crittenton madeira's daughter wandered down the garden path, singing softly, after her father had left her, but there was in her song, as there had been in her laughter, a little tremble of unrest. the garden was a delicious place, whose fragrance beat up in waves of sweetness at every turn. all the flowers were in their luxuriant last bloom. there were great roses and sweet elysium, mignonette, peppermint pinks, crepe myrtle, riotous vines and creepers. long ago she had taken everything out of the garden that was not sweet. she had a fancy that fragrance was one of the spirit's tremulous paths into heaven, and out in the garden she liked to shut her eyes and, with her little straight nose in the air, go drifting off toward what was infinitely good, fine, strong, imperishable. it sometimes seemed to her that the most intimate and exquisite happinesses of her life had come to her with her eyes shut in that garden. she called it the garden of dreams.
when steering found her, she was waiting for him, her arms on an old vine-covered stump, that dusky-gold radiance of hers playing over her and from her, the most beautifully, glowingly alive woman in the world. what he said to her was "how-do-you-do?" but what he wanted to say was, "oh, stand there so forever, and let every grace, every beauty burn into my brain, so that all my life i may carry you about with me, your wine-warm eyes, your sunlit hair, the whole sweet glow of you,--having you perfectly, knowing you perfectly everywhere, everyhow, near, far, in the sunshine, in the dark!" and when a man wants to talk like that "how-do-you-do" is as good a catchphrase as the next to keep his tongue discreet.
"i do very well," she told him, smiling at him, maddening him, "i always do well, here in my garden,--but you, you put my sense of well-being to shame. you look so glad!"
"i am the gladdest man on earth," bruce told her, knowing chiefly that he had her hand in his. he barely remembered in time that she was rich in gold and lands and cattle, and that he was poor, and that the positivism of his personality had already incurred the ill-will of her father. "still, i don't think there is any doubt in the world how it is all going to end," he said hazily. he still had her hand. she had the hardest hand to put down that he had ever taken up.
"i don't quite follow? all what?" she bit her lip; her eyes flashed off across the di, bright and swift as mating birds, as she drew her hand gently away.
"i was only thinking that a man may go on and on through so many meaningless years, of no special significance to himself or to anybody else and then suddenly,--think everything is going to be all right some day." he clasped his hands and leaned on the other side of the vine-covered stump and looked at her wishfully, and she laughed at him, with her eyes still on the pale river.
"how do you like my garden?" she asked divertingly. for answer he shut his eyes and breathed deeply. "oh, how good!" she cried, satisfied, "that's the only way really to follow the path of fragrance,--that's my own way!" he blessed his stars that he had sniffed at the roses. "where did the path lead you?" she queried, as he opened his eyes dreamily upon her golden beauty. "into heaven," he murmured with sublime conviction, and she clasped her slender hands, delighted at their mystical congeniality.
"i am so glad that we like the same thing," she continued, hurrying a little; "haven't you noticed?--we both like the garden,--and we both like piney. when did you see piney?"
"piney? oh, i see piney often." he rather wished that she had not mentioned piney. since he had come to know the tramp-boy better his first ache for him had become sharper and sharper. "piney and i were out on the hills together only yesterday. poor piney!"
"why," she took his hand and led him forward through a tangle of rose-bushes; she would not look at him, but the bewildering sweetness of her hair, her gown, the curve of her cheek came back to him--"why poor piney?" she was guiding him to a bench of twisted grape-vines from which they might look down upon the river. "sit down," she said, "and tell me why poor piney?"
"well," he sat down and looked at the river, half-frowning, "it has seemed to me--i've had a notion--oh, i don't know. i suppose it is not poor piney after all."
"tell me," she insisted, "tell me what you started to tell me."
"well, it has seemed to me ever since i first met piney that he was in the way of trouble," he dashed on more abruptly, thinking only of piney for a moment--"i have come to love that boy. i find myself clinging to him. i think it is because he stands to me for the spirit of my own boyhood; perhaps that, perhaps because he stands for the spirit of the woods he loves; because he stands for simplicity, honesty, spontaneity. at any rate he is rare, what with his musical gift and his high melody of living--and--oh well, i've sometimes felt sorry that he is not all wood-spirit, that he is part human." the characteristics that had made steering stand too determinedly to suit crittenton madeira made him forge ahead determinedly now. "piney would be apt to suffer less if he were wholly the sylvan, irresponsible creature, the faun, he sometimes seems to be. but, alas, piney has a man's heart, miss madeira. he will have to suffer for that, for he will have to love. that's why 'poor' piney; because he will have to love."
