A country that has yielded a billion and a half of gold is, perforce, well and favorably known to the uttermost parts of the earth. Though the stream of yellow wealth diminishes, or even ceases to flow, yet the channel is carved through which the thoughts of men longingly roll. Upon such a land no limit of impossibility is placed. Upon what has been, the faith of man lays the foundations of nobler structures yet to be. The structures may rise and fall, but the foundation yet remains. It matters not to the builders of golden castles that, between the gold fields of California and the line that marked another nation, the whole of New England could lie, like an island in a sea of desert sand; California was yet California, and the Pactolean sands of the Cascades and the Sierras spread their yellow sheen over the whole vast expanse of mountain, and valley, and desert.
Winston was right. The gold that had flowed to the Eastward was now returning in heavy waves. From the pockets of idle tourists, it was scattered with lavish hand. From the pockets of gamblers, it came also; gamblers who, with trembling fingers, placed their gold on checkered town-lots, and waited for the spinning wheel to return it with usury, and went out white and haggard when the croupier declared against them. It came in the pockets of shrewd-eyed men who parted with it for a proper consideration, or not at all.
Into this stream of wealth, Winston was planning to build his dam. His efforts were rewarded more abundantly and sooner than either he or the more sanguine Elijah had expected.
Elijah had suggested a movement on the speculators in Ysleta lots, but against this Winston had set his hand.
"We don't want floaters; we want stayers. I met a man in the crowd yesterday who's a stayer all right. I think he'll come in. If he does, it will make me feel good in more ways than one. He's got money and he's got a head that tells him where there's more."
"What's his name?"
"Seymour. He'll be in, in a day or two, to look the matter up. That young orange grove of yours took his hard head by storm. He didn't do a thing yesterday but roll those navels that Amy gave him, in his fist, all the way down. He would have rubbed them under his nose if he hadn't been afraid to trust his teeth. As it was, he kept smelling of his fingers. Didn't say a word!" Winston laughed. "It makes us feel good, doesn't it, Elijah?"
A few days later, they were again in Winston's office, awaiting the coming of Seymour.
Winston turned to Elijah.
"You remember Helen Lonsdale?"
"Yes, what about her?" Elijah looked up questioningly.
"What did you make out of her?"
"She appeared to be a very able young woman."
"You don't think she would get stampeded very easily, do you?"
"I hardly think so." Elijah smiled. "She gave me some very telling reasons for keeping out of Ysleta lots."
"And you gave her some pretty convincing reasons for thinking that orange trees on a hillside would grow better crops than corner stakes on a sand dune."
"What makes you think so?"
"Because you hadn't been gone an hour before she was in here and wanted to know if she could get into this building on the ground floor. She said she had a few thousands that she wanted to put in a good thing."
"You told her 'yes,' didn't you?" Elijah's voice was eager.
"I told her 'no.'"
"You ought to have taken her up."
"I don't know about that. This business is a sure thing one way, but in another, it isn't. It's a big thing. If we can swing it, it's all right. If we can't, it's going to go hard with the small fry. I may want to look into those big black eyes of hers again sometime."
"Why haven't you introduced me to Helen Lonsdale before?"
Winston was surprised, more at the manner of Elijah's question than at the question itself. He shifted the onus of the surprise to Elijah's shoulders.
"Why should I?" he asked bluntly.
"That's a Yankee trick, not a Californian's," retorted Elijah.
"I'm not too old to learn."
Elijah laughed consciously.
"It doesn't matter. We're acquainted now."
"It's up to you to make it worth her while to keep it up. She's rather particular about her friends."
Elijah was irritated, and not for the first time in his relations with Winston. Winston seemed to him to be contradictory. At times he was deferential to the point of enthusiasm; at times reserved, if not cynical. Elijah was not a close reasoner and he failed to understand that Winston's principles were a kind of moral straight-edge which he applied impartially. Winston had no hesitancy in calling attention to discrepancies.
"Helen Londsdale is a mighty bright girl. She may be of use to us," hazarded Elijah.
Winston's momentary glance was searching.
"I expect she will be," he answered curtly.
After a short pause, Elijah resumed the broken conversation.
"You're going for Seymour?"
"Oh, yes. That's all right. A few hundred thousand wouldn't hurt Seymour. Five thousand would break Helen Lonsdale. Beside, if Seymour takes hold of it, it's going."
Elijah changed the point bluntly.
"Well, who's going to do the talking? You've done all the work and made out the estimates; you'd better. We don't want to make any mistakes."
"That's all right Elijah, but it isn't always the folks who make the cartridges that shoot the straightest. I'll stand by to furnish ammunition if you run short, but you work the trigger." Winston laughed. "I loaded him with estimates and facts. They're good so far as they go; but you know that champagne is pretty flat without the fizz. Here he comes now."
A man of medium height entered the office. There was more than a suggestion of iron about him. Iron-gray hair and mustache; steely, quick moving eyes, but not restless; hard lines that blocked out close-set lips; a firm decided step. Withal, a not unpleasant man; but one who suggested that the pleasure of acquiring money and the pleasure of spending it, had appropriate and distinct seasons. He acknowledged Winston's introduction with a quick look at Elijah.
"From what Mr. Winston said, I expected to meet an older man, Mr. Berl."
"That's all right, Mr. Seymour," Winston put in. "We don't put new wine in old bottles out here. This is a new country. Elijah is a new man, and he's chuck full of new ideas."
"I'm getting near enough to the age limit to make your figure rather doubtful, so far as I am concerned." Seymour's features relaxed in a grim smile as he pointed to his gray hair.
"We don't count a horse old, so long as he can kick the top rail off a fence."
