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Title: The Californians


Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton



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Language: English

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THE CALIFORNIANS

by

GERTRUDE ATHERTON







John Lane: The Bodley Head
London and New York
1898

Third Edition
University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.




TO N. L.




BOOK I




I


"I won't study another word to-day!" Helena tipped the table, spilling
the books to the floor. "I want to go out in the sun. Go home, Miss
Phelps, that's a dear. Anyhow, it won't do you a bit of good to stay."

Miss Phelps, young herself, glanced angrily at her briery charge,
longingly at the brilliant blue of sky and bay beyond the long window.

"I leave it to Miss Yorba." Her voice, fashioned to cut, vibrated a
little with the vigour of its roots. "You seem to forget, Miss Belmont,
that this is not your house."

"But you are just as much my teacher as hers. Besides, I always know
what Magdalena wants, and I know that she has had enough United States
history for one afternoon. When I go to England I'll get their version
of it. We're brought up to love their literature and hate them! Such
nonsense--"

"My dear Miss Belmont, I beg you to remember that you have but recently
passed your sixteenth birthday--"

"Oh, of course! If I'd been brought up in Boston, I'd be giving points
to Socrates and wondering why there were so many old maids in the world.
However, that's not the question at present. 'Lena, do tell _dear_ Miss
Phelps that she needs an afternoon off, and that if she doesn't take
it--I'll walk downstairs on my head."

Helena, even at indeterminate sixteen, showed promise of great beauty,
and her eyes sparkled with the insolence of the spoiled child who
already knew the power of wealth. The girl she addressed had only a pair
of dark intelligent eyes to reclaim an uncomely face. Her skin was
swarthy, her nose crude, her mouth wide. The outline of her head was
fine, and she wore her black hair parted and banded closely below her
ears. Her forehead was large, her expression sad and thoughtful. Don
Roberto Yorba was many times more a millionaire than "Jack" Belmont, but
Magdalena was not a spoiled child.

"I don't know," she said, with a marked hesitation of speech; "I'd like
to go out, but it doesn't seem right to take advantage of the fact that
papa and mamma are away--"

"What they don't know won't hurt them. I'd like to have Don Roberto
under my thumb for just one week. He'd get some of the tyranny knocked
out of him. Jack is a model parent--"

Magdalena flushed a dark ugly red. "I wish you would not speak in that
way of papa," she said. "I--I--well--I'm afraid he wouldn't let you come
here to study with me if he knew it."

"Well, I won't." Helena flung her arms round her friend and kissed her
warmly. "I wouldn't hurt his Spanish dignity for the world; only I do
wish you happened to be my real own cousin, or--that would be much
nicer--my sister."

Magdalena's troubled inner self echoed the wish; but few wishes, few
words, indeed, passed her lips.

"Well?" demanded Miss Phelps, coldly. "What is it to be? Do you girls
intend to study any more to-day, or not? Because--"

"We don't," said Helena, emphatically. And Magdalena, who invariably
gave way to her friend's imperious will, nodded deprecatingly. Miss
Phelps immediately left the room.

"She's glad to get out," said Helena, wisely. "She hates me, and I know
she's got a beau. Come! Come!" She pulled Magdalena from her chair, and
the two girls ran to the balcony beyond the windows and leaned over the
railing.

"There's nothing in all the world," announced Helena, "so beautiful as
California--San Francisco included--in spite of whirlwinds of dust, and
wooden houses, and cobblestone streets, and wooden sidewalks. One can
always live on a hill, and then you don't see the ugly things below. For
instance, from here you see nothing but that dark blue bay with the dark
blue sky above it, and opposite the pink mountains with the patches of
light blue, and on that side the hills of Sausalito covered with
willows, and the breakers down below. And the ferry-boats are like great
white swans, with long soft throats bending backwards. I don't express
myself very well; but I shall some day. Just you wait; I'm going to be a
scholar and a lot of other things too."

"What, Helena?" Magdalena drew closer. She thought Helena already the
most eloquent person alive, and she envied her deeply, although without
bitterness, loving her devotedly. The great gifts of expression and of
personal magnetism had been denied her. She had no hope, and at that
time little wish, that the last paucity could ever be made good by the
power of will; but that articulate inner self had registered a vow that
hard study and close attention to the methods of Helena and others
as--or nearly as--brilliant should one day invest her brain and tongue
with suppleness.

"What other things are you going to be, Helena?" she asked. "I know that
you can be anything you like."

"Well, in the first place, I am going to New York to school,--now, don't
look so sad: I've told you twenty times that _I know_ Don Roberto will
let you go. Then I'm going to Europe. I'm going to study hard--but not
hard enough to spoil my eyes. I'm going to finish off in Paris, and then
I'm going to travel. Incidentally, I'm going to learn how to dress, so
that when I come back here I'll astonish the natives and be the
best-dressed woman in San Francisco; which won't be saying much, to be
sure. Then, when I do come back, I'm going to just rule things, and,
what is more, make all the old fogies let me. And--_and_--I am going to
be the greatest belle this State has ever seen; and that _is_ saying
something."

"Of course you will do all that, Helena. It will be so interesting to
watch you. Ila and Tiny will never compare with you. Some people are
made like that,--some one way and some another, I mean.
Shall--shall--you ever marry, Helena?"

"Yes. After I have been engaged a dozen times or so I shall marry a
great man."

"A great man?"

"Yes; I don't know any, but they are charming in history and memoirs.
I'd have a simply gorgeous time in Washington, and ever after I'd have
my picture in 'Famous Women' books."

"Shall you marry a president?" asked Magdalena, deferentially. She was
convinced that Helena could marry a reigning sovereign if she wished.

"I haven't made up my mind about that yet. Presidents' wives are usually
such dreary-looking frumps I'd hate to be in the same book with them.
Besides, most of the presidents don't amount to much. Truthful George
must have been a deadly bore. I prefer Benjamin Franklin--although I
never could stand that nose--or Clay or Calhoun or Patrick Henry or
Webster. They're dead, but there must be lots more. I'll find one for
you, too."

Again the dark flush mounted to Magdalena's hair, as with an alertness
of motion unusual to her, she shook her head.

"Aha!" cried the astute Helena, "you've been thinking the matter over,
too, have you? Who is he? Tell me."

Magdalena shook her head again, but slowly this time. Helena embraced
and coaxed, but to no effect. Even with her chosen friend, Magdalena was
reticent, not from choice, but necessity. But Helena, whose love was
great and whose intuitions were diabolical, leaped to the secret. "I
know!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "It's a caballero!"

This time Magdalena's face turned almost purple; but she had neither her
sex's quick instinct of self-protection nor its proneness to dissemble,
secretive as she was. She lifted her head haughtily and turned away. For
a moment she looked very Spanish, not the unfortunate result of coupled
races that she was. Helena, who was in her naughtiest humour, threw back
her head and laughed scornfully. "A caballero!" she cried: "who will
serenade you at two o'clock in the morning when you are dying with
sleep, and lie in a hammock smoking cigaritos all day; who will roll out
rhetoric by the yard, and look like an idiot when you talk common-sense
to him; who is too lazy to walk across the plaza, and too proud to work,
and too silly to keep the Americans from grabbing all he's got. I met a
few dilapidated specimens when I was in Los Angeles last year. One
beauty with long hair, a sombrero, and a head about as big as my fist,
used to serenade me in intervals of gambling until I appealed to Jack,
and he threatened to have him put in the calaboose if he didn't let me
alone--"

Magdalena turned upon her. Her face was livid. Her eyes stared as if she
had seen the dead walking. "Hush!" she said. "You--you cruel--you have
everything--"

Helena, whose intuitions never failed her, when she chose to exercise
them, knew what she had done, caught a flashing glimpse of the shattered
dreams of the girl who said so little, whose only happiness was in the
ideal world she had built in the jealously guarded depths of her soul.
"Oh, Magdalena, I'm so sorry," she stammered. "I was only joking. And my
statesmen will probably be horrid old boors. I _know_ I'll never find
one that comes up to my ideal." She burst into tears and flung her arms
about Magdalena's neck: she was always miserable when those she loved
were angry with her, much as she delighted to shock the misprized. "Say
you forgive me," she sobbed, "or I sha'n't eat or sleep for a week." And
Magdalena, who always took her mercurial friend literally, forgave her
immediately and dried her tears.




II


Don Roberto Yorba had escaped the pecuniary extinction that had
overtaken his race. Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before,
had called the Californias their own: living a life of Arcadian
magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates
clad in silk and lace, botas and sombrero, mounted upon steeds as
gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at
the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in
splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an
occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of
their lives,--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and
consequence to-day. But through no original virtue of his. He had been
as princely in his hospitality, as reckless with his gold, as meagrely
equipped to cope with the enterprising United Statesian who first
conquered the Californian, then, nefariously, or righteously,
appropriated his acres. When Commodore Sloat ran up the American flag on
the Custom House of Monterey on July seventh, 1846, one of the
midshipmen who went on shore to seal the victory with the strength of
his lungs was a clever and restless youth named Polk. As his sharpness
and fund of dry New England anecdote had made him a distinctive position
on board ship, he was permitted to go to the ball given on the following
night by Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul, in honour of the
Commodore and officers of the three warships then in the bay. Having
little liking for girls, he quickly fraternised with Don Roberto Yorba,
a young hidalgo who had recently lost his wife and had no heart for
festivities, although curiosity had brought him to this ball which
celebrated the downfall of his country. The two men left the
ball-room,--where the handsome and resentful senoritas were preparing to
avenge California with a battery of glance, a melody of tongue, and a
witchery of grace that was to wreak havoc among these gallant
officers,--and after exchanging amenities over a bowl of punch, went out
into the high-walled garden to smoke the cigarito. The perfume of the
sweet Castilian roses was about them, the old walls were a riot of pink
and green; but the youths had no mind for either. The don was fascinated
by the quick terse common-sense and the harsh nasal voice of the
American, and the American's mind was full of a scheme which he was not
long confiding to his friend. A shrewd Yankee, gifted with insight, and
of no small experience, young as he was, Polk felt that the idle
pleasure-loving young don was a man to be trusted and magnetic with
potentialities of usefulness. He therefore confided his consuming desire
to be a rich man, his hatred of the navy, and, finally, his
determination to resign and make his way in the world.

"I haven't a red cent to bless myself with," he concluded. "But I've got
what's more important as a starter,--brains. What's more, I feel the
power in me to make money. It's the only thing on earth I care for; and
when you put all your brains and energies to one thing you get it,
unless you get paralysis or an ounce of cold lead first."

The Californian, who had a true grandee's contempt for gold, was
nevertheless charmed with the engaging frankness and the unmistakable
sincerity of the American.

"My house is yours," he exclaimed ardently. "You will living with me,
no? until you find the moneys? I am--how you say it?--delighted. Always
I like the Americanos--we having a few. All I have is yours, senor."

"Look here," exclaimed Polk. "I won't eat any man's bread for nothing,
but I'll strike a bargain with you. If you'll stand by me, I'll stand by
you. I mean to make money, and I don't much care how I do make it; this
is a new place, anyhow. But there's one thing I never do, and that is to
go back on a friend. You'll need me, and my Yankee sharpness may be the
greatest godsend that ever came your way. I've seen more or less of this
country. It's simply magnificent. Americans will be swarming over the
place in less than no time. They've begun already. Then you'll be just
nowhere. Is it a bargain?"

"It is!" exclaimed Don Roberto, with enthusiasm; and when Polk had
explained his ominations more fully, he wrung the American's hand again.

Polk, after much difficulty, but through personal influence which he was
fortunate enough to possess, obtained his discharge. He immediately
became the guest of Don Roberto, who lived with his younger sister on a
ranch covering three hundred thousand acres, and, his first intention
being to take up land, was initiated into the mysteries of
horse-raising, tanning hides, and making tallow; the two last-named
industries being pursued for purposes of barter with the Boston
skippers. But farming was not to Polk's taste; he hated waiting on the
slow processes of Nature. He married Magdalena Yorba, and borrowed from
Don Roberto enough money to open a store in Monterey stocked with such
necessities and luxuries as could be imported from Boston. When the
facile Californians had no ready money to pay for their wholesale
purchases, he took a mortgage on the next hide yield, or on a small
ranch. His rate of interest was twelve per cent; and as the Californians
were never prepared to pay when the day of reckoning came, he foreclosed
with a promptitude which both horrified Don Roberto and made imperious
demands upon his admiration.

"My dear Don," Polk would say, "if it isn't I, it will be some one else.
I'm not the only one--and look at the squatters. I'm becoming a rich
man, and if I were not, I'd be a fool. You had your day, but you were
never made to last. Your boots are a comfortable fit, and I propose to
wear them. I don't mean yours, by the way. I'm going to look after you.
Better think it over and come into partnership."

To this Don Roberto would not hearken; but when the rush to the gold
mines began he was persuaded by Polk to take a trip into the San Joaquin
valley to "see the circus," as the Yankee phrased it. There, in
community with his brother-in-law, he staked off a claim, and there the
lust for gold entered his veins and never left it. He returned to
Monterey a rich man in something besides land. After that there was
little conversation between himself and Polk on any subject but money
and the manner of its multiplication; and, as the years passed, and
Polk's prophecy was fulfilled, he gave the devotion of a fanatic to the
retention of his vast inheritance and to the development of his grafted
financial faculty.

