The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Her aunt put a sudden hand on Sara’s arm. “Listen. Do you hear something?”

  Sara listened and heard the sound quite plainly—the distant mewing of a cat. It was Comstock in Allison’s room and Allison had to be protected.

  “Why, no,” Sara said. “I don’t hear a thing. What is it, Aunt Hester?”

  Her aunt brushed a hand over her eyes and leaned heavily on Sara’s arm. “Help me to my room. I’m tired tonight. I am getting old.”

  Sara helped her aunt upstairs and into her room. At her bidding, she jerked the bellpull for Ah Foong, who as usual would take up his post outside Miss Varady’s door when she was ready to retire. There had been no further mewing and Aunt Hester had rallied. As they waited for Ah Foong, she watched Sara with eyes that seemed to glitter in the lamplight.

  “I am old. Older than I thought. But you are young, Sara. You will go on in my place. You will do the things I might have done. I will be young again through you and this city will be ours for the taking, girl. You’ll need only to put out your hand.”

  There was something so intense in her manner that Sara listened uneasily. “I don’t think I can understand this yet. I’m not used to the idea of having anything I want. Besides, I don’t want a city. What I want—” She broke off because she could never have the thing she wanted most.

  “Yes?” Miss Varady said. “What do you want, Sara?”

  She could only shrug helplessly. “I don’t know—ah, the things any girl wants, I suppose.”

  “Yes, of course. As I did when I was your age and so much like you. You shall have them too. We shall have them. The ball I am planning will launch you. We’ll wait no longer. I’ll set the date a month ahead to enable us to get ready. It’s to be a fancy dress party, Sara. Something San Francisco will love after the grim time we’ve been through. So you must start thinking about what you will wear.”

  Ah Foong knocked on the door to announce that he was at his post, and Aunt Hester, suddenly weary again, dismissed Sara.

  When she was back in her own room, Sara stood before a window, looking out between half-opened shutters. There were still lights across Van Ness in the new little shops that had been thrown up so quickly. Everyone worked all hours now, with so much to be done.

  But the sight of the street made her feel hemmed in, restricted. She longed for her high tower, with the wind rattling the panes, and the marvelous view spread out on all sides. Up there she might have comprehended the things her aunt planned. Here, somehow, her view was too narrow. She was an earth creature who could not scan the heights. She could not even remember what her tower had looked like, how it had felt to view the city of San Francisco from its windows. The tower she saw now in her mind was a heap of rubble, the roofs and pinnacles of San Francisco were no more.

  Geneva’s soft-spoken words whispered through her mind unbidden. For Geneva this had been one of the happiest days of her life. But Geneva had Nick. And what had Sara Bishop? The prospect of wealth such as she had never dreamed possible. Anything, Aunt Hester had said—anything she might want.

  Well, she knew now what she wanted. To love and to be loved. Nothing else mattered as much as that. Some women were lucky and had it. Some were not. Or was it wholly a matter of luck? Aunt Hester had lost what she had wanted. But she had made mistakes. Sara, she’d said, need make no such mistakes. Hester Varady would have the wisdom to help her.

  Fancy dress! So a girl who was to be presented to eligible young men could be at her most beautiful best. She would find exactly the right costume to give her the air of confidence she would need, the poise she often lacked. She was no wren like Geneva. Among these young men there would surely be one . . . She turned away from the window, closing her eyes, trying to imagine what he would be like. But another face came between—a face she did not want to see. Nick Renwick’s face.

  She got into bed at last, knowing only that the emptiness must be filled. It was the most imperative thing in her life. There were women who had to love. She was one of them.

  It was two days later that Geneva came looking for her in the sitting room one morning and drew her out of her mother’s hearing.

  “This is our chance,” Geneva whispered. “Aunt Hester is off on a business appointment and Ah Foong is busy in the kitchen.”

  Sara, who didn’t know what she was talking about, looked puzzled.

  “Don’t you remember?” Geneva asked. “I said there was something I could show you. You wanted to know about the person named Callie. This one thing is all I know.”

