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The wall opposite the fireplace in the living room was a big dormer window stretching from the cushioned window seats almost to the ceiling—small diamond panes set in lead. From the window, preferably if you were sitting on the window seat, you could look across the garden and up the hill. There was a stretch of shady lawn under the garden oaks—around each oak there was a circle of carefully tended earth in which grew cinerarias, big ones with loads of flowers so heavy they bent the stems over, and ranging in color from scarlet to ultramarine. At the edge of the lawn, a line of fuchsias grew like little symbolic trees. In front of the fuchsias lay a shallow garden pool, the coping flush with the lawn for a very good reason.

Right at the edge of the garden, the hill started up, wild with cascara bushes and poison oak, with dry grass and live oak, very wild. If you didn’t go around to the front of the house you couldn’t tell it was on the very edge of the town.

Mary Teller, Mrs. Harry E. Teller, that is, knew the window and the garden were Right and she had a very good reason for knowing. Hadn’t she picked out the place where the house and the garden would be years ago? Hadn’t she seen the house and the garden a thousand times while the place was still a dry flat against the shoulder of a hill? For that matter, hadn’t she, during five years, looked at every attentive man and wondered whether he and that garden would go together? She didn’t think so much, “Would this man like such a garden?” but, “Would the garden like such a man?” For the garden was herself, and after all she had to marry some one she liked.

When she met Harry Teller, the garden seemed to like him. It may have surprised him a little when, after he had proposed and was waiting sulkily for his answer as men do, Mary broke into a description of a big dormer window and a garden with a lawn and oak trees and cinerarias and then a wild hill.

He said, “Of course,” rather perfunctorily.

Mary asked, “Do you think it’s silly?”

He was waiting a little sullenly. “Of course not.”

And then she remembered that he had proposed to her, and she accepted him, and let him kiss her. She said, “There will be a little cement pool flush with the lawn. Do you know why? Well, there are more birds on that hill than you’d ever think, yellowhammers and wild canaries and red-wing blackbirds, and of course sparrows and linnets, and lots of quail. Of course they’ll be coming down to drink there, won’t they?”

She was very pretty. He wanted to kiss her over and over, and she let him. “And fuchsias,” she said. “Don’t forget fuchsias. They’re like little tropical Christmas trees. We’ll have to have the lawn raked every day to keep the oak leaves up clear.”

He laughed at her. “You’re a funny little bug. The lot isn’t bought, and the house isn’t built, and the garden isn’t planted; and already you’re worrying about oak leaves on the lawn. You’re so pretty. You make me kind of—hungry.”

That startled her a little. A little expression of annoyance crossed her face. But nevertheless she let him kiss her again, and then sent him home and went to her room, where she had a little blue writing desk and on it a copy book to write things in. She took up a pen, of which the handle was a peacock feather, and she wrote, “Mary Teller” over and over again. Once or twice she wrote, “Mrs. Harry E. Teller.”

II

The lot was bought and the house was built, and they were married. Mary drew a careful plan of the garden, and when the workmen were putting it in she didn’t leave them alone for a moment. She knew to an inch where everything should be. And she drew the shape of the shallow pool for the cement workers, a kind of heart-shaped pool with no point at the bottom, with gradually sloping edges so the birds could drink easily.

Harry watched her with admiration. “Who could tell that such a pretty girl could have so much efficiency,” he said.

That pleased her, too; and she was very happy, so that she said, “You can plant some of the things you like in the garden, if you want.”

“No, Mary, I like too much to see your own mind coming out in the garden. You do it all your own way.”

She loved him for that; but after all, it was her garden. She had invented it, and willed it, and she had worked out the colors too, so carefully. It really wouldn’t have been nice if, for instance, Harry had wanted some flowers that didn’t go with the garden.

At last the green lawn was up, and the cinerarias around the oak trees bloomed in sunken pots. The little fuchsia trees had been moved in so carefully that not a leaf wilted.

The window seats behind the dormer windows were piled with cushions covered with bright, fadeless fabrics, for the sun shone in that window a good part of the day.

Mary waited until it was all done, all finished exactly as her mind had seen it; and then one evening when Harry came home from the office, she led him to the window seat. “You see,” she said softly. “There it is, just the way I wanted it.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Harry, “very beautiful.”

