Everywhere were the shameful wrecks of forests; everywhere the dry bones of torrents, the dwindling streams, the hell-like brand of fire.
And now the region was dead, forests stripped of hemlock bark and great trunks prone, and nothing left save a light sandy loam which the breeze blew and shifted as dunes are blown.
Yet, to the iron flanks of the denuded hills human beings still clung, because they were too poor to get away. Ruin wrought by them and their fathers had caught them where their shanties stood gauntly amid the sandy fields. The curse had come upon them — all the ignorance and stupidity and wanton waste of tree and water they were now paying for in sterile fields and starving stomachs.
The girl at the wheel turned toward Green: “This is the region,” she said, “which I have described to you in my letters. Did I make it more hideous than it is?” He was silent.
Wild, shy, ragged children came from half-ruined shanties to stare at them; shaggy, gaunt men turned to lean upon hoe and spade and watch the grey runabout pass.
Everywhere ignorance and folly had wrought; everywhere hopeless faces and dull eyes met their gaze. The sun was hot; the country road sandy and full of rocks. Even the roadside shade trees had been wantonly felled, the bushes hacked and burned — God only knew why. These people in their madness seemed bent on obliterating the last green shadow, the last breath of merciful coolness that shielded them and the burnt land from the hot anger of a scornful sun.
“What fools!” said Green, aloud to himself.
“What martyrs,” she said quietly, “poor sufferers from their own ignorance — from the ignorance of the State, of the Nation. How could we expect these people to know by instinct that which the educated in the United States are just beginning to learn.
“Was there anybody to tell these people that the death of the forests meant starvation to them? Who was there to teach them that conservation of natural resources was vital — that axe and fire meant hunger and thirst for them and theirs? Not the State; not even the National Government. No, they are not fools; they are neglected children; and the Nation is responsible for their dreadful degeneration!”
At the summit of a long treeless sandy ridge she brought the car to a stop; and they looked out over the grim desolation made by man. In a weedy field nearby a young girl was hoeing corn — her symmetrical features thin with malnutrition, her garments in tatters about her.
The girl at the wheel touched her companion on the sleeve and pointed, paraphrasing: “There, but for the grace of God, delves Marion Grey.”... And in the next instant a smile flashed in her eyes— “with an e,” she said gaily, “and maybe you had better write out the ‘Marion.’”
He was on the point of impulsive confession — he felt he could endure his own duplicity no longer — and opened his mouth with a boyish gasp; but she had begun speaking again.
“To propose to aid these people is a noble charity,” she said. “Your idea of establishing a Conservation School here, of teaching these people how to wring a little more than a living out of this rock and sand — of aiding them with money, of employing them to reforest the ashes of this burnt-out hell, is a noble and God-inspired charity.
“As you have pointed out to me in your letters, these people can be aided; they can be schooled; they can be taught fish culture, forest culture, land culture.
“With a little education and aid they can raise fish and game for re-stocking purposes; they can re-plant devastated areas; they can make something of what fertile strips they possess; their children can be schooled, clothed, fed, taught; and this nightmare of a region and the pitiful shades who inhabit it can be reclaimed.” She leaned on the wheel and looked him in the eyes.
“I pledge you twenty thousand dollars — thirty if you need it. I pledge you three months every year personal service among these people. Others will contribute as much. Are you satisfied in your first meeting with your correspondent of many months, Mr. Brown?”
The young man turned a deep and painful red.
“I — am not — Mr. Brown,” he said, looking her squarely in the eyes.
Whether she was struck dumb with astonishment and anger he did not know, but she said nothing; she did not even utter an exclamation; but her grey eyes remained fixed on him.
“I’m a broker; I earn about two thousand dollars a year. I don’t know — know anything about conservation of n-natural resources, or about human misery — except what I’m now enduring — or about philanthropy, or about anything. I’m just as something fraudulent — and — I’ll ask your pardon. I’m — sorry; and I’ll get out of your car and walk — somewhere or other.”
