Back Aa

Garden of Eden

<h2>CHAPTER THIRTEEN</h2> Connor wakened in the gray hour of the morning, but beyond the window the world was much brighter than his room. The pale terraces went down to scattered trees, and beyond the trees was the water of the lake. Farther still the mountains rolled up into a brighter morning. A horse neighed out of the dawn; the sound came ringing to Connor, and he was suddenly eager to be outside. In the patio the fountain was still playing. As for the house, he found it far less imposing than it had been when lantern light picked out details here and there. The walls and the clumsy arches were the disagreeable color of dried mud and all under the arcade was dismal shadow. But the lawn was already a faintly shining green, and the fountain went up above the ground shadow in a column of light. He passed on. The outside wall had that squat, crumbling appearance which every one knows who has been in Mexico—and through an avenue of trees he saw the two buildings between which he had ridden the night before. From the longer a man was leading one of the gray horses. This, then, was the stable; the building opposite it was a duplicate on a smaller scale of the house of David, and must be the servants' quarters. Connor went on toward a hilltop which alone topped the site of the master's house; the crest was naked of trees, and over the tops of the surrounding ones Connor found that he commanded a complete view of the valley. The day before, looking from the far-off mountaintop, it had seemed to be a straight line very nearly, from the north to the south; now he saw that from the center both ends swung westward. The valley might be twelve miles long, and two or three wide, fenced by an unbroken wall of cliffs. Over the northern barrier poured a white line of water, which ran on through the valley in a river that widened above David's house into a spacious lake three or four miles long. The river began again from the end of the lake and continued straight to the base of the southern cliffs. Roads followed the swing of the river closely on each side, and the stream was bridged at each end of the lake. His angle of vision was so small that both extremities of the valley seemed a solid forest, but in the central portion he made out broad meadow lands and plowed fields checkering the groves. The house, as he had guessed the evening before, stood into the lake on a slender peninsula. And due west a narrow slit of light told of the gate into the Garden. It gave him a curiously confused emotion, as of a prisoner and spy in one. He had walked back almost to the edge of the clearing when David, from the other side went up to the crest of the hill. Connor was already among the trees and he watched unobserved. The master of the Garden, at the top of the hill, paused and turned toward Connor. The gambler flushed; he was about to step out and hail his host when a second thought assured him that he could not have been noticed behind that screen of shrubbery and trunks; moreover the glance of David Eden passed high above him. It might have been the cry of a hawk that made him turn so sharply; but through several minutes he remained without moving either hand or head, and as though he were waiting. Even in the distance Connor marked the smile of happy expectation. If it had been another place and another man Connor would have thought it a lover waiting for his mistress. But, above all, he was glad of the opportunity to see David and remain unseen. He realized that the evening before it had been difficult to look directly into David's face. He had carried away little more than impressions; of strength, dignity, a surface calm and strong passions under it; but now he was able to see the face. It was full of contradiction; a profile irregular and deeply cut, but the full face had a touch of nobility that made it almost handsome. As he watched, Connor thought he detected a growing excitement in David—his head was raised, his smile had deepened. Perhaps he came here to rejoice in his possessions; but a moment later Connor realized that this could not be the case, for the gaze of the other must be fixed as high as the mountain peaks. At that instant came the revelation; there was a stiffening of the whole body of David; his breast filled and he swayed forward and raised almost on tiptoe. Connor, by sympathy, grew tense—and then the miracle happened. Over the face of David fell a sudden radiance. His hair, dull black the moment before, now glistened with light, and the swarthy skin became a shining bronze; his lips parted as though he drank in strength and happiness out of that miraculous light. The hard-headed Connor was staggered. Back on his mind rushed a score of details, the background of this picture. He remembered the almost superhuman strength of Joseph; he saw again the old servants withering with many years, but still bright-eyed, straight and agile. Perhaps they, too, knew how to stand here and drink in a mysterious light which filled their outworn bodies with youth of the spirit, at least. And David? Was not this the reason that he scorned the world? Here was his treasure past reckoning, this fountain of youth. Here was the explanation, too, of that intolerable brightness of his eye. The gambler bowed his head. When he looked up again his soul had traveled higher and lower in one instant than it had ever moved before; he was staring like a child. Above all, he wanted to see the face of David again, to examine that mysterious change, but the