into the company."
Madeira emitted a breezy "All right. God bless you, all right." The girl
looked sorry and puzzled. Steering came on up the steps behind them,
with a sense of mingled elation and sadness, and the three passed
through the door of the Joplin man's house.
_Chapter Six_
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
Madeira Place was the old Peele Farm, whose square brick house had been
the boast of Canaan township ever since it had been put up,--out of
brick hauled by team across three counties,--by the man who had
established, but failed, despite his effort, to make permanent the
fortunes of his family. When the grandnephew, Bruce Grierson, came on,
the brick house was plastered with a mortgage that somehow passed
eventually into the hands of the then alert young sapling land-agent,
Crittenton Madeira. Crittenton took the house, and, by and by, Bruce
Grierson, the second, took himself, with money borrowed from Madeira,
out of Canaan, never to return. It was not long after this that
Crittenton Madeira, who was still a slight man, with a young wife and a
pretty baby out at the brick house, began to be named "our esteemed
fellow townsman" by the _Canaan Call_. Madeira built a hotel for
Canaan, promoted the Canaan Short Line, and established the Bank of
Canaan. His wife died, and his little girl grew, and he became large of
girth. It was not until his daughter was twelve that he had to share
honours with anyone as the foremost personage of Tigmore County. At
twelve the daughter began to show that she had inherited her father's
vitality, though the sphere of her activities was different. He bought
and sold and made money. She lassoed heifers, broke colts, and rode up
and down the Di in rickety skiffs. The community took as much pride in
her adventures as it did in his achievements.
The Madeiras were very happy together all through those days, and very
proud of each other. She recognised that her father was superior to the
Canaan men, that they did what he told them to do, and he recognised
that she was the most wonderful child, and the most beautiful, that had
ever come into the world. His convictions on that score were so profound
that they seemed to him something surer and bigger than the customary
paternal pride and affection. As the girl grew older he spent a great
deal of his money on her education and pleasure--at first blindly,
guided only by a big impulse to have her as good as the best, an impulse
that resulted in some funnily pathetic scenes where the little girl,
frightfully over-dressed, wandered through the St. Louis shops, holding
to the big man's finger, trying to think up something else that she
might possibly want. Later, under the girl's own direction, the money
went to better purpose.
His daughter's way of spending the money early became, in Madeira's
manner of getting at the thing, a sort of balance-wheel to his way of
making it. Although he had made money in the same way before she was
born, and although he would have made it in the same way had she never
been born, he grew to like the feeling that what he did he did for her,
and that his desire to make money had a soul in his desire to have her
spend it. This feeling was in the ascendant always when he was with her.
Unconsciously she fanned it within him. She had spent her young life
couched rosily on his love for her and hers for him; at home she was
lonely; at home Madeira was well-nigh perfect, and the girl's
imagination made all her ideals live in the big, handsome, assertive
man who was at once father to her and hero. Perceiving this, Madeira,
with her, entered into a sort of world of make-believe, and, with her,
was sometimes able to take himself for what she held him, a man whose
honour matched his ability, and, with her, sometimes surprised in
himself the little glow that she seemed to get when she was profoundly
appreciating him.
One Sunday afternoon they were sitting, father and daughter, in the
garden, behind the brick house, he with a St. Louis paper on his knee,
his head bare, his waistcoat loose, his feet in slippers. His chair was
tilted back against a crab-apple tree at the side of one of the garden
walks. For several weeks his face had been showing some sort of strain,
but at this moment he looked comfortable. She had been telling him that
she was glad that he had put up the new watering trough in Court House
Square, and the way she had talked about it had made him feel sure that
he had had some notion, when he did it, of benefiting the community,
instead of insuring that the farmers would stop in front of the Grange
store, in which he was interested.
She sat on a bench near him, quite idle; her gown, a tawny drapery,
whose half-hidden suggestions of blue were like shy spring flowers, was
sheathed closely about her; her eyes were following the pale wide river
below the garden; her hair, so light that it made her eyes seem lighter,
was piled above the warm, creamy tan of her forehead; there was a little
drowsy droop on her face; the dusky-gold radiance was all about her.
"Daddy," she said, by and by, "do you know that I swam the Di once?" He
laughed sleepily. He remembered. "I wonder if I could do it now--I was
pretty awful as a youngster, wasn't I, Daddy?"
