We were sojourning between Anaheim and the sea. There was a sunshiny
dullness about the place, like the smiles of a vapid woman. The bit of
vineyard surrounding our whitewashed cabin was an emerald set in the
dull, golden-brown plain. Before the door an artesian well glittered in
the sun like an inverted crystal bowl. Esculapius called the spot
Fezzan, and gradually I came to think the well a fountain, and the
sunburnt waste about us a stretch of yellow sand.
When I had walked to the field of whispering corn behind the house, and
through the straggling vines to the edge of the vineyard in front, I
came back to where my invalid sat beneath the feathery acacias, dreaming
in happy lonesomeness.
"Did you ever see such placid, bright, ethereal stillness?" I asked.
Esculapius took his cigar from his lips and looked at me pensively.
"It may be my misfortune, I hope it is not my fault, but I do not
remember to have seen stillness of any sort."
Esculapius has but one shortcoming--he is not a poet. I never wound him
by appearing to notice this defect, so I sat down on the dry burr-clover
and made no reply.
"You think it is still," he went on in a mannish, instructive way, "but
in fact there are a thousand sounds. At night, when it is really quiet,
you will hear the roar of the ocean ten miles away. Hark!"
Our host was singing far down in the corn. He was a minister, a
deep-toned Methodist, brimming over with vocal piety.
"Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the jasper sea,"--
came to us in slow, rich cadences.
The fern-like branches above us stirred softly against the blue. Little
aromatic whiffs came from the grove of pale eucalyptus-trees near the
house. Esculapius diluted the intoxicating air with tobacco smoke and
remained sane, but as for me the sunshine went to my head, and whirled
and eddied there like some Eastern drug.
"My love," I said wildly, "if we stay here very long and nothing
happens, I shall do something rash."
The next morning a huge derrick frowned in the dooryard, and a
picturesque group of workmen lounged under the acacias. The well had
ceased to flow.
Esculapius called me to a corner of the piazza, and spoke in low,
hurried tones.
"Something has happened," he said; "the well has stopped. I thought it
might relieve your feelings to get off that quotation about the golden
bowl and the wheel, and the pitcher, and the fountain, etc.; then, if it
is safe to leave you, I would like to go hunting."