EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE
_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
Loneliness of Adam_
Two months had passed since the wedding of Curly and the Littlest Girl,
and nothing further had happened in the way of change. The man from
Philadelphia had not come, and, to the majority of the population of
Heart's Desire at least, the railroad to the camp remained a thing as
far distant as ever in the future. Life went on, spent in the open for
the most part, and in silent thoughtfulness by choice. Blackman, J.
P., now languished in desuetude among the fallen remnants of an
erstwhile promising structure of the law; and there being no further
occupation for the members of the bar, the latter customarily spent
much of the day sitting in the sun.
"You might look several times at me," said Dan Andersen one day,
without preface or provocation, "and yet not read all my past in these
fair lineaments."
This seemed unworthy of notice. A man's past was a subject tabooed in
Heart's Desire. Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were
glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall. Conversation languished. Dan
Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a _cigarrillo_ with one hand, his gaze
the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of
the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away. His mind
might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely. There was
nothing to do. There was only the sun, and as against it the shade.
That made up life at Heart's Desire. It was a million miles away to
any other sort of world; and that world, in so far as it had reference
to a past, was a subject not mentioned among the men of Heart's Desire.
Yet this morning there seemed to be something upon Dan Andersen's mind,
as he edged a little farther along into the shade, and felt in his
pocket for a match.
"No, you wouldn't think; just to look at me, my friend," said he, "you
wouldn't think, without runnin' side lines, and takin' elevations for
dips, spurs, and angles, that I had ever been anything but a barrister;
now, would you? Attorney and Counsellor-at-law, all hours of the day
and night: that bill of specifications is engraved on my brow, ain't
it? You like enough couldn't believe that I was ever anything
else--several things else, could you?"
His speech still failed of interest, except as it afforded additional
proof of the manner in which Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the like
disappeared from the speech of all men at Heart's Desire. Dan Anderson
sat down in the shade, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
"My boy," said he, "you can gaze at me if you ain't too tired. As a
matter of fact, in this pernicious age of specialization I stand out as
the one glitterin' example of success in more than one line. Why, once
I was a success as a journalist--for a few moments."
There was now a certain softness and innocence in his voice, which had
portent, although I did not at that time suspect that he really had
anything of consequence upon his soul. Without more encouragement he
went on.
"My brother," said he, "when I first came out of Princeton I was
burnin' up with zeal. There was the world, the whole wide world,
plunged into an abyss of error and wrongdoin'. I was the sole and
remainin' hope. Like all great men, I naturally wanted to begin the
savin' as early as possible; and like everybody else who comes out of
Princeton, I thought the best medium for immediate salvation was
journalism. I wasn't a newspaper man. I never said that at all. I
was a journalist.
"Well, dad got me a place on a paper in New York, and I worked on the
dog-fight department for a time, it havin' been discovered that I was
noted along certain lines of research in Princeton. I knew the
pedigree and fightin' weight of every white, black, or brindle pup in
four States. Now, a whole lot of fellows come out of college who don't
know that much; or if they do, they don't know how to apply their
knowledge. Now dogs, that's plumb useful.
"I was still doin' dogs when the presidential campaign came along, or
rather, that feature of our national customs which precedes the
selection of the People's Choice. First thing, of course, the People's
Choice had to take a run over the country--which was a good thing, too,
because he didn't know much about it--and let the people in general
know that he was their choice. I went along to tell the other people
how he broke it to them."
I confess I sat up at this, for there was now so supreme an innocence
in Dan Anderson's eye that one might have been morally certain that
something was coming. "From dogs to politics--wasn't that a little
singular?" I asked.
"Yes," said he; "but you have to be versatile in journalism. The
regular man who was to have gone on that special presidential car got
slugged at an art gatherin'. I didn't ask for the place. I just went
and told the managin' editor I was ready if he would give me an order
for expense money. It wouldn't have been good form for him to look up
and pay any attention to me, so I got the job. I needed to see the
country just as much as the People's Choice did.
"Three other fellows went along,--newspaper men. I was the only real
journalist. We did the presidential tour for ten towns a day. I
watched what the other fellows did, and in about two hours it was easy.
Everything's easy if you think so. Folks made a lot of fuss about
gettin' along in the world. That's all a mistake.
"People's Choice tore it off in fine shape. Comin' into Basswood
Junction he turns to his Honorable Secretary, and says he, 'Jimmy,
what's this?' Jimmy turns to his card cabinet, and says he: 'Prexie,
this is Basswood Junction. Three railroads come in here--and get away
as soon as they can. Four overall factories and a reaper plant.
