The Lay of the Land
Linda entered the street car for her daily ride to Lilac Valley. She
noticed Peter Morrison and Henry Anderson sitting beside each other,
deeply engrossed in a drawing. She had been accustomed to ride in the
open section of the car as she liked the fresh air. She had a fleeting
thought of entering the body of the car and sitting where they would
see her; and then a perverse spirit in Linda’s heart said to her:
“That is precisely what Eileen would do. You sit where you belong.”
Whereupon Linda dropped into the first vacant seat she could reach,
but it was only a few moments before Peter Morrison, looking up from
the plans he was studying, saw her, and lifting his hat, beckoned her
to come and sit with him. They made room for her between them and
spreading the paper across her lap, all three of them began to discuss
the plans for the foundation for Peter’s house. Anderson had roughly
outlined the grounds, sketching in the trees that were to be saved,
the spring, and the most available route for reaching the road. The
discussion was as to where the road should logically enter the grounds,
and where the garage should stand.
“Which reminds me,” said Linda—“haven’t you your car with you? Or was
that a hired one you were touring in?”
“Mine,” said Peter Morrison, “but we toured so far, it’s in the shop
for a general overhauling to-day.”
“That being the case,” said Linda, “walk home with me and I’ll take you
to your place in mine and bring you back to the cars, if you only want
to stay an hour or two.”
“Why, that would be fine,” said Peter. “You didn’t mention, the other
evening, that you had a car.”
“No,” said Linda, “I had been trying to keep cars out of my thought for
a long time, but I could endure it no longer the other day, so I got
mine out and tuned it up. If you don’t mind stacking up a bit, three
can ride in it very comfortably.”
That was the way it happened that Linda walked home after school that
afternoon between Peter Morrison and his architect, brought out the
Bear-cat, and drove them to Peter’s location.
All that day, workmen had been busy under the management of a
well-instructed foreman, removing trees and bushes and stones
and clearing the spot that had been selected for the garage and
approximately for the house.
The soft brownish gray of Linda’s dress was exactly the colour to
intensify the darker brown of her eyes. There was a fluctuating red in
her olive cheeks, a brilliant red framing her even white teeth. Once
dressed so that she was satisfied with the results, Linda immediately
forgot her clothes, and plunged into Morrison’s plans.
“Peter,” she said gravely, with Peter perfectly cognizant of the
twinkle in her dark eyes, “Peter, you may save money in a straight-line
road, but you’re going to sin against your soul if you build it. You’ll
have to economize in some other way, and run your road around the
base of those boulders, then come in straight to the line here, and
then you should swing again and run out on this point, where guests
can have one bewildering glimpse of the length of our blue valley,
and then whip them around this clump of perfumy lilac and elders, run
them to your side entrance, and then scoot the car back to the garage.
I think you should place the front of your house about here.” Linda
indicated where. “So long as you’re buying a place like this you don’t
want to miss one single thing; and you do want to make the very most
possible out of every beauty you have. And you mustn’t fail to open up
and widen the runway from that energetic, enthusiastic spring. Carry
it across your road, sure. It will cost you another little something
for a safe bridge, but there’s nothing so artistic as a bridge with a
cold stream running under it. And think what a joyful time I’ll have,
gathering specimens for you of every pretty water plant that grows in
my particular canyon. Any time when you’re busy in your library and you
hear my car puffing up the incline and around the corner and rattling
across the bridge, you’ll know that I am down here giving you a start
of watercress and miners’ lettuce and every lovely thing you could
mention that likes to be nibbled or loved-up, while it dabbles its toes
in the water.”
Peter Morrison looked at Linda reflectively. He looked for such a long
moment that Henry Anderson reached a nebulous conclusion. “Fine!” he
cried. “Every one of those suggestions is valuable to an inexperienced
man. Morrison, shan’t I make a note of them?”
“Yes, Henry, you shall,” said Peter. “I am going to push this thing
as fast as possible, so far as building the garage is concerned and
getting settled in it. After that I don’t care if I live on this spot
until we know each other by the inch, before I begin building my home.
At the present minute it appeals to me that ‘home’ is about the best
word in the language of any nation. I have a feeling that what I build
here is going to be my home, very possibly the only one I shall ever
have. We must find the spot on which the Lord intended that a house
should grow on this hillside, and then we must build that house so that
it has a room suitable for a workshop in which I may strive, under
the best conditions possible, to get my share of the joy of life and
to earn the money that I shall require to support me and entertain my
friends; and that sounds about as selfish as anything possibly could.
