The Californians

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

  XXV

  It was midnight, and Magdalena was still awake; a storm raged,prohibitive of sleep. The wind screamed over the hills, tearing the longribbons of rain to bits and flinging them in great handfuls against thewindows; from which they rebounded to the porch to skurry down the pipesand gurgle into the pools of the soaked ground below. The roar of theocean bore aloft another sound, a long heavy groan,--the fog-horn of theFarallones. Magdalena imagined the wild scene beyond the Golden Gate:the ships driven out of their course, bewildered by the fog, the loudunceasing rattle of the rigging, the hungry boom of the breakers, themountains and caverns of the raging Pacific. Her mind, open toimpressions once more, stirred as it had not during its period ofsubservience to the heart, and toward expression. Suffering had notworked those wonders with her literary faculty of which she had read;but she certainly wrote with something more of fluency, something lessof attenuated commonplace. She had finished her first story; andalthough it by no means satisfied her, she had passed on to the next,determined to write them all; then, with the education accruing fromlong practice, to go back to the beginnings and make them literature.To-night she forgot her stories and lay wondering at the ghostly imagesrolling through her brain, breaking upon the wall which stood betweenthemselves and speech,--hurled back to rise and form again. What did itmean? Was some dumb dead poet trying to speak through her brain,inextricably caught in the folds of her ravening intelligence beforerecognising its fatal limitations? Or was that intelligence but the halfof another, divided out there in eternity before being suckedearthwards? It was seldom that such fancies came to her nowadays, butto-night the storm shrieked with a thousand voices, no one of which wasunfamiliar to these ghosts in her mind. She had heard the expression"hell let loose" variously applied. Were those the souls of old andwicked mates tossed into the wild playground of the storm, helpless andfurious shuttle-cocks, yelling their protests with furious energy? Theidea that she too might have been wicked once thrilled Magdalenaunexpectedly: she had had a few sudden brief lapses into primal impulse,accompanied by a certain exaltation of mind. As she recalled them therest of her life seemed flat by comparison, and unburdened with meaning;something buried, unsuspected, left over from another existence, shookitself and made as if to leap to those doomed wretches, heavy withmemories, buffeting each other on the tides of the storm.

  A crash brought her upright. It had been preceded by a curious bumpingalong the front of the house. She realised in a moment what it meant:the flag-pole had snapped and been hurled to the ground. She thought ofher father's dismay, and shuddered slightly; she was in a mood to greetomens hospitably.

  Suddenly her eyes fixed themselves expandingly upon the door. She wascast in a heroic mould; but the storm and the vagaries of herimagination had unnerved her, and she shook violently as the knob wassoftly turned and the door moved forward with significant care. Had herfather gone suddenly mad? The possibility had crossed her mind more thanonce. She would lock her door hereafter.

  "What is it?" she faltered.

  The door was pushed open abruptly. Her uncle stood there. For a momentshe thought it was his ghost. The dim light of the hall shone on aghastly face, and he wore a long gown of grey flannel. He held one handpressed against his chest. In another second she heard the rattling ofhis breath. She sprang out of bed and ran to him.

  "I am going to die," Mr. Polk said. "Telegraph and ask her to come."

  She led him to his room, roused her father and mother, telephoned forthe doctor and a messenger boy, then went to her room, dressed, andwrote the telegram. She had little time to think, but the approach ofdeath made her hands shake a little, and lent an added significance tothe horrid sounds without. Death had been a mere name before these lastfew moments; he suddenly became an actual presence stalking the storm.

  The bell rang. She went down to the door herself. It was the messengerboy. She gave him the telegram to despatch, and told him to return andto remain on duty all night. Then she went to her uncle's room. Hermother and a dishevelled maid were compounding mustard plasters andheating water. Her father was huddled in an armchair, staring at thegasping form on the bed. Magdalena shuddered. His face was more terribleto look on than the sick man's.

  "It's pneumonia, of course," said Mrs. Yorba, in the hushed whisper ofthe sick room, although her hard voice was little more sympathetic inits lower register. "He was wet through when he came home thisafternoon. I should think it had rained enough for one year."

  The doctor came and eased the sufferer with morphine; but he gave thewatchers no hope.

  "He has no lungs, anyhow," he said. "This abrupt climax is rather amercy than otherwise."

  Magdalena remained by the bedside during all of the next day. Early inthe morning a telegram came from Mrs. Polk, saying that she was about tostart on a special train. The message was read to her husband, and hewhispered to Magdalena, "I should live until she came,--if she took aweek." That was the only remark he made until late in the day, when hemotioned to Magdalena to bend her ear to his lips. "Don't waste youryouth," he whispered; and then he coloured slightly, as if ashamed ofhaving broken the reticence of a lifetime.

  Don Roberto barely moved from the chair which commanded a view of thedying man's face. His own shrank visibly. He neither ate nor drank. Hissunken terror-struck eyes seemed staring through the passing face on thehigh pillows into an inferno beyond.

  "I declare, he gives me the horrors, and I'm not a nervous woman," saidMrs. Yorba to her daughter. "I never could understand your father'squeer ways. Who would ever have thought that he could care for anyonelike that? Poor Hiram! No one can feel worse than I do; but he has togo, and as the doctor says, this is a mercy; there's no use acting as ifyou had lost your last friend on earth."

  "Perhaps that's the way papa feels; and as you say, he's not like otherpeople."

