Chapter 4

"No," Adam said, shaking his head; "our ideals change. The scheme of life laid down by Christ was to the Greeks foolishness and to the Jews a stumbling-block, and there were plenty of Greeks and Jews in our day. By Greeks I mean people whose ideals were purely intellectual, and by Jews those who saw no good save a material good, no God but the God of Mammon. They would not hear either Moses or the prophets, and the statute of limitations was as near as they could come to the Sabbatic year. The Greek and the Jew have stood ready with their cup of hemlock, their crown of thorns for every Christ-spirit that has ever come to earth. Yet more people read Socrates, and believed on the Nazarene every year. I don't mean in the church; the working-man did not go to church, but he uncovered his head at the name of Christ, the first lawgiver who confounded the scribes and Pharisees, and ate with publicans and sinners."

"But Moses was the first lawgiver to forbid taking the nether millstone as a pledge," objected Robin.

"True," he admitted, "and the laws of Moses would have made the world over. He was the greatest writer on political economy this earth has ever seen. His absolute fiat against the alienation of the land would have done more for the common people than all Adam Smith's theories of free competition, and Fourier's dream of a perfected communism. But who would have known of Moses, save for Christ? The Old Testament would have been merely the sacred book of the Hebrews, and save as a literary and historic work, of very uncertain historic value, would have been unread, as the Koran and other books of a similar nature were unread."

"And yet you do not believe in the divinity of Christ," she said slowly.

"No," he answered. "Is that necessary before one can believe in his teachings? The truth is always divine. What difference does it make whether the one who utters it be human or divine, bond or slave, Æsop or Marcus Aurelius? the truth remains the same. A fable is only another name of a parable. We have the story of the lost sheep; that's a parable; and that of the lamb that muddied the stream, and that's a fable. One is sacred, the other profane, but both are fables, both parables. When you take them away from the context it is as easy to feel for the lamb eaten by the wolf, as for the one that was rescued, and has been immortalized in picture and song."

"Probably you are right," she said. "I never thought of it in just that way before," and saying "good night" she went to her room.

Adam thought he heard her humming, "Away on the mountains cold and bare."

VIII

When we mean to build We first survey the plot, then draw the model, And, then we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection.

SHAKSPERE.

The discovery of the incomplete journal made a subtle change in Adam. He had been silent and self-absorbed from the first, but he had never quite given up hope. Even now, Robin sought to keep up the pretence, and dreading the despair which she saw creeping over Adam, she began artfully to seek some means of interesting him in something else. The question of a proper place for the books gave her an opportunity, and Adam suggested that he build an addition to the house.

They planned it as eagerly as if it was to be a castle, and spent days in looking for adobe, but finally decided that logs would be better, and Adam's ax could have been heard ringing from morning till night. A log house is not exactly a work of art, but it requires no little skill to build one, and takes a good deal of time when the logs for the floor must be planed and squared, so as to make a matched board floor. Sometimes Robin went with Adam, and worked or read; sometimes she took him his luncheon at noon, for the trees were at some little distance from the house. The logs had to be "snaked" across the rough ground and down the mountain, and when the floor had been laid, and the location of the window decided upon, Robin planted morning-glory seeds where it was to be. By dint of much pushing and hauling the logs were finally put in place, and the roof battened down. The window was truly worthy of a mediæval castle, for it was simply an oblong hole, boxed in with a casement made from some scraps of boards, while a slab shutter, swung on leather hinges, shut out the elements.

The chinking was a simple matter, and when it was all done, including a doorway into the main room, Robin was unfeignedly delighted. They made rows of shelves with the packing-cases, and arranged the books thereon. It was not an extensive library, but it occupied one side of the room, and was a godsend to them. Under the window Robin placed the green covered desk, and placed on it Adam's writing materials. Along the inside wall Adam built a bunk, after the fashion in miners' cabins, and with a mattress stuffed with the soft inner cornhusk, and a pillow from the other room, and blankets from the one tiny closet, the couch looked sufficiently inviting. On the floor Robin spread mats made from plaited cornhusk, and in the doorway hung a portière, woven from the same material on a loom that a Navajo might not have utterly despised.

Adam's scanty wardrobe was transferred to pegs in one corner of the room, one or two stools were set first here, then there, until Robin was sure the best effect had been secured, and when all was done that they could accomplish with the means at hand, and the morning-glory blossoms came peeping in at the window, the room was by no means unattractive.

Then Robin's housewifely soul took refuge in house-cleaning, and she scrubbed and arranged and re-arranged, while Adam repaired or invented furniture, until inside and out their little domain was as perfect as they could make it.

Between them there had again fallen one of those long silences they dreaded, but seemed powerless to prevent. As the voice of the turtledove was lifted in the plaintive notes of nesting time, Adam harrowed three acres of the plowed land and planted it in wheat and corn. The perennial garden was flourishing, and there was nothing to do. Adam said so one day, with an air of calm finality.

