In spite of Elijah's earnest conviction that the land should be
inspected and a course of action mapped out as soon as possible, it was
several weeks before the trip could be arranged. To Elijah it seemed as
if one insistent detail after another was crowding upon him in a most
extraordinary manner. He grew fretful, and at the last decidedly
irritable.
"Don't worry, Elijah," Helen said, after an unusually impatient
outburst. "The world wasn't made in a day."
"Opportunities are, and are short-lived too."
"Not when they travel via Mexicanos. You can always count on one day
more with them. Manana has some redeeming features after all."
"Well," Elijah's lips straightened, "manana is tomorrow, and tomorrow we
start."
Helen glanced at her desk with its litter of correspondence.
"I guess we can manage it in some way."
"I don't guess, I know. It's tomorrow; so be ready early. Don't come to
the office; I will call for you."
Elijah was as good as his word. At six o'clock he was waiting at Helen's
door, and they were early on their way.
In the days that had followed their conversation relative to unpurchased
lands, Helen had given much thought to the possible results of the plan
suggested by Elijah. She had experienced no waver of hesitation over
their present confidential relations. These presumed nothing more than
their face value and were in no sense different from her relations with
other employers. Had she been possessed of a fortune, the proposed
partnership would have had a plausible excuse. She would then merely
have furnished the money necessary to carry out their mutual plans and a
partnership would naturally have followed. She had no fortune. Her
relations with Elijah would of necessity become more confidential, more
personal. Elijah was a married man, and intuitively she hesitated. But
then; here was the great business opportunity of her life; the
opportunity for which she had been waiting and hoping until hope had
become all but expectation, and now hope and expectation needed only her
consent to become reality. She had been really glad of the delays which
put from her the necessity of immediate decision. She would decide when
the time came. She thought of going to Winston again for advice; but
Winston was occupied. This was her excuse to herself. In her heart she
knew what he would say and she did not wish to listen to his words. She
dwelt long over the idea of buying land independently, for herself. But
this savored of using for her own benefit, information gained indirectly
from her present position. Moreover, being a woman, she shrank from
wholly independent action. The appeal to her ambition was a powerful
one. A great transformation was going on in California. It was so
radical, so unthought of, that those connected with it in any of its
phases were bound to become prominent, and prominence was one great
thing that she desired. Elijah was the originator of orange growing on a
large scale. He had made his particular field a variety of seedless
orange which had been hitherto unknown; he had conceived of fertile
lands that were now worthless; had, by sheer will power, got under way
an irrigation scheme which would bring fame and fortune. These
possibilities were known to only half a dozen individuals who could take
advantage of them, and Helen was one. It was strange that, as she now
faced the question finally, she felt none of that sense of triumph and
satisfaction which she had imagined such an outlook would give her.
As she took her seat beside Elijah and was whirled through the sandy
streets of Ysleta, out over the rolling desert toward the foot-hills of
the San Bernardinos, she felt, instead of elation, a strange depression
which she could not explain away. Perhaps it was the chill which is
always in the California air before the rising sun has asserted its
power, or lost it when its daily course is run and it is sinking towards
the western horizon. The scenes they passed only served to heighten this
feeling; the torpid Mexicans, crawling from their cheerless adobe huts,
squatted on what should be the sunny side, their sombreros pulled low,
their ponchos wrapped closely around face, and neck, and shoulders, one
grimy hand with numbed fingers, thrusting the inevitable cigarro between
blue lips, as they watched with dull eyes the team flash by. Stiffened
bunches of scrawny cattle rose regretfully from the sand which their
bodies had warmed through the night. Shambling the least possible
distance from the wagon trail, they stood with arched backs and low-hung
heads, looking mild reproach at the disturbers of their dismal peace.
Even the long, blue shadows stretched themselves stiffly along the
yellow sands or lost their form in the soggy mists that hung damp and
chill over the river bottoms and deep-sunk hollows, where seeping
springs oozed out into the shivery air. Toward the west, the great
Pacific was hidden by a waveless wall of milky white that flowed inland
by imperceptible motions, overwhelming with its advancing flood, town
and plain, but leaving here and there a tawny hill rising above the
choking mist, like barren islands in a sea of arctic white.
Elijah shivered.
"It doesn't look like a land of perpetual sunshine, does it?"
"No, and it doesn't feel like one either." Helen's teeth fairly
chattered as she drew her wraps more closely about her.
"When we get ready to sell fruit ranches from our block of ground, we
will entertain our Eastern purchasers with lateness. Late suppers, late
retiring, late rising--"
"And late sales." Helen shrugged her shoulders. "We'll have to keep
prospective purchasers under cover all of the time. If we take them out
early, we'll freeze them, if late, we'll roast them, and almost any time
they're liable to be blown away. Just look at that!" She nodded toward a
grove of native orange trees. The outer row had had every leaf twisted
from it by the constant winds.
Elijah glanced at his companion.
"I'll tell you my first move. I'm going to get you into a cheerful mood
and then put you under cover and keep you there. What is the matter,
anyway?"
Helen made no reply. Perhaps she could not, in exact truth. Her youthful
philosophy had hardly gone far enough to emphasize the fact that nature
is only responsive to our moods, not creative of them.
"Twenty miles is a long drive on an empty stomach." Elijah spoke
apologetically. "I can go a week without eating, or sleeping either, if
necessary. It came pretty near being necessary one time." He shrugged
his shoulders. "Poor Amy! She never complained. Do you think you would
have put up with a husband who gave you only oatmeal week in and week
out, and not over much at that?"