Seymour looked closely at Winston, but made no reply. He began to talk with Elijah. At first, Elijah was conscious of the momentous importance of the interview; but this did not prevent him from grasping the import of Seymour's questions and answering clearly and to the point. Gradually he lost himself in his subject and poured forth fact after fact, estimate on estimate, with such rapidity that Seymour felt compelled at times to interrupt him.
"This is new business to me, Mr. Berl. I can't keep up with you." He spoke sharply, almost impatiently, but his manner showed that he was deeply impressed, both with the proposition and with Elijah himself.
"That is a strong presentation of your proposition, Mr. Berl. Now I want a few definite answers to definite questions. As I understand you, you propose to do something entirely new. What warrant have you for believing that oranges can be successfully grown in this district? Oranges are a tropical fruit."
"People are used to thinking that oranges are a tropical fruit. They aren't. Look at Spain, and France, and Italy. They are famous for this very fruit. Here," Elijah swept his hands around, "those conditions are reproduced. Here are the San Bernadinos, there the Pacific, between are desert hills. Bring water to this sunshine and soil, and California will become the garden of the New World."
Seymour smiled at Elijah's enthusiasm. His words were fervid, but Seymour realized their truth.
"That's all right for Spain, and Italy and the rest; but those countries are only a few hours by water from three hundred millions of people, while California is six days by rail from sixty millions, and high rate express at that."
Elijah's face lost none of its assurance; but his eyes half closed as he grasped Seymour's import. He answered with less fire but no less conviction.
"I'll take your estimate of sixty millions and six days express. Suppose that each of those sixty millions ate only two oranges a year, that calls for one hundred and twenty millions. If these oranges sold at five cents, there are six million dollars in a year. That's worth while, isn't it?"
Seymour nodded assent and Elijah resumed. He pointed out the cost of the land, of water, the care of the orchards, express rates and other charges.
"Taking all this into account, your net yield on your investment will be at least fifteen percent."
Seymour again smiled.
"That's all right too; but it hasn't been proved that California will produce one hundred and twenty million oranges."
Elijah was nettled. It irritated him to be questioned too closely. He was too thoroughly convinced, too thoroughly in earnest.
"No one believed in the Western hemisphere till Columbus found it."
Seymour paid no attention to Elijah's impatience. He had a concentrated look on his face. He spoke again sharply and decidedly.
"You believe in this thing. So do I. If suitable terms can be arranged, I am prepared to back my belief with cash."
"To what extent?" Elijah asked briefly.
"A hundred thousand or so. Think over what you will do and I will be in again, in an hour. If your terms are all right, I'll get the money for you at once." He left the office.
Elijah turned jubilantly to Winston.
"We're all right now."
"For a starter." Winston was sober.
"What do you mean?" Elijah spoke sharply.
"We've got a hundred thousand dollars. That's one thing. Now it's up to us to make it pay. That's another." Winston did not lack confidence or faith. He was realizing his responsibilities.
They began arranging terms for the transfer of an interest. Elijah, full of the enthusiasm of success, could hardly pin himself down to details. His years of dreams were being realized. He was looking upon a step as taken. With his foot as yet hardly lifted, already he was looking toward other paths. Winston held him down to the present.
At the appointed hour, Seymour reappeared. The terms offered were satisfactory.
"I must get back East and attend to my other business. I shall have to trust this to you."
Perhaps it was a mistake; but Winston had the feeling that Seymour's eyes rested upon him with his last words, that it was to him that the work was entrusted, that upon him was the responsibility, that he would be the one called to account. This did not oppress him; it sobered him. As Seymour finally left the office, Winston turned to Elijah.
"It's up to us now to show what there is in us."
It did not follow because Seymour had promised to back the Las Cruces Water Company to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars, that he intended to put in that amount of his own money; nor because he had promised a certain sum, that that sum was the limit. He had become thoroughly convinced that the enterprise was well conceived and that with proper management it was bound to succeed and to "succeed big." He wisely concluded that those who had conceived the project and had figured out so minutely the cost and detail, were the proper ones to trust with its execution. He was too cold blooded to be figurative, but Winston's figure to Elijah exactly expressed his attitude of mind. Elijah furnished the fizz of enthusiasm, while Winston supplied the necessary body to the wine, with his well-balanced, matter-of-fact mind. There was nothing in his contract to prevent his disposing at par of one half of the two hundred thousand shares which he had acquired at fifty, and this was the step which he proposed to take and which he did take. He too regarded the laborer as worthy of his hire.
Mr. Seymour was a business man. He was shrewd and he was very successful. It did not necessarily follow that he was unscrupulous. In fact, from a purely business standpoint, he was not; but he had no Quixotic limitations to the end that he was his brother's keeper. The world was full of disastrous mistakes; he took it as he found it. He did not count as a sin of his own, the omission to do good unto others when opportunity offered; but he regarded the opportunity as an indication of sin or at least of poor judgment in his fellow. He was a church communicant in good and regular standing; but religion was one thing, business another. He did not search the scriptures either for approbation or for defense. He acted upon the principle that offenses must be and that woe was the lot of the one through whom they came. The woe that was visited upon the offender was in reality no less a reward of merit than the benefit which accrued to the one who was wise enough to take advantage of the offense. He never pointed to the decalogue with the smug assertion that this had been kept from his youth up. If his business record did not show this, words would be useless. He wasted no love on his neighbor, for love was a dissipater of energy. Love engendered pity, pity sacrifice, and sacrifice precluded success. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. If his neighbor's tub leaked, it was his neighbor's fault for not keeping it calked. His neighbor had no ground for complaint if the liquor which he spilled, was gathered by a more fitting vessel.
