"I have heard homesick people, living among the oranges, speak longingly of a place they called 'G.o.d's country.' I think we should make our home somewhere in 'G.o.d's country,' do you not?"

"Yes, dear," he exclaimed delightedly, "but where and what is 'G.o.d's country?' We hear about it, but its boundaries seem undefined. I take it that each individual has his or her ideal. I am confident, though, that ours are the same. Is not that so?"

"To me," she spoke bravely, "'G.o.d's country' is, first of all, where you are, and," she added reverently, "of course G.o.d is everywhere."

"Bless you," he said, "but, go on. Let us consider what we two think the essentials for our own 'G.o.d's country.'"

"It must be a country where the gra.s.s grows, where sod, turf, close-woven gra.s.s, cover the ground," she answered promptly. "The raw, unkempt plains and hills of the arid regions are not for us, nor is the stormless life of the land of oranges and grapes. We want, first of all, the good green sod, and, next, trees, waving, luxuriant elms and oaks and ash and beech and all their kindred, and their vines as well, wild grapes and ivy and bitter-sweet."

He smiled. "You have begun with the command in Genesis, instructing the Earth to bear, and so on, but I should go one step back in the epic of Creation and say, let us live by the waters where they are 'gathered together unto one place.' We must have a great body of water near us and, we must have rain."

"Yes, in summer, rain; in winter, snow. I want the four seasons."

"I don't know where we are to find four, that is an absolutely complete four," he said. "We can rarely boast a spring in its entirety. It seems to exist only in the dreams of the poets, or in England. I saw a real spring in England. But there are some pretty fair imitations of it, I'll admit, in many of our states, notably, for instance, in Michigan and Wisconsin." Adroit, time-serving man!

"Well, we can get along without an elaborate spring," she laughed, "if we can have a June, a real June, once a year."

And so they considered deliciously until it was decided that "G.o.d's country" for them, implied a green country in summer and a white country in winter, with vast water near, if possible, and that from Maine to the Western Mountains it existed, all without prejudice to other "G.o.d's countries" for other mortals elsewhere born.

Straightforward, reckless, trusting confidence, was it not, this conversation between the man and woman thus rejoined, but he was of the sort who do things, and she was a woman given fully. Besides--though in a world which ended--they had dreamed before.

This matter of great importance settled, there was silence for a time.

He looked upon her with devouring eyes. At last he broke forth:

"Now I want to draw my breath, but find it difficult. I am going to lean back and study you and try to think of the world as it has rearranged itself. I have not grasped it all yet. It is odd; it is great! I have you and you can't get away from me now! It is wonderful, this sudden possession, the possession rightly, even in all the conventional, in all that the weakling centuries dictate. No wonder that I am dazed. Ever as the world revolves, come new revelations of thought and of all existence. I dreamed that I knew things, but I didn't.

"What are you going to do about it, dearie? My heart is like a kettle in which everything is boiling, and it is foaming over the top with love for you. Can you not help me? What are you going to put into the kettle to stop this unseemly boiling? I don't want you to pour in cold water, or take the kettle off, or put the fire out. Oh, well, let 'er boil! I am afraid, my dear, that you will have to take care of me most of the time. I'm irresponsible.

"Let us talk about something practical, my dear woman," he rambled on.

"You look at me with your great eyes, and you know what the inevitable is. You know that you and I must face the world and all its dragons together after this. What fun it will be! Have you any suggestions to make? By the way, I like the trick of the top of your garments, the arrangement about your throat. You have tact and taste, and sense, my dear, yet you lack a mountain of judgment and discretion. You have intrusted yourself to me, reckless person! Now, cut loose and tell me something. I think that expression 'cut loose' is one of the best of all our Americanisms. Tell me something."

What could the woman say? She was puzzled over this wild, fumbling-thoughted lover, with his commingled gleams of fact and fancy.

But ever to the more admirable of the s.e.xes comes divination. There came into this gentle woman's mind a sudden radiance of comprehension. She knew what he was seeking. He wanted her, with all the selfishness of love, to be foolish with him. And this is what she said:

"I don't know. I only know what I think of his heart and soul, of the resources and qualities of one man in the world and that I am but the dependent woman--and I am most content, dear."

Then she became more venturesome and spoke more definitely and practically, as she knew he wished her to. She looked him squarely in the eyes:

"Make that place for us across the lake, the place of which we dreamed.

