Presley's room in the ranch house of Los Muertos was in the second story
of the building. It was a corner room; one of its windows facing the
south, the other the east. Its appointments were of the simplest. In
one angle was the small white painted iron bed, covered with a white
counterpane. The walls were hung with a white paper figured with knots
of pale green leaves, very gay and bright. There was a straw matting
on the floor. White muslin half-curtains hung in the windows, upon
the sills of which certain plants bearing pink waxen flowers of which
Presley did not know the name, grew in oblong green boxes. The walls
were unadorned, save by two pictures, one a reproduction of the “Reading
from Homer,” the other a charcoal drawing of the Mission of San Juan de
Guadalajara, which Presley had made himself. By the east window stood
the plainest of deal tables, innocent of any cloth or covering, such as
might have been used in a kitchen. It was Presley's work table, and was
invariably littered with papers, half-finished manuscripts, drafts of
poems, notebooks, pens, half-smoked cigarettes, and the like. Near at
hand, upon a shelf, were his books. There were but two chairs in the
room--the straight backed wooden chair, that stood in front of the
table, angular, upright, and in which it was impossible to take one's
ease, and the long comfortable wicker steamer chair, stretching its
length in front of the south window. Presley was immensely fond of
this room. It amused and interested him to maintain its air of rigorous
simplicity and freshness. He abhorred cluttered bric-a-brac and
meaningless objets d'art. Once in so often he submitted his room to a
vigorous inspection; setting it to rights, removing everything but the
essentials, the few ornaments which, in a way, were part of his life.
His writing had by this time undergone a complete change. The notes for
his great Song of the West, the epic poem he once had hoped to write
he had flung aside, together with all the abortive attempts at its
beginning. Also he had torn up a great quantity of “fugitive” verses,
preserving only a certain half-finished poem, that he called “The
Toilers.” This poem was a comment upon the social fabric, and had been
inspired by the sight of a painting he had seen in Cedarquist's art
gallery. He had written all but the last verse.
On the day that he had overheard the conversation between Dyke and
Caraher, in the latter's saloon, which had acquainted him with the
monstrous injustice of the increased tariff, Presley had returned to Los
Muertos, white and trembling, roused to a pitch of exaltation, the like
of which he had never known in all his life. His wrath was little short
of even Caraher's. He too “saw red”; a mighty spirit of revolt heaved
tumultuous within him. It did not seem possible that this outrage could
go on much longer. The oppression was incredible; the plain story of
it set down in truthful statement of fact would not be believed by the
outside world.
He went up to his little room and paced the floor with clenched fists
and burning face, till at last, the repression of his contending
thoughts all but suffocated him, and he flung himself before his table
and began to write. For a time, his pen seemed to travel of itself;
words came to him without searching, shaping themselves into
phrases,--the phrases building themselves up to great, forcible
sentences, full of eloquence, of fire, of passion. As his prose grew
more exalted, it passed easily into the domain of poetry. Soon the
cadence of his paragraphs settled to an ordered beat and rhythm, and in
the end Presley had thrust aside his journal and was once more writing
verse.
He picked up his incomplete poem of “The Toilers,” read it hastily a
couple of times to catch its swing, then the Idea of the last verse--the
Idea for which he so long had sought in vain--abruptly springing to his
brain, wrote it off without so much as replenishing his pen with ink.
He added still another verse, bringing the poem to a definite close,
resuming its entire conception, and ending with a single majestic
thought, simple, noble, dignified, absolutely convincing.
Presley laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair, with the
certainty that for one moment he had touched untrod heights. His hands
were cold, his head on fire, his heart leaping tumultuous in his breast.
Now at last, he had achieved. He saw why he had never grasped the
inspiration for his vast, vague, IMPERSONAL Song of the West. At the
time when he sought for it, his convictions had not been aroused; he
had not then cared for the People. His sympathies had not been touched.
Small wonder that he had missed it. Now he was of the People; he had
been stirred to his lowest depths. His earnestness was almost a frenzy.
He BELIEVED, and so to him all things were possible at once.
Then the artist in him reasserted itself. He became more interested in
his poem, as such, than in the cause that had inspired it. He went over
it again, retouching it carefully, changing a word here and there, and
improving its rhythm. For the moment, he forgot the People, forgot his
rage, his agitation of the previous hour, he remembered only that he had
written a great poem.
Then doubt intruded. After all, was it so great? Did not its sublimity
overpass a little the bounds of the ridiculous? Had he seen true? Had he
failed again? He re-read the poem carefully; and it seemed all at once
to lose force.