It seems to be mostly ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ and it’s not the real truth
concerning this house. I don’t believe there is a healthy, normal
man living who has not his dream. I have no hesitation whatever in
admitting that I have mine. This house must be two things. It has got
to be a concrete workshop for me, and it has got to be an abstract
abiding place for a dream. It’s rather difficult to build a dream house
for a dream lady, so I don’t know what kind of a fist I am going to
make of it.”
Linda sat down on a boulder and contemplated her shoes for a minute.
Then she raised her ever-shifting, eager, young eyes to Peter, and it
seemed to him as he looked into them that there were little gold lights
flickering at the bottom of their darkness.
“Why, that’s just as easy,” she said. “A home is merely a home. It
includes a front porch and a back porch and a fireplace and a bathtub
and an ice chest and a view and a garden around it; all the rest is
incidental. If you have more money, you have more incidentals. If you
don’t have so much, you use your imagination and think you have just as
much on less.”
“Now, I wonder,” said Peter, “when I find my dream lady, if she will
have an elastic imagination.”
“Haven’t you found her yet?” asked Linda casually.
“No,” said Peter, “I haven’t found her, and unfortunately she hasn’t
found me. I have had a strenuous time getting my start in life. It’s
mostly a rush from one point of interest to another, dropping at
any wayside station for refreshment and the use of a writing table.
Occasionally I have seen a vision that I have wanted to follow, but I
never have had time. So far, the lady of this house is even more of a
dream than the house.”
“Oh, well, don’t worry,” said Linda comfortingly. “The world is full of
the nicest girls. When you get ready for a gracious lady I’ll find you
one that will have an India-rubber imagination and a great big loving
heart and Indian-hemp apron strings so that half a dozen babies can
swing from them.”
Morrison turned to Henry Anderson.
“You hear, Henry?” he said. “I’m destined to have a large family. You
must curtail your plans for the workroom and make that big room back of
it into a nursery.”
“Well, what I am going to do,” said Henry Anderson, “is to build a
place suitable for your needs. If any dream woman comes to it, she will
have to fit herself to her environment.”
Linda frowned.
“Now, that isn’t a bit nice of you,” she said, “and I don’t believe
Peter will pay the slightest attention to you. He’ll let me make you
build a lovely room for the love of his heart, and a great big bright
nursery on the sunny side for his small people.”
“I never believed,” said Henry Anderson, “in counting your chickens
before they are hatched. There are a couple of acres around Peter’s
house, and he can build an addition as his needs increase.”
“Messy idea,” said Linda promptly. “Thing to do, when you build a
house, is to build it the way you want it for the remainder of your
life, so you don’t have to tear up the scenery every few years,
dragging in lumber for expansion. And I’ll tell you another thing. If
the homemakers of this country don’t get the idea into their heads
pretty soon that they are not going to be able to hold their own with
the rest of the world, with no children, or one child in the family,
there’s a sad day of reckoning coming. With the records at the patent
office open to the world, you can’t claim that the brain of the white
man is not constructive. You can look at our records and compare them
with those of countries ages and ages older than we are, which never
discovered the beauties of a Dover egg-beater or a washing machine
or a churn or a railroad or a steamboat or a bridge. We are head
and shoulders above other nations in invention, and just as fast as
possible, we are falling behind in the birth rate. The red man and
the yellow man and the brown man and the black man can look at our
egg-beaters and washing machines and bridges and big guns, and go home
and copy them; and use them while rearing even bigger families than
they have now. If every home in Lilac Valley had at least six sturdy
boys and girls growing up in it with the proper love of country and the
proper realization of the white man’s right to supremacy, and if all
the world now occupied by white men could make an equal record, where
would be the talk of the yellow peril? There wouldn’t be any yellow
peril. You see what I mean?”
Linda lifted her frank eyes to Peter Morrison.
“Yes, young woman,” said Peter gravely, “I see what you mean, but this
is the first time I ever heard a high-school kid propound such ideas.
Where did you get them?”
“Got them in Multiflores Canyon from my father to start with,” said
Linda, “but recently I have been thinking, because there is a boy in
High School who is making a great fight for a better scholarship record
than a Jap in his class. I brood over it every spare minute, day or
night, and when I say my prayers I implore high Heaven to send him an
idea or to send me one that I can pass on to him, that will help him to
beat that Jap.”
“I see,” said Peter Morrison. “We’ll have to take time to talk this
over. It’s barely possible I might be able to suggest something.”
