The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Miss Varady, he said, had invited Mr. Merkel to dinner, as she sometimes did, to talk business more comfortably than she could at the office. And on this occasion she had chosen for the first time to ask his younger partner as well—Nicholas Renwick. Geneva of course had dinner with them. She had been quiet and shy all through the meal, scarcely speaking a word, plainly afraid of her aunt’s displeasure should she make a mistake of any kind. Nick’s heart had gone out to her in pity. And when the other two had retired to the drawing room for their talk, he had set himself to draw out the timid young girl.

  The library had given them a background in which they could both feel comfortable. When Nick had asked if she were lonely in this big house, Geneva made a gesture with two small hands that took in the bookshelves about her.

  “How can I be lonely when the world comes in?” she had said.

  So they had lost themselves in talking about a world which came in through these books, and Geneva had forgotten to be timid and self-conscious.

  “I began to see her occasionally after that,” Nick went on. “I was alone too, in spite of a family about me. I enjoyed being with Jenny and I somehow expected our friendship to remain as it was. I’m not sure when I realized she had grown to love me and that she was gently offering me the gift of her love. I’ve had no great opinion of myself in the scheme of things, Sara. It has never seemed to me that Nick Renwick was doing much that mattered one way or another, until lately perhaps since the fire. To bring happiness to someone like Jenny who had been starved for love all her life, seemed important to me. I had—I have—a great affection for Jenny Varady.”

  Sara lay quiet against his shoulder, listening. She could see Geneva as he pictured her. She too could love the gentle little person Geneva was and know in her own heart that she would never want to hurt her.

  “I wanted you to know how it is, Sara,” he went on, his arms tightening about her. “The thing you must understand, darling, is that I could never live with myself if I failed Jenny. She deserves only love and kindness from me. Can you understand this and forgive me?”

  She sat up in his arms and framed his face with her hands, kissed him with a tenderness she had not known she could feel. For the first time she knew with all her heart that love had to be more a giving than a wanting, or it was nothing.

  “I do understand,” she told him softly. “Good night, Nick.”

  For just an instant he held her close, his face against her hair. Then he let her go. She went out of the room and back upstairs. Ah Foong slept without stirring, but beyond his cot her aunt’s door stood ajar. A flash of warning ran through Sara and she turned from her own door, hurried down the hall to her mother’s room. She could not bear to face Hester Varady now. It was better not to be alone.

  “Mama,” she whispered, grateful for the darkness of the room which hid her face, “may I come in with you tonight?”

  “Of course, dear,” Mary Bishop said. “Is it the dream again?”

  Sara flung off the filmy negligee and crept beneath warm blankets, went close to her mother. Now she could talk—a little wildly, perhaps, governed only by a desire to escape from this house and the pain it held for her. To escape from Hester Varady.

  “You were right from the beginning, Mama. Aunt Hester can never bear the slightest opposition to her wishes. Sometimes I’m afraid of what she might do if she’s balked. We must move soon. No matter how small the room—anything will do.” She could not speak of her love for Nick. All that must be hidden away forever.

  Her mother asked no questions, but only comforted with crooning sounds, as if Sara were still a child.

  Sara slept at last, through the early hours and late into the morning. When she wakened her mother was gone from the room and the sun was well up over Van Ness Avenue.

  Sara lay in bed thinking, groping. There was a soreness in her, a knowledge of pain to be faced. But now she felt strong and able to face it. Now, at length, her course was clear. She knew what must be done.

  She got out of bed and returned to her own room without meeting anyone in the hall. As she dressed, she made her plans. Last night she had sought her mother’s room for comfort and protection. But now in the light of morning she knew that she could never be at peace with herself until she had faced her aunt, stood up to her will. Hester Varady must be made to understand that Nick would marry Geneva and that Sara would never in any way interfere.

  She went downstairs to a quiet breakfast alone. There was no need to rush heedlessly, to hurl herself into action, as she had sometimes done in the past.

