Nothing was ever farther from his wife's thought than the presence of Cornelius Darby. The two had never lived for each other; they had lived for the accumulation of property that together they might gather in.
It was long after midnight before the family retired. The moon came out of hiding as the storm-cloud swept eastward. The night breezes were cool and sweet, scattering the flower petals, that the shower had beaten off, in little perfumy cloudlets about the rose-arbor and upon its stone door-step.
It was long after Jerry Swaim had gone to her room before she slept. Over and over the events of the day passed in review before her mind: the city shopping; the dainty lunch in the Delft room at La Señorita; the art exhibit and that one level gray landscape with the flaming, gorgeous sunset so unlike the green-and-gold sunset landscape of "Eden"; the homeward ride with all its dangerous thrills; the talk with Aunt Jerry; Eugene, Eugene, Eugene; Uncle Cornie with his discus, at the door of the rose-arbor, and all that he had said to her; the old, old songs, and the thunder-storm's tremendous beauty, and Uncle Cornie again – and dreams at last, and Jim Swaim, big, strong, shrewd; and Lesa, sweet-faced, visionary; and then sound slumber bringing complete oblivion.
Last to sleep and first to waken in the early morning was Jerry. Happy Jerry! Nobody as happy as she was could sleep – and yet – Uncle Cornie's last discus-throw had brought new thoughts that would not slip away as the storm had slipped up the Winnowoc into nowhere. A rift in the lute, a cloud speck in a blue June sky, was the memory of what Uncle Cornie had told her when he let his discus roll up to her very feet by the door of the rose-arbor. Jerry Swaim must not be troubled with lute rifts and cloud specks. The call of the early morning was in the air, the dewy, misty, rose-hued dawning of a beautiful day in a beautiful "Eden" where only beautiful things belong. And loveliest among them all was Jerry Swaim in her pink morning dress, her glorious crown of hair agleam in the sun's early rays, her blue eye full of light.
The sweetest spot to her in all "Eden" on this morning was the rose-arbor. It belonged to her now by right of Eugene and – Uncle Cornie. The snatches of an old love-ballad, one of the songs she had sung with Eugene the night before, were on her lips as she left the veranda and passed with light step down the lilac walk toward the arbor. The very grass blades seemed to sing with her, and all the rain-washed world glowed with green and gold and creamy white, pink and heliotrope and rose.
At the turn of the walk toward the arbor Jerry paused to drink in the richness of all this colorful scene. And then, for no reason at all, she remembered what Uncle Cornie had said about his colorless life. Strange that she had never, in her own frivolous existence, thought of him in that way before. But with the alchemy of love in her veins she began to see things in a new light. His had been a dull existence. If Aunt Jerry ever really loved him she must have forgotten it long ago. And he made so little noise in the world, anyhow, it was easy to forget that he was in it. She had forgotten him last night even after all that he had said. He had had no part in their music, nor the beauty of the storm.
But here he was up early and sitting at the doorway of the rose-arbor just as she had left him last night. He was leaning back in the angle of the slightly splintered trellis, his colorless face gray, save where a blue line ran down his cheek from a blue-black burn on his temple, his colorless eyes looking straight before him; the discus he had stooped to pick up in the twilight last night clasped in his colorless hands; his colorless life race run. His clothing, soaked by the midnight storm, clung wet and sagging about his shrunken form. But the rain-beaten rose-vines had showered his gray head with a halo of pink petals, and about his feet were drifts of fallen blossoms flowing out upon the rich green sod. Nature in loving pity had gently decked him with her daintiest hues, as if a world of lavish color would wipe away in a sweep of June-time beauty the memory of the lost drab years.
