第97章 Linda's First Party(10)
Through the village, up the steep inclines, past placid lakes, past waving yellow mustard beds, beside highways where the breastplate of Mother Earth gleamed emerald and ruby against the background of billions of tiny, shining diamonds of the iceplant, past the old ostrich tree reproduced by etchers of note the world over, with grinding brakes, sliding down the breathless declivity leading to the shore, Linda stopped at last where the rock walls lifted sheer almost to the sky. She led Donald to a huge circle carpeted with cerise sand verbena, with pink and yellow iceplant bloom, with jewelled iceplant foliage, with the running blue of the lovely sea daisy, with the white and pink of the sea fig, where the walls were festooned with ferns, lichens, studded all over with flaming Our Lord's Candles, and strange, uncanny, grotesque flower forms, almost human in their writhing turns as they twisted around the rocks and slipped along clinging to the sheer walls. Just where the vegetation met the white, sea-washed sand, Linda spread the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the lunch box. At their feet adventurous waves tore themselves to foam on the sharp rocks. On their left they broke in booming spray, tearing and fretting the base of cliffs that had stood impregnable through aeons of such ceaseless attack and repulse.
"I wonder," said Donald, "how it comes that I have lived all my life in California, and today it seems to me that most of the worthwhile things I know about her I owe to you. When I go to college this winter t.he things I shall be telling the boys will be how I could gain a living, if I had to, on the desert, in Death Valley, from the walls of Multiflores Canyon; and how the waves go to smash on the rocks of Laguna, not to mention cactus fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand beefsteak. It's no wonder the artists of all the world come here copying these pictures.
It's no wonder they build these bungalows and live here for years, unsatisfied with their efforts to reproduce the pictures of the Master Painter of them all.""I wonder," said Linda, "if anybody is very easily satisfied. Iwonder today if Eileen is satisfied with being merely rich. Iwonder if we are satisfied to have this golden day together. Iwonder if the white swallows are satisfied with the sea. Iwonder if those rocks are satisfied and proud to stand impregnable against the constant torment of the tide.""I wonder, oh, Lord, how I wonder," broke in Donald, "about Katherine O'Donovan's lunch box. If you want a picture of per feet satisfaction, Belinda beloved, lead me to it!""Thank heaven you're mistaken," she said; "they spared me the 'Be'--. It's truly just 'Linda."'
"Well, I'm not sparing you the 'Be--'," said Donald, busy with the fastenings of the lunch basket. "Did you hear where I used it?""Yes, child, and I like it heaps," said Linda casually. "It's fine to have you like me. Awfully proud of myself.""You have two members of our family at your feet," said Donald soberly as he handed her packages from the box. "My dad is beginning to discourse on you with such signs of intelligence that I am almost led to believe, from some of his wildest outbursts, that he has had some personal experience in some way.""And why not?" asked Linda lightly. "Haven't I often told you that my father constantly went on fishing and hunting trips, that he was a great collector of botanical specimens, that he frequently took his friends with him? You might ask your father if he does not recall me as having fried fish and made coffee and rendered him camp service when I was a slip of a thing in the dawn of my teens.""Well, he didn't just mention it," said Donald, "but I can .easily see how it might have been."After they had finished one of Katy's inspired lunches, in which a large part of the inspiration had been mental on Linda's part and executive on Katy's, they climbed rock faces, skirted wave-beaten promontories, and stood peering from overhanging cliffs dipping down into the fathomless green sea, where the water boiled up in turbulent fury. Linda pointed out the rocks upon which she would sit, if she were a mermaid, to comb the seaweed from her hair. She could hear the sea bells ringing in those menacing depths, but Donald's ears were not so finely tuned. At the top of one of the highest cliffs they climbed, there grew a clump of slender pale green bushes, towering high above their heads with exquisitely cut blue-green leaves, lance shaped and slender. Donald looked at the fascinating growth appraisingly.
"Linda," he said, "do you know that the slimness and the sheerness and the audacious foothold and the beauty of that thing remind me of you? It is covered all over with the delicate frostbloom you taught me to see upon fruit. I find it everywhere but you have never told me what it is."Linda laughingly reached up and broke a spray of greenish-yellow tubular flowers, curving out like clustered trumpets spilling melody from their fluted throats.
"You will see it everywhere. You will find these flowers every month of the year," she said, "and I am particularly gladsome that this plant reminds you of me. I love the bluish-green 'bloom' of its sheer foliage. I love the music these flower trumpets make to me. I love the way it has traveled, God knows how, all the way from the Argentine and spread itself over our country wherever it is allowed footing. I am glad that there is soothing in these dried leaves for those who require it. I shall be delighted to set my seal on you with it. There are two little Spanish words that it suggests to the Mexican--Buena moza--but you shall find out for yourself what they mean."Encountering his father that night at his library door, Donald Whiting said to him: "May I come in, Dad? I have something Imust look up before I sleep. Have you a Spanish lexicon, or no doubt you have this in your head.""Well, I've a halting vocabulary," said the Judge. "What's your phrase?""Linda put this flower on me today," said Donald, "and she said she was pleased because I said the tall, slender bush it grew on reminded me of her. She gave me the Spanish name, but I don't know the exact significance of the decoration I am wearing until I learn the meaning of the phrase.""Try me on it," said the Judge.
" 'Buena moza,"' quoted Donald.
The Judge threw back his head and laughed heartily.
"Son," he said, "you should know that from the Latin you're learning. You should translate it instinctively. I couldn't tell you exactly whether a Spaniard would translate 'Buena'
'fine' or 'good.' Knowing their high-falutin' rendition of almost everything else I would take my chance on 'fine.' Son, your phrase means 'a fine girl.' "Donald looked down at the flower in his buttonhole, and then he looked straight at his father.
"And only the Lord knows, Dad," he said soberly, "exactly how fine Linda-girl is."