The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  A faint pinkness tinged Miss Varady’s cheekbones. Her lids lowered over dark eyes for a moment and then raised again. It was her only show of emotion.

  “I know what she feared,” she said. “If you had grown up in this house you would have belonged to me. Mary Bishop was scarcely strong enough to stand against me. She was afraid to lose her daughter.”

  “Then perhaps she was wise to escape,” said Sara.

  “Escape—escape! As though I held her prisoner! What brought you back to San Francisco?”

  “I wanted to come,” Sara said. But she changed the subject quickly. “I have always wanted to know what became of my father. Can you tell me?”

  Miss Varady’s blue-veined hands tightened upon the arms of her chair. The tinge of pink turned to red in her cheeks. “That last time he disappeared without a trace. As far as I am concerned he is dead. We do not discuss the matter in this house. Never ask such a question again.”

  For an instant Sara felt chilled. Though her aunt had not moved, or raised her voice, there was cold venom in her tone and Sara was conscious through all her nerves of a force of personality so strong, so ruthless, that nothing could stand against it and win. What this woman wanted she would have. What she chose to do she would do. All who did not run away must yield to her will. So Martin Bishop had run away with her sister Elizabeth. Leland had fled this house never to be heard from again. Mary Jerome had taken her four-year-old baby and escaped to another city.

  For a shaken moment Sara too had felt an urge to escape, to save herself while there was time. But she would not be like the others. Already she recognized that there was something of Hester in her own character. Sara Bishop would be the one who did not run away, the one who stood up to her.

  Her aunt waited and the driving force that burned in her was almost a tangible presence in the shadowy room.

  Sara moved to a more comfortable position in the stiff chair, made an effort to relax.

  “Why did you invite me here today, Aunt Hester?” she asked directly.

  “I do not recall having granted you permission to call me ‘aunt,’ ” Miss Varady said. Then she glanced toward the closed door of the drawing room and clapped her hands. “Ah Foong! Stop listening at the keyhole and come here!”

  Unabashed, Ah Foong opened the door at once and shuffled into the room, performed his bent knee bow in Miss Varady’s direction. His wrinkled face was expressionless, but the lively eyes noted Sara, so obviously uncowed. It seemed to Sara that there was approval in Ah Foong’s look. Perhaps he would be the one to tell her truly what her father had been like.

  “You may serve us chocolate here,” Miss Varady told him. “And tell Miss Geneva she is to join us now.”

  “Yes, Missy,” said Ah Foong and went quietly away.

  Miss Varady turned again to Sara. “What do you think of Nicholas Renwick?” she asked abruptly.

  “I admire him very much,” Sara said readily. “Everyone in the Renwick house looks up to him and depends on him.” She hesitated, thinking of certain facets of Nick Renwick’s character which puzzled her. But these were not something she could put into words for her aunt.

  “You have reservations?” Miss Varady asked with quick perception.

  “No—not really. It’s just that he seems dissatisfied at times. He doesn’t care a great deal for the social life of the household.”

  “The more credit to him. The Renwicks have money, but no real family. Nevertheless, I shan’t object if Geneva marries him. Though I’m not sure she’ll have the gumption to manage it. Of course I don’t know him very well. It has seemed to me at times that Nicholas Renwick has hardly shown me the proper respect. Which makes me doubt his intentions toward Geneva.”

  “I think he wouldn’t be afraid of you,” said Sara.

  Miss Varady’s tone was suddenly cold. “I can see that you have been badly brought up. It is a growing habit in this low-mannered century for the young to express themselves as no young lady of my day ever did to her elders.”

  Sara merely stared, wondering if there had ever been a day when Hester Varady had been too young to express herself.

  Her aunt went on, warming to her lecture. “Had you grown up in this house as you should have done, I would have seen to it—”

  “You could never treat me the way you have others,” said Sara, finding herself a little breathless.