III
HITCHING THE WAGON TO A STAR
Behind the most expensive mourner's crape to be had in Philadelphia Jerusha Darby hid the least mournful of faces. Not that she had not been shocked that one bolt out of all that summer storm-cloud, barely splintering the rose-arbor, should strike the head leaning against it with a blow so faint and yet so fatal; nor that she would not miss Cornelius and find it very inconvenient to fill his place in her business management. Every business needs some one to fetch and carry and play the watch-dog. And in these days of expensive labor watch-dogs come high and are not always well trained. But everybody must go sometime. That is, everybody else. To Mrs. Darby's cast of mind the scheme of death and final reckoning as belonging to a general experience was never intended for her individually. After all, things work out all right under Providential guidance. Eugene Wellington was a fortunate provision of an all-wise Providence. Eugene had some of his late cousin's ability. He would come in time to fill the vacant chair by the roll-top desk in the city banking and business house. Moreover, to the eyes of age he was a thousandfold more interesting and resourceful than the colorless quiet one whose loss would be felt of course, of course.
The reddest roses of "Eden" bloomed the next June on Cornelius Darby's grave, the brightest leaves of autumn covered him warmly from the winter's snows, and the places that had never felt his living presence missed him no more forever.
There was a steady downpour of summer rain on the day following the funeral at "Eden." Mrs. Darby was very busy with post-mortem details and Eugene Wellington's services were in constant demand by her, while Jerry Swaim wandered aimlessly about the house with a sense of the uselessness of her existence forcing itself upon her for the first time. Late in the afternoon, when the big rooms with all their luxurious appointments seemed unbearable, she slipped down the sodden way to the rose-arbor. There was a shower of new buds showing now under the beneficence of the warm rain, and all the withered petals of fallen blossoms were swept from sight.
As Jerry dropped into an easy willow rocker her eye fell on the splintered angle of the trellis by the doorway where Uncle Cornie had sat when the last summons came to him. A folded paper lay under the seat, inside the door, as if it had been blown from his pocket by a whirl of wind in that midnight thunder-storm.
Jerry stared at the paper a long time before it occurred to her to pick it up. At last, in a mechanical way, she took it from under the seat and spread it out on the broad arm of her chair. As she read its contents her listlessness fell away, the dreamy blue eyes glowed with a new light, the firm mouth took on a bit more of firmness, and the strong little hands holding the paper did not tremble.
"A claim in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas." Jerry spoke slowly. "It lies in Range – Township – Oh, that's all Greek to me! They must number land out there like lots in the potter's-field corner of the cemetery that we drove by yesterday. Maybe they may all be dead ones, paupers at that, in Kansas. It is controlled, or something, by York Macpherson of the Macpherson Mortgage Company of New Eden —New Eden– Kansas. Uncle Cornie told me it hadn't brought any income, but that wasn't York Macpherson's fault. Strange that I remember all that Uncle Cornie said here the other night."
The girl read the document spread out before her a second time. When she lifted her face again it was another Jerry Swaim who looked out through the dark-blue eyes. The rain had ceased falling. A cool breeze was playing up the Winnowoc Valley, and low in the west shafts of sunlight were piercing the thinning gray clouds.
"Twelve hundred acres! A prince's holdings! Why 'Eden' has only two hundred! And that is at New Eden. It 'hasn't been well managed.' I know who's going to manage it now. I'm the daughter of Jim Swaim. He was a good business man. And Aunt Darby – " A smile broke the set line about the red lips. "I'd never dare to say she didn't understand how to manage things, Chief of Staff to the General who runs the Universe, she is."
Then the serious mood came back as the girl stared out at the meadows and growing grain of the "Eden" farmland. A sudden resolve had formed in her mind – Jerry Swaim the type all her own, not possible to forecast.
"Father wanted me to know what it means to be independent. I'll find out. If this 'Eden' can be so beautiful and profitable, what can I not make out of twelve hundred acres, in a New Eden? And it will be such a splendid lark, just the kind of thing I have always dreamed of doing. Aunt Jerry will say that I'm crazy, or that I'm Lesa Swaim's own child. Well, I am, but