_CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE_
At the house they were met by one of the servants who had been waitingfor David to receive from the master definite orders concerning somewoodchopping. For the trees of the garden were like children to David ofEden, and he allowed only the ones he himself designated to be cut fortimber or fuel. He left the girl with manifest reluctance.
"For when I leave you of what do you think, and what do you do? I amlike the blind."
She felt this speech was peculiar in character. Who but David of Edencould have been jealous of the very thoughts of another? And smiling atthis, she went into the patio where Ben Connor was still lounging. Fewthings had ever been more gratifying to the gambler than the sight ofthe girl's complacent smile, for he knew that she was judging David.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Nothing worth repeating. But I think you're wrong, Ben. He isn't abarbarian. He's just a child."
"That's another word for the same thing. Ever see anything more brutalthan a child? The wildest savage that ever stepped is a saint comparedwith a ten-year-old boy."
"Perhaps. He acts like ten years. When I mention leaving the valley heflies into a tantrum; he has taken me so much for granted that he haseven picked out the site for my house."
"As if you'd ever stay in a place like this!"
He covered his touch of anxiety with loud laughter.
"I don't know," she was saying thoughtfully a moment later. "I likeit--a lot."
"Anything seems pretty good after Lukin. But when your auto is buzzingdown Broadway--"
She interrupted him with a quick little laugh of excitement.
"But do you really think I can make him leave the valley?"
"Of course I'm sure."
"He says there's a law against it."
"I tell you, Ruth, you're his law now; not whatever piffle is in thatRoom of Silence."
She looked earnestly at the closed door. Her silence had always botheredthe gambler, and this one particularly annoyed him.
"Let's hear your thoughts?" he asked uneasily.
"It's just an idea of mine that inside that room we can find outeverything we want to know about David Eden."
"What do we want to know?" growled Connor. "I know everything that'snecessary. He's a nut with a gang of the best horses that ever stepped.I'm talking horse, not David Eden. If I have to make the fool rich, itisn't because I want to."
She returned no direct answer, but after a moment: "I wish I knew."
"What?"
She became profoundly serious.
"The point is this: he _may_ be something more than a boy or a savage.And if he _is_ something more, he's the finest man I've ever laid eyeson. That's why I want to get inside that room. That's why I want tolearn the secret--if there is a secret--the things he believes in, howhe happens to be what he is and how--"
Connor had endured her rising warmth of expression as long as he could.Now he exploded.
"You do me one favor," he cried excitedly, more moved than she had everseen him before. "Let me do your thinking for you when it comes to othermen. You take my word about this David Eden. Bah! When I have you fixedup in little old Manhattan you'll forget about him and his mysteryinside a week. Will you lay off on the thinking?"
She nodded absently. In reality she was struck by the first similarityshe had ever noticed between David of Eden and Connor the gambler:within ten minutes they had both expressed remarkable concern as to whatmight be her innermost thoughts. She began to feel that Connor himselfmight have elements of the boy in his make up--the cruel boy which heprotested was in David Eden.
She had many reasons for liking Connor. For one thing he had offeredher an escape from her old imprisoned life. Again he had flattered herin the most insinuating manner by his complete trust. She knew thatthere was not one woman in ten thousand to whom he would have confidedhis great plan, and not one in a million whose ability to execute hisscheme he would have trusted.
More than this, before her trip to the Garden he had given her a largesum of money for the purchase of the Indian's gelding; and Ruth Manninghad learned to appreciate money. He had not asked for any receipt. Hisattitude had been such that she had not even been able to mention thatsubject.
Yet much as she liked Connor there were many things about him whichjarred on her. There was a hardness, always working to the surface likerocks on a hard soil. Worst of all, sometimes she felt a degree ofuncleanliness about his mind and its working. She would not haverecoiled from these things had he been nearer her own age; but in a manwell over thirty she felt that these were fixed characteristics.
He was in all respects the antipode of David of Eden. It was easier tobe near Connor, but not so exciting. David wore her out, but he also wasmarvelously stimulating. The dynamic difference was that Connorsometimes inspired her with aversion, and David made her afraid. She wasroused out of her brooding by the voice of the gambler saying: "When awoman begins to think, a man begins to swear."
She managed to smile, but these cheap little pat quotations which shehad found amusing enough at first now began to grate on her throughrepetition. Just as Connor tagged and labeled his idea with thisaphorism, so she felt that Connor himself was tagged by them. She foundhim 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 himand she at once disliked it. She shook the hand heartily.
"That's a foolish thing to say," she assured him. "But--why does thatold man keep sneaking around us?"
It was Zacharias, who for some time had been prowling around the patiotrying 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 hecame 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 herinvitation by dropping his withered hands on the back of the chair, butmade no move to sit down.
"But after all these years you have worked for him, I should think hewould give you a little house of your own, and nothing to do except takecare of yourself."
He listened to her happily, but it was evident from his pause that hehad 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 alittle toward the soft Southern accent. "That's music to oldZacharias!"
"Do you come from Tennessee, Zacharias?"
Again there was a pause as the thoughts of Zacharias fled back to theold days.
"Everything in between is all shadowy like evening, but what I remembermost is the little houses on both sides of the road with the gardensbehind them, and the babies rolling in the dust and shouting and theirmammies 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 thinkof them."
He struck his hands lightly together and his misty-bright eyes wereplainly 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 andbecame aware of the girl's face once more.
"Because my soul was burni
ng 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 noway of getting out again without breaking the law. The Garden is justlike heaven!"
Connor spoke for the first time.
"Or hell!" 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 looksto me as if our friend here paid pretty high for anything he gets out ofthe 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."
"Land of your own?"
"No."
"Sixty years and not a penny saved! That's what I call a sharp bargain!What else have you gained?"
"A good bright hope of heaven."
"But are you sure, Zacharias? Are you sure? Isn't it possible that allthese five masters of yours may have been mistaken?"
Zacharias could only stare in his horror. Finally he turned away andwent silently across the patio.
"Ben," cried the girl softly, "why did you do it? Aside from torturingthe poor man, what if this comes to David's ear?"
Connor snapped his finger. His manner was that of one who knows that hehas taken a foolish risk and wishes to brazen the matter out.
"It'll never come to the ear of David! Why? Because he'd wring the neckof the old chap if he even guessed that he'd been talking about leavingthe valley. And in the meantime I cut away the ground beneath David'sfeet. He has not standing room, pretty soon. Nothing left to him, byJove, but his own conceit, and he has tons of that! Well, let him use itand get fat on it!"
She wondered why Connor had come to actually hate the master of theGarden. Sure David of Eden had never harmed the gambler. She rememberedsomething that she had heard long before: that the hatred always lies onthe side of injurer and not of the injured.
They heard David's voice, at this point, approaching, and in anothermoment a small cavalcade entered the patio.