Max Brand (21 page)

"This thing is going through," she declared.

"You won't weaken?"

"I'm as cold as steel. Let's go back. He'll probably be in the house by
this time."

Time had slipped past her unnoticed, and the lake was violet and gold
with the sunset as they turned away; under the trees along the terraces
the brilliant wild flowers were dimmed by a blue shadow.

"But I never saw wild flowers like those," she said to Connor.

"Nobody else ever did. But old Matthew, whoever he was, grew 'em and
kept crossing 'em until he got those big fellows with all the colors of
the rainbow."

"Hurry! We're late!"

"No, David's probably on top of that hill, now; always goes up there to
watch the sun rise and the sun set. Can you beat that?"

He chuckled, but a shade had darkened the face of the girl for a moment.
Then she lifted her head resolutely.

"I'm not going to try to understand him. The minute you understand a
thing you stop being afraid of it; and as soon as I stop being afraid of
David Eden I might begin to like him—which is what I don't want."

"What's that?" cried Connor, breaking in on her last words. When Ruth
began to think aloud he always stopped listening; it was a maxim of his
to never listen when a woman became serious.

"It's that strange giant."

"Joseph!" exclaimed Connor heavily. "Whipping did him no good. He'll
need killing one of these days."

But she had already reverted to another thing.

"Do you think he worships the sun?"

"I don't think. Try to figure out a fellow like that and you get to be
just as much of a nut as he is. Go on toward the house and I'll follow
you in a minute. I want to talk to big Joe."

He turned aside into the trees briskly, and the moment he was out of
sight of the girl he called softly: "Joseph!"

He repeated the call after a trifling wait before he saw the big man
coming unconcernedly through the trees toward him. Joseph came close
before he stopped—very close, as a man will do when he wishes to make
another aware of his size, and from this point of vantage, he looked
over Connor from head to foot with a glance of lingering and insolent
criticism. The gambler was somewhat amused and a little alarmed by that
attitude.

"Now, Joseph," he said, "tell me frankly why you're dodging me about the
valley. Waiting for a chance to throw stones?"

His smile remained without a reflection on the stolid face of the
servant.

"Benjamin," answered the deep, solemn voice, "I know all!"

It made Connor peer into those broad features as into a dim light. Then
a moment of reflection assured him that Joseph could not have learned
the secret.

"Haneemar, whom you know," continued Joseph, "has told me about you."

"And where," asked Connor, completely at sea, "did you learn of
Haneemar?"

"From Abraham. And I know that this is the head of Haneemar."

He brought out in his palm the little watch-charm of carved ivory.

"Of course," nodded Connor, feeling his way. "And what is it that you
know from Haneemar?"

"That you are evil, Benjamin, and that you have come here for evil. You
entered by a trick; and you will stay here for evil purposes until the
end."

"You follow around to pick up a little dope, eh?" chuckled Connor. "You
trail me to find out what I intend to do? Why don't you go to David and
warn him?"

"Have I forgotten the whip?" asked Joseph, his nostrils trembling with
anger. "But the good Haneemar now gives me power and in the end he will
betray you into my hands. That is why I follow you. Wherever you go I
follow; I am even able to know what you think! But hearken to me,
Benjamin. Take back the head of Haneemar and the bad luck that lives in
it. Take it back, and I shall no longer follow you. I shall forget the
whip. I shall be ready to do you a service."

He extended the little piece of ivory eagerly, but Connor drew back. His
superstitions were under the surface of his mind, but, still, they were
there, and the fear which Joseph showed was contagious.

"Why don't you throw it away if you're afraid of it, Joseph?"

"You know as I know," returned Joseph, glowering, "that it cannot be
thrown away. It must be given and freely accepted, as I—oh
fool—accepted it from you."

There was such a profound conviction in this that Connor was affected in
spite of himself. That little trinket had been the entering wedge
through which he had worked his way into the Garden and started on the
road to fortune. He would rather have cut off his hand, now, than take
it back.