  “Do not interrupt me!” Miss Varady snapped. “I will not tolerate rudeness.” She would have said more, but Geneva stood in the doorway. “Come in—don’t stand there. Bring another chair here by the fire.”

  Geneva looked about with an air of being on unfamiliar ground. She smiled faintly at her aunt and started to lift a heavy chair. Sara went quickly to help her, paying no attention to her aunt’s remark that Geneva could manage well enough alone. Geneva was slight and frail, while Sara carried the chair easily, placed it where her aunt indicated beside her own.

  When they were settled, Ah Foong brought frothy cups of Spanish chocolate, hot and spicy with cinnamon. Sara sipped the strange flavor with pleasure, as Miss Varady explained that this was a drink of old California. Those who continued the Spanish heritage had the duty of keeping up some of the old customs.

  As they drank their chocolate it was Miss Varady who talked, the girls who listened. She spoke of the Oliveros and of the first Julian Varady. The Olivero family had wanted no American suitor for their youngest daughter. Americans were outsiders. But Julian had apparently had a way with him and he had been a brilliant, well-educated young man. He had a dream for the future of California as United States territory and knew that the day of the Spaniards would end. It was clever of him to be, in a sense, on both sides of the border at once, a friend with both races. The Oliveros had been proud enough of him, had loved him well, once they had decided to make him one of themselves. By the time the change came, the elder Julian was ready to step in as an influential American.

  Miss Varady paused and Geneva, draining her cup, asked politely if Sara Jerome was still interested in these stories of old California.

  Sara said she was and exchanged a quick look with her aunt. The flicker of a smile passed between them, leaving Geneva out. Whether Aunt Hester admitted it or not, Sara thought, she had begun to accept her. Satisfaction flowed through her in a warm flood.

  Miss Varady set her cup on a table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and rose. “Since you’ve finished, Sara, come with me. I want to show you something. You might as well get into your things, Geneva. It is past time to take Miss Jerome home.”

  As she crossed the room Miss Varady made a bright splash of color in her kingfisher-blue. Sara went quickly after her, eager to see something of this house. Dismissed for the moment, Geneva went to put on outdoor things and Hester Varady led the way toward the dim stairway at the rear of the hall, where it rose beneath the stained-glass window. She held herself more erectly than many a younger woman, her strong chin lifted at a proud angle that allowed no folds of flesh to gather at her throat.

  Sara started after her up the stairs, and now, staring at the bits of blue and amber of the circular window, she had for the first time in this house a sense of the familiar. She knew that window. It was part of some childhood memory. Perhaps it had seemed a thing of marvellous beauty to the baby Sara who had lived so briefly in this old house.

  Hester Varady gave the window not a glance. She mounted quickly from the landing to the second floor and here Sara found herself in a long dim hallway that was surely the hall of her old dreams. This hall was of normal length, and in spite of all the closed doors facing upon it, it seemed not at all strange. In the dream the hallway stretched into obscure distance, with seemingly countless doors bordering it. Had that been the way the real hall had looked to very young eyes?

  What an exploration could be conducted in this house, Sara thought. Would it ever be possible to wander this corridor alo
ne, to find herself unattended and able to explore?

  Miss Varady turned toward the rear of the house, where a few steps led upward to several small rooms. Sara glanced hastily about, but nothing else spoke to her as the stained glass and the corridor had done. Hester opened a door upon a small balcony. The fog had descended now, creeping along this valley between the hills. Sara could feel its droplets wet against her skin and she lifted her face eagerly to the caress of San Francisco.

  “So you like the fog?” said Miss Varady. “Come out here—this is one of my favorite spots in the house.”

  The balcony, which opened from a small room, overlooked a courtyard at the rear of the house. Below the balcony was a flagstone walk, and beyond were the remains of what had once been a little garden.

  “Look!” said Miss Varady and never took her eyes from Sara’s face.

