Max Brand (28 page)

"Even in the Room of Silence!" he said slowly. "Was it not enough to
bring sin into the Garden? But you have carried it even into the holy
place!"

Connor found his tongue. The fallen head of Ruth told him that there was
no help to be looked for from her, and the crisis forced him into a
certain boisterous glibness of speech.

"Sin, Brother David? What sin? To be sure, Ruth was too curious. She
went into the Room of Silence, but as soon as I knew she was there I
went to fetch her, when—"

He had even cast out one arm in a gesture of easy persuasion, and now it
was caught at the wrist in a grip that burned through the flesh to the
bones. Another hand clutched his coat at the throat. He was lifted and
flung back against the wall by a strength like that of a madman, or a
wild animal. One convulsive effort showed him his helplessness, and he
cried out more in horror than fear. Another cry answered him, and Ruth
strove to press in between, tearing futilely at the arms of David.

A moment later Connor was miraculously freed. He found David a long pace
away and Ruth before him, her arms flung out to give him shelter while
she faced the master of the garden.

"He is saved," said David, "and you are free. Your love has ransomed
him. What price has he paid to win you so that you will even risk death
for him?"

"Oh, David," sobbed the girl, "don't you see I only came between you to
keep you from murder? Because he isn't worth it!"

But the master of the Garden was laughing in a way that made Connor look
about for a weapon and shrink because he found none; only the greedy
eyes of Joseph, close by. David had come again close to the girl; he
even took both her hands in one of his and slipped his arm about her. To
Connor his self-control now seemed more terrible than that one outbreak
of murdering passion.

"Still lies?" said David. "Still lies to me? Beautiful Ruth—never more
beautiful than now, even when you lied to me with your eyes and your
smiles and your promises! The man is nothing. He came like a snake to
me, and his life is worth no more than the life of a snake. Let him
live, let him die; it is no matter. But you, Ruth! I am not even
angered. I see you already from a great distance, a beautiful, evil
thing that has been so close to me. For you have been closer to me than
you are now that my arm is around you, touching you for the last time,
holding your warmth and your tender body, keeping both your hands, which
are smaller and softer than the hands of a child. But mighty hands,
nevertheless.

"They have held the heart of David, and they have almost thrown his soul
into eternal hellfire. Yet you have been closer to me than you are now.
You have been in my heart of hearts. And I take you from it sadly—with
regret, for the sin of loving you has been sweet."

She had been sobbing softly all this time, but now she mastered herself
long enough to draw back a little, taking his hands with a desperate
eagerness, as though they gave her a hold upon his mind.

"Give me one minute to speak out what I have to say. Will you give me
one half minute, David?"

His glance rose past her, higher, until it was fixed on the east, and as
he stood there with his head far back Connor guessed for the first time
at the struggle which was going on within him. The girl pressed closer
to him, drawing his hands down as though she would make him stoop to
her.

"Look at me, David!"

"I see your face clearly."

"Still, look at me for the one last time."

"I dare not, Ruth!"

"But will you believe me?"

"I shall try. But I am glad to hear your voice, for the last time."

"I've come to you like a cheat, David, and I've tried to win you in
order to steal the horses away, but I've stayed long enough to see the
truth.

"If everything in the valley were offered me—the horses and the
men—and everything outside of the valley, without you, I'd throw them
away. I don't want them. Oh, if prayers could make you believe, you'd
believe me now; because I'm praying to you, David.

"You love me, David. I can feel you trembling, and I love you more than
I ever dreamed it was possible to love. Let me come back to you. I don't
want the world or anything that's in it. I only want you. David—I only
want you! Will you believe me?"

And Connor saw David of Eden sway with the violence of his struggle.

But he murmured at length, as one in wonder:

"How you are rooted in me, Ruth! How you are wound into my life, so that
it is like tearing out my heart to part from you. But the God of the
Garden and John and Matthew has given me strength." He stepped back from
her.

