Heart's Desire Part 8

Dan Anderson made no answer, except a sweep of his hand to the mountains, and an unconscious swell of the broad chest beneath his blue shirt.

"What made you come?" insisted Mr. Ellsworth, feeling around for the neck of the bottle, which had been forgotten.

"You know almighty well why I came. But let that go. Let's say I came for the express purpose of handling your local interests when you buy our coal-mines and try to get a railroad somewhere near our valley if you have luck later. I'm going to be your kind and loving partner in that deal, and I'll soak you the limit in everything I do for you.

You watch me. I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to work all I want to. When I don't want to, there isn't any living mortal soul that's going to crack a whip over me and tell me I've got to."

"Things seem rather strange," began Mr. Ellsworth. "You talk as though I were obliged to put money into these mines."

"Of course you will. You can't help it. You never saw a better opportunity for investment in all your life. But now let me tell you another thing, which I oughtn't to tell you if I served you right.

You go slow while you're here. There is plenty of gold in this valley. There isn't a fellow in this settlement who hasn't got a quart gla.s.s fruit-jar full of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and who isn't just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like yourself. You're Glad Tidings in this town. You couldn't walk to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys would offer you. You'd get dizzy looking down prospect holes. You wouldn't know where you were; and when you came to; you'd own about fifty gold-mines, with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and all the variations of the magnetic needle to wit and aforesaid. Now, I oughtn't to take care of you. I don't owe you a thing on earth. But because you brought--well, because--anyhow, I'm _going_ to take care of you, while you're here, and see that you get a square deal."

"By the way, my daughter--" said Mr. Ellsworth, sitting up uneasily.

"Never mind," said Dan Anderson, gently. "Miss Constance is all right. They'll take care of her just as well as I'll take care of you. Everybody will be more sociable by about noon to-morrow. The whole town's scared yet."

"I don't see anything very terrible about me," said Mr. Ellsworth.

"Oh, it isn't _you_," said Dan Anderson, calmly. "n.o.body's afraid of _you_. It's your daughter--it's the woman. Don't you reckon Adam was about the scaredest thing in the wide, wide world about the time old Ma Eve set up her bakeshop under the spreading fig tree? I don't know that I make myself right plain--you see, it's sort of funny here.

We aren't used to women any more."

"Oh, well, now, my dear sir, you see, my daughter--"

"I know all about her," said Dan Anderson, sharply.

"I don't doubt she thought I was a mere trifler. She couldn't understand that it isn't right for a man to stick to anything until he's found the right thing to stick to. I don't blame her the least bit in the world. She could only see what I _wasn't_ doing. I knew what I was _going_ to do, and I know it now." There was a gravity and certainty about Dan Anderson now that went through the self-consciousness of the man before him. Ellsworth looked at him intently. "We'll be here for a day or so," said he, "and meantime, it will seem a little strange for my daughter, I suppose--"

"You don't need to tell me about anything," said Dan Anderson. "Of course, her coming is a little inopportune. You see, Mr. Ellsworth, the morning stars are inopportune, and the sunrise every day, and the dew of heaven."

Ellsworth looked at him half in terror, and in his discomfort murmured something about going to look up his daughter.

"Now, that's mighty kind of you," said Dan Anderson. "But I know the way over there alone, and after I have taken you back to Uncle Jim's, I am going over there--alone. Wait till I get my coat. I don't wear it very often, but we'll just show you that we can dress up for the evening here, the same as they do in the States."

As Dan Anderson, his head bent down and his hands in his pockets, crossed the _arroyo_ alone, he met Curly coming the other way.

Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expressed a certain consciousness of the importance of his position in society at the time.

"Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new girl is the absolute limit. She dropped in just like we'd been expectin' her. I was some scared; but _she's_ just _folks_!"

Dan Anderson hardly heard him. He pa.s.sed on into the house, where he had long ago made himself easily at home with the women of the place.

It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl. "I was just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to our city park. Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and light."

She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she rose and joined him. All human beings in Heart's Desire that evening fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without possible resistance.

