In the kitchen she reached behind the stove and felt the water tank. It was full of hot water from the noonday cooking. In the bathroom she tore off her soiled clothes and flung them into the corner. And then she scrubbed herself with a little block of pumice, legs and thighs, loins and chest and arms, until her skin was scratched and red. When she had dried herself she stood in front of a mirror in her bedroom and looked at her body. She tightened her stomach and threw out her chest. She turned and looked over her shoulder at her back.
After a while she began to dress, slowly. She put on her newest underclothing and her nicest stockings and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness. She worked carefully on her hair, penciled her eyebrows and rouged her lips.
Before she was finished she heard the little thunder of hoofs and the shouts of Henry and his helper as they drove the red steers into the corral. She heard the gate bang shut and set herself for Henry’s arrival.
His step sounded on the porch. He entered the house calling, “Elisa, where are you?”
“In my room, dressing. I’m not ready. There’s hot water for your bath. Hurry up. It’s getting late.”
When she heard him splashing in the tub, Elisa laid his dark suit on the bed, and shirt and socks and tie beside it. She stood his polished shoes on the floor beside the bed. Then she went to the porch and sat primly and stiffly down. She looked toward the river road where the willow-line was still yellow with frosted leaves so that under the high grey fog they seemed a thin band of sunshine. This was the only color in the grey afternoon. She sat unmoving for a long time. Her eyes blinked rarely.
Henry came banging out of the door, shoving his tie inside his vest as he came. Elisa stiffened and her face grew tight. Henry stopped short and looked at her. “Why—why, Elisa. You look so nice!”
“Nice? You think I look nice? What do you mean by ‘nice’?”
Henry blundered on. “I don’t know. I mean you look different, strong and happy.”
“I am strong? Yes, strong. What do you mean ‘strong’?”
He looked bewildered. “You’re playing some kind of a game,” he said helplessly. “It’s a kind of a play. You look strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a watermelon.”
For a second she lost her rigidity. “Henry! Don’t talk like that. You didn’t know what you said.” She grew complete again. “I’m strong,” she boasted. “I never knew before how strong.”
Henry looked down toward the tractor shed, and when he brought his eyes back to her, they were his own again. “I’ll get out the car. You can put on your coat while I’m starting.”
Elisa went into the house. She heard him drive to the gate and idle down his motor, and then she took a long time to put on her hat. She pulled it here and pressed it there. When Henry turned the motor off she slipped into her coat and went out.
The little roadster bounced along on the dirt road by the river, raising the birds and driving the rabbits into the brush. Two cranes flapped heavily over the willow-line and dropped into the river-bed.
Far ahead on the road Elisa saw a dark speck. She knew.
She tried not to look as they passed it, but her eyes would not obey. She whispered to herself sadly, “He might have thrown them off the road. That wouldn’t have been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot,” she explained. “He had to keep the pot. That’s why he couldn’t get them off the road.”
The roadster turned a bend and she saw the caravan ahead. She swung full around toward her husband so she could not see the little covered wagon and the mismatched team as the car passed them.
In a moment it was over. The thing was done. She did not look back.
She said loudly, to be heard above the motor, “It will be good, tonight, a good dinner.”
“Now you’ve changed again,” Henry complained. He took one hand from the wheel and patted her knee. “I ought to take you in to dinner oftener. It would be good for both of us. We get so heavy out on the ranch.”
“Henry,” she asked, “could we have wine at dinner?”
“Sure we could. Say! That will be fine.”
She was silent for a while; then she said, “Henry, at those prize fights, do the men hurt each other very much?”
“Sometimes a little, not often. Why?”
“Well, I’ve read how they break noses, and blood runs down their chests. I’ve read how the fighting gloves get heavy and soggy with blood.”
He looked around at her. “What’s the matter, Elisa? I didn’t know you read things like that.” He brought the car to a stop, then turned to the right over the Salinas River bridge.
“Do any women ever go to the fights?” she asked.
“Oh, sure, some. What’s the matter, Elisa? Do you want to go? I don’t think you’d like it, but I’ll take you if you really want to go.”