Robin regarded him uneasily. The time had not yet come when he could sit down and write, though she had brewed an excellent ink, and the paper waited on the desk in his room. She considered for a moment, then said brightly, "Don't you remember what Myron used to say? How when his friends got rich they first built a beautiful house, and then went abroad for three years? Let us go traveling; wouldn't you like it?"

The alacrity with which he acquiesced proved how well he liked it, and he started out at once to get the burros, and make ready for the expedition.

Robin baked and prepared as well as she could.

"It's a good thing I had a Southern grandmother," she soliloquized, as she put her beaten biscuit in the Dutch oven and pulled the coals over it. "And it's a good thing my mother crossed the plains and learned how to make biscuit in the mouth of her flour sack, and," as she rolled out some crackers, "it is a blessed good thing I went to cooking-school, but I wish that, instead of being so particular about the knobs on the candlesticks, the Pentateuch had given Sarah's recipe for making cakes with honey. Not that I have any honey, but I am sure we shall find some on this trip."

When they were all ready, and the burros stood waiting at the door, with Lassie jumping wildly about them, Adam wrote a placard which he stuck in the framework of the door. The stock had been turned loose on the mountain-side, and the house and stables secured as well as possible against any storms that might arise. The kittens had possession of one of the sheds. The puppies were to accompany them.

Robin had put on her long unused shoes, and a new gown that she had made out of a dark blue serge found hanging in her room. Adam looked at her approvingly from under his wide sombrero. She turned back, after going a few paces, and read the card.

WAIT!

APRIL 5th.

Back in two weeks.

Look for smoke.

As she passed into the cañon that hid their home from sight, Adam saw her brush her hand across her eyes.

IX

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren."

STERNE.

They traveled a due west course, crossing the two ranges, wending their way through dim defiles and along precipitous cañons, until they saw the sea. Here its mood was summer-like. Even in the short time that had elapsed it had worn itself a broad, smooth beach, and wide tracts of land between the sand and the base of the mountains proved that the earth had been thrown up, or that the water had receded. They had not looked upon the ocean before for many months.

They picketed the burros on the rank, salt grass, and built their camp-fire early, and while Robin set the potatoes baking, and began her supper preparations, Adam went scouting along the coast. In less than half an hour he came back with a quantity of clams which he threw down before her as proudly as if they had been foreign battle-flags. She gave a little feminine shriek of delight.

"Now I know why we brought that inconvenient iron pot," she said; "bring it here, please."

Adam brought it, and watched her slice up onions and potatoes and stir in the various ingredients.

"It is going to be the best chowder you ever tasted," she said, "even if we haven't any bacon. When you write the veracious tale of our adventures, Adam, don't put in how many things we ate."

"They might think it a voracious tale if I did," he answered, dropping some more butter into his mealy potato. "Do you remember how the Swiss Family were always worrying for fear they wouldn't have enough to eat?"

"Yes, and how they went out and killed an elephant for breakfast, and a herd of wild pigs for dinner, and had a buffalo apiece for supper. And don't you remember how, when the boa constrictor killed one of their zebras, little Fritz asked pathetically if boas were good to eat?"

They laughed over their supper, and then having made sure that they were out of reach of the tide, and the fire would keep, and the rifle was close at Adam's elbow, they spread their blankets and said "good night." It had been an exciting day.

It was past midnight, and the moon was waning when Adam was wakened by Lassie's cold muzzle against his face. He sat up and called to Robin. There was no answer, and her blankets lay tossed on the other side of the fire. He started up and listened. At first he heard only the sound of the sea; then there came mingled with it the clear notes of her glorious voice. Holding Lassie in check he went down to the beach.

Robin stood well out on the shimmering sand, the waves lapping softly almost at her feet, and he heard the plaintive music, and caught the words,--

"Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove, Far away, far away, would I fly, and be, and be at rest."

Her voice quivered when she came to the words, "In the wilderness build me a nest," but she sang on, and Adam recalled the words of hymn after hymn, anthem after anthem, for she sang nothing else. He heard the bitter cry of the De Profundis, Handel's triumphant "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and then she began, "He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps."

His eyes filled, and he saw the tents of his regiment. She had written by every mail, and across her letters, at the top or bottom, she had put those five bars from "Elijah." Though he did not believe it, for he had not the early Hebrew ability to see Israel in his own race, and the to be spoiled Philistine in every Filipino, it had comforted him in that sickening campaign. Surely, surely if he, an American "non-com," had spared a Filipino now and then, He watching over Israel had not been less merciful.

Her voice died away; it was the first time she had sung that year, though she was a very perfectly trained musician. Indeed in the old days, Adam had first sought her acquaintance because of her music.

