The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “We’ll get you home safely in no time at all, Jenny. Grit your teeth, darling. We’ll lift as gently as we can.”

  But Geneva raised one arm from her torn sleeve and slipped it about Nick’s neck as he bent over her. “No,” she said. “Not right away. I waited for you, Nick. Stay with me for a little while.”

  Nick bent over her and Sara stumbled to her feet, found her way to the auto. The engine was still running, so that Nick wouldn’t have to crank it again. Sara stood with one hand on the vibrating door, the sense of unreality upon her. Surely in a few moments Nick would come hand in hand with Geneva out of the ruins, just as they had done that day of the picnic. Geneva—her sister. Older by two years, but still her little sister. She couldn’t find and lose a sister as quickly as this.

  But when Nick came toward her out of the fog, carrying Geneva in his arms, she knew the one, irrevocable truth that no one would ever be able to shake or change.

  He scarcely saw Sara as she opened the door of the tonneau for him. With gentle hands he laid Geneva upon the seat. Sara got in and sat on the floor, so that Geneva would not slip off with the movement of the car. All the way back to Van Ness she held her sister’s hand, though she knew Geneva would never know, or care.

  Hester Varady stood in the lower hallway when Nick came in with Geneva in his arms. She started to speak, to question, but he brushed past her. And Sara, following him up the stairs, had no word or look for her aunt.

  29

  Sara could eat no dinner that night, though Ah Foong, old and more crumpled than ever, brought a bowl of soup to her room. His eyes were no longer shoe-button black, but rheumy with age and with sorrow. Sara put her hand upon his blue sleeve for a moment.

  “Geneva was my sister,” she said. “She told me this afternoon. Ah Foong, why didn’t you let us know before?”

  The old Chinese only shook his head and went away. Through all the long years his allegiance had been given first to Hester Varady, and he was too old to change.

  When Ah Foong had gone, Mary Bishop came to sit beside Sara’s bed to offer comfort. But tonight there was no comfort Sara could get from her mother. She did not know the truth. Perhaps she had never known that her husband had been married to another woman before he had married her. She had not known the identity of the Callie whose name was only whispered in this house.

  Tonight Sara dreaded sleep. Too much that was terrible had happened. She could not bear to dream through it all again. When her mother went away she fought to stay awake, but her own emotional exhaustion betrayed her and at length she slept.

  Slept deeply, soundly, until the cold thing gripped her again and in her dream she stood with bare feet in an impossibly long corridor. Closed doors like blank faces stretched into the endless distance. Step after inevitable step she must move down the long hall with the sound of storm all about her. She knew that rain blew against windows, pounded on the roof. Trees outside moaned and threshed their branches about. She had always loved storms and there was a moment of exultation when she started down the hall to a room from which she could look out upon the storm. What other room would she choose save one which opened upon a small balcony?

  With the abrupt transition that was possible in a dream, the hall was gone and she was in the small crowded room, with furniture piled untidily about her. There—there near one wall, reflecting door and balcony—stood a long wardrobe chest with a mirror down its side.

  Terror gripped her. She could hear voices—angry voices. These had never come into the dream before. And she could see the faint, advancing glow of light. Closer and closer it came, until the moment when she knew she would see the hand come into the mirror—a pale hand, carrying a tall candlestick. Outside gray light pressed against the windows, but the storm had turned the afternoon dark and a candle was needed. Then the hand vanished and the light with it. Dim figures moved in the mirror and again came the sound of a strange crackling.

  She could feel horror grip her throat, stifle the screams she wanted to utter. She fought now, struggled against the web of dream that bound her to this freezing fear. She fought like a swimmer who struggles wildly against drowning, fought so fiercely that she tossed about the bed and her own violent movement jerked her awake. For the first time that she could remember she had not carried the dream through to the final moment of horror when memory put down its curtain and refused her the knowledge of whatever had happened.

  She sat up on the edge of her bed, trembling with cold and dread, yet not abjectly ruled by her own fear as she had always been before. This time she must follow the dream through to the end before it could fade. This time she must hunt it down, no matter what terror it held for her.

  She troubled with no wrapper or slippers, but ran barefoot down the hall as she had done that long ago time as a child. She could hear again the sounds of storm shaking the house, though the night was still and windless, with fog dampening all the city. The door of the little room stood open and she pushed her way in, stood in the corner where once she had hidden trembling as a child. The mirror was there—there where it reflected the balcony. She could see it as clearly as though it had been real.

  But this time it was no hand with a candlestick she saw, but the scene on the balcony beyond—the scene which her dream had always refused to make clear. A man and a woman struggled together in the mirrored reflection, their angry words lost in the storm sounds outside. The woman screamed and struck out at the man, pushed wildly. There was the ripping, crackling sound of splintered wood as the balcony rail gave way. The cry that rang down through the years of memory made Sara clap her hands over her ears, though the real night beyond the long-repaired rail was quiet and heavy with fog.

  But Sara knew the truth now. The man had gone through the flimsy wood, crashing to the flagstones of the walk below. The storm had washed over the sound of his fall, and over the screaming of the woman who had thrust him to his death.

