The Vision of Elijah Berl. Nason Frank Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ I wish oranges had never grown in this country. I was so happy before. Now you never think of me. You look at the mountains and the springs and the orange trees, but never at me." Her tears were flowing freely, her lips were tremulous.

      Elijah was moved, but without understanding.

      "Why! Haven't I always enjoyed showing them to you and talking to you about them? You know that I always tell you every thing that I am doing."

      "Yes, I know; but you get just as enthusiastic over them to Ralph Winston and he looks cold all the time and keeps criticising and contradicting you. It's just the same with the other men who come to look at your work. They don't care one single thing about you, and I do, and I tell you so, but you won't believe me."

      Amy's tears had ceased, her voice was steadier; but there was a suggestion of the eager heart hunger that looked from her eyes.

      "Winston isn't my wife, Amy – "

      "And he doesn't care for you. He says things to you I would not think of saying."

      Elijah made an impatient gesture, resuming his interrupted words.

      "I have a great idea, a great work. I have only shown what can be done. To actually do it, I must have money. I know these men don't care anything about me; I don't care anything about them, only to get them interested and convinced. If I can only do this, it means fame and fortune to me and, just think of what it all means! Just think! When these great, barren, red hillsides are all covered with orchards; with beautiful houses and thousands of happy, prosperous people; when the snows and rains of the San Bernardinos, instead of running to waste, will flow through tunnels and canals and make the desert blossom as the rose; then they will all say that this is the work of one man, of me, Elijah Berl!" Elijah's eyes kindled anew with the thought which he had elaborated.

      Amy saw and was terrified. Her soul shrank and shivered before the vision which he had conjured up. She could not have stated to herself the reason of her fear. Only one thought was keenly present to her, that henceforth she would be no longer the sole centre of her husband's life.

      "I don't want you to be great, Elijah. I want you, just as you are."

      Elijah saw the expression of his wife, not the principle which gave it birth. He caught a fleeting glimpse, a faint suggestion of the impelling principle that stimulates all men to the heights of achievement; the pride and glory of laying at the feet of love the laurels of their triumphs, the testimonials of worth wrung from a grudging world; the proud conviction that love is made secure by the assurance that its object is not unworthy. He failed to see that the principles which control a narrow though amiable mind, may be in hopeless antagonism with the broader views of higher mental endowment. He failed to see that each life has its limitations, that when it has given all, it can give no more. The time had not yet come for this knowledge. Therefore it was hidden from his eyes, that when it should come, a hopeless sorrow should come with it. He turned again to Amy.

      "I am not always going to be just what I am. I am going to do great things and you will be proud that I am your husband."

      "Don't, Elijah! Don't!" Amy clutched Elijah as if already she felt him slipping from her grasp. "I loved you as you were. I love you as you are. You can never be more dear to me. I don't know, Elijah; I am afraid." She buried her head on his shoulder. "I am afraid I shall not always be everything to you. I am so happy with you now. If I should ever be less happy, it would kill me."

      "Nonsense. Don't make pictures to get scared at." He drew his watch from his pocket. "I must go now. You know I promised to see Ralph at Ysleta this morning. Goodbye, and don't scare yourself any more."

      Elijah began to unclasp her arms. They were reluctant rather than resisting. He kissed her with a show of affection which was not absent, only obscured by other things; then he saddled his horse and rode away.

      Amy stood watching him with hard, dry eyes; with the unconscious superstition of the maiden who with trembling fingers plucks one by one the petals from a prophetic flower. "He loves me, he loves me not." She stood watching for a motion, a gesture which should assure her that her husband's thoughts were of her, even as hers were of him, making herself the wretched plaything of senseless Fate, instead of resting tranquil in the surety that she was its master.

      Elijah was absorbed in himself. He grew but a speck on the trail to Amy's watching eyes. There was not a motion which she could distort into a recognition of her existence. The last petal had fallen. "He loves me not."

      CHAPTER THREE

      Ysleta was booming and was being boomed. Avenues of graded sand, cleared of their desert growth, stretched in prim right angles far out into the horizon. White posts with staring, black numerals heralded city lots and bounded patches of cactus and chaparral which were thus protected from further molestation, and gave asylum to gophers and prairie dogs who had not lost their wits in the booming hubbub for the sole reason that nature had given them none to lose. Straining teams dragged great ploughs that tore through matted roots and turned furrows which slid back behind the parting share. Other sweating horses pulled scrapers of sand from dusty hummocks and plumped their loads in dustier hollows. Rows of bedraggled palms trailed out behind gangs of burrowing men or gathered in quincunx clumps where a glaring signboard proclaimed a city park. Thumping hammers and clinking trowels were raising uncouth buildings around the central plaza, adding other grotesque monstrosities to those which had already attained perfection in every detail that rebelled against a sense of beauty. Throngs of men and women trailed ankle deep through the new-turned sand and broke up into knots of animated discussion, or paused before a map of Ysleta to listen to a perspiring real estate agent repeating with tireless enthusiasm "the beauties of eternal sunshine in a land where burning heat and blasting cold never entered; a land where perennial spring went hand in hand with perennial autumn, where seed time and harvest trailed side by side, where dividing lines between summer and winter solstice were but meaningless numerals in the cycles of succeeding years; a land that for untold ages had slumbered and waxed fat with accumulated richness and where the sun had stored its genial warmth against the day when suffering humanity should wake to the knowledge of what California was and hasten to enjoy her stored up treasures."

      Blaring trumpets and booming drums accompanied aligned men, gorgeous with purple and gold; beribboned four-in-hands with varnished carriages trailed along behind, and a brazen-throated herald proclaimed a bounteous repast free to all who would honor his master by partaking.

      "Fall in! Fall in!" and knots of men balanced to the swing of the band and wheeled into line, choked with dust, blinded with dust, and covered with dust which the tearing ploughshares had softened up, and which eager feet were beating into the air.

      Into this bustle and blare, Elijah Berl rode as he had ridden many times of late. Unmoved, save for a contemptuous pity, he looked down upon the hurrying crowd, crazed by the lust of wealth, who bought today to sell tomorrow, each knowing that some would be caught in the reaction that was sure to come, but each steadfast in the confidence that his own good sense would protect him from the general ruin. He looked down to where the Sangre de Cristo, no longer an impetuous torrent, seeped lazily through its bed of shining sand; at the mass of tangled shrubs and clinging vines quickened by its waters into a riotous growth that blossomed and fruited in the sensuous sun. Over his shoulder, he looked at the distant slopes from which he had come. At the open door of a redwood cottage he dismounted and entered.

      "Hello, Ralph!"

      At the salutation, Winston's compact athletic figure straightened from his drawing-board.

      "Oh, hello, Elijah! You're just the man I wanted to see."

      "Have you decided yet?" Elijah's voice was eager.

      "Do you СКАЧАТЬ