The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “It’s rather fun to watch them, isn’t it?” said a man’s voice behind her. “More fun than being down there.”

  Sara froze in her ignominious position on her knees. She turned her head slowly and saw his legs first—long legs encased in well-cut gray trousers. Her braid swung over her shoulder as her eyes traveled upward. A very long way upward. This man was tall. Tall enough to make even Sara Jerome seem small, had she been on her own feet, instead of kneeling at his. He was rather thin too. The bones in his cheeks stood out, spoiling any claim he might have had to being handsome. His hair was dark and straight, not softly waved like Ritchie’s, and he had gray eyes which seemed to see clearly and with penetration. His straight mouth was barely smiling, yet he did not seem angry as he looked at the huddled figure at his feet.

  “You’re the new housekeeper’s little girl, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Sara choked and tried not to laugh out loud.

  He went on, kindly and reassuringly, evidently taking her lack of reply for confusion. “I am Nicholas Renwick. I expect every child who lives in this house will find that particular vantage post sooner or later. I used it myself as a boy. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to go down and join the party. I slipped in by the side door and they don’t know I’m home ahead of time.”

  He nodded to her and went down the stairs. Still suppressing her desire to laugh, she watched him all the way down. When he reached the last step he glanced toward her dim post and waved before he vanished into the dining room. Sara sat rigid until he was out of sight. Then she jumped up and ran upstairs to her room.

  She kicked off her slippers and hopped into bed, put her head down on drawn-up knees and smothered her laughter in the bedclothes.

  “Little girl,” he had said. And she had probably looked that, crouched small in the shapeless robe, with her hair down her back. She really ought to regard the matter seriously, decide on what she might say and do when next she faced Mr. Nicholas Renwick.

  But in the end she could only cover her face with the quilt and shake with laughter. It was good to laugh. Somehow—laughter was a relief and a release. It pushed tears that much farther away.

  5

  That night, long after she had gone to sleep, Sara was wakened by the distant sound of piano music. The diners must now be in the drawing room, and someone was playing for them. Nick’s Jenny-Geneva? No, Sara thought not. She remembered having heard music like this before. It could be no one but Judith.

  When Judith had come to Chicago on that visit with her mother, she had sometimes played the piano in the Temple parlor. Sara knew little about music except through her own emotional response to it. But everyone said Judith’s technique was perfection itself. The most difficult passages tripped without error from her fingers. But always, Sara felt, it was chill music, music that did not satisfy the listener. Whether the tempo was swift or slow, whether she played crescendo or diminuendo, there was no heart behind her touch. It was the sweet, clear sound of glass set ringing, but it was not music that could make you laugh or cry.

  On a few special occasions in Chicago Mrs. Jerome had taken Sara to concerts at Orchestra Hall. Once they had heard a famous pianist play an all-Chopin program. For a long while afterwards Sara had not been able to get the stirring measures of the Polonaise out of her mind. Now Judith was playing it—a tinkling thing without the spirit the composer had written into his music.

  Poor Ritchie, Sara thought with unexpected pity for him. Why had he not seen that Judith was like that—empty, emotionless? Why did he want her instead of Sara who brimmed to overflowing with the need to love warmly and to be loved with equal warmth in return. What need had Judith for love?

  Yet something about this cool, remote music brought tears to Sara’s eyes before she fell asleep.

  The first thing in the morning Allison, ready for school, came pounding on Sara’s door. At least she knocked now, though with a somewhat heavy hand.

  Sara got up and opened the door sleepily. “It’s practically dawn,” she protested.

  “Dawn!” cried Allison in scorn. “I’ve been up for hours. I just wanted to tell you before I left for school that my brother Nick is home. And the very first thing today when I see him I’m going to ask for my room back. He won’t let you stay here.”

  “Well, you could at least let me sleep till I’m put out,” Sara said. “But now that you’re here, wait a minute. I have something of yours.”

  She went to the bureau and opened the top drawer, fumbled among handkerchiefs and gloves, while Allison waited curiously.