Mr. Seymour's one hundred thousand shares of Las Cruces had cost him nothing, save a little energy. If he did no better, he would have so much clear. That was worth while. If Winston and Berl made a mess of the affair, that was no concern of his. One man's extremity was to him another man's opportunity. He intended to be the other man. Elijah was an enthusiast, Winston a professional man. Enthusiasm would inflate iridescent bubbles, professional pride would be an absorbing end in itself. Both were essential, neither would necessarily supply the third element of success, business acumen. At the proper time he would supply this himself and at his own price. In any event, he would be perfectly safe.
The orderly bustle which succeeded Seymour's departure, argued well for the success of the new company. Experienced Ysleta boomers saw in "Las Cruces" a new kind of boom, and beyond offering to put their experience and methods at the service of the new company, did nothing further. The idea of taking up land on a venture near Elijah's ranch, was discussed, but the conclusion was reached that this land was too far from Ysleta to be advantageous and that attention distracted from their own kettle of fish would result in the deadening of the fires that were keeping their own pot boiling.
The division of the entailed labor fell naturally. The engineering work demanded Winston's presence in the field. The office duties fell to Elijah. It was Winston who suggested to Elijah the necessity of a bookkeeper and that there was no one better fitted in every way than Helen Lonsdale. Winston had no doubts of Elijah's intentional integrity and he had great confidence in Helen Lonsdale's ability both in business and in looking out for herself. So she was installed as an essential feature of the company. She felt herself in a position of great and growing responsibility.
Days slipped into weeks and weeks into months with the easy motion of well-organized work. Helen hardly surpassed Winston's expectations, but as he darted in and out of the office, full of his work, he felt no more than a passing sense of satisfaction at the readiness with which everything that he wanted came to his hands. Helen might have a personal pride in never being caught unprepared, but she never displayed the emotion. It was Winston himself who was first caught off his guard. He rushed into the office one afternoon with a look of annoyance, almost of disgust on his face.
"I've made a mess, Helen. I want you to help me out."
"Short of powder at No. 1?" Helen hardly looked up from her work.
"Yes. How did you know?"
"I ordered two tons from the magazine. It's on its way there now."
"Good! But how did you know that I was short?"
"From the reports. I thought you wouldn't be in, so I ordered it."
"You are a jewel, Helen. I haven't had time to tell you so before, but I've known it all along."
"Jewels are ornamental, not useful."
"You are both."
Helen glanced at the clock.
"Office hours aren't over yet and the company isn't paying me to trade sugar plums."
"All right. I'll see you off shift sometime."
Elijah's work kept him much in the office and he was held to business quite as closely as was Winston. Helen showed her appreciation of his work by saying nothing, but doing everything that came to her hands. He longed to drink of the sparkling waters of his dreams, and with all that was in her, Helen was trying to convert these iridescent dreams into material facts. Elijah longed also to see Helen's eyes kindle, to hear her words of commendation; but she never spoke now of his idea. Thus it happened that one phase of his nature was hungered, the other fully satisfied.
Poor Amy was the only party to the new order of things who was unhappy. She had accepted the necessity of Elijah's absence at the Ysleta office, not with resignation, but with unprotesting grief. She regarded this as the dregs of her cup of bitterness; but when she learned of Elijah's assistant, she discovered her mistake. She mourned over his absence, yet utterly refused to consider the idea of moving to Ysleta. He must come to her at her bidding; she could not bring herself to go to him at his. This was her touchstone of love and devotion. It was failing her, and in sackcloth and ashes she was mourning it. She made a brave attempt at cheerfulness when Elijah broached the subject, but she could neither keep the color in her cheeks nor her lips steady when she made reply.
"Don't ask me, Elijah. I can't bear it."
"Why?" he asked in surprise.
"Because," she paused for a moment. "We have been here almost four years, just you, and I and the children. Every spot of it is a part of you. It would be like death to leave it. While you are away, I shall look forward to your coming back. If I should go to Ysleta, you wouldn't be coming back."
"Of course not. I'd be there all the time. You'd have lots of company. I could run in to lunch and bring my friends." Elijah lifted his head and squared his shoulders. He caught not the slightest glimpse of Amy's real feeling. His words and gestures showed that only too plainly even to her.
Amy smiled wanly.
"I wouldn't have you all to myself there. I would rather have you all to myself part of the time, than part of you all the time." It was a tremendous thought for Amy. She almost stood in awe of herself over its utterance.
"You are a silly goose." Elijah caught her in his arms and swung her to and fro as if she were a child. "You have me all the time, wherever I am."
Amy lay in his arms with closed eyes. The color came back to her face. It was only a dream; a dream of what had been. She knew it was only a dream and she tried to close her mental eyes to this knowledge. She was aroused when Elijah set her on her feet.
"I have lots to do at the office now."
Amy's face showed a sudden gleam of inspiration.
"Couldn't I be in the office with you?"
"Of course not, goose. You'd be in the way."
"Is the bookkeeper in the way?" The words were almost gasped.
"Of course not. She'd be in the way if she wasn't there."
"Why?" The word was spoken perforce and with fear.
"Because I couldn't get along without her. She's no end of help to me in my work."
"Couldn't I help you? I would try hard."
Elijah laughed long and loud. Not brutally, at least he had no intention of brutality; but the thought of Amy's doing Helen Lonsdale's work incited his thoughtless mirth. It was inconsiderate rather than thoughtless, for he had not personified Amy's words. Her white face brought the truth home. He grew sober.
"Not the way you mean, Amy. You will have to help me in your way, and Miss Lonsdale in another. Goodbye, dear. Don't scare yourself with pictures, as I said before."
Amy watched him as on a former occasion; then she had thought her lot hard. She would now be glad to exchange forever and to ask no more. Then, she feared. Now she knew that there were others, beside herself, upon whom Elijah depended. Farther, she could not go, for she could not see her own limitations.