  When Hester Varady drove away from the house in the carriage, Sara did not hear her go. She did not know that her aunt had taken Geneva with her.

  28

  Not until after breakfast did Sara learn that her aunt had gone out on a business appointment. Building had begun on several of her lots and Miss Varady liked to make tours of the work and see that everything moved to her satisfaction. It was odd that she had taken Geneva with her. Unusual.

  They stayed away for lunch and into the afternoon.

  Fog came rolling in through the Gate at an earlier hour than usual that day, inching its way into the sunlit area, swallowing ships and islands, obscuring the water, edging bit by bit into the streets of San Francisco. This was no high fog that touched the hills and the tallest rooftops, but one that crawled on its belly through every street and into every cranny. The eucalyptus trees beside the Varady house creaked and dripped with moisture. A fog silence fell upon the city. Only the bay was alive with sounds of warning.

  Sara heard her aunt’s carriage return and she waited without haste for Miss Varady to settle herself in her room. She was quite sure now and unafraid.

  Before she could see her aunt, however, Ah Foong came to summon her. His face looked more seamed and ancient than ever and his shoe-button eyes were uneasy. For a moment Sara thought he might let down his guard and speak to her of the forbidden. But in the end he only told her to “hully up” because her aunt wanted her right away.

  Sara wished this particular interview could have been held elsewhere than in Hester’s great, incongruous bedroom, with its peeping cupids and frivolous gilt. This room seemed too filled with reminders of what had never come to pass.

  Her aunt sat at an ornate writing desk, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pen in her hand. As Sara came in she turned her chair about and her look of satisfaction, of triumph, was one Sara did not like to see.

  “Sit down,” Miss Varady ordered. “In that chair facing the light where I can see you. I’ve several things to say to you, my girl. For one thing, I’ve not been pleased with the limp-willed course you’ve taken lately. You remind me of Geneva. Of Elizabeth.”

  “There is something I want to say, too,” Sara told her, determined to remain undaunted.

  The heavy-lidded eyes watched her darkly, but this time Sara did not flinch before them.

  “What you have to say can wait,” Miss Varady told her. “I heard you go downstairs last night, though Ah Foong did not. He is getting old and useless, I’m afraid. I heard nothing but talk, and then you came scuttling upstairs like a frightened rabbit, and went straight to your mother’s room. So I suppose you have muddled the whole thing and failed again.”

  Sara spoke firmly, still unafraid. “You might as well understand that whatever it is you are trying to accomplish through me is impossible. My mother and I intend to find a place of our own in the next few days. Then we will be off your hands for good.”

  Aunt Hester dismissed this nonsense with a scornful gesture. “Don’t waste my time with such talk, Sara. I shall stand for no interference with my plans this time. As I’ve told you, you are the girl I once was. But now Nicholas stands in Martin’s place, Geneva in Elizabeth’s. And this time there will be no bungling as there was before. You shall have what you want, Sara. What I want!”

  Sara longed suddenly to g
et out of the room, to remove herself from something monstrously unhealthy and distorted. But she managed to keep her voice steady when she spoke.

  “Nick belongs to Geneva and she belongs to him,” she said. “Nothing you can say or do will change that, Aunt Hester. They will marry and be happy together. You can’t live over the past again and remake it as you wish.”

  “You mean you don’t want Nicholas Renwick?”

  Sara answered her evenly. “I don’t want him at the cost of hurt to Geneva.”

  “So! You are exactly the fool I’d begun to think you. I suspected as much and I knew I must take steps to help you. Now I have done so.”

  The triumph in her eyes was ugly to see.

  “What do you mean?” Sara asked, alert now to the warning.

  “I have told Geneva the truth,” Miss Varady said.

  Sara left her chair and stood above her aunt. “What do you mean by that? What truth?”

  “That Nicholas is in love with you, not with her. That she is in the way, cheating him and herself if she tries to hold him.”

  Never before had Sara touched Hester Varady of her own volition, but now she took her aunt’s arm, shook it roughly.