“In a way I’m sad that it’s done,” she said. “But mostly I’m glad. We won’t ever change it, will we, Harry? If a bush dies, we’ll put another one just like it in the same place.”

“Curious little bug,” he said.

“Well, you see I’ve thought about it so long that it’s part of me. If anything should be changed it would be like part of me being torn out.”

He put out his hand to touch her, and then withdrew it. “I love you so much,” he said, and then paused. “But I’m afraid of you, too.”

She smiled quietly. “You? Afraid of me? What’s there about me you can be afraid of?”

“Well, you’re kind of untouchable. There’s an inscrutability about you. Probably you don’t even know it yourself. You’re kind of like your own garden—fixed, and just so. I’m afraid to move around. I might disturb some of your plants.”

Mary was pleased. “Dear,” she said. “You let me do it. You made it my garden. Yes, you are dear.” And she let him kiss her.

III

He was proud of her when people came in to dinner. She was so pretty, so cool and perfect. Her bowls of flowers were exquisite, and she talked about the garden modestly, hesitantly, almost as though she were talking about herself. Sometimes she took her guests into the garden. She pointed to a fuchsia tree. “I didn’t know whether he would succeed,” she said, just as though the plant were a person. “He ate a lot of plant food before he decided to come around.” She smiled quietly to herself.

She was delightful when she worked in the garden. She wore a bright print dress, quite long in the skirt, and sleeveless. Somewhere she had found an old-fashioned sun-bonnet. She wore good sturdy gloves to protect her hands. Harry liked to watch her going about with a bag and a big spoon, putting plant food about the roots of her flowers. He liked it, too, when they went out at night to kill slugs and snails. Mary held the flashlight while Harry did the actual killing, crushing the slugs and snails into oozy, bubbling masses. He knew it must be a disgusting business to her, but the light never wavered. “Brave girl,” he thought. “She has a sturdiness in back of that fragile beauty.” She made the hunts exciting, too. “There’s a big one, creeping and creeping,” she would say. “He’s after that big bloom. Kill him! Kill him quickly!” They came into the house after the hunts laughing happily.

Mary was worried about the birds. “They don’t come down to drink,” she complained. “Not many of them. I wonder what’s keeping them away.”

“Maybe they aren’t used to it yet. They’ll come later. Maybe there’s a cat around.”

Her face flushed and she breathed deeply. Her pretty lips tightened away from her teeth. “If there’s a cat, I’ll put out poisoned fish,” she cried. “I won’t have a cat after my birds!”

Harry had to soothe her. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll buy an air gun. Then if a cat comes, we can shoot it, and it won’t kill the cat, but it’ll hurt, and the cat won’t come back.”

“Yes,” she said more calmly. “That might be better.”

The living room was very pleasant at night. The fire burned up in a sheet of flame. If there was a moon, Mary turned off the lights and then they sat looking through the window at the cool blue garden and the dark oak trees.

It was utterly calm and eternal out there. And then the garden ended and the dark thickets of the hill began.

“That’s the enemy,” Mary said one time. “That’s the world that wants to get in, all rough and tangled and unkempt. But it can’t get in because the fuchsias won’t let it. That’s what the fuchsias are there for, and they know it. The birds can get in. They live out in the wild, but they come to my garden for peace and for water.” She laughed softly. “There’s something profound in all that, Harry. I don’t know quite what it is. The quail are beginning to come down now. At least a dozen were at the pool this evening.”

He said, “I wish I could see the inside of your mind. It seems to flutter around, but it’s a cool, collected mind. It’s so—sure of itself.”

Mary went to sit on his lap for a moment. “Not so awfully sure. You don’t know, and I’m glad you don’t.”

IV

One night when Harry was reading his paper under the lamp, Mary jumped up. “I left my garden scissors outside,” she said. “The dew will rust them.”

Harry looked over his paper. “Can’t I get them for you?”

