The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I don’t know what you’ll think of me for intruding on you like this, Miss Jerome,” Geneva ran on. “This is not something I would have done if—” She broke off and moved her hands apart helplessly.

  She seemed so distressed that Sara’s own confidence began to return.

  “That’s quite all right,” Sara said cheerfully, though still at a loss as to the reason why Geneva was here. Unless Miss Varady—she looked at the girl sharply. “Did your aunt send you?”

  Geneva’s pointed chin came up, her pale little face turned toward Sara in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “I guessed,” said Sara. She put a shovelful of coal on the fire, her back to her guest.

  “I’m so bewildered,” Geneva said. “Though of course I never question Aunt Hester.” She shivered delicately at the thought. “She has been quite indignant because I first mentioned your name and presence in this house to her only recently. She feels I should have told her long before. But how was I to know she would have a special interest in you? Since she knew I was coming here to the dinner tonight she sent you a message. She was very particular about saying that no one else in the house was to know, so I’ve not even told Nick. Aunt Hester would like you to come to tea at our house next Sunday afternoon. That’s day after tomorrow.”

  Sara left the fireplace and walked about the room again. This was the beginning. It was the first step and it had come from Miss Varady! Nevertheless, she felt faintly nettled by the tone of command behind the invitation. There had been a time when Hester Varady must have treated Mary Jerome very badly. Mary’s daughter did not want to capitulate too quickly.

  “This Sunday?” she murmured. “I’m not sure that I can. I had some plans—”

  Geneva gave a chirp like a frightened bird. “Oh, but you must! Aunt Hester doesn’t ever take ‘no’ for an answer. You know it really is a compliment she is paying you. She hardly ever has guests any more. She only asks Nick to tea or dinner once in a while, and no one else from this house.”

  “I don’t believe I can accept,” Sara said, though she knew perfectly well that she meant to eventually.

  Geneva looked as if she might burst into tears. “I’ll never dare go home and tell her that. She’ll say I didn’t ask you, or that I offended you. Have I offended you, Miss Jerome?”

  “No, of course not,” Sara said. “If you put it like that, I suppose I’ll have to agree. But please make it clear to your aunt that I wasn’t sure at first that I could arrange it on such short notice. How am I to get to your house without the family knowing?”

  “Aunt Hester thought of that. You might take a walk of a Sunday afternoon, mightn’t you? I can wait for you in the carriage a few blocks away. And I’ll bring you home again. You needn’t be gone for more than an hour. Surely you can manage that?”

  Sara nodded, still pretending hesitance as Geneva set the time and exact place. Aunt Hester was not going to have everything exactly her way with this niece.

  “Did your aunt suggest any reason for this invitation?” Sara asked.

  “None at all. But that’s like her. She often does surprising things. I happened to tell her about the way you stopped Miss Millie from putting those dreadful butterflies on Judith’s dress the other night. And about your working in Nick’s office. She doesn’t go out a great deal herself and she always wants to know what’s going on. But why she wishes to see you, I haven’t any idea.” Geneva shook her head and rose from her chair.

  “Do you have to go back right away?” Sara asked. She had more questions she wanted to ask Geneva about the house on Van Ness Avenue. But the girl was already moving toward the door.

  “It wouldn’t do to have them miss me downstairs. Everyone is listening to Judith’s playing, so it was easy for me to slip out. I want to get back before she stops.”

  Sara stood in the doorway watching Geneva hurry down the stairs. Somehow, now that the meeting was set, she felt a little uneasy. There was a disloyalty to her mother involved which did not rest comfortably on her conscience, yet she knew she must take this step and that she did not dare to tell her mother about it.

  10

  By good fortune there was no rain on Sunday after noon, though a fog was rolling in from the bay. It drifted at hilltop height, but did not envelop the streets. Sara, who had already shown a liking for foggy days, told her mother she was going for a good long walk, and left the house on the downhill side. No one mentioned the threat of footpads any more, providing she confined her excursions to the daytime.