"would that be so terrible?" the flash from the amber eyes that she turned up to him made the world go zig-zagging through a long space while steering looked on with a great tremulous intake of breath. then he steadied again to what he wanted to say to her and could say to her for piney's sake.
"it would be for piney. piney is going to love hopelessly," he saw that a little shiver caught her and he was glad of it. "yes, it would be terrible to love hopelessly, wouldn't it?" he said, to strengthen his hidden appeal for piney. he wanted to make her realise what she was doing for piney, realise that for sheer kindness, kindness as to a dumb thing, she should never let the lad come near her. he had forgotten the woman in her when he began to formulate that appeal. she laughed a light, mocking laugh.
"i believe that you think that piney loves me!" she cried. "piney, the spirit of the oaks! the song of the night-wind! piney suffer! piney love!" steering was sorry to hear the note of evasion in her voice. no woman, he remembered, too late, could be brought to treat man's love or boy's love quite honestly. his eyes clouded. he felt masculinely, sanely sympathetic with piney.
"i wish," he said gloomily, "that you would sometimes put yourself in the place of a man who loves you, put yourself in piney's place."
her eyes crinkled up again. "i'll just do it," she said gaily, "i'll do it now. presto," she shut her eyes. "now i have his point of view. now i'm seeing what he sees--that miss sally madeira likes to hear him sing, and humours him and pets him because he is gay and glad to be alive, and because uncle bernique says that he needs somebody to mother him. i mother piney. can't you see that." she laughed again and arose and stood in front of him, gay, mocking, nonchalant. "piney love! and if piney could love, that you should fancy that he might dare love salome madeira!"
he forgot about piney. she blocked his farther vision like a shaft of light. he could not see an inch beyond her. madeira's voice rang down the garden walk. steering did not hear it. "salome! salome!" he murmured, "is that it, salome?"
"yes, that's it, salome. isn't it foolish? the di down there is the diaphanous, too. some pioneer poet named it for its shimmer, but what good did it do? missouri promptly called it the 'di.' no more good is it to name a child salome in the backwoods of missouri. she's bound to grow up sally. i've always been sally, except at school. i'll always be sally down here with my own people."
"no, you won't always be sally--no you won't always be down here with your own people either,"--he leaned back on the bench and watched her, his eyes half shut, his whole sense of being illumined by her, his tongue playing audaciously with his discretion.
"yes, i shall always be sally, too." that bisque-warm skin of hers flushed wondrously and she seemed to talk out of a little confused audacity of her own. madeira's voice rang down the walk again. "yes, father!--and down here with my own people, too. yes, father!"
"company's here, sally."
"all right, father, coming."
"and i have to go?" asked steering piteously.
"oh no, come up to the house and meet our sixteen-to-one congressman, quicksilver sam."
"no--i'll go," chose steering. "say, can't i get through from the garden here, and go down the river road?"
"yes, you can. samson shall bring your horse around, if you like. there's a bridle-path down to the river; it's piney's way."
"well, if you will be so good as to have the horse brought, i'll take piney's path. i'm going to the hills to try to find piney and uncle bernique. think i'll sleep in the hills with them to-night. i feel so sad. when may i come back?"
"well, you see," the trouble crept into her voice again, misty, tremulous--"you see, i may go away."
"oh!" he cried, and then again, "oh!" a bitter wailing note.
"yes, i may," she said hastily. "you see, your friend, miss gossamer, wants me to join her in europe. she is very insistent about it."
"and you may go?"
"and i may go."
he knew that she said that she would see him again before going, if it came to pass that she decided to go, and that she pressed his hand, with the grateful look that she had bestowed upon him when she had tried to thank him for holding on to her father in the joplin mine; and that afterwards she stole away through the garden, and a negro man-servant brought his horse around to the rear grounds and showed him a bridle-path to the river; but these things were hazy. the vivid thing was an imprecation that by and by took awful form, like a monster of the mist, hissingly, from between his clenched teeth:
"damn miss--europe!"