Adam returned to the camp; he knew instinctively that she preferred to keep this to herself. He was lying quite still when she came back, and controlled every muscle when she bent over him. She regarded him intently for a moment, then went to her blankets with a heavy sigh that Adam knew was for him. She had sung out her own sorrows.

Their vigils seemed to do them both good, for they shook off their melancholy tendencies, and before the end of the first week their tour was beginning to be thoroughly enjoyable. They did not find cocoanuts and bananas, but they did find plenty of strawberries, and long, prickly vines that would be covered with raspberries, and wild grapes and choke-cherries and currants, which they planned to transplant, for though the Western coast was more beautiful, and in some respects more convenient than their hedged in valley, they preferred the valley. Already it had come to mean home.

They traveled about fifty miles southward, to the end of the island, making desultory trips up into the mountains to see if anywhere, on land or sea, there was a friendly wreath of smoke, and every night their watch-fire glowed from the highest peak in their vicinity. The island narrowed to a single range, detached peaks rising here and there from the sea. As they rounded the southernmost point, Adam said, "We ought to name it; that remarkable Swiss family always named places."

Robin looked at the bare, stone walls rising sheer above the waves three hundred feet, and her lip curled.

"Let us call it the Cape of Good Hope," she said.

"In the name of wonder, why?" asked Adam, and she answered, "Because we are past it," and then would have given anything to have recalled the bitter words.

The Eastern coast was wilder and more picturesque, but the traveling was correspondingly slower. Something in the formation of the coast caused a terrific surf, and at many places there was scarcely any beach, and they found themselves compelled to climb along trails that made even the burros dizzy.

When they had been absent ten days, Robin said, "I begin to feel like a grandmother; no, I don't mean that I feel so old, but that I begin to long to see the chicken and cat-children, and the new calf, and--everything."

Adam laughed, "I have been thinking we ought to hurry; that place of ours is growing so entrancingly lovely in memory that last night I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls!"

They were not to reach home without at least one adventure, however. A day or so later, as they toiled up a painfully steep ascent, Lassie sounded the note of alarm, and catching up the rifle, Adam ran ahead. As he rounded a point in the rocks, he came upon a Rocky Mountain goat engaged in combat with a cinnamon bear. The bear was hardly more than a cub, and was carrying off one of the kids. The goat, horns down, was fighting viciously, though weak from loss of blood.

It would be interesting to know what one wild animal thinks when another wild animal, from its point of view, comes to the rescue. Adam carried a lariat over one arm. In an instant it flew through the air, dropping over Bruin's shoulders. He released the kid, and tumbled backward over the cliff, as much with surprise as by the force of the jerk on the rope, taking that treasured article with him.

It took some time to capture the wounded animals, bind up their hurts, and get them down the pathway leading to the beach. For there was a beach, the best one they had found on the Eastern coast, and as they put the goat and her kids down in the grass, Adam said tentatively, "If you are not afraid, I can go home and get the horses and the sleds. It isn't a great way, and I believe I can be back in three hours,--I'm sure I can if the beach goes as close to our park as I think."

Robin acquiesced, and as soon as he was gone began gathering driftwood. When she had quite a little heap she made a fire with the coals they carried in the pot. It is doubtless more romantic to build a fire by striking flint rocks together, but a pot of coals has its uses in a matchless universe. Then she found a long, stout club, and put one end in the fire, where it smouldered sullenly.

"There now," she said conclusively, "if my bear acquaintance calls, I will present him with 'the red flower.' I didn't learn the 'Jungle Books' by heart for nothing."

Meanwhile Adam was striding over the beach at a rate that brought him to the little cove and the high wall of rocks that shut them in on the south in a little over an hour. Two of the pups had gone with him, and they raced on ahead, as he came in sight of the house. Everything seemed to have an air of welcome, and the horses whinnied joyfully when he called them from the gateway.

The pathetic placard was still there, and he crumpled it in his hand, and went in and opened the windows. He milked one of the cows, and gathering some green stuff in the garden started back with the team and the sleds. Once down the steep decline, and over the rocks at the south, they went on rapidly.

Although he had wasted no time, it was past one o'clock when he saw her familiar figure afar off. She hurried to meet him. They had not been separated so long before that year, and realized the unconscious strain in the sudden revulsion. They said nothing of this, however, though they clasped hands for a moment. Then Robin spoke to the horses, and stroked their necks, as they bent their heads and rubbed against her affectionately.

She had spread their table on a broad, flat rock, but before they had their own meal, she warmed some of the milk, and they gave the kids their first lesson in drinking out of a bucket. Afterward it took but a few moments to strike camp. The burros were already packed, and the goat with her kids, all hobbled, were placed in the sled, and the cavalcade started on its way.