By now, Presley could not tell whether what he had written was true
poetry or doggerel. He distrusted profoundly his own judgment. He must
have the opinion of some one else, some one competent to judge. He could
not wait; to-morrow would not do. He must know to a certainty before he
could rest that night.
He made a careful copy of what he had written, and putting on his hat
and laced boots, went down stairs and out upon the lawn, crossing over
to the stables. He found Phelps there, washing down the buckboard.
“Do you know where Vanamee is to-day?” he asked the latter. Phelps put
his chin in the air.
“Ask me something easy,” he responded. “He might be at Guadalajara, or
he might be up at Osterman's, or he might be a hundred miles away from
either place. I know where he ought to be, Mr. Presley, but that ain't
saying where the crazy gesabe is. He OUGHT to be range-riding over east
of Four, at the head waters of Mission Creek.”
“I'll try for him there, at all events,” answered Presley. “If you see
Harran when he comes in, tell him I may not be back in time for supper.”
Presley found the pony in the corral, cinched the saddle upon him, and
went off over the Lower Road, going eastward at a brisk canter.
At Hooven's he called a “How do you do” to Minna, whom he saw lying in a
slat hammock under the mammoth live oak, her foot in bandages; and
then galloped on over the bridge across the irrigating ditch, wondering
vaguely what would become of such a pretty girl as Minna, and if in
the end she would marry the Portuguese foreman in charge of the
ditching-gang. He told himself that he hoped she would, and that
speedily. There was no lack of comment as to Minna Hooven about the
ranches. Certainly she was a good girl, but she was seen at all hours
here and there about Bonneville and Guadalajara, skylarking with the
Portuguese farm hands of Quien Sabe and Los Muertos. She was very
pretty; the men made fools of themselves over her. Presley hoped they
would not end by making a fool of her.
Just beyond the irrigating ditch, Presley left the Lower Road, and
following a trail that branched off southeasterly from this point, held
on across the Fourth Division of the ranch, keeping the Mission Creek
on his left. A few miles farther on, he went through a gate in a barbed
wire fence, and at once engaged himself in a system of little arroyos
and low rolling hills, that steadily lifted and increased in size as
he proceeded. This higher ground was the advance guard of the Sierra
foothills, and served as the stock range for Los Muertos. The hills were
huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats. At
long intervals, were isolated live oaks. In the canyons and arroyos, the
chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets. The ground
was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were
everywhere. Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one
growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect. High
overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush
of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the
trail.
On the hillsides, in thinly scattered groups were the cattle, grazing
deliberately, working slowly toward the water-holes for their evening
drink, the horses keeping to themselves, the colts nuzzling at their
mothers' bellies, whisking their tails, stamping their unshod feet. But
once in a remoter field, solitary, magnificent, enormous, the short hair
curling tight upon his forehead, his small red eyes twinkling, his vast
neck heavy with muscles, Presley came upon the monarch, the king,
the great Durham bull, maintaining his lonely state, unapproachable,
austere.
Presley found the one-time shepherd by a water-hole, in a far distant
corner of the range. He had made his simple camp for the night. His
blue-grey army blanket lay spread under a live oak, his horse grazed
near at hand. He himself sat on his heels before a little fire of
dead manzanita roots, cooking his coffee and bacon. Never had Presley
conceived so keen an impression of loneliness as his crouching figure
presented. The bald, bare landscape widened about him to infinity.
Vanamee was a spot in it all, a tiny dot, a single atom of human
organisation, floating endlessly on the ocean of an illimitable nature.
The two friends ate together, and Vanamee, having snared a brace of
quails, dressed and then roasted them on a sharpened stick. After
eating, they drank great refreshing draughts from the water-hole. Then,
at length, Presley having lit his cigarette, and Vanamee his pipe, the
former said:
“Vanamee, I have been writing again.”
Vanamee turned his lean ascetic face toward him, his black eyes fixed
attentively.
“I know,” he said, “your journal.”
“No, this is a poem. You remember, I told you about it once. 'The
Toilers,' I called it.”
“Oh, verse! Well, I am glad you have gone back to it. It is your natural
vehicle.”
“You remember the poem?” asked Presley. “It was unfinished.”
“Yes, I remember it. There was better promise in it than anything you
ever wrote. Now, I suppose, you have finished it.”
Without reply, Presley brought it from out the breast pocket of his
shooting coat. The moment seemed propitious. The stillness of the vast,
bare hills was profound. The sun was setting in a cloudless brazier of
red light; a golden dust pervaded all the landscape. Presley read his
poem aloud. When he had finished, his friend looked at him.
