Trying Yucca
On her way to school that morning Linda stopped at the post office and
pasted the required amount of stamps upon the package that she was
mailing to New York. She hurried from her last class that afternoon to
the city directory to find the street and number of James Brothers,
figuring that the firm with whom Marian dealt would be the proper
people for her to consult. She had no difficulty in finding the place
for which she was searching, and she was rather agreeably impressed
with the men to whom she talked. She made arrangements with their buyer
to call at her home in Lilac Valley at nine o’clock the following
Saturday morning to appraise the articles with which she wished to part.
Then she went to one of the leading book stores of the city and made
inquiries which guided her to a reliable second-hand book dealer, and
she arranged to be ready to receive his representative at ten o’clock
on Saturday.
Reaching home she took a note book and pencil, and studied the billiard
room and the library, making a list of the furniture which she did not
actually need. After that she began on the library shelves, listing
such medical works as were of a technical nature. Books of fiction,
history, art, and biography, and those books written by her father she
did not include. She found that she had a long task which would occupy
several evenings. Her mind was methodical and she had been with her
father through sufficient business transactions to understand that in
order to drive a good bargain she must know how many volumes she had to
offer and the importance of their authors as medical authorities; she
should also know the exact condition of each set of books. Since she
had made up her mind to let them go, and she knew the value of many of
the big, leather-bound volumes, she determined that she would not sell
them until she could secure the highest possible price for them.
Two months previously she would have consulted John Gilman and asked
him to arrange the transaction for her. Since he had allowed himself to
be duped so easily—or at least it had seemed easy to Linda; for, much
as she knew of Eileen, she could not possibly know the weeks of secret
plotting, the plans for unexpected meetings, the trumped-up business
problems necessary to discuss, the deliberate flaunting of her physical
charms before him, all of which had made his conquest extremely hard
for Eileen, but Linda, seeing only results, had thought it contemptibly
easy—she would not ask John Gilman anything. She would go ahead on the
basis of her agreement with Eileen and do the best she could alone.
She counted on Saturday to dispose of the furniture. The books might
go at her leisure. Then the first of the week she could select such
furniture as she desired in order to arrange the billiard room for her
study. If she had a suitable place in which to work in seclusion, there
need be no hurry about the library. She conscientiously prepared all
the lessons required in her school course for the next day and then,
stacking her books, she again unlocked the drawer opened the previous
evening, and taking from it the same materials, set to work. She wrote:
Botanists have failed to mention that there is any connection
between asparagus, originally a product of salt marshes, and
Yucca, a product of the alkaline desert. Very probably there is no
botanical relationship, but these two plants are alike in flavor.
From the alkaline, sunbeaten desert where the bayonet plant thrusts
up a tender bloom head six inches in height, it slowly increases in
stature as it travels across country more frequently rain washed,
and winds its way beside mountain streams to where in more fertile
soil and the same sunshine it develops magnificent specimens from
ten to fifteen and more feet in height. The plant grows a number
of years before it decides to flower. When it reaches maturity it
throws up a bloom stem as tender as the delicate head of asparagus,
thick as one’s upper arm, and running to twice one’s height.
This bloom stem in its early stages is coloured the pale pink of
asparagus, with faint touches of yellow, and hints of blue. At
maturity it breaks into a gorgeous head of lavender-tinted, creamy
pendent flowers covering the upper third of its height, billowing
out slightly in the centre, so that from a distance the waxen
torch takes on very much the appearance of a flaming candle. For
this reason, in Mexico, where the plant flourishes in even greater
abundance than in California, with the exquisite poetry common
to the tongue and heart of the Spaniard, Yucca Whipplei has been
commonly named “Our Lord’s Candle.” At the most delicate time of
their growth these candlesticks were roasted and eaten by the
Indians. Based upon this knowledge, I would recommend two dishes,
almost equally delicious, which may be prepared from this plant.
Take the most succulent young bloom stems when they have exactly
the appearance of an asparagus head at its moment of delicious
perfection. With a sharp knife, cut them in circles an inch in
depth. Arrange these in a shallow porcelain baking dish, sprinkle
with salt, dot them with butter, add enough water to keep them
from sticking and burning. Bake until thoroughly tender. Use a
pancake turner to slide the rings to a hot platter, and garnish
with circles of hard-boiled egg. This you will find an extremely
delicate and appetizing dish.
The second recipe I would offer is to treat this vegetable
precisely as you would creamed asparagus. Cut the stalks in
six-inch lengths, quarter them to facilitate cooking and handling,
and boil in salted water. Drain, arrange in a hot dish, and pour
over a carefully made cream sauce. I might add that one stalk would
furnish sufficient material for several families. This dish should
be popular in southwestern states where the plant grows profusely;
and to cultivate these plants for shipping to Eastern markets
would be quite as feasible as the shipping of asparagus, rhubarb,
artichokes, or lettuce.
I have found both these dishes peculiarly appetizing, but I should
be sorry if, in introducing Yucca as a food, I became instrumental
in the extermination of this universal and wonderfully beautiful
plant. For this reason I have hesitated about including Yucca among
these articles; but when I see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by
thousands who cut it to decorate touring automobiles and fruit and
vegetable stands beside the highways, who carry it from its native
location and stick it in the parching sun of the seashore as a
temporary shelter, I feel that the bloom stems might as well be
used for food as to be so ruthlessly wasted.
