The Garden of Eden Part 43

More than this, before her trip to the Garden he had given her a large sum of money for the purchase of the Indian's gelding; and Ruth Manning had learned to appreciate money. He had not asked for any receipt. His att.i.tude had been such that she had not even been able to mention that subject.

Yet much as she liked Connor there were many things about him which jarred on her. There was a hardness, always working to the surface like rocks on a hard soil. Worst of all, sometimes she felt a degree of uncleanliness about his mind and its working. She would not have recoiled from these things had he been nearer her own age; but in a man well over thirty she felt that these were fixed characteristics.

He was in all respects the antipode of David of Eden. It was easier to be near Connor, but not so exciting. David wore her out, but he also was marvelously stimulating. The dynamic difference was that Connor sometimes inspired her with aversion, and David made her afraid. She was roused out of her brooding by the voice of the gambler saying: "When a woman begins to think, a man begins to swear."

She managed to smile, but these cheap little pat quotations which she had found amusing enough at first now began to grate on her through repet.i.tion. Just as Connor tagged and labeled his idea with this aphorism, so she felt that Connor himself was tagged by them. She found him considering her with some anxiety.

"You haven't begun to doubt me, Ruth?" he asked her.

And he put out his hand with a note of appeal. It was a new role for him and she at once disliked it. She shook the hand heartily.

"That's a foolish thing to say," she a.s.sured him. "But--why does that old man keep sneaking around us?"

It was Zacharias, who for some time had been prowling around the patio trying to find something to do which would justify his presence.

"Do you think David Eden keeps him here as a spy on us?"

This was too much for even Connor's suspicious mind, and he chuckled.

"They all want to hang around and have a look at you--that's the point,"

he answered. "Speak to him and you'll see him come running."

It needed not even speech; she smiled and nodded at Zacharias, and he came to her at once with a grin of pleasure wrinkling his ancient face.

She invited him to sit down.

"I never see you resting," she said.

"David dislikes an idler," said Zacharias, who acknowledged her invitation by dropping his withered hands on the back of the chair, but made no move to sit down.

"But after all these years you have worked for him, I should think he would give you a little house of your own, and nothing to do except take care of yourself."

He listened to her happily, but it was evident from his pause that he had not gathered the meaning of her words.

"You come from the South?" he asked at length.

"My father came from Tennessee."

There was an electric change in the face of the Negro.

"Oh, Lawd, oh, Lawd!" he murmured, his voice changing and thickening a little toward the soft Southern accent. "That's music to old Zacharias!"

"Do you come from Tennessee, Zacharias?"

Again there was a pause as the thoughts of Zacharias fled back to the old days.

"Everything in between is all shadowy like evening, but what I remember most is the little houses on both sides of the road with the gardens behind them, and the babies rolling in the dust and shouting and their mammies coming to the doors to watch them."

"How long ago was that?" she asked, deeply touched.

He grew troubled.

"Many and many a year ago--oh, many a long, weary year, for Zacharias!"

"And you still think of the old days?"

"When the bees come droning in the middle of the day, sometimes I think of them."

He struck his hands lightly together and his misty-bright eyes were plainly looking through sixty years as though they were a day.

"But why did you leave?" asked Ruth tenderly.

Zacharias slowly drew his eyes away from the mists of the past and became aware of the girl's face once more.

"Because my soul was burning in sin. It was burning and burning!"

"But wouldn't you like to go back?"

The head of Zacharias fell and he knitted his fingers.

"Coming to the Garden of Eden was like coming into heaven. There's no way of getting out again without breaking the law. The Garden is just like heaven!"

Connor spoke for the first time.

"Or h.e.l.l!" he exclaimed.

It caused Ruth Manning to cry out at him softly; Zacharias was mute.

"Why did you say that?" said the girl, growing angry.

"Because I hate to see a bad bargain," said the gambler. "And it looks to me as if our friend here paid pretty high for anything he gets out of the Garden."

He turned sharply to Zacharias.

"How long have you been working here?"

"Sixty years. Long years!"

"And what have you out of it? What clothes?"

"Enough to wear."

"What food?"

"Enough to eat."

"A house of your own?"

"No."