CHAPTER XXVIII.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
It was as the Post Mistress had said. Cyclona was the heiress of the Magic City. As Seth had predicted, she sold his land in its heart for more money than she knew what to do with. Cyclona was not only the most beautiful young woman in the Magic City, but she was the most beautifully gowned and exquisite, what with her well-filled purse with its attendant luxuries of maids, mantua-makers and milliners. She was new to look at, but old thoughts clung to her, old dreams, old fancies.
Cyclona dreamed a dream one night. She thought that she was in the old dugout at the little deal table before the dim half-window, outside which the wind sang fitfully, blowing the tumbleweeds. .h.i.ther and thither, near and far, with moans and sighs, and Seth sat by her side.
And as of old he talked to her of the beautiful house.
"All these were of costly stones, according to the measures of hewed stones," she heard him say in the dream, "sawed with saws within and without. Even from the foundation unto the coping, and so on the outside toward the great court."
Cyclona sat up in her bed with a start and slept no more.
So it was the beautiful house that she was to build, of course.
Wondering how it was she had not thought before of carrying out Seth"s dearest wish without waiting to be reminded of it in a dream, reproaching herself, condemning her selfishness, marvelling how she could for a moment have considered this money her own which she simply held in trust for Celia and Seth.
Thereafter, Hugh, in spite of his deep affection for her, became occasionally somewhat exasperated with Cyclona, who all at once developed such peculiar ideas in regard to the building of the house, ideas gathered from an old and yellow plan resurrected from the leaves of a well-thumbed Bible brought from the dugout.
"Cedar!" he cried, "Must we bring cedar all the way from the South?
It will cost a fortune. Why not use some other wood? There are others as beautiful."
"We will use cedar," determined Cyclona without further explanation, and cedar they used, carved curiously in pomegranate and lily work, very beautiful, Hugh had to acknowledge, though the expense was more than it should have been, no matter how much money a young woman had to throw to the birds.
"Shall we have so many windows?" he asked as Cyclona ordered window after window, according to the old yellow plan.
"There must be no dark spot in all this house," decided Cyclona, and when it was finished there was not. Built of stone brought from great distances, stone of delicate pink from Tennessee, carved, wide of door, alight with windows, it was a marvel to those who came and stood by, watching the building of it.
"A beautiful house," they called it. "A beautiful house!"
There was no word of Seth in regard to the beautiful house that Cyclona failed to remember.
"This is the stairway," she heard him say, "up which Celia shall trail in her silks and her velvets. This is the threshold her little feet shall press, and here is the low divan before a wide and sunny window where she shall sit and thrum on her guitar."
Cyclona fashioned the threshold of marble, she built the stairway s.p.a.cious, she had the low divan carved in cedar and placed it before a wide and sunny window in the music room. She placed there mandolins and guitars. She ordered a piano made of cedar for the music room. She had antique and gorgeous pillows embroidered by deft fingers for the low divan, then went on to the bed-room of white and gold, of which Seth had delighted to dream. She ordered pier-gla.s.ses, so many that Hugh began to fear indeed for her sanity. She bought spindle-legged furniture of gold and scattered it about. She covered the gold bedstead with lace of the rarest. She hung curtains at the sunny window, but curtains of so lacey a web that no possible ray of light could they exclude.
"Exquisite!" exclaimed Hugh, "but must you have gold door k.n.o.bs?"
"We must," answered Cyclona; and people came in wonder to look at the beautiful house whose gold door k.n.o.bs pa.s.sed into one of the many traditions of the excess of insanity displayed by the very rich of that marvellous boom in their expenditure of money.
Cyclona caused the cellar to be lighted, according to Seth"s directions, until there was no dark spot in it. Light gleamed throughout, if not the light of day, the light of electrics.
"I never in my life," declared Hugh, "saw so light a cellar. It is like a conservatory."
By the time the house was finished, it was the wonder of the Magic City, which itself was the wonder of the West for its beautiful houses.
Then, when carpenter, painter, wood-carver and decorator had departed, and the house stood in the sunshine, a gem of a house, surpa.s.sing, if possible, in beauty, the house of Seth"s imaginings, he came to Cyclona for the last time in a dream. He stood in the dimness of a low-roofed room, looking out of a window. His face was inexpressibly sad. He stood there stilly for a long time, looking out of the window.
Then there rushed through Cyclona"s dream the heavy whirring roar of the wind, the moan of the wind, the wail of the wind.
Cyclona started out of the dream with a cry.
What had happened? What was it? What was it?
It was as if her life had gone out all at once like the flame of a candle. It was as if her heart-strings had snapped asunder.
What was it? What was it?
She lay back among her pillows, trembling in the dark, afraid of she knew not what, her wide eyes agaze at the ceiling"s shadows.
And then after a long while she fell asleep again and once more dreamed.
The wind soughed through her dream again, pitifully, wailingly, as it had often soughed outside the dugout. Presently it dropped to a whisper and the pa.s.sing gleam of clouds let in a slab of sunlight through the window.
Was Seth in the dugout then, or in that other room?
Whichever it was, the sunlight rested goldenly on the calmness of his face. It glorified it.
In her dream, Cyclona looked long and lovingly at the strong, fine lines of it brought out by this unexpected high light of the skies, accentuated Rembrandt-like against the darkness of the hole in the ground.
Yes. It was in the hole in the ground and not that other room of the Beautiful House.
As she looked the calm dream face of Seth turned to her with a smile of ineffable content.
On the following day Hugh said to her:
"Now that the beautiful house is finished, be mine. Be mine!"
She shook her head and looked at him with eyes that turned the heart of him cold. The pupils that had once been large and full and black had shrunk to the size of pin heads.
"No," she said. "I will wait and keep the house beautiful for Seth.
Last night I saw him in a dream. He"ll be coming home soon now to the beautiful house."
She walked to the window and looked out. She sank into a chair there, folded her hands and smiled contentedly, looking out through the leaves of the trees down the sunlit road.
"I will wait here for Seth," she repeated. "He won"t be long now.
He"ll be coming home soon. I saw his face last night in a dream, and he smiled at me."
CHAPTER XXIX.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The whittlers of the little sticks sitting on dry goods boxes which surrounded the corner grocery looked up as a wagon came lumberingly down the Lexington Pike, rounded the corner and made its way up Main Street to Tom Coleman"s livery stable.
They watched a man get out, lift an enormous trunk and carry it into the stable on his shoulders. They saw the man bend earthward beneath the weight of the trunk.