“No, I’ll go. You couldn’t find them.” She went out into the garden and found the shears, and then she looked in the window, into the living room. Harry was still reading his paper. The room was clear, like a picture, like the set of a play that was about to start. A curtain of fire waved up in the fireplace. Mary stood still and looked. There was the big, deep chair she had been sitting in a minute ago. What would she be doing if she hadn’t come outside? Suppose only essence, only mind and sight had come, leaving Mary in the chair? She could almost see herself sitting there. Her round arms and long fingers were resting on the chair. Her delicate, sensitive face was in profile, looking reflectively into the firelight. “What is she thinking about?” Mary whispered. “I wonder what’s going on in her mind. Will she get up? No, she’s just sitting there. The neck of that dress is too wide, see how it slips sideways over the shoulder. But that’s rather pretty. It looks careless, but neat and pretty. Now—she’s smiling. She must be thinking something nice.”

Suddenly Mary came to herself and realized what she had been doing. She was delighted. “There were two me’s,” she thought. “It was like having two lives, being able to see myself. That’s wonderful. I wonder whether I can see it whenever I want to. I saw just what other people see when they look at me. I must tell Harry about that.” But then a new picture formed; she saw herself explaining, trying to describe what had happened. She saw him looking over his paper with an intent, puzzled, almost pained look in his eyes. He tried so hard to understand when she told him things. He wanted to understand, and he never quite succeeded. If she told him about this vision tonight, he would ask questions. He would turn the thing over and over, trying to understand it, until finally he ruined it. He didn’t want to spoil the things she told him, but he just couldn’t help it. He needed too much light on things the light shriveled. No, she wouldn’t tell him. She would want to come out and do it again, and she couldn’t if he spoiled it for her.

Through the window she saw Harry put his paper down on his knee and look up at the door. She hurried in, showing him the shears to prove what she had gone for. “See, the rust was forming already. They’d’ve been all brown and nasty by morning.”

He nodded and smiled at her. “It says in the paper we’re going to have more trouble with that new loan bill. They put a lot of difficulties in our way. Somebody has to loan money when people want to borrow.”

“I don’t understand loans,” she said. “Somebody told me your company had title to nearly every automobile in town.”

He laughed. “Well, not all, but a good many of them, anyway. When times are a little bit hard, we make money.”

“It sounds terrible,” she observed. “It sounds like taking unfair advantage.”

He folded the paper and put it on the table beside his chair. “No, I don’t think it’s unfair,” he said. “The people must have the money, and we supply it. The law regulates the interest rate. We haven’t anything to do with that.”

She stretched her pretty arms and fingers on the chair, as she had seen them through the window. “I suppose it really isn’t unfair,” she said. “It just sounds as though you took advantage of people when they were down.”

Henry looked seriously into the fire for a long time. Mary could see him, and she knew he was worrying about what she said. Well, it would do him no harm to see what business really was like. Things seemed righter when you did them than when you thought about them. A little mental housecleaning mightn’t be a bad thing for Harry.

After a little, he looked over at her. “Dear, you don’t think it’s unfair practice, do you?”

“Why, I don’t know anything about loans. How can I tell what is fair?”

Harry insisted, “But do you feel it’s unfair? Are you ashamed of my business? I wouldn’t like it if you were.”

Suddenly Mary felt very glad and pleased. “I’m not ashamed, silly. Every one has a right to make a living. You do what you do well.”

“You’re sure, now?”

“Of course I’m sure, silly.”

After she was in bed in her own little bedroom she heard a faint click and saw the door knob turn, and then turn slowly back. The door was locked. It was a signal; there were things Mary didn’t like to talk about. The lock was an answer to a question, a clean, quick, decisive answer. It was peculiar about Harry, though. He always tried the door silently. It seemed as though he didn’t want her to know he had tried it. But she always did know. He was sweet and gentle. It seemed to make him ashamed when he turned the knob and found the door locked.

Mary pulled the light chain, and when her eyes had become accustomed to the dark, she looked out the window at her garden in the half moonlight. Harry was sweet, and understanding, too. That time about the dog. He had come running into the house, really running. His face was so red and excited that Mary had a nasty shock. She thought there had been an accident. Later in the evening she had a headache from the shock. Harry had shouted, “Joe Adams—his Irish Terrier bitch had puppies. He’s going to give me one! Thoroughbred stock, red as strawberries!” He had really wanted one of the pups. It hurt Mary that he couldn’t have one. But she was proud of his quick understanding of the situation. When she explained how a dog would—do things on the plants of her garden, or even dig in her flower beds, how, worst of all, a dog would keep the birds away from the pool, Harry understood. He might have trouble with complicated things, like that vision from the garden, but he understood about the dog. Later in the evening, when her head ached, he soothed her and patted Florida Water on her head. That was the curse of imagination. Mary had seen, actually seen the dog in her garden, and the dug holes, and ruined plants. It was almost as bad as though it actually happened. Harry was ashamed, but really he couldn’t help it if she had such an imagination. Mary couldn’t blame him, how could he have known?