Population six thousand, and increasin' satisfactory. Hon. Charles D.
Bastrop, M.C., from this district, on the straight Republican ticket
for the last three hundred years; world without end.'
"Then the train would pull into this station to the sad sweet notes of
the oompah horn, and the delegation of leadin' citizens would file in
behind the car, and the first leadin' citizen would get red in the face
with his Welcome talk, while we four slaves of the people were hustling
the President's speech to the depot telegraph wire before he said it.
People's Choice, he stands on the back platform with one hand in his
bosom, and says he: 'Fellow-citizens of Basswood Junction, I am proud
to see before me this large and distinguished gatherin' of our noble
North American fauna. My visit to your pleasant valley is wholly
without political significance. These noble et cetera; these smilin'
et cetera; these beautiful et cetera, fill me with the proudest
emotions of et cetera. This, our great and glorious et cetera;
Basswood Junction has four magnificent factories, and is the centre
of three great trunk lines of railroad which radiate et cetera; it
is destined to be a great commercial et cetera. And what could be
more confirmatory of the sober, practical judgment of the citizens of
this flourishing community than the fact that they have produced and
given to the world that distinguished statesman and gentleman, the
Hon. Charles D. Bastrop, who is your representative in the Congress
of the United States and who has always et cetera, et cetera?
'Fellow-citizens, the issue before this country to-day--' and that
was where he would hit his gait.
"He had three of these, and on the schedule laid out by the chairman of
the Central Committee he couldn't spring any two alike closer together
than a hundred miles. The whole business would take about five minutes
to a station. We would put number Two, or number Three, or whichever
it was, on the wire, while the People's Choice was talkin', provided we
could catch the station agent, who on such occasions was bigger than
the President. Then, toot! toot! and we were off for the next Basswood
Junction, to show 'em who was their spontaneous choice.
"Well, that was all right, and it was easy work to report. The only
thing was not to get number One speech mixed up with number Two or
number Three at any given point. The Honorable Secretary had to attend
to that. So all the time we were bored for something to do. What we
was hopin' and longin' for all the time was that some one in the
opposition at some station would haul off and throw a brick at the car.
Then we would have had some News."
"Oh," said I, "you got to wanting news! You had a narrow escape."
"Maybe," said Dan Anderson. "I admit I got to likin' the game. I
think, too, I did get to understandin' what news was. So one day, when
I was mighty tired of the four-factory, railroad-centre,
leadin'-citizen business, I mixed up the speeches on the Honorable
Secretary between stations." Dan Anderson blew a faint wreath of blue
smoke up toward the blue sky and remained silent for a time.
"The next particular Basswood Junction happened to be a Democratic
minin' town, instead of a Republican agricultural community. It didn't
have any overall factories at all. They didn't relish bein' told that
they had voted the straight Republican ticket ever since Alexander
Hamilton, and that they had given to the public that distinguished
citizen, James K. Blinkensop, when the man they had really given to the
public was Dan G. Healy. Oh, the whole thing got all mixed up! Now,
that was News! And they fired me by wire that night! The People's
Choice was awful hostile. And me raised tender, too!"
"Well, then, what did you do?" asked I, getting interested in spite of
myself.
"I was far, far from home. But not thus easily could I be shaken out
of my chosen profession. In thirty-eight minutes I was at work as
managin' editor of a mornin' paper. That particular Basswood Junction
was just startin' a daily, the kind the real-estate men and the local
congressman have to support or go out of the business. Their editor
had been raised on a weekly, and had been used to goin' to sleep at
eight o'clock in the evening. The rumor spread that a metropolitan
journalist had fallen out of a balloon into their midst. That
morning's paper was two days late. So I just went in and went to work.
I sent every one else home to bed, and sat down to write the paper.
"Of course, I began with dogs, for on account of my early trainin' I
knew more about that. Two columns of dogs as a Local Industry. Then I
took up Mineral Resources, about half a column. Might have played that
up a little stronger, but I was shy on facts. Then I did the Literary
and Dramatic. I shuddered when I struck that, because when a man on a
paper gets put on Literary and Dramatic, it usually isn't far to his
finish. He don't have to send out after trouble--it comes to him
spontaneous. Next, I had to do Society. Didn't know anybody there, so
that was a little hard. Had to content myself with the
Beautiful-and-Accomplished-Who-Shall-be-Nameless,--that sort of thing.
