The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Thank you, Sara. The fact is that I am in the awkward position of having to ask a favor of you. If Allison didn’t have so much right on her side, I might be tempted to ignore her words and her dress. But she is already upset over breaking that plate, and this new disappointment isn’t her fault. She’s taking it very hard.”

  He paused and Sara waited for him to continue.

  “I suggested to Allison that perhaps she and I could drive out to Sutro Heights by ourselves. We could leave in a half hour, take a lunch and spend the afternoon there. Once this would have pleased her sufficiently. But now she has the notion that the day will be nothing unless you go along. Do you suppose we could declare a truce for one day, Sara, in order to give Allison a happy time?”

  “Certainly not,” said Sara flatly. “After your behavior at the office the other day, I shall go nowhere in your company.”

  “After my behavior!” Nick echoed. Then he affronted her by laughing out loud. “Strange how things can look from different viewpoints. However, I am still asking this favor of you, Sara. Not for my sake. For Allison’s.”

  “Very well,” she said, still haughty. “Since you put it in the light of doing something for Allison. I’ll go change my clothes.” She left her chair and moved toward the door.

  “Good,” he said quietly. “Dress warmly. In spite of the sun there will be a wind.”

  She chose a starched boating suit of pale blue linen with a fitted jacket. A bow tie graced the glazed collar of her shirtwaist and she pinned a small sailor hat atop her dark hair. She felt she looked very neat and sports-manlike as she stood on a chair in her room to glimpse bits of herself in the bureau mirror. This suit too had been of her own designing and she knew it was exactly right.

  The fleeting thought crossed her mind that there was no need to look exactly right for Nick Renwick, whom she detested with all her heart. But she dismissed this at once.

  Allison had been unable to get all the Vaseline out of her bangs, though she’d rubbed them strenuously with a bar of Pears soap. But while they still had a tendency to plaster, she had at least pasted them down the right way on her forehead. The rest of her costume had been transformed accordingly. She wore a new dress of pale blue and she was beaming with happiness as they got into the carriage. Ritchie, as usual, had gone somewhere in the car.

  “You know,” Allison said as the carriage started west toward the beaches, “I’m really very glad it happened.”

  “Glad what happened?” Nick asked cheerfully.

  “I mean,” Allison said, “that you frightened me first when you said we couldn’t go. So I mussed myself up in that horrible way I used to look. And now it feels extra good to stop looking like that and to have everything right after all.”

  Nick’s laughter was understanding. “Maybe you’ve found the secret of happiness, my dear,” he said. “Everything is comparative.”

  With the sun shining so brightly the long drive was pleasant. The carriage rolled along oiled red roads past Golden Gate Park, and the wind was not too cold.

  “Sutro Heights is out near the Cliff House, isn’t it?” Sara asked. So far she had not seen this famous spot.

  Allison nodded. “The heights are right above the Cliff House and the Seal Rocks. I like the heights best. It’s so queer up there—like something out of a storybook.”

  “The park was Adolph Sutro’s estate,” Nick said. “When he died the ground was deeded to San Francisco.”

  “Wait till you see!” Allison cried. “All those deer and lions and goddesses and things!”

  “Deer and lions?” said Sara. “You don’t mean alive?”

  “No, of course not. Wait—you’ll see.”

  The carriage left the lower road and climbed to the heights above. At the entrance to a wide carriage drive was an ornate white arch. Two lions crouched on pedestals at its base, guarding the way.

  “This used to be the vehicle entrance when Mr. Sutro was alive,” Nick said.

  They left the carriage and Allison saluted the lions as old friends as they walked past the arch. A variety of trees from every climate lined the straight drive. There were northern pines, cypress, and tropical palms from the south, meeting at this California borderline. The pines had been thickly planted—to make a windbreak, Nick said—and their branches all leaned away from the sea-borne wind.

  The most startling feature of the lushly planted drive was the collection of Grecian gods and goddesses, copies of classical statues, which rose from the shrubbery and peered unexpectedly from behind almost any bush.