  The only other person in the sick-room was Colonel Belmont. He came overas soon as he heard of the attack, and sat on the other side of the bedall day, when he was not attempting to make himself useful. His oldcomrade smiled when he entered; but Mr. Polk took little notice ofanyone. Occasionally his eyes rested with an expression of profound pityon the face of his brother-in-law: once or twice he pressed Magdalena'shand; but his attention chiefly centred on the door, although he knewthat his wife could not arrive until after midnight.

  Magdalena went to the train to meet her aunt. It was still raining, butcalmly. There was no gay and chattering crowd in Market Street, not eventhe light of a cable car flashing through the grey drizzle. Magdalenarecalled the night of the fire. Her inner life had undergone manyupheavals since that night; even her feeling for Helena was changed. Andher aunt was a mere memory.

  At the station she left the carriage and walked along the platform asthe train drew in. Mrs. Polk, assisted by a Mexican maid, descended fromthe car. She was very stout, but as she approached Magdalena, it wasevident that her carriage had lost nothing of majesty or grace. Shekissed her niece warmly.

  "So good you are to come for me, _mijita_. And when rain, too--sohorriblee San Francisco. Never I want to see again. And the uncle? howhe is?"

  "He says he will live until you come; but he won't live long after."

  "Poor man! I am sorry he go so soon. But all the mens die early inCalifornia now: work so hard. Live very old before the Americanoscoming."

  They could talk without restraint in the carriage, for the maid did notspeak English; but Mrs. Polk merely asked how her husband had caughtcold. Her fair placid face and sleepy eyes showed no print of the years.She seemed glad to see Magdalena again.

  "Often I wish have you with me in Santa Barbara," she said. "But Robertois what the Americanos call 'crank.' No is use asking him. Santa Barbarano is like in the old time, but is nice sleep place, where no have theneuralgia, and nothing to bother. Then always I have the few oldfamilies that are left, and we are so friends,--see each other everyday, and eat the Spanish dishes. I no know any Americanos; always Ihating them. So thin you are, _mijita_; I wish I can tak
e you back."

  But Magdalena felt no desire to go with her; her aunt seemed to belongto another life.

  When they reached home, Mrs. Polk went to Mrs. Yorba's room to removeher wraps and drink a cup of chocolate. She smoothed her beautiful duskyhair and arranged the old-fashioned lace about her throat, then sailedin all her languid majesty across the hall.

  "Aunt," said Magdalena, with her hand on the door of the sick room,"will--will--you kiss uncle?"

  Mrs. Polk raised her eyebrows. "Why, yes, is he wanting; but I neverkiss him in my life. Why now?"

  "He is dying, and he has wanted you more than anything."

  "So queer fancies the seeck people have. But I kiss him, of course."

  As she entered the room, Mr. Polk raised himself slightly and stared ather with an expression she had never seen in his young eyes. It thrilledher nerves within their mausoleum of flesh. She bent over and kissedhim. "Poor Eeram!" she said. "So sorry I am. But you no suffer, no?"

  He made no reply. He sank back to his pillows; and after greeting herbrother, she took a chair beside the bed and sat there until her husbanddied, in the ebb of the night. He held her hand, his eyes never leavingher beautiful face, never losing their hunger until the film coveredthem. What thoughts, what bitter regrets, what futile desires foranother beginning may have moved sluggishly in that disintegratingbrain, he carried with him into the magnificent vault which his widowerected on Lone Mountain.

  His will was read on the day following the funeral, in the parlour wherehis coffin had rested, and by the light of a solitary gas-jet. Magdalenahad never heard a will read before: she hoped she might never hearanother. The three women in their black gowns, the four executors andtrustees in their crow-black funeral clothes,--her father, ColonelBelmont, Mr. Washington, and Mr. Geary,--the big rustling document withits wearisome formalities,--made a more lugubrious picture than thelonely coffin of the day before. The terms of the will were simpleenough: the interest of the vast fortune was left to Mrs. Polk; upon herdeath it was to be divided between his sister and niece, the principalto go to Magdalena upon Mrs. Yorba's death. When Mr. Washington finishedreading the document, Don Roberto spoke for the first time in four days.

  "I go to resign. I no will be executor or trustee. No need me, anyhow."And he would listen to no argument.

  The next day he called a meeting of the bank's board of directors andresigned the presidency, requesting that Mr. Geary, a cautious and solidman, should succeed him. His wish was gratified, and he walked out ofthe bank, never to enter it again. His many other interests were in thehands of trustworthy agents: neither he nor his brother-in-law had evermade a mistake in their choice of servants. When he reached home, hewrote to each of these agents demanding monthly instead of quarterlyaccounts. He had a bed brought down to a small room adjoining the"office," and in these two rooms he announced his intention to livehenceforth. At the same time he informed his wife and daughter thattheir allowance hereafter would be one hundred dollars a year each, andthat he would pay no bills. Ah Kee, who had lived with him for twentyyears, would attend to the domestic supplies. Then he ordered his mealsbrought to the office, and shut himself up.

  On the third day Mrs. Polk said to Magdalena,--

  "Si I stay in this house one day more, I go mad, no less. Is like thedungeons in the Mission. _Madre de Dios!_ and you living like this foryears, perhaps; for Roberto grow more crank all the time. Come with me.I no think he know."

  "You may be sure that he knows everything. And I cannot leave them.Shall you go back to Santa Barbara? Don't you want to travel?"

  "_Dios de mi alma_; no! I think I go to die on that treep from SantaBarbara--so jolt. I am too old to travel. Once I think I like see Spain;but now I only want be comfortable. Well, si you change the mind andcome sometime, I am delight. But I go now: feel like I am old flowerwither up, without the sun."