At his office in Ysleta, Elijah found Helen Lonsdale bent over a map and oblivious to her surroundings. A pad and pencil were at her elbow. She was tracing the map with one finger which occasionally recurred to one point, while with the other hand she was apparently recording memoranda. Finally the maps were pushed aside and pad and pencil absorbed her entire attention. There were pauses during which she looked at the map, ran over her figures and then her pencil flew over the pad more rapidly than before. At length she sat up straight, spread the slips of paper before her, and, rolling her pencil meditatively between her fingers, appeared absorbed in thought.
"You seem to be deeply interested." Elijah was standing at the door of the inner office.
Helen turned her head sharply.
"You're just in time to sign these letters before the mail closes."
Elijah seated himself at his desk and signed the letters, as one by one, she placed them before him.
"Do you want to look them over?" she asked.
"No, you never make mistakes."
She began reading and folding the letters.
"I think they are all right. You stamp them." She glanced at the clock. "You'll have to hurry."
Elijah stamped the letters as she tossed them to him. As the last stamp was affixed, she shuffled them together, and, with a glance over her shoulder at the clock, started through the door.
"Have the boy take them over." Elijah called out.
"Boy and hurry aren't on intimate terms." She was already on the threshold of the outer door. In a few moments she returned. "If I had sent the boy, the letters would have lain over until tomorrow, I was just in time." She drew a handkerchief over her flushed face. The handkerchief was not purely ornamental, neither did it suggest unrefined utilitarianism. It lacked lace, but not delicacy. The motion that swept it over her face was decided, but not harsh. Her movements, as she seated herself at her desk and turned her face full toward Elijah, were quick, yet rhythmic and graceful. There was masculine alertness and concentration; yet both were softened by a femininity, unobtrusive but not to be ignored. For over six months, she had been "Helen" to him as he was "Elijah" to her. Yet the barrier between man and woman that seemed so frail, had effectively obstructed the path that led to intimacy.
Elijah was half-conscious of a longing which he could not express, half-conscious that every attempt to gratify it was repulsed by an intangible atmosphere which seemed transparent and unresisting, yet was dense and impenetrable. Had he been able to state his position to himself at this time, he would have shrunk from the picture. He was not analytical, therefore he did not know that the greater part of the sins of the world are the result not of deliberate premeditation and decision, but of the almost unconscious, initial yielding to apparently innocent impulses which should be recognized for what they are, for what they may be, and crushed out of existence at once.
Elijah was strong in his vision of possibilities, strong in his purpose to wrest success from the teeth of defeat, strong in the enthusiasm that made him tingle with restless impatience to be doing, strong in his power to kindle others with the fire of his own purpose; yet he was weak. Weak because of an unconscious, yet all-pervading selfishness. Imperative as were his visions, even so were his desires, and unconsciously both centred in himself. As in the rock-ribbed, narrow confines of his New England home, so in the desolate, sun-burned deserts of California, unchecked by contact with his fellow men, his thoughts ran riot in the channels of his glowing soul. He had longed for sympathetic companionship; but his solitary, isolated life forbade it. This longing had found gratification in what he grew to believe was fellowship with God. His youth fostered the idea, his growing, solitary years developed it into a fanatical belief. If he was in doubt, he took refuge in prayer, not for guidance, firmly as he may have believed it, but for confirmation. From his youth up, he had had a fanatical belief in the guidance of Divinity, and had placed the Bible as a lamp to his feet. Elijah prayed to God for guidance in paths which he should have chosen for himself, blindly putting aside the fact that in the very seeking for guidance, he was longing to be confirmed in a course which in the depths of his soul he knew to be wrong. Fortified by his belief, armed by God's sanction, he followed his desires mercilessly and without shame.
Helen Lonsdale was not analytical, she was not fanatical, nor was she deeply religious. Her surroundings had precluded that. She had strong common sense. When for lack of experience this failed her, she had intuition. She moved among men fearlessly, because in the field of their movements, sex was not thought of,—only things to be done. The two men with whom, in her present relations, her lot was so intimately cast, stood respectively on an entirely different footing. In their childhood days, she and Ralph Winston had been playmates. Later, they had been parted only to be thrown into closer relations by a strange turn of Fortune's wheel. She had welcomed Ralph with the unreserve of the days of their childhood. She was, perhaps, on this very account, unconscious that his memories were the more faithful of the two.
Elijah had come into her life, full-fledged, with no childish memories to blur the outlines of the image. However strong Winston was in the eyes of others, there were yet in her eyes the clinging shreds of the memory of other days. She was attracted by Elijah's enthusiasm, the strength of his ideas, of his purpose to succeed. With a woman's intuition she saw the barren stretch of his unsympathetic surroundings, and, with no idea of injustice, the sight prompted her to give in full that which had hitherto been denied him. Her sympathy was aroused, her enthusiasm kindled by his work; but it was apparently impersonal. She was surrounded by an atmosphere of womanliness as delicate as an electric field, which warned off and repelled any disturbing element. Yet her atmosphere was polar; it would respond to the proper element. The element was existent, but as yet unrecognized.
Elijah again turned to Helen.
"How are things going?"
"Ralph is short of powder and cement at the dam. I sent up a pack-train this morning. It will leave two tons of powder at No. 1 tunnel. The magazine is getting low, but San Francisco is sending a carload. It will be here tomorrow. That will keep Ralph supplied for a month. Seymour writes from New York that Las Cruces is snapped at one-twenty; that he is going to run it up to one-thirty. Everything is coming our way on the run."
"We've got a pretty heavy balance to our credit." Elijah spoke meditatively. "Pretty heavy to carry in the local banks."