Why," said Dan Anderson, plaintively, "it's awful hard to write society
and local news in a town when you've only been there fifteen minutes.
But a real metropolitan journalist ought to be able to, and I did.
"By this time the office force was standin' around some awed. I sent
the foreman of the pressroom out for a bottle of fizz. Sarsaparilla
was the nearest he could come to it, but it went. Then I turned my hot
young blood loose on the editorial page. 'This,' said I, 'is my
opportunity to save the country, and I'm goin' to save it, right here.'
It was then eleven hours, forty-five minutes, and eight seconds by the
grandpa clock which adorned the newly furnished sanctum." Dan Anderson
again sat silent a few moments, the stub of his _cigarrillo_ between
his fingers.
"Oh, well," said he, "it might, perhaps, have been worse, although I
admit that was unlikely. I couldn't prove an alibi, but there were
extenuatin' circumstances. The fact was, I got the politics of the
place mixed up almost as bad as the People's Choice. That community
woke up as one man at six-thirty the next morning, and turned out to
see the evidence of their progress. I never did see so many Democrats
in my life. Or was it Republicans? I forget. I had given 'em a good,
hot, mixed Princeton paper,--dog, international law, society,
industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had
Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a
Household Corner--How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich
for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers--why, if I do say
it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in
all his life, inside the space of one night's writin'. But they didn't
like me. I was too good for them. Ah, well!"
Dan Anderson sighed softly. The lazy sun crawled on. Nobody came into
the street. There was nothing to happen. It might have been an hour
before Dan Anderson leaned over, picked up a splinter to whittle, and
went on with his story, back of which I was long before this well
convinced there remained some topic concealed, albeit beneath
inconsequent and picturesque details.
"At that state of my _entwickelung_, as the French say, I still wore
my trousers with a strong crimp at the bottom and cut pear-shaped at
the hips. That pair was. The next one wasn't. It was a long, long
way to that next pair. I forgot how many years.
"You see, by that time--although I did still say 'rully,' account of
having roomed with a man who had been in Harvard for a while--I was
really beginning to wake up just a little bit. My dad still supposed I
was doing dog on the dramatic page in New York, whereas the facts were
I had been fired twice. But that did me good. I sort of woke up about
then, and realized there were such things in the world as folks. I
wasn't the People's Choice,--not yet,--but I was learnin' a heap more
about the Basswood Junctions of this world. And I want to say to you
that after all's said and done, Princeton hasn't got Basswood Junction
skinned no ways permanent. There's several kinds of things in life,
when you come to find it out. It ain't all in the gay metropolis.
"At half-past four one afternoon I turned the roll down out of my
trousers and took account of the world. Says I to myself: 'Journalism
is not a science. It ain't exact enough.' Then I thought of studyin'
medicine. Bah! That's not a science. It's a survival. I clerked for
a while, but I couldn't stand it. What I was lookin' for was a
science. At last I concluded to take up law, because I thought it was
more of a science than any of these other things. I wanted some place
where I could sort of reason things out, and have them fit and hang
together. Well, the law--well, you know the law isn't just exactly
that way. But it's a beautiful thing if you just hang to the
principles, and don't believe too much of the practice. The law is
disgraced--but at bottom what the law meant to do was to give humanity
some sort of a square deal; which, of course, it doesn't. It ain't a
science; but I love it, because it might have been."
He fell silent once again for a time, after his fashion, but now his
gaze was softened, although he went on with his light speech. "I
rather thought I would take up the science of the law as the most
possible line of activity for a man of my attainments. I began to read
a little on the side. Then I didn't know whether to have contempt for
us fools who live and endure the eternal folly, or whether I ought to
pity Basswood Junction and Princeton, because life is all so awfully
hard and hopeless. Meantime, Old Mr. World went right on--didn't stop
to ask me anything.
"You can understand these things took a little time. Meantime, my dad
had sized me up as one more young man ruined by college life. The old
man had a heap of sense in him, and he did the right thing. He told me
to go to the devil."
"So you came West?"
"So I came West. Same pants."
"But you haven't told me about the girl," said I, quietly.
Ah, that was it, then! I could see his eyelids twitch. A moisture
broke out on his lower lip, in that country where perspiration was so
little known. "And you!" he said. "But then, it didn't take much
brains to guess that. It was the same way with you. We all of us came
here to Heart's Desire because some time, some where, there was a Girl."