A short distance up the _arroyo_, toward the old abandoned stamp mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the Patos spring, far up on the mountain side. At the end of this pipe, where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of her own. Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose bush, now blossomless. Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.

"This is our park," said he, very gravely; "I hope you have enjoyed your stroll along the boulevard. I hope, also, that the entertainment of the cow gentleman was not displeasing."

"Not a word!" she answered, her cheek flushing; "you shall not rail at them. These people are genuine."

"I'm not apologizing," he said quickly; "there are just a few things a fellow learns out here. One is not to apologize; and another is not to beg. Sit down." There were two white boulders beside which the trickle of water rippled. Obeying him, she seated herself. Presently Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat in silence. The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of Heart's Desire. The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified into a strange, half-ghostly beauty. The earth has few scenes more beautiful than Heart's Desire at moonlight. These two sat and gazed for a time.

"And so this is your world!" the girl spoke at length, more to herself than to him.

"Yes," he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the mountain-rimmed horizon. "Yes, it's mine."

"It is very beautiful," she murmured softly.

"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's beautiful. Some time there'll be a man who'll learn something in such a place as this. I don't know but I've learned a little bit myself in the last few years."

"The years!" she whispered to herself.

"It seems forever," said he. "The time when a fellow's taking his medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life of five years ago--almost, except a part of it. It's been another world here. Nothing matters much, does it?"

Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.

"Look," said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart's Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight.

"Look! It is unspeakable."

He looked at her face instead. "I've seen you right here," he said, "right at this very place, a thousand times. It's Eden. It's the Garden. It's the Beginning."

"It is the world," she whispered vaguely.

"Yes, yes--" Words burst from his lips beyond his power to control.

"It is Eden, it is Paradise, but a vacant Eden, a Paradise incomplete.

Constance--"

The girl felt herself shiver at this sound of a voice which all too often these past five years had come to her unbidden when she found moments of self-communion in her own restless and dissatisfied life.

Walls had not shut it out, music had not drowned it, gayety had not served to banish it. She had heard it in her subjective soul ofttimes when the shadows fell and the firelight flickered. Now, beneath a limitless sky, under a strange radiance, in a wild primeval world--in this Eden which they two alone occupied--she heard him, the man whom in her heart she loved, speaking to her once more in very person, and speaking that very thought which was in her own heart that hour. Her bosom rose tumultuously, her throat fluttered. Instinctively she would have fled, but a hand on her shoulder pressed her back as she would have arisen, and she obeyed--as she had always obeyed him--as she always would.

"Paradise unfinished--" he whispered, his face close to hers. "You know what it is that's missing."

Ah! could not a woman also know the longing, the vacancy, the solitude of an Eden incomplete! She turned to him trembling, her lips half open, as though to welcome a long-hoped-for draught of happiness.

Alas! it was not happiness, but misery that came; for Constance Ellsworth now got taste of those bitter waters of life which are withheld from none. There was a sound of a distant shout--the chance call of some drunken reveller--far down the street, a tawdry, unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just.

Dan Anderson turned to look down the long street of Heart's Desire.

It was as though the physical act restored him to another realm, another mental world. He started, and half shivered as his hand dropped to his side. His face showed haggard even in the moonlight.

"My G.o.d! what am I saying?" he murmured to himself.

Then presently he drew himself up, smiling bitterly. "Some prominent citizens of the place enjoying themselves," he said and nodded toward the street. "Don't you think you'd like Heart's Desire?"

The moment of Eve--the woman's moment--the instant for her happiness was past and gone! The light of the moon lay ghostly over all the world, but there was no radiance, no joy nor comfort in it now.

The girl herself was silent. She sat looking out over the street below, instinctively following Dan Anderson's gaze. Voices came to them, clamorous, strident, coa.r.s.e. There lay revealed all that was crude, all that was savage, all that was unlovable and impossible of Heart's Desire. It had been a dream, but it was a man's dream in which he had lived. For a woman--for her--for this sweet girl of a gentler world, that dream could be nothing else than hideous. "Be just! Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.

"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the la.s.situde which suddenly a.s.sailed her, "we must go in."

His face was averted as he walked beside her. There was no word that he could say. Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood and in some part forgave.