he brought glani to a halt. they had left the sight of the meadow, though they could still hear the snorting of the oxen at their labor, a distant sound. here, on one side of the road, the forest tumbled back from a swale of ground across which a tiny stream leaped and flashed with crooked speed, and the ground seemed littered with bright gold, so closely were the yellow wild flowers packed.
"two days ago," said david, "they were only buds. see them now!"
he slipped from his horse and, stooping, rose again in a moment with his hands full of the yellow blossoms.
"they have a fragrance that makes them seem far away," he said. "see!"
he tossed the flowers at her; the wind caught them and spangled her hair and her clothes with them, and she breathed a rare perfume. david fell to clapping his hands and laughing like a child at the picture she made. she had never liked him so well as she did at this moment. she had never pitied him as she did now; she was not wise enough to shrink from that emotion.
"it was made for you—this place."
and before she could move to defend herself he had raised her strongly, lightly from the saddle, and placed her on the knoll in the thickest of the flowers. he stood back to view his work, nodding his satisfaction, and she, looking up at him, felt the old sense of helplessness sweep over her. every now and then david eden overwhelmed her like an inescapable destiny; there was something foredoomed about the valley and about him.
"i knew you would look like this," he was saying. "how do men make a jewel seem more beautiful? they set it in gold! and so with you, ruth. your hair against the gold is darker and richer and more like piles and coils of shadow. your face against the gold is the transparent white, with a bloom in it. your hands are half lost in the softness of that gold. and to think that is a picture you can never see! but i forget."
his face grew dark.
"here i have stumbled again, and yet i started with strong vows and resolves. my brother benjamin warned me!"
it shocked her for a reason she could not analyze to hear the big man call connor his brother. connor, the gambler, the schemer! and here was david eden with the green of the trees behind, his feet in the golden wild flowers, and the blue sky behind his head. brother to ben connor?
"and how did he warn you?" she asked.
"that i must not talk to you of yourself, because, he said, it shames you. is that true?"
"i suppose it is," she murmured. yet she was a little indignant because connor had presumed to interfere. she knew he could only have done it to save her from embarrassment, but she rebelled at the thought of connor as her conversational guardian.
put a guard over david of eden, and what would he be? just like a score of callow youths whom she had known, scattering foolish commonplaces, trying to make their dull eyes tell her flattering things which they had not brains enough to put into words.
"i am sorry," said david, sighing. "it is hard to stand here and see you, and not talk of what i see. when the sun rises the birds sing in the trees; when i see you words come up to my teeth."
he made a grimace. "well, i'll shut them in. have i been very wrong in my talk to you?"
"i think you haven't talked to many women," said ruth. "and—most men do not talk as you do."
"most men are fools," answered the egoist. "what i say to you is the truth, but if the truth offends you i shall talk of other things."
he threw himself on the ground sullenly. "of what shall i talk?"
"of nothing, perhaps. listen!"
for the great quiet of the valley was falling on her, and the distances over which her eyes reached filled her with the delightful sense of silence. there were deep blue mountains piled against the paler sky; down the slope and through the trees the river was untarnished, solid, silver; in the boughs behind her the wind whispered and then stopped to listen likewise. there was a faint ache in her heart at the thought that she had not known such things all her life. she knew then what gave the face of david of eden its solemnity. she leaned a little toward him. "now tell me about yourself. what you have done."
"of anything but that."
"why not?"
"no more than i want you to tell me about yourself and what you have done. what you feel, what you think from time to time, i wish to know; i am very happy to know. i fit in those bits of you to the picture i have made."
once more the egoist was talking!
"but to have you tell me of what you have done—that is not pleasant. i do not wish to know that you have talked to other men and smiled on them. i do not wish to know of a single happy day you spent before you came to the garden of eden. but i shall tell you of the four men who are my masters if you wish."
"tell me of them if you will."
"very well. john was the beginning. he died before i came. of the others matthew was my chief friend. he was very old and thin. his wrist was smaller than yours, almost. his hair was a white mist. in the evening there seemed to be a pale moonshine around his face.
"he was very small and old—so old that sometimes i thought he would dry up or dissolve and disappear. toward the last, before god called him, matthew grew weak, and his voice was faint, yet it was never sharp or shaken. also, until the very end his eyes were young, for his heart was young.
"that was matthew. he was like you. he liked the silence. 'listen,' he would say. 'the great stillness is the voice; god is speaking.' then he would raise one thin finger and we caught our breath and listened.
"do you see him?"
"i see him, and i wish that i had known him."
"of the others, luke was taller than i. he had yellow hair as long and as coarse as the mane of a yellow horse. when he rode around the lake we could hear him coming for a great distance by his singing, for his voice was as strong as the neigh of glani. i have only to close my eyes, and i can hear that singing of luke from beside the lake. ah, he was a huge man! the horses sweated under him.