  At the appointed corner Geneva awaited her in Miss Varady’s shabby, old-fashioned carriage. She appeared relieved to see Sara and signaled the coachman to drive off the moment her guest was settled.

  “I was afraid you might not come,” she murmured nervously, as Sara settled down beside her. “How very nice you look.”

  Sara had worn her best gray suit again and a small hat with a silver-gray feather curled along the brim. It was an old hat which her mother had retrimmed for her and she wore it tipped slightly toward her nose.

  Geneva sat back in her corner of the carriage, at a loss to make conversation with someone she must regard as an odd visitor to her aunt’s house. The carriage rolled downhill toward Van Ness, passing the tightly packed houses of a poorer section, all with the fat bow windows which Ritchie had decried.

  “Have you recalled who it is I remind you of?” Sara asked Geneva when the silence grew long.

  The other girl shook her head. “I’ve checked everyone I could think of and I haven’t found a clue. But now the first feeling I had of recognition has gone, so I’ll probably never remember. I mentioned it to Aunt Hester and she gave me the queerest look.”

  Geneva hesitated, glancing up at the wreathing of fog as it drifted above them, blotting out the highest turrets.

  “I wonder if you’d mind if I say something,” Geneva went on.

  “Anything you like,” said Sara.

  “It’s about Aunt Hester. You seem to be rather an independent person, and—and it might be that you could easily irritate her. She is really a very remarkable woman and I am grateful to her for all she has done for me. But she can be—terrifying when she becomes angry. She doesn’t like to be crossed in any way. So—whatever it is she wants of you this afternoon—may I suggest—”

  “I’m not afraid of Miss Hester Varady,” Sara put in firmly.

  “That’s exactly what I am afraid of,” Geneva said with a quick sidelong look at Sara. “Aunt Hester enjoys having people afraid of her. I don’t think she can help it. But it’s not good for her to become too excited. Last year she had a dreadful row with one of her tenants and she was so ill afterwards she had to go to bed.”

  “Are you really fond of her?” Sara puzzled. She could imagine feeling kinship and respect for Hester Varady, but she could not imagine feeling an affection toward her.

  “She is all the family I have, except perhaps Ah Foong.”

  “Ah Foong?”

  Geneva relaxed in her corner and a smile dispelled her worried expression. “I still say ‘God bless Ah Foong’ in my prayers every night, just as I used to as a little girl. He has been with Aunt Hester since long before I was born and I expect he is her very best friend, even though she is the mistress and he the servant. Ah Foong cooks and serves our meals. And he scolds our maids—when we have one, since they never stay for long.”

  “I’ve heard about how wonderful Chinese servants are in San Francisco,” Sara said. “Will I see Ah Foong today?”

  “If I know him he’ll be right there to look you over. If Aunt Hester has told anyone why you’re coming today, it would be Ah Foong. He’s very old and wise. I don’t know what I’d have done without him as a child. He’s the one person who isn’t ever afraid of Aunt Hester, and he can take her in hand when she goes on a rampage and get her quieted as no one else is able to.”

  Once mo
re Sara felt drawn to Geneva as she had been the first time she had seen her. If ever she were established with Aunt Hester, she might be able to stand up for Geneva, as the girl was unable to stand up for herself. As yet Geneva didn’t know of the blood relationship between them. She couldn’t know that she did have someone else who was “family.” How odd it was that Miss Varady chose not to tell her.

  The carriage had turned a corner and Geneva glanced out the window. “Here we are on Van Ness Avenue.”

  Sara gave her attention to the wide residential street, with handsome houses lining both sides. Van Ness, though it boasted its own slope, was a valley between high hills. There was little view here except of hilltops around. But apparently it was an avenue of worth and dignity. Its houses were not as big as the mansions on Nob Hill, but they had an air of being old and respected citizens with none of the show-off manners of the Bonanza rich. Family meant more than money here. Sara fixed her attention on house after house as they passed and a sense of anticipation grew in her. Would she have a feeling of recognition about the house of her birth? Would it speak to her in any way?