She relaxed limply in the seat. “Oh, no. No. I don’t want to go. I’m sure I don’t.” Her face was turned away from him. “It will be enough if we can have wine. It will be plenty.” She turned up her coat collar so he could not see that she was crying weakly—like an old woman.
The White Quail
I
The wall opposite the fireplace in the living room was a big dormer window stretching from the cushioned window seats almost to the ceiling—small diamond panes set in lead. From the window, preferably if you were sitting on the window seat, you could look across the garden and up the hill. There was a stretch of shady lawn under the garden oaks—around each oak there was a circle of carefully tended earth in which grew cinerarias, big ones with loads of flowers so heavy they bent the stems over, and ranging in color from scarlet to ultramarine. At the edge of the lawn, a line of fuchsias grew like little symbolic trees. In front of the fuchsias lay a shallow garden pool, the coping flush with the lawn for a very good reason.
Right at the edge of the garden, the hill started up, wild with cascara bushes and poison oak, with dry grass and live oak, very wild. If you didn’t go around to the front of the house you couldn’t tell it was on the very edge of the town.
Mary Teller, Mrs. Harry E. Teller, that is, knew the window and the garden were Right and she had a very good reason for knowing. Hadn’t she picked out the place where the house and the garden would be years ago? Hadn’t she seen the house and the garden a thousand times while the place was still a dry flat against the shoulder of a hill? For that matter, hadn’t she, during five years, looked at every attentive man and wondered whether he and that garden would go together? She didn’t think so much, “Would this man like such a garden?” but, “Would the garden like such a man?” For the garden was herself, and after all she had to marry some one she liked.
When she met Harry Teller, the garden seemed to like him. It may have surprised him a little when, after he had proposed and was waiting sulkily for his answer, as men do, Mary broke into a description of a big dormer window and a garden with a lawn and oak trees and cinerarias and then a wild hill.
He said, “Of course,” rather perfunctorily.
Mary asked, “Do you think it’s silly?”
He was waiting a little sullenly. “Of course not.”
And then she remembered that he had proposed to her, and she accepted him, and let him kiss her. She said, “There will be a little cement pool flush with the lawn. Do you know why? Well, there are more birds on that hill than you’d ever think, yellow-hammers and wild canaries and red-wing blackbirds, and of course sparrows and linnets, and lots of quail. Of course they’ll be coming down to drink there, won’t they?”
She was very pretty. He wanted to kiss her over and over, and she let him. “And fuchsias,” she said. “Don’t forget fuchsias. They’ re like little tropical Christmas trees. We’ll have to have the lawn raked every day to keep the oak leaves clear.”
He laughed at her. “You’re a funny little bug. The lot isn’t bought, and the house isn’t built, and the garden isn’t planted; and already you’re worrying about oak leaves on the lawn. You’re so pretty. You make me kind of—hungry.”
That startled her a little. A little expression of annoyance crossed her face. But nevertheless she let him kiss her again, and then sent him home and went to her room, where she had a little blue writing desk and on it a copy-book to write things in. She took up a pen, of which the handle was a peacock feather, and she wrote, “Mary Teller” over and over again. Once or twice she wrote, “Mrs. Harry E. Teller.”
II
The lot was bought and the house was built, and they were married. Mary drew a careful plan of the garden, and when the workmen were putting it in she didn’t leave them alone for a moment. She knew to an inch where everything should be. And she drew the shape of the shallow pool for the cement workers, a kind of heart-shaped pool with no point at the bottom, with gradually sloping edges so that birds could drink easily.
Harry watched her with admiration. “Who could tell that such a pretty girl could have so much efficiency,” he said.
That pleased her, too; and she was very happy, so that she said, “You can plant some of the things you like in the garden, if you want.”
“No, Mary, I like too much to see your own mind coming out in the garden. You do it all your own way.”
She loved him for that; but after all, it was her garden. She had invented it, and willed it, and she had worked out the colors too, so carefully. It really wouldn’t have been nice if, for instance, Harry had wanted some flowers that didn’t go with the garden.
