When Magdaléna returned home she spread her new garments on the bed and
regarded them with much satisfaction. Helena had expended no less
thought on these than on her own, and none whatever on the meagreness of
Don Roberto's check. There was a brown tweed with a dash of scarlet, a
calling-frock of fawn-coloured camel's hair and silk, a dinner-gown of
pale blue with bunches of scarlet poppies, and a miraculous coming-out
gown of ivory gauze, the deepest shade that could be called white. And
besides two charming hats there was a large box of presents: fans, silk
stockings, gloves, handkerchiefs, and soft indescribable things for the
house toilette. And her trousseau was also to come from Paris! Don
Roberto, in his delight at having secured Trennahan, had informed his
daughter that she should have a trousseau fit for a princess; or, on
second thoughts, for a Yorba.
Magdaléna opened a drawer and took out another of Helena's presents,--a
jewelled dagger. While Colonel Belmont and his daughter were in Madrid
there was a sale of a spendthrift noble's treasures. They had gone to
see the famous collection, and among other things the dagger was shown
them.
"It belonged to a lady of the great house of Yorba," they were told.
"She always wore it in her hair, and all men worshipped her. The old
women said it was the dagger that made men love her, that it was
bewitched; there were other women as beautiful. But men died for this
one and no other. One day she lost the dagger, and after that men loved
her no longer. They ran and threw themselves at the feet of the women
that had hated her. She laughed in scorn and said that she wanted no
such love, and that when one returned--he had gone as Ambassador to the
Court of France--he would show the world that his love did not skulk in
the hilt of a dagger. People marvelled at this because she had flouted
her very skirts in his face, had not thrown him so much as the humblest
flower of hope. When they heard he was coming, they held their breath to
see if the magnet had been in the dagger for him too. He arrived in the
night, and in the morning she was found in her bed with the dagger to
the hilt in her heart. They accused him, and he would not say yes or no,
but they could prove nothing and let him go. And when he died the dagger
was found among his possessions. No one could ever say how he got it.
But it has remained in his family until to-day--and now it goes where?"
"To a Yorba!" announced Helena to Magdaléna, as she repeated this yarn.
"I made up my mind to that, double quick! It may or may not be true, and
she may or may not have been your ancestress; but it would make a jolly
present all the same, so I ordered papa to buy it if all Madrid bid
against him. Of course he did what I told him, and I want you to wear it
the night of the party."
Magdaléna regarded it with great awe. She was by no means without
superstition. Would it bring men to her feet? Not that she wanted them
now, but she would like one evening of intoxicating success, just for
the sake of her old ambitions: they had been little less than entities
at one time; for old friendship's sake she would like to give them their
due. She did wish that she felt a thrill as she touched it,--a vibration
of the attenuated thread which connected one of her soul's particles
with that other soul which, perhaps, had contributed its quota to her
making. But she felt nothing, and replaced the dagger with some chagrin.
She put away the clothes and sat down before the fire to think of
Trennahan. He had gone East at the summons of his mother, who had
invested a large sum of money unwisely,--a habit she had. He might be
detained some weeks. Magdaléna, on the whole, was glad to have him gone
for a while. She wanted to think about him undisturbed, and she wanted
to get used to Helena and her exactions while his demands were abstract:
she loved so hard that she must rub the edge off her delight in having
Helena again, or the two would tear her in twain.
She found the sadness of missing him very pleasurable,--feeling sure of
his return; also the painful thrill every morning when the postman
knocked. And to sit in retrospect of the summer was delicious. There may
have been flaws in its present; there were none in its past. Her
ambition to write was dormant. A woman's brain in love is like a garden
planted with one flower. There may be room for a weed or two, but for
none other of the floral kingdom.
Trennahan had given her more than one glimpse of his past, and it had
appalled without horrifying or repulsing her. Her sympathy had been
swift and unerring. She realised that Trennahan had come to California
at a critical point in his moral life, and that his complete
regeneration depended on his future happiness. He had pointed this out
as a weakness, but the fact was all that concerned her. Whatever mists
there might be between her perceptions and the great abstractions of
life, love had sharpened all that love demanded and pointed them
straight at all in Trennahan that he wished her to know. She was awed by
the tremendous responsibility, but confident that she was equal to it;
for did she not love him wholly, and had he not chosen her, by the light
of his great experience, out of all women? She would walk barefooted on
Arctic snows or accept any other ordeal that came her way, but she would
make him happy.
Suddenly she remembered that she had received a brief dictated note from
her aunt that morning, asking her to pack and send to Santa Barbara a
painting of the Virgin which hung in her old apartments: she wished to
present it to the Mission. Mr. Polk had closed his house a year before
and taken up his permanent abode with the Yorbas, but his Chinese