So now we both were silent. Indeed, all the world was silent. The
calm valley lay unwinking in the sun. The grave mountains stood about
unperturbed, unagitated, calm. The blue sky swept above, peaceful,
unflecked by any moving cloud. There was not a leaf in all that land
to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple. It was a
world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with
nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world
gone by. Here was no place for memories or dreams. The rush of
another world might go on. Folk might live and love, grieve and joy,
and sorrow and die, and it mattered nothing. These things came not to
Heart's Desire.
Presently Dan Anderson was guilty of a thing revolutionary, horrible!
He sat silent as long as he could, but at length there broke from him a
groan that was half a sob. He rose and flung out an arm at the great
blue heaven. "Girl!" he cried. "Girl!" Then he sank down, burying
his face in his hands. One might have heard falling, faint and far
off, the shattered crystals of the walls that had long hedged sacredly
about the valley of Heart's Desire. One might have heard, sweeping the
soft and silken curtains of its oblivion, the rough rush of a
disturbing wind!
Dan Anderson's back was in shame turned to me as he gazed down the
valley. "Friend," said he, "I swore never to think of her once more.
Of course, the old ways had to end. Her people wouldn't have it. She
told me she could not be happy with a dreamer; that it was no time for
dreamers; that the world was run by workers. She told me--well, I came
West, and after a while a little farther West.
"I hadn't begun, I know that. It was fair enough to suppose I never
would begin. But at least I didn't holler. I sat down to read law.
Ah, don't let's talk of it. Her face was on the pages. I would brush
it off, and read over a page a dozen times. I had to force it into my
mind. I worked so hard--but maybe it was all the better for me. I not
only learned my law, but I remember to this minute every misplaced
comma and every broken type on every page I read; and I know how type
looks, irregularly set around a roll of brown hair and a pair of gray
eyes that look straight at you. My boy, when the principles of law are
back and under that kind of a page illustration, they are hard to get,
and you don't forget them when they're yours. It wasn't hard to learn
things in Princeton. It's the things out of college that are hard to
learn.
"Well, you know how that is. A fellow lives because this physical
machine of ours is wound up for threescore years and ten, and unless
the powers of evil get their fingers in the works, it runs. Well, one
time, after I was admitted to the bar back there, I was sitting one
night reading Chitty on Pleading. That was the worst of all the books.
Contracts, notes and bills, torts, replevin, and ejectment--all those
things were easy. But when I got to Chitty, the girl's face would
always get on the page and stick there. So one night, seeing that I
was gone, I took Chitty on Pleading, girl's face and all, and screwed
it shut, tight and fast in the letter-press. I allowed she couldn't
get out of there! Then I pulled my freight. I punched a burro into
Heart's Desire, two hundred miles, just as you did. I have lived here,
just as you have. No life, no trouble, no woman--why, you know, this
is Heart's Desire!"
"It was," said I; "God bless it."
"And amen! We'd all have been in the Army, or burglary, or outlawry,
if it hadn't been for Heart's Desire. God bless it."
"But she got out," said I. "Some one unscrewed the press?"
"Yes," said Dan Anderson. "She's out. They're out. I tell you,
they're out, all over the world!
"We were three hundred men here, and it was Heaven. One vast commune,
and yet no commune. Everything there was if you asked for it, and
nothing you could take if you didn't ask. Not a church, because there
wasn't a woman. Not a courthouse, because there wasn't any crime, and
that because there wasn't a woman. Not a society--not a home--and I
thank God for it. I knew what it was back there--every man suspicious,
every man scared, every man afraid of his own shadow--not a clean, true
note in all the world; and incidentally a woman behind every tree, in
every corner, whichever way you turned. Life in the States was being a
_peon_ with a halter around your neck. But it was never that way
here. There never was any crime in Heart's Desire. It's no crime to
shoot a man when he's tired of living and wants you to kill him. Why,
this was Heart's Desire until--"
"Until the press got loose?"
"It's loose all over the world!" cried Dan Anderson. "They've got out.
You can't keep them in. How did Charlie Allen get killed over at
Sumner? Woman in it. When the boys arrested this fellow Garcia over
at the Nogales, what was it all about? A woman. What set the
desperado Arragon on the warpath so the boys had to kill him? That was
a woman, too. What made Bill Hilliard kill Pete Anderson? Woman moved
in within fifty miles of them on the Nogales. Here's Curly; good man
in his profession. Night-wrangler, day-herder, bog-rider, buster,
top-waddy--why, he'd be the old man on the range for his company if
that Kansas family hadn't moved down in here and married him. It's
Paradise Lost, that's what it is. Arizona next, and it's full of
copper mines and railroads. Where shall we go?" The sweat stood full
on his lip now, and a deep line ran across his forehead. "Where shall
we go?" he repeated insistently. "Come!"