  Then the picture was gone. There was no mirror. The room stood empty about her. She knew now what had happened to Leland Bishop. She knew again her love for her father, knew the horror her young mind had rejected, thrust away to the very deeps of her being.

  The knowledge left her empty and sorrowful. Until this moment there had always been the possibility that her father still lived, that somewhere, sometimes she would find him. Now, for these few moments, her loss was as keen as though his death had just occurred.

  But she roused herself, shook off new sorrow. Now she must deal with the present. She was filled with a purpose that warmed her, that sent the blood tingling through her body, banishing the clammy cold. The present meant Aunt Hester, and she knew what she must do.

  She hurried upstairs to the little room with the bureau in it. The bureau on whose wood poor Callie had scratched her name, fighting perhaps to recover a sense of her own being which Aunt Hester tried to take from her. The bottom drawer stuck, but Sara pulled it open with a clatter. Inside lay the bundle of bones, wrapped in newspaper. Sara took it into her hands and hurried to the stairway.

  At her aunt’s door it was necessary to slip past Ah Foong, lest he try to stop her. But again he slept soundly and well. She opened the door and stepped into the room. Here the shutters had been closed against the fog.

  Miss Varady stirred in her great bed and spoke in the darkness.

  “Who is it? Who is there?”

  Sara knew where the candlestick stood. Candlelight would be best for her purpose. She set her package down and found the matches, struck one and lit the candle.

  “How dare you—” Miss Varady began.

  Sara set the candle close to the bed, so that its light fell upon her aunt’s face. And she stood beside it, sharply aware of her own youth and strength, of the frailty of the woman who struggled to sit up against her pillows. Why had she ever feared this old woman?

  “Today you sent Geneva to her death,” Sara said. “It was yo
ur hand which thrust her from that wall just as surely as though you had been there. It was you who pushed my father from that balcony so that he died on the flagstones below.”

  Hester spoke between tight-drawn lips. “You’ve gone mad!”

  “Oh, no, I haven’t. I was there in that little room. I saw what happened. I saw it all. Though I couldn’t remember until tonight. You hated my father, didn’t you? You wanted him to die.”

  Hester Varady stared at her for an angry moment. Then her hand began to move toward the bellpull. Sara snatched up the newspaper bundle and flung it beside her aunt on the covers of her bed. The paper rustled open and the little white bones shone in the candlelight.

  Hester forgot the bellpull. She put a hand to her throat as if she were choking and moved desperately away to the other side of the bed.

  “It was only a little cat,” Sara said. “A little white cat. And you had to kill that too. Because Ah Foong said Callie’s spirit had come back to inhabit its body. But you couldn’t get rid of the cat as you did the others. It still walks the corridors, doesn’t it?”

  “Take that away!” her aunt cried. “Take it away at once!”

  “Only if you’ll tell me the truth. All the truth. What happened after you pushed my father from the balcony?”

  The woman in the bed turned her face from the sight of the packet and Sara closed the wrapping of newspaper.

  “It wasn’t I who thrust your father from that balcony.” Her aunt’s voice trembled and she steadied it with an effort. “It was Geneva’s mother—that miserable Callie. She was always an unbalanced creature, emotional and unpredictable. Pretty enough, I suppose, as a wretched little barmaid in a saloon down on the Coast when Leland found her. He felt she needed rescuing. Besides, he knew nothing would upset me more than to bring such a person home to my house. So he married her in his irresponsible way and tried to install her here as his wife. I managed to hush it up so that it never got into the newspapers and I hustled them both out of town at once. Before their baby was born he left her and I managed to get him a quiet divorce.”

  Hester paused and rubbed a hand over her eyes as if there were sights she too wanted to wipe away.

  “Go on,” Sara said.

  “I was not pleased by Leland’s second marriage, but it was better than the first. I let them live in this house. I let their child—you—be born here. We didn’t hear from Callie again for a long while. Leland had settled some money on her, thanks to me. But he was back again in his shady schemes for making a fortune and Callie stumbled onto them. She began to follow him and make threats, I found he was paying her money to hold her tongue and I knew that couldn’t go on indefinitely. I told him to have her come here. I was going to talk to her myself and put a stop to what she was doing. She might frighten your father, but she couldn’t frighten me.”

  “Where was Geneva all this time?” Sara asked.

  “Callie had her. She brought her here to the house that day and Ah Foong took Geneva into the kitchen to free the mother for the interview. But Callie came early and she was in a state of nervous emotion bordering on hysteria. She got away from Ah Foong and came upstairs looking for Leland. There was a terrible wind that afternoon and a rainstorm. Your mother had gone to nap in her own room and there at the front of the house she heard nothing of what happened. You were supposed to be having your nap too.

  “Callie met Leland in the hallway and began to shriek at him. To keep her away from your mother, he took her to the back of the house—that little room near the balcony. Ah Foong came to tell me what was happening.”

  “And you came along the hall with a candle,” said Sara.