master was already walking down the hill and had almost reached the circle of the trees on the opposite side of the slope. But now Connor noted a difference everywhere surrounding him. The air was warmer; the wind seemed to have changed its fiber; and then he saw that the treetops opposite him were shaking and glistening in a glory of light. Connor went limp and leaned against a tree, laughing weakly, silently. "Hell," he said at length, recovering himself. "It was only the sunrise! And me—I thought—" He began to laugh again, aloud, and the sound was caught up by the hillside and thrown back at him in a sharp echo. Connor went thoughtfully back to the house. In the patio he found the table near the fountain laid with a cloth, the wood scrubbed white, and on it the heavy earthenware. David Eden came in with the calm, the same eye, difficult to meet. Indeed, then and thereafter when he was with David, he found himself continually looking away, and resorting to little maneuvers to divert the glance of his host. "Good morrow," said David. "I have kept you waiting?" asked Connor. The master paused to make sure that he had understood the speech, then replied: "If I had been hungry I should have eaten." There was no rebuff in that quiet statement, but it opened another door to Connor's understanding. "Take this chair," said David, moving it from the end of the table to the side. "Sitting here you can look through the gate of the patio and down to the lake. It is not pleasant to have four walls about one; but that is a thing which Isaac cannot understand." The gambler nodded, and to show that he could be as unceremonious as his host, sat down without further words. He immediately felt awkward, for David remained standing. He broke a morsel from the loaf of bread, which was yet the only food on the table, and turned to the East with a solemn face. "Out of His hands from whom I take this food," said the master—"into His hands I give myself." He sat down in turn, and Isaac came instantly with the breakfast. It was an astonishing menu to one accustomed to toast and coffee for the morning meal. On a great wooden platter which occupied half the surface of the table, Isaac put down two chickens, roasted brown. A horn-handled hunting knife, razor sharp, was the only implement at each place, and fingers must serve as forks. To David that was a small impediment. Under the deft edge of his knife the breast of one chicken divided rapidly; he ate the white slices like bread. Indeed, the example was easy to follow; the mountain air had given him a vigorous appetite, and when Connor next looked up it was at the sound of glass tinkling. He saw Isaac holding toward the master a bucket of water in which a bottle was immersed almost to the cork; David tried the temperature of the water with his fingers with a critical air, and then nodded to Isaac, who instantly drew the cork. A moment later red wine was trickling into Connor's cup. He viewed it with grateful astonishment, but David, poising his cup, looked across at his guest with a puzzled air. "In the old days," he said gravely, "when my masters drank they spoke to one another in a kindly fashion. It is now five years since a man has sat at my table, and I am moved to say this to you, Benjamin: it is pleasant to speak to another not as a master who must be obeyed, but as an equal who may be answered, and this is my wish, that if I have doubts of Benjamin, and unfriendly thoughts, they may disappear with the wine we drink." "Thank you," said Connor, and a thrill went through him as he met the eye of David. "That wish is my wish also—and long life to you, David." There was a glint of pleasure in the face of David, and they drank together. "By Heaven," cried Connor, putting down the cup, "it is Médoc! It is Château Lafite, upon my life!" He tasted it again. "And the vintage of '96! Is that true?" David shook his head. "I have never heard of Médoc or Château Lafite." "At least," said Connor, raising his cup and breathing the delicate bouquet, "this wine is Bordeaux you imported from France? The grapes which made this never grew outside of the Gironde!" But David smiled. "In the north of the Garden," he said, "there are some low rolling hills, Benjamin; and there the grapes grow from which we make this wine." Connor tasted the claret again. His respect for David had suddenly mounted; the hermit seemed nearer to him. "You grew these grapes in your valley?" he repeated softly. "This very bottle we are drinking," said David, warming to the talk. "I remember when the grapes of this vintage were picked; I was a boy, then." "I believe it," answered Connor solemnly, and he raised the cup with a reverent hand, so that the sun filtered into the red and filled the liquid with dancing points of light. "It is a full twenty years old." "It is twenty-five years old," said David calmly, "and this is the best vintage in ten years." He sighed. "It is now in its perfect prime and next year it will not be the same. You shall help me finish the stock, Benjamin." "You need not urge me," smiled Connor. He shook his head again. "But that is one wine I could have vowed I knew—Médoc. At least, I can tell you the soil it grows in." The brows of the host raised; he began to listen intently. "It is a mixture of gravel, quartz and sand," continued Connor. "True!" exclaimed David, and looked at his guest with new eyes. "And two feet underneath there is a stone for subsoil which is a sort of sand or fine gravel cemented together." David struck his hands