“What have you been doing lately?” he demanded. Presley, wondering, told
of his various comings and goings.
“I don't mean that,” returned the other. “Something has happened to you,
something has aroused you. I am right, am I not? Yes, I thought so. In
this poem of yours, you have not been trying to make a sounding piece of
literature. You wrote it under tremendous stress. Its very imperfections
show that. It is better than a mere rhyme. It is an Utterance--a
Message. It is Truth. You have come back to the primal heart of things,
and you have seen clearly. Yes, it is a great poem.”
“Thank you,” exclaimed Presley fervidly. “I had begun to mistrust
myself.”
“Now,” observed Vanamee, “I presume you will rush it into print. To have
formulated a great thought, simply to have accomplished, is not enough.”
“I think I am sincere,” objected Presley. “If it is good it will do good
to others. You said yourself it was a Message. If it has any value, I do
not think it would be right to keep it back from even a very small and
most indifferent public.”
“Don't publish it in the magazines at all events,” Vanamee answered.
“Your inspiration has come FROM the People. Then let it go straight TO
the People--not the literary readers of the monthly periodicals, the
rich, who would only be indirectly interested. If you must publish it,
let it be in the daily press. Don't interrupt. I know what you will say.
It will be that the daily press is common, is vulgar, is undignified;
and I tell you that such a poem as this of yours, called as it is, 'The
Toilers,' must be read BY the Toilers. It MUST BE common; it must be
vulgarised. You must not stand upon your dignity with the People, if you
are to reach them.”
“That is true, I suppose,” Presley admitted, “but I can't get rid of the
idea that it would be throwing my poem away. The great magazine gives me
such--a--background; gives me such weight.”
“Gives YOU such weight, gives you such background. Is it YOURSELF you
think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must
sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of
admitted success. It is your POEM, your MESSAGE, that must
prevail,--not YOU, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of
self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the
tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem,
but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer
writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the
proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of
the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book.”
But Presley would hear no further.
“No,” he cried, “I know I am sincere, and to prove it to you, I will
publish my poem, as you say, in the daily press, and I will accept no
money for it.”
They talked on for about an hour, while the evening wore away. Presley
very soon noticed that Vanamee was again preoccupied. More than ever
of late, his silence, his brooding had increased. By and by he rose
abruptly, turning his head to the north, in the direction of the Mission
church of San Juan. “I think,” he said to Presley, “that I must be
going.”
“Going? Where to at this time of night?”
“Off there.” Vanamee made an uncertain gesture toward the north.
“Good-bye,” and without another word he disappeared in the grey of the
twilight. Presley was left alone wondering. He found his horse, and,
tightening the girths, mounted and rode home under the sheen of the
stars, thoughtful, his head bowed. Before he went to bed that night
he sent “The Toilers” to the Sunday Editor of a daily newspaper in San
Francisco.
Upon leaving Presley, Vanamee, his thumbs hooked into his empty
cartridge belt, strode swiftly down from the hills of the Los Muertos
stock-range and on through the silent town of Guadalajara. His lean,
swarthy face, with its hollow cheeks, fine, black, pointed beard,
and sad eyes, was set to the northward. As was his custom, he was
bareheaded, and the rapidity of his stride made a breeze in his long,
black hair. He knew where he was going. He knew what he must live
through that night.
Again, the deathless grief that never slept leaped out of the shadows,
and fastened upon his shoulders. It was scourging him back to that scene
of a vanished happiness, a dead romance, a perished idyl,--the Mission
garden in the shade of the venerable pear trees.
But, besides this, other influences tugged at his heart. There was a
mystery in the garden. In that spot the night was not always empty, the
darkness not always silent. Something far off stirred and listened to
his cry, at times drawing nearer to him. At first this presence had
been a matter for terror; but of late, as he felt it gradually drawing
nearer, the terror had at long intervals given place to a feeling of an
almost ineffable sweetness. But distrusting his own senses, unwilling
to submit himself to such torturing, uncertain happiness, averse to the
terrible confusion of spirit that followed upon a night spent in the
garden, Vanamee had tried to keep away from the place. However, when the
sorrow of his life reassailed him, and the thoughts and recollections of
Angele brought the ache into his heart, and the tears to his eyes, the
temptation to return to the garden invariably gripped him close. There
were times when he could not resist. Of themselves, his footsteps turned
in that direction. It was almost as if he himself had been called.
Guadalajara was silent, dark. Not even in Solotari's was there a light.
