A woman's heart may be said to resemble a subterranean cavern to which
communication is had by means of a trap-door. How the lover enters this
guarded precinct depends upon the lover and the woman. Sometimes the
trap-door is jerked open, and he is hurled down with no by your leave,
gobbled up, willing or unwilling. Sometimes there is a desperate fight
just over the trap-door, in which he does sometimes, but not always,
come off victor. At other times he suddenly finds himself rambling
through those labyrinthine passages, to his surprise and that of the
woman, who, however, perceives him instantly. There is no such fallacy
as that a girl turns in terror or in any other sentiment from the
knowledge of this dweller below the trap-door. A woman of experience
may, after that first glimpse: she may, in fact, bolt the trap-door yet
more tightly and sit herself upon it. But a girl uses it as a frame for
her face and watches every movement of the occupant with neither fear
nor foreboding until occasion comes,--hanging the halls with the
tapestry of dreams, fitting the end of each rose-hued scented gallery
with the magic mirror of the future.
Magdaléna, at the end of that morning in the woods, was quite aware that
she was in love. She wondered why she had not thought of it before, and
concluded that in the prelude she had been merely fascinated by the
first enthralling man she had known. The trap-door of her heart was not
jealously guarded; nevertheless, it was not yawning for an occupant.
Just how and when Trennahan slipped in, she could not have told, but
there he certainly was, and there he would stay so long as life was in
her.
He went home with her to luncheon, and she longed to have him go, that
she might be alone with the thought of him. He left early in the
afternoon, and she locked herself in her room and sat for hours staring
into the tree-tops swimming in their blue haze. She was not in the least
terrified at the beginnings of tumult within her; she rather welcomed
them as the birthright of her sex. In this first stage, she hardly cared
whether Trennahan were in love with her or not, having none of the
instinct of the huntress and her imagination being a slow one. It was
enough that she should see him for many hours alone during this dreamy
exquisite summer, that she should look constantly into the cold eyes
that had their own power to thrill. That he was not the orthodox lover
in appearance, manner, nor age pleased her the better. She was not like
other girls, therefore it was fitting that she should find her mate
among the odd ones of earth. That there might be others like him in the
great world whence he came, that he might have loved and been loved by
women of the world, never occurred to her. She was content, having found
her other part, and wove no histories of the past nor future.
But as the weeks went on and their intimacy grew, she accepted the fact
that he loved her before the disposition to speculate had arrived in the
wake of love. During the hours that they spent rambling through the
woods, or in whatever fashion pleased their mood, although he did not
startle her by definite word or act, he managed to convey that their
future was assured, that she was his, and that in his own time he should
claim her. By the time this dawn broke, her imagination was beating at
its flood-gates, and shortly broke loose. Thereafter when she was not
with Trennahan in the present, she was his in a future built on the
foundations of all she had read and all that instinct taught her. She
had no wish that the present should change; it was enough that it
suggested the inevitable future. She was happy, and she knew that
Trennahan was happy.
Meanwhile they escaped the others and rode together before breakfast,
read together after, explored every corner of the woods, and talked of
many of the things under heaven. Magdaléna, except for an occasional
flutter of eyelid or leap of colour, confessed nothing: her pride was a
supple armour that she laced tightly above her heart; but Trennahan's
very self lifted the trap-door and looked to him through her eyes, and
he had no misgivings. Sometimes he awakened suddenly in the night and
gave a quick, short laugh: he was so new to himself. But he knew that he
had found something very like true happiness, and he was loving her very
deeply. At first he had been pricked by the apprehension that it could
not last; that nature had constructed him to move upon the lower planes;
that a prolonged tour on the heights would result in disastrous and
possibly hideous reaction: his time-worn habits of loving had been of
woof and make so different. But as time passed and the light in his
spirit spread until it dazzled his eyes and consumed his memories, as
the sense of regeneration grew stronger, as the future beckoned
alluringly, as he forgot to remember whether Magdaléna were plain or
beautiful, as peace and content and happiness possessed him,--he ceased
to question his immutability. He had lived in the world for forty years,
and it was like an old bottle of scent long uncorked. The ideals of his
youth had not changed; they had gone. Beautiful women had turned to gall
on his tongue, shrunken to their skeletons in his weary eyes. Fate had
steered his bark in the open sea of bachelorhood until he was old enough
and wise enough to choose his mate with his soul and his brain, and Fate
had steered him to Magdaléna. He was profoundly thankful.
Their intimacy attracted little attention in Menlo Park, for the reason
that it was confined within the wooded limits of Fair Oaks. When they
rode and drove with the others and attended dinners and dances, they
kept apart. As Rose had predicted, gaieties were sporadic, although the
young people met somewhere, usually at the Yorbas', every Saturday
evening; what others did during the long hot days when there was no
company to entertain, concerned no one. Occasionally one of Don
Roberto's huge farm waggons, as deep as a tall man's height, was filled
with hay, and young Menlo Park jolted slowly to the hills. They ate
their luncheon by cool streams dark with meeting willows, and poked at
the tadpoles, gathered wild roses, killed, perhaps, a snake or two.
Then, toward evening, they jolted home again, hot, dusty, and weary, but
supremely content in having lived up to the traditions of Menlo Park.
Tiny alone came out triumphant on these trying occasions. Dressed in
cool white, she seated her diminutive self in the very middle of the
haystack and talked little. The others, undaunted by the sun, started in
high spirits, flirted with energy, and changed their positions many
times. Upon the return journey, Tiny, again, sat serene and white; the
rest dangled over the sides as a last relief for aching limbs and backs,
and forgot the very alphabet of flirtation. It is true that Magdaléna
did not flirt; but she worked hard to keep her guests pleased and
comfortable, and usually went to bed with a headache.