"I might have put up with the husband, that would depend; but the
oatmeal, never! If I had thought it worth while, I wouldn't have
troubled him about that, even. I would have found something else for him
and for myself too!"
Helen spoke with decision. Elijah's words were uppermost in her mind, a
realization of what his work had cost him. Her enthusiasm kindled, she
forgot for the moment that the suggestion of the more helpful course
which she would have pursued, was an unqualified condemnation of Amy. It
was partly owing to the singleness of the vision of youth, partly to the
fact that Elijah's wife was hardly a tangible entity to her.
Elijah looked down at Helen. His face was sober. A moment he looked,
then turned his eyes to the distant hills.
"I believe you would."
His look and manner of speaking disturbed Helen, though she could not
tell why. All the doubts and fears of the past weeks again assailed her.
She began to feel a vague distrust of her ambition. Was it after all so
very different from the sordid motives she had despised in others? A
vision of Ysleta rose before her, with the glaring rawness and gaudy
pretensions which she had regarded with such humorous contempt. She had
been keen enough to forecast the ruin in store for the promoters; but
were her own plans so superior to these as she had once imagined? Did
not they too possess some elements of ruin? Suppose success should crown
her efforts, would success bring happiness? There was Elijah's wife; how
would this success affect this woman whom she had never seen, of whose
existence she was barely conscious? Her depression deepened. Why not
tell Elijah, even without a plausible reason, that she had decided
against it? Her lips half opened to speak, but a host of conflicting
impulses held her dumb. Success, wealth, these were the golden spurs
that had urged her on. Without this shining goal, what would life be but
a dreary round of duties?
The sun was beating with fierce heat on her unprotected face. The clammy
chill of the lowlands was gone. The towering heights of the San
Bernardinos rose clear against the blue of the sky. Elijah drew rein,
and Helen turned to look behind. To the west and south as far as the eye
could reach, stretched a great, softly moving sea of milky white. Thus
far and no farther, soft fingers of creamy vapor reached out against the
foot-hills, crept up into the gulches, reached upward and were dissolved
by the sun into transparent air. Far up on one of the foot-hills, was a
huge square of dark green set in a frame of tawny sand. Helen knew the
map; she recognized the locality. She had no need of Elijah's words as
he pointed with his whip.
"There's the first grove of navel oranges ever raised on this continent.
I had just three trees to start with, now you can see for yourself.
There's Pico's ranch. That's the one we are to buy." He again pointed
with his whip, tracing the boundaries in the air. "There's the Sangre de
Cristo; here's where it's going to be." He indicated with his whip the
crest of the hills, the line of the main canal; showed where it would
pierce a higher peak with tunnels, and where, the main canal being
tapped, the life-giving waters would be distributed to every field.
"It is great." Elijah was speaking with solemn voice. "It was all
revealed to me. The work is too great for me alone, I must have help. I
shall have to give up to others, but not too much. They must not push me
too hard. I shall be guided. But this shall be my work alone." He swept
his whip again over the barren hillsides. "Yours and mine. I shall need
your help. I have never had human help before, nor human sympathy. What
little help I have had, was because I could promise money, money! What
is money beside this great work? Just think! I shall make this, all this
a living green. 'The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It
shall bloom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing.'" Elijah's
eyes swept over the hills, his hands outstretched as if to gather to
them the fruits of his vision.
"This is my especial work; yours and mine. I was going to do it all
alone, but it was not to be. Why else did I trust you and why else did
you see what I believed was for my eyes alone?" He bent his eyes full
upon Helen. She looked shrinkingly into their solemn distance. The
conviction was forcing itself upon her that she could of herself have
nothing to say. There was more than fame, more than glory and wealth in
the vision he was forcing her to see as he saw; something great to be
done, a life to be lived too great to be measured by the petty standards
of humanity, and thus beyond her power to gauge; something above her,
beyond her, yet enveloping her like the air she breathed.
He laid his hand on hers, not questioningly, but masterfully, and
without power to resist, she felt his clasp tighten. She heard his
voice; words that hummed and throbbed, lulling her to a numb
insensibility to all but the thoughts she felt, rather than heard. She
saw the visions he saw, heard the voice that he heard, and she followed,
not him, but the vision and the voice. She shrank without motion; but
she knew that she must follow. Sorrow was nothing, regret was nothing;
only the vision that beckoned, the voice that called, these were
everything. She would have given worlds to have been beyond their spell;
but the eyes that were looking into hers she could not turn away from,
the clasp of the hand that held her, she could not shake off. Her
eyelids drooped, but they could not shut from her sight the great,
solemn eyes that balanced and swung, grew large and small, but ever
burned and burrowed into her soul.
Elijah gathered up the reins and the horses moved on. They followed the
winding trail down the hill, up the gulch, then a quick turn and the
dark green square cut off the burning rays of the sun.
In front of a little cottage almost hidden by blossoming roses the team
came to a halt. Elijah sprang from the wagon, and Helen caught a glimpse
of a delicately beautiful face among the roses. The next instant it was
hidden from sight upon Elijah's shoulder. Helen could not believe the
voice to be the same that she had just heard.
"Hello, Amy! I've brought you a visitor. Have you got anything to eat?
We're awfully hungry. Driven from Ysleta since six o'clock."