Between the mines, his store, and his various enterprises in San
Francisco, Polk rapidly became a wealthy man. Even in those days he was
accounted an unscrupulous one, but he was powerful enough to hold the
opinion of men in contempt and too shrewd to elbow such law as there
was. And his gratitude and friendship for Don Roberto never flickered.
He advised him to invest his gold in city lots, and as himself bought
adjoining ones, Don Roberto invested without hesitation. Polk had
acquired a taste for Spanish cooking, cigaritos, and life on horseback;
his influences on the Californian were far more subtle and
revolutionising. Don Roberto was still hospitable, because it became a
grandee so to be; but he had a Yankee major-domo who kept an account of
every cent that was expended. He had no miserly love of gold in the
concrete, but he had an abiding sense of its illimitable power, all of
his brother-in-law's determination to become one of the wealthiest and
most influential men in the country, and a ferocious hatred of poverty.
He saw his old friends fall about him: advice did them no good, and any
permanent alliance with their interests would have meant his own ruin;
so he shrugged his shoulders and forgot them. The American flag always
floated above his rooms. In time he and Polk opened a bank, and he sat
in its parlour for five hours of the day; it was the passion of his
maturity and decline. When Polk's sister, some eleven years after the
Occupation of California by the United States, came out to visit the
brother who had left her teaching a small school in Boston, he married
her promptly, feeling himself blessed in another New England relative.
She was thirty-two at the time, and her complexion was dark and sallow:
but she carried her tall angular figure with impressive dignity, and her
chill manners gave her a certain distinction. Don Roberto was delighted
with her, and as she was by nature as economical as his familiar could
desire, he dismissed the major-domo and gave her _carte blanche_ at the
largest shops in the city; even if he had wished it, she could not have
been induced to buy more than four gowns a year. But she was a very
ambitious woman. As the wife of a great Californian grandee, she had
seen herself the future leader of San Francisco society. Her ambitions
were realised in a degree only. Don Roberto built her a huge wooden
palace on Nob Hill,--on which was the highest flagstaff and the biggest
flag in San Francisco,--placed a suitable number of servants at her
command, and gave her a carriage. But he only permitted her to give two
large dinners and one ball during the season, and would go to other
people's entertainments but seldom. As their ideas of duty were equally
rigid, she would not go without him; but they had a circle of intimate
and aristocratic friends with whom they lunched and dined
informally,--the Polks, the Belmonts, the Montgomerys, the Tarltons, the
Brannans, the Gearys, and the Folsoms.

They had been married ten years when Magdalena, their only child, was
born.




III


Mrs. Yorba was so ill when her daughter came that the child struggled
miserably into existence, and, failing to cry, was put away as dead, and
forgotten for a time. It was discovered to be breathing by Mrs. Polk,
who coaxed it through several months of puny existence with all a native
Californian woman's resource. During this time it never cried, only
whimpered miserably at rare intervals. It was finally discovered to be
tongue-tied, and as soon as it was old enough an operation was
performed. After that the child's health mended, although she seemed in
no hurry to use her tongue. As she progressed in years she still spoke
but seldom, only mildly remonstrating when Helena Belmont pulled her
hair or vented her exuberant vitality upon Magdalena's inferior person.
Once only did she lose her temper,--when Helena hung up all her dolls in
a row and slit them that she might have the pleasure of seeing the
sawdust pour out,--and then she leaped upon her tormentor with a hoarse
growl of rage, and the two pommelled each other black and blue. But as a
rule she was gentle and much-enduring, and Helena was very kind and
clamoured constantly for her society. As the girls grew older they
studied together, and the friendship, born of propinquity, was
strengthened by mutual tastes and sympathy. Helena was probably the only
person who ever understood the reticent, proud, apparently cold and
impassive temperament of the girl who was an unhappy and incongruous
mixture of Spanish and New England traits; and Magdalena was Helena's
most enthusiastic admirer and attentive audience.

Magdalena had one other friend, her aunt, Mrs. Polk, for whom she was
named. That lady was enormously stout and something of an invalid, but
carried the tokens of early beauty in a skin of brilliant fairness and a
pair of magnificent dark eyes fringed with lashes so long and thick that
Magdalena, when a child, found it her greatest pleasure to count them.
Mrs. Polk knew little of her husband and liked him less. She had obeyed
her brother's orders and married him, loving a dazzling caballero--who
had since gambled away his acres--the while. But Polk ministered to the
luxury that she loved; and though his high-pitched voice never ceased to
shake her nerves, and his hard cold face to inspire active dislike, as
the years went on and she saw how it was with her people, she accepted
her lot with philosophy, and finally--as youth fled--with gratitude.
Mrs. Yorba she detested, but she loved the child she had saved to a life
of doubtful happiness, and--she had no children of her own--would gladly
have adopted her. She lived a life of retirement, and had a scanty
though kindly brain: therefore she never understood Magdalena as well as
Helena did at the age of six; but she could love warmly, and that meant
much to her niece.

The three large and aristocratically ugly mansions of Don Roberto Yorba,
Hiram Polk, and Colonel "Jack" Belmont stood side by side on Nob Hill.
Belmont was not as wealthy as the others, but a "palatial residence"
does not mean illimitable riches even yet in San Francisco. Belmont had
married a Boston girl of far greater family pretensions than Mrs.
Yorba's, but of no more stately appearance nor correct demeanour. The
two women were intimate friends until her husband's notorious
infidelities and erraticisms when under the periodical influence of
alcohol killed Mrs. Belmont. Neither Don Roberto nor Polk drank to
excess, and they kept their mistresses in more decent seclusion than is
the habit of the average San Franciscan. It would never occur to Mrs.
Yorba to suspect her husband or any other man of infidelity, did she
live in California an hundred years, and Mrs. Polk was too indifferent
to give the matter a thought.

Although she lived in retirement, rarely venturing out into the winds
and fogs of San Francisco, Mrs. Polk surrounded herself with all the
luxuries of a pampered woman of wealth and fashion. Her house was
magnificent, her private apartments almost stifling in their
sumptuousness. Polk squeezed every dollar before he parted with it, but
his wife had long since accomplished the judicious exercise of a violent
Spanish temper, and her bills were seldom disputed.

Magdalena and Helena loved these scented gorgeous apartments, and ran
through the connecting gardens daily to see her. Their delight was to
sit at her feet and listen to the tales of California when the grandee
owned the land, when the caballero, in gorgeous attire, sang at the
gratings of the beauties of Monterey. Mrs. Polk would sing these old
love-songs of Spain to the accompaniment of the guitar which had
entranced her caballeros in the _sala_ of her girlhood; and Helena, who
had a charming voice, learned them all--to the undoing of her own
admirers later on. It was she who asked a thousand questions of that
Arcadian time, and Mrs. Polk responded with enthusiasm. Doubtless she
exaggerated the splendours, the brilliancy, the unleavened pleasure; but
it was a time far behind her, and she was happy again in the
rememoration. As for Magdalena, she seldom spoke. She listened with
fixed eyes and bated breath to those descriptions of the beautiful women
of her race, seeing for the time her soul's face as beautiful, gazing at
her reflected image aghast when she turned suddenly upon one of the long
mirrors. Her soul sang in accompaniment to her aunt's rich voice, and
her hands moved unconsciously as those listless Spanish fingers swept
the guitar. When Helena imperiously demanded to be taught, and quickly
became as proficient as her teacher, Magdalena kept her eyes on the
floor lest the others should see the dismay in them. Had it occurred to
Mrs. Polk to ask her niece if she would like to learn these old songs of
her race, Magdalena would have shaken her head shyly, realising even
sooner than she did that there was no medium for the music in her soul,
as there was none for the thoughts in her mind. Although her aunt loved
her, she did not scruple to tell her that she was not to be either a
beautiful or a brilliant woman; but although Magdalena made no reply,
she had a profound belief that the Virgin would in time grant her
passionate nightly prayers for a beautiful face and an agile tongue.
Beauty was her right; no woman of her father's house had ever been
plain, and she had convinced herself that if she were a good girl the
Virgin would acknowledge her rights by her eighteenth birthday. As her
intellect developed, she was haunted by an uneasy scepticism of
miracles, particularly after she learned to draw, but she still prayed;
it was a dream she could not relinquish. Nor was this all she prayed
for. She had all the Californian's indolence, which was ever at war with
the intellect she had inherited from her New England ancestors. Her most
delectable instinct was to lie in the sun or on the rug by the fire all
day and dream; and she was thoroughly convinced that the Virgin aided
her in the fight for mental energy, and was the prime factor in the long
periods of victory of mind over temperament.

And only her deathless ambition enabled her to keep pace with Helena.
She sat up late into the night poring over lessons that her brilliant
friend danced through while dressing in the morning. Her memory was bad,
and she never mastered spelling; even after her schooldays were over,
she always carried a little dictionary in her pocket. She laboured for
years at the piano, not only under her father's orders, but because she
passionately loved music, but she had neither ear nor facility, and to
her importunities for both the Virgin gave no heed.

And the bitterness of it all lay in the fact that she was not stupid;
she was fully aware that her intellect was something more than
commonplace; but the machinery was heavy, and, so far as she could see,
there was not a drop of cleverness with which to oil the wheels. She had
read extensively even before she was sixteen,--letters, essays,
biographies, histories, and a number of novels by classic authors; and
although she was obliged to read each book three times in order to write
it on her memory, she slowly assimilated it and developed her brain
cells. Up to this age she was seldom actively unhappy, for she had the
hopes of youth and religion, her aunt, Helena, and, above all, her sweet
inner life, which was an almost constant dwelling upon the poetical
past, linked to a future of exalted ideals: not only should she be more
beautiful than Helena or Tiny Montgomery or Ila Brannan, but she should
hold rooms spell-bound with her eloquence, or the music in her
finger-tips; and when in solitude her soul would rise to such heights as
her fettered mind hinted at vaguely but insistently. Wild imaginings for
a plain tongue-tied little hybrid, but what man's inner life is like
unto the husk to whose making he gave no hand?




IV


Helena remained an hour longer, then ran home to don a white frock and
Roman sash. Her father, with all his vagaries, seldom failed to dine at
home; and he expected to find his little daughter, smartly dressed,
presiding at his table. His sister, Mrs. Cartright, who had managed his
house since his wife's death, made no attempt to manage Helena, and
never thought of taking the head of the table.

Magdalena stood for some time looking out over the darkening bay, at the
white mist riding in to hang before the mountains beyond. She had seen
California wet under blinding rain-storms, but never ugly. Even the fogs
were beautiful, the great waves of sand whirling through the streets of
San Francisco picturesque. California was associated in her mind,
however, with perpetual blue skies and floods of yellow light. She had
wondered occasionally if all people were not happy in such a
country,--where the sun shone for eight months in the year, where
flowers grew more thickly than weeds, and fruit was abundant and
luscious. She had read of the portion to which man was born, and had
decided that if Thackeray and Dickens had lived in California they would
have been more cheerful; but to-day, assailed by a presentiment general
rather than specific, she accepted, for the first time, life in
something like its true proportions.

"There are no more caballeros," she thought, putting into form such
sense of the change as she could grasp. "And Helena is going away, for
years; and papa will not let me go, I know, although I mean to ask him;
and aunt is way down in Santa Barbara, and writes that she may not
return for months. And I don't know my music lesson for to-morrow, and
papa will be so angry, because he pays five dollars a lesson; and Mrs.
Price is so cross." She paused and shivered as the white fog crept up to
the verandah. It was very quiet. She could hear the ocean roaring
through the Golden Gate. Again the presentiment assailed her. "None of
those things was it," she thought in terror. "Uncle Jack Belmont says,
according to Balzac, our presentiments always mean something." She
noticed anew how beautiful the night was: the white wreaths floating on
the water, the dark blue sky that was bursting into stars, the
mysterious outline of the hills, the ravishing perfumes rising from the
garden below. "It is like a poem," she thought. "Why does no one write
about it? Oh!" with a hard gasp, "if I could--if I could only write!" A
meteor shot down the heavens. For the moment it seemed that the fallen
star flashed through her brow and lodged, effulgent, in her brain.
"I--I--think I could," she thought. "I--I--am sure that I could." And
so, the cruel desires of art, and the tree of her crucifix were born.

She went inside hastily, afraid of her thoughts. She changed her frock
for a white one, smoothed her sleek hair, and walked downstairs. She
never ran, like Helena--unless, to be sure, Helena dragged her; she had
all the dignity of her father's race, all its iron sense of convention.

She went into the big parlours to await her parents' return; they had
been spending a day or two at their country house in Menlo Park, and
would return in time for dinner. The gas had been lighted and turned
low; Magdalena had never seen any rooms but her own in this house
sufficiently lighted by day or by night, except when guests were
present. Mrs. Yorba would waste neither gas nor carpets; in consequence,
the house had a somewhat sepulchral air; even its silence was never
broken, save when Helena gave a sudden furious war-whoop and slid down
the banisters.