"Find some one else to take it," he suggested cheerily. "I don't want
the thing."

"Then all that Abraham told me is true!" muttered Joseph, closing his
hand over the trinket. "But I shall follow you, Benjamin. When you think
you are alone you shall find me by turning your head. Every day by
sunrise and every day by the dark I beg Haneemar to put his curse on
you. I have done you no wrong, and you have had me shamed."

"And now you're going to have me bewitched, eh?" asked Connor.

"You shall see."

The gambler drew back another pace and through the shadows he saw the
beginning of a smile of animal-cunning on the face of Joseph.

"The devil take you and Haneemar together," he growled. "Remember this,
Joseph. I've had you whipped once. The next time I'll have you flayed
alive."

Instead of answering, Joseph merely grinned more openly, and the
gambler, to forget the ape-face, wheeled and hurried out from the trees.
The touch of nightmare dread did not leave him until he rejoined Ruth on
the higher terrace.

They found the patio glowing with light, the table near the fountain,
and three chairs around it. David came out of the shadow of the arcade
to meet them, and he was as uneasy as a boy who had a surprise for
grown-ups. He had not even time for a greeting.

"You have not seen your room?" he said to Ruth. "I have made it ready
for you. Come!"

He led the way half a pace in front, glancing back at them as though to
reprove their slowness, until he reached a door at which he turned and
faced her, laughing with excitement. She could hardly believe that this
man with his childish gayety was the same whose fury had terrified the
servants that same afternoon.

"Close your eyes—close them fast. You will not look until I say?"

She obeyed, setting her teeth to keep from smiling.

"Now come forward—step high for the doorway. So! You are in. Now
wait—now open your eyes and look!"

She obeyed again and saw first David standing back with an anxious smile
and the gesture of one who reveals, but is not quite sure of its effect.
Then she heard a soft, startled exclamation from Connor behind her. Last
of all she saw the room.

It was as if the walls had been broken down and a garden let inside—it
gave an effect of open air, sunlight and wind. Purple flowers like warm
shadows banked the farther corners, and out of them rose a great vine
draping the window. It had been torn bodily from the earth, and now the
roots were packed with damp moss, yellow-green. It bore in clusters and
single flowers and abundant bloom, each blossom as large as the mallow,
and a dark gold so rich that Ruth well-nigh listened for the murmur of
bees working this mine of pollen. From above, the great flowers hung
down against the dull red of the sunset sky; and from below the distant
treetops on the terrace pointed up with glimmers of the lake between.
There was only the reflected light of the evening, now, but the cuplike
blossoms were filled to the brim with a glow of their own.

She looked away.

A dapple deerskin covered the bed like the shadow under a tree in
mid-day, and the yellow of the flowers was repeated dimly on the floor
by a great, tawny hide of a mountain-lion. She took up some of the
purple flowers, and letting the velvet petals trail over her finger
tips, she turned to David with a smile. But what Connor saw, and saw
with a thrill of alarm, was that her eyes were filling with tears.

"See!" said David gloomily. "I have done this to make you happy, and now
you are sad!"

"Because it is so beautiful."

"Yes," said David slowly. "I think I understand."

But Connor took one of the flowers from her hand. She cried out, but too
late to keep him from ripping the blossom to pieces, and now he held up
a single petal, long, graceful, red-purple at the broader end and deep
yellow at the narrow.

"Think of that a million times bigger," said Connor, "and made out of
velvet. That'd be a design for a cloak, eh? Cost about a thousand bucks
to imitate this petal, but it'd be worth it to see you in it, eh?"

She looked to David with a smile of apology for Connor, but her hand
accepted the petal, and her second smile was for Connor himself.

When they went out into the patio again, David had lost a large part of
his buoyancy of spirits, as though in some subtle manner Connor had
overcast the triumph of the room; he left them with word that the
evening meal would soon be ready and hurried off calling orders to
Zacharias.

"Why did you do it?" she asked Connor as soon as they were alone.

"Because it made me mad to see a stargazer like that turning your head."

"But didn't you think the room was beautiful?"

"Sure. Like a riot in a florist's shop. But don't let this David take
you off guard with his rooms full of flowers and full of silence."

"Silence?"

"Haven't I told you about his Room of Silence? That's one of his queer
dodges. That room; you see? When anything bothers him he goes over and
sits down in there, because—do you know what he thinks sits with him?"

"Well?"

"God!"

She was between a smile and a gasp.

"Yep, that's David," grinned Connor. "Just plain nut."

"What's inside?"

"I don't know. Maybe flowers."

"Let's find out."

He caught her arm quickly.

"Not in a thousand years!" He changed color at the thought and glanced
guiltily around. "That would be the smash of everything. Why, he turned
over the whole Garden of Eden to me. I can go anywhere, but not a step
inside that room. It's his Holy Ground, you see! Maybe it's where he
keeps his jack. And I've a hunch that he has a slough of it tucked away
somewhere."

She raised her hand as an idea came to her half way through this speech.

"Listen! I have an idea that the clew to all of David's mystery is in
that room!"

"Drop that idea, Ruth," he ordered gruffly. "You've seen David on one
rampage, but it's nothing to what would happen if you so much as peeked
into that place. When the servants pass that door they take off their
hats—watch 'em the next time you have a chance. You won't make a slip
about that room?"

"No." But she added: "I'd give my soul—for one look!"

Dinner that night under the stars with the whispering of the fountain
beside them was a ceremony which Connor never forgot. The moon rose late
and in the meantime the sky was heavy and dark with sheeted patchwork of
clouds, with the stars showing here and there. The wind blew in gusts.
A wave began with a whisper on the hill, came with a light rushing
across the patio, and then diminished quickly among the trees down the
terraces. Rough, iron-framed lanterns gave the light and showed the
arcade stepping away on either side and growing dim toward the entrance.
That uncertain illumination made the crude pillars seem to have only the
irregularity of vast antiquity, stable masses of stone. Where the circle
of lantern-light overlapped rose the fountain, a pale spray forever
dissolving in the upper shadow. Connor himself was more or less used to
these things, but he became newly aware of them as the girl sent quick,
eager glances here and there.

She had placed a single one of the great yellow blossoms in her hair and
it changed her shrewdly. It brought out the delicate coloring of her
skin, and to the darkness of her eyes it lent a tint of violet. Plainly
she enjoyed the scene with its newness. David, of course, was the spice
to everything, and his capitulation was complete; he kept the girl
always on an uneasy balance between happiness and laughter. And Connor
trembled for fear the mirth would show through. But each change of her
expression appeared to delight David more than the last.

Under his deft knife the choicest white meat came away from the breast
of a chicken and he heaped it at once on the plate of Ruth. Then he
dropped his chin upon his great brown fist and watched with silent
delight while she ate. It embarrassed her; but her flush had a tinge of
pleasure in it, as Connor very well knew.

"Look!" said David, speaking softly as though Ruth would not hear him.
"How pleasant it is, to be three together. When we were two, one talked
and the other grew weary—was it not so? But now we are complete. One
speaks, one listens, and the other judges. I have been alone. The
Garden of Eden has been to me a prison, at many times. And now there is
nothing wanting. And why? There were many men before. We were not
lacking in numbers. Yet there was an emptiness, and now comes one small
creature, as delicate as a colt of three months, this being of smiles
and curious glances, this small voice, this woman—and at once the gap
is filled. Is it not strange?"

He cast himself back in his chair, as though he wished to throw her into
perspective with her surroundings, and all the time he was staring as
though she were an image, a picture, and not a thing of flesh and blood.
Connor himself was on the verge of a smile, but when he saw the face of
Ruth Manning his mirth disappeared in a chill of terror. She was
struggling and struggling in vain against a rising tide of laughter,
laughter in the face of David Eden and his sensitive pride.

It came, it broke through all bonds, and now it was bubbling from her
lips. As one who awaits the falling of a blow, Connor glanced furtively
at the host, and again he was startled.