  Sara remembered with a full return of interest and followed Geneva quickly upstairs. Her cousin led the way toward the little upper bedroom, and Sara had a momentary qualm. That package of bones still lay hidden in the bureau drawer, and she didn’t want to repeat her feeling of panic in that room.

  “Fortunately,” Geneva said, “Aunt Hester hasn’t ordered the room to be locked again. I came up here first to see.”

  They reached the door and Geneva pushed it open without hesitation. Nevertheless, like Sara, she paused an instant on the threshold, as if she wanted to sense the climate of the room before she entered it. Had Geneva too, on some past occasion, felt the miasma of grief that shrouded the place?

  However, there seemed to be nothing here today. It was only a small empty room. Geneva went straight to the bureau and, for a startled moment, Sara thought she meant to open its drawers. But instead she pulled the bureau itself out from its corner.

  “I’ll tell you how I found this,” Geneva said, with a smile that was not altogether happy. “As a child I was curious about this third floor. Oh, I was curious about lots of things I never dared ask about. But once I came up here and went through all the rooms. Of course, since this one was locked, it was the one I most wanted to get into. When no one caught me the first time, I tried again, and one day I found the door open.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Sara, her hands still on the bureau’s top.

  “Well, go on!” Sara cried.

  “It was a disappointment. There was nothing here—as you can see. Just bare, ugly furniture and an unmade bed. But while I was poking around I heard someone coming up the stairs. The rustling skirts told me it was Aunt Hester and I was terrified. I pulled the bureau out a crack and crawled behind it. I stood there absolutely still, holding my breath.”

  “With your feet showing underneath?” Sara asked.

  “Of course. I never thought of that. So she saw me as soon as she came into the room and pulled me out by the ear. She was terribly angry. She talked about sending me back to the convent where I’d stayed as a baby and I began to hope she really would. But of course she didn’t. She wanted to keep a hold on me for some reason, though I knew then as I know now that she really disliked me.”

  “But what did you find?” Sara asked.

  “Come here. Wait—I’ll pull it out a little farther. There, you can get behind it where I stood. I had a good few minutes of staring at the back of that bureau while I waited to see if Aunt Hester might go past the door without coming in.”

  Sara squeezed her larger person into the corner. At first she saw nothing but the oval wooden back of the mirror. Then she remembered that Geneva had been a child, with a considerably lower eye level. Enough light filtered into the corner from the window so that Sara could see plainly the scratching on the back of the bureau. Someone had taken a pin or a sharp-pointed instrument and scratched letters, words, into the wood. She bent to read them.

  I am Callie. Callie. Callie. I am Callie. I am Callie Bis—

  That was all. The last word had never been finished. Had the woman who once lived in this room been afraid of losing her identity? Had she tried to make this pitiful record of who she was? And had her name been Callie Bishop?

  Sara wriggled out of the corner and pushed the bureau back.

  That doesn’t tell us very much, does it?” s
he said carefully.

  Geneva’s eyes were wide, a little frightened. “It points to possibilities. I’ve thought and thought about them. But mostly I end by feeling terribly sorry for her—whoever she was. I think Aunt Hester must have kept her shut up in this room for a time. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what happened to her. But sometimes I used to go to sleep at night weeping for her. I had the feeling that she was young and lonely and unhappy, like me. No one else knows that scratching is there, or it would have been rubbed away, I’m sure. Let’s go down, Sara. I don’t like this room.”

  The chill was there again. The cold, creeping thing that stole up from the ankles and traced the spine. They hurried from the room together and downstairs to the more beneficent climate of the lower floors.

  Sara’s mother had left the sitting room and they could have it to themselves. More sewing remained to be done on Mrs. Blanchard’s dresses and Geneva went to work on them again.

  Sara watched her, puzzling. “How is it that when you’ve had to lead an unhappy childhood in this house, with no one to love you and a gloomy atmosphere around you—how could you grow up a sweet and gentle person?”

