The Californians

by Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn

  "Oh—I—suppose so—that is, if you want me to. Let us go back to the house."

  "I have no intention of going back to the house for fully half an hour. Do you love me?"

  She hated him at the moment.

  "Answer me."

  "I—I—thought I did—I don't know."

  "Well, we will drop the subject for a moment. There are some other things I want to talk to you about. Shall we walk on?"

  She drew a long breath at the respite. He resumed in a moment.

  "Of course I am double your age, but I do not think we shall be any less happy on that account. My life, I am going to tell you, has not been an ideal one. After the wildness of youth came the deliberate transgressions of maturity, then the more flagrant, because purposeless sins which followed satiety. I know nothing of the middle classes of the United States,—I have lived little in this country,—but the young men of the upper class are not educated to add to the glory of the American race: they are educated to spend their fathers' millions. It is true that in spite of a rather wild career at college I left it with a half-defined idea of being a scientific explorer, and had taken a special course to that end. But my ambitions crumbled somewhere between the campus and New York. I am not seeking to exculpate myself, to throw the responsibility on my adolescent country: I had something more than the average intelligence, and I pursued my subsequent life deliberately. Not pursuing an ideal, I had no care to reserve the best that was in me for the woman who should one day be my wife. I entered diplomacy because I liked the life, and because I believed that the day would come when women would mean little more than paper dolls to me, and power would mean everything. I did not reckon on wearying to desperation of the world in general. That time came; with it a desire to live an outdoor existence for the rest of my life. That at least never palled. I determined to come to California. It was an impulse; I hardly speculated upon whether I should remain or not. As the train slid down the Sierras, I knew that I should. Memories jumbled, and I made no effort to pull them apart. For the first time in my life I wanted a home and a wife. The night we met I felt more attracted to you than to the other charming Californians I had met because you seemed more a part of the country. It is singular that a man should love the country first, and the woman as a logical result, but I did. I think that you know I love you; but not how much, nor what it means to me. I am not good enough for you. My soul is old. I see life exactly as it is. I have not an illusion. I am as prosaic as are all men who have made a business of the pleasures of life. I could not make you a perfervid or romantic speech to save my life, and as the selfishness of a lifetime has made me moody and fitful, there will be intervals when I shall be the reverse of lover-like; but on the whole I think you will find me a rather ardent lover. It seems very little to offer a girl who has everything to give. But I love you; never doubt that. What little good was left in me you have coaxed up and trained to something like its original proportions. I want you to understand what my past has been; but I also want you to understand that I am not the same man I was six months ago, and that you have worked the change. When I crossed the continent, it is no exaggeration to say that I had Hell in me,—that ferment of spirit which means mental nausea and the desperate dodging of one's accusing soul. I suppose such a time comes to most men who have persistently violated the original instinct for good. With the lower orders it means crime; with the higher civilisation a legion of imps shrieking in a man's soul. I will not say that my particular band have been silent since I came here, for that would mean moral obtuseness; but they are placated, and have consented to fix a generous eye on the future. I believe, firmly believe, that my future will atone for my past,—morally, I mean; I want you to understand that I have wronged no man but myself, that I have been guilty of no act unbecoming a gentleman. Now look at me and tell me that you do not hate me."

  Magdaléna lifted her face. Her lips were dry and parted, her eyes expanded, but not with horror.

  "I love you," she said; "I am glad that I can help you."

  They were near a huge oak whose limbs shut out the stars. Trennahan drew her into its shadows and took her in his arms and kissed her many times. He lifted her arms about him, and she clasped her hands tightly. He might be business-like, without illusions, but he knew how to make love with energy and grace. Magdaléna from brain to sole was on fire with adoration of him. The words of it surged toward speech, but reserve held her even then. She only clung to him and breathed the passion which his touch had startled. His own pulses were full, and he held her close, glad that the spiritual desires had caught and embraced the human, and that their chances for happiness were all that he could wish and a good deal more than he deserved.