The walls of the parlour were tinted a pale buff, the ceilings frescoed
with cherubs and flowers. On the great plate-glass windows were curtains
of dark red velvet trimmed with gold fringe. The large square pieces of
furniture were upholstered with red velvet. The floor was covered with a
red Brussels carpet with a design of squirming devil-fish. Three or four
small chairs were covered with Indian embroidery, and there were two
Chinese tables of teak-wood and mottled marble. Gas having been an
afterthought, the pipes were visible, although painted to match the
walls. Magdalena had seen few rooms and had not awakened to the
hideousness of these; her aunt had mingled little taste with her
splendour, and the Belmont mansion was furnished throughout its lower
part in satin damask with no attempt at art's variousness. Magdalena
opened the piano and felt vaguely for the music in the keys. She forgot
the star, remembered only her passionate love of exultant sound, her
longing to find the soul of this most mysterious of all instruments. But
her stiff fingers only sprawled helplessly over the keys, and after a
few moments she desisted and sat staring with dilating eyes, the
presentiment again assailing her. Her shattered caballeros rose before
her, but she shook her head; they, under what influence she knew not,
had faded out into ghost-land.

A carriage drove up to the door. She went forward and stood in the hall,
awaiting her parents. They entered almost immediately. Both kissed her
lightly, her mother inquiring absently if she had been a good girl, and
remarking that she had neuralgia and should go to bed at once. Her
father grunted and asked her if she and Helena Belmont had behaved
themselves, and, more particularly, if she had been outside the house
without an attendant; he never failed to ask this when he had been away
from the house for twenty-four hours. Magdalena replied in the negative,
and did not feel called upon to confess her minor sins. She had a
conscience, but she had also a strong distaste for her father's temper.

Don Roberto had been a handsome caballero in his youth, but his face,
like that of most Californians, had coarsened as it receded from its
prime. The nose was thick, the outlines of the jaw lost in rolls of
flesh. But the full curves of his mouth had been compressed into a
straight line, and the consequent elevation of the lower lip had almost
obliterated an originally weak chin. He was bald and wore a skull-cap,
but his black eyes were fiery and restless, his skin fair with the
fairness of Castile. He went to his room, and Magdalena did not see him
again until dinner was announced. She saw little of her parents. There
is not much fireside life in California. There was none in the Yorba
household. Mrs. Yorba was a martyr to neuralgia, and such time as was
not passed in the seclusion of her chamber was devoted to the manifold
cares of her household and to her small circle of friends. Don Roberto
would not permit her to belong to charitable associations, nor to
organisations of any kind, and although she regretted the prestige she
might have enjoyed as president of such concerns, she had long since
found herself indemnified: Don Roberto's social restrictions had
unwittingly given her the position of the most exclusive woman in San
Francisco. As time went on, it gave people a certain distinction to be
on her visiting list. When Mrs. Yorba realised this, she looked it over
carefully and cut it down to ninety names. After that, hostesses whose
position was as secure as her own begged her personally to go to their
balls. Her own yearly contribution to the season's socialities was
looked forward to with deep anxiety. It was the stiffest and dullest
affair of the year, but not to be there was to be written down as second
of the first. So was greatness thrust upon Mrs. Yorba, who never
returned to her native Boston, lest she might once more feel the pangs
of nothingness. She loved her daughter from a sense of duty rather than
from any animal instinct, but never petted nor made a companion of her.
Nevertheless she watched over her studies, literary excursions, and
associates with a vigilant eye.

Magdalena's companions were the objects of her severe maternal care.
Once a year in town and once during the summer in Menlo Park, Magdalena
had a luncheon party, the guests chosen from the very inner circle of
Mrs. Yorba's acquaintance. The youngsters loathed this function, but
were forced to attend by their distinguished parents. Magdalena sat at
one end of the table and never uttered a word. The only relief was
Helena, who talked bravely, but far less than was her wont; the big dark
dining-room, panelled to the ceiling with redwood, and hung with the
progenitors of the haughty house of Yorba, the gliding Chinese servants,
the eight stiff miserable little girls, with their starched white
frocks, crimped hair, and vacant glances, oppressed even that
indomitable spirit. On one awful occasion when even Helena's courage had
failed her, and she was eating rapidly and nervously, the children with
one accord burst into wild hysterical laughter. They stopped as abruptly
as they had begun, staring at one another with expanded, horrified eyes,
then simultaneously burst into tears. Helena went off into shrieks of
laughter, and Magdalena hurriedly left the room, and in the privacy of
her own wept bitterly. When she went downstairs again, she found Helena
making a brave attempt to entertain the others in the large garden
behind the house. They were swinging and playing games, and looked much
ashamed of themselves. When they went home each kissed Magdalena warmly,
and she forgave them and wished that she could see them oftener. She was
never allowed to go to lunch-parties herself. Occasionally she met them
at Helena's, where they romped delightedly, appropriating the entire
house and yelling like demons, but taking little notice of the quiet
child who sat by Mrs. Cartright, listening to that voluble dame's tales
of the South before the war, too shy and too Spanish to romp. Even at
that early age, they respected and rather feared her. As she grew older,
it became known that she was "booky,"--a social crime in San Francisco.
As for Helena, she was one of those favoured mortals who are permitted
to be anything they please. She, too, devoured books, but she did so
many other things besides that people forgot the idiosyncrasy, or were
willing to overlook it.

Don Roberto spent his leisure hours with his friends Hiram Polk and Jack
Belmont. There was no resource of the town unknown to these elderly
rakes; and the older they grew the more they enjoyed themselves. On fine
evenings they always rode out to the Presidio or to the Cliff House; and
it was one of the sights of the town,--these three leading citizens and
founders of the city's prosperity: Don Roberto, fat, but riding his big
chestnut with all the unalterable grace of the Californian; Polk, stiff
and spare, his narrow grey face unchanged from year to year, ambling
along on a piebald; dashing Jack Belmont, a cavalry officer to his
death, his long black moustachios flying in the wind, a flapping hat
pulled low over his abundant curls, bestriding a mighty black. All three
men were somewhat old-fashioned in their attire; they went little into
society, preferring the more various life beyond its pale.




V


Half of the dinner passed in unbroken silence. Magdalena sat at one end
of the table, her father at the other, their wants attended to by three
Chinese servants. Magdalena was not eating: she was summoning up courage
to speak on a subject that was fast conquering her reticence. Her
thoughts were not interrupted. Don Roberto was a man of few words. He
had been an eloquent caballero in his youth, but had grown to be as
careful of words as of investments. He liked to be amused by women; but,
as he rightly judged, no amount of development could make his wife and
daughter amusing, so he encouraged them to hold their tongues. He deeply
resented Magdalena's lack of beauty; all the women of his house had been
famous throughout the Californias for their beauty. It was the duty of a
Yorba to be beautiful--while young; after thirty it mattered nothing.

Magdalena had completed the structure of her courage. She did nothing by
halves, and she knew that she should not break down.

"Papa," she said.

"Well?"

"Helena is going to New York and to Paris to school. She is going to
live with relatives, but she will attend school."

"She need."

"I thought you liked Helena."

"I like; but she need the discipline more than all the girls in
California."

"I shall be very lonely without her."

"Suppose so; but now is the time to learn plenty, and no think so much
by the play."

"I should like to go with her."

"Suppose so."

"May I?"

"No."

"But you would not miss me, nor mamma either."

"I choose you shall be educate at home. I no approve of the schools. Si
Helena Belmont was my daughter, I take the green hide reata to her every
morning; but Belmont so soffit, the school is better for her. You stay
here. No say any more about it."

"Could I not travel with her after? I want to travel."

"Si I find time one day go abroad, I take you; but you no go with Helena
Belmont. I no am surprise si she make herself the talk of Europe."

"Could not mamma go with me?"

"Your mother no leave the husband! Never she propose such a thing!"

"Do you think you will be able to go soon?"

"Very doubt. The Californian who leave the business for a year working
like the dog for five after. Si he find one red cent when he come back,
he is lucky. The man no knowing just where he is even when he stand over
the spot."

"Then when Helena goes, can I go to Santa Barbara for awhile and visit
aunt?"

"You no can! I no wish you ask the reason. You never go to the South!
Never before you talk so much, by Scott!"




VI


Magdalena had failed at every point. She had expected to fail, but she
felt miserable and discouraged, nevertheless. After dinner she went up
to her room and prayed to the Virgin. In time she felt comforted, her
tears ceased, and she sat thinking for some time at the foot of her
little altar. With the sad philosophy of her nature she put the
impossible from her, and considered the future. It had been arranged
long ago that she and Helena, Ila and Tiny, were to come out at the same
time; the great function which should introduce to San Francisco three
of its most beautiful girls, and its most favoured by lineage and
fortune, was to be given by Mrs. Yorba. The other girls would come out a
year earlier or later. Ila and Tiny were already in Europe. She had
three uninterrupted years before her. In those years she could do much.
When she was not studying, she would read the best authors and learn
their secret. Her father had no library, but Colonel Belmont had, and
she was a life member of the Mercantile Library; the membership had been
presented to her two birthdays ago by her luncheon guests, who respected
what they would not emulate. She pressed her face into her hands,
striving to arrange the nebulous thoughts and ambitions which burned in
her brain.

There was a wild ringing of bells. She raised her head and saw a red
glare, then rose and walked over to the window. She thought a fire very
beautiful; and as there were many in that city of wood and wind, she had
had full opportunity to observe their manifold phases. Her bedroom
adjoined the schoolroom, but was on the corner of the house at the back,
and overlooked not only the business part of the city between the foot
of the hill and the bay, but the region known as "South of Market
Street." This large valley had its aristocratic quarter, but it was now
largely given over to warehouses, depots, and streets of the poor. A
month seldom passed without a big blaze in this closely built
combustible section. To-night there was a long narrow ribbon of flame
twisting in the wind, which in a few moments would leap from block to
block, licking up the flimsy dwellings as a cat licks up milk. Above the
ribbon flew a million sparks, turning the stars from gold to white.
Every moment the wind twisted the ribbon into wonderful fantastic
shapes, which beset Magdalena's brain for words as beautiful.

She listened intently. Some one was climbing a pillar of the balcony. It
was Helena, of course: she often chose that laborious method of entering
a house whose doors were always open to her. Magdalena opened the back
window and stepped out onto the balcony.

"Is that you, Helena?" she whispered.

"Is it? Just you wait till you see me!"

A moment later she had clambered over the railing and stood before the
astonished Magdalena.

"What--what--"

"Boys' clothes. Can't you see for yourself? I'm going to the fire, and
you're going with me."

"Of course I shall not. What possessed you--"

But the astute Helena detected a lack of decision in her friend's voice.
"You're just dying to go," she said coaxingly. "You adore fires, and
you'd love to see one close to. Put a waterproof on and a black shawl
over your head. Then if anybody notices you, they'll think you're a
_muchacha_ from Spanish town. As I am a boy, I can protect you
beautifully. We'll go to the livery stable and I'll make old Duff give
me a hack. I've a pocket full of boodle; papa gave me my allowance
to-day. Here, come in." She dragged the unresisting Magdalena into the
room, arrayed her in a waterproof, and pinned a black shawl tightly
about the small brown face. "There!" she said triumphantly, "you look
like a poor little greaser, for all the world. Don Roberto would have a
fit. Do you think you can slide down the pillar?"

"I don't know--yes, I am sure I can if you can." Her Spanish dignity was
aghast, but her newborn creative instinct stung her spirit into a sudden
overpowering desire for dramatic incident. "Yes, I'll go," she
whispered, closer to excitement than Helena had ever, save once, seen
her. "I'll go."

"Of course! I knew you would. I always knew you were a brick; come!
Quick! I'll go first." She slid down the pillar, which she could easily
clasp with her long arms and legs; and Magdalena, after a gasp,
followed, shivering with terror, but too proud to utter a sound. Before
she had reached the bottom she had lost all interest in the fire; she no
longer wanted to write poetry; she wished frantically to be back in the
security of her room. But she reached the ground safely; and although
she fell in a heap, she quickly pulled herself together and stood up,
holding her head higher than ever. And when she was on the sidewalk, in
disguise, unattended for the first time in her life, her very nerves
sang with exultation, and she was filled with a wild longing for a night
replete with adventure.

"'Lena!" whispered Helena, ecstatically. "Isn't this gorgeous?"

Magdalena nodded. Her brain and heart were throbbing too loud for
speech.

"I'm going to fires for the rest of my life," announced Helena, as they
turned the corner and walked swiftly down the hill. She was not of the
order which is content with one experience, even while that initial
experience is yet a matter of delightful anticipation.

When they reached the livery stable, Helena marched in, holding
Magdalena firmly by the hand. "I want a hack," she said peremptorily to
the man in charge. "And double quick, too." The man stared, but Helena
rattled the gold in her pocket, and he called to two men to hitch up.

"Upon my soul," he whispered to his associates, "it's those kids of Jack
Belmont's and old Yorba's, or I'm a dead man. But it ain't none of my
business, and I ain't one to peach. I like spirit."

"We're going to the fire, and I wish the hack to wait for us," said
Helena, as he signified that all was ready. "I'll pay you now. How much
is it?"

"Ten dollars," he replied unblushingly.

Helena paid the money like a blood, Magdalena horrified at the
extravagance. Her own allowance was five dollars a month. "Can you
really afford this, Helena?" she asked remonstrantly, as the hack slid
down the steep hill.

