"They are all of people," Saxon said, remembering the beautiful paintings in Mark Hall's bungalow.
"My windows frame my landscape paintings," Mrs. Hale answered, pointing out of doors. "Inside I want only the faces of my dear ones whom I cannot have with me always. Some of them are dreadful rovers."
"Oh!" Saxon was on her feet and looking at a photograph. "You know Clara Hastings!"
"I ought to. I did everything but nurse her at my breast. She came to me when she was a little baby. Her mother was my sister.
Do you know how greatly you resemble her? I remarked it to Edmund yesterday. He had already seen it. It wasn't a bit strange that his heart leaped out to you two as you came drilling down behind those beautiful horses."
So Mrs. Hale was Clara's aunt--old stock that had crossed the Plains. Saxon knew now why she had reminded her so strongly of her own mother.
The talk whipped quite away from Billy, who could only admire the detailed work of the cedar desk while he listened. Saxon told of meeting Clara and Jack Hastings on their yacht and on their driving trip in Oregon. They were off again, Mrs. Eale said, having shipped their horses home from Vancouver and taken the Canadian Pacific on their way to England. Mrs. Hale knew Saxon's mother or, rather, her poems; and produced, not only "The Story of the Files," but a ponderous scrapbook which contained many of her mother's poems which Saxon had never seen. A sweet singer, Mrs. Hale said; but so many had sung in the days of gold and been forgotten. There had been no army of magazines then, and the poems had perished in local newspapers.
Jack Hastings had fallen in love with Clara, the talk ran on; then, visiting at Trillium Covert, he had fallen in love with Sonoma Valley and bought a magnificent home ranch, though little enough he saw of it, being away over the world so much of the time. Mrs. Hale talked of her own Journey across the Plains, a little girl, in the late Fifties, and, like Mrs. Mortimer, knew all about the fight at Little Meadow, and the tale of the massacre of the emigrant train of which Billy's father had been the sole survivor.
"And so," Saxon concluded, an hour later, "we've been three years searching for our valley of the moon, and now we've found it."
"Valley of the Moon?" Mrs. Hale queried. "Then you knew about it all the time. What kept you so long?"
"No; we didn't know. We just started on a blind search for it.
Mark Hall called it a pilgrimage, and was always teasing us to carry long staffs. He said when we found the spot we'd know, because then the staffs would burst into blossom. He laughed at all the good things we wanted in our valley, and one night he took me out and showed me the moon through a telescope. He said that was the only place we could find such a wonderful valley. He meant it was moonshine, but we adopted the name and went on looking for it."
"What a coincidence!" Mrs. Hale exclaimed. "For this is the Valley of the Moon."
"I know it," Saxon said with quiet confidence. "It has everything we wanted."
"But you don't understand, my dear. This is the Valley of the Moon. This is Sonoma Valley. Sonoma is an Indian word, and means the Valley of the Moon. That was what the Indians called it for untold ages before the first white men came. We, who love it, still so call it."
And then Saxon recalled the mysterious references Jack Hastings and his wife had made to it, and the talk tripped along until Billy grew restless. He cleared his throat significantly and interrupted.
"We want to find out about that ranch acrost the creek--who owns it, if they'll sell, where we'll find 'em, an' such things."
Mrs. Hale stood up.
"We'll go and see Edmund," she said, catching Saxon by the hand and leading the way.
"My!" Billy ejaculated, towering above her. "I used to think Saxon was small. But she'd make two of you."
"And you're pretty big," the little woman smiled; "but Edmund is taller than you, and broader-shouldered."
They crossed a bright hall, and found the big beautiful husband lying back reading in a huge Mission rocker. Beside it was another tiny child's chair of red-enameled rattan. Along the length of his thigh, the head on his knee and directed toward a smoldering log in a fireplace, clung an incredibly large striped cat. Like its master, it turned its head to greet the newcomers.
Again Saxon felt the loving benediction that abided in his face, his eyes, his hands--toward which she involuntarily dropped her eyes. Again she was impressed by the gentleness of them. They were hands of love. They were the hands of a type of man she had never dreamed existed. No one in that merry crowd of Carmel had prefigured him. They were artists. This was the scholar, the philosopher. In place of the passion of youth and all youth's mad revolt, was the benignance of wisdom. Those gentle hands had passed all the bitter by and plucked only the sweet of life.
Dearly as she loved them, she shuddered to think what some of those Carmelites would be like when they were as old as he--especially the dramatic critic and the Iron Man.
"Here are the dear children, Edmund," Mrs. Hale said. "What do you think! They want to buy the Madrono Ranch. They've been three years searching for it--I forgot to tell them we had searched ten years for Trillium Covert. Tell them all about it. Surely Mr.
Naismith is still of a mind to sell!"
They seated themselves in simple massive chairs, and Mrs. Hale took the tiny rattan beside the big Mission rocker, her slender hand curled like a tendril in Edmund's. And while Saxon listened to the talk, her eyes took in the grave rooms lined with books.
She began to realize how a mere structure of wood and stone may express the spirit of him who conceives and makes it. Those gentle hands had made all this--the very furniture, she guessed as her eyes roved from desk to chair, from work table to reading stand beside the bed in the other room, where stood a green-shaded lamp and orderly piles of magazines and books.