  * * *

  XXX

  "Look!" whispered Magdaléna.

  They had reached the steps of the verandah, and were about to mount when she laid her hand on his arm. Mr. Polk stood by one of the windows. His head was thrust forward. He was staring into the room with hungry eyes and twitching jaw. The light was full on his white face. In the room Tiny was standing on a chair fanning Alan Rush. Fort was commanding Ila to pick up his handkerchief. The others were laughing and applauding. Lee and Coralie in their obscure corner were wide-eyed with excitement, and happy. Mr. Polk's chest heaved spasmodically. He screwed up his eyes. His face grinned. He looked like a man on the rack. He opened his eyes and glared about; but he saw nothing, for they were blind with tears. He turned and fled.

  Magdaléna clung to Trennahan, shaking. "Take me home," she said. "I cannot stand any more to-night."

  * * *

  BOOK II

  * * *

  I

  Helena was back.

  Magdaléna sat amidst iridescent billows of ballgowns, dinner-gowns, tea-gowns, négligés, demi-toilettes, calling-frocks, street-frocks, yachting-frocks, summer-frocks. She had never seen so many clothes outside of a dry-goods shop, and marvelled that any one woman should want so many. They were on the bed, the chairs, the tables, the divan. Two mammoth trunks were but half unpacked. Others, empty, made the hall impassable.

  "I love dress," said Helena, superfluously. "And women forgive your beauty and brains so much more willingly if you divert their attention by the one thing their soul can admire without bitterness."

  "You have not grown cynical, Helena?" asked Magdaléna, anxiously.

  "A little. It's a phase of extreme youth which must run its course with the down on the peach. I fought against it because I want to be original, but you might as well fight against a desire to sing at the top of your voice when you are happy. But, you darling! I'm so glad to see you again."

  She flung herself on her knees beside Magdaléna and demanded to be kissed. Magdaléna, who could hardly realise that she was back, and whose loves were as fixed as the roots of the redwoods, gave her a great hug.

  "Tell me, 'Léna, am I improved? Am I beautiful? Am I a great beauty?"

  "You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen. Of course I have not seen the great beauties of Europe—"

  "They are not a patch to ours. When I was presented, there were eight professionals standing round, and I walked away from the lot of them. Am I more beautiful than Tiny, or Ila, or Caro, or Mrs. Washington?"

  "Oh, yes! yes!"

  "How? They are really very beautiful."

  "I know; but you are—you know I never could express myself."

  "I am Helena Belmont," replied that young woman, serenely. "Besides, I've got the will to be beautiful as well as the outside. Tiny hasn't. I have real audacity, and Ila only a make-believe. Caro shows her cards every time she rolls her eyes, and Mrs. Washington never had a particle of dash. I'm going to be the belle. I'm going to turn the head of every man in San Francisco."

  "I'm afraid you will, Helena."

  "Afraid? You know you want me to. It wouldn't be half such fun if you weren't approving and applauding."

  "I don't want you to hurt anybody."

  "Hurt?" Helena opened her dark-bl
ue pellucid eyes. "The idea of bothering about a trifle like that. Men expect to get a scratch or two for the privilege of knowing us. It will be something for a man to remember for the rest of his life that I've 'hurt' him."

  "I am afraid you're a spoilt beauty already, Helena."

  "I've got the world at my feet. That's a lovely sensation. You can't think—it's a wonderful sensation."

  "I can imagine it." Magdaléna spoke without bitterness. Helena realised all her old ambitions but one, but she was too happy for envy.

  "Describe Mr. Trennahan all over again."

  "I am such a bad hand at describing."

  "Well, never mind. Fancy your being engaged! Tell me everything. How did you feel the first moment you met him? When did you find yourself going? It must be such a jolly sensation to be in love—for a week or so. Now! Tell me all."