"I got fifty dollars out of Jack to-night. He's feeling awfully soft
over my going away. Poor old Jack, he'll feel so lonesome without me.
But we'll have a gay old time travelling together in Europe when I'm
through."

Magdalena did not speak of her conversation with her own parent. She did
not want to think of it. This night was to be one of uniform joy. They
were a quarter of an hour reaching the fire. As they turned into the
great central artery of the city, Market Street, they leaned forward and
gazed eagerly at the dense highly coloured mass of men and women, mostly
young, who promenaded the north sidewalk under a blaze of gas.

"What queer-looking girls!" said Magdalena. "Why do they wear so many
frizzes, and sailor hats on one side?"

"They're chippies," said Helena, wisely.

"What's chippies?"

"Girls that live south of Market Street. They work all day and promenade
with their beaux all evening. As I live, 'Lena, we're going down Fourth
Street. We'll go right through Chippytown."

They had been south of Market Street before, for Ila and Tiny lived on
the aristocratic Rincon Hill; but their way had always lain down Second
Street, which was old, but stately and respectable. Fourth Street, like
Market Street by night, would be a new country; but after a few moments'
eager attention Helena sniffed with disappointment. The narrow street
and those branching from it were ill-lighted and deserted; there was
nothing to be seen but low-browed shops. But there was always the red
glare beyond; and in a few moments the holocaust burst upon them in all
its terrible magnificence.

They sprang out of the hack and walked rapidly to the edge of the crowd,
which filled the street in spite of the warning cries of the firemen and
the angry shouts of the policemen. The fire was devouring four large
squares and sending leaping branches to isolated dwellings beyond. A
great furniture factory and innumerable tenements were vanishing like
icicles under a hot sun.

The girls, careless of the severe jostling they received, stared in
fascinated amazement at the red tongues darting among the blackened
shells, the crashing roofs, the black masses of smoke above, cut with
narrow swords of flame, the solid pillar of fire above the factory, the
futile streams of water, the gallant efforts of the firemen. Magdalena,
hardly knowing why, reflected with deep satisfaction that a fire was
even more wonderful at close quarters than when viewed from a distance.
Every detail delighted her; but when a clumsy boy stepped on her toes,
she drew Helena into a sand lot opposite, where it was less crowded. It
was then that she noticed for the first time the weeping women gathered
about their household goods. She stared at them for a moment, then shook
the rapt Helena by the arm.

"Look!" she whispered. "What is the matter with those people?"

"What?" asked Helena, absently. "Oh, don't I wish I were on that house
with a hose in my hand! What a lovely exciting life a fireman's must
be!" Then, yielding to Magdalena's insistence, she turned and directed
her gaze to the people in the lot behind her. "Oh, the poor things!" she
said, forgetting the fire. "They've been burnt out. Let's talk to them."

The two girls approached the unfortunate creatures, who were wailing
loudly, as if at a wake.

"Poor devils!" exclaimed Helena. "I am so glad I have some silver with
me."

"And I have nothing to give them," thought Magdalena, bitterly; but she
was too proud to speak. She stared at them, her brain a medley of new
sensations, as Helena went about, questioning, fascinating,
sympathising, giving. It was the first time she had seen poverty; she
had barely heard of its existence; it had never occurred to her that
great romanticists condescended to borrow from life. It was not abject
poverty that she witnessed, by any means. There were no hollow cheeks
here, no pallid faces, no shrunken limbs. It was, save for the passing
distress, to which they were not unaccustomed, a very jolly, hearty,
contented poverty. Their belongings were certainly mean, but solid and
sufficient. Nevertheless, to Magdalena, who had been surrounded by
luxury from her birth, and had rarely been in a street of less
importance than her own, these commonly clad creatures, weeping over
their cheap household goods, seemed the very dregs of the earth. Her
keen enjoyment fled. She was sure she could never be happy again with so
much misery in the world. If her father would only--she recalled his
contempt for charities, the prohibition he had laid on her mother. She
determined to pray all night to the Virgin to soften his heart. When the
Virgin had been allowed a reasonable time, she would beg him to give her
a monthly allowance to devote to the poor. The Virgin had failed her
many times, but must surely hearken to so worthy a petition as this. She
stood apart. No one noticed her. She had nothing to give. They were
showering blessings upon Helena, who was walking about with a cocky
little stride, well pleased with herself.

Suddenly Helena wheeled and ran over to Magdalena.

"I've given away my last red," she said. "It's lucky I paid for that
hack in advance. Let's get out. Those I haven't given any to will be
down on me in a minute. Besides, it's getting late. A-ou-u!"

A policeman had tapped her roughly on the shoulder. She gazed at him in
speechless terror for a half-moment, then gasped, "W-h-a-t do you want?"

"I want you two young uns for the lock-up," he said curtly. The
struggling crowd had lashed his pugnacity and ensanguined his temper. As
an additional indignity, the saloon had been burned, and he had not had
a drink for an hour. "I'll run you in for wearing boys' clothes; have
you ever heard the penalty for that, miss? And I'll run in this little
greaser as a vagrant."

Helena burst into shrieks of terror, clinging to Magdalena, who
comforted her mechanically, too terrified, herself, to speak. Even in
that awful moment it was her father she feared, not the law.

"Shut up!" exclaimed the officer. "None of that." He paused abruptly and
regarded Helena closely. She was searching wildly in her pockets. "Oh,
if you've got a fiver," he said easily, "I'll call it square."

"I haven't so much as a five-cent piece," sobbed Helena, with a fresh
burst of tears. "Oh, 'Lena, what shall we do?"

"You'll come with me! that's what you'll do." He took them firmly by the
hand and dragged them through the crowd, a section of which had
transferred its attentions to the victims of the officer's wrath. But
the three were soon hurrying up a dark cross-street toward a car; and as
they went Helena recovered herself, and began to cast about among her
plentiful resource. She dared not risk telling this man their names, and
bid him take them home in hope of reward, for he would certainly demand
that reward of their scandalised parents. No, she decided, she would
confide in the dignitary in charge at the station; and as soon as he
knew who she was, he would be sure to let them go at once.

They went up town on a street-car. Helena had never been in one before,
and the experience interested her; but Magdalena sat dumb and wretched.
She had been a docile child, and her father's anger had never been
visited upon her; but she had seen his frightful outbursts at the
servants, and once he had horsewhipped a Mexican in his employ until the
lad's shrieks had made Magdalena put her fingers in her ears. He would
not whip her, of course; but what would he do? And this horrid man, who
was of the class of her father's coachman, had called her a "greaser."
She had all the pride of her race. The insult stifled her. She felt
smirched and degraded.

Nor was this all: she had had her first signal experience of the pall
that lines the golden cloud.

The officer motioned to the conductor to stop in front of a squat
building in front of the Old Plaza. The man, whose gall had been slowly
rising for want of drink, hurried them roughly off the car and across
the sidewalk into a dark passage. Their feet lagged, and he shoved them
before him, flourishing his bludgeon.

"Git on! Git on!" he said. "There's no gittin' out of this until you've
served your time."

The words and the dark passage made Helena shiver. What if they would
not give her a chance to speak, but should lock her up at once? She knew
nothing of these dark doings of night. Perhaps the policeman would take
them directly to a cell. In that case, she must confide in him.

They entered a room, and her confidence returned. A man sat at a desk,
an open ledger before him. He was talking to several tramps who stood in
various uneasy attitudes in front of the desk. His face was tired, but
his eyes had a humourous twinkle. He did not glance at the new-comers.

"Sit down," commanded the policeman, "and wait your turn."

The girls sat down uncomfortably on the edge of a bench. In a moment
they noticed a young man sitting near the desk and writing on a small
pad of paper. He looked up, looked again, regarding them intently, then
rose and approached the policeman.

"Hello, Tim," he said. "What have you got here? A girl in boys'
clothes?"

"That's about the size of it."

Helena pulled her cap over her eyes and reddened to her hair. For the
first time she fully realised her position. She was Colonel Jack
Belmont's daughter, and she was waiting in the city prison as a common
vagrant. Magdalena bent her head, pulling the shawl more closely about
her face.

The young man looked them over sharply. "They are the kids of
somebodies," he said audibly. "Look at their hands. There's a 'story'
here."

Helena turned cold and set her teeth. She had no idea who the young man
might be, but instinct told her that he threatened exposure.

A few moments later the tramps had gone, and the man at the desk asked
the policeman what charge he preferred against his arrests.

"This one's a girl in boys' clothes, sir, and both, I take it, are
vagrants. The House of Correction is the place for 'em, I'm thinkin'."

Magdalena's head sank still lower, and she dug her nails into her palms
to keep from gasping. But Helena, in this crucial moment, was game. She
walked boldly forward and said authoritatively,--

"I wish to speak alone with you."

The sergeant recognised the great I AM of the American maiden; he also
recognised her social altitude. But he said, with what severity he could
muster,--

"If you have anything private to say, you can whisper it."

Helena stepped behind the desk and put her lips close to his ear. "I am
Colonel Jack Belmont's daughter," she whispered. "Send me home, quick,
and he'll make it all right with you to-morrow."

"A chip of the old block," muttered the sergeant, with a smile. "I see.
And who is your companion?"

Helena hesitated. "Do--do I need to tell you?" she asked.

"You must," firmly.

"She's--you'll never breathe it?"

"You must leave that to my discretion. I shall do what is best."

"She is the daughter of Don Roberto Yorba."

"O Lord! _O_ Lord!" He threw back his head and gave a prolonged chuckle.

The young man edged up to the desk.

"Who is that man?" demanded Helena, haughtily. She felt quite mistress
of the situation.

"He's a reporter."

"What's that?"

"Why, a reporter for the newspapers."

"I know nothing of the newspapers," said Helena, with an annihilating
glance at the reporter. "My father does not permit me to read them."

The sergeant sprang to his feet. "This _is_ no place for you," he
muttered. "That's the best thing I've heard of Jack Belmont for some
time. Here, come along, both of you."

He motioned to the girls to enter the passage, and turned to the
officer. "Don't let anybody leave the room till I come back," he said;
and the reporter, who had started eagerly forward, fell back with a
scowl. "There's no 'story' in this, young man," said the sergeant,
severely; "and you'll oblige _me_," with significant emphasis, "by
making no reference to it."

"I think you're just splendid!" exclaimed Helena, as they went down the
passage.

"Oh, well, we all like your father. Although it would be a great joke on
him,--Scott, but it would! However, it wouldn't be any joke on you a few
years from now, so I'm going to send you home with a little good
advice,--don't do it again."

"But it's such fun to run to fires!" replied Helena, who now feared
nothing under heaven. "We _did_ have a time!"

"Well, if you're set on running to fires, go in your own good clothes,
with money enough in your pocket to grease the palm of people like our
friend Tim. Here we are."

He called a hack and handed the girls in.

"Please tell him to stop a few doors from the house," said Helena;
"and," with her most engaging smile, "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to
pay him. If you'll give me your address, I'll send you the amount first
thing to-morrow."

"Oh, don't mention it. Just ask your father to vote for Tom Shannon when
he runs for sheriff. It's no use asking anything of old Yorba," he
added, with some viciousness. "And I'd advise you, young lady, to keep
this night's lark pretty dark."

The remark was addressed to Magdalena, but she only lifted her head
haughtily and turned it away. Helena replied hastily,--

"My father shall vote for you and make all his friends vote, too. I
won't tell him about this until next Wednesday, the day before I leave
for New York; then he'll be feeling so badly he won't say a word, and
he'll be so grateful to you that he'll do anything. Good-night."

"Good-night, miss, and I guess you'll get along in this world."

As the carriage drove off, Helena threw her arms about Magdalena, who
was sitting stiffly in the corner. "Oh, darling, dearest!" she
exclaimed. "_What_ have I made you go through? And you're so generous,
you'll never tell me what a villain I am. But you will forgive me, won't
you?"

"I am just as much to blame as you are. I was not obliged to go."

"But it was dreadful, wasn't it? That horrid low policeman! The idea of
his daring to put his hand on my shoulder. But we'll just forget it, and
next week, to-morrow, it will be as if it never had happened."

Magdalena made no reply.

"'Lena!" exclaimed Helena, sharply. "You're never going to own up?"

"I must," said Magdalena, firmly. "I've done a wicked thing. I've
disobeyed my father, who thinks it's horrible for girls to be on the
street even in the daytime alone, and I've nearly disgraced him. I've no
right not to tell him. I must!"

"That's your crazy old New England conscience! If you were all Spanish,
you'd look as innocent as a madonna for a week, and if you were my kind
of Californian you'd cheek it and make your elders feel that they were
impertinent for taking you to task."

"You are half New England."

"So I am, but I'm half Southerner, too, and all Californian. I'm just
beautifully mixed. You're not mixed at all; you're just hooked together.
Come now, say you won't tell him. He's a terror when he gets angry."

"I must tell him. I'd never respect myself again if I didn't. I've done
lots of other things and didn't tell, but they didn't matter,--that is,
not so much. He's got a _right_ to know."

"It's a pity you're not more like him, then you wouldn't tell."

"What do you mean, Helena? I am sure my father never told a lie."

Helena was too generous to tell what she knew. She asked instead, "I
wonder would your conscience hurt you so hard if everything had turned
out all right, and we were coming home in our own hack?"