V

Late in the afternoon, when the sun had gone behind the hill, there was a time Mary called the really garden time. Then the high-school girl was in from school and had taken charge of the kitchen. It was almost a sacred time. Mary walked out into the garden and across the lawn to a folding chair half behind one of the lawn oaks. She could watch the birds drinking in the pool from there. She could really feel the garden. When Harry came home from the office, he stayed in the house and read his paper until she came in from the garden, star-eyed. It made her unhappy to be disturbed.

The summer was just breaking. Mary looked into the kitchen and saw that everything was all right there. She went through the living room and lighted the laid fire, and then she was ready for the garden. The sun had just dropped behind the hill, and the blue gauze of the evening had settled among the oaks.

Mary thought, “It’s like millions of not quite invisible fairies coming into my garden. You can’t see one of them, but the millions change the color of the air.” She smiled to herself at the nice thought. The clipped lawn was damp and fresh with watering. The brilliant cinerarias threw little haloes of color into the air. The fuchsia trees were loaded with blooms. The buds, like little red Christmas tree ornaments, and the open blooms like ballet-skirted ladies. They were so right, the fuchsias, so absolutely right. And they discouraged the enemy on the other side, the brush and scrubby, untrimmed trees.

Mary walked across the lawn in the evening to her chair, and sat down. She could hear the birds gathering to come down to the pool. “Making up parties,” she thought, “coming to my garden in the evening. How they must love it! How I would like to come to my garden for the first time. If I could be two people—‘Good evening, come into the garden, Mary.’ ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely.’ ‘Yes, I like it, especially at this time. Quiet, now, Mary. Don’t frighten the birds.’ ” She sat as still as a mouse. Her lips were parted with expectancy. In the brush the quail twittered sharply. A yellowhammer dropped to the edge of the pool. Two little flycatchers flickered out over the water and stood still in the air, beating their wings. And then the quail ran out, with funny little steps. They stopped and cocked their heads, to see whether it was safe. Their leader, a big fellow with a crest like a black question mark, sounded the bugle-like “All clear” call, and the band came down to drink.

And then it happened, the wonderful thing. Out of the brush ran a white quail. Mary froze. Yes, it was a quail, no doubt of it, and white as snow. Oh, this was wonderful! A shiver of pleasure, a bursting of pleasure swelled in Mary’s breast. She held her breath. The dainty little white hen quail went to the other side of the pool, away from the ordinary quail. She paused and looked around, and then dipped her beak in the water.

“Why,” Mary cried to herself, “she’s like me! Maybe she is me.” A powerful ecstasy quivered in her body. “She’s like the essence of me, an essence boiled down to utter purity. She must be the queen of the quail. She makes every lovely thing that ever happened to me one thing.”

The white quail dipped her beak again and threw back her head to swallow.

The memories welled in Mary and filled her chest. Something sad, always something sad. The packages that came; untying the string was the ecstasy. The thing in the package was never quite—

The marvelous candy from Italy. “Don’t eat it, dear. It’s prettier than it’s good.” Mary never ate it, but looking as it was an ecstasy like this.

“What a pretty girl Mary is. She’s like a gentian, so quiet.” The hearing was an ecstasy like this.

“Mary dear, be very brave now. Your father has—passed away.” The first moment of loss was an ecstasy like this.

The white quail stretched a wing backward and smoothed down the feathers with her beak. “This is the me that was everything beautiful. This is the centre of me, my heart.”

VI

The blue air became purple in the garden. The fuchsia buds blazed like little candles. And then a gray shadow moved out of the brush. Mary’s mouth dropped open. She sat paralyzed with fear. A gray cat crept like death out of the brush, crept toward the pool and the drinking birds. Mary stared in horror. Her hand rose up to her tight throat. Then she broke the paralysis. She screamed terribly. The quail flew away on muttering wings. The cat bounded back into the brush. Still Mary screamed and screamed.

Harry ran out of the house crying, “Mary! What is it, Mary?”