In my own bitterness at all this I grew sarcastic with him. "Sit
down," said I. "Why all this foolishness about a college girl with a
shirtwaist and a straw hat?"
"Oh, now," and his forehead puckered up, "don't you be deceived for one
minute, my friend. This wasn't ordinary. No plain woman; no common or
crimping variety. Just a specimen of the great 'North American Girl!"
He took off his hat. "And may God bless her, goin' or comin'!" said he.
This was the most untoward situation ever yet known in the valley of
Heart's Desire. Dan Andersen was proving recreant to our creed. And
yet, what could be done?
Dan Anderson presently made the situation more specific. "May old Jack
Wilson just be damned!" said he. "If he hadn't found that gold
prospect up on the Homestake, we might have lived here forever.
Besides, there's the coal fields yonder on the Patos, no one knows how
big."
Coal! That meant Eastern Capital. I could have guessed the rest
before he told it.
"Oh, of course, we've got to sell our coal mines, and get a lot of
States men in here monkeyin' around. And, of course, it couldn't have
been anybody else but the particular daddy of this particular girl who
had to come pokin' in here to look at the country! He's got money
literally sinful."
"But, man," I cried, "you don't mean to say that the girl's coming,
too?"
He nodded mutely. "They're out," said he, at last. "You can't get
away from 'em. They're all over the world."
Here, indeed, was trouble, and no opportunity for speech offered for a
long time, as we sat moodily in the sun. At about this time, Tom Osby
drove his freight wagon down the street and outspanned at the corral of
Whiteman the Jew, just across the street. Tom tore open a bale of hay,
and threw down a handful of precious oats to each of his hump-backed
grays, and then sat down on the wagon-tongue, where, as he filled a
pipe, he began to sing his favorite song.
"I never _loved_ a fond gazel-l-l-e,"
he drawled out. Dan Andersen drew his revolver and fired a swift shot
through the top of Tom Osby's wagon. Tom came up, rifle in hand, like
a jack-in-the-box, and bent on bloodshed.
"Shut up," said Dan Anderson.
"Well, I ain't so sure," said Tom, judicially rubbing his chin. "It's
a new wagon-bow for you fellers; and next time just you don't get quite
so funny, by a leetle shade."
I interfered at this point, for trouble had begun in Heart's Desire
over smaller things than this. "Don't you know it's Sunday?" I asked
Tom Osby.
"I hadn't noticed it," said he.
"Well, it is," said Dan Anderson. "You come here, and tell me what
time the stage gets in from Socorro."
"I ain't no alminack," said Tom Osby, "and I ain't no astrollyger."
"He's _loco_, Tom," said I.
"Well, I reckon _so_. When a man begins to worry about what time the
Stage'll come in, he's gettin' too blamed particular for this country."
"This," said I, "is a case of Eastern Capital--Eastern Capital, Eve and
the Serpent, all on one stage. The only comfort is that no Eastern
Capital has ever been able to stay here more than one day. She'll go
back, shirtwaist and all, and you can begin over again." But the dumb
supplication in Dan Anderson's eye caused me swift regret.
There was no telegraph at Heart's Desire. It was ninety miles to the
nearest wire. The stage came in but occasionally from the distant
railroad. Yet--and this was one of the strange things of that strange
country, which we accepted without curiosity and without
argument--there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by
which news got about over great distances. Perhaps it was a rider in
by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had
seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the cañon, the white
smoke of the desert dust that said the stage was coming. This news
brought little but a present terror to Dan Anderson, as I looked at him
in query.
"Man," said he, as he gripped my arm, "you see, up there on Carrizo,
the big cañon where we hunt bear. You know, up there at the end,
there's a big pine tree. Well, now, if you or any of the citizens of
this commercial emporium should require the legal services of the late
Daniel Anderson, you go up the cañon and look up the tree. I'll be
there. I'm scared."
By this I knew that he would, in all likelihood, meet the stage and
help Eve to alight at Heart's Desire. Moreover, I reproached him as
having been deliberately a party to this invasion. "You've been
writing back home to the girl," I said. "That is not playing the game.
That's violation of the creed. You're renegade. Then go back home.
You don't belong here!"
"I'm not! I won't! I didn't!" he retorted. "I didn't write--at least
only a few times. I tried not to--but I couldn't help it. Man, I tell
you I couldn't _help_ it."