Magdalena thought a moment. "It might not to-night, but it would
to-morrow. I am sure of that," she said.

Helena groaned. "You are hopeless. Thank Heaven, I was born without a
conscience,--that kind, anyhow. I intend to be a law all to myself. I'm
Californian clear through into my backbone."

The hack stopped. The girls alighted and walked slowly forward. Mr.
Belmont's house was the first of the three.

"Well," said Helena, "here we are. I'm going to climb up the pillar and
walk along the ledge. How are you going in?"

"Through the front door."

"Well, if you will, you will, I suppose. Kiss me good-night."

Magdalena kissed her and walked on. A half-moment later Helena called
after her in a loud whisper,--

"Take off that shawl!"

Magdalena lifted her hand to her chin, then dropped it. When she reached
her own home, she rang the bell firmly. The Chinaman who opened the door
stared at her, the dawn of an expression on his face.

"Where is Don Roberto?" she asked.

"In loffice, missee."

Magdalena crossed the hall and tapped at the door of the small room her
father called his office. Don Roberto grunted, and she opened the door
and went in. He was writing, and wheeled about sharply.

"What?" he exclaimed. "What the devil! Take that shawl off the head."

Magdalena removed the shawl and sat down.

"I went to a fire," she said. "I got taken up by a policeman and went to
the station. A man named Tom Shannon said he wouldn't lock me up, and
sent me home. He paid for the carriage." She paused, looking at her
father with white lips.

His face had turned livid, then purple. "_Dios!_" he gasped. "_Dios!_"
And then she knew how furious her father was. When his life was in even
tenor he never used his native tongue. "_Dios!_" he repeated. "Tell that
again. You go with that little devil, Helena Belmont, I suppose. _Madre
de Dios!_ Again! Again!"

"I went to a fire--south of Market Street. A policeman arrested me for a
vagrant. He called me a greaser--"

Her father sprang to his feet with a yell of rage. He caught his
riding-whip from the mantel.

She stumbled to her feet. "Papa!" she said. "Papa! You will not do
that!"

A few moments later she was in her own room. The stars shone full on her
pretty altar. She turned her back on it and sat down on the floor. She
had not uttered a word as her father beat her. Even now she barely felt
the welts on her back. But her self-respect had been cut through at
every blow, and it quivered and writhed within her. She hated her father
and she hated life with an intensity which added to her misery, and she
decided that she had made her last confession to any one but the priest,
who always forgave her. If she did wrong in the future and her father
found it out, well and good; but she would not be the one to tell him.




VII


It was a part of her punishment that she was to be locked in her room
until Helena left for New York; but Helena visited her every night in
her time-honoured fashion. Magdalena never told of the blows, but
confinement was a sufficient excuse to her restless friend for any
amount of depression; and Helena coaxed twenty dollars out of her father
and bought books and bonbons for the prisoner, which she carefully
disposed about her person before making the ascent. Magdalena hid her
presents in a bureau drawer; and it is idle to deny that they comforted
her. One of the books was "Jane Eyre," and another Mrs. Gaskell's Life
of Charlotte Bronte. They fired her with enthusiasm, and although she
cried all night after the equally tearful Helena had said good-bye to
her, she returned to them next day with undiminished enthusiasm.

The Sunday after Helena's departure she was permitted to go to church.
She was attended by her mother's maid, a French girl and a fervid
Catholic. St. Mary's Cathedral, in which Don Roberto owned a pew that he
never occupied, was at that time on the corner of California and Dupont
streets.

Magdalena prayed devoutly, but only for the reestablishment of her
self-respect, and the grace of oblivion for the degradation to which her
father had subjected her. Later, she intended to pray that he might be
forgiven, both by herself and God, and that his heart should be softened
to the poor; but not yet. She must be herself again first.

Her head had been aching for two days, the result of long confinement
and too many bonbons. It throbbed so during service that she slipped
out, whispering to the maid that she only wanted a breath of fresh air
and would be back shortly.

She stood for a few moments on the steps. Her head felt better, and she
noticed how peaceful the city looked; yet, as ever, with its suggestion
of latent feverishness. She had heard Colonel Belmont say that there was
no other city in the world like it, and as she stood there and regarded
the precipitous heights with their odd assortment of flimsy "palaces"
and dilapidated structures dating back to the Fifties, she felt the
vague restlessness that brooded over everything, and understood what he
had meant; and she also knew that she understood as he had not. Above
was the dazzling sky, not a fleck in its blue fire. There was not a
breath of wind in the city. She had never known a more peaceful day. And
yet, if at any moment the earth had rocked beneath her feet, she would
have felt no surprise.

She felt the necessity for exercise. It was now over a week since she
had been out of her room, and during that time she had not only studied
as usual, but read and read and read. She did not remember to have ever
felt so nervous before. She could not go back into the Cathedral; it was
musty in itself and crowded with the Great Unwashed. But it would not be
right to disturb Julie. There could be no harm in the least bit of a
walk alone, particularly as her father was in Menlo Park. She glanced
about her dubiously. Chinatown, which began a block to her right, was
out of the question, although she would have liked to see the women and
the funny little Chinese babies that she had heard of: the fortunate
Helena had been escorted through Chinatown by her adoring parent and a
policeman. She did not care to climb twice the almost perpendicular hill
which led to her home, and at the foot of the hill was the business
portion of the city. There was only one other way, and it looked quiet
and deserted and generally inviting.

She crossed California Street and walked along Dupont Street. She saw to
her surprise that the houses were small and mean; those the fire had
eaten had hardly been worse. They had green outside blinds and appeared
to date from the discovery of gold at least.

"There are poor people so near us," she thought. "Even Helena never
guessed it. I am glad the plate had not been handed round; I will give
some one my quarter."

The houses were very quiet. The shutters were closed, but the slats were
open. She glanced in, but saw no one.

"Probably they are all in the Cathedral," she thought. "I am glad it is
so close to them."

She walked on, forgetting the houses for the minute, absorbed in her new
appreciation of the strange suggestiveness of San Francisco. Again,
something was shaping itself in her mind, demanding expression. She felt
that it would have the power to make her forget all that she did not
wish to remember, and thought that perhaps this was the sponge for the
slate the Virgin was sending in answer to her prayers.

Suddenly, almost in her ear, she heard a low chuckle. She started
violently; in all her life she had never heard anything so evil, so
appalling, as that chuckle. It had come from the window at her left. She
turned mechanically, her spirits sinking with nameless terror.

Her expanded eyes fastened upon the open shutters. A woman sat behind
them; at least, she was cast in woman's mould. Her sticky black hair was
piled high in puffs,--an exaggeration of the mode of the day. Her thick
lips were painted a violent red. Rouge and whitewash covered the rest of
her face. There was black paint beneath her eyes. She wore a dirty pink
silk dress cut shamefully low.

The blood burned into Magdalena's cheeks. Of sin she had never heard.
She had no name for the creature before her, but her woman's instinct
whispered that she was vile.

The woman, who was regarding her malevolently, spoke. Magdalena did not
understand the purport of her words, but she turned and fled whence she
had come. As she did so, the chuckle, multiplied a dozen-fold,
surrounded her. She stopped for a second and cast a swift glance about
her, fascinated, with all her protesting horror.

Behind every shutter which met her gaze was the duplicate of the
creature who had startled her first. As they saw her dismay, their
chuckle broke into a roar, then split into vocabulary. Magdalena ran
faster than she had ever run in her life before. Suddenly she saw
Colonel Belmont sauntering down California Street, debonair as ever. His
long moustaches swept his shoulders. His soft hat was on the back of his
head, framing his bold handsome dissipated face. His frock-coat, but for
the lower button, was open, and stood out about the dazzling shirt, well
revealed by a low vest.

"Uncle Jack!" screamed Magdalena. "Uncle Jack!"

Colonel Belmont jumped as if a battery had ripped up the ground in front
of him. Then he dashed across the street. "Good God!" he shouted. "Good
God!" He caught Magdalena in his arms and carried her back to the shadow
of the cross.

"You two have been possessed by the devil of late," he began wrathfully,
but Magdalena interrupted him.

"No! no!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know there was anything different
there from any other street. I didn't mean to."

"Well, I don't suppose you did. You never know where you are in this
infernal town, anyhow. Where's your maid?"

But Magdalena had fainted.




VIII


After that, Magdalena had brain fever. It was a sharp but brief attack,
and when she was convalescent the doctor ordered her to go to the
country at once and let her school-books alone. As Mrs. Yorba never left
her husband for any consideration, Magdalena was sent to Menlo Park with
Miss Phelps. The time came when Magdalena hated the monotony of Menlo,
with its ceaseless calling and driving, its sameness of days and
conversation; but at that age she loved the country in any form.

Menlo Park, originally a large Spanish grant, had long since been cut up
into country places for what may be termed the "Old Families of San
Francisco." The eight or ten families who owned this haughty precinct
were as exclusive, as conservative, as any group of ancient county
families in Europe. Many of them had been established here for twenty
years, none for less than fifteen. That fact set the seal of gentle
blood upon them for all time in the annals of California,--a fact in
which there is nothing humourous if you look at it logically; there is
really no reason why a new country should not take itself seriously.

Don Roberto owned a square mile known as Fair Oaks, in honour of the
ancient and magnificent woods upon it. These woods were in three
sections, separated by meadows, and there was a broad road through each,
but not a twig of the riotous underbrush had been sacrificed to a
foot-path. A hundred acres about the house--which was a mile from the
entrance to the estate--had been cleared for extensive lawns, ornamental
trees, and a deer park.

Directly in front of the house, across the driveway and starting from a
narrow walk between two great lawns, was a solitary eucalyptus-tree, one
of the few in the State at the time of its planting. It was some two
hundred feet high and creaked alarmingly in heavy winds; but Don
Roberto, despite Mrs. Yorba's protestations, would not have it uprooted:
he had a particular fondness for it because it was so little like the
palms and magnolias of his youth.

To the left of the house at the end of an avenue of cherry-trees was an
immense orchard surrounded by an avenue of fig-trees, and English
walnut-trees.

The house was as unlike the adobe mansions of the old grandees as was
the eucalyptus the palms. It was large, square, two-storied, and
although of wood, of massive appearance. It was, indeed, the most
solid-looking structure in California at that time. A deep verandah
traversed three sides of the house, its roof making another beneath the
bedroom windows. Its pillars were hidden under rose vines and wistaria.
The thirty rooms were somewhat superfluous, as Don Roberto would have
none of house-parties, but he could not have breathed in a small house.
The rooms were very large and lofty, the floors covered with matting,
the furniture light and plain. Above, as from the town house, floated
the American flag.

Colonel Belmont's estate adjoined Fair Oaks on one side, the
Montgomerys' on the other; and the Brannans, Kearneys, Gearys,
Washingtons, and Folsoms all spent their summers in that sleepy valley
between the waters of the San Francisco and the redwood-covered
mountains; these and others who have nothing to do with this tale. Hiram
Polk had no home in Menlo, excepting in his brother-in-law's house. Some
of his wife's happiest memories were of the Rancho de los Pulgas, and
she refused to witness its possession by the hated American. So Polk had
bought her one of the old adobe houses in Santa Barbara, and each year
she extended the limit of her sojourn in a town where memories were
still sacred.




IX


Magdalena was languid and content. She put the terrible experiences
which had preceded her illness behind her without effort. Her mind dwelt
upon the joy of living in the sunshine, and upon the hopes of the
future. She admitted frankly that she was glad to be rid of her parents,
and only longed for Helena. That faithful youngster wrote, twice a week,
letters which were a succession of fireworks embellished by caricatures
of such of her teachers and acquaintance as had incurred her
disapproval. Her aunt, Mrs. Edward Forbes, who was one of the leaders of
New York society and a beauty, was giving her much petting and would
take her abroad later.

Magdalena read these letters with delight stabbed with doubt. More than
once she had wondered if Helena had been born to realise all her own
ambitions. Even her letters were clever and original.

In a week Magdalena was strong enough to walk in the woods, and Miss
Phelps placed no restraint upon her. She re-read what books she had,
then made out a list and sent it to her father to purchase, believing
that he would refuse her nothing after her illness. Don Roberto read the
note, grunted, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. He abominated
erudite women, and had the scorn of the financial mind for the
superfluous attributes of the intellectual. Magdalena waited a
reasonable time, then after a day's hard fight with the reticence of her
nature, wrote and asked Colonel Belmont for the books. He sent them at
once, with a penitent note and an order on the principal bookseller of
the city for all that she might want in the future. "I will say a prayer
to the Virgin for him," thought Magdalena, with a glow at her heart,
oblivious that the Virgin had refused to intercede with her father.

The packet contained the lives of a number of men and women who had
distinguished themselves in letters; but although Magdalena read them
twice they told her little, save that she must read the works of the
masters and puzzle out their methods if she could.

Meanwhile, in spite of her studies, she was growing strong, for she
spent the day out of doors; and when her parents came down on the first
of June, they found her as shy and cold as ever, but with sparkling eyes
and a faint glow in her cheeks.