  “Why do you tip your mirror back like that?” the child asked.

  “Because I like to see the ceiling,” Sara muttered. “Here—I think this cigar band belongs to you. I found it on the floor after you spilled all your truck.”

  Color rose in Allison’s sallow cheeks. She made no effort to take the band, but stood where she was, staring at it.

  “What is the matter?” Sara asked, “You look as guilty as though you’d been smoking cigars. I won’t tell if you have.”

  Allison snatched the band from her and ran out of the room. Sara could only shrug the incident aside. Whatever the association that band had in Allison’s mind, it was one which embarrassed her.

  Breakfast was the meal Sara liked least, since it must be eaten in the kitchen, the family having taken over the breakfast room for its proper use. Sara ate hastily, alone at the kitchen table with the servants busy around her, paying no attention except when she was in their way. Having eaten, she roamed the halls again, wondering if she would run into Nicholas Renwick. She rather looked forward to the next encounter with him. However, he had apparently gone early to the office and was not to be seen around the house.

  During the morning Mrs. Renwick sent word that Sara and her mother were to have lunch with her that day. This, at least, promised an interesting change of routine, since Sara had liked Mrs. Renwick and found her unexpected and amusing.

  At noon Mrs. Jerome came to her daughter’s room and they went downstairs together. In Mrs. Renwick’s suite a scrawny little woman, evidently the dressmaker, was bundling up her sewing, getting ready to leave after the morning’s work. A Singer sewing machine stood out from the wall and there were threads and snippings of cloth all over the carpet.

  Hilda Renwick, corsetless and comfortable in a frilly negligee, greeted them cheerfully from her chaise longue.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Jerome. Good morning, Sara. I’m glad you came in time to meet Millie. This is Miss Millie Matson, who is very busy these days with Judith’s trousseau. Without her, I’d never know what was going on in San Francisco. Millie, this is Mrs. Jerome and her daughter Sara, who are making life more comfortable for us in this house.”

  The sour grimace Miss Millie turned upon them was meant, Sara decided, to be a smile. The woman nodded curtly and her bright eyes, like beads of black jet, took in every inch of the gray suit which Sara had put on this morning, on the bare chance that she might meet Mr. Nicholas Renwick in the halls. She wanted to restore her young-lady status and prove her dignity after last night. “You didn’t make that yourself,” Miss Millie stated flatly, her eyes upon the fashionable bolero jacket.

  “No, my mother made it,” said Sara. “But I cut it out.”

  “Whose pattern?” Miss Millie asked.

  “Well, I planned it,” Sara said diffidently. She had no desire to set her talents up for professional comparison.

  “Humph,” said Miss Millie, and there was no knowing whether she implied praise or blame. After telling Mrs. Renwick she would be back in a couple of days, she went off with a scant nod for Sara and her mother.

  Mrs. Renwick laughed comfortably. “I won’t say, ‘Don’t let her frighten you,’ because she is a positive terror. No San Francisco secret is safe within three blocks of our Miss Millie. I couldn’t do without her. Well, come along—I have my
meals served in my own little dining room. Then I can see people or not as I please.”

  She hoisted her bulky person up from the chair, pulled her robe around her and slapped toward the door in loose bedroom slippers.

  The dining room was small and had been done in pink rosebuds which looked like bedroom paper. There was not a heavy, dark note in it. Decorative Oriental plates of red and gold china graced a rack about the wall. The chairs were painted gray, with pink satin seats, and the gleam of silver serving dishes added a further bright accent.

  Mrs. Renwick looked about proudly. “The only mahogany piece in here is the table and I keep that hidden under a pink tablecloth. All my life I’ve eaten in mahogany-heavy dining rooms. Pink’s good for the digestion. My doctor says so. Of course I gave him the idea, but he’s delighted with it. Says he’ll pass it on to his other patients. Here, Sara, next to me. I like young people, even though the modern generation alarms me. Will you take the end place, Mrs. Jerome?”