  But when Geneva said, “There’s Aunt Hester’s house—the big brown one on ahead,” Sara had no conviction that she had ever seen it before. No chord of memory reverberated.

  Hester Varady’s house looked like something out of a fairy tale, with its gloomy turrets and peaked roofs. Vines grew heavily over the front windows as if the house wanted to hide its secrets from the street. Undoubtedly Ritchie would have thought such architecture horrible, but Sara loved the structure on sight. This was a house Miss Varady might wear as fittingly as she wore her handsome, old-fashioned gowns.

  At one side grew two tall eucalyptus trees and Sara felt that they too belonged in this setting. The carriage stopped at the concrete block before the house and Geneva got out first, waited for Sara. As they went up the steps together Sara felt a certain tensing in Geneva’s manner. For a while in the carriage, when she spoke with affection of Ah Foong, she had seemed relaxed and at ease. But now, approaching her aunt’s presence, she had tightened as if in instinctive self-protection. Sara pitied her and was determined not to let Hester Varady frighten her.

  Ah Foong answered their ring. He was small and shriveled, with the fore part of his head quite bald, though the back hair grew into the conventional long pigtail. His face was leathery in texture and color and amazingly wrinkled. Out of this network looked a pair of eyes as black and lively as any Sara had ever seen in a young person. He wore the usual blue trousers and tunic of the Chinese house servant.

  Geneva he ignored as they came in, though she spoke to him. All his attention was fixed upon Sara and she smiled at him warmly, sensing the need to win him as a friend, to have him on her side. He would have known her father. That was why he looked at her like this.

  He did not, however, return her smile. He said, “Missy Valady this way. You come.” Then he looked at Geneva and shook his head as if he spoke to a small child. “Missy Valady no wantchee you. Jus’ Missy Sala.”

  “I understand.” Geneva smiled apologetically at Sara. “I’ve been banished for a little while. I—I hope everything will go well.”

  The big hallway was dimly lit. Sara could just make out a wide stairway toward the rear which ran up several steps to a landing, then turned right to the upper floors. In the wall above the landing was set a circular window of stained glass, permitting faint, colored light to filter through.

  The door to which Ah Foong motioned opened on the right—the side of the house where the eucalyptus trees stood. Sara stepped to the door and found this room brightened to some degree by lights in a crystal chandelier. A fire, flanked with big brass andirons, had been lighted in a grate beneath the marble mantelpiece, and Miss Varady sat before it, erect in a stiff chair with a high, ornately carved back.

  As Sara crossed the room she was aware of a musty, airless odor and masses of heavy dark furniture, carved and uncomfortable-looking.

  But it was the woman by the fire who held her fullest attention. Miss Varady wore her iron-gray hair in a frizz of bangs across her forehead, and wound into a chignon on the back of her neck. She was gowned in heavy watered silk of kingfisher blue. Apparently Hester Varady did not hold with the notion that older women should wear black. Color became her, suited her bold, vigorous air of authority.

  Today she seemed more gracious than she had been that time in the office. When Sara reached her she rose and held out her hand. Something which passed for a smile softened a mouth carved against ivory.

  “How do you do, Sara Bishop,” said Hester Varady.

  Sara put her own strong hand into Miss Varady’s and found that lady as large of bone as she. Her aunt’s hand was cold and dry, however, and Sara was glad to be released from its chilly clasp. She took the chair Miss Varady indicated; a stiff chair with a leather seat, that looked to be Spanish in origin. Ah Foong performed an odd little bob in Miss Varady’s direction and went soft-footed from the room.

  After her first response to her aunt’s greeting, Sara sat as silent as her hostess, suddenly less sure of her wisdom in coming here. She looked about, trying to pretend a casual manner as she waited for Miss Varady to speak. Over the mantel hung a painting of a woman and Sara wished she could see it more clearly. Vine-grown windows, heavy velvet draperies shut out the daylight, and the distant chandelier did not reveal the picture’s detail.