  “Why, Sara, how nice of you to say such a thing!” Geneva was pleased and surprised. “But of course I did have someone to love me and whom I could love. Ah Foong. Even though I was a girl, and not a preferred boy, he was always good to me. And he never let Aunt Hester punish me too severely, or for too long a time.”

  “Just the same,” said Sara, “if I’d been in your place I’m sure I’d have grown up wild and unruly and hating everyone.”

  Geneva smiled. “You heard Miranda quoting Aunt Hester. Every now and then my aunt says that I’m too much like her sister Elizabeth. I have a feeling, even though Aunt Hester would never admit it, that Elizabeth Varady Bishop was my grandmother.” She listened a moment, then went on, lowering her voice. “Perhaps ‘Callie’ is the missing name on the roster.”

  “You mean—” Sara hesitated, not quite daring to put it into words.

  “That Callie Bishop was my mother. The daughter of Elizabeth and Martin. Your father Leland’s sister. I am almost sure of it.”

  “It may be that you’re right,” Sara murmured.

  This was the thought that had come to her mind too. But then why had Geneva’s identity been kept a secret? Unless there was some shame connected with it—something Aunt Hester feared would disgrace the Varady name. Aunt Hester was capable of going to fantastic lengths to keep that name unsullied if she thought it was in danger.

  Geneva’s needle moved carefully in and out of the goods she sewed. “Ah Foong was kind to poor Callie too. I think it was he who gave her the little white cat.”

  26

  In the days that followed Sara continued to ponder the mystery of the woman named Callie. If she had been the daughter of Elizabeth and Martin, Leland’s sister, why was her presence not admitted on the family tree? Why did Sara’s own mother have no knowledge of her husband’s sister? Certainly she had not been imprisoned in that room all her life. From what Sara’s mother had said, no particular mystery connected with the room became evident until after Leland Bishop had disappeared. Was that because he would never have permitted his sister to be locked up there had he been in the house?

  In any case, where did Geneva fit into the picture? Aunt Hester had admitted that she had given her the name of Varady. Could this be because a child had been born to Callie out of wedlock? However, it seemed unlikely that Hester would keep the girl locked up in this house because of such a thing. She would have been more likely to pack her off in a hurry. What, eventually, had been Callie’s fate? Had she, like her brother, been driven from the house to die in some distant place? If they were both really dead.

  Round and round, fruitlessly, until Sara almost wished that Geneva had never revealed the pitiful words scratched on the back of that bureau upstairs.

  Fortunately, there were other things to think about these days. Ritchie’s ring was back on Judith’s finger. They were going to be married and move into a place of their own the very moment she found something suitable, but modest. With the fee that Miss Varady was paying him as an architect, and with Judith’s own jewels to sell, they would be able to manage if they were careful, until Ritchie established himself. Mrs. Renwick and Allison were to come with them. Nick’s problems were so serious now that no extra burden must be put upon him. Nick himself had no choice, for the moment, but to stay where he was, retaining the library office in Miss Varady’s house and struggling to keep afloat.

  For Geneva’s sake and because she could not escape the urgings of her own conscience, Sara had broached the matter of Geneva’s marriage to her aunt. It would be easy, if Aunt Hester wished to make it possible for Geneva to marry Nick. Miss Varady, however, had snorted indignantly.

  “Because I rather like that young man, I have already offered to give him a wedding in this house and settle some small income on his wife until he recovers his losses. But do you know, he turned me down! A stiff-necked fellow, this Nicholas Renwick. Of course Geneva doesn’t know. I’d not give her the satisfaction of realizing I had made such an offer.”

  Sara did not tell Geneva. She had the feeling that her cousin might be more hurt by Nick’s willingness to postpone the wedding, than by her present conviction that Aunt Hester was merely acting like herself.

  Plans for the costume party were now well under way. Invitations had gone out ahead of time, because those who came might have difficulty in planning suitable dress. Sara had finally settled the matter of what she would wear.