"You certainly had a reputation," he admitted.
"Do you know that I still have a good deal of a reputation"--she turned
upon him with more directness and a little laughing pugnacity--"as
though I were the same terrible child, up to the same riotous tricks as
when I was twelve!"
"Hump-mmh, hump-mmh!" He looked at her from under his slanted lids and
shook his head, while his big face quivered with amusement. "You haven't
given up all your riotous tricks even yet--don't tell me." He spoke
with the indulgence that had allowed free rein to her caprices all her
life.
"Never you mind, I do precious little that is riotous any more; I am
getting used to harness," she made answer, and looked as though she did
not mean to be interfered with in the precious little that was riotous
that she still clung to, and then looked as though she were threatening
herself with sweeping reform. "Go back to sleep, Daddy. You will be in
my way presently, anyhow."
"Anybody coming?"
"Your Mr. Steering."
"'My!'" Madeira's face clouded over, and he thrust out his jaw
grimacingly. "If he _were_ mine, you know what I should do with him?" he
asked, in a sharp voice.
"No, I don't know. What would you do with him?"
"I should send him packing back East. This country don't need,--aw, the
people of this country are good enough for the country and the country
is good enough for them. We don't need outsiders."
He was so vehement that she regarded him questioningly. "Don't you like
him any more?" she inquired, with a little dubious shake of her head.
"I don't like"--Madeira got up and walked back and forth under the
crab-apple tree--"I don't like for a man without any practical knowledge
or experience to get a lot of ideas about a thing and bring them to a
field and try to push other chaps out, other chaps who are already in
the field."
"Yes, but----" It occurred to her that she was defending Steering--"but
if he brings the ideas, he ought to have the credit for originating the
ideas, oughtn't he?"
"No! No!" Madeira's voice rang up, urgent, strident; he did not seem
conscious that he was talking to her; he seemed rather to be having
something out with himself. The strain of the past weeks had come back
to his face. "Plenty of people before this Steering have thought of ore
in the Canaan Tigmores. Look at old Grierson himself! Originate the
idea! Grierson had the idea before Steering was born! We can get ideas
in this country, and work 'em out, too, without any help from
outsiders."
"Mr. Steering is not exactly an outsider, is he?"
"Yes, he is, too. He hasn't any more claim to this land now than you
have; it isn't any more his business what's done here during Grierson's
lifetime than it's Rockefeller's business. Not a bit. Let Steering wait
till the land is his."
"Well,"--she was troubled,--"in the meantime, what is old Grierson going
to do?"
Madeira seemed to be trying to quiet himself. He went down to the garden
fence and looked at the oak forest on the other side of the Di, puckered
up his mouth, as though to whistle, but stopped short of it, and came
sauntering back toward his daughter. "He is going to do what I tell him
to do, Honey," he made answer. "And I'm telling him to put the Canaan
Mining and Development Company into the Tigmores after zinc."
"I should think, though," she said then, slowly, "that even if the
matter is in your hands now, it would be to your ultimate advantage to
have Mr. Steering in with you. He is the next owner, and, if old
Grierson should die, whatever work you have done on the Tigmores would
go for nothing. I should think it would be almost essential for you and
Mr. Steering to be together."
He let his chair down angrily. "There isn't a big enough scheme in the
universe to accommodate Steering and me together! He is a blamed idiot,"
he said doggedly. And it became clear to her that in his bull-headed way
he had forged all the links of one of his intense antagonisms. He had
been like that all his life; of pronounced personality himself, he had
never been able to abide pronounced personality in those with whom he
came in contact. He had ridden rough-shod over inferior men all his
life; he liked to ride rough-shod; he was never pleased when his path
crossed people over whom he could not ride rough-shod. Generally she had
accepted his classification of those who opposed him strongly as "blamed
idiots"; sometimes with a little of her laughing banter, but usually,
his superiority standing out sharp and clear when opposed to the dull
Canaanites, endorsing his opinion. "I sort of wish," he went on, with
that keen, wire-edged exasperation still sawing in his voice, "that you
wouldn't have much to do with that chap. He isn't my kind of people. I
shouldn't mind if, now that you've given him a good high swing, you'd
let him drop."