together, frankly delighted. "This is marvelous," he said, "I would say you have seen the hills." "I paid a price for what I know," said Connor rather gloomily. "But north of Bordeaux in France there is a strip of land called the Médoc—the finest wine soil in the world, and there I learned what claret may be—there I tasted Château Lafite and Château Datour. They are both grown in the commune of Pauillac." "France?" echoed David, with the misty eyes of one who speaks of a lost world. "Ah, you have traveled?" "Wherever fine horses race," said Connor, and turned back to the chicken. "Think," said David suddenly, "for five years I have lived in silence. There have been voices about me, but never mind; and now you here, and already you have taken me at a step halfway around the world. "Ah, Benjamin, it is possible for an emptiness to be in a manlike hunger, you understand, and yet different—and nothing but a human voice can fill the space." "Have you no wish to leave your valley for a little while and see the world?" said Connor, carelessly. He watched gloomily, while an expression of strong distaste grew on the face of David. He was still frowning when he answered: "We will not speak of it again." He jerked his head up and cleared away his frown with an effort. "To speak with one man in the Garden—that is one thing," he went on, "but to hear the voices of two jabbering and gibbering together—grinning like mindless creatures—throwing their hands out to help their words, as poor Joseph does—bah, it is like drinking new wine; it makes one sick. It made me so five times." "Five times?" said Connor. "You have traveled a good deal, then?" "Too much," sighed David. "And each time I returned from Parkin Crossing I have cared less for what lies outside the valley." "Parkin Crossing?" "I have been told that there are five hundred people in the city," said David, pronouncing the number slowly. "But when I was there, I was never able to count more than fifty, I believe." Connor found it necessary to cough. "And each time you have left the valley you have gone no farther than Parkin Crossing?" he asked mildly, his spirits rising. "And is not that far enough?" replied the master, frowning. "It is a ride between dawn and dark." "What is that in miles?" "A hundred and thirty miles," said David, "or thereabout." Connor closed his eyes twice and then: "You rode that distance between dawn and dark?" "Yes." "Over these mountains most of the way?" he continued gently. "About half the distance," answered David. "And how long"—queried Connor hoarsely—"how long before your horse was able to make the trip back after you had ridden a hundred and thirty miles in twelve hours?" "The next day," said David, "I always return." "In the same time?" "In the same time," said David. To doubt that simple voice was impossible. But Connor knew horses, and his credence was strained to the breaking point. "I should like very much," he said, "to see a horse that had covered two hundred and sixty miles within forty-eight hours." "Thirty-six," corrected David. Connor swallowed. "Thirty-six," he murmured faintly. "I shall send for him," said the master, and struck the little gong which stood on one side of the table. Isaac came hurrying with that light step which made Connor forget his age. "Bring Glani," said David. Isaac hurried across the patio, and David continued talking to his guest. "Glani is not friendly; but you can see him from a distance." "And yet," said Connor, "the other horses in the Garden seem as friendly as pet dogs. Is Glani naturally vicious?" "His is of other blood," replied David. "He is the blood of the great mare Rustir, and all in her line are meant for one man only. He is more proud than all the rest." He leaned back in his chair and his face, naturally stern, grew tender. "Since he was foaled no hand has touched him except mine; no other has ridden him, groomed him, fed him." "I'll be glad to see him," said Connor quietly. "For I have never yet found a horse which would not come to my hand." As he spoke, he looked straight into the eyes of David, with an effort, and at the same time took from the pocket of his coat a little bulbous root which was always with him. A Viennese who came from a life half spent in the Orient had given him a small box of those herbs as a priceless present. For the secret was that when the root was rubbed over the hands it left a faint odor on the skin, like freshly cut apples; and to a horse that perfume was irresistible. They seemed to find in it a picture of sweet clover, blossoming, and clean oats finely headed; yet to the nostrils of a man the scent was barely perceptible. Under cover of the table the gambler rubbed his hands swiftly with the little root and dropped it back into his pocket. That was the secret of the power over Abra which had astonished the two old men at the gate. A hundred times, in stable and paddock, Connor had gone up to the most intractable race horses and looked them over at close hand, at his leisure. The master seemed in nowise disturbed by the last remark of Connor. "That is true of old Abraham, also," he said. "There was never a colt foaled in the valley which Abraham had not been able to call away from its mother; he can read the souls of them all with a touch of his withered hands. Yes, I have seen that twenty times. But with Glani it is different. He is as proud as a man; he is fierce as a wolf; and Abraham himself cannot touch the neck of my horse. Look!" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.