  One afternoon she was sitting in the drawing room with her aunt, helping to address invitations, when the matter of her costume had come up. Sara had been toying with the idea of a Marie Antoinette dress, when she happened to look up at the portrait above the mantel. Consuelo Varady’s eyes seemed to catch hers significantly.

  “Of course, Aunt Hester,” Sara cried. “There is the dress I want to wear. I have Consuelo’s comb, and if I could find a lace mantilla—”

  Aunt Hester put her pen down and fixed her attention on the portrait for a moment. Then she rose with an air of making up her mind.

  “Come along, Sara. We’ll see what we can find upstairs.”

  She led the way to her own great bedroom, with its cupids and gilt. In one corner stood a handsome Japanese screen painted with a delicate flower design. Aunt Hester folded it out of the way, revealing a great Spanish chest hidden in the corner. The dark wood of the chest, with its deep carving, would not have suited this room, but it was plain that Aunt Hester set high stock in it.

  “I’ve always meant to show you these things, Sara,” she said, slipping a big key into the lock and raising the heavy lid.

  The odor of moth balls was strong as Miss Varady folded back layers of tissue paper uncovering the bright garments which lay within the chest.

  “Were these Consuelo’s?” Sara asked.

  Her aunt shook her head. “I only wish we could go that far back. There are a few of my mother’s things here, but most of these are mine. When I was a girl I liked to fancy that I resembled Consuelo—as you do now, Sara. My father had a dress made for me to match the one she wears in the picture. I’ve old mantillas here too. And shawls. Everything you need.”

  The dress her aunt took from the trunk spilled golden light into the room. There was a tight, rounded bodice and a skirt that ended in flounces. A fragile shawl, delicately embroidered with flowers, had yellowed to the color of old ivory and its fringe was deep and thick. The mantilla was of white lace, yellowed too, like the shawl. This was fiesta garb of the finest.

  “Put them on,” Aunt Hester said. “Let me see how you look.”

  Sara carried the things eagerly to her room, excitement tingling through her. She could manage the dress and shawl, but not the mantilla. Whirling this way and that before the triple mirrors on her dressing table, she m
ade the golden flounces spin out in a great wheel about her. Then she ran back to her aunt’s room to show herself off and ask for help with the mantilla. She expected approval, admiration. But Hester Varady did not look altogether pleased.

  “You are a big girl, aren’t you, Sara? Of course I am no puny little woman myself. But in my day a girl was taught how to carry herself. Back with your shoulders. If you are big, act big! Don’t droop and step on those flounces. Here, let me show how the comb and mantilla go.”

  There were several dress rehearsals after that, until Sara began to gain more confidence in the wearing of such a costume. In her mind she could see just how she ought to look, just how she should carry herself. But to make this picture real was more difficult than she had expected.

  Only Geneva was told the secret of her dress, and Geneva helped her confidence a great deal. She was always ready to admire and applaud. And she sighed wistfully because she was not the type for clothes like these. Ah Foong was bringing her the trousers and tunic of a Chinese lady to wear that night. A lady of China was supposed to behave in a most demure manner, and that suited Geneva exactly.

  Allison, of course, could not attend a grown-up party, and was once more bewailing her lack of years. Mrs. Renwick, on better terms with her daughter these days, though still a little afraid of her, suggested that she might invite Miranda to stay overnight. They could sit up later than usual and peek over the banister to watch the guests.

  So it was that on the night of the party Miranda came over for an early supper with Allison. They got into their nightgowns and wrappers, and were encamped in the hall above before the first guest arrived.

  They had a special box seat to view the household as each member came downstairs. Mrs. Renwick, with considerable enjoyment and a lack of elegance, had dressed herself as an Irish washerwoman. Ritchie was a grandee of old California—and looked handsome enough to break a good many hearts. Sara was glad her own was immune. Geneva looked entrancing as a little Chinese maiden and Judith, as Juliet, was breathtaking. Sara had cut Judith’s blue velvet dress, with its high waistline and high-bosomed bodice, from an old gown that had belonged to Elizabeth Varady.