"You are free to go, but if you return the doom against you is death
like that of any wild beast that steals down the cliffs to kill in my
fields. Begone, and let me see your face no more. Joseph, take them to
the gate."

And he turned his back with a slowness which made his resolution the
more unmistakable.

It was, unquestionably, a tempting of Providence, but Connor was almost
past caring. Far off he heard the neighing of an Eden Gray; Ruth, with
her bowed head and face covered in her hands, was before him, sobbing;
and all that he had come so near to winning and yet had lost rushed upon
the mind of the gambler. He hardly cared now whether he lived or died.
He called to the master of the Garden, and David whirled on him with a
livid face. Connor walked into the reach of the lion.

"I've made my play," he said through his teeth, "and I don't holler
because I've lost the big stakes. Now I'm going to give you something to
show that I'm not a piker—some free advice, Dave!"

"O man of many lies," said David. "Peace! For when I hear you there is a
great will come on me to take you by the throat and hear your life go
out with a rattle."

"A minute ago," said Connor coolly enough, "I was scared, and I admit
it, but I'm past that stage. I've lost too much to care, and now you're
going to hear me out to the last damned word!"

"God of Paul and Matthew," said David, his voice broken with rage, "let
temptation be far from me!"

"You can take it standing or sitting," said Connor, "and be damned to
you!"

The blind fury sent David a long step nearer, but he checked himself
even as one hand rose toward Connor.

"It is the will of God that you live to be punished hereafter."

"No matter about the future. I'm chattering in the present. I'm going to
come clean, not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'm going to
clear up the girl. Abraham had the cold dope, well enough. I came to
crook you out of a horse, Dave, my boy, and I did it. But after I'd got
away with the goods I tried to play hog, and I came back for the rest of
the horses."

He paused; but David showed no emotion.

"You take the punishment very well," admitted Connor. "There's a touch
of sporting blood in you, but the trouble is that the good in you has
never had a fair chance to come to the top. I came back, and I brought
Ruth with me.

"I'll tell you about her. She's meant to be an honest-to-God woman—the
kind that keeps men clean—she's meant for the big-time stuff. And where
did I find her? In a jay town punching a telegraph key. It was all
wrong.

"She was made to spend a hundred thousand a year. Everything that money
buys means a lot to her. I saw that right away. I like her. I did more
than like her. I loved her. That makes you flinch under the whip, does
it? I don't say I'm worthy of her, but I'm as near to her as you are.

"I admit I played a rotten part. I went to this girl, all starved the
way she was for the velvet touch. I laid my proposition before her. She
was to come up here and bamboozle you. She was to knock your eye out and
get you clear of the valley with the horses. Then I was going to run
those horses on the tracks and make a barrel of coin for all of us.

"You'd think she'd take on a scheme like that right away; but she
didn't. She fought to keep from going crooked until I showed her it was
as much to your advantage as it was to ours. Then she decided to come,
and she came. I worked my stall and she worked hers, and she got into
the valley.

"But this voice of yours in the Room of Silence—why didn't it put you
wise to my game? Well, David, I'll tell you why. The voice is the bunk.
It's your own thoughts. It's your own hunches. The god you've been
worshiping up here is yourself, and in the end you're going to pay hell
for doing it.

"Well, here's the girl in the Garden, and everything going smooth. We
have you, and she's about to take you out and show you how to be happy
in the world. But then she has to go into your secret room. That's the
woman of it. You blame her? Why, you infernal blockhead, you've been
making love to her like God Almighty speaking out of a cloud of fire!
How could she hear your line of chatter without wanting to find out the
secrets that made you the nut you are?

"Well, we went in, and we found out. We found out what? Enough to make
the girl see that you're 'noble,' as she calls it. Enough to make me see
that you're a simp. You've been chasing bubbles all your life. You're
all wrong from the first.

