CHAPTER XXXVA GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM
THE siding was deserted. ThePalmyrahad run out to Tucson, carrying Marshall and Claudia with her tender-hued, baby-smelling wools. Of that little party, Tony made perhaps the larger gap, Tony with his diamond blazing on his finger, his “holdouts,” left-overs from the Marshall table, and his case of smuggled triple X whisky. The young fellows encouraged his stories of old San Francisco, of Bliss and his yellow tips, of wonderful dinners, of the Bush Street Theater when McCullough and Barrett were there. Ah, those the only days! A forefinger would flank Tony’s wicked eye.
Marshall had gone without apprehension. They did not expect now to have setbacks, to have to extend the time set for the ultimate diversion. The days were flowing like oil.
The encampment was filling up with visitors, newspaper men who came to report the spectacular capture of the river. Gerty was finding some opportunities for her chafing-dish and lingerie gowns, but the fish felt small to her net. The attention she received assuaged little of her pride. “At any rate, Rickard will see it.” On theDelta, for the young engineers were relaxing again toward hospitality, she was a belle. Every afternoon, she served tea to a small court.
Brandon came down, sent by theSun, his old paper. Rickard had the newcomer’s tent pitched next his own. He was anticipating snatches of intimacy with this cosmopolitan, whose sweetness he felt sure was the ripe result of some deep experience. His few hours in the Imperial tent had discovered to him a rare brain. He was keen to see more of him.
The day after his arrival, Brandon sent a telegram to his wife. He told Rickard about it afterward.
“I suppose I should have asked you first,” he admitted. “I may have taken a liberty!”
“I think you couldn’t do that,” smiled Rickard. “This camp is yours, señor!”
“Impulse does not often carry me away.” The trim-cut, dog-like face of the irrigationist frowned. “I should have asked you. But seeing other women here gave me the idea, I suppose. I telegraphed for Mrs. Brandon to join me here.”
Deliberately Rickard controlled the muscles of his face. Every one else knew what he thought about women in camp. He hoped that he would not be quoted to Brandon.
“It is a little different, I think, from ordinary cases,” Brandon was working up a justification. “Mrs. Brandon is a writer of fiction, of some note. You have run across her books, her pen name—George Verne.”
Rickard’s face held back the surprise of it. A smile suffused his mind. Brandon, the classicist, theSun’spet man, a specialist on irrigation, related by marriage toThe Cowboy’s Bride! He acknowledged that he knew her by name, had seen her books. He had been in remote places, where English matter is scarce, and had often found George Verne usurping the shelves.
“I should think she would find this an opportunity,” he agreed. He had caught a hint of returning fires in the calm gray eyes.
The thin lips were pursed musingly. “But it is pretty hard for her to leave New York. Her publishers keep her pretty busy.”
Rickard’s silence was not inactive. He was thinking of the diverted lives; of Brandon living out his banishment in a western desert tent; George Verne weaving her stories hundreds of miles away in a New York apartment-house.
“The separation is hard on both of us.” The man was revealing his renunciations in this instant of homesickness; his guards were down. “When my trouble came, I had hoped that her work might make it possible for her to come out with me, at least half her time, that she might gather material. But they crowd her with orders; she works right through the hot summers; I don’t remember when she has taken a vacation. I run out once in a while to try to stop her, to make her play a little. But my cough comes back; she has the habit of grind by this time. I’m hoping this will appeal to her as a chance; it’s a tremendous setting, this!”
He chatted about valley happenings for a few minutes before leaving.
“Anything I can do for you?” inquired Rickard.
“Thank you, no. I’m off now to the Crossing to see Marshall’s gate. And I want to see Matt Hamlin. He was my host once, years ago.”
Rickard’s mail that morning included a letter from his chief at Tucson. Marshall delivered a peremptory mandate from Faraday. The borrow-pits and muck-ditches were to be constructed according to precedent.The stream-side excavating was to be continued. Marshall added that this order admitted no argument.
Rickard, fuming helplessly, read the letter to MacLean, Jr. “Everybody sticking his precious fingers in the pie. Tying me up with orders. What does Faraday know about it, I’d like to know?” MacLean observed a Hardin inflection.
The mail had brought other exasperations. A classmate he had been wiring for, an engineer specialist on hydraulics, was ill. There was another letter from Marshall, with enclosures. More complaints from Chicago. Rickard declared he could “smell” Washington.
Irish brought the news of the Parrish horror. The opened vein of tragedy stained the day. The double tragedy, the three sharp deaths sobered the camp, preparing for its coup.
“War!” summed up Rickard. “Our army marches over dead bodies.”
The day badly begun, piled up with vexations. By evening, Rickard’s temper, slow to rouse, was on the rampage. His men got out of his way. The river flotsam was piling up against the gate and making a kink in the trestle. There was a nasty bend. Rickard spent his afternoon on the by-pass, jumping from boats to rafts, directing the pile-drivers, driving the stolid bucks. By sundown, he was wet to the skin, and mad, he told MacLean, Jr., as a sick Arizona cat.
In this jaundiced juncture, MacLean, Jr., brought down his despatches to the river.
“Anything important?” cried Casey from the raft. “Read them to me. I can hear.”
MacLean read of the burning of a trainload of railroadties in a nasty wreck on the way to the break; just out of Galveston. To purge his mood, Rickard swore.
“If that isn’t the darndest.” He had “luck” on his tongue. His mood had been paralleling, disagreeably to his consciousness, Tom Hardin’s manner. He withheld the word.
“Anything else pleasant?”
“A letter from the governor—from dad. Nothing important.” MacLean had that instant decided to leave that letter on the desk where Rickard might find it by himself.