The town was asleep. Only the inevitable guitar hummed from an unseen
'dobe. Vanamee pushed on. The smell of the fields and open country, and
a distant scent of flowers that he knew well, came to his nostrils,
as he emerged from the town by way of the road that led on towards the
Mission through Quien Sabe. On either side of him lay the brown earth,
silently nurturing the implanted seed. Two days before it had rained
copiously, and the soil, still moist, disengaged a pungent aroma of
fecundity.
Vanamee, following the road, passed through the collection of buildings
of Annixter's home ranch. Everything slept. At intervals, the aer-motor
on the artesian well creaked audibly, as it turned in a languid breeze
from the northeast. A cat, hunting field-mice, crept from the shadow
of the gigantic barn and paused uncertainly in the open, the tip of
her tail twitching. From within the barn itself came the sound of the
friction of a heavy body and a stir of hoofs, as one of the dozing cows
lay down with a long breath.
Vanamee left the ranch house behind him and proceeded on his way. Beyond
him, to the right of the road, he could make out the higher ground in
the Mission enclosure, and the watching tower of the Mission itself. The
minutes passed. He went steadily forward. Then abruptly he paused, his
head in the air, eye and ear alert. To that strange sixth sense of his,
responsive as the leaves of the sensitive plant, had suddenly come the
impression of a human being near at hand. He had neither seen nor
heard, but for all that he stopped an instant in his tracks; then, the
sensation confirmed, went on again with slow steps, advancing warily.
At last, his swiftly roving eyes lighted upon an object, just darker
than the grey-brown of the night-ridden land. It was at some distance
from the roadside. Vanamee approached it cautiously, leaving the road,
treading carefully upon the moist clods of earth underfoot. Twenty paces
distant, he halted.
Annixter was there, seated upon a round, white rock, his back towards
him. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his
hands. He did not move. Silent, motionless, he gazed out upon the flat,
sombre land.
It was the night wherein the master of Quien Sabe wrought out his
salvation, struggling with Self from dusk to dawn. At the moment when
Vanamee came upon him, the turmoil within him had only begun. The
heart of the man had not yet wakened. The night was young, the dawn far
distant, and all around him the fields of upturned clods lay bare and
brown, empty of all life, unbroken by a single green shoot.
For a moment, the life-circles of these two men, of so widely differing
characters, touched each other, there in the silence of the night under
the stars. Then silently Vanamee withdrew, going on his way, wondering
at the trouble that, like himself, drove this hardheaded man of affairs,
untroubled by dreams, out into the night to brood over an empty land.
Then speedily he forgot all else. The material world drew off from him.
Reality dwindled to a point and vanished like the vanishing of a star
at moonrise. Earthly things dissolved and disappeared, as a strange,
unnamed essence flowed in upon him. A new atmosphere for him pervaded
his surroundings. He entered the world of the Vision, of the Legend, of
the Miracle, where all things were possible. He stood at the gate of the
Mission garden.
Above him rose the ancient tower of the Mission church. Through the
arches at its summit, where swung the Spanish queen's bells, he saw the
slow-burning stars. The silent bats, with flickering wings, threw their
dancing shadows on the pallid surface of the venerable facade.
Not the faintest chirring of a cricket broke the silence. The bees were
asleep. In the grasses, in the trees, deep in the calix of punka flower
and magnolia bloom, the gnats, the caterpillars, the beetles, all the
microscopic, multitudinous life of the daytime drowsed and dozed. Not
even the minute scuffling of a lizard over the warm, worn pavement of
the colonnade disturbed the infinite repose, the profound stillness.
Only within the garden, the intermittent trickling of the fountain made
itself heard, flowing steadily, marking off the lapse of seconds,
the progress of hours, the cycle of years, the inevitable march of
centuries. At one time, the doorway before which Vanamee now stood had
been hermetically closed. But he, himself, had long since changed that.
He stood before it for a moment, steeping himself in the mystery and
romance of the place, then raising he latch, pushed open the gate,
entered, and closed it softly behind him. He was in the cloister garden.
The stars were out, strewn thick and close in the deep blue of the sky,
the milky way glowing like a silver veil. Ursa Major wheeled gigantic
in the north. The great nebula in Orion was a whorl of shimmering star
dust. Venus flamed a lambent disk of pale saffron, low over the horizon.
From edge to edge of the world marched the constellations, like the
progress of emperors, and from the innumerable glory of their courses a
mysterious sheen of diaphanous light disengaged itself, expanding over
all the earth, serene, infinite, majestic.