  They sat down and Mrs. Renwick lifted a long-stemmed silver bell at her place and rang for the butler.

  “Light the candles, Jonsey,” Mrs. Renwick directed. “I do like candles for company.”

  The room was brightly pink and sun streamed in the windows, but Jonsey solemnly lit the candles in their branched candelabrum at each end of the table. Mrs. Renwick regarded room and guests happily.

  “I suppose Judith has told you that I’ve gone to pot? It’s wonderful to be irresponsible and do as I like. William Renwick was as fine a husband as any woman could have. But he knew exactly what he wanted in a wife. I shall always be glad I was able to give him what he expected. I dressed stylishly and kept my figure at the size he thought most ladylike—thank heaven he never cared for ladies who were puny. I spoke only to the right people—those, that is, who would speak to me. Old San Francisco snubbed us, of course. They put no stock in money, but only in blood, and while ours is healthy, it’s more red than blue. But we had lots of Bonanza company up here on the hill, so we weren’t lonely.”

  The butler moved impassively, serving the rich luncheon Mrs. Renwick had ordered.

  “Now that I’ve let down I do only what I like. I have let down, haven’t I, Jonsey?”

  “Yes, madam,” said Jonsey politely, serving Sara from a platter of salmon creamed with a luscious egg sauce.

  Sara stole a look at her mother once or twice and almost smiled at her expression of bafflement and disbelief.

  Mostly during the luncheon the guests said little. Mrs. Renwick enjoyed the sound of her own voice and required few responses. She had been rather a timid and suppressed child, she admitted—it was pleasant to be over that. Never, never would she go back to being young. Her one regret was that she could not seem to be a better mother to Allison. This was what Nick couldn’t forgive her. But how did one go about being a mother to a child like Allison? She rolled her eyes heavenward and shrugged expansively.

  “The girl won’t be touched, she won’t be talked to, she won’t be loved,” Mrs. Renwick said, and for a moment there was no laughter, no outrageous joke in her eyes.

  While they were finishing lunch, Nicholas Renwick came into the room. Sara knew his voice, though he stood behind her in the doorway. She smiled and waited.

  “Darling!” Hilda Renwick cried. “How nice to see you! Did you have a good trip? Do let me call Jonsey to set another plate so you—”

  “Not today, Mother. Thank you. I promised to lunch with Judith and Allison. They’re going into the dining room now. But since I had no chance to see you last night or this morning, I wanted to pay my respects. The trip went well enough. Good morning, Mrs. Jerome.”

  There was a brief silence and Sara could almost feel his eyes on the back of her head.

  “This is Sara,” Mrs. Renwick said. “Miss Sara Jerome.”

  Nick came around the table for a better look. He said, “How-do-you-do,” politely, but with surprise and a hint of amusement.

  Sara smiled and acknowledged the introduction. Nick Renwick would not give her away, she sensed.

  “I’m afraid Allison is disturbed because I’ve been given her playroom,” she told him. “Ritchie must have remembered how I loved towers when he suggested it. This tower is wonderful. I hope I won’t have to give it up.”

  Nick seemed surprised. “Why, yes, Allison mentioned the room to me just now when I came in from the office. She says she likes you and she thinks you ought to keep it. Thank you, Miss Jerome, for being so kind to her.”

  He kissed his mother lightly on the cheek and went out, while Sara looked after him in astonishment. He had surprised her more than she had surprised him.

  “How very nice that you’ve befriended Allison,” Mrs. Renwick said. “I know the child is lonely, though she won’t admit it.”

  “I—I didn’t know that I had,” said Sara frankly.

  Mrs. Renwick nodded. “I understand how that can be. And I wouldn’t put too much stock in it anyway. Likely as not she’ll be screaming to have you out of the room by tomorrow. Children are a problem! Thank heavens Judith is settled at last. I’m delighted over her engagement to Ritchie and I can’t think why she has postponed it for so long. Of course she had a heartbreaking experience a few years ago with a young man who proved to be a roué and a rascal—a mere money-seeker. Judith was desperately in love with him. If William hadn’t shown him up and sent him packing she’d have thrown her life away. The poor girl has been fearful of her own judgment and distrustful of men ever since.”