“Fire away,” cried Rickard, stretching the cramp from his shoulders.
Uncomfortably, MacLean cleared his throat before he read that his father begged a small favor of Rickard. “Godfrey, the celebrated English tenor, is on my hands. His doctors have been advising outdoor occupation. I am sending him to you, asking you to give him any job you may have. He is willing to do anything. Put him at something to keep him occupied.”
MacLean saw Rickard’s face turn red. “Suffering cats! A worn-out opera-singer! What sort of an opera does he think we’re giving down here? Why doesn’t he send me a fur coat, or a pair of girl twins? Give the tenor a rôle! Anything else? Pile it all on.”
“That’s all.” MacLean was turning away. Then, as an afterthought, he threw over his shoulder, “Oh, and one from Godfrey himself. He’s in Los Angeles. He says he’ll be here to-morrow.” He did not wait for his chief’s reply.
At the supper-table, Rickard, dry and in restored humor, alluded to the invasion of high notes. “Pity theparts are all assigned! He might have done the ‘Toreador,’ or ‘Canio.’ The only vacancy—” he could safely gibe at his own complications, for the Hardins were dining on theDeltathat evening, “is in the kitchen. I wonder how he would like to be understudy to Ling!”
The next day when the incident had been forgotten, and while Rickard was up at the Crossing on the concrete gate, Godfrey blew into camp. He was like a boy out on a lark. His brown eyes were dancing over the adventure.
“He’s certainly not sick,” thought MacLean, Jr. “Must be his throat.” He was a little piqued over Rickard’s sarcasm. What in creation was his father thinking about, anyway?
Godfrey asked to be turned loose. “I won’t be in any one’s way!” He explored the Heading, covered the by-pass in a river boat, went a way down the river, down the old channel through which considerable water was now flowing, made the trip down the levee work, on horseback, and came back bubbling.
“It’s the biggest thing I ever saw. But say, Junior, that’s what they call you, isn’t it? I’m the only idle man here. Can’t you give me something to do?”
MacLean was not sure but that the suggestion of Rickard’s had been a jest. He felt abashed to repeat it. “I’ll do anything,” twinkled the handsome tenor. “I’d like the boss to find me busy when he comes in.”
MacLean softened the offer. Perhaps until Mr. Godfrey learned the ropes he could be of general use. They were short-handed the present moment—there was another hesitation—in the kitchen! Ling, the Chinese cook, was overcrowded—so many visitors—
“Great,” crowed Godfrey, slapping him on the shoulder.“I don’t want to feel in the way. I want to earn my board. And it’s not bad to keep on the right side of the cook. No one can beat me beating eggs.”
His spirits were infectious. “Not many eggs in this camp!” grinned MacLean.
“Lead me to the cook!” declaimed the newcomer. “Chin chin Chinaman!” he sang at a daring pitch. “Chin chin Chinaman, chop, chop, chop!” His voice had the world-adored quality, the vibrant stirring thrill which is never tremolo.
“He’ll do,” thought the youth. He foresaw concerts on the deck of theDelta.
That evening, the dinner was helped on its way by the best paid singer of England. In an apron, borrowed of Ling, he was “having the time of his life.” Ling, pretending to scold, had been won immediately. Rickard, hearing of the jolly advent, forgot his vexation, and immediately on his return made his way to the mesquit enclosure—to greet the friend of George MacLean.
It was a comic opera already to Godfrey. He had won over Ling by doing all of the tedious jobs. Had peeled the potatoes, opened the cans of tomatoes, washed the rice and scoured the pans. As Rickard, obscured by the mesquit hedge, reached the enclosure, the newcomer was entering by the riverside.
“Hi, there, you,” cried Ling. “Where you put my potato skins? Save potato skins. Me plant skins by liver, laise plenty potatoes—bimeby.”
Godfrey laughed uproariously. He pounced on a red slab of bacon rind and was making for the outside, Rickard vastly entertained.
“Hi, there,” yelled Ling. “Hi, stop. No thlow bacon away. Save bacon. Me make hot cakes, grease pan.”
“Not on your life,” Godfrey swept the irate Ling and the entering stranger in khaki a deep theatric bow. “Ling no get bacon. Me plant bacon by river. Me raise hogs!”
Thus met Rickard and the tenor, who captured the camp that night with his singing. After dinner, MacLean carried off his prize to theDelta, where Godfrey earned his welcome. In a dark corner, Brandon was feeling the edge of his disappointment. George Verne was blocking out a new book, so she had wired. She was too busy to come. Gerty Hardin forgot to flirt with the engineers; she had discovered a new sensation. The wonderful voice twisted her heart-strings; it told her that the heart that has truly loved never forgets, and she knew that she could never have really loved, yet, because the youth in her veins was whispering to her that she could still forget. Godfrey saw a mobile plaintive face turned up to the gibbous moon; he swept it with thrills and flushes. She was a wonderful audience; she was also his orchestra, the woman with the plaintive eyes. He played on her expressions as though she were a harp.
Later, he was presented to Mrs. Hardin. She told him that the camp would no longer be dull; that she had tea every afternoon in her ramada. She convicted him archly of British-hood. “She knew he must have his tea!”
“You American women are the wonders of the world! Nothing daunts you. In the desert, and you give afternoon teas. I’ll be there every day!”
He gave her open admiration; she looked young and wistful in her soft flowing mulls, the moonlight helping her. She fell into a delicious flurry of nerves and excitement. Later, she wandered with him from a rudegaping world into a heaven of silvered decks and gleaming waters. He told her of himself, of his loneliness; his music had dropped him to self-pity.
Gerty Hardin heard her bars drop behind her. She snatched her first glimpse of freedom.