“You let that kid fight his own battles,” said Henry Anderson roughly.
“He’s no proper bug-catcher. I feel it in my bones.”
For the first time, Linda’s joy laugh rang over Peter Morrison’s
possession.
“I don’t know about that,” she said gaily. “He’s a wide-awake specimen;
he has led his class for four years when the Jap didn’t get ahead of
him. But, all foolishness aside, take my word for it, Peter, you’ll be
sorry if you don’t build this house big enough for your dream lady and
for all the little dreams that may spring from her heart.”
“Nightmares, you mean,” said Henry Anderson. “I can’t imagine a bunch
of kids muddying up this spring and breaking the bushes and using
slingshots on the birds.”
“Yes,” said Linda with scathing sarcasm, “and wouldn’t our government
be tickled to death to have a clear spring and a perfect bush and a
singing bird, if it needed six men to go over the top to handle a
regiment of Japanese!”
Then Peter Morrison laughed.
“Well, your estimate is too low, Linda,” he said in his nicest drawling
tone of voice. “Believe me, one U. S. kid will never march in a whole
regiment of Japanese. They won’t lay down their guns and walk to
surrender as bunches of Germans did. Nobody need ever think that. They
are as good fighters as they are imitators. There’s nothing for you
to do, Henry, but to take to heart what Miss Linda has said. Plan the
house with a suite for a dream lady, and a dining room, a sleeping
porch and a nursery big enough for the six children allotted to me.”
“You’re not really in earnest?” asked Henry Anderson in doubting
astonishment.
“I am in the deepest kind of earnest,” said Peter Morrison. “What Miss
Linda says is true. As a nation, our people are pampering themselves
and living for their own pleasures. They won’t take the trouble or
endure the pain required to bear and to rear children; and the day is
rolling toward us, with every turn of the planet one day closer, when
we are going to be outnumbered by a combination of peoples who can take
our own tricks and beat us with them. We must pass along the good word
that the one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is
_homes and hearts big enough for children_, as were the homes of our
grandfathers, when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the
family, and if you didn’t have a dozen you weren’t doing your manifest
duty.”
“Well, if that is the way you see the light, we must enlarge this
house. As designed, it included every feminine convenience anyway. But
when I build my house I am going to build it for myself.”
“Then don’t talk any more about being my bug-catcher,” said Linda
promptly, “because when I build my house it’s going to be a nest that
will hold six at the very least. My heart is perfectly set on a brood
of six.”
Linda was quite unaware that the two men were studying her closely, but
if she had known what was going on in their minds she would have had
nothing to regret, because both of them found her very attractive, and
both of them were wondering how anything so superficial as Eileen could
be of the same blood as Linda.
“Are we keeping you too late?” inquired Peter.
“No,” said Linda, “I am as interested as I can be. Finish everything
you want to do before we go. I hope you’re going to let me come over
often and watch you with your building. Maybe I can get an idea for
some things I want to do. Eileen and I have our house divided by a
Mason and Dixon line. On her side is Mother’s suite, the dining room,
the living room and the front door. On mine there’s the garage and the
kitchen and Katy’s bedroom and mine and the library and the billiard
room. At the present minute I am interested in adapting the library to
my requirements instead of Father’s, and I am emptying the billiard
room and furnishing it to make a workroom. I have a small talent with
a brush and pencil, and I need some bare walls to tack my prints on to
dry, and I need numerous places for all the things I am always dragging
in from the desert and the canyons; and since I have the Bear-cat
running, what I have been doing in that line with a knapsack won’t be
worthy of mention.”
“How did it come,” inquired Henry Anderson, “that you had that car
jacked up so long?”
“Why, hasn’t anybody told you,” asked Linda, “about our day of the
Black Shadow?”
“John Gilman wrote me when it happened,” said Peter softly, “but I
don’t believe it has been mentioned before Henry. You tell him.”
Linda turned to Henry Anderson, and with trembling lips and paling
cheeks, in a few brief sentences she gave him the details. Then she
said to Peter Morrison in a low voice: “And that is the why of Marian
Thorne’s white head. Anybody tell you that?”
“That white head puzzled me beyond anything I ever saw,” he said. “I
meant to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often
about her, and lately he hasn’t; when I came I saw the reason, and so
you see I felt reticent on the subject.”