X

Cling to thy home! If there the meanest shed Yield thee a hearth and a shelter for thy head, And some poor plot, with vegetables stored, Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board, Unsavory bread, and herbs that scatter'd grow Wild on the river-brink, or mountain-brow; Yet e'en this cheerless mansion shall provide More heart's repose than all the world beside.

LEONIDAS.

"Do you know, Adam," said Robin, when they had walked a mile in silence, "do you know that you are a fraud?"

"Well, yes," he responded, "but I didn't know you knew it. Is the discovery recent?"

"Never mind about dates, but tell me why you didn't use the rifle instead of the lariat? What did you take it for?"

"I took it for your peace of mind. I didn't use it for several good and substantial and sentimental reasons. To reverse them, this last year I have grown to understand your horror of killing things. We have done very well without sacrificing any of our dependents; in fact, it would seem like murder to slaughter the animals about us. And it's such a little world it seems a pity to kill off any of its inhabitants. To tell the truth, I hope the bear got away all right. This is maudlin, I know, but I don't want my hand first to bring death on all there is left of earth. Incidentally,--there are no cartridges."

He stopped the horses, while Robin readjusted the kids to make them more comfortable, and took the lame one in her arms, then they moved on.

Presently she said, "I am so glad of these kids!"

There was so much enthusiasm in her voice that Adam laughed and asked why, and she answered:--

"Like you, I have sound and sentimental reasons. The sound one is that we shall need their fleece unless,--why, goodness gracious, Adam, there is a baking-powder can of flax in the dresser, and I never thought till this moment that we can plant it."

"True," answered Adam, "but given flax or fleece, what would you do with it?"

"Spin it," she answered sententiously. "Of course you think I can't, but it happens that I once lived, when I was a little girl, very near to an old woman. I don't refer to her age, but her ideas. She carded and spun and wove and dyed all the family clothing. She made her own soap and wouldn't have a stove in the house. She had eight children, too, and they all of them turned out badly. I used to go there off and on; I think she looked on me as a kind of sinful amusement. Anyhow, she told me the world was going to ruin, and the women were poor 'doless' creatures, who couldn't spin a hank of yarn, or gin a pound of cotton, or heel a sock. She shook her head over me when she found I couldn't knit, but she set a garter for me at once, and during the seven or eight years that I went by her door on my way to school she taught me all those marvelous accomplishments. I daresay I have forgotten them."

"What are the sentimental reasons?" asked Adam.

She looked at the kid as it nestled against her shoulder.

"I have a fancy," she said, "that Nannette and her children are going to minister to a mind diseased, and help pluck a rooted sorrow from the brain. The world was getting too healthy. Has it ever struck you that we have neither of us been sick for a day this year? I have had to mother the chickens, but there has been no suffering. I'm not glad to have pain come into the world, but it is good to be able to alleviate it. We will put Nannette in a sling till her leg has a chance to set, and by the time it is well she won't want to leave us. As for the kids, I expect they will be like the plague of frogs, and we shall find them in our beds and our ovens and our kneading troughs. Oh, Adam, there is the house! Doesn't it look dear and homey?"

She put the kid back on the sled, and ran on, pointing out this and that, the growth of the corn, the afternoon radiance, till they reached their doorway. Then there were a thousand things to do. First Nannette was made comfortable in the stable; then the chickens were summoned to a meal of yellow corn, and when Lassie drove the cows into the barnyard, each was congratulated in turn upon her calf, and those interesting, if wobbly, bovine infants were carefully inspected. After supper they sat down before the fire, very tired, but the nearest happy they had been in a year. The dogs were lying about them, and the thump, thump of first one tail and then another told the story of canine content, while the kittens walked over them impartially.

"What a strange thing human nature is!" Adam said. "The only thing needed to make our life perfect is that it shall not last. The moment, if that moment ever comes, when it is real no more, it will become ideal."

"I know," she said dreamily. "Things in the world used to be too good to be true. This must cease to be, to be good at all."

XI

Yet if Hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none. Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

POE.

"It is the first of May," said Adam. "It is a year ago to-day. Shall we pass the gateway?"

"Not now," answered Robin. "Wait till afternoon. I am so busy this morning."

She was sitting at the table teaching half a dozen little chickens to appreciate hard-boiled egg. The wounded kid was lying in her lap, one arm was about it, and an adventurous kitten looked over her shoulder. As she tapped on the board with one slender forefinger, the chickens, hearing their mother's bill, began picking up the fragments of egg. She had rounded out wonderfully in a year, and Adam realized for the first time that she was a very beautiful woman.

"Suppose," she went on, "you begin your book to-day. Write your description of a year ago. It will never be so plain again. There is plenty of time before we go. Besides, if it is a dream, we shall want the written record to show what dreams may come."