  "I'd rather not, Helena. I love you better than anyone besides, but I am not the kind that can talk—"

  "Well, perhaps I couldn't talk about it, myself, but I think I could. I can't imagine not talking about anything. But of course you are the same old 'Léna. Will you let me read his letters?"

  "Oh, no! no!"

  "I'll show you every letter I get. I never could be so stingy."

  "I could not do that. I should feel as if I had lost something."

  "You were always so romantic. There never was any romance about me. Poor Mr. Trennahan will have something to do to live up to you. An altitude of eleven thousand feet is trying to most masculine constitutions. But I suppose he likes the variety of it, after twenty years of society girls. Well, let him rest."

  A door shut heavily in the hall below. Helena sprang to her feet.

  "There's papa. I must go down. I never leave him a minute alone if I can help it. That's my only crumpled rose-leaf,—he is so pale and seems so depressed at times. You know how jolly and dashing he used to be. He hasn't a thing to worry him, and I can't think what is the matter. I beg him to tell me, but he says a man at his age can't expect to be well all the time. I can always amuse him, and I like to be with him all I can. He's such a darling! He'd build me a house of gold if I asked for it."

  * * *

  II

  When Magdaléna returned home she spread her new garments on the bed and regarded them with much satisfaction. Helena had expended no less thought on these than on her own, and none whatever on the meagreness of Don Roberto's check. There was a brown tweed with a dash of scarlet, a calling-frock of fawn-coloured camel's hair and silk, a dinner-gown of pale blue with bunches of scarlet poppies, and a miraculous coming-out gown of ivory gauze, the deepest shade that could be called white. And besides two charming hats there was a large box of presents: fans, silk stockings, gloves, handkerchiefs, and soft indescribable things for the house toilette. And her trousseau was also to come from Paris! Don Roberto, in his delight at having secured Trennahan, had informed his daughter that she should have a trousseau fit for a princess; or, on second thoughts, for a Yorba.

  Magdaléna opened a drawer and took out another of Helena's presents,—a jewelled dagger. While Colonel Belmont and his daughter were in Madrid there was a sale of a spendthrift noble's treasures. They had gone to see the famous collection, and among other things the dagger was shown them.

  "It belonged to a lady of the great house of Yorba," they were told. "She always wore it in her hair, and all men worshipped her. The old women said it was the dagger that made men love her, that it was bewitched; there were other women as beautiful. But men died for this one and no other. One day she lost the dagger, and after that men loved her no longer. They ran and threw themselves at the feet of the women that had hated her. She laughed in scorn and said that she wanted no such love, and that when one returned—he had gone as Ambassador to the Court of France—he would show the world that his love did not skulk in the hilt of a dagger. People marvelled at this because she had flouted her very skirts in his face, had not thrown him so much as the humblest flower of hope. When they heard he was coming, they held their breath to see if the magnet had been in the dagger for him too. He arrived in the night, and in the morning she was found in her bed with the dagger to the hilt in her heart. They accused him, and he would not say yes or no, but they could prove nothing and let him go. And when he died the dagger was found among his possessions. No one could ever say how he got it. But it has remained in his family until to-day—and now it goes where?"

  "To a Yorba!" announced Helena to Magdaléna, as she repeated this yarn. "I made up my mind to that, double quick! It may or may not be true, and she may or may not have been your ancestress; but it would make a jolly present all the same, so I ordered papa to buy it if all Madrid bid against him. Of course he did what I told him, and I want you to wear it the night of the party."

  Magdaléna regarded it with great awe. She was by no means without superstition. Would it bring men to her feet? Not that she wanted them now, but she would like one evening of intoxicating success, just for the sake of her old ambitions: they had been little less than entities at one time; for old friendship's sake she would like to give them their due. She did wish that she felt a thrill as she touched it,—a vibration of the attenuated thread which connected one of her soul's particles with that other soul which, perhaps, had contributed its quota to her making. But she felt nothing, and replaced the dagger with some chagrin.