"That's just what I was going to speak of. I'd let San Francisco carry the bulk of our deposits. It's solid. The local banks may be called any time. You can leave just enough here to keep them good-natured."
"All right. We'll deposit our next checks in 'Frisco. What were you mulling over this morning?"
Helen laughed.
"How to get even with you and Ralph."
"Get even with us!" Elijah looked at her in surprise.
"Yes."
"What do you mean?"
"You wouldn't let me into Las Cruces on the ground floor, so I am planning a building of my own."
"That was Ralph's doing; he didn't want you to run the risk of losing."
"My five thousand was as good, so far as it went, as Seymour's hundred. He got in at fifty. He's made good at one hundred and forty. If you had let me in, I would have had twelve thousand five hundred now. It will take me a long time to earn that." She spoke with assumed levity.
Elijah was regarding her through half-closed eyes. He spoke very deliberately.
"You are right, I wanted to do it, but Ralph wouldn't consent. He meant all right," he added hastily. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll let you have five thousand dollars of my stock at fifty. That will set you straight."
"No it won't." There was no levity in Helen's voice.
"Why?" Elijah's eyes opened in surprise.
"Because that would be a present, and I don't want presents. What I get, I want to get myself."
"It wouldn't be a present. It would be a reward. You've earned it." Elijah spoke earnestly and warmly.
"From you, not from the company," she replied decidedly and with finality. "Besides, I've discovered a way to help myself. That's better."
"That brings us back to the first point. What were you mulling over?"
Helen drew the map toward them and weighted down the corners.
"Oranges don't mind a breath of cold air now and then; they're dead set against a freeze out." She was looking quizzically at Elijah. An expression of assured satisfaction came over her face at Elijah's astonishment.
His head was thrown back as he raised his eyes to Helen's face.
"What do you mean?"
"As if I needed to tell you." Her lips were scornful at the limitations Elijah had put upon her. A smile softened the scorn and left a doubt as to which emotion was dominant. "You know that oranges on a hillside with southwestern exposure will do better than in an unprotected river bottom."
Elijah looked up fiercely.
"Has Ralph been talking?"
"No; but you have."
"I never said anything of the kind to you."
"I'm not a phonograph."
"You've no right to make use of information that you get from a confidential position." Elijah's voice was decided. There was a startled look on his face that he could not keep from being anxious.
"Not even to make myself more useful?"
Elijah did not commit himself to words. His eyes were expectant. Helen continued, pointing to the map.
"This land is practically vacant. It's owned by a Mexican. He would jump at a dollar an acre. It is separated from this of yours by a hill. He would never dream of a tunnel. Some one else may. There are thousands of acres just as good as the land you control. What's the matter with forming a land company independent of the Las Cruces? My five thousand would cover five thousand acres. When water gets to it, say it's worth a hundred; that will make me five hundred thousand to the good. That's better than a present of Las Cruces at fifty, and it will come from myself."
"I never told you about the tunnel. How did you find it out?"
Helen could not restrain a satisfied smile.
"You didn't tell me about a belt of country around here where the temperature never falls to thirty-two?"
Elijah glanced hastily around the room.
"That's all right." Helen had noted the look. "We're all alone."
"What do you want?" Elijah's look was not yet wholly one of relief.
"To get a little closer."
"There's a big future in that idea. I have been thinking of forming a land company. We can get control of the whole section." He swept his hand over the map.
"We don't want the earth, Elijah. It would be too much work to handle it. There wouldn't be any time for fun. We only want a goodly portion. We want to do things, don't we?"
Elijah's eyes opened. An expression as of a revelation swept over his face. The simple "we" thrilled him through and through. Unconsciousness was dropping its mask and standing out in bold relief.
"We do, we do! and we will."
Helen was quite unconscious. She laughed at Elijah's enthusiasm.
"What kind of women have you lived with, I would like to know. This idea would not have surprised you if it had come from a man."
Helen spoke in ignorance. Unconsciously she had opened Elijah's eyes still wider. In a blinding flash, he saw Amy and Helen Lonsdale side by side. The vision brought him face to face with his past life with Amy; with its barren stretch, unwatered by sympathetic appreciation, only parched and withered by the burning rays of selfish love. He had given; but he had not received. What he had accomplished, he had accomplished not only by himself, but in spite of a hostile influence. So long as his work had been limited to the little patch of ground irrigated by the developed springs of his home, Amy had offered no objections to his enthusiasm. So far as it was possible for her, she had been interested, almost encouraging. Even over his visions of greater things, which he had laid before her unseeing eyes, she had smiled with acquiescence which he mistook for appreciation. Only when the films began to grow into material form, when the warp and woof must be gathered from others, and the frame of the loom itself must be builded with another's aid, did the real meaning of Elijah's dream suggest itself to Amy. Not that she saw clearly, only intuitively, that in the carrying out of his plans he would come in contact with others, that this contact would develop a comparison of herself with others, that this comparison would be unfavorable to her, and would end forever her ability to fill Elijah's mental vision. Therefore, at the very first signs of expansion, she had opposed the feeble barrier of her will. Elijah had no more recognized the barrier than he had Amy's limitations which made the barrier imperative to her. He had felt her opposition, and, without understanding it, he had chafed against it. He had not compared her with others, because up to this time he had not come in contact with those who made a comparison imperative.
Now the comparison was coming to him, had indeed already come. Appreciation, sympathy, energy, assistance were manifest to him in every word and action of Helen Lonsdale. Her first suggestion of independent action had startled, then brought to him a sudden, overpowering realization of what she was, of what she might be to him in comparison with Amy. His first emotion was fear lest she might leave him, and, equipped with the knowledge which she had gained from her confidential relation with the company, start out on an independent course of her own. There was almost a feeling of resentment against Amy, as if she had defrauded him, and this was a thing which Elijah should have put aside; but he did not.