She shuddered when he touched her. She began to cry hysterically. He took her up in his arms and carried her into the house, and into her own room. She lay quivering on the bed. “What was it, dear? What frightened you?”

“It was a cat,” she moaned. “It was creeping on the birds.” She sat up; her eyes blazed. “Harry, you must put out poison. Tonight you simply must put out some poison for that cat.”

“Lie back, dear. You’ve had a shock.”

“Promise me you’ll put out poison.” She looked closely at him and saw a rebellious light come into his eyes. “Promise.”

“Dear,” he apologized, “some dog might get it. Animals suffer terribly when they get poison.”

“I don’t care,” she cried. “I don’t want any animals in my garden, any kind.”

“No,” he said. “I won’t do that. No, I can’t do that. But I’ll get up early in the morning. I’ll take the new air gun and I’ll shoot that cat so he’ll never come back. The air gun shoots hard. It’ll make a hurt the cat won’t forget.”

It was the first thing he had ever refused. She didn’t know how to combat it; but her head ached, terribly. When it ached its worst he tried to make it up to her for refusing the poison. He kept a little pad soaked with Florida Water, and he patted it on her forehead. She wondered whether she should tell him about the white quail. He wouldn’t believe it. But maybe if he knew how important it was, he might poison the cat. She waited until her nerves were calm before she told him. “Dear, there was a white quail in the garden.”

“A white quail? Are you sure it wasn’t a pigeon?”

There it was. Right from the first he spoiled it. “I know quail,” she cried. “It was quite close to me. A white hen quail.”

“That would be a thing to see,” he said. “I never heard of one.”

“But I tell you I saw it.”

He dabbed at her forehead. “Well, I suppose it was an albino. No pigment in the feathers, something like that.”

She was growing hysterical again. “You don’t understand. That white quail was me, the secret me that no one can ever get at, the me that’s way inside.” Harry’s face was contorted with the struggle to understand. “Can’t you see, dear? The cat was after me. It was going to kill me. That’s why I want to poison it.” She studied his face. No, he didn’t understand, he couldn’t. Why had she told him? If she hadn’t been so upset she never would have told him.

“I’ll set my alarm clock,” he assured her. “Tomorrow morning I’ll give that cat something to remember.”

At ten o’clock he left her alone. And when he had gone Mary got up and locked the door.

His alarm clock bell awakened Mary in the morning. It was still dark in her room, but she could see the gray light of morning through the window. She heard Harry dressing quietly. He tiptoed past her door and went outside, closing the door silently for fear of awakening her. He carried the new shining air gun in his hand. The fresh gray morning air made him throw back his shoulders and step lightly over the damp lawn. He walked to the corner of the garden and lay down on his stomach in the wet grass.

The garden grew lighter. Already the quail were twittering metallically. The little brown band came to the edge of the brush and cocked their heads. Then the big leader called, “All’s well,” and his charges ran with quick steps to the pool. A moment later the white quail followed them. She went to the other side of the pool and dipped her beak and threw back her head. Harry raised the gun. The white quail tipped her head and looked toward him. The air gun spat with a vicious whisper. The quail flew off into the brush. But the white quail fell over and shuddered a moment, and lay still on the lawn.

Harry walked slowly over to her and picked her up. “I didn’t mean to kill it,” he said to himself. “I just wanted to scare it away.” He looked at the white bird in his hand. Right in the head, right under the eye the BB shot had gone. Harry stepped to the line of fuchsias and threw the quail up into the brush. The next moment he put down the gun and crashed up through the under growth. He found the white quail, carried her far up the hill and buried her under a pile of leaves.

Mary heard him pass her door. “Harry, did you shoot the cat?”

“It won’t ever come back,” he said through the door.

“Well, I hope you killed it, but I don’t want to hear the details.”

Harry walked on into the living room and sat down in a big chair. The room was still dusky, but through the big dormer window the garden glowed and the tops of the lawn oaks were afire with sunshine.

“What a skunk I am,” Harry said to himself. “What a dirty skunk, to kill a thing she loved so much.” He dropped his head and looked at the floor. “I’m lonely,” he said. “Oh, Lord, I’m so lonely!”

THE END

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

A cover was created for this ebook which is placed in the public domain.

[The end of The White Quail by John Steinbeck]