  There was very little to see. Here grew another eucalyptus tree, raising its branches skyward. The flower beds were weed-grown, long neglected. Brown paint on the balcony’s wooden rail had peeled, so that rotting wood showed beneath. Sara gazed about with a puzzled air, wondering what it was her aunt found significant.

  “On a sunny day this is a lovely place to sit,” said Miss Varady. “We are secluded from the street and no other house overlooks this part of the courtyard. Sometimes as a child you used to play here, Sara. Do you remember it?”

  Sara shook her head. “I remember the stained-glass window on the stairs. But not this place.”

  Hester nodded carelessly and turned back to the dark corridor. Sara longed to see the rest of the house, but Miss Varady led her downstairs to the front door, where Geneva waited.

  Again her aunt extended a hand, and Sara felt the cold touch of her strong clasp. Then she was in the carriage again and no word had been spoken of another visit, of any future plans.

  Sara was quiet on the way home, and Geneva asked her nothing, though she must have been curious about her visit to Hester Varady’s. Since Aunt Hester had asked for silence, Sara was willing to comply, and was grateful for Geneva’s consideration. Perhaps it might mean something to Geneva as well, if ever Sara Jerome came to live in that house.

  11

  When Sara got home, only Allison was sitting on the stairs, with Comstock beside her. She remarked wistfully that she wished Sara would let her go along sometime when she went walking. Sara promised that she would another time, and went upstairs to her room.

  She was too excited, too keyed up to risk talking to anyone. Allison would be sure to sense that something out of the ordinary had happened. Sara needed to be alone, to compose herself before she could face the others in the house.

  In the tower above her room she sat on a window ledge and watched the drifting fog. It was not so heavy that it blotted out the city completely. Here it thickened like a heavy veil, there it thinned to transparent gauze, so that it was fascinating to watch the ever-changing aspect of rooftops and towers. From the bay came the bleating of water craft, the continuous hoarse warnings of foghorns, but otherwise the city seemed utterly still.

  Sara could think with less turmoil now of her visit to Aunt Hester, of the significance it might hold for the future. There were sure to be more visits. When she had left with Geneva, she had been disappointed because no mention had been made of another meeting. Nor had there been any real indication of how Sara had measured up in Aunt Hester’s eyes. But all this would come in good time. She had the feeling that she had done well to be herself and stand up to her aunt. The one thing which still nagged at her conscience was the fact that she must keep her visit secret from her mother.

  During Sunday-night supper Sara thought of this uncomfortably as her mother chattered about household affairs. Susan, Mrs. Jerome reported, had been rude to her and she was upset about the matter. She had done no more than make a necessary suggestion and Susan had resented her direction. The girl was not always reliable and responsible.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Sara promised. “You can’t have her being rude to you. One of these days everything will be different and you won’t have to stand for such things.”

  Mrs. Jerome heard only her first words. “No, please! There’s no use making her give notice. I was just talking—I don’t mind, really.”

  Sara wished she could blurt out the truth and assure her mother that a change might be due in the very near future. But that would upset her more than any pert words from Susan. It was better to wait until the thing was accomplished. Now Sara felt all the more eager for the time to come when Mary Jerome could take her place properly as Mrs. Leland Bishop.

  That night, long after she had gone to bed, Sara went on building dream pictures. Perhaps she and her mother would go to live in the Varady house again, as they had long ago. If they went there a new existence would begin for them all, and for the house too. Sara would persuade her aunt to have the vines clipped away from the front windows, to open up the drawing room for more comfortable use, banish the cobwebs, perhaps bring in more comfortable furniture. They would begin to entertain and both she and her mother would be established in San Francisco.

  As she fell asleep she thought again of the little balcony at the rear of the house, which her aunt had somehow expected her to remember. And of the door-lined hallway upstairs. She did not want to remember that hall now.

  How much of the night she slept away she could not tell. Suddenly the dream enveloped her. She was aware of a long corridor—an endless corridor, with doors beyond number on either side. Darkness lay about her and the doors watched her slow advance blindly, hiding their secrets.