At last the green lawn was up, and the cinerarias around the oak trees bloomed in sunken pots. The little fuchsia trees had been moved in so carefully that not a leaf wilted.
The window seats behind the dormer windows were piled with cushions covered with bright, fadeless fabrics, for the sun shone in that window a good part of the day.
Mary waited until it was all done, all finished exactly as her mind had seen it; and then one evening when Harry came home from the office, she led him to the window seat. “You see,” she said softly. “There it is, just the way I wanted it.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Harry, “very beautiful.”
“In a way I’m sad that it’s done,” she said. “But mostly I’m glad. We won’t ever change it, will we, Harry? If a bush dies, we’ll put another one just like it in the same place.”
“Curious little bug,” he said.
“Well, you see I’ve thought about it so long that it’s part of me. If anything should be changed it would be like part of me being torn out.”
He put out his hand to touch her, and then withdrew it. “I love you so much,” he said, and then paused. “But I’m afraid of you, too.”
She smiled quietly. “You? Afraid of me? What’s there about me you can be afraid of?”
“Well, you’re kind of untouchable. There’s an inscrutability about you. Probably you don’t even know it yourself. You’re kind of like your own garden—fixed, and just so. I’m afraid to move around. I might disturb some of your plants.”
Mary was pleased. “Dear,” she said. “You let me do it. You made it my garden. Yes, you are dear.” And she let him kiss her.
III
He was proud of her when people came in to dinner. She was so pretty, so cool and perfect. Her bowls of flowers were exquisite, and she talked about the garden modestly, hesitantly, almost as though she were talking about herself. Sometimes she took her guests into the garden. She pointed to a fuchsia tree. “I didn’t know whether he would succeed,” she said, just as though the plant were a person. “He ate a lot of plant food before he decided to come around.” She smiled quietly to herself.
She was delightful when she worked in the garden. She wore a bright print dress, quite long in the skirt, and sleeveless. Somewhere she had found an old-fashioned sunbonnet. She wore good sturdy gloves to protect her hands. Harry liked to watch her going about with a bag and a big spoon, putting plant food about the roots of her flowers. He liked it, too, when they went out at night to kill slugs and snails. Mary held the flashlight while Harry did the actual killing, crushing the slugs and snails into oozy, bubbling masses. He knew it must be a disgusting business to her, but the light never wavered. “Brave girl,” he thought. “She has a sturdiness in back of that fragile beauty.” She made the hunts exciting too. “There’s a big one, creeping and creeping,” she would say. “He’s after that big bloom. Kill him! Kill him quickly!” They came into the house after the hunts laughing happily.
Mary was worried about the birds. “They don’t come down to drink,” she complained. “Not many of them. I wonder what’s keeping them away.”
“Maybe they aren’t used to it yet. They’ll come later. Maybe there’s a cat around.”
Her face flushed and she breathed deeply. Her pretty lips tightened away from her teeth. “If there’s a cat, I’ll put out poisoned fish,” she cried. “I won’t have a cat after my birds!”
Harry had to soothe her. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll buy an air gun. Then if a cat comes, we can shoot it, and it won’t kill the cat, but it’ll hurt, and the cat won’t come back.”
“Yes,” she said more calmly. “That might be better.”
The living room was very pleasant at night. The fire burned up in a sheet of flame. If there was a moon, Mary turned off the lights and then they sat looking through the window at the cool blue garden and the dark oak trees.
It was utterly calm and eternal out there. And then the garden ended and the dark thickets of the hill began.
“That’s the enemy,” Mary said one time. “That’s the world that wants to get in, all rough and tangled and unkempt. But it can’t get in because the fuchsias won’t let it. That’s what the fuchsias are there for, and they know it. The birds can get in. They live out in the wild, but they come to my garden for peace and for water.” She laughed softly. “There’s something profound in all that, Harry. I don’t know quite what it is. The quail are beginning to come down now. At least a dozen were at the pool this evening.”
He said, “I wish I could see the inside of your mind. It seems to flutter around, but it’s a cool, collected mind. It’s so—sure of itself.”