  Now Allison wanted to fly in every direction at once and could not fit her steps to the slow pace of adults.

  “Wait for me in the summerhouse,” she beseeched Nick. “I want to visit all my friends. I’ll find you there.”

  Nick let her go and led Sara toward the shelter. The summerhouse was a small wooden structure with a slanting, shingled roof. Its windows and door stood open, and Sara sat down on the bench within. Nick was content to lean in the doorway, breathing deeply of the bracing, pine-scented air. This was a lonely place. Most of holiday San Francisco chose the lower level of the Cliff House, Sutro Baths, the beach. This was a spot lost to the past, where few chose to wander.

  “We’ll go on in a little while,” Nick said. “Then you’ll see the view.”

  Sara listened, saying nothing. All turmoil seemed to have drained from her on the quiet drive out here. She wanted to be nothing but a creature of the moment. She loved the brisk wind blowing from the ocean, loved the sunlight on her face. It was good to feel somnolent, quiet, ready to listen to Nick, or not to listen. She wanted to feel strongly about nothing.

  He stood tall in the narrow doorway of the summerhouse, his dark head in shadow, and she knew that he was watching her. But in this quiet mood she did not care. Let him condemn her or not, as he chose.

  “Sara,” he said, “I am more than sorry about what happened in the office the other day.”

  She held to her sense of remoteness. None of this mattered very much, one way or another.

  “I feel,” Nick went on, “that I should try to understand your viewpoint. I suspect that Ritchie was to blame for what happened.”

  She turned her face to the sun and wind and closed her eyes, relaxed, indifferent. When she did not answer, he continued.

  “I have been trying to understand what you seem to believe, to understand why you believe it. I mean that your right to Ritchie comes before Judith’s.”

  She did not really believe that. Not any more. She had said in anger more than she meant that day in Nick’s office. But she could not explain. It would be no use.

  “Why should it be difficult to understand that another person can be in love?” she asked.

  There was a hint of pity in his eyes, and she turned away from it. Pity might make her sorry for herself. It might make her angry again.

  “Now Judith is in love with Ritchie,” Nick said quietly, “though I can remember when she was in love with another man. Not so guardedly and fearfully then, but with all the generosity and belief that was in her. She was badly hurt that time. I always thought my father brutal in his handling of the affair. I’ve little use for Ritchie, Sara, but I don’t want to see Judith so deeply wounded again. Now do you understand a little better how I feel?”

  Sara nodded wordlessly. She could understand, but understanding would not help her in her own soreness and confusion.

  Nick went on in the same quiet tone. “However, I’m not forgetting you, Sara. In fact, I’ve thought about you quite a lot. I hate to see waste and there is so much of it under our roof. Don’t take a wasteful course yourself, Sara. There’s something better ahead for you.”

  “What?” she asked blankly.

  “What is it that you want from life?”

  Answers were easy, cheap, she didn’t have to think. “I want more dress
es than I can wear. A fine house. A dozen taffeta petticoats.”

  “Those petticoats again!” He laughed, but without derision. “I won’t take such an answer. What is it you truly want, Sara?”

  He had a way of drawing out the truth, whether she wished to speak it or not. She gave him the answer evenly. “All I have ever wanted was to be Ritchie Temple’s wife.”

  “But, Sara,” his voice was gentle, “no human being can cling blindly to something that is lost to him. You have to face life as it really is.”

  He still didn’t understand that she was trying to face it. But if she could not have Ritchie, she must find something to put in Ritchie’s place. And what was there left except things? Once she had wanted material things to make her Ritchie’s equal. Now she knew the fallacy of such a wish. But still, what Aunt Hester might give her could fill her life with glamour and excitement. But she could not explain this to Nicholas Renwick who had never known what it was to lack for anything.

  “I only want to be happy,” she said at last. “Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

  “I suppose I’ve never given happiness much thought,” Nick said. “As a goal in itself I don’t think it’s very real or important.”