The little garden revealed itself but dimly beneath the brooding light,
only half emerging from the shadow. The polished surfaces of the leaves
of the pear trees winked faintly back the reflected light as the trees
just stirred in the uncertain breeze. A blurred shield of silver marked
the ripples of the fountain. Under the flood of dull blue lustre, the
gravelled walks lay vague amid the grasses, like webs of white satin
on the bed of a lake. Against the eastern wall the headstones of the
graves, an indistinct procession of grey cowls ranged themselves.
Vanamee crossed the garden, pausing to kiss the turf upon Angele's
grave. Then he approached the line of pear trees, and laid himself down
in their shadow, his chin propped upon his hands, his eyes wandering
over the expanse of the little valley that stretched away from the foot
of the hill upon which the Mission was built.
Once again he summoned the Vision. Once again he conjured up the
Illusion. Once again, tortured with doubt, racked with a deathless
grief, he craved an Answer of the night. Once again, mystic that he
was, he sent his mind out from him across the enchanted sea of the
Supernatural. Hope, of what he did not know, roused up within him.
Surely, on such a night as this, the hallucination must define itself.
Surely, the Manifestation must be vouchsafed.
His eyes closed, his will girding itself to a supreme effort, his senses
exalted to a state of pleasing numbness, he called upon Angele to come
to him, his voiceless cry penetrating far out into that sea of faint,
ephemeral light that floated tideless over the little valley beneath
him. Then motionless, prone upon the ground, he waited.
Months had passed since that first night when, at length, an Answer had
come to Vanamee. At first, startled out of all composure, troubled and
stirred to his lowest depths, because of the very thing for which he
sought, he resolved never again to put his strange powers to the test.
But for all that, he had come a second night to the garden, and a third,
and a fourth. At last, his visits were habitual. Night after night
he was there, surrendering himself to the influences of the place,
gradually convinced that something did actually answer when he called.
His faith increased as the winter grew into spring. As the spring
advanced and the nights became shorter, it crystallised into certainty.
Would he have her again, his love, long dead? Would she come to him once
more out of the grave, out of the night? He could not tell; he could
only hope. All that he knew was that his cry found an answer, that his
outstretched hands, groping in the darkness, met the touch of other
fingers. Patiently he waited. The nights became warmer as the spring
drew on. The stars shone clearer. The nights seemed brighter. For nearly
a month after the occasion of his first answer nothing new occurred.
Some nights it failed him entirely; upon others it was faint, illusive.
Then, at last, the most subtle, the barest of perceptible changes began.
His groping mind far-off there, wandering like a lost bird over the
valley, touched upon some thing again, touched and held it and this
time drew it a single step closer to him. His heart beating, the blood
surging in his temples, he watched with the eyes of his imagination,
this gradual approach. What was coming to him? Who was coming to him?
Shrouded in the obscurity of the night, whose was the face now turned
towards his? Whose the footsteps that with such infinite slowness drew
nearer to where he waited? He did not dare to say.
His mind went back many years to that time before the tragedy of
Angele's death, before the mystery of the Other. He waited then as he
waited now. But then he had not waited in vain. Then, as now, he had
seemed to feel her approach, seemed to feel her drawing nearer and
nearer to their rendezvous. Now, what would happen? He did not know. He
waited. He waited, hoping all things. He waited, believing all things.
He waited, enduring all things. He trusted in the Vision.
Meanwhile, as spring advanced, the flowers in the Seed ranch began
to come to life. Over the five hundred acres whereon the flowers were
planted, the widening growth of vines and bushes spread like the waves
of a green sea. Then, timidly, colours of the faintest tints began to
appear. Under the moonlight, Vanamee saw them expanding, delicate
pink, faint blue, tenderest variations of lavender and yellow, white
shimmering with reflections of gold, all subdued and pallid in the
moonlight.
By degrees, the night became impregnated with the perfume of the
flowers. Illusive at first, evanescent as filaments of gossamer; then
as the buds opened, emphasising itself, breathing deeper, stronger. An
exquisite mingling of many odours passed continually over the Mission,
from the garden of the Seed ranch, meeting and blending with the aroma
of its magnolia buds and punka blossoms.
As the colours of the flowers of the Seed ranch deepened, and as their
odours penetrated deeper and more distinctly, as the starlight of each
succeeding night grew brighter and the air became warmer, the illusion
defined itself. By imperceptible degrees, as Vanamee waited under the
shadows of the pear trees, the Answer grew nearer and nearer. He saw
nothing but the distant glimmer of the flowers. He heard nothing but
the drip of the fountain. Nothing moved about him but the invisible,
slow-passing breaths of perfume; yet he felt the approach of the Vision.