"But never she is beauty," said Don Roberto, that evening to Polk, as
the two men sat on the verandah, smoking. "Before, I resent very much,
and say damnation, damnation, damnation. But now I think I no mind. Si
she is beauty I think more often by that time--no can help. I wonder si
there are the beautiful women in the South now, like before; but, by
Jimminy! I like forget the place exeest. I am an American. Yes, Great
Scott!"

He stretched out his little fat legs and rested his third chin on his
inflexible shirt-front. He felt an American, every inch of him, and
hated anything that reminded him of what he might become did he yield to
the natural indolence and extravagance of his nature. He would gladly
have drained his veins and packed them with galloping American blood. It
grieved him that he could not eliminate his native accent, and he was
persuaded that he spoke the American tongue in all its purity, being
especially proud of a large assortment of expletives peculiar to the
land of his adoption.

Polk gave a short dry laugh and stretched out his long hard Yankee legs.
Even in the dusk his lantern jaws stood out. There was no doubt about
his nationality. Those legs and jaws were the objects of Don Roberto's
abiding envy.

"Pretty women in the family are a nuisance," said Polk. "They want the
earth, and don't see why they shouldn't get it. I wouldn't have that
Helena for another million. By the way, Jack told me a good story on you
yesterday."

Don Roberto grunted. His Spanish pride had not abated an inch. He
resented being discussed.

Polk continued: "There were seven or eight men talking over old
times in the Union Club the other night; that is to say, they were
reminiscing over the various enterprises they had been engaged in, and
the piles they had made and lost. Our names naturally came up, and
Brannan said, slowly, as if he were thinking it over hard,
'I--don't--think--I--had--any--dealings--with--Yorba--ever.' Whereupon
Washington replied, quick as a shot, 'You'd remember it if you had.'"

Don Roberto scowled heavily. It was one of his fictions that he
hoodwinked the world. He never snapped his fingers in its face as Polk
did: exteriorly a Yorba must always be a Yorba.

"Some day when the bank have lend Meester Washington one hundred
thousand dollars, I turn on the screw when he no is prepare to pay," he
said. And he did.




X


During the following week all Menlo, which had moved down before Mrs.
Yorba, called on that august leader. She received every afternoon on the
verandah, clad in black or grey lawn, stiff, silent, but sufficiently
gracious. On the day after her arrival, as the first visitor's carriage
appeared at the bend of the avenue, its advent heralded by the furious
barking of two mastiffs, a bloodhound, and an English carriage dog,
Magdalena gathered up her books and prepared to retreat, but her mother
turned to her peremptorily.

"I wish you to stay," she said. "You must begin now to see something of
society. Otherwise you will have no ease when you come out. And try to
talk. Young people must talk."

"But I can't talk," faltered Magdalena.

"You must learn. Say anything, and in time it will be easy."

Magdalena realised that her mother was right. If she was to overcome her
natural lack of facile speech, she could not begin too soon. Although
she was terrified at the prospect of talking to these people who had
alighted and were exchanging platitudes with her mother, she resolved
anew that the time should come when she should be as ready of tongue and
as graceful of speech as her position and her pride demanded.

She sat down by one of the guests and stammered out something about the
violets. The young woman she addressed was of delicate and excessive
beauty: her brunette face, under a hat covered with corn-coloured
plumes, was almost faultless in its outline. She wore an elaborate and
dainty French gown the shade of her feathers, and her small hands and
feet were dressed to perfection. Magdalena had heard of the beautiful
Mrs. Washington, and felt it a privilege to sun herself in such
loveliness. The three elderly ladies she had brought with her--Mrs.
Cartright, Mrs. Geary, and Mrs. Brannan--were dressed with extreme
simplicity.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Washington, "they are lovely,--they are, for a fact.
Mine have chilblains or something this year, and won't bloom for a cent.
Hang the luck! I'm as cross as a bear with a sore head about it."

"Would you like me to pick some of ours for you?" asked Magdalena,
wondering if she had better model her verbal accomplishments on Mrs.
Washington's. She thought them even more picturesque than Helena's.

"Do; that's a jolly good fellow."

When Magdalena returned with the violets, they were received with a
bewitching but absent smile; another carriage-load had arrived, and all
were discussing the advent of a "Bonanza" family, whose huge fortune,
made out of the Nevada mines, had recently lifted it from obscurity to
social fame.

"It's just too hateful that I've got to call," said Mrs. Washington, in
her refined melodious voice. "Teddy says that I must, because sooner or
later we've all got to know them,--old Dillon's a red Indian chief in
the financial world; and there's no use kicking against money, anyhow.
But I can't cotton to that sort of people, and I just cried last night
when Teddy--the old darling! I'd do anything to please him--told me I
must call."

"It's a great pity we old families can't keep together," said Mrs.
Brannan, a stout high-nosed dame. "There are plenty of others for them
to know. Why can't they let us alone?"

"That's just what they won't do," cried Mrs. Washington. "We're what
they're after. What's the reason they've come to Menlo Park? They'll be
'landed aristocracy' in less than no time. Hang the luck!"

"Shall you call, Hannah?" asked Mrs. Cartright. "Dear Jack never imposes
any restrictions on me,--he's so handsome about everything; so I shall
be guided by you."

"In time," replied Mrs. Yorba, who also had had a meaning conference
with her husband. "But I shall not rush. Toward the end of the summer,
perhaps. It would be unwise to take them up too quickly."

"I've got to give them a dinner," said Mrs. Washington, with gloom. "But
I'll put it off till the last gun fires. And you've all got to come.
Otherwise you'll see me on the war-path."

"Of course we shall all go, Nelly," said Mrs. Yorba. "We will always
stand in together."

The conversation flowed on. Other personalities were discussed, the
difficulty of getting servants to stay in the country, where there was
such a dearth of "me gentleman frien'," the appearance of the various
gardens, and the atrocious amount of water they consumed.

"I wish to goodness the water-works on top wouldn't shut off for eight
months in the year," exclaimed Mrs. Washington. "Whenever I want
something in summer that costs a pile, Teddy groans and tells me that
his water bill is four hundred dollars a month." And Mrs. Washington,
whose elderly and doting husband had never refused to grant her most
exorbitant whim, sighed profoundly.

Magdalena did not find the conversation very interesting, nor was she
called upon to contribute to it. Nevertheless, she received every day
with her mother and went with her to return the calls. At the end of the
summer she loathed the small talk and its art, but felt that she was
improving. Her manner was certainly easier. She had decided not to
emulate Mrs. Washington's vernacular, but she attempted to copy her ease
and graciousness of manner. In time she learned to unbend a little, to
acquire a certain gentle dignity in place of her natural haughty
stiffness, and to utter the phrases that are necessary to keep
conversation going; but her reticence never left her for a moment, her
eyes looked beyond the people in whom she strove to be interested, and
few noticed or cared whether or not she was present. But at the end of
the summer she was full of hope; society might not interest her, but the
pride which was her chief characteristic commanded that she should hold
a triumphant place among her peers.

She had told neither of her parents of the books Colonel Belmont had
given her, knowing that the result would be a violent scene and an
interdiction. At this stage of her development she had no defined ideas
of right and wrong. Upon such occasions as she had followed the dictates
of her conscience, the consequences had been extremely unpleasant, and
in one instance hideous. She was indolent and secretive by nature, and
she slipped along comfortably and did not bother her head with problems.




XI


The Yorbas returned to town on the first of November. It was decided
that Magdalena should continue her studies, but the rainy days and
winter evenings gave her long hours for her books. She found, to her
delight, that her brain was losing something of its inflexibility; that,
by reading slowly, one perusal of an ordinary book was sufficient. Her
memory was still incomplete, but it was improving. Her mother had ceased
to overlook her choice of books, being satisfied that Magdalena would
never care for trash.

Magdalena always found the big dark house oppressive after the months in
Menlo Park, and went out as often as she could. On fine days, attended
by Julie, she usually walked down to the Mercantile Library, and prowled
among the dusty shelves. The old Mercantile Library in Bush Street,
almost in the heart of the business portion of the city, had the most
venerable air of any building in California. There was, indeed, danger
of coming out covered with blue mould. And it was very dark and very
gloomy. It has always been suspected that it was a favourite resort for
suicides, but this, happily, has never been proved.

But Magdalena loved it, for it held many thousand volumes, and they were
all at her disposal. Her membership was worth more to her than all her
father's riches. Julie, who hated the library, always carried a chair at
once to the register and closed her eyes, that she might not be
depressed to tears by the gloom and the walls of books, which were bound
as became all that was left of the dead.

It was during one of these visits that Magdalena approached another
crisis of her inner life. She was wandering about aimlessly, hardly
knowing what she wanted, when her eye was caught by the title of a book
on an upper shelf: "Conflict between Religion and Science." She knew
nothing about science, but she wondered in what manner religion could
conflict with anything. She took the book down and read the first few
lines, then the page, then the chapter, still standing. When she had
finished she made as if to replace the book, then put it resolutely
under her arm, called Julie, and went home.

She read during the remainder of the afternoon, and as far into the
night as she dared. Before she went to bed she said her prayers more
fervently than ever, and the next morning considered deeply whether or
not she should return the book half read. She finally concluded to
finish it. Her intellect was voracious, and she had no other companion
but her religion. Moreover, if she was to aspire to a position in the
world of letters, she must equip her mind with the best that had gone
before. She had every faith in the power of the Catholic religion to
hold its own; her hesitation had been induced, not by fear of disturbing
her faith, but because she doubted, pricked by the bigotry in her veins,
if it was loyal to recognise the existence of the enemy.

However, she finished the book. On the following Saturday morning she
went down to the library and asked the librarian, who took some interest
in her, what he would advise her to read in the way of science; she had
lost all taste for anything else.

"Well, Darwin is about the best to begin on, I should say," he replied.
"He's easy reading on account of his style. And then I should advise you
to read Fiske's 'Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy' before you tackle
Herbert Spencer or Huxley or Tyndall."

Magdalena took home Darwin's "Origin of Species" and "Descent of Man."
They so fascinated her that not until their contents had become a
permanent part of her mental furnishing did she realise their warfare on
revealed religion. But by this time science had her in its mighty grip.

She read all that the librarian had recommended, and much more. It was
some six months later that she fully realised that her faith was gone.
There came a time when her simple appeals to the Virgin stuck in her
throat; when she realised that her beloved masters, if they could have
seen her telling a rosary at the foot of her altar, would have thought
her a fool.

There was no struggle, for the work was done, and finally. But her grief
was deep and bitter. Religion had been a strong inherited instinct, and
it had been three fourths of her existence for nearly eighteen years.
She felt as if the very roots of her spirit had been torn up and lay
wilting and shrivelling in the cold light of her reason. She was
terrified at her new position. How was she, a mere girl, to think for
herself, to make her way through life, which every great writer told her
was a complex and crucifying ordeal, with no guide but her own poor
reason?

For the first time she felt her isolation. She had no one to go to for
sympathy, no one to advise her. Of all she knew, her parents were the
last she could have approached on any subject involving the surrender of
her reticence.

She lost interest in her books, and brooded, her mind struggling toward
will-o'-the-wisps in a fog-bank, until she could endure her solitary
position no longer; she felt that she must speak to some one or her
brain would fall to ashes. Her aunt was still in Santa Barbara, and
showed no disposition to return. A priest was out of the question. There
was no one but Colonel Belmont. Magdalena knew nothing of his private
life: not a whisper had reached her secluded ears; but she doubted if
religion were his strong point. But he had always been kind, and she
knew him to be clever. It took her a week to make up her mind to speak
to him and to decide what to say; but when her decision was finally
reached, she walked through the connecting gardens one evening with firm
tread and set lips.

She entered the house by a side door and went to the library, where she
knew Colonel Belmont smoked his after-dinner cigar when at home. A
cordial voice answered her knock. When she entered he rose and came
forward with the graceful hospitality which never failed him in the
moments of his liveliest possession, and with the acute interest which
anything feminine and young never failed to inspire.

"Well, honey!" he exclaimed, kissing her warmly and handing her to a
chair; "you might have done this before. I'm such a lonely childless old
widower."

"Oh!" said Magdalena, with contrition; "I never thought you'd care to
see me." She could not know that he seldom permitted himself to be
alone.

"Well, now you know it, you'll come oftener, won't you? Have you heard
from my baby lately? I had a letter a yard long this morning. She can
write!"

"I had one too." She hesitated a moment, then determined to speak at
once. She could not hold this nor any man's attention in ordinary
conversation, and she wanted to finish before she wearied him.

"Uncle Jack," she said, "I've come to see you about something in
particular. I know so few people, or I wouldn't bore you--"

"Don't you talk about boring me, honey,--you! Why, your old Uncle Jack
would do anything for you."

A light sprang into Magdalena's eyes. Colonel Belmont forgot for the
moment that she was not beautiful, and warmed to interest at once. Few
people had ever withstood Jack Belmont's magnetism, and Magdalena found
it easy to speak.

"It is this," she said. "I have been reading books lately that have
taken my religion from me; it has gone utterly. I want to ask you what I
shall do,--if there is anything to take its place. I--I--feel as if I
could not get along without something."

Colonel Belmont made a faint exclamation and wheeled about, staring at
the fire. His first impulse was to laugh, so ludicrous was the idea that
anyone should come to him for spiritual advice; his second to get out of
the room. He did neither, however, and ordered his intelligence to work.