  Hester’s heavy lids drooped over her eyes. “Yes. By the time I reached the room they were out on the balcony. Callie was half crazy and threatening to fling herself over the railing if Leland would not comply with her wishes. I thought it might be convenient if she did and I stayed where I was, watching them from the door of the room.”

  “With that tall candlestick in your hand,” Sara whispered.

  “Small as she was, Callie had the strength of madness that day. When he put himself between her and the balcony rail she flung herself upon him, fighting and struggling. I don’t think for a moment that she intended what happened. But the rail gave way and he went through to those stones below.”

  A shudder ran through Hester’s body. She opened her eyes and stared at Sara.

  “Is this what you wanted to know?”

  “It’s not all,” Sara said. “What did you do about—about my father?”

  “Ah Foong helped me that night. First Callie had to be taken care of. She had gone clean out of her mind. I gave her something to put her to sleep and Ah Foong and I got her upstairs to that small bedroom where we locked her in. I’d sent the servants out that day, so there was no one to see. Ah Foong hitched up the carriage and we took Leland away. You need not know where. He had died at once. His body was never found. It was the only thing to do. I could not have such a scandal as would have stained the Varady name forever.”

  Sara felt a little sick, listening. “And Callie?”

  “Her case was hopeless. We managed to keep her quiet most of the time. There are drugs. She was better here than in the type of institution which care for such cases. She was very ill. Her death came only a few months after your mother had left this house. Fortunately she had no relatives to look for her. In the meantime I had put the child in the capable hands of convent nuns. She was well cared for until I brought her here. I told her nothing, hid her identity. I could take no chance on anyone else knowing.”

  “And today she died too,” Sara said softly.

  “I did not intend that,” Miss Varady said and Sara saw that she looked suddenly old and withered and helpless.

  “I was there in the room when it happened,” Sara mused. “I must have seen the whole thing.”

  “I was afraid you had,” Miss Varady said. “When I found you there you were shivering and crying. It was a good thing your mother was so busy nursing you in the days that followed that she didn’t know what was going on. You were down with fever and in a delirium for days. When it cleared up you didn’t remember anything you had seen. But you began to have those dreams at night.”

  “I won’t have them any more,” Sara said. “I’m free of them forever.” She held up the packet in her hands. “What of the little cat?”

  “Ah Foong is an old woman! He gave the cat to her up in that room. I suppose it kept her quiet a bit.”

  “And after Callie’s death?”

  “Get out!” Miss Varady cried. “Get out of my room. You have tormented me enough.”

  There was no reason to stay. When Sara turned to the door she found Ah Foong waiting for her. She did not know how long he had been there, or how much he had heard, but this house held no secrets from him. As she went out, she put the little packet into his hands, and he took it without question. It would be buried again. Silently in the night. As the body of Leland Bishop had once been buried in some unknown spot.

  Sara returned wearily to her room and sat for a while by the window looking out upon the fog-laden quiet of Van Ness Avenue. It was too bad that the fire had not flared out to take this house as well as the rest. It was an ill-fated house where no one could ever be happy. She would be glad to get away from it.

  In the days following Geneva’s funeral, Sara walked from house to house in Pacific Heights until she found rooms she and her mother could move into.

  She saw little of Nick in the days before she left Miss Varady’s and she tried to keep away from him in his grief. The very sight of her would, she knew, be an unhappy reminder. He too sought other quarters and he and Mr. Merkel rented a single office room above a store on Fillmore Street.

  Nick left the house before Sara and her mother and he said good-by to her sadly, impersonally. Since Geneva’s death he had chang
ed. He held his grieving to himself and withdrew from the society of others. More than ever now he was immersed in his work. Sara did not blame him for avoiding the sight of her. But when she gave him her hand in parting, she tried to offer some small word of comfort.

  He only said, “Good luck, Sara,” and turned soberly away.

  She knew then how irrevocably Geneva’s death had set itself between them. He blamed himself and perhaps he blamed her too. Under the circumstances he could take no happiness for himself with another woman.

  Hester Varady made no comment upon any of these changes. She had aged in the span of a few weeks and often she did not come down for meals, but had Ah Foong bring a tray to her room. She still kept her business appointments, but her interest had obviously faded.

  When Sara left she tried to say good-by to her aunt, feeling a certain pity for her, in spite of all that had happened. But Hester refused to see her, and only Ah Foong stood on the steps to say farewell, his eyes rheumy as he watched her go. Had she dared, Sara might have kissed his cheek, but she knew he would resent so personal a gesture.

  In the new place Sara flung herself into the work of designing dresses for the ladies of San Francisco. Her growing reputation stood her in good stead and it was not necessary for her mother to seek outside work. Mary was kept busy enough with her needle and she worked happily, glad to be free of Hester Varady and her house of dark memories. To please her mother, Sara used the name Jerome as a label in her designing of dresses.

  There was a weary numbness in Sara these days. She helped her mother in the simpler phases of the sewing, forcing herself to learn what she had always scorned before. They could not afford assistance now and she must fill in where she could. The purchase of a sewing machine had been their one important expenditure.