Helen was watching him. There was decided humor in her eyes, in the motion of her lips.
"What are you mulling over?"
Elijah started as if waking from a dream. He spoke hastily, but none the less decidedly.
"We must drive over together and see that land as soon as possible."
In spite of Elijah's earnest conviction that the land should be inspected and a course of action mapped out as soon as possible, it was several weeks before the trip could be arranged. To Elijah it seemed as if one insistent detail after another was crowding upon him in a most extraordinary manner. He grew fretful, and at the last decidedly irritable.
"Don't worry, Elijah," Helen said, after an unusually impatient outburst. "The world wasn't made in a day."
"Opportunities are, and are short-lived too."
"Not when they travel via Mexicanos. You can always count on one day more with them. Mañana has some redeeming features after all."
"Well," Elijah's lips straightened, "mañana is tomorrow, and tomorrow we start."
Helen glanced at her desk with its litter of correspondence.
"I guess we can manage it in some way."
"I don't guess, I know. It's tomorrow; so be ready early. Don't come to the office; I will call for you."
Elijah was as good as his word. At six o'clock he was waiting at Helen's door, and they were early on their way.
In the days that had followed their conversation relative to unpurchased lands, Helen had given much thought to the possible results of the plan suggested by Elijah. She had experienced no waver of hesitation over their present confidential relations. These presumed nothing more than their face value and were in no sense different from her relations with other employers. Had she been possessed of a fortune, the proposed partnership would have had a plausible excuse. She would then merely have furnished the money necessary to carry out their mutual plans and a partnership would naturally have followed. She had no fortune. Her relations with Elijah would of necessity become more confidential, more personal. Elijah was a married man, and intuitively she hesitated. But then; here was the great business opportunity of her life; the opportunity for which she had been waiting and hoping until hope had become all but expectation, and now hope and expectation needed only her consent to become reality. She had been really glad of the delays which put from her the necessity of immediate decision. She would decide when the time came. She thought of going to Winston again for advice; but Winston was occupied. This was her excuse to herself. In her heart she knew what he would say and she did not wish to listen to his words. She dwelt long over the idea of buying land independently, for herself. But this savored of using for her own benefit, information gained indirectly from her present position. Moreover, being a woman, she shrank from wholly independent action. The appeal to her ambition was a powerful one. A great transformation was going on in California. It was so radical, so unthought of, that those connected with it in any of its phases were bound to become prominent, and prominence was one great thing that she desired. Elijah was the originator of orange growing on a large scale. He had made his particular field a variety of seedless orange which had been hitherto unknown; he had conceived of fertile lands that were now worthless; had, by sheer will power, got under way an irrigation scheme which would bring fame and fortune. These possibilities were known to only half a dozen individuals who could take advantage of them, and Helen was one. It was strange that, as she now faced the question finally, she felt none of that sense of triumph and satisfaction which she had imagined such an outlook would give her.
As she took her seat beside Elijah and was whirled through the sandy streets of Ysleta, out over the rolling desert toward the foot-hills of the San Bernardinos, she felt, instead of elation, a strange depression which she could not explain away. Perhaps it was the chill which is always in the California air before the rising sun has asserted its power, or lost it when its daily course is run and it is sinking towards the western horizon. The scenes they passed only served to heighten this feeling; the torpid Mexicans, crawling from their cheerless adobe huts, squatted on what should be the sunny side, their sombreros pulled low, their ponchos wrapped closely around face, and neck, and shoulders, one grimy hand with numbed fingers, thrusting the inevitable cigarro between blue lips, as they watched with dull eyes the team flash by. Stiffened bunches of scrawny cattle rose regretfully from the sand which their bodies had warmed through the night. Shambling the least possible distance from the wagon trail, they stood with arched backs and low-hung heads, looking mild reproach at the disturbers of their dismal peace. Even the long, blue shadows stretched themselves stiffly along the yellow sands or lost their form in the soggy mists that hung damp and chill over the river bottoms and deep-sunk hollows, where seeping springs oozed out into the shivery air. Toward the west, the great Pacific was hidden by a waveless wall of milky white that flowed inland by imperceptible motions, overwhelming with its advancing flood, town and plain, but leaving here and there a tawny hill rising above the choking mist, like barren islands in a sea of arctic white.
Elijah shivered.
"It doesn't look like a land of perpetual sunshine, does it?"
"No, and it doesn't feel like one either." Helen's teeth fairly chattered as she drew her wraps more closely about her.
"When we get ready to sell fruit ranches from our block of ground, we will entertain our Eastern purchasers with lateness. Late suppers, late retiring, late rising—"
"And late sales." Helen shrugged her shoulders. "We'll have to keep prospective purchasers under cover all of the time. If we take them out early, we'll freeze them, if late, we'll roast them, and almost any time they're liable to be blown away. Just look at that!" She nodded toward a grove of native orange trees. The outer row had had every leaf twisted from it by the constant winds.
Elijah glanced at his companion.
"I'll tell you my first move. I'm going to get you into a cheerful mood and then put you under cover and keep you there. What is the matter, anyway?"
Helen made no reply. Perhaps she could not, in exact truth. Her youthful philosophy had hardly gone far enough to emphasize the fact that nature is only responsive to our moods, not creative of them.
"Twenty miles is a long drive on an empty stomach." Elijah spoke apologetically. "I can go a week without eating, or sleeping either, if necessary. It came pretty near being necessary one time." He shrugged his shoulders. "Poor Amy! She never complained. Do you think you would have put up with a husband who gave you only oatmeal week in and week out, and not over much at that?"