He did not speak for some time; and Magdalena, for the first moment,
watched him intently, scarcely breathing. Then her attention wandered
from herself, and she studied his profile. She noted for the first time
how worn it was, the bags under the injected eyes, the heavy lines about
the mouth. She had no name for what she saw written in that face, but
she suddenly felt herself in the presence of one of life's mysteries. Of
man's life she knew nothing--nothing. What did this man do when he was
not at home? Who were his friends besides her morose father, her cold
dry uncle? She felt Belmont's difference from both, and could not know
that they had much in common. What circumstances had imprinted that face
so differently from the few faces familiar to her? For the first time
man in the concrete interested her. She suddenly realised how profound
was her ignorance, despite the lore she had gathered from
books,--realised dimly but surely that there was a vast region called
life for her yet to explore, and that what bloomed for a little on its
surface was called human nature. She gave an involuntary shiver and sank
back in her chair. At the same moment Colonel Belmont looked round.

"Someone walking over your grave?" he asked, smiling. "What you asked
came on me right suddenly, 'Lena. I couldn't answer it all in a minute.
You didn't say much--you never do; so I understand how you've been
taking this thing to heart. I'm sorry you've lost your religion, for it
stands a woman in mighty well. They have the worst of it in this life."
Perhaps he was thinking of his wife. His face was very sober. "But if
you have lost it, that is the end of the chapter as far as you are
concerned. All I can think of is this--" the words nearly choked him,
but he went on heroically: "Do what you think is right in little matters
as well as in great. You've been properly brought up; you know the
difference between right and wrong; and all your instincts are naturally
good, if I know anything about women. As you grow older, you will see
your way more clearly. You won't have the temptations that many women
have, so that it will be easier for you than for some of the poor little
devils. And you'll never be poor. You'll find it easier than most--and
I'm glad of it!" he added with a burst of warm sympathy. Emotional by
nature, the unaccustomed experience had brought him to the verge of
tears; and Magdalena, forlorn and lonely, but thanking him mutely with
her eloquent eyes, appealed to the great measure of chivalry in him.

"I am glad I spoke to you, Uncle Jack," she said after a moment. "You
have given me much to think about, and I am sure I shall get along much
better. Thanks, ever so much."

She did not rise to go, but was silent for several moments. Then she
asked abruptly,--

"What do you mean by women having temptations? I know by the way you
said it that you don't mean just ordinary every-day temptations."

Colonel Belmont glanced about helplessly. His eloquence had carried him
away; he had not paused to take feminine curiosity into account. He
encountered Magdalena's eyes. They were fixed on him with solemn
inquiry, and they were very intelligent eyes. Did he take refuge in
verbiage, she would not be deceived. Did he refuse to continue the
conversation, she would be hurt. In either case her imagination would
have been set at work, and she might go far, and in the wrong direction,
to satisfy her curiosity. Once more he stared at the fire.

To his daughter he could have said nothing on such a subject: he was too
old-fashioned, too imbued with the chivalrous idea of the South of his
generation that women were of two kinds only, and that those who had
been segregated for men to love and worship and marry must never brush
the skirts of their thought against the sin of the world. They were
ideal creatures who would produce others like themselves, and men--like
himself.

But as he considered he realised that he had a duty toward Magdalena,
which grew as he thought: she needed help and advice and had come to
him, having literally no one else to go to. After all, might she not
have temptations which would pass his beautiful, quick-witted,
triumphant daughter by? Helena, with the world at her feet, would have
little time for brooding, little time for anything but the lighter
pleasures of life under his watchful eye, until she loved and passed to
the keeping of a man who, he hoped, would be far stronger and finer than
himself. But Magdalena? Repressed, unloved, intellectual, disappointed
at every turn, passionate undoubtedly,--there was no knowing to what
sudden extremes desperation might drive her. And the woman, no matter
how plain, had yet to be born who could not be utterly bad if she put
her mind to it. It was not only his duty to warn Magdalena, but to give
her such advice as no mortal had ever heard from his lips before, nor
ever would hear again.

He drew a long breath and wheeled about. Magdalena was leaning forward,
staring at him intently. There was no self-consciousness in her face,
and he realised in a flash that he would merely talk into a brain. Her
woman's nature would not be awakened by the homily of an elderly man.
The task became suddenly light.

"Well, it's just this: There's no moral law governing the animal
kingdom; but men and women were allowed to develop into speaking,
reasoning, generally intelligent beings for one purpose only: to make
the world better, not worse. Their reasoning faculty may or may not be a
spark of the divine force behind the universe; but there's no doubt
about the fact, not the least, that every intelligent being knows that
he ought to be at least two thirds good, and in his better
moments--which come to the worst--he has a desire to be wholly good, or
at least better than he has ever been. In other words, the best of men
strive more or less constantly toward an ideal (and the second-best
strive sometimes) which, if realised, would make this world a very
different place. I believe myself that it is this instinct alone which
is responsible for religions,--a desire for a concrete form of goodness
to which man can cling when his own little atom is overwhelmed by the
great measure of weakness in him. Do you follow me?"

Magdalena nodded, but she did not look satisfied.

"Well, this is the point: The world might be prosaic without sin, but it
is right positive that women would suffer less. And if it could be
pounded into every woman's head that she was a fool to think twice about
any man she could not marry, and that she threatened the whole social
structure every time she brought a fatherless child into the world; that
she made possible such creatures as you saw in Dupont Street, and a long
and still more hideous sequelae, every time she deliberately violated her
own instinct for good,--we'd all begin to develop into what the Almighty
intended us to be when He started us off on our long march. Don't
misunderstand me! Even if I were not such a sinner myself, I'd be deuced
charitable where love was concerned, marriage or no marriage--O Lord! I
didn't mean to say that. Forget it until you're thirty; then remember it
if you like, for your brain is a good one. Look, promise me something,
'Lena;" he leaned forward eagerly and took her hand. "Promise me, swear
it, that until you are thirty you'll never do anything your instincts
and your intelligence don't assure you is right,--really right without
any sophistry. Of course I mean in regard to men. I don't want you to
make yourself into a prig--but I am sure you understand."

"I think I do," said Magdalena. "I promise."

"Thank goodness, for you'll never break your word. You may be tempted
more than once to kick the whole stupid game of life to the deuce and go
out on a bat like a man, but console yourself with this: you'd be a long
sight worse off when you got through than when you started, and you'd
either go to smash altogether or spend the rest of your life trying to
get back where you were before; and sackcloth hurts. There isn't one bit
of joy to be got out of it. If you can't get the very best in this
world, take nothing. That's the only religion for a woman to cling to,
and if she does cling to it she can do without any other."

Magdalena rose. "Good-night," she said. "I'll never forget a word of it,
and I'm very much obliged."

She kissed him and had half crossed the room before he sprang to his
feet and went hastily forward to open the door. He went to her father's
house with her, then returned to his library fire. To the surprise of
his servants, he spent the evening quietly at home.




XII


A year from the following June, and two days after her arrival in Menlo,
Magdalena went into the middle woods. The great oaks were dusty already,
their brilliant greens were dimming: but the depths of the woods were
full of the warm shimmer of summer, of the mysterious noises produced by
creatures never seen, by the very heat itself, perchance by the riotous
sap in the young trees which had sprung to life from the roots of their
mighty parents.

Magdalena left the driveway and pushed in among the brush. Poison oak
did not affect her; and she separated the beautiful creeper fearlessly
until she reached a spot where she was as sure of being alone and unseen
as if she had entered the bowels of the earth. She sat down on the warm
dry ground and looked about her for a moment, glad in the sense of
absolute freedom. Above the fragrant brush of many greens rose the old
twisted oaks, a light breeze rustling their brittle leaves, their arms
lifted eagerly to the warm yellow bath from above. Near her was a high
pile of branches and leaves, the home of a wood-rat. No sound came from
it, and mortal had nothing to fear from him. A few birds moved among the
leaves, but the heat made them lazy, and they did not sing.

After a few moments, Magdalena's glance swept the wall of leaves that
surrounded her; then she took a pencil and a roll of foolscap from her
pocket. She had made up her mind that the time had come for her first
essay in fiction. For two years and a half she had studied and thought
to this end; too reverent to criticise, but taking the creators'
structures to pieces as best she could and giving all attention to parts
and details.

She had had a nebulous idea in her mind for some time. It had troubled
her that it did not assume definite form, but she trusted to that
inspiration of the pen of which she had read much.

Her hand trembled so that she could not write for a few moments. She put
the pencil down, not covering her face with her hands as a more
demonstrative girl would have done, but biting her lips. Her heart beat
suffocatingly. For the first time she fully realised what the power to
write would mean to her. Her religion had gone, that dear companion of
many years; she had practised faithfully until six months ago, when she
had asked her teacher to tell her father that she could never become
even a third-rate musician; and Don Roberto had, after a caustic hour,
concluded that he would "throw no more good money after bad;" she had
had long and meaning conferences with her mirror, conjuring up phantasms
of the beautiful dead women of her race, and decided sadly that the
worship of man was not for her. She had never talked for ten consecutive
minutes with a young man; but she had a woman's instincts, she had read,
she had listened to the tales of her aunt, and she knew that what man
most valued in woman she did not possess. Her great position and the
graces she hoped to cultivate might gratify her ambitions in a measure,
but they would not companion her soul. Books were left; but books are
too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason
for being alive. She had read of the jealous absorption of art, of the
intense exclusive love with which it inspired its votaries. She had read
of the joys of creation, and her whole being had responded; she felt
that did her brain obey her will and shape itself to achievement, she
too would know ecstasy and ask nothing more of life.

Her nerves settled, and she began to write. Her reading had been
confined to the classics of the old world: not only had she not read a
modern novel, but of the regnant lights of her own country, Mr. Howells
and Mr. James, she had never heard. She may have seen their names in the
"Literary Bulletin" her bookseller sent her, but had probably gathered
that they were biologists. There was no one to tell her that the actors
and happenings within her horizon were the proper substance for her
creative faculty. California had whispered to her, but she had not
understood. Her intention was to write a story of England in the reigns
of Oliver Cromwell and Charles the Second. The romance of England
appealed to her irresistibly. The mass of virgin ore which lay at her
hand did not provoke a flash of magnetism from her brain.

She wrote very slowly. An hour passed, and she had only covered a page.
Her head ached a little from the intense concentration of mind. Her
fingers were stiff. Finally, she laid her pencil aside and read what she
had written. It was a laboured introduction to the story, an attempt to
give a picture of the times. She was only nineteen and a novice, but she
knew that what she had written was rubbish. It was a trite synopsis of
what she had read, of what everybody knew; and the English, although
correct, was commonplace, the vocabulary cheap. She set her lips, tore
it up, and began again. At the end of another hour she destroyed the
second result.

Then she determined to skip the prologue for the present and begin the
story. For many long moments she sat staring into the brush, her brain
plodding toward an opening scene, an opening sentence. At last she began
to write. She described the hero. He was walking down the great
staircase of a baronial hall,--in which he had lain concealed,--and the
company below were struck dumb with terror and amazement at the
apparition. She got him to the middle of the stair; she described his
costume with fidelity; she wrote of the temper of the people in the
great hall. Then she dropped the pencil. What was to happen thereafter
was a blank.

She read what she had written. It was lifeless. It was not fiction. The
least of Helena's letters was more virile and objective than this.

Again that mysterious indefinable presentiment assailed her. It was the
first time that it had come since that night she had stood on the
balcony and opened her brain to literary desire. Had that presentiment
meant anything since compassed? Her father's cruel treatment? Her
terrible experience in the street of painted women? Her illness? The
loss of her religion? It was none of these things. So far, it had not
been fulfilled; and it had struck its warning note again. She shivered,
then discovered that the yellow light was no longer about her, and that
her head ached. She rose stiffly and put the torn scraps of paper in her
pocket. As she left, she cast a curious glance about her retreat, not
knowing what prompted it. The scent of newly upturned earth came to her
nostrils; a bird flew down on the rat's nest, starting along the sides a
shower of loose earth; the frogs were chanting hoarsely.




XIII


The next morning the natural buoyancy of youth asserted itself; she
reasoned that a long hard apprenticeship had been the lot of many
authors, and determined that she would write a page a day for years, if
need be, until her tardy faculty had been coaxed from its hard soil and
trained to use.

She could not go to the woods that day: her mother expected callers.

"Your birthday is a week from Wednesday," Mrs. Yorba said as they sat on
the verandah. "Your father and I have decided to give a dinner. You will
not come out formally, of course, until winter; but a little society
during the summer will take off the stiffness."

Magdalena turned cold. "But, mamma! I cannot talk to young men."

"You expect to begin sometime, do you not? I shall also take you to any
little entertainment that is given in Menlo this summer; and as the
Brannans and Montgomerys are back from Europe,--they arrived last
Thursday,--there may be several. The older girls gave little parties
before they married; but there have not been any grown girls in Menlo
for some years now. Rose Geary and Caro Folsom, who spent last summer in
the East, will spend this in Menlo, so that there will be five of you,
besides Nelly Washington."

Magdalena knew that the matter was settled. She had given a good deal of
imagination to the time when she should be a young lady, but the
immediate prospect filled her with dismay. Then, out of the knowledge
that her lines had been chosen for her, she adapted herself, as mortals
do, and experienced some of the pleasures of anticipation.