  Sara winced inwardly, but the revelation surprised her. She wouldn’t have thought Judith could step out of her shell long enough to fall in love.

  Clearly Mrs. Renwick had no inhibitions when it came to talking about family affairs. The fact that those she talked about so readily might have preferred more reticence on her part never occurred to her.

  “Now if Nick would just make up his mind about Geneva,” she ran on, “everything would be perfect. Goodness knows the child is mad about him. And I do like having her around. She goes out of her way to visit with me and make me comfortable. In fact, I expect it’s more at my invitation than Nick’s that she comes here so often. A dear child, really. Well, since we’ve finished our ices—”

  Her sentence was interrupted by a shiver that seemed to start underfoot and run through the house. Sara saw the painted china dishes on the wall rack tilt forward, then settle back. The sensation quieted in seconds, but it was startling while it lasted.

  Mrs. Renwick’s laugh was cheerful. “There, Sara, you’ve had your first earthquake. Though I can’t say it was a really good sample.”

  “I’ve wondered what one would feel like,” said Sara.

  “That’s the spirit.” Mrs. Renwick approved. “No good San Franciscan ever regards a quake as anything but a joke. Mercy, Mrs. Jerome—you’re not frightened?”

  Sara saw that her mother was dabbing at her lips with her handkerchief.

  “I’m afraid I—I shall never become accustomed to earthquakes,” she said.

  “You’ll be all right in a minute,” Mrs. Renwick assured her kindly. “I imagine it seems a nasty feeling to strangers. Sara, I saw you watching my Japanese plates. But you needn’t worry—I’ve had them wired into place. William treasured them and I’d feel terrible if anything happened to them. He brought them home from one of his trips. I’ve never lost one even in a good quake. What we just had was a mere vibration. But as I was about to say, do let’s go back to my sitting room and be comfortable.”

  She rose and Sara glanced at her mother as she left the table. Mrs. Jerome had recovered, but Sara knew she must be remembering other quakes. An earthquake was no new experience to her.

  Mrs. Renwick chattered on as she returned to her favorite chair with a sigh of repleteness. “Do stay and visit me. After all, I haven’t a single tidbit about you to report to Miss Millie when she comes next time. Not that sh
e needs any help. She can take one look and ferret out a whole family history. Undoubtedly it will be all over San Francisco by tonight that a gentlewoman named Mary Jerome has come to work as housekeeper for the Renwicks. And that her daughter is a handsome young thing who dresses like a Paris model.”

  Sara saw her mother wince. Perhaps Millie Matson might be the right one on whom to try the name of Bishop.

  As they sat down in the sitting room, Mrs. Renwick nodded toward the picture-crowded walls behind her chair. “There is my husband, Willie. The double pictures of us in the middle. They were taken during the first year of our marriage. Wasn’t I pretty then?”

  Two old-fashioned photographs, somewhat yellowed by age, had been mounted in a wide, forget-me-not painted border and framed beneath one glass. The man looked a little like his son Nick, with the same high cheekbones. But obviously William Renwick had been built more of iron than of flesh. His eyes were cool as Judith’s, his mouth undoubtedly set grimly beneath the usual bushy mustache.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Renwick fondly, “I never called him ‘Willie’ while he was alive. But I’m afraid he has let down too, lately, poor dear. I keep him there behind me so I can’t see when he disapproves of what I say or do.”

  Mrs. Jerome sat on the edge of her chair, again uncomfortable and at a loss. Sara knew that her mother wished they could escape from Mrs. Renwick’s bewildering company. She liked people to stay in proper pigeonholes. But Hilda Renwick’s pigeonholes had jumbled all their contents, so you never knew what she would pull out next.

  “How do you like my son?” she asked now of her visitors.

  “He seems a fine man,” Mrs. Jerome said. “Responsible, sober. A kindly man, I should think.”