The plant is hardy in the extreme, growing in the most unfavourable
places, clinging tenaciously to sheer mountain and canyon walls.
After blooming and seeding the plant seems to have thrown every
particle of nourishment it contains into its development, it dries
out and dies (the spongy wood is made into pin-cushions for the art
stores); but from the roots there spring a number of young plants,
which, after a few years of growth, mature and repeat their life
cycle, while other young plants develop from the widely scattered
seeds. The Spaniards at times call the plant Quiota. This word
seems to be derived from _quiotl_, which is the Aztec name for
Agave, from which plant a drink not unlike beer is produced, and
suggests the possibility that there might have been a time when the
succulent flower stem of the Yucca furnished drink as well as food
for the Indians.
After carefully re-reading and making several minor corrections, Linda
picked up her pencil, and across the top of a sheet of heavy paper
sketched the peaks of a chain of mountains. Across the base she drew a
stretch of desert floor, bristling with the thorns of many different
cacti brilliant with their gold, pink, and red bloom, intermingled with
fine grasses and desert flower faces. At the left she painstakingly
drew a huge plant of yucca with a perfect circle of bayonets, from the
center of which uprose the gigantic flower stem the length of her page,
and on the misty bloom of the flaming tongue she worked quite as late
as Marian Thorne had ever seen a light burning in her window. When she
had finished her drawing she studied it carefully a long time, adding a
touch here and there, and then she said softly: “There, Daddy, I feel
that even you would think that a faithful reproduction To-morrow night
I’ll paint it.”
John Gilman saw the light from Linda’s window when he brought Eileen
home that night, and when he left he glanced that way again, and was
surprised to see the room still lighted, and the young figure bending
over a work table. He stood very still for a few minutes, wondering
what could keep Linda awake so far into the night, and while his
thoughts were upon her he wondered, too, why she did not care to
have beautiful clothes such as Eileen wore; and then he went further
and wondered why, when she could be as entertaining as she had been
the night she joined them at dinner, she did not make her appearance
oftener; and then, because the mind is a queer thing, and he had
wondered about a given state of affairs, he went a step further, and
wondered whether the explanation lay in Linda’s inclinations or in
Eileen’s management, and then his thought fastened tenaciously upon the
subject of Eileen’s management.
He was a patient man. He had allowed his reason and better judgment
to be swayed by Eileen’s exquisite beauty and her blandishments. He
did not regret having discovered before it was too late that Marian
Thorne was not the girl he had thought her. He wanted a wife cut after
the clinging-vine pattern. He wanted to be the dominating figure in
his home. It had not taken Eileen long to teach him that Marian was
self-assertive and would do a large share of dominating herself. He had
thought that he was perfectly satisfied and very happy with Eileen; yet
that day he repeatedly had felt piqued and annoyed with her. She had
openly cajoled and flirted with Henry Anderson past a point which was
agreeable for any man to see his sweetheart go with another man. With
Peter Morrison she had been unspeakably charming in a manner with which
John was very familiar.
He turned up his coat collar, thrust his hands in his pockets, and
swore softly. Looking straight ahead of him, he should have seen a
stretch of level sidewalk, bordered on one hand by lacy, tropical
foliage, on the other, by sheets of level green lawn, broken everywhere
by the uprising boles of great trees, clumps of rare vines, and rows
of darkened homes, attractive in architectural design, vine covered,
hushed for the night. What he really saw was a small plateau, sun
illumined, at the foot of a mountain across the valley, where the lilac
wall was the bluest, where the sun shone slightly more golden than
anywhere else in the valley, where huge live oaks outstretched rugged
arms, where the air had a tang of salt, a tinge of sage, an odour of
orange, shot through with snowy coolness, thrilled with bird song, and
the laughing chuckle of a big spring breaking from the foot of the
mountain. They had left the road and followed a narrow, screened path
by which they came unexpectedly into this opening. They had stood upon
it in wordless enchantment, looking down the slope beneath it, across
the peace of the valley, to the blue ranges beyond.
“Just where are we?” Peter Morrison had asked at last.
John Gilman had been looking at a view which included Eileen. She
lifted her face, flushed and exquisite, to Peter Morrison and answered
in a breathless undertone, yet John had distinctly heard her:
“How wonderful it would be if we were at _your_ house. Oh, I envy the
woman who shares this with you!”
It had not been anything in particular, yet all day it had teased John
Gilman’s sensibilities. He felt ashamed of himself for not being more
enthusiastic as he searched records and helped to locate the owner of
that particular spot. To John, there was a new tone in Peter’s voice,
a possessive light in his eyes as he studied the location, and made
excursions in several directions, to fix in his mind the exact position
of the land.
He had indicated what he considered the topographical location for a
house—stood on it facing the valley, and stepped the distance suitably
far away to set a garage and figured on a short private road down to
the highway. He very plainly was deeply prepossessed with a location
John Gilman blamed himself for not having found first. Certainly nature
had here grown and walled a dream garden in which to set a house of
dreams. So, past midnight, Gilman stood in the sunshine, looking at
the face of the girl he had asked to marry him and who had said that
she would; and a small doubt crept into his heart, and a feeling that
perhaps life might be different for him if Peter Morrison decided to
come to Lilac Valley to build his home. Then the sunlight faded, night
closed in, but as he went his homeward way John Gilman was thinking,
thinking deeply and not at all happily.