This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She could regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her garden retreat who had to put in one more afternoon in a dull desert town before he was away to that outside world which she might know only through books and memory.
She rose exultantly, disregarding any formality that she would owe to the average guest; for an average guest he was not. Her att.i.tude meant that she was having the last word; that she was showing her mettle.
He did not rise. He was staring into the sunlight, as if it were darkness alive with flitting spectres which baffled identification.
"Yes, back--back to armies of Leddys!" he said slowly.
But this she saw as still another pose. It did not make her pause in gathering up her sewing. She was convinced that there was nothing more for her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease and unconcern.
"Is it work you mean? You are not used to that, I take it?" she inquired a little sarcastically.
"Yes, call it work," he answered, looking away from the spectres and back to her.
"And you have never done any work!" she added.
"Not much," he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness. He was smiling at the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur.
"As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you--"
she was moving away.
"No, I will be walking back to the house," he said after she had taken a few steps. "Will you wait on my slow pace?"
He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung to her side. She who wished that the interview were over saw that it must be prolonged. Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as the brusqueness of her att.i.tude. She had been about to fly from him as from something that she feared. It was not necessary. It was foolish, even cowardly.
"I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted,"
she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in the circle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; of its beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father"s plans should have been fulfilled.
"And in all these years you have never been back East?" he asked.
"No. We are always planning a trip, but the money which we save for it goes into more plantings."
They had been moving slowly toward the house, but now he stopped and his glance swept the sky and rested on Galeria.
"It is the best valley of all! I knew it as soon as I saw it from the pa.s.s!" and the rapture of the scene was sounding in every syllable like chimes out of the distance. She knew that he was far away from the garden, and delaying, still delaying. If she spoke she felt that he would not hear what she said. If she went on it seemed certain that she would leave him standing there like a statue.
"And there is more land here to make gardens like this?" he asked slowly, absorbed.
"Yes, with water and labor and time."
Though his face was in the full light of the sun, it seemed at times in shadow; then it glowed, as if between two pa.s.sions. For an instant it was grim, the chin coming forward, the brows contracting; then it was transformed with something that was as a complete surrender to the transport of irresistible temptation. He looked down at her quickly and she saw him in the mood of story-telling to the children, suffused with the radiance of a decision.
"I prefer the Leddys of Little Rivers to the Leddys of New York," he said. "I am not going to-morrow! I am going to have land and a home under the aegis of the Eternal Painter and in sight of Galeria, and worship at the shrine of fecund peace. Will you and the Doge help me?" he asked with an enthusiasm that was infectious. "May I go to his school of agriculture, horticulture, and floriculture?"
Dumfounded, she bent her head and stared at the ground to hide her astonishment.
"You want citizens, industrious young citizens, don"t you?" he persisted.
"Yes, yes!" she said hastily and confusedly.
"Do you know a good piece of land?" he continued.
"Yes, several parcels," she answered, recovering her poise and smiling in mockery.
"Come on!" he cried.
He was taking long, jumping steps on his crutches as they went up the path.
"You will take me to look at the land, won"t you, please--now? I want to get acquainted with my future estate. I mean to beat the Smiths at plums, Jim Galway at alfalfa, even rival Bob Worther at pumpkins and peonies.
And you will help me lay out the flower garden, won"t you? You see, I shall have to call in the experts in every line to start with, before I begin to improve on them and make them all jealous. I may find a kind of plum that will grow on alfalfa stalks," he hazarded. "What a horticultural sensation!"
"And a spineless cactus called the Leddy!"
His eyes were laughing into hers and hers irresistibly laughed back. She guessed that he was only joking. He had acted so well in the latest role that she had actually believed in his sincerity for a moment. He meant to take the train, of course, but his resourceful capriciousness had supplied him with a less awkward exit from the garden than she had provided. He would yet have the last word if she did not watch out--a last mischievous word at her expense.
"First, you will have to plow the ground, in the broiling hot sun," she said tauntingly, when they had pa.s.sed around to the porch. She was starting into the house with nervous, precipitate triumph. The last word was hers, after all.
"But you are going to show me the land now!"
His tone was so serious and so hurt that she paused.
"And"--with the seriousness electrified by a glance that sought for mutual understanding--"and we are to forget about that duel and the whole hero-desperado business. I am a prospective settler who just arrived this afternoon. I came direct to headquarters to inquire about property. The Doge not being at home, won"t you show me around?"
Again he had said the right thing at the right time, with a delightful impersonality precluding sentiment.
"I couldn"t be unaccommodating," she admitted. "It is against all Little Rivers ethics."
"I feel like a b.u.t.terfly about to come out of his miserable chrysalis!
Haven"t you a walking-stick? I am going to shed the crutches!"
She became femininely solicitous at once.
"Are you sure you ought? Did the doctor say you might? Is the wound healed?"
"There isn"t any wound!" he answered. "That is one of the things which we are to forget."
She brought a stick and he laid the crutches on the porch.
He favored the lame leg, yet he kept up a clipping pace, talking the while as fast as the Doge himself as they pa.s.sed through one of the side streets out onto the cactus-spotted, baking, cracked levels.
"This is it!" she said finally. "This is all that father and I had to begin with."
"Enough!" he answered, and held out his hands, palms open. "With callouses I will win luxuriance!"
She showed him the irrigation ditch from which he should draw his water; she told him of the first steps; She painted all the difficulties in the darkest colors, without once lessening the glow of his optimism. He was so overwhelmingly, boyishly happy that she had to be happy with him in making believe that he was about to be a real rancher. But he should not have the sport all on his side. He must not think that she accepted this latest departure of his imagination incarnated by his Thespian gift in anything but his own spirit.
"You plowing! You spraying trees for the scale! You digging up weeds! You stacking alfalfa! You settling down in one place as a unit of co-ordinate industry! You earning bread by the sweat of your brow! You with callouses!" Thus she laughed at him.
Very seriously he held out his hands and ran a finger around a palm and across the finger-joints: