The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Give those to me,” said Sara. “My mother will take care of them.” She took the keys firmly from Allison’s hand.

  “All I wanted,” Allison told her, “was to get some of my things out of the tower room.”

  “Then you could ask permission. You could have knocked at my door and asked politely. You didn’t need to come sneaking in like a little thief behind my back.”

  “A thief!” Allison cried. “As if you had anything anybody’d want to steal. I looked through your old trunk.”

  Sara stepped toward her and Allison picked up her box in a scramble and fled. Sara slammed the door after her and enjoyed the reverberation that went shivering through the house. Let them take that downstairs! At least Allison had not regarded her as an inferior. Allison had been plainly frightened.

  Sara went to the bureau mirror and looked at herself. She did look rather frightening, she thought with satisfaction. Color bloomed in her cheeks again, but this time the tint was that of fury. Her dark eyes flashed and she looked thoroughly dangerous, if she did admit it herself.

  They’d better look out, these Renwicks. All of them. Nick too when he got home—whatever he was like. Though she had to admit that the only one she had frightened so far was a misfit of a child who had been dispossessed of her room.

  Suddenly her triumph faded. There was a hollow of loneliness in her, such loneliness as even Sara Jerome had never known before.

  The meeting with Ritchie had been utterly disappointing. True, he had greeted her warmly. And he had said nothing about an engagement to Judith, as he would surely have done if it were so. Or would he?

  Sara moved toward the bed, meaning to fling herself upon it. Until this moment she had not known how weary she was. But the spread bore the dent of Comstock’s body and she pulled it off, threw it across a chair. As she did so a glint of bright color against the dark floor caught her eye. She picked up what looked for a moment to be some golden trinket. Then she saw that it was only paper. A cigar band—a ragged one, at that. Probably a bit of the trash from Allison’s box. The medallion on the band was an impressive gold crown and there was red lettering all around.

  She moved to toss the frayed scrap into a wastebasket, and then stayed her hand. If this was a childish treasure of Allison’s, there was no point in throwing it away. She would return it sometime when the opportunity offered.

  She dropped the band into a drawer and stretched full length on the bed, trying to think of something comforting.

  If only she could remember her father. There would be consolation in a full remembering. In the little while she had known him, as a small child, there had been something warm and loving between them. There were dim memories that sometimes came to her and were surely concerned with her father. A misty consciousness of a big man with a cheery laugh and a pungent, male odor of tobacco smoke about him. There had been arms that squeezed a small person too hard, but were endured for the love behind them.

  As always, however, when she tried to reach into memory and make everything clear, a curtain seemed to fall without warning, cutting off what lay in the past. It was as if such thoughts might be dangerous to remember. Yet this was all there had ever been in her life of the enveloping love she had longed for. Now, in this house, there would be emptiness again, just as there had been in Chicago.

  At last, because she was weary, she slept.

  4

  When she awoke it was growing dark in the room. She lay still for a moment, trying to orient herself. The door was to her right, she knew, opposite the paler splotch of the front window. Remembering the mirror on the bureau, she got out of bed to fumble toward it with averted eyes. She meant to take no chances the very first night in this house. The swivel enabled her to tip the glass toward the ceiling. It could stay that way till she wanted to use it.

  Now she was conscious mainly of ravenous hunger. Judith had said they might ring for tea, but it was surely suppertime by this hour. She opened the door and stepped into the drearily lighted upper hall.

  The maid Susan came out of a room toward the back of the house, looking perky and fresh in a clean apron and cap.

  “Hello,” Sara said, craving companionship. “So that’s your room? Are all the others up here taken?”

  Susan shook her head. “The rest of the help sleeps out, except the coachman, and he’s got a room over the stable. This floor was so empty—I’m glad to have company up here. I have to hurry now—Miss Judith will need hooking up.”

  Sara wished she dared ask Susan about the ring Judith wore, but the girl hurried downstairs and Sara went to the door of her mother’s room and tapped on the dark panel. Mrs. Jerome called to her to come in and she found that her mother too had been having a nap.

  Sara pulled on the light by its cord—again a bare, ungracious bulb hanging high from the ceiling. Her mother’s room was smaller than her own, but less haphazardly furnished. The furniture was oak and not so shabby as the pieces in Sara’s room. A faded green carpet covered the floor and the air, minus tower drafts, was warmer.

  “How are you feeling?” Sara asked. “Goodness, but I’m hungry! Judith told us we could ring for tea.”

  Mary Jerome sat up in bed, pulled down her white eyelet corset cover to meet her underskirt, retied its drawstrings. The harsh light cast brown shadows beneath her eyes and she looked worn from the trip.

  “I’m still a little tired,” she said. “I don’t think we should get off on the wrong foot with the servants by asking anyone to carry a tea tray up two flights. Everyone seems pleasant, but of course they are sizing me up, since I’m to be in charge. Anyway, it’s late for tea.”

  “What about supper?”

  “Let’s see what time it is,” Mrs. Jerome said. “Please hand me my watch.”

  Sara gave her mother the small gold watch. It was attached to fleur de lis pin which Mrs. Jerome wore fastened to her shirtwaist on the opposite side from the eyeglass button. It had been a gift from Mr. Temple one Christmas long ago.

  “We can go down in fifteen minutes,” she said. “The family dines at seven thirty, and we can eat ahead of them at seven.”

  “In the dining room?” Sara asked. Back in Chicago she and her mother, being higher on the social scale than cook and housemaids, had been permitted their meals in the dining room, though not with the family.

  Mrs. Jerome folded her long cotton skirt about her legs and sat up wearily. “The dining room here is a banquet hall. No, there’s a smaller breakfast room where we can have our lunches and suppers. Breakfast we’ll get for ourselves in the kitchen. Suppose we dress now and I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”

  Sara was paying little attention. “Did you notice the engagement ring Judith Renwick is wearing?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Jerome carefully. “It’s very beautiful.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Mama, you don’t think—” but she wouldn’t say the dreadful words out loud. She would not give them that much credence.

  “No one has mentioned it, dear.” Her mother’s tone was gentle. “Let’s not cross bridges before we come to them. But, Sara, if Miss Renwick is engaged to Ritchie, then you must be a grown woman and face whatever has to be faced.”

  “It’s not true, anyway,” Sara said. “I won’t believe it.”

  She went back to her room, murmuring the words over to herself as she went.

  By the time she and her mother went down to the breakfast room together, she had recovered a semblance of good spirits.

  They found the breakfast room pleasant, with gay green paper on the walls. A cheerful fire burned in the grate and as the evening grew cool, its warmth was welcome. They were probably better off here than in some great barn of a dining hall. Sara’s spirits continued to rise. She had expected too much from Ritchie at the beginning. She must be patient, give him time.

  She talked enough for the two of them and set
herself to please and cheer her mother. It could not be easy for her to return to this city where she had been so unhappy and Sara longed to make this up to her. Though she wished she knew exactly what had happened to her mother.

  Once Allison came to the door and looked in on them. She had tidied up in a fresh dress, still an unbecoming dark color that did nothing for her sallow skin, and had a stiff black hair ribbon tied at the back of her head.

  “Good evening, Miss Allison,” said Mrs. Jerome pleasantly.

  Allison mumbled, “Good evening,” and went away after a moment, having said nothing else at all.

  “What an odd child,” Sara said and described her experiences of the day.

  Mrs. Jerome shook her head in sympathy. “She’s lonely, I expect.”

  Perhaps she could make friends with Allison, Sara thought, though the prospect did not seem too promising.

  After supper she returned to her room to finish unpacking. The question of Judith’s engagement remained unanswered, but she knew no one well enough to ask pointed questions. It was maddening to be in a houseful of people who knew, and yet not be able to ask. But she would surely find out tomorrow.