  “Not important!”

  “It’s not something you can take in your two hands and wring from life, Sara. Considered that way, it’s only a mirage on the horizon. More likely happiness is a by-product of other things. The small things as well as large that one meets every day. Perhaps it’s most apt to come when we’re not even looking for it.”

  She listened wonderingly. This was not an aspect of happiness she had ever considered.

  “Here comes Allison,” Nick said. “And it’s just as well. There’s been enough of long talk for one day.”

  She agreed with him, but she was glad that he no longer condemned her, or felt contemptuous toward her. Indeed, she had an odd sense of having, for this little space of time, someone to lean upon and trust. Someone she might be able to talk to, if only she dared, as she had never talked to anyone before. She could understand what it was that Geneva loved in this man, and for a moment she almost envied Geneva.

  Allison’s voice broke in upon them from the doorway. “I’m most horribly hungry, Nick. Do let’s eat. But not in this damp old place. Out in the sunshine.”

  Nick had brought the lunch hamper from the carriage and now he spread a checked tablecloth on the grass, while Allison and Sara set out sandwiches, cold chicken, chocolate cake, fruit. The day had apparently gone to Allison’s head. Sara had never seen her so gay, so free of all sullenness. Her quick wit and flights of imagination kept them laughing.

  Sara felt completely relaxed and tranquil. This world, this afternoon, seemed to exist apart from the rest of her life.

  When they had repacked the remains of the lunch in the hamper, Allison announced that the best still remained to be seen. They walked toward the edge of the cliff, where it dropped away to the road below. Through the trees the square white lookout tower of the Sutro house was visible. Allison skipped and danced ahead and back, covering the distance several times over. When she reached the terrace, she ran up a flight of steps and stood at the top, waiting for them.

  “You’re such slowpokes! Hurry, Sara. It’s wonderful up here.”

  They followed her up the steps and out upon the level top of a rocky promontory around which had been built a curved wall like a battlement. At intervals in the castellated granite were set more white urns and classic statues.

  Far below rose the turreted wooden structure of the Cliff House, and below that jutted the Seal Rocks. White froth curled at their feet, and beyond rolled the great Pacific.

  “The brown spots on the rocks are the sea lions,” Allison pointed out. “They’re not seals, really. But look at the beach. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  A long stretch of golden sand lay beside the ocean, with the water curling and creaming along its edge. There were hundreds of people down there, driving in carriages, or sitting on the sand in the sun.

  The holiday clatter that must be going on below could not reach them in this high, remote spot. Here there was only sea and sky and wind.

  Sara’s interest was held by the endless stretch of ocean and sky, interrupted only by the Farallons. The sunset must be magnificent here. She wished they could stay.

  “The Sundown Sea,” Nick said, almost reading her thoughts. “The Costanoans called it that.”

  Then, without warning, the earth stirred, quivered under their feet. A white urn on the wall seemed to tip toward them and then back. Allison was out of reach, but Nick caught Sara’s arm and pulled her away from the wall. The tremor was gone in seconds and she laughed out loud.

  “My second earthquake! Did you think I was going over into the sea?”

  “I took no chances,” Nick said, looking around to make sure Allison was on safe ground. “I see you’ve learned to laugh like a good San Franciscan. Just the same, don’t forget that this is earthquake country and the ground can do nasty things on occasion. Don’t laugh so hard that you stay in a dangerous spot.”

  “Oh, pooh!” cried Allison, dancing toward them. “That was a silly little shake. I wish we could have a really good one and show Sara what we can do.”

  They left the terrace and wound their way through the rest of the lush growth Adolph Sutro had planted here. There were lawns and gardens and bridle paths. And only an occasional human being to be seen. There could hardly be a more tranquil spot in the area.

  The drive home was quiet too, and they were all a little sleepy from sun and wind and exercise. How differently this day had ended, Sara thought, from the way it had begun. She felt soothed, renewed. Strength was flowing back clear to her finger tips. Nick was wrong about happiness. It was something you could work for, attain as a goal in itself. Somehow, somehow—she would find it.