Never mind now about the town house. That will take care of itself, but the dream place, the 'Shack,' will not. When you were working with your coolies in another hemisphere I hope and believe you had your dreams about me, hopeless as they may have seemed. I want to tell you, great heart, that men do not dream all the dreams. Is it unwomanly, is it not just to you and as it should be that I should say to you now that the woman in America"--and her voice was tremulous--"was dreaming quite as constantly and sadly as the man upon the Russian steppes."

She was looking at him steadfastly and in her eyes were tears and the light which gleams only when the dearest of all fires is burning, a light reflected and intensified, if that were possible, in the eyes of him who was leaning silently forward and hardly breathing. She had gratified his wish. She had "cut loose."

They looked out upon the Kansas prairie, across which the train was scurrying. There were occasional houses, far apart, but the notable objects of the landscape were gaunt windmills which in midsummer drew water for the herds of cattle which even at this season could be seen huddled, more or less comfortably, here and there. The wind had swept bare great patches of pasture land and some of the cattle were browsing contentedly upon the dried gra.s.s left in autumn. There were many herds of them but the simile of "cattle on a thousand hills" did not apply, for there were no hills. The travelers looked out upon what was but an illimitable white blanket, with dots upon it. They looked upon a great country, but it was not for them.

They left the dining car and visited the Ca.s.sowary, where were still a.s.sembled a number of the group for whom through the days of imprisonment the luxurious sleeper had been a gathering-place, but they did not linger there. They sought the sleeping-car of the Far Away Lady where they lingered until night fell, for what they had said to each other was only the beginning. They had much to tell, and when Stafford slept that night there came to him no vexing or distempered dreams. He had come to a full realization of his new world and all its points of compa.s.s. To this strong, almost turbulent character a great peace and content had come. Though he was lying in the berth of a sleeping car there were in his ears, vague and incomplete words of the hackneyed but pleasant benediction:

"Sleep sweet within this quiet room, * * * whoe'er thou art, * * * no mournful yesterdays * * * disturb thy heart."

CHAPTER XXIX

AT LAST

Stafford waited for the Far Away Lady in the morning--she was to come to breakfast at ten o'clock--and met her as she entered the Ca.s.sowary. They went into the dining car together, and, as they seated themselves, she noted the added buoyancy of his look and was prepared for anything. The breakfast ordered, he leaned back and asked complacently:

"What do you think of clocks?"

The Far Away Lady looked at him in mild amazement: "Are you not a trifle vague?" she asked. "Is not that like what I have heard you call too much of a 'general proposition'? How can I answer you when I do not know what you mean?"

"Oh, well, maybe it was only a sort of 'general proposition,' but it was in earnest. This, my dear, is an important subject. They have clocks in houses, do they not? Now, it so happens that I am mightily interested in a home and, so, am necessarily interested in clocks. This home is not yet made, but it is as sure as anything within man's mortal scope may be, and clocks are part of the general theme. My dear lady, help me out."

She looked upon him indulgently in his lunacy. She understood, as she had the day before, though now the understanding was simple, since she had the key to his mood. Besides, even in the exuberance of his feelings, he was apparently, not quite so royally driveling, as on the occasion of his first outbreak. Her look grew almost motherly as he checked himself suddenly and informed her that he was pinching his arm to be sure that everything was true.

"Yes," he continued, "there is a great deal to clocks. They are wonderfully cheering and companionable. Their ticking, after a little, never annoys you, and you somehow, come to really need it and to feel a loss when the clock is stopped. It is, in a way, like the sound of the cricket on the hearth. While it is ticking you feel as if you had something alive and friendly about you."

"I like clocks, too," said the Far Away Lady, smiling into his foolish face.

"I had two clocks in China," went on the beaming Stafford, "and I had them with me wherever I was stationed. The transportation of such things was a nuisance, but they paid their way. One was a pretty clock with a softly beaming face, who struck the hours with a delightful chime. The other was a little alarm clock, and he was noisy and tough. He was a profligate. He became confidential with me, but there was always a certain reservation. Our souls never got absolutely close together, but he was a bulwark and a brother. He was all there. The charming clock with the chime I called St. Cecelia, and the little tough clock I called Billy. Sweetheart, you can hardly imagine what a comfort the two were to me. Away off there in the gray wastes of a vast territory, an engineer solving his problems practically alone, longing occasionally for companionship and finding it not among the alien Russian a.s.sistants or among the flat-faced Celestial laborers--well, then I'd go in to St.