"I might have put up with the husband, that would depend; but the oatmeal, never! If I had thought it worth while, I wouldn't have troubled him about that, even. I would have found something else for him and for myself too!"
Helen spoke with decision. Elijah's words were uppermost in her mind, a realization of what his work had cost him. Her enthusiasm kindled, she forgot for the moment that the suggestion of the more helpful course which she would have pursued, was an unqualified condemnation of Amy. It was partly owing to the singleness of the vision of youth, partly to the fact that Elijah's wife was hardly a tangible entity to her.
Elijah looked down at Helen. His face was sober. A moment he looked, then turned his eyes to the distant hills.
"I believe you would."
His look and manner of speaking disturbed Helen, though she could not tell why. All the doubts and fears of the past weeks again assailed her. She began to feel a vague distrust of her ambition. Was it after all so very different from the sordid motives she had despised in others? A vision of Ysleta rose before her, with the glaring rawness and gaudy pretensions which she had regarded with such humorous contempt. She had been keen enough to forecast the ruin in store for the promoters; but were her own plans so superior to these as she had once imagined? Did not they too possess some elements of ruin? Suppose success should crown her efforts, would success bring happiness? There was Elijah's wife; how would this success affect this woman whom she had never seen, of whose existence she was barely conscious? Her depression deepened. Why not tell Elijah, even without a plausible reason, that she had decided against it? Her lips half opened to speak, but a host of conflicting impulses held her dumb. Success, wealth, these were the golden spurs that had urged her on. Without this shining goal, what would life be but a dreary round of duties?
The sun was beating with fierce heat on her unprotected face. The clammy chill of the lowlands was gone. The towering heights of the San Bernardinos rose clear against the blue of the sky. Elijah drew rein, and Helen turned to look behind. To the west and south as far as the eye could reach, stretched a great, softly moving sea of milky white. Thus far and no farther, soft fingers of creamy vapor reached out against the foot-hills, crept up into the gulches, reached upward and were dissolved by the sun into transparent air. Far up on one of the foot-hills, was a huge square of dark green set in a frame of tawny sand. Helen knew the map; she recognized the locality. She had no need of Elijah's words as he pointed with his whip.
"There's the first grove of navel oranges ever raised on this continent. I had just three trees to start with, now you can see for yourself. There's Pico's ranch. That's the one we are to buy." He again pointed with his whip, tracing the boundaries in the air. "There's the Sangre de Cristo; here's where it's going to be." He indicated with his whip the crest of the hills, the line of the main canal; showed where it would pierce a higher peak with tunnels, and where, the main canal being tapped, the life-giving waters would be distributed to every field.
"It is great." Elijah was speaking with solemn voice. "It was all revealed to me. The work is too great for me alone, I must have help. I shall have to give up to others, but not too much. They must not push me too hard. I shall be guided. But this shall be my work alone." He swept his whip again over the barren hillsides. "Yours and mine. I shall need your help. I have never had human help before, nor human sympathy. What little help I have had, was because I could promise money, money! What is money beside this great work? Just think! I shall make this, all this a living green. 'The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall bloom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing.'" Elijah's eyes swept over the hills, his hands outstretched as if to gather to them the fruits of his vision.
"This is my especial work; yours and mine. I was going to do it all alone, but it was not to be. Why else did I trust you and why else did you see what I believed was for my eyes alone?" He bent his eyes full upon Helen. She looked shrinkingly into their solemn distance. The conviction was forcing itself upon her that she could of herself have nothing to say. There was more than fame, more than glory and wealth in the vision he was forcing her to see as he saw; something great to be done, a life to be lived too great to be measured by the petty standards of humanity, and thus beyond her power to gauge; something above her, beyond her, yet enveloping her like the air she breathed.
He laid his hand on hers, not questioningly, but masterfully, and without power to resist, she felt his clasp tighten. She heard his voice; words that hummed and throbbed, lulling her to a numb insensibility to all but the thoughts she felt, rather than heard. She saw the visions he saw, heard the voice that he heard, and she followed, not him, but the vision and the voice. She shrank without motion; but she knew that she must follow. Sorrow was nothing, regret was nothing; only the vision that beckoned, the voice that called, these were everything. She would have given worlds to have been beyond their spell; but the eyes that were looking into hers she could not turn away from, the clasp of the hand that held her, she could not shake off. Her eyelids drooped, but they could not shut from her sight the great, solemn eyes that balanced and swung, grew large and small, but ever burned and burrowed into her soul.
Elijah gathered up the reins and the horses moved on. They followed the winding trail down the hill, up the gulch, then a quick turn and the dark green square cut off the burning rays of the sun.
In front of a little cottage almost hidden by blossoming roses the team came to a halt. Elijah sprang from the wagon, and Helen caught a glimpse of a delicately beautiful face among the roses. The next instant it was hidden from sight upon Elijah's shoulder. Helen could not believe the voice to be the same that she had just heard.
"Hello, Amy! I've brought you a visitor. Have you got anything to eat? We're awfully hungry. Driven from Ysleta since six o'clock."
In response to the brusque introduction that followed, Amy turned her eyes to Helen. The motion was evidently without volition on her part, only obedience to an unexpressed command. She advanced timidly, with outstretched hand.
"I am glad to see you; I have heard my husband speak of you very often."
There was a touch of the pride of possession in the words, "My husband," but it sounded pleading and doubtful, rather than confident. With the words, the eyes again sought Elijah.
Helen was outwardly self possessed, inwardly, her thoughts were confused.
"He speakstome quite often; I didn't know that he spoke of me."
Elijah was sizzling with impatience.
"This doesn't look much like breakfast." Without even a glance at Amy, he turned toward the cottage. His words seemed to crowd each other, as he called back through the door, "You two stay and talk women stuff. I'll rustle breakfast."