  For a moment she felt busy and hopeful. Tomorrow she would begin to live in San Francisco. Tomorrow there might be a better chance to talk with Ritchie.

  During the evening it began to rain. The sound made a great rush and clattering in her room, and cool gusts of wind were sucked down the stairway. Sara heaped more coal on the fire, slipped into a warm wrapper and did not mind at all. Before she went to bed she climbed into the tower itself and there in the noisy darkness she felt a sense of exhilaration. She had always loved storms. Even as a child she had exulted in them. Let thunder roar and lightning slash black skies—Sara Jerome felt no fear, but only a mounting stimulation. A restoring of life forces. Even the mirror dream had given her no fear of storms. It was something else she dreaded in the mirror.

  Tonight gusts of wind flung rain in wet swirls against the windows of her tower. This smaller, higher room seemed to tremble in the wind and she loved the stormy feeling of movement. She stood beneath the dome of the wind-shaken tower and watched the drenched lights of San Francisco swim and waver in the rain. If only Ritchie could share such a moment with her. Where was he now in this great house? She did not even know the door of his room.

  A sudden memory returned to her. When she and her mother had been with Mrs. Renwick in her sitting room, Judith’s mother had talked about how much she liked Ritchie. And she had spoken of “wonderful news.” What else could she have meant but that Ritchie and her daughter were engaged to be married?

  The rain was only rain now and the tower chilly. All Sara’s exhilaration faded and she went downstairs to bed in the square, unlovely room, trying to shut out thoughts of the ring on Judith’s finger and the possibility of her marriage to Ritchie.

  All the next morning it rained. After breakfast, Mrs. Jerome commenced her new duties and Sara, now unpacked and well ordered, ready for life to begin, had nothing to do. Once, roaming dejectedly down the stairs from third floor to first, she heard the familiar silken rustle of Judith’s taffeta petticoats and saw her opening a middle door off the corridor that ran parallel with the western side of the house. Judith noticed her and paused.

  “I’ve been thinking about your plan to look for work, Sara. I believe it’s an excellent one. You’ll need something to occupy your time. I’ll speak to my brother about it when he returns from his trip in a day or two. In the meantime, if you’d like something to read, there are magazines in the library. And of course books, if Allison has left any on the shelves. She has to be kept from moving the whole library into her room.”

  But Sara was staring at the ring on her left hand, hardly listening. She was able to hold back her question no longer. Judith herself could tell her.

  “You’ve become engaged since you were in Chicago,” Sara said flatly.

  “Why, yes,” said Judith. “Didn’t Ritchie tell you? He gave me my ring just a week ago.”

  It was as if her breath had been snatched away.

  “I thought,” Sara faltered. “I mean you said—” But there was no use in going on. What was there to say? She had a sense of unreality, as if none of this mattered very much.

  Judith watched her. “Sara—are you all right?”

  “Of course!” Sara said. She had no intention of betraying weakness before Judith.

  She would have turned away, but the older girl put a hand on her arm and her eyes were not without sympathy.

  “I know how much love can hurt, Sara. That’s why I was afraid this time. Even now I’m not sure—”

  Sara moved back from her touch. “If you’re not sure, how can you marry him?”

  “I’m not sure I won’t be hurt,” Judith said quietly and went toward the stairs.

  Sara found that she was standing alone in the front hall. She opened the nearest door and stepped into the Renwick drawing room. She had the queer feeling that nothing had happened. After that first moment of shock she felt perfectly all right. Her life had been completely smashed and she couldn’t feel anything. Sometimes a wound was like that, she remembered. The throbbing began later. For the moment she could only stare numbly around the vast room, noting its detail impersonally.

