Now he moaned with them and sighed.
Cyclona took up her abode at the dugout now, nursing him tirelessly, while Seth walked the floor, back and forth, back and forth like some caged and helpless animal writhing in pain; for from the first he had read death in the face of the child.
The wind lulled and Seth knelt by his bedside, his ear against Charlie"s heart, listening for his breathing, Cyclona standing fearfully by, her face white as the coverings.
After a long time Seth raised beseeching eyes to her in an unspoken question:
"Does he breathe?"
As if he had heard, Charlie suddenly opened his eyes and looked smilingly first at one and then at the other of these two who had encompa.s.sed his short life about with such loving care.
"Listen," he whispered, "to the wind."
The wind had risen. It howled like some mad thing. It blew great blasts, ferocious blasts and deafening.
It was as if it, too, were hurt. It was as if it, too, suffered the agony of mortal pain in sympathy with the child.
Soon the child began to lisp and they bent their heads to listen.
"I am ... going ... out ... in ... the wind ... again," he said, "to find ... my ... mother."
"Charlie!" cried Seth, in a voice whose anguish sounded high above the winds. "Stay! It is we who love you, Cyclona and I. Stay with us!"
Cyclona knelt and laid her brown hand across the beautiful eyelids of the child for a little while.
Then she took Seth"s head and pillowing it upon her bosom, rocked gently back and forth as they knelt alone on the hard cold earth of the dugout floor.
"It doesn"t matter now," she whispered to him; "he knows."
CHAPTER XVII.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The days are long in the desert. Sometimes they seem to be endless.
When the wind would permit, Seth endeavored to find comfort in digging in the soil into which we must all descend, in getting near to it, in ploughing it, often with apparent aimlessness, never being able to count upon the harvest, but buoying up his soul with hope of the yield.
But there were days of wind and rain and sleet and cold stormy weather when all animals of the desert, whether human or four-footed, were glad to seek their holes in the ground and stay there.
These days Seth spent in building the beautiful house.
He sat before the dim half window, drawing the plan, Cyclona beside him, watching him.
Sometimes he called her Cyclona, and then again he called her Charlie; for what with his grief and the wail of the wind, his mind had become momentarily dazed.
Full well Cyclona knew the story of the Magic City, having heard it again and again, but it was only of late when Seth had given up all hope of Celia"s returning to the dugout that he commenced to plan the beautiful house.
"When the Wise Men come out of the East," Seth told her, "and buy up ouah land fo" the Magic City, we shall be rich. It is then that I shall build this beautiful house, so beautiful that she must come and live in it with us."
Cyclona leaned over the table on her elbows, looking at the plan. Her dark eyes were sad, for she knew that by "us," Seth meant Charlie and himself.
He ran his pencil over the plan, showing how the beautiful house was to be built. Somewhat after the fashion of a Southern house modernized. A Southern woman, he explained, must live in a house which would remind her of her home and still be so beautiful that not for one instant would she regret that home or the land of her birth which she had left for it.
"A species of insanity it is," he muttered, "to bring such a woman to a hole in the ground." He bit his lip and frowned, "fo" theah ah women in whom the love of home, of country, is pa"amount. Above all human things, above husband, above children, she loves her home. Child!
Celia has no child. Cyclona, has no one written to Celia that she has no child?"
This wildly, his eyes insanely bright.
"It is just as well," soothed Cyclona. "It doesn"t matter. She never knew him."
It seemed to Cyclona that she could see the lonely resting place of the child reflected in Seth"s eyes, so firmly was his mind fixed upon it.
"You ah right, Cyclona," he said by and by. "You ah right. It is just as well. It might grieve her, altho" it is as you say, she nevah knew him."
Cyclona traced a line of the plan of the beautiful house.
"Tell me about it," she said.
"It is her natuah," insisted Seth almost fiercely, "and we can no mo"
change ouah natuah, the instinct that is bawn in us, that is inherited, than we can change the place of ouah birth. Can we teach the fish to fly or the bird to swim, or the blind mole to live above the cool sof" earth in which centuries of ancestral moles have delighted to burrow? Then no mo" can you teach a woman in whom the love of country is pa"amount to love anothah country. Only by the gentlest measuahs may you wean her from it. Only by givin" her in this strange new country something mo" beautiful than any othah thing she has evah known. And that," he finished, "is why I am goin" to build the beautiful house."
He fell to dreaming audibly.
"All these were of costly stones, accordin" to the measuah of hewed stones, sawed with saws within and without," he muttered, "even from the foundation unto the copin", and so on the outside toward the great court."
Cyclona reaching up took down from a shelf a well-thumbed Book, which, since books are scarce on the desert, both knew by heart, and opened it at the Book of Kings.
"Seth," she said, presently, touching him on the shoulder, "aren"t you getting this house mixed up with the House of the Lord?"
"No," smiled Seth, "with the house that Solomon built fo" Pharaoh"s daughter whom he had taken to wife."
He went on softly:
"And the foundation was of cos"ly stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits. And above were cos"ly stone, aftah the measuah of hewed stones, and cedars."
"Seth," said Cyclona, to whom no dream was too fanciful, "are you goin" to build this house just like that one?"
"If I could, I would," Seth made reply, and then went on dreaming his dream aloud. "And he made the pillahs and the two rows around about upon the network, to covah the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates; and so did he fo" the othah chapiter. And the chapiters that were upon the tip of the pillahs were of lily work in the porch, fo" cubits. Lily work," he lingered over the words, smiling at their musical poetry.
After awhile he began again to talk of the beautiful house which should have every improvement, a marble bath....
"And it was an hand-breadth thick," interrupted Cyclona, "and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers, of lilies; it contained two thousand baths. If you could, would you build her a bath like that, Seth?" she questioned.
"I would," replied Seth, "and as fo" the lights!"