On the following Monday Don Roberto had a cold and did not go to town,
but sunned himself on the verandah, alternately sipping whiskey and
eating quinine pills. Magdaléna dutifully kept him company, and the
whiskey having made him unusually amiable, he talked more than was his
wont with the women of his family. In his way he was fond of his
daughter, deeply as she had disappointed him; and, had she known how to
manage him, doubtless her girlish wants would have met with few rebuffs.
But that would have meant another Magdaléna.
"I like this Trennahan," he announced. "He prefer talk with me than with
the young mens, and he know plenty good stories, by Jimminy! He have
call on me at the bank three times, and I have lunch with him one day.
Damn good lunch. He is what Jack call thoroughbred, and have the manners
very fine. I like have him much for the neighbour. He ask myself and
Eeram and Washeengton to have the dinner with him on Thursday and warm
the house. He understand the good wine and the tabac, by Scott! I feel
please si he ask me plenty time, and I have him here often."
Magdaléna was delighted with these unexpected sentiments. She pressed
her lips together twice, then said,--
"He asked me if I could ride again with him to-morrow morning."
"I have not the objection to you ride all you want it with Mr.
Trennahan, si you not go outside the place. Need not take that boy, for
he have the work; and I have trust in Mr. Trennahan."
He would, indeed, have welcomed Trennahan as a son-in-law. Magdaléna
must inherit his wealth as well as the immense fortune of her uncle;
neither of these worthy gentlemen had the least ambition to be
caricatured in bronze and accumulate green mould as public benefactors.
Nor did Don Roberto regret that he had no son, having the most profound
contempt for the sons of rich men, as they circled within his horizon.
It would be one of the terms of his will that Magdaléna's first son
should be named Yorba, and that the name should be perpetuated in this
manner until California should shake herself into the sea.
He had long since determined that Magdaléna should marry no one of the
sons of his moneyed friends, nor yet any of the sprouting lawyers or
unfledged business youths who made up the masculine half of the younger
fashionable set. Nor would he leave his money in trust for trustees to
fatten on. Ever since Magdaléna's sixteenth birthday he had been on the
look-out for a son-in-law to his pattern. The New Yorker suited him. A
wealthy man himself, Trennahan's motives could not be misconstrued. His
birth and breeding were all that could be desired, even of a Yorba. He
understood the value of money and its management. And he was well past
the spendthrift age.
Don Roberto and Mr. Polk had discussed the matter between them; and
these two wily old judges of human nature had agreed that Trennahan must
become the guardian of their joint millions. Magdaléna was her father's
only misgiving. Would a man with an exhaustive experience of beautiful
women be attracted into marriage by this ugly duckling? But Trennahan
had passed his youth. Perhaps, like himself, he would have come to the
conclusion that it was better to have a plain wife and leave beauty to
one's mistresses. He had not the slightest objection to Trennahan having
a separate establishment; in fact, he thought a man a fool who had not.
Little escaped his sharp eyes. He had noted Trennahan's interest in
Magdaléna, the length of the morning ride, his daughter's sparkling eyes
at breakfast. Propinquity would do much; and the bait was dazzling, even
to a man of fortune.
He became aware that Magdaléna was speaking.
"I have no habit; and Ila says that they intend to have riding parties."
"You can get one habit. Go up to-morrow and order one."
Magdaléna felt a little dazed, and wondered if everything in her life
were changing.
"I hear wheels," she said after a moment. They were on the verandah on
the right of the house. She stood up and watched the bend of the drive.
"It is the Montgomery char-à-banc," she said, "and there are Mrs.
Cartright and Tiny and Ila and Rose. Shall you stay?"
"I stay. Bring them here to me. Tiny and Ila beautiful girls. Great
Scott! they know what they are about. Rose very pretty, too."
The char-à-banc drew up; and as its occupants did not alight, Magdaléna
went down and stood beside it, shading her eyes with her hand.
"We have come to take you for a drive to the hills, 'Léna dear," said
Tiny. "Do come."
"Papa has a bad cold. I cannot leave--"
"Poor dear Don Roberto!" exclaimed Mrs. Cartright. "I will get out this
minute and speak to him. I know so many remedies for a cold,--blackberry
brandy, or currant wine, or inhaling burnt linen and drinking hot
water--" But she was halfway down the verandah by this time.
"Do you remember the last time we went to the hills?" asked Ila. "Helena
and Rose shrieked with such hilarity that the horses bolted."
"I can answer for myself," said Rose. "I may say that the memory was
burnt in with a slipper."
"I never was spanked," murmured Tiny. "That is one of the many things I
am grateful for. It must be so humiliating to have been spanked."
"Who can tell what futures may lie in a slipper?" replied Rose, who had
a reputation for being clever. "I am sure that my slipperings, for
instance, generated a tendency for epigram; something swift and sharp.
It destroyed the tendency to bawl continuously,--the equivalent of the
great national habit of monologue."
"Rose, you are quite too frightfully clever," said Tiny, with an
assumption of languor. "You will be writing a book next."
"I will make 'Léna the heroine," retorted Rose, with a keen glance, "and
call it 'The Sphinx of Menlo Park.'"
"Fancy 'Léna being called a sphinx," said Ila, who was looking very
bored. "Are you coming, 'Léna, or not? I suppose you don't want to be
kept standing in the sun."
"Oh, we're all used to that," said Rose. "I have three new freckles that
I owe to Mrs. Washington and Caro Folsom. They called yesterday and kept
me standing in the sun exactly three quarters of an hour before they
made up their minds to come in and stay ten minutes."
"I'd like to go--"
Mrs. Cartright returned, shaking her head.
"Don Roberto does not want to be left alone," she said. "I fortunately
thought of a most wonderful remedy for colds, and I have also been
telling him about a terrible cold General Lee had once when he was
staying with us. He did look so funny, dear great man, with his head
tied up in one of old Aunt Sally's bandannas--"
"Please excuse me for interrupting you, dear Mrs. Cartright," said Tiny,
firmly; "but I think we had better get out and talk to Don Roberto, and
go to the hills another day when 'Léna can go with us. Don't you think
that would be best?" she murmured to the other girls. "We might help to
amuse him a little."
"It will be vastly to our credit," said Rose, "for he certainly won't
amuse us."
"Has anyone ever been amused here?" asked Ila, looking at Magdaléna, who
was politely listening to Mrs. Cartright's anecdote. "Fancy having the
biggest house in the smartest county in California and making no more of
it than if it were a cottage. The rest of the houses are so cut up; but
fancy what dances we could have here."
"I have been thinking over a plan," said Tiny, "and that is to try to
manage Don Roberto. 'Léna can't, but I think the rest of us could, and
Mrs. Yorba likes to give parties."
"I am told that in early days there was an extra burst of lawlessness
after each of her balls,--reaction," said Rose.
"I don't think that it is nice for us to be discussing people at their
very doorstep," said Tiny. "I just thought I'd mention my plan. And if
it succeeded, and all took charge, as it were, there need be no
stiffness in an informal party in the country. Shall we get out?"
"By all means, General Tom Thumb," said Rose, with some ire; "it is very
plain who is to be boss in this community, as Mrs. Washington would
say."
"Wait till Helena comes," whispered Ila.