  It was an amazing room—big enough for a ball, surely, but so crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac that it looked smaller than it was. This, presumably, was further evidence of Mr. William Renwick’s old-fashioned tastes. Every inch of wall space was hung with valuable paintings, one above another, each touching the frame of a close neighbor. There were small rugs running diagonally over larger rugs, lush with Oriental color. Chairs and sofas were silk-fringed, and mirrors decked with velvet drapery. An enormous crystal chandelier hung from the center, reigning in splendor over the conglomeration of colors and shapes. At the far end stood a grand piano and beside it on the floor was a huge vase filled with long-stemmed roses. In every corner were the marble busts of gentlemen whom Sara did not recognize.

  She took inventory carefully, postponing the moment when she must face her own feelings. How very elegant, how fashionable must be the ladies and gentlemen who gathered here. As Ritchie’s wife she might have attended elaborate parties in such a room. But now she would never be Ritchie’s wife.

  She closed the door and went out. Down the hall was the dining room and, moving without direction, she crossed the threshold and looked in.

  This room was, as her mother had said, a banquet hall. The long table set in the center had acres of wine-red carpet space all about it. The great buffet gleamed with an elaborate silver service, and the chairs had brocaded seats. Everywhere, hung against dark wood paneling, were pictures, sometimes painted scenes, sometimes portraits of the Renwick family.

  If only she could have reached San Francisco sooner! If only she could have found her father’s family so that Ritchie could see her in a new light. But now it was too late. She would never sit with the others in such a dining room, facing Ritchie down the length of a table.

  She found the library next on the east side of the house. It looked cold and dark on this rainy day, with no fire in the grate. A gloomy room, in keeping with the mood that was slowly enveloping her.

  Sara turned on a lamp and searched idly through titles until she found the shelves of California history. The thing to do was occupy herself, keep busy. She took several volumes down and piled them on a table beside the big green leather chair near a window. The chair had the feeling of being much used and the leather was no longer new, but veined with faint cracks. Somehow Sara could not imagine the elegant Judith sitting in it. Judith was too slight for such a chair. And Ritchie had never been a great reader. The chair would lose Allison in one corner, and probably did. But it was not here for Allison alone.

  A book rested open on the velvet table runner beside her and she picked it up. It was
by some Roman philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. Next to the book lay a pipe and Sara picked that up too, weighed the smooth bowl in her hand. It had no feel of Ritchie about it and she set it down, smelling her fingers afterwards with distaste. Ritchie smoked cigarettes, not a pipe. So this chair and the pipe beside it, the book, must belong to the unknown Nicholas Renwick. Nick, they called him. Allison claimed him for her champion, the servants deferred to him, his mother, Hilda Renwick, resented him, and Judith spoke of him often as if the household revolved around him, ran at his bidding. Ritchie had never mentioned him at all.

  She mustn’t think of Ritchie. She didn’t dare.

  She found a book which told the story of the great Comstock Lode, and began to read. Hazy figures that she could imagine were her own people came to life and moved through the Bonanza excitement, taking part in it, becoming powerful and wealthy. But though she watched always for the name of Bishop, she did not find it at all. And if she had found it, it would not have mattered. It would come too late.

  Finally the book slipped from her knees onto the floor. She reached for the lamp chain and turned off the light. The chair was big enough to hold her like two great arms as she curled herself into it. She drew up her knees and rested her head upon them, but her eyes were dry and burning. A storm of weeping might have helped, but she could not cry.

  This was worse than when Ritchie had gone to San Francisco the first time. This was more final, more irrevocable, and it hurt all the more because it had been preceded by a period of brave hopes.

  Her mother found her there and tried to draw her out of the cold, dark room. But Sara stayed curled in her chair and would not move. Mary Jerome had learned the truth by now too, but she knew Sara well enough to realize that no offer of consolation or comfort could help her. She would have to work this out in her own way.

  She made only one quiet remark. “I wonder,” she said, “how much of your feeling about Ritchie grows out of old habit, out of determination, and how much of it is truly love.”