Helen turned to Amy.
"That's considerate, if not complimentary."
"Elijah has no time for compliments; he's too busy." Amy spoke rather stiffly. She longed with all her heart to follow Elijah; but at the same time, she was glad of the opportunity to show Helen that she had talents along other lines than "women stuff."
Helen laughed.
"'Women stuff' isn't so bad as it's painted."
"Why?" Amy inquired blankly.
"Oh, it fills in. One can't always be so terribly in earnest."
"Elijah is."
Helen restrained herself with difficulty. She felt an hysterical and unreasonable desire to laugh.
"That's why I'm in his office, probably. I'm a relief."
Helen's reply was reassuring to Amy. It was a new reason for the relations between Elijah and Helen. She accepted it without question.
"I'm afraid that I am too much interested in his work. It isn't good for him, but I can't help it. I think you are right about his being too much in earnest." Amy spoke laboriously; she evidently had some ulterior purpose in view, more evident to Helen than she knew. With all the guile that she could muster, Amy looked at Helen. "What is your work?"
Helen did not feel the pathos of what was passing before her eyes, she only saw the absurdity of it.
"Oh, nothing much. I just keep the books. That's easy. Then I write letters, and see that they are mailed, and for amusement, I have arguments with Ralph Winston; he's the engineer, you know."
"Yes, I know Mr. Winston. I don't think much of him. He's rather conceited, don't you think so?"
"Very."
"I am sure he is. My husband knows more about orange trees, and land, and irrigation than anybody, and yet I have heard Mr. Winston contradict him time and time again. My husband is very patient with him."
Again Helen felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to laughter.
"Ralph tries everyone's patience when he doesn't agree with them."
Amy felt that she was wandering from her purpose. She had a vague idea of returning to it by a graceful transition, but one did not suggest itself to her, and she dared temporize no further.
"Is book-keeping so very hard?" she asked.
"Not at all; it's just a little puzzling once in a while."
"Where did you learn?"
"At a business college. I took a regular course."
"I can't—that is—I—" Amy stumbled, her face flushed with confusion. She had almost disclosed her purpose in so many words. "Really," she continued, regaining her mental foothold, "I know nothing about such things. Do you really have to go to college to learn book-keeping?"
"No, indeed." Helen was moved to pity. "Get 'A and B's elements,' any book store has them; a little paper and pencil, a small journal, a cash book and ledger. A little practice, and the thing is done."
Helen's face was smiling and imperturbable. A glance at it convinced Amy that her purpose was undivined.
"Thank you. I have always been curious about such things." Then she grew oblivious of Helen, more completely absorbed than she had ever been before in her life. Her face flushed a delicate pink with the glow of the resolution which had at last taken definite shape in her mind. It was all so simple. Why hadn't she thought of it before? Helen was watching her with a pitying smile on her lips, but the pity was for Elijah, not for Amy. She recalled involuntarily her first meeting with Elijah, the intangible something that had puzzled her about him. Then the incidents of the morning came to her with a rush that overpowered her. She saw everything now, and the smile died from her lips. "What might he not have accomplished, had he married a different sort of a woman?—if,"—her face was scarlet now.
"Breakfast!" Elijah stood in the door, flourishing a dauby spoon. "Oatmeal!" he called, looking at Helen. "Come!"
He darted forward, flung one arm with the spoon attached around Amy's waist and swept her towards the open door.
Helen followed, laughing. The laugh was not the hearty, spontaneous expression of innocent mirth, of—was it only hours, or was it ages ago? Helen could not answer. She was not clearly conscious of the question. She was not certain whether the present was a reality, or whether it was a vague, disagreeable dream, threatening hideous things that were nameless and terrifying, as the demon-peopled shadows surrounding a shrinking child. Her eager anticipations, the sudden, indefinite repugnance to the ride with Elijah, the chill morning, the huddled numbness of the blanketed Mexicans, the hunched-up cattle by the roadside, the clammy, milky fog, the fierce blast of the smiting sun, the land of promise in the blazing light, Elijah's "My work, mine and yours," the consuming enthusiasm of Elijah, the empty, inane beauty of Amy, these two people, twain and one flesh, and she, apart or a part; which should it be? Weaving out and in, confusing, tantalizing, and she, drifting and floating like an errant leaf on these currents of destiny, going hither and thither, to find a resting place, where?
The sound of her own laughter mocked her. She was conscious that her smile was labored, that her spontaneous effort would be tears. This she was resisting. Everything seemed strange to her. Why? She could not answer.
The breakfast table was set on a verandah, shaded with climbing roses and honeysuckle in full bloom. Flecks of sunshine pierced the clustered leaves, but the fierceness of the sun was tempered to a soft glow by the matted vines. The fragrance of flowers perfumed the air, and light and perfume gave a heightened pleasure from consciousness of the conditions without. A dish of steaming oatmeal was before Elijah, a pitcher of thick cream and a bowl of powdered sugar. In the centre of the table was a plate of oranges, golden and fair.
Elijah motioned Helen to a seat on the opposite side of the table, and swung Amy into a chair by his side. His face was flushed, his motions quick and nervous. Helen dumbly wondered if he too were conscious of a struggle within himself, if his actions were forced, or if they were natural, and she were reading her own unrest into them.
Elijah selected from the dish the largest and fairest orange, if choice were possible. He poised it in the air for the fraction of a second. "Catch," he said, and tossed it into Helen's hands. Another orange was dropped into Amy's lap. Selecting one for himself, he began to tear the acrid rind from the fruit and holding the stripped orange, looked at Helen with eyes momentarily half-closed.
"Let's eat and drink to our success." His eyes opened wide as he turned to Amy. "Here's food and drink, typical of all objects worth the struggle.