"Why, Father! You oughtn't to forget that there was one time in your
life when he might have let you drop--and didn't!"
He saw that he had got himself before her in too keen a light.
"Yes, but you don't expect me to let him hold me up by the collar
forever, do you, Pet? That's his dog-on way, anyhow--wants to dictate. I
can't stand a man who wants to dictate. I think we've had enough of him.
That's what I mean, and all I mean." He patted her hands and got up from
his chair again. "There comes Samson with the mail," he said nervously.
A negro man rode up through the big gate at the front of the grounds and
came on to Madeira, who took two letters from him. "One for you, Sally,"
said Madeira, "and one for me."
"Oh, from Elsie Gossamer!" she cried, and took her letter and sat,
unobservant of him, for several moments, the little frown that his words
had brought out still on her brow. Presently she looked up and saw that
he had read his letter, and had put it in his pocket; he was tilted
back against the crab-apple tree again, his forehead knit, his eyes
brilliant, a peculiar fixity in their gaze. "Oh, here!" she cried
protestingly, "you look as though you had just decided to become the
President of the United States of America! Stop scowling and listen;
Elsie is after me again to join her in Europe. She is fairly eloquent
with the project----"
He broke in upon her with a sudden intensity of interest: "Do it!" he
cried. "It's the very thing. You go. You go and have a good time."
"I don't want to go so awfully," she began hesitatingly. "I've been away
from you a lot in the last two years. I don't care so much about it."
"Yes, you do; you go." He was always keen for her pleasure, but in the
present case he seemed especially earnest.
"Want to get rid of me, huh?"
"No; you know I'll half die without you. But I am going to be fearfully
busy from now on,"--his mouth seemed hot and dry as he talked,--"it will
suit better now than ever. You go."
"Well, maybe," she said. She was accustomed to let her own fancy settle
such questions for her. "Maybe I'll go. Maybe I shan't." There was a
click at the front gate. "I expect that's Mr. Steering," she announced.
Madeira got out of his chair quickly. "If it is, I don't want to see
him," he said, "he--oh, he irritates me, that man,--always wanting to
dictate. I'll go in. Don't want ever to see him again,--and say, Pet?"
"Well, Dad?"
"I'd be glad if you would never see him again. Just stop where you are,
will you?"
She drew a long sighing breath. "Just stop where I am? Well, I'll see,"
she said, laughing and flushing in the warm, rich fashion of her skin,
but there was the faint far call of uneasiness in her laughter, like a
wind-whisper of coming rain. "Tell Samson to bring Mr. Steering out here
to me," she commanded, and Madeira went off toward the house and
disappeared through the green-latticed porch.
Inside the house he retired to the room that was known as his office,
locked the door and came over to his desk. As he did it a peculiar
consciousness of himself suffused him like the first fumes of a deadly
narcotic. He began to see that he was lifting his feet stealthily,
advancing them stealthily, stealthily setting them down, with the
soundless fall of a cat's foot on velvet. Reaching his desk, he half
fell into a chair there, a thin line of white froth between his lips,
his big face purplish. "Eh, God?" he cried, "what's this? what's this?"
The seizure passed as suddenly as it had come. By and by he heard
Steering pass through the house under Samson's escort. When the sound of
Steering's foot-steps had died away, Madeira took a letter from his
pocket, spread it open before him and read it over and over.
"Dear Crit," [the letter said] "I have thought this thing to a finish. I
want you to turn the Tigmores over to my cousin, Bruce Steering. Let him
start at once on the jack trail, that primrose path of dalliance. As for
me, my dear sir, by the time this reaches you, I shall be on the long
trail. You needn't blow any trumpets about it, for B. G. will have no
funeral. The name that I gave you as the name that I live here under is
good enough to die here under. The certain fact for your consideration
is that I die at once, and that the question of this property entail is
now confided to you to arrange for my heir, young Steering. Write to the
clerk of Snow Mountain County for the documents that I have left with
him for you. They establish everything. Tell my cousin that, besides the
Tigmores, I bequeath him my debts to you. This leaves me not at all
envious of the job ahead of him, and, as ever,
"Your blindly devoted servant,
"BRUCE GRIERSON."
_Chapter Seven_
THE GARDEN OF DREAMS
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."