  Miss Varady stirred in her chair. “There’s a candlestick on the piano. Fetch it here.”

  Sara glanced at her, startled. Then she walked the length of the drawing room to the closed grand piano at the far end. A tall side window nearby, unshrouded by vines, let misty daylight through. Sara saw that the music rack on the piano was not entirely free of dust, that its carving showed traces of cobweb. Apparently this room was not in frequent use. She picked up the tall silver candlestick and returned to the woman by the fireplace.

  “You can light the candle at the fire,” Miss Varady said.

  Sara held the candle’s tip to a red coal and awaited her aunt’s direction.

  “Well!” said Miss Varady. “You wanted to see the picture, didn’t you? Then look at it!”

  The candle flame flickered in a draft, then flamed high. It did not cast sufficient light to fully illumine the painting above the mantel, but at least Sara could see that it was the portrait of a young girl. A beautiful, striking girl with haunting dark eyes and teeth that flashed white in her smile. Her gown was the color of sunshine, her black hair almost hidden beneath a white lace mantilla draped over a high comb.

  Sara felt a sense of recognition. This was Consuelo Olivero. Consuelo Varady. The smiling face looked oddly familiar, but Sara could not think who it was she resembled.

  “Do you know who she is?” Miss Varady asked.

  Sara answered at once. “Yes—my great-great-grandmother, Consuelo Varady.”

  Hester made no denial. “You look like her. Geneva has been trying to remember who it is you remind her of. She did not think of this picture, which is just as well. I prefer that for the moment Geneva should know nothing about why I wished to see you, or who you are.”

  With a minimum of words Sara had come a long way in this house. She had been accepted without question, she had been allied to some extent on her aunt’s side. The future promised to be exciting, yet her first uneasiness remained. If only she knew more of what had happened to her mother in this house. She set the candlestick on the mantel, where it threw a faint light on Consuelo’s small feet. Apparently Sara’s good-sized bones did not come from the Oliveros. Judging by her aunt, they must be a Varady heritage.

  Once more Sara seated herself in the embossed leather chair and waited.

  “You seem to be better acquainted with the Varady side of your family than I had expected,” her aunt went on. “Did your mother tell you these things?”

  Sara shook her head. “Only my fath
er’s name, and that I was born in San Francisco. She has never answered my questions. Lately I’ve been searching through books of California history. First I found the Varady name and then Olivero. And Mrs. Renwick told me your sister had married a man named Martin Bishop, that they had a child whom you raised—Leland. Mrs. Renwick doesn’t know why I am interested.”

  “At least you show some enterprise,” said Miss Varady. “Geneva accepts what I say and asks no questions. Geneva is a timid fool.”

  Sara said nothing. She was not yet in a position to stand up for Geneva.

  “Your father proved a great disappointment to me,” Miss Varady continued. “He had no sense of family worth, no pride in the name of Varady which was his mother’s. With every opportunity given him he threw his chances away, got into one disgraceful scrape after another. I sent him out of town and hushed things up more than once. He had charm, but was without scruples.”

  Sara stiffened at these words against her father.

  “I wish my father were here to speak for himself. I don’t remember him at all. I have only an old picture of him.”

  Miss Varady looked at her niece without rancor. “At least you say what you think. You don’t tremble and trip over your tongue. It may be that you will do.”

  “Do?” Sara echoed the word.

  “This is not the time to explain. I don’t know you yet. And I have been disappointed before. Do you realize that if your mother had not run away, taking you with her, you might have been raised in this house? Then perhaps I would not have bothered with Geneva, whose blood is not as good as yours.”

  “My mother wanted to get away from San Francisco and what she calls its wickedness. She didn’t want me to come back at all.”

  “Mary Bishop was always a ninny,” said Miss Varady flatly.

  Sara did not like that. “My mother is not a ninny,” she told Miss Varady. “If she was afraid of this town, perhaps there was something here for her to fear.”