“Well, there’s nothing the matter with my tongue,” said Linda. “It’s
loose at both ends. Marian was an expert driver. She drove with the
same calm judgment and precision and graceful skill that she does
everything else, but the curve was steep and something in the brakes
was defective. It broke with a snap and there was not a thing she could
do. Enough was left of the remains of the car to prove that. Ten days
afterward her head was almost as white as snow. Before that it was as
dark as mine. But her body is just as young and her heart is just as
young and her face is even more beautiful. I do think that a white
crown makes her lovelier than she was before. I have known Marian ever
since I can remember, and I don’t know one thing about her that I could
not look you straight in the eye and tell you all about. There is not a
subterfuge or an evasion or a small mean deceit in her soul. She is the
brainiest woman and the biggest woman I know.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” said Peter Morrison. “And while you are
talking about nice women, we met a mighty fine one at Riverside on
Sunday. Her name is Mary Louise Whiting. Do you know her?”
“Not personally,” said Linda. “I don’t recall that I ever saw her. I
know her brother, Donald. He is the high-school boy who is having the
wrestle with the Jap.”
“I liked her too,” said Henry Anderson. “And by the way, Miss Linda,
haven’t bug-catchers any reputation at all as nest builders? Is it true
that among feathered creatures the hen builds the home?”
“No, it’s not,” said Linda promptly. “Male birds make a splendid record
carrying nest material. What is true is that in the majority of cases
the female does the building.”
“Well, what I am getting at,” said Henry Anderson, “is this. Is there
anything I can do to help you with that billiard room that you’re going
to convert to a workroom? What do you lack in it that you would like to
have? Do you need more light or air, or a fireplace, or what? When you
take us to the station, suppose you drive us past your house and give
me a look at that room and let me think over it a day or two. I might
be able to make some suggestion that would help you.”
“Now that is positively sweet of you,” said Linda. “I never thought
of such a thing as either comfort or convenience. I thought I had to
take that room as it stands and do the best I could with it, but since
you mention it, it’s barely possible that more air might be agreeable
and also more light, and if there could be a small fireplace built in
front of the chimney where it goes up from the library fireplace, it
certainly would be a comfort, and it would add something to the room
that nothing else could. “No workroom really has a soul if you can’t
smell smoke and see red when you go to it at night.”
“You little outdoor heathen,” laughed Peter Morrison. “One would think
you were an Indian.”
“I am a fairly good Indian,” said Linda. “I have been scouting around
with my father a good many years. How about it, Peter? Does the road go
crooked?”
“Yes,” said Peter, “the road goes crooked.”
“Does the bed of the spring curve and sweep across the lawn and drop
off to the original stream below the tree-tobacco clump there?”
“If you say so, it does,” said Peter.
“Including the bridge?” inquired Linda.
“Including the bridge,” said Peter. “I’ll have to burn some midnight
oil, but I can visualize the bridge.”
“And is this house where you ‘set up your rest,’ as you so beautifully
said the other night at dinner, going to lay its corner stone and grow
to its roof a selfish house, or is it going to be generous enough for a
gracious lady and a flight of little footsteps?”
Peter Morrison took off his hat. He turned his face toward the length
of Lilac Valley and stood, very tall and straight, looking far away
before him. Presently he looked down at Linda.
“Even so,” he said softly. “My shoulders are broad enough; I have a
brain; and I am not afraid to work. If my heart is not quite big enough
yet, I see very clearly how it can be made to expand.”
“I have been told,” said Linda in a low voice, “that Mary Louise
Whiting is a perfect darling.”
Peter looked at her from the top of her black head to the tips of her
brown shoes. He could have counted the freckles bridging her nose. The
sunburn on her cheeks was very visible; there was something arresting
in the depth of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the lithe slenderness
of her young body; she gave the effect of something smoldering inside
that would leap at a breath.
“I was not thinking of Miss Whiting,” he said soberly.
Henry Anderson was watching. Now he turned his back and commenced
talking about plans, but in his heart he said: “So that’s the lay of
the land. You’ve got to hustle yourself, Henry, or you won’t have the
ghost of a show.”
Later, when they motored down the valley and stopped at the Strong
residence, Peter refused to be monopolized by Eileen. He climbed the
two flights of stairs with Henry Anderson and Linda and exhausted his
fund of suggestions as to what could be done to that empty billiard
room to make an attractive study of it. Linda listened quietly to all
their suggestions, and then she said:
“It would be fine to have another window, and a small skylight would be
a dream, and as for the fireplace you mention, I can’t even conceive
how great it would be to have that; but my purse is much more limited
than Peter’s, and while I have my school work to do every day, my
earning capacity is nearly negligible. I can only pick up a bit here
and there with my brush and pencil—place cards and Easter cards and
valentines, and once or twice magazine covers, and little things like
that. I don’t see my way clear to lumber and glass and bricks and
chimney pieces.”