Red, trembling slightly, he began to climb out of the runabout, had already laid an unsteady hand on the door when she spoke. “Please — I must tell you something — before you go.”
He turned; her slight gesture asked him to resume his seat.
“I — I’ll have to tell you something, too,” she said. Suddenly the scarlet leaped into her face, but she managed to keep her grey eyes lifted.
“All I told you was — was only what I’d like to do — if I had the means.... But I haven’t. I — I am not wealthy. I’m p-poor. I came — came to meet Mr. Brown at Saratoga because he — he wanted a secretary for this enterprise — and because I knew this region. M-my salary will be very s-small.”
She continued to face him with a visible effort, but her voice was weakening a little.
“I knew you were not the Mr. Brown as soon as I saw you. I have seen his photograph. He is old and bald. I — I don’t know what madness seized me to do this thing — let you talk to me — lunch with you. I knew you were pretending. But suddenly I wanted to — to have an adventure. And I — have — had one.”
After a silence he nodded in a dazed sort of way. She said, tremulously: “There must be something about the air of Saratoga. I never before behaved this way.”
“There is,” he said, “something about the air of Saratoga.”
“I don’t think you, either, have ever before done anything like this. H-have you?” she asked timidly.
“No. But the germ of this sort of thing is in us all.” He drew a long deep breath. “It has been very wonderful after all, hasn’t it?” he said almost dreamily. And, dreamily, the girl looked back at him out of her grey eyes tinged already with the vague beauty of that perennial enchantment born out of the morning mists in Eden.
Thoughtfully she backed the car, turned out through a dry field, and swung into the road again.
“You drive wonderfully.”
“I demonstrated for the Snapper Motor Company. They let me have a car sometimes when I ask for it.”
“Oh.”
She looked up at him, then her head dropped a little over the wheel.
“And is — is this enterprise — this idea of aiding these people only a myth?” he asked.
“No. That is real enough.”
“It is actually going to be done?”
“Yes.”
“By Brown?”
“Yes.”
“And are you going to be his secretary?”
“Yes.”
“If there were a place in his office,” said the young man, “any old place, at any old salary — and if Mr. Brown would let me take it, I’d do it — to be near — you.” After a long while, and driving very carefully, “Shall I ask Mr. Brown?” she inquired, looking straight ahead of her.
“Yes; if you would like to have me — near you.”
She continued to gaze straight ahead, gravely. Intuition silently solved her unasked questions. A faint and adorable flush came over her face.
“Then I shall ask Mr. Brown at the meeting tonight whether there is on his staff any place for—” she hesitated; and suddenly the two little demons danced in her grey eyes.
“Do you spell yours with an e?” she asked.
“Two,” he said; “G-r-e-e-n!”
They smiled rather confusedly at each other.
Suddenly her mood ent
irely changed. “Oh, how guilty I have been! I never could have believed it of myself — I, Marion Grey—”
She turned her dismayed gaze on him again. And after a moment they both smiled confusedly.
For, within each youthful body the germ, well-sprouted by the Saratoga atmosphere, was already in bud, and the buds had begun to open.
The frail bark of Romance sailed slowly on, leaving Scylla behind.
Then the old gods laughed and blew the golden sails until they filled above a sapphire sea.
LUCILLE’S LEGS
SHE was young and pretty, and she came from Eagle City, N. M., where two years previously her husband had fallen down a shaft in his own mine and had immediately become nihil ad rem.
As he was a wealthy man, he required expensive obsequies, so they scraped him off the ore — which also was too rich to waste. Anyway, the mine continued to pay and young Mrs. Quest continued to wear mourning. Her name was Lucille, and she was just beginning to like being married; and her fat, florid husband was just beginning to find it a trifle wearisome.
In fact, he had an appointment with a senorita that evening and had imbibed sufficient courage to keep it, when he carelessly wandered down the shaft. So perhaps it happened just as well for all concerned.
Eagle City, N. M., was the garish setting; Lucille the jewel of purest ray serene. At the end of the second year the one wore out the other — it works either way — and Lucille made madly for New York. And was there instantly engulfed in the restless and boundless ocean of pretty women. In Eagle City, N. M., she had been a local gem; in Gotham she glimmered only as a single ray from the glittering mountain of brilliants, where every pebble is a jewel, and where nothing added is distinguishable, nothing subtracted missed.
Society, considering her transparent, gazed through her very indifferently at a point somewhere beyond her. Something had to be done. So she became a suffragette, a settlement worker, a social uplifter. But bettered herself socially not at all. Even the stage dodged her, although it was receptive concerning her money. There seemed nothing left but the Waldorf or Hot Springs.
A great and pensive seriousness came over Lucille: the world was cold and mostly vulgar; that seemed certain. Besides that, her young life had already been wrecked. Retirement, study, and contemplation remained to console her. The result, ultimately, should be a book — a sad one, full of subtleties and great truths, tinged with the gentle melancholy of a noble soul misunderstood by Manhattan.
The world should read and realize what it had not particularly noticed in her — a great moral and abiding purpose.
What that purpose was, however, she did not trouble herself to analyze. And had anybody told her that her purpose had been the spotlight, her delicacy might never have recovered from the libel. Libels in law are not necessarily untruths.
During her widowhood, Lucille’s adventures with the brute, Man, had not endeared the species to her. There is, perhaps, as cynics assert, only one sort of man; but she had met all sorts of that sort. She detested them as frankly as she cherished the memory of her husband — why, she did not know. But the truth was that they too closely resembled her husband, whose smirking memory her loyalty to custom and precedent had so carefully repainted and varnished and framed under glass that all resemblance to the original had vanished.
Yes, men were all the same to her, only more so. The kind she encountered as a suffragette or a social uplifter and in the Waldorf or at Hot Springs, differed only in this: the latter danced tangos with her; the former sat too close to her, breathed on her when they spoke of uplift, and read the Evening Post.
Retirement, leisure in which to nourish ineffable thoughts and aspirations — a jug of wine, perhaps, but no loafer, no “thou” — merely a solitude of golden sunshine where golden thoughts might germinate and blossom — and plenty of pretty gowns in case mere man intruded — these ideas were now desperately attracting Lucille.
She had been reading Florida railroad literature. And she had fallen for it. But like all fallen women she should not be judged harshly. The literature was very, very alluring.
Which explains her ensuing situation along that coral strip which separates the social desert from the sown — not too far from Palm Beach and Miami; an orange grove fronting the sea; a straight, white road vanishing both ways into perspective between palmetto woods and acres of white and pink phlox; a cottage constructed of silvery palm logs; six English servants; and a basket phaeton.
In her narrow gown of snowy serge, her golden hair tied with a butterfly bow of black ribbon like a schoolgirl, she sat in a great wicker chair under a kumquat bush, writing the memoirs of her life. Which she realized would prove a long, serious, and exhausting effort, she being already nearly twenty-two and aging rapidly.
She began to write her memoirs with a pencil on a pad of yellow paper, balanced over her knees. When a quarter of an hour had elapsed she paused, overcome with astonishment at her own philosophy.
For, with the very first paragraph, she had already pointed out to the world with calm and pitiless logic that experience is a stern teacher, and that life is not worth the effort of living. And was intensely pleased with herself for discovering these great truths unaided.
The air was balmy, soft with the scent of orange blossoms. Suave little winds carried subtle odours from oleander hedges and stirred the great palm fronds till they glistened, rattling faintly overhead.
“Life is not worth living,” she repeated to herself, somewhat awed by her discovery. But presently she began to nourish what little vitality remained with kumquats, reaching up behind her head to pluck from the bush the little, egg-shaped, orange-like fruit.