"his beard was long; it came to the middle of his belly; it had a great blunt square end. once i angered him. i crept to him when he slept—i was a small boy then—and i trimmed the beard down to a point.
"when luke wakened he felt the beard and sat for a long time looking at me. i was so afraid that i grew numb, i remember. then he went to the room of silence. when he came out his anger was gone, but he punished me. he took me to the lake and caught me by the heels and swung me around his head. when he loosened his fingers i shot into the air like a light stone. the water flashed under me, and when i struck the surface seemed solid. i thought it was death, for my senses went out, but luke waded in and dragged me back to the shore. however, his beard remained pointed till he died."
he chuckled at the memory.
"paul reproved luke for what he had done. paul was a big man, also, but he was short, and his bigness lay in his breadth. he had no hair, and he stood under luke nodding so that the sun flashed back and forth on his bald head. he told luke that i might have been killed.
"'better teach him sober manners now,' said luke, 'than be a jester to knock at the gate of god.'
"this paul was wonderfully silent. he was born unhappy and nothing could make him smile. he used to wander through the valley alone in the middle of winter, half dead with cold and eating nothing. in those times, even luke was not strong enough to make him come home to us.
"i know that for ten days at one time he had gone without speech. for that reason he loved to have joseph with him, because joseph understood signs.
"but when silence left him, paul was great in speech. luke spoke in a loud voice and matthew beautifully, but paul was terrible. he would fall on his knees in an agony and pray to god for salvation for us and for himself. while he kneeled he seemed to grow in size. he filled the room. and his words were like whips. they made me think of all my sins. that is how i remember paul, kneeling, with his long arms thrown over his head.
"matthew died in the evening just as the moon rose. he was sitting beside me. he put his hand in mine. after a while i felt that the hand was cold, and when i looked at matthew his head had fallen.
"paul died in a drift of snow. we always knew that he had been on his knees praying when the storms struck him and he would not rise until he had finished the prayer.
"luke bowed his head one day at the table and died without a sound—in spite of all his strength.
"all these men have not really died out of the valley. they are here, like mists; they are faces of thin air. sometimes when i sit alone at my table, i can almost see a spirit-hand like that of matthew rise with a shadow-glass of wine.
"but shall i tell you a strange thing? since you came into the valley, these mist-images of my dead masters grow faint and thinner than ever."
"you will remember me, also, when i have gone?"
"do not speak of it! but yes, if you should go, every spring, when these yellow flowers blossom, you would return to me and sit as you are sitting now. however you are young, yet there are ways. after matthew died, for a long time i kept fresh flowers in his room and kept his memory fresh with them. but," he repeated, "you are young. do not talk of death!"
"not of death, but of leaving the garden."
he stared gravely at her, and flushed.
"you are tormenting me as i used to torment my masters when i was a boy. but it is wrong to anger me. besides i shall not let you go."
"not let me go?"
"am i a fool?" he asked hotly. "why should i let you go?"
"you could not keep me."
it brought him to his feet with a start.
"what will free you?"
"your own honor, david."
his head fell.
"it is true. yes, it is true. but let us ride on. i no longer am pleased with this place. it is tarnished; there are unhappy thoughts here!"
"what a child he is!" thought the girl, as she climbed into the saddle again. "a selfish, terrible, wonderful child!"
it seemed, after that, that the purpose of david was to show the beauties of the garden to her until she could not brook the thought of leaving. he told her what grew in each meadow and what could be reaped from it.
he told her what fish were caught in the river and the lake. he talked of the trees. he swung down from glani, holding with hand and heel, and picked strange flowers and showed them to her.
"what a place for a house!" she said, when, near the north wall, they passed a hill that overlooked the entire length of the valley.
"i shall build you a house there," said david eagerly. "i shall build it of strong rock. would that make you happy? very tall, with great rooms."
an impish desire to mock him came to her.
"do you know what i'm used to? it's a boarding house where i live in a little back bedroom, and they call us to meals with a bell."
the humor of this situation entirely failed to appeal to him.
"i also," he said, "have a bell. and it shall be used to call you to dinner, if you wish."
he was so grave that she did not dare to laugh. but for some reason that moment of bantering brought the big fellow much closer to her than he had been before. and when she saw him so docile to her wishes, for all his strength and his mastery, the only thing that kept her from opening her heart to him, and despising the game which she and connor were playing with him, was the warning of the gambler.
"i've heard a young buck talk to a young squaw—before he married her. the same line of junk!"
connor must be right. he came from the great city.
but before that ride was over she was repeating that warning very much as odysseus used the flower of hermes against the arts of circe. for the garden of eden, as they came back to the house after the circuit, seemed to her very much like a little kingdom, and the monarch thereof was inviting her in dumb-show to be the queen of the realm.