"I believe I did not tell you," her mother resumed, "that I wrote to
Helena some time ago asking her to bring back four dresses for you,--a
ball dress for your debut, an English walking suit, a calling dress, and
a dinner dress."

Magdalena had never given a thought to dress; but this sudden
announcement that she was to have four gowns from Paris and London
pricked her with an intimation that the interests of life were more
varied than she had suspected. She wondered vividly what they would be
like, and recalled several of Nelly Washington's notable gowns.

"You are to have forty dollars a month after your birthday, and your
father will permit me to get you three dresses a year; everything else
must come out of your allowance. You will keep an account-book and show
it to your father every month, as I do. Oh--and there is another thing:
a Mr. Trennahan of New York has brought letters to your father. He is a
man of some importance,--is wealthy and has been Secretary of Legation
twice, and comes of a distinguished family; we must do something for
him, and have decided to ask him down to your dinner. That will kill two
birds with one stone. He can also stay a day or two, and we will show
him the different places."

"A strange man in the house for two days," gasped Magdalena, forgetting
that she was to have forty dollars a month.

"He can take care of himself most of the time. Here come Nelly."

Mrs. Washington's ponies were rounding the deer park. Magdalena craned
her neck.

"She has some one with her," she said. And in another half-moment: "Tiny
Montgomery and Ila Brannan."

Magdalena clasped her hands tightly to keep them from trembling. What
would they think of her? She saw that they were smartly dressed.
Doubtless they were very grand and clever indeed, and would think her
more trying than ever. But although all her shyness threatened for a
moment, it was summarily routed by her Spanish pride.

She rose as the phaeton drew up, and went to the head of the steps,
smiling. They might find her uninteresting, but not _gauche_.

The girls came gracefully forward and kissed her warmly.

"_Dear_ 'Lena," said Miss Montgomery. "We wouldn't wait: we wanted so
much to see you again. And besides, you know," with a mischievous smile,
"we owe you a great many luncheon calls."

Miss Brannan exclaimed almost simultaneously, "How you have improved,
'Lena! I should never have known you." And if her tone was conventional,
it fell upon ears untuned to conventions.

It was Magdalena's first compliment, and she thrilled with pleasure. "My
face looks very much the same in the glass," she said. "But I am glad to
see you back. Let us sit on this side."

She led the girls a little distance down the verandah; she was trembling
inwardly, but felt that she should get along better if relieved of her
mother's ear. Tiny began at once to talk of her delight in being home
again, and Magdalena had time to recover herself.

Tiny Montgomery was an exquisitely pretty little creature, very small
but admirably proportioned, although thin. Her brown eyes were very
sweet under well-pencilled brows, her nose aquiline and fine. The mouth
was barely rubbed in, but the teeth were beautiful, the smile as sweet
as the eyes. She had the smallest feet and hands in California, and
to-day they were clad in white _suede_ with no detriment to their fame.
She wore a frock of white embroidered nainsook and a leghorn covered
with white feathers. She talked rather slowly, in language carefully
chosen, although plentifully laden with superlatives. Her voice was very
sweet, and highly cultivated.

Ila Brannan was taller, with a slender full figure, and very smart. She
wore a closely fitting frock of tan-coloured cloth, a small toque, and a
veil covered with large velvet dots. She was very olive, and her cheeks
were deeply coloured. Her black eyes had a slanting expression. Young as
she was, there was a vague suggestion of maturity about her. She smiled
pleasantly and echoed Tiny's little enthusiasms, which had an air of
elaborate rehearsal, but she seemed to have brought something of Paris
with her, and to adapt herself but ill to her old surroundings.
Magdalena did not feel at ease with either of them, but concluded that
she liked Tiny best.

"Tell me something of Helena," she said finally. "Of course you saw her
in Paris."

"Oh, constantly," replied Tiny. "She's perfectly beautiful, 'Lena,
_perfectly_. Mamma took her with us one night to the opera, and so many
people asked her who the beautiful American was. She has grown _quite_
tall, and is wonderfully stylish. Colonel Belmont has simply showered
money on her since he went over, and she will have beautiful clothes,
and cut us _all_ out when she comes back." But Tiny did not look in the
least disturbed, and peeped surreptitiously into the polished glass of
the window.

"She'll have all the men wild about her," announced Ila; she spoke with
a slight French accent, which was not affected, as she had spent the
greater part of the last five years in Paris. "And she is going to be a
very dashing belle. She informed me that she shall run to fires and do
whatever she chooses, and make people like it whether they want to or
not. But I doubt if she will ever be fast."

"Fast!" echoed Magdalena, a street of painted women flashing into
memory; she knew of no degrees. "Helena! How can you think of such a
thing in connection with her!"

Ila laughed softly. "You baby!" she said.

Tiny frowned. "You know, Ila," she said coldly, "that I do not like to
talk of such things."

"Well, you need not," said Ila, coolly.

Tiny lifted her brows. "I think you know you cannot talk to me of what I
do not wish to hear," she said with great dignity.

Magdalena turned to her, the warm light of approval in her eyes; and
Ila, unabashed, rose and said, "I think I'll go over and talk scandal
for awhile," and joined the older women, whose numbers had been
reinforced.

Magdalena longed to ask Tiny if she really had improved, but was too
shy. Tiny said almost directly,--

"You look _so_ intellectual, 'Lena. Are you? I feel quite afraid."

"Oh, no, no!" replied Magdalena, hastily, "I really know very little; I
wish I knew more." She hesitated a moment; it was difficult for her to
expand even to the playmate of her childhood, but an alluring prospect
had suddenly opened. "Of course you will have a great deal of leisure
this summer," she added. "Shall we read together?"

Tiny rose with a sweet but rather forced smile. "I am not going to let
you see how ignorant I am," she said. "But I feel very rude: I should go
over and talk to Mrs. Yorba."

When they had gone, Magdalena sat for a time staring straight before
her, unheeding her mother's comments. The snub had been prettily
administered, but it had cut deep into her sensitiveness. She realised
that she was quite unlike these other girls of her own age, had never
been like them; it was not Europe that had made the difference. "I would
not care," she thought, "if they would keep away from me altogether. I
have what I care much more for. But I must see them nearly every day and
try to interest them. And I know they will find me as dull as when I
gave those dreadful luncheons."

She was recalled by a direct observation of her mother's.

"Your washed cross-barred muslin looked very plain beside their French
things, but I do not think it worth while to get you any new clothes at
present. But do not let it worry you. Remember that what _we_ do seems
right to every one. We can afford to dress exactly as we choose."

"It does not worry me," replied Magdalena.




XIV


Whether or not to tell her parents of her determination to write had
been a matter of momentous consideration to Magdalena. After the
resignation of her faith and her conversation with Colonel Belmont, she
had determined to adhere rigidly to the truth and to the right way of
living, to conquer the indolence of her moral nature and jealously train
her conscience. The result, she felt, would be a religion of her own,
from which she could derive strength as well as consolation for what she
had lost. She knew, by reading and instinct, that life was full of
pitfalls, but her intelligence would dictate what was right, and to its
mandates she would conform, if it cost her her life. And she knew that
the religion she had formulated for herself in rough outline was far
more exacting than the one she had surrendered.

She had finally decided that it was not her duty to tell her parents
that she was trying to write. When she was ready to publish she would
ask their consent. That would be their right; but so long as they could
in no way be affected, the secret might remain her own. And this secret
was her most precious possession; it would have been firing her soul at
the stake to reveal it to anyone less sympathetic than Helena; she was
not sure that she could even speak of it to her.

Her time was her own in the country. Her father and uncle came down
three times a week, but rarely before evening; her mother's mornings
were taken up with household matters, her afternoons with siesta,
calling, and driving; frequently she lunched informally with her
friends. How Magdalena spent her time did not concern her parents, so
long as she did not leave the grounds and was within call when visitors
came.

Don Roberto would not keep a horse in town for Magdalena, but in the
country she rode through the woods unattended every morning. The
exhilaration of these early rides filled Magdalena's soul with content.
The freshness of the golden morning, the drowsy summer sounds, the deep
vistas of the woods,--not an outline changed since unhistoried races had
possessed them,--the glimpses of mountain and redwood forests beyond,
the embracing solitude, laid somnolent fingers on the scars of her inner
life, letting free the sweet troubled thoughts of a girl, carried her
back to the days when she had dreamed of caballeros serenading beneath
her casement. For two years she had dreamed that dream, and then it had
curled up and fallen to dust under Helena's ridicule. Magdalena was
fatally clear of vision, and her reason had accepted the facts at once.

Sometimes during those rides she dreamed of a lover in the vague fashion
of a girl whose acquaintance of man is confined to a few elderly men and
to the creations of masters; but only then. She rarely deluded herself.
She was plain; she could not even interest women. She felt that she was
wholly without that magnetism which, she had read, made many plain women
irresistible to man.




XV


Don Roberto was to bring his guest with him on the train which arrived a
few minutes after five. Magdalena was told to dress early and be in the
parlour when Mr. Trennahan came downstairs. She was cold at the thought
of talking alone with a man and a stranger; but Mrs. Yorba had
neuralgia, and announced her intention to lie down until the last
minute.

Magdalena had received a number of pretty presents from her aunt and
friends, a cablegram from Colonel Belmont and Helena, and from her
father a small gold watch and fob. Her father's gift was very
magnificent to her, and her pleasure was as great in the thought of his
generosity as in the beauty of the gift itself. His usual gift was ten
dollars; and as it had been decided that she was not to be a young lady
until she was nineteen, her eighteenth birthday had been passed over.

Her mother's present was the dress she was to wear to-night, a white
organdie of the pearly tint high in favour with blondes of matchless
complexion, a white sash, and a white ribbon to be knotted about the
throat. The neck of the gown was cut in a small V.

Magdalena had no natural taste in dress, nor did she know the first
principle of the law of colour; but when she had finished her toilette
she stood for many moments before the mirror, regarding herself with
disapproval. The radiant whiteness of the frock and of the ribbon about
her neck made her look as dark as an Indian. She saw no beauty in the
noble head with its parted, closely banded hair, in the fine dark eyes.
She saw only the wide mouth and indefinite nose, the complexionless
skin, the long thin figure and ugly neck. The only thing about her that
possessed any claim to beauty, according to her own standards, was her
foot. She thrust it out and strove to find encouragement in its
pulchritude. It was thin and small and arched, and altogether perfect.
She wore her first pair of slippers and silk stockings,--a present from
her aunt. Her mother thought silk stockings a sinful waste of money.

Magdalena sighed and turned to the door. "Feet don't talk," she thought.
"What am I to say to Mr. Trennahan?"

She walked slowly down the stair. He was before her, standing on the
verandah directly in front of the doors. His back was to her. She saw
that he was very tall and thin, not unlike her uncle in build, but with
a distinction that gentleman did not possess. Her father was strutting
up and down the drive, taking his ante-dinner constitutional.

She went along the hall as slowly as she could, her hands clenched, her
mind in travail for a few words of appropriate greeting. When she had
nearly reached the door, Trennahan turned suddenly and saw her. He came
forward at once, his hand extended.

"This is Miss Yorba, of course," he said. "How good of you to come down
so soon!"

He had a large warm hand. It closed firmly over Magdalena's, and gave
her confidence. She could hardly see his face in the gloom of the hall,
but she felt his cordial grace, his magnetism.

"I am glad you have come down to my birthday dinner," she said, thankful
to be able to say anything.

"I am highly honoured, I am sure. Shall we go outside? I hope you prefer
it out there. I never stay in the house if I can help it."

"Oh, I much prefer to be out."

They sat facing each other in two of the wicker chairs. He was a man
skilled in woman, and he divined her shyness and apprehension. He talked
lightly for some time, making her feel that politeness compelled her to
be silent and listen. She raised her eyes after a time and looked at
him. He was, perhaps, thirty-five, possibly more. He looked older and at
the same time younger. His shaven chin and lips were sternly cut. His
face was thin, his nose arched and fine, his skin and hair neutral in
tint. The only colouring about him was in his eyes. They were very blue
and deeply set under rather scraggy brows. Magdalena noted that they had
a peculiarly penetrating regard, and that they did not smile with the
lips. The latter, when not smiling, looked grim and forbidding, and
there was a deep line on either side of the mouth. Her memory turned to
Colonel Belmont, and the night she had studied his profile. There was an
indefinable resemblance between the two men. Then she realised how
old-fashioned and worn Belmont was beside this trim elegant man, who,
with no exaggeration of manner, treated her with a deference and
attention which had no doubt been his habitual manner with the greatest
ladies in Europe.

"Shall you be in California long?" she asked suddenly.

"That is what I am trying to decide. I had heard so much of your
California that I came out with a half-formed idea of buying a little
place and settling down for the rest of my days."

"The Mark Smith place is for sale," she answered quickly. "It has only
two acres, but they are cultivated, and the house is very pretty."

"Your father told me about it; but although Menlo is very beautiful, it
seems to have one drawback. I am very fond of rowing, sailing, and
fishing, and there is no water."

"There is if you go far enough. The bay is not so very far away, and I
have heard that there is salmon-fishing back in the mountains. And Mr.
Washington and Uncle Jack Belmont often