"Those first four birds who started the Garden, who were they? There was
John, a rich fellow who'd hit the high spots, had his life messed up,
and was ready to quit. He'd lived enough. Then there was Luke, a gent
who'd been double-crossed and was sore at the world on general
principles.

"Paul would have been a full-sized saint in the old days. He was never
meant to live the way other men have to live. And finally there's a guy
who lies in the grass and whistles to a bird—Matthew. A poet—and all
poets are nuts.

"Well, all those fellows were tired of the world—fed up with it. Boil
them down, and they come to this: they thought more about the welfare
of their souls than they did about the world. Was that square? It
wasn't! They left the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the
friends, everything that had brought them into the world and raised 'em.
They go off to take care of themselves.

"That wasn't bad enough for 'em—they had to go out and pluck you and
bring you up with the same rotten hunches. Davie, my boy, d'you think a
man is made to live by himself?

"You haven't got fed up with the world; you're no retired high liver;
you haven't had a chance to get double-crossed more than once; you're
not a crazy poet; and you're a hell of a long ways from being a martyr.

"I'll tell you what you are. You're a certain number of pounds of husky
muscle and bone going to waste up here in the mountains. You've been
alone so much that you've got to thinking that your own hunches come
from God, and that'd spoil any man.

"Live alone? Bah! You've had more happiness since Ruth came into this
valley than you've ever had before or you'll ever have again.

"Right now you're breaking your heart to take her in your arms and tell
her to stop crying, but your pride won't let you.

"You tried to make yourself a mystery with your room of silence and all
that bunk. But no woman can stand a mystery. They all got to read their
husband's letters. You try to bluff her with a lot of fancy words and
partly scare her. It's fear that sent the four men up here in the first
place—fear of the world.

"And they've lived by fear. They scared a lot of poor unfortunate men
into coming with them for the sake of their souls, they said. And they
kept them here the same way. And they've kept you here by telling you
that you'd be damned if you went over the mountains.

"And you still keep them here the same way. Do you think they stay
because they love you? Give them a chance and see if they won't pack up
and beat it for their old homes.

"Now, show me that you're a man and not a fatheaded bluff. Be a man and
admit that what you call the Voice is just your pride. Be a man and take
that girl in your arms and tell her you love her. I've made a mess of
things; I've ruined her life, and I want to see you give her a chance to
be happy.

"Because she's not the kind to love more than one man if she lives to be
a thousand. Now, David Eden, step out and give yourself a chance!"

It had been a gallant last stand on the part of Connor. But he was
beaten before he finished, and he knew it.

"Are you done?" said David.

"I'm through, fast enough. It's up to you!"

"Joseph, take the man and his woman out of the Garden of Eden."

The last thing that Connor ever saw of David Eden was his back as he
closed the door of the Room of Silence upon himself. The gambler went to
Ruth. She was dry-eyed by this time, and there was a peculiar blankness
in her expression that went to his heart.

Secretly he had hoped that his harangue to David would also be a
harangue to the girl and make her see through the master of the Garden;
but that hope disappeared at once.

He stayed a little behind her when they were conducted out of the patio
by the grinning Joseph. He helped her gently to her horse, the old gray
gelding, and when he was in place on his own horse, with the mule pack
behind him, they started for the gate.

She had not spoken since they started. At the gate she moved as if to
turn and look back, but controlled the impulse and bowed her head once
more. Joseph came beside the gambler and stretched out his great palm.
In the center of it was the little ivory ape's head which had brought
Connor his entrance into the valley and had won the hatred of the big
Negro, and had, eventually, ruined all his plans.

"It was given freely," grinned Joseph, "and it is freely returned."

"Very well."

Connor took it and hurled it out of sight along the boulders beyond the
gate. The last thing that he saw of the Garden of Eden and its men was
that broad grin of Joseph, and then he hurried his horse to overtake
Ruth, whose gelding had been plodding steadily along the ravine.