It came first to about the middle of the Seed ranch itself, some half
a mile away, where the violets grew; shrinking, timid flowers, hiding
close to the ground. Then it passed forward beyond the violets, and drew
nearer and stood amid the mignonette, hardier blooms that dared
look heavenward from out the leaves. A few nights later it left the
mignonette behind, and advanced into the beds of white iris that pushed
more boldly forth from the earth, their waxen petals claiming the
attention. It advanced then a long step into the proud, challenging
beauty of the carnations and roses; and at last, after many nights,
Vanamee felt that it paused, as if trembling at its hardihood, full
in the superb glory of the royal lilies themselves, that grew on the
extreme border of the Seed ranch nearest to him. After this, there was
a certain long wait. Then, upon a dark midnight, it advanced again.
Vanamee could scarcely repress a cry. Now, the illusion emerged from the
flowers. It stood, not distant, but unseen, almost at the base of the
hill upon whose crest he waited, in a depression of the ground where the
shadows lay thickest. It was nearly within earshot.
The nights passed. The spring grew warmer. In the daytime intermittent
rains freshened all the earth. The flowers of the Seed ranch grew
rapidly. Bud after bud burst forth, while those already opened expanded
to full maturity. The colour of the Seed ranch deepened.
One night, after hours of waiting, Vanamee felt upon his cheek the touch
of a prolonged puff of warm wind, breathing across the little valley
from out the east. It reached the Mission garden and stirred the
branches of the pear trees. It seemed veritably to be compounded of
the very essence of the flowers. Never had the aroma been so sweet, so
pervasive. It passed and faded, leaving in its wake an absolute silence.
Then, at length, the silence of the night, that silence to which Vanamee
had so long appealed, was broken by a tiny sound. Alert, half-risen from
the ground, he listened; for now, at length, he heard something. The
sound repeated itself. It came from near at hand, from the thick shadow
at the foot of the hill. What it was, he could not tell, but it did not
belong to a single one of the infinite similar noises of the place with
which he was so familiar. It was neither the rustle of a leaf, the snap
of a parted twig, the drone of an insect, the dropping of a magnolia
blossom. It was a vibration merely, faint, elusive, impossible of
definition; a minute notch in the fine, keen edge of stillness.
Again the nights passed. The summer stars became brighter. The warmth
increased. The flowers of the Seed ranch grew still more. The five
hundred acres of the ranch were carpeted with them.
At length, upon a certain midnight, a new light began to spread in
the sky. The thin scimitar of the moon rose, veiled and dim behind the
earth-mists. The light increased. Distant objects, until now hidden,
came into view, and as the radiance brightened, Vanamee, looking down
upon the little valley, saw a spectacle of incomparable beauty. All the
buds of the Seed ranch had opened. The faint tints of the flowers had
deepened, had asserted themselves. They challenged the eye. Pink became
a royal red. Blue rose into purple. Yellow flamed into orange. Orange
glowed golden and brilliant. The earth disappeared under great bands and
fields of resplendent colour. Then, at length, the moon abruptly soared
zenithward from out the veiling mist, passing from one filmy haze to
another. For a moment there was a gleam of a golden light, and Vanamee,
his eyes searching the shade at the foot of the hill, felt his heart
suddenly leap, and then hang poised, refusing to beat. In that instant
of passing light, something had caught his eye. Something that moved,
down there, half in and half out of the shadow, at the hill's foot.
It had come and gone in an instant. The haze once more screened the
moonlight. The shade again engulfed the vision. What was it he had seen?
He did not know. So brief had been that movement, the drowsy brain had
not been quick enough to interpret the cipher message of the eye. Now
it was gone. But something had been there. He had seen it. Was it the
lifting of a strand of hair, the wave of a white hand, the flutter of a
garment's edge? He could not tell, but it did not belong to any of those
sights which he had seen so often in that place. It was neither the
glancing of a moth's wing, the nodding of a wind-touched blossom, nor
the noiseless flitting of a bat. It was a gleam merely, faint, elusive,
impossible of definition, an intangible agitation, in the vast, dim blur
of the darkness.
And that was all. Until now no single real thing had occurred, nothing
that Vanamee could reduce to terms of actuality, nothing he could put
into words. The manifestation, when not recognisable to that strange
sixth sense of his, appealed only to the most refined, the most delicate
perception of eye and ear. It was all ephemeral, filmy, dreamy, the
mystic forming of the Vision--the invisible developing a concrete
nucleus, the starlight coagulating, the radiance of the flowers
thickening to something actual; perfume, the most delicious fragrance,
becoming a tangible presence.