  This was the beginning of terror.

  In her dream she knew it was a dream, struggled helplessly to waken and could not. The enchantment bound her and there was no escape. Always it was the same dream, always the same—as if it were foreordained.

  Without warning she was no longer in a corridor, but in a dark room crowded with unarranged furniture. There was a fury of storm outside, the threshing of trees in the wind, rain against the windows. Then the mirror—tall and narrow and black—and gradually, silvering the glass, the gleaming approach of light. Candlelight.

  Sara knew her body was bathed in cold sweat, felt the trembling run through her limbs. She wanted to scream, to rush wildly away from this place, to escape whatever was to come. But horror held her, closed her throat, locked her muscles. The candlelight came closer, and a pale hand showed in the mirror. Once more came the sharp sound of a strange crackling, the overwhelming sense of an evil so great that her mind could not endure it and must at last bring her shudderingly awake.

  For a moment she did not remember where she was. The room about her was strange, unknown. She had forgotten where the door lay, or upon what scene the windows opened. Her hands were wet, her trembling uncontrollable. The unknown room seemed to spin about her, as if at length it would tumble out into space and take her with it. Then it steadied and she saw the windows against a sky less dark than the room, saw the faint light which came through the opening of the circular stair.

  Fear shook her again. But now it was fear of the reality about her. Above her head an empty tower looked out upon a frightening city which held for her only the threat of evil. Something crouched in the tower above her, something that might steal down the stairway at any moment and seize her in its frightful grasp.

  Sara flung herself from the bed and fled toward the door. She scarcely felt the cold boards of the floor beneath her feet as she stumbled toward the stairs. Somehow she must escape that tower, reach a place where evil could not touch her. Not her mother’s room. These dreams had always frightened her mother. If only she could find Ritchie. Ritchie would remember from her childhood. He would hold her close and comfort her.

  On down the carpeted stair she ran to the first floor, her damp palm slippery on the banister, her nightgown sticking to her skin. Ritchie had to be up—still downstairs. She could not return to that
frightening tower.

  When she reached the lower hall she saw an edging of light beneath the library door and ran toward it, flung open the door. Within was lamplight and warmth. A man sat in a big chair before the fire. He looked around as she burst into the room. It was not Ritchie, but Nicholas Renwick sitting up with a book in the cozy quiet of the library.

  He crossed the room and took her trembling hands in his. “You’re shivering, Sara. Come here by the fire.”

  From the back of his chair he caught up an afghan made of varicolored squares and wrapped it snugly about her. Nick was so tall that Sara had again the sense of being small beside him, like a child in his hands. He put her into the big chair, brought a footstool for her feet and wrapped them gently in a corner of the bright afghan.

  “There now,” he said. “You’ll be warm soon. And you needn’t talk unless you want to. Will you be all right if I leave you alone for a few minutes?”

  “Don’t be long,” she pleaded.

  His smile reassured her as he went out of the library. She leaned her head against the chair’s leather back and watched the glow of the dying fire. Gradually the frenzy of fear slipped away, leaving her weak, but no longer terrified. Here in this room, with Nick soon to return, she was safe. No fearsome thing could reach out and grasp her here.

  In a little while he was back with a glass of hot milk on a tray, and a plate of crackers. He sat on the rug before the fire and held the tray for her. The liquid was so hot she could only sip it at first, but it went down her throat soothingly and something of strength and peace began to seep back into her veins.

  “It was a dream,” she told him. “A dream that has come again and again all my life. There’s always a mirror in it and the feeling that I’m about to see something so terrible in the glass that I can’t bear it. But I wake up before it happens. And then I’m terrified and shaken for a long while afterwards.”

  Nick did not cluck sympathetically as others had done. “It’s too bad,” he said, “that you can’t hold onto the dream long enough to see it through.”