There were no engagements for the following morning, and Magdaléna was
sitting idly on the verandah when she saw Trennahan sauntering up the
drive. The blood flew through her veins, lifting the weight from her
brain. But she repressed the quick smile, and sat still and erect until
he reached the carriage block, when she went to the head of the steps to
meet him.
"Put on your hat," he said, "and let us hide in the woods before
somebody comes to take us for a drive or to invite us to luncheon. I
haven't forgotten our private plans, if you have."
"I had not forgotten, but Tiny and Ila manage everything. I don't like
to refuse when they are so kind."
"You must develop a faculty--or no, leave it to me. I shall gradually
but firmly insist upon having a day or two a week to myself; and Miss
Geary informs me that such unprecedented energy can never last in this
Vale of Sleep; that before a month is over we shall all have settled
down to a chronic state of somnolence from which we shall awaken from
Saturday till Monday only. Then, indeed, will Menlo be the ideal spot of
which I dreamed while you left me to myself on that long day of my
visit."
Her hat was in the hall. She put it on hastily back foremost, and they
walked toward the woods. Suddenly she turned into a side path.
"Let us walk through the orchard," she said. "Then we shall not meet
anyone."
The cherries were gone; but the yellow apricots, the golden pears, the
red peaches and nectarines, the purple plums, hung heavy among the
abundant green, or rotted on the ground. Several poor children were
stealing frankly, filling sacks almost as large as themselves. Don
Roberto had never so far unbent as to give the village people permission
to remove the superfluity of his orchard, but he winked at their
depredations, as they saved him the expense of having it carted away;
his economical graft had never been able to overcome his haughty
aversion to selling the produce of his private estate. Magdaléna often
came to the orchard to talk to these children: the poor fascinated her,
and she liked to feel that she was helping them with words and dimes;
but they were not as the poor of whom she had read, nor yet of the fire.
They were tow-headed and soiled of face, but they wore stout boots and
well-made calico frocks, and they were not without dimes of their own.
"Does California seem a little unreal to you?" she asked. "I mean, there
are no great contrasts. The poverty of London must be frightful."
"You ungrateful person, for Heaven's sake reap the advantage of your
birthright and forget the countries that are not California."
They passed out of the back gate and entered the middle woods. Magdaléna
without hesitation led the way to the retreat hitherto sacred to Art.
Trennahan need not have apprehended that she would inflict him with her
manuscript, nor with hopes and fears: she was much too shy to mention
the subject unless he drew her deliberately; but she liked the idea of
associating him with this leafy and sacred temple.
He threw himself on his back at once, clasping his hands under his head
and gazing up into the rustling storeys above. About his head was a low
persistent hum, a vibration of a sound of many parts. Above were only
the intense silences of a hot California morning.
Trennahan forgot Magdaléna for the moment. He felt young again and very
content. His restless temperament, fed with the infinite varieties of
Europe, had seldom given way to the pleasures of indolence. Even satiety
had not meant rest. But California--as distinct from San Francisco--with
her traditions of luxurious idleness, the low languid murmur of her
woods, her soft voluptuous air, her remoteness from the shrieking nerve
centres of the United States, the sublime indifference of her people to
the racing hours, drew so many quiet fingers across his tired brain,
half obliterating deep and ugly impressions, giving him back something
of the sense of youth and future. Perhaps he dimly appreciated that
California is a hell for the ambitious; he knew that it was the
antechamber of a possible heaven to the man who had lived his life.
He turned suddenly and regarded Magdaléna, wondering how much she had to
do with his regeneration, if regeneration it were, and concluded that
she was merely a part of California the whole. But she was a part as was
no other woman he had met.
She had clasped her hands about her knees and was staring straight
before her. Trennahan, in a rare flash of insight, saw the soul of the
girl, its potentialities, its beauty, struggling through the deep mists
of reserve.
"I could love her," he thought; "and more, and differently, than I have
loved any other woman."
He determined in that moment to marry her. As soon as he had made his
decision, he had a sense of buoyancy, almost of happiness, but no
rejuvenation could destroy his epicureanism; he determined that the slow
awakening of her nature, of revealing her to herself, should be a part
of the happiness he promised himself. He was proud that he could love
the soul of a woman, that he had found his way to that soul through an
unbeautiful envelope, that so far there was not a flutter of sense. He
was to love in a new way, which should, by exquisite stages, blend with
the old. There could be no surprises, no enigmatic delights, but
vicariously he could be young again. Then he wondered if he were a
vampire feeding on the youth of another. For a moment he faced his soul
in horrified wonder, then reasoned that he was little past his meridian
in years; that a man's will, if favoured by Circumstance, can do much of
razing and rebuilding with the inner life. No, he concluded with healthy
disgust, he was not that most sickening tribute to lechery, an old vein
yawning for transfusion. He was merely a man ready to begin life again
before it was too late. This girl had not the beauty he had demanded as
his prerogative in woman, but she had individuality, brains, and all
womanliness. Her shyness and pride were her greatest charms to him: he
would be the first and the last to get behind the barriers. Such women
loved only once.
She turned her head suddenly and met his eyes.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"I have been wondering what that huge pile is behind you."
"That is a wood-rat's nest."
"And you are not afraid of him? Extraordinary woman!"
"He is much more afraid of me. I am very afraid of house-rats."
"And you sit here often? You are not afraid of snakes?"
"There are none in these woods. They always retreat before
people--civilisation. Everyone drives through here, but scarcely anyone
goes through the back woods; the roads are so bad--"
"Hush!"
The sound of wheels, faint for a moment, grew more distinct; with it
mingled the sound of voices. A heavy char-à-banc rolled by, and the
words of Tiny and Ila came distinctly to the two in hiding.
"They will have a long and fruitless search," said Trennahan,
contentedly. "We are going to stay here and become acquainted."
And they did not move for two hours. For a time Trennahan made her talk,
learning almost all there was to know. He even drew forth the tattered
shreds of the caballero, who had been little more than a matter of
garments, and a confession of her long and passionate desire to be
beautiful. The story ended with the lonely and terrible surrender of her
religion. He was profoundly interested. Once or twice he was appalled.
Did he take this woman, he must assume responsibility for every part of
her. She was so wholly without egoism that she would give herself up
without reservation and expect him to guide her. That would be all very
well with the ordinary woman; but with a nature of high ideals, and
possibly of transcendent passions,--was he equal to the task? But in his
present mood the prospect fascinated him. One of her slim hands, dark
but pretty, lay near his own. He wanted to take it in his, but did not:
he wished to keep her unself-conscious as long as possible.
He tried to talk to her about himself, but found it hard to avoid the
claptrap with which a man of the world attempts to awaken interest in
woman. He had always done it artistically: the weariness, the satiety,
the mental grasp of nothingness,--these had been ever revealed in
flashing glimpses, in unwilling allusiveness; the hope that he had
finally stumbled upon the one woman sketched with a brush dipped in
mist. But feeling himself sincere for the first time in incalculable
years, he dismissed the tempered weapons of his victories with contempt,
and, not knowing what others to substitute, talked of his boyhood and
college days. As a result, he felt younger than ever, and closer to the
girl who was part of the mystery that had taken him to her heart.