But into that garden the serpent intruded. Though cradled in the slow
rhythm of the dream, lulled by this beauty of a summer's night, heavy
with the scent of flowers, the silence broken only by a rippling
fountain, the darkness illuminated by a world of radiant blossoms,
Vanamee could not forget the tragedy of the Other; that terror of many
years ago,--that prowler of the night, that strange, fearful figure with
the unseen face, swooping in there from out the darkness, gone in
an instant, yet leaving behind the trail and trace of death and of
pollution.
Never had Vanamee seen this more clearly than when leaving Presley on
the stock range of Los Muertos, he had come across to the Mission garden
by way of the Quien Sabe ranch.
It was the same night in which Annixter out-watched the stars, coming,
at last, to himself.
As the hours passed, the two men, far apart, ignoring each other, waited
for the Manifestation,--Annixter on the ranch, Vanamee in the garden.
Prone upon his face, under the pear trees, his forehead buried in the
hollow of his arm, Vanamee lay motionless. For the last time, raising
his head, he sent his voiceless cry out into the night across the
multi-coloured levels of the little valley, calling upon the miracle,
summoning the darkness to give Angele back to him, resigning himself to
the hallucination. He bowed his head upon his arm again and waited. The
minutes passed. The fountain dripped steadily. Over the hills a haze of
saffron light foretold the rising of the full moon. Nothing stirred. The
silence was profound.
Then, abruptly, Vanamee's right hand shut tight upon his wrist.
There--there it was. It began again, his invocation was answered. Far
off there, the ripple formed again upon the still, black pool of
the night. No sound, no sight; vibration merely, appreciable by some
sublimated faculty of the mind as yet unnamed. Rigid, his nerves taut,
motionless, prone on the ground, he waited.
It advanced with infinite slowness. Now it passed through the beds of
violets, now through the mignonette. A moment later, and he knew it
stood among the white iris. Then it left those behind. It was in the
splendour of the red roses and carnations. It passed like a moving star
into the superb abundance, the imperial opulence of the royal lilies.
It was advancing slowly, but there was no pause. He held his breath, not
daring to raise his head. It passed beyond the limits of the Seed ranch,
and entered the shade at the foot of the hill below him. Would it come
farther than this? Here it had always stopped hitherto, stopped for a
moment, and then, in spite of his efforts, had slipped from his grasp
and faded back into the night. But now he wondered if he had been
willing to put forth his utmost strength, after all. Had there not
always been an element of dread in the thought of beholding the mystery
face to face? Had he not even allowed the Vision to dissolve, the Answer
to recede into the obscurity whence it came?
But never a night had been so beautiful as this. It was the full period
of the spring. The air was a veritable caress. The infinite repose
of the little garden, sleeping under the night, was delicious beyond
expression. It was a tiny corner of the world, shut off, discreet,
distilling romance, a garden of dreams, of enchantments.
Below, in the little valley, the resplendent colourations of the million
flowers, roses, lilies, hyacinths, carnations, violets, glowed like
incandescence in the golden light of the rising moon. The air was thick
with the perfume, heavy with it, clogged with it. The sweetness
filled the very mouth. The throat choked with it. Overhead wheeled the
illimitable procession of the constellations. Underfoot, the earth was
asleep. The very flowers were dreaming. A cathedral hush overlay all
the land, and a sense of benediction brooded low,--a divine kindliness
manifesting itself in beauty, in peace, in absolute repose.
It was a time for visions. It was the hour when dreams come true, and
lying deep in the grasses beneath the pear trees, Vanamee, dizzied with
mysticism, reaching up and out toward the supernatural, felt, as it
were, his mind begin to rise upward from out his body. He passed into a
state of being the like of which he had not known before. He felt that
his imagination was reshaping itself, preparing to receive an impression
never experienced until now. His body felt light to him, then it
dwindled, vanished. He saw with new eyes, heard with new ears, felt with
a new heart.
“Come to me,” he murmured.
Then slowly he felt the advance of the Vision. It was approaching. Every
instant it drew gradually nearer. At last, he was to see. It had left
the shadow at the base of the hill; it was on the hill itself. Slowly,
steadily, it ascended the slope; just below him there, he heard a faint
stirring. The grasses rustled under the touch of a foot. The leaves
of the bushes murmured, as a hand brushed against them; a slender twig
creaked. The sounds of approach were more distinct. They came nearer.
They reached the top of the hill. They were within whispering distance.