Peter looked at Henry, and Henry looked at Peter, and a male high sign,
ancient as day, passed between them.
“Easiest thing in the world,” said Peter. “It’s as sure as shooting
that when my three or four fireplaces, which Henry’s present plans call
for, are built, there is going to be all the material left that can
be used in a light tiny fireplace such as could be built on a third
floor, and when the figuring for the house is done it could very easily
include the cutting of a skylight and an extra window or two here,
and getting the material in with my stuff, it would cost you almost
nothing.”
Linda’s eyes opened wide and dewy with surprise and pleasure.
“Why, you two perfectly nice men!” she said. “I haven’t felt as I do
this minute since I lost Daddy. It’s wonderful to be taken care of.
It’s better than cream puffs with almond flavoring.”
Henry Anderson looked at Linda keenly.
“You’re the darndest kid!” he said. “One minute you’re smacking your
lips over cream puffs, and the next you’re going to the bottom of the
yellow peril. I never before saw your combination in one girl. What’s
the explanation?” For the second time that evening Linda’s specialty in
rapture floated free.
“Bunch all the component parts into the one paramount fact that I am
Saturday’s child,” she said, “so I am constantly on the job of working
for a living, and then add to that the fact that I was reared by a
nerve specialist.”
Then they went downstairs, and the men refused both Eileen’s and
Linda’s invitation to remain for dinner. When they had gone Eileen
turned to Linda with a discontented and aggrieved face.
“In the name of all that’s holy, what are you doing or planning to do?”
she demanded.
“Not anything that will cost you a penny beyond my natural rights,”
said Linda quietly.
“That is not answering my question,” said Eileen. “You’re not of age
and you’re still under the authority of a guardian. If you can’t answer
me, possibly you can him. Shall I send John Gilman to ask what I want
to know of you?”
“When did I ever ask you any questions about what you chose to
do?” asked Linda. “I am merely following the example that you have
previously set me. John Gilman and I used to be great friends. It might
help both of us to have a family reunion. Send him by all means.”
“You used to take pride,” suggested Eileen, “in leading your class.”
“And has anyone told you that I am not leading my class at the present
minute?” asked Linda.
“No,” said Eileen, “but what I want to point out to you is that the
minute you start running with the boys you will quit leading your
class.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said Linda quietly. “I’m not built that way.
I shan’t concentrate on any boy to the exclusion of chemistry and
geometry, never fear it.”
Then she thoughtfully ascended the stairs and went to work.
Eileen went to her room and sat down to think; and the more she
thought, the deeper grew her anger and chagrin; and to the indifference
that always had existed in her heart concerning Linda was added in that
moment a new element. She was jealous of her. How did it come that a
lanky, gangling kid in her tees had been paid a visit by the son of
possibly the most cultured and influential family of the city, people
of prestige, comfortable wealth, and unlimited popularity? For four
years she had struggled to gain an entrance in some way into Louise
Whiting’s intimate circle of friends, and she had ended by shutting
the door on the only son of the family. And why had she ever allowed
Linda to keep the runabout? It was not proper that a young girl should
own a high powered car like that. It was not proper that she should
drive it and go racing around the country, heaven knew where, and with
heaven knew whom. Eileen bit her lip until it almost bled. Her eyes
were hateful and her hands were nervous as she reviewed the past week.
She might think any mean thing that a mean brain could conjure up, but
when she calmed down to facts she had to admit that there was not a
reason in the world why Linda should not drive the car she had driven
for her father, or why she should not take with her Donald Whiting
or Peter Morrison or Henry Anderson. The thing that rankled was that
the car belonged to Linda. The touring car which she might have owned
and driven, had she so desired, lay in an extremely slender string of
pearls around her neck at that instant. She reflected that if she had
kept her car and made herself sufficiently hardy to drive it, she might
have been the one to have taken Peter Morrison to his home location and
to have had many opportunities for being with him.
“I’ve been a fool,” said Eileen, tugging at the pearls viciously. “They
are nothing but a little bit of a string that looks as if I were trying
to do something and couldn’t, at best. What I’ve got to do is to think
more of myself. I’ve got to plan some way to prevent Linda from being
too popular until I really get my mind made up as to what I want to do.”