Cecelia and Billy, and she would console softly and Billy would tick and swear with me in the most intimate companionship and understanding, and brace me up. Why, my girl, that clock was my right hand man and my adviser. I don't suppose he really advised, but he was somehow, always on deck. Billy and St. Cecelia are both in my baggage now."

"Billy appeals to me," said the lady. "Did he always awaken you?"

"No," admitted Stafford, "I was usually awakened by the racket of the coolies. Their clatter and chatter made them worse than sparrows. It wasn't Billy's utility as an alarm clock which endeared him, but a sort of personal affection which developed in me because he really deserved it. We were drawn together. St. Cecelia and I respected and admired each other, but Billy was such a flagrant fellow and whooped it up so when he struck that I got rather to lean upon him when I had anything approaching the blues. I had them, sometimes," said he more slowly and looking at her earnestly, "but Billy always sounded a note of reckless plunging ahead and hopefulness."

Here he stopped talking, apparently seized with a sudden inspiration.

Then, after a moment, he went on in the most casual manner: "By the way, dear, why can't we have Billy in the kitchen of the Shack? His hands show clearly against his face and he'd be excessively good to boil eggs by."

The fair countenance of the woman became suffused and the depths of her eyes were suddenly peopled beyond all the vision of any fate-reader's crystal. All the nymphs of love and sweet regard were there. She, like him, had been dreaming much of the Shack since their parting of the night before, and the knowledge that he also had been thinking of it, was something wonderful to her. He, too, then had been having fancies about the Shack, the dream home by the side of the water, the vision of the past, the certainty, now, of the future. They would never abandon that idea. And now there came to her--she could see nothing else--the miserable scene of the years past, the sh.o.r.e and the blue lake waters and the man with bursting heart drawing a picture which was at the time indeed a fantasy, talking bravely, seeking to hide his own suffering and make hers less, to gloss over the hard aspect of the parting,--and failing miserably.

She reached her hand across and put it in that of Stafford:

"We will have Billy and St. Cecelia both," she whispered.

Now these were not young people in their 'teens nor in the early twenties, yet they said and did what is now being told of them. Is the gold of the world, are all its great pa.s.sions and vast affection, but for the callow!

"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four," saith the venerable and justly popular author of Proverbs, and he concludes and crowns the list with "the way of a man with a maid." He might have made the same comment regarding the way of a maid with a man, but either way is insignificant in comparison with the ways of an intelligent man and woman in the full flux and prime of life, and who have learned.

There is a difference indescribable between youth and those who have come to the understanding comprehension of what is the greatest thing in the world. They own the consciousness of its magnitude, a knowledge which the others lack. Talk about love-making! Theirs is the unconscious, intense and honest art of the old masters.

He dawdled on in his day dream: "You know about the dogs, don't you?"--she nodded--"and we'll have chickens, of course, far from the house and garden, snow-white Leghorns, since they lay voraciously--'voracious' is the word--and eggs are the spice of life.

There'll be other things to eat, too, and in sunny cleared places in the wood there will be the most voluptuous asparagus and strawberry beds in the world, and, as for the eye and nose, your own flower garden, near the Shack,--Have we not talked of it, somewhere, before?--what a garden that will be! I know it already, because I know your fancies. No park gardening there, but the natural beauty and abandon of nature with a friend at hand. I can shut my eyes and see the roses and the dahlias and the hollyhocks and the old-fashioned pinks and the lilacs and all the old flowers and shrubs and a host of the newer ones which have won a deserved place since Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, and there is in my nostrils a blending of perfumes that makes any mention of Araby the Blest seem puerile, while the desert that 'shall rejoice and blossom as the rose' will be but as a sand spit compared with our responsive but untamed estate.

"And," he continued, "there is a fad of my own which I have not yet mentioned. I am going to be a benefactor of mankind--I suppose it was in me and had to come out--and our jungle home will afford the opportunity for carrying out my beneficent designs. I am going to make a domestic bird of one of the most desirable of birds existent. I refer to the quail, the bird that whistles on country fences and doesn't on toast.

I'm going to get a lot of them and treat them as if they were and had always been part of the family. They shall have a great wire-covered range and all conveniences of an outdoor home, and I'm going to keep on raising them and experimenting and trying until I have a really tame quail, one with atrophied wings and a trusting heart. That we'll do, dear, and coming generations shall rise up and call us blessed."