  “Where is Geneva? What have you done to her?”

  “How dare you touch me!” Hester cried. She flung off Sara’s hand and rose from her chair. “I have done nothing to her. How do I know where she is? She was sniveling there in the carriage in her usual way. When we stopped at a crossing, she got out with no apology and ran away into the fog.”

  “You mean you let her go off alone, shocked with grief like that?”

  “I scarcely had a choice. I stopped the carriage of course. But by the time I’d sent the coachman after her, she’d disappeared. He couldn’t hunt for her all day while I sat there waiting. She’ll bring herself home in her own good time when she comes to her foolish senses.”

  Sara gave her aunt no second thought. She ran from the room and down the stairs to the library. Nick was there, talking to a client, when Sara burst into the room. He saw her face and turned the man over to Mr. Merkel, came into the hall.

  “Sara, what has happened?”

  “It’s Geneva! Aunt Hester told her—that—you and I—” She choked, and went on again. “Geneva left the carriage and went off on foot. We’ve got to find her, Nick. We’ve got to undo this right away.”

  Nick wasted no time on words. He strode down the hall to the back door and Sara followed. The coachman remembered that Miss Geneva had left the carriage in the downtown area below Nob Hill. Nick started the auto and Sara went with him when he drove away.

  Fog writhed through San Francisco’s streets, as if possessed by a life of its own. The noise of the motor warned pedestrians away, but now and then some figure would loom up abruptly in the mist and Nick would swerve the wheel.

  “Where are we to look?” Sara asked, peering anxiously ahead through the windshield. The wind whipped at her hair, tore strands of it loose, and she pushed it back impatiently so that it would not interfere with her vision.

  “If she was near Nob Hill, I know where she might go,” Nick said.

  Sara knew too. Geneva, distraught and grieving, might return to what remained of the place where she had once spent happy times; a place that had been more a home to her than her own.

  Where street lights burned, the fog thickened to a yellowish glow. The lamps wore a cloudy nimbus about them that made the streets all the more ghostly. Away from the light there was no color anywhere. Fog had turned the world to gray.

  Now it became so difficult to drive that Nick left the automobile at a curb and they got out to climb on foot. There was some building going on up here, but ruins still crowded on all sides, looming eerily in the fog like the remains of a ghost city.

  “Here we are,” Nick said. “Step carefully.” He took Sara by the arm.

  Beneath their feet uncertain steps led upward, their summit hidden by the gray veil. The two mounted slowly a step at a time, lest they slip off the edge, where the iron rail had been twisted askew. If Geneva were anywhere near, they would not see her unless they were almost upon her.

  In the distance foghorns wailed and the sound of boat whistles made a remote clamor. But nearby it was still.

  “Jenny!” Nick called. “Jenny, I’ve come to take you home.”

  A gust of wind thinned the mists at the top of the steps and it seemed to Sara that a figure moved in the obscurity.

  “There’s someone up there. Go after her, Nick!”

  “Wait for me, Jenny!” he called again.

  But the figure at the top of the steps fled away from them—though there was nowhere to flee. A muffled sound reached them, as if someone had leaped into space and landed on some ledge, sending a brick or two flying. Sara remembered in fear the leaning brick wall that Allison had wanted to climb the day they had picnicked here.

  Now Nick had disappeared too in the fog and Sara stood helplessly on the steps, her heartbeats thudding in her ears. She heard the light, heedless patter of footsteps, as if the runner gave no thought for the insecure path beneath her feet. Nick called again, his voice a command.

  “Wait, Jenny! Stay where you are. I’m coming after you.”

  Only then did Geneva’s words come back to them. “No, Nick! Don’t! The wall is shaking—you mustn’t, Nick!” Her voice was lost in the roar of falling bricks.

  The sound echoed dully against surrounding walls, went reverberating down the hill, fog-deadened.

  Sara could hear herself screaming senselessly, helplessly.