Vanamee, trembling, kept his head buried in his arm. The sounds, at
length, paused definitely. The Vision could come no nearer. He raised
his head and looked. The moon had risen. Its great shield of gold
stood over the eastern horizon. Within six feet of Vanamee, clear and
distinct, against the disk of the moon, stood the figure of a young
girl. She was dressed in a gown of scarlet silk, with flowing sleeves,
such as Japanese wear, embroidered with flowers and figures of
birds worked in gold threads. On either side of her face, making
three-cornered her round, white forehead, hung the soft masses of her
hair of gold. Her hands hung limply at her sides. But from between her
parted lips--lips of almost an Egyptian fulness--her breath came slow
and regular, and her eyes, heavy lidded, slanting upwards toward the
temples, perplexing, oriental, were closed. She was asleep.
From out this life of flowers, this world of colour, this atmosphere
oppressive with perfume, this darkness clogged and cloyed, and thickened
with sweet odours, she came to him. She came to him from out of the
flowers, the smell of the roses in her hair of gold, the aroma and the
imperial red of the carnations in her lips, the whiteness of the lilies,
the perfume of the lilies, and the lilies' slender, balancing grace in
her neck. Her hands disengaged the scent of the heliotrope. The folds of
her scarlet gown gave off the enervating smell of poppies. Her feet were
redolent of hyacinth. She stood before him, a Vision realised--a dream
come true. She emerged from out the invisible. He beheld her, a figure
of gold and pale vermilion, redolent of perfume, poised motionless in
the faint saffron sheen of the new-risen moon. She, a creation of sleep,
was herself asleep. She, a dream, was herself dreaming.
Called forth from out the darkness, from the grip of the earth, the
embrace of the grave, from out the memory of corruption, she rose into
light and life, divinely pure. Across that white forehead was no smudge,
no trace of an earthly pollution--no mark of a terrestrial dishonour.
He saw in her the same beauty of untainted innocence he had known in his
youth. Years had made no difference with her. She was still young.
It was the old purity that returned, the deathless beauty, the
ever-renascent life, the eternal consecrated and immortal youth. For a
few seconds, she stood there before him, and he, upon the ground at her
feet, looked up at her, spellbound. Then, slowly she withdrew. Still
asleep, her eyelids closed, she turned from him, descending the slope.
She was gone.
Vanamee started up, coming, as it were, to himself, looking wildly about
him. Sarria was there.
“I saw her,” said the priest. “It was Angele, the little girl, your
Angele's daughter. She is like her mother.”
But Vanamee scarcely heard. He walked as if in a trance, pushing by
Sarria, going forth from the garden. Angele or Angele's daughter, it was
all one with him. It was She. Death was overcome. The grave vanquished.
Life, ever-renewed, alone existed. Time was naught; change was naught;
all things were immortal but evil; all things eternal but grief.
Suddenly, the dawn came; the east burned roseate toward the zenith.
Vanamee walked on, he knew not where. The dawn grew brighter. At length,
he paused upon the crest of a hill overlooking the ranchos, and cast his
eye below him to the southward. Then, suddenly flinging up his arms, he
uttered a great cry.
There it was. The Wheat! The Wheat! In the night it had come up. It was
there, everywhere, from margin to margin of the horizon. The earth, long
empty, teemed with green life. Once more the pendulum of the seasons
swung in its mighty arc, from death back to life. Life out of death,
eternity rising from out dissolution. There was the lesson. Angele was
not the symbol, but the PROOF of immortality. The seed dying, rotting
and corrupting in the earth; rising again in life unconquerable, and
in immaculate purity,--Angele dying as she gave birth to her little
daughter, life springing from her death,--the pure, unconquerable,
coming forth from the defiled. Why had he not had the knowledge of God?
Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. So the
seed had died. So died Angele. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest
not that body that shall be, but bare grain. It may chance of wheat, or
of some other grain. The wheat called forth from out the darkness,
from out the grip of the earth, of the grave, from out corruption,
rose triumphant into light and life. So Angele, so life, so also the
resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption. It is raised in
incorruption. It is sown in dishonour. It is raised in glory. It is sown
in weakness. It is raised in power. Death was swallowed up in Victory.
The sun rose. The night was over. The glory of the terrestrial was one,
and the glory of the celestial was another. Then, as the glory of sun
banished the lesser glory of moon and stars, Vanamee, from his mountain
top, beholding the eternal green life of the growing Wheat, bursting its
bonds, and in his heart exulting in his triumph over the grave, flung
out his arms with a mighty shout:
“Oh, Death, where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory?”