She had eaten a dozen, perhaps, perhaps two dozen — for she was young and sturdy — and was reaching for another, when, on the veranda of the next cottage, appeared one of the objectionable young men who tenanted it.
She paused, her pretty, rounded arm raised, her golden head tilted back against the glossy foliage of the kumquat bush — truly a picture that any young man might well discover with a dramatic start.
Gage started, gazed to the limit of good breeding, then picked up his gun and sat down on the veranda rail, pretending to be busy with the locks.
As for Lucille, she regarded him with undisguised disapproval.
The cottage stood some hundred odd yards down the white road, embowered in palms and live oaks, with a field of pink and white phlox between it and her own abode.
Four young men inhabited it — sunburned, active, noisy young men who seemed to find much in this sad world to laugh at, much to eat, much to drink. This particular man was consuming a swizzle now. She couldn’t hear the ice tinkle, but she could see the shape of the glass. And — had he intentionally glanced in her direction when he lifted it to his lips? As a good woman, and a recently widowed one, she sincerely hoped not; but she was gravely doubtful: noisy, healthy men of that sort were probably capable of anything — men prone to easy laughter, to unconsidered skylarking among themselves — men who went tramping about on their veranda whistling — men in whose hands was always to be seen either a gun, a riding crop, or a swizzle.
Lucille picked up her pencil and inspected the pencil-written pad on her knee with pretty gravity. During the next ten minutes she changed a comma to a semicolon and crossed three t’s. Which was something.
When she got ready she lifted her dark blue eyes meditatively.
The young man on the veranda was evidently preparing to shoot quail. He wore over his thin, grey flannel shirt, which was open at the throat, a shooting coat of solaro cloth, breeches of the same, heavy shoes, and puttees. A gun lay across his knees; a dog wagged beside them. He sorted cartridges, smoked a cob pipe, petted his dog, and occasionally patronized his swizzle. And about every thirty or thirty-one seconds, as well as she could calculate, he lifted a lean, well-shaped head and glanced in her direction. Maybe it was something behind her that attracted him. Involuntarily she turned to see, but there was only the kumquat bu
sh.
“That man,” she thought rather sadly to herself, “is probably totally unaware of the seriousness and futility of life. Doubtless he lives only from moment to moment, from one pleasure to the next, utterly ignorant that nothing is really worth while — that the fountain of pleasure is already failing — that only the noble melancholy of meditation renders endurable an existence that is meaningless until it ends.”
She wrote this down, rather fancying it. Then she looked at him.
His three companions presently came out on the veranda, noisily as usual, followed by three excited dogs and a negro; and after swizzles and much laughter they, their dogs, guns, lunch baskets, and ammunition were loaded into a wagon and driven off down the white road by the negro.
But the bronzed young man who had dared to look at her when he drank his swizzle remained seated on the veranda rail, smoking his cob pipe.
Exactly what his eyes were about she could not see, because he had put on a flat sun helmet, and the shadow of it fell across the bridge of his straight nose.
If, taking advantage of this natural phenomenon, he were looking at her out of the shadow, it was an impudent thing for him to do. Also, this had been going on now for nearly three weeks; whenever he put on his sun helmet she never was able to decide what his eyes were doing; and he always ended a period of mutual and silent inspection by putting it on.
To ignore him entirely, to appear utterly indifferent and oblivions to his presence in the landscape was what she intended. At any rate she wished him to understand that she was indifferent, preoccupied, and oblivious to his inspection. Yet she had to look at him to see whether the intended effect was being produced. But every time, before she could make up her mind, he always put on his sun helmet, leaving her irritated, curious, and uncertain.
Thoughtfully tracing her maiden initials over the yellow pad, she sat motionless in the shade of the kumquat bush, conscious, however, whenever he moved; for, while not looking at him any more, she kept him within her range of vision. And a woman’s range is boundless.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1186