  There were still rumblings of lesser volume, and then a sound as if someone clambered through the wreckage. Sara fled down the steps to where the fog was thinner and she could climb from the sidewalk to the grounds of the Renwick place. She made her way around by the side, found a low spot where she could lower herself into the rubble that had once been a house.

  Nick heard her and called. “I’ve found her, Sara. Come quickly—I need you.”

  She scrambled over the heaps of brick, stumbled to her knees, rose and stumbled again. She followed the sounds until she stood beside him. He was working with all his might to pull away loose brick and Sara saw a small hand, its fingers curled inward. She knelt beside Nick to help as best she could.

  At least Geneva had been flung from the top of the wall, so that she had been caught only by the edge of the avalanche. If she had dropped straight down she would have been buried completely. In minutes they had her head and shoulders free of the loose brick. She had fallen face down. Blood streaked her turned cheek and her soft brown hair was matted with blood and dust and bits of debris.

  Sara did not know until later that her own hands were bleeding, her nails broken. She worked frantically with Nick until Geneva lay free of the burden that had crushed her. The girl did not cry out, or moan, and Sara could not tell whether she lived or not. Nick stripped off his coat and improvised a stretcher so that he and Sara could carry her without jarring. The weight in the coat-stretcher was so slight that it was no burden. They stepped carefully over rubble and did not rest until they had reached the side yard, where they lowered the girl gently to the blackened stubble of grass.

  Only then did she open her eyes and look at them. Sara took her handkerchief and wiped the streak of blood from Geneva’s cheek, but the girl looked only at Nick, her lips curving faintly.

  “Jenny, darling!” He bent above her, kissed her, touched her matted hair. “You’re going to be all right, Jenny. The auto is only a few blocks away and I’m going to get it. Sara will stay with you. I’ll be back in a jiffy. Then we’ll take you home to your own bed where you’ll be warm and comfortable.”

  Geneva formed a word with her lips. “Nick—”

  He kissed her again. “I love you very much, Jenny. You’ve got to be good now. Be quiet so you’ll get well soon. I need you, Jenny.”<
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  Again the faint smile curved her lips. Nick gave Sara a quick look of warning and hurried off at a run to get the car.

  The slash on Geneva’s cheek was bleeding again and once more Sara wiped at it futilely. The cut was so little beside all the rest that might be wrong with Geneva’s small body.

  “How did you find me?” Geneva’s lips formed the words weakly.

  “Aunt Hester told me what she had done,” Sara said. “And we came at once. You mustn’t believe any of her lies. Nick loves you—that’s the only truth. That’s what you must hold to now, little cousin.”

  Geneva closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. Her voice was stronger.

  “Aunt Hester told me a great many things. We aren’t cousins, after all, Sara. Callie Bishop was my mother, but she wasn’t Leland’s sister, as we thought. She was his wife. His first wife. So you and I are sisters—half-sisters. I like that very much. It’s nicer than being cousins.”

  Sara could feel tears sting her eyes. But for the moment she could think only of Geneva’s plight.

  “You mustn’t talk. You must have your strength.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to talk,” Geneva said. “I must—while I can. You needn’t worry—there isn’t any pain. I can’t seem to feel my legs or the rest of my body. It’s better this way, Sara—it’s the only way. After what Aunt Hester told me I knew I could never marry Nick.”

  “Of course you’ll marry him!” Sara cried, “You mustn’t ever doubt that he loves you.”

  “I know he loves me.” Geneva closed her eyes, sighing faintly. “I knew that was a lie when Aunt Hester spoke it. I’m sorry if you love him too. But there’s something else. She told me about the insanity that ran in my mother’s side of the family. My mother—Callie—died in Aunt Hester’s house. She had to be kept locked up in that little room—or else sent to some dreadful madhouse. Aunt Hester said that meant I should never marry and have children. And about this, Sara, she was right.”

  Sara was shaken by Geneva’s words, by the shock of what had happened. The only reality in this world of fog and nightmare was the sound of the automobile coughing as it climbed the hill. In a few moments Nick was with them again, his voice forcedly cheerful.