  She put away the clothes and sat down before the fire to think of Trennahan. He had gone East at the summons of his mother, who had invested a large sum of money unwisely,—a habit she had. He might be detained some weeks. Magdaléna, on the whole, was glad to have him gone for a while. She wanted to think about him undisturbed, and she wanted to get used to Helena and her exactions while his demands were abstract: she loved so hard that she must rub the edge off her delight in having Helena again, or the two would tear her in twain.

  She found the sadness of missing him very pleasurable,—feeling sure of his return; also the painful thrill every morning when the postman knocked. And to sit in retrospect of the summer was delicious. There may have been flaws in its present; there were none in its past. Her ambition to write was dormant. A woman's brain in love is like a garden planted with one flower. There may be room for a weed or two, but for none other of the floral kingdom.

  Trennahan had given her more than one glimpse of his past, and it had appalled without horrifying or repulsing her. Her sympathy had been swift and unerring. She realised that Trennahan had come to California at a critical point in his moral life, and that his complete regeneration depended on his future happiness. He had pointed this out as a weakness, but the fact was all that concerned her. Whatever mists there might be between her perceptions and the great abstractions of life, love had sharpened all that love demanded and pointed them straight at all in Trennahan that he wished her to know. She was awed by the tremendous responsibility, but confident that she was equal to it; for did she not love him wholly, and had he not chosen her, by the light of his great experience, out of all women? She would walk barefooted on Arctic snows or accept any other ordeal that came her way, but she would make him happy.

  Suddenly she remembered that she had received a brief dictated note from her aunt that morning, asking her to pack and send to Santa Barbara a painting of the Virgin which hung in her old apartments: she wished to present it to the Mission. Mr. Polk had closed his house a year before and taken up his permanent abode with the Yorbas, but his Chinese major-domo was in charge. Magdaléna reflected that it was not necessary to bother her uncle, who had seemed ill and restless of late; the Chinaman could attend to the matter.

  She went downstairs and through the gardens to the adjoining house. The weeds grew high behind it; the windows were dusty; the side door at which she rang needed painting. The Chinaman answered in his own good time. He looked a little sodden; doubtless he employed much of his large leisure with the opium pipe. Magdaléna bade him follow her to her aunt's apartments. As she ascended the imposing staircase she withdrew her hand h
astily from the banister.

  "Why do you not keep things clean?" she asked disgustedly.

  "Whattee difflence? Nobody come," he replied with the philosophy of his kind.

  The very air was musty and dusty. The black walnut doors, closed and locked, looked like the sealed entrances to so many vaults. The sound of a rat gnawing echoed through the hollow house. It seemed what it was, this house,—the sarcophagus of a beautiful woman's youth and hopes.

  For a year or two after the house was built Mrs. Polk had given magnificent entertainments, scattering her husband's dollars in a manner that made his thin nostrils twitch, and without the formality of his consent. Magdaléna paused at a bend of the stair and tried to conjure up a brilliant throng in the dark hall below, the great doors of the parlours rolled back, the rooms flooded with the soft light of many candles; her aunt, long, willowy, of matchless grace, her marvellous eyes shooting scorn at the Americans crowding about her, standing against the gold-coloured walls in the blood-red satin she had shown once to her small admirers. But the vision would not rise. There was only a black well below, a rat crunching above.

  She reached the door of her aunt's private apartments on the second floor and entered. She stepped back amazed. There was no dust here, no musty air, no dimness of window. A fire burned on the hearth. The gas was lit and softly shaded. The vases on the mantel were full of flowers. On one table was a basket of fruit; on another were the illustrated periodicals.

  "Mrs. Polk is here?" she said to Ah Sin.

  "No, missee."

  "She is expected, then? How odd—"

  "Donno, missee. Evey day, plenty days, one, two, thlee weeks, me fixee rooms all same this."

  "But why?"

  "Kin sabbee, missee. Mr. Polk tellee me, and me do allee same whattee he say."

  Magdaléna's lips parted, and her breath came short.