  15

  The following Sunday was Easter and San Francisco dressed in its finest and turned out to attend its many churches. Sara suspected that the city was well satisfied with itself these days. Real wickedness lay in the roaring past and could be regarded with tolerant pride. In this prosperous and more orderly era, the town felt itself still colorful and distinctive—a city men lost their hearts to like no other city in the country.

  It was exhilarating, Sara found, to be a part of this San Francisco of a new century. The Victorian days were over, the future bright, and there was a great deal to give thanks for on this Easter Sunday, the fifteenth of April, 1906.

  The days following Easter were gay and busy. On Tuesday night Caruso and Olive Fremstad were to sing Carmen at the Opera House and the diamond tiaras and dog collars of the Bonanza rich would be out in full force. It would be a night of after-the-opera parties and festivity. The Renwick household was in a buzz of preparation.

  Judith looked more beautiful that night than Sara had ever seen her, with a diamond butterfly in her ash-blond hair and diamond drops in her ears. Her gown had come from Paris and was a concoction of pink chiffon, steel spangles and chiffonné roses, of lace and ribbonwork in intricate layers. Paris or not, Sara did not like it. But Judith transcended the conglomeration and made the dress itself seem beautiful.

  Allison and Sara, of an age tonight, knelt in the second-floor hallway and watched beneath the banister as the opera party left. Ritchie was more handsome than ever in a silk hat and opera cape, and even Allison, who disliked him, had to admit that no gentleman in San Francisco could touch Ritchie for gallant appearance. Nick was going too and had brought Geneva earlier from her aunt’s house. Nick looked himself as always. He never seemed to take on the coloration of his surroundings as other people did. Geneva wore glowing wine-red satin and the rubies about her throat must have been given her by Hester Varady.

  Sara watched and ached with longing. Even though she couldn’t go to the opera at Ritchie’s side, she should have been there tonight
in her own right. Geneva had told her that Miss Varady had for once come out of seclusion and taken a box. She had invited some old friends from Rincon Hill. Geneva said she would sit there, lorgnette in hand, and look disdainfully upon the tiaras, which she regarded as being in inexcusable taste. One wore fine jewelry, of course. But a lady did not drape quantities of it on her person until she sparkled like a Christmas tree.

  Why couldn’t Aunt Hester have taken her, Sara wondered, and ate her heart out with longing.

  It was hard to sleep that night. She kept waking up and listening to see if she could hear them coming home. They were attending a supper party after the performance and it must have been after two o’clock when they came in. Everywhere lights burned late on Nob Hill and the echo of music and laughter drifted through the spring night. Eventually, however, the Renwick household settled down to what hours of rest remained.

  Sara felt that she hardly slept, yet she must have dozed off for she heard no sound of footsteps on the bare floor of the hall outside her door. She heard nothing at all until the faint tapping began in her dreams. Then she roused herself and sat up in bed.

  Yes, someone was tapping at her door. She slipped into her wrapper and went to unlock the door, pulled it open a crack.

  “Sara,” Ritchie said softly, “I must talk to you. Let me come in for just a moment.”

  Her first impulse was to shut the door in his face. She had not forgiven him for his behavior that day at the office and she distrusted him completely. But she had drawn his laughter once before by leaping onto the bed and brandishing an umbrella. Since she did not want him to laugh again, she would hear with dignity what he had to say, and perhaps tell him a few things herself before she sent him away.

  He came into the dark room, shivering a little. “Light a candle, Sara. So I won’t bark my shins. Not that ghastly electric bulb. What a drafty cave this is. But never mind the fire—I won’t stay long.”

  That was reassuring. She humored him by lighting the candle she always kept on the dresser, since power lines could blow down in a high wind. She had forgotten to tip her mirror up last night and for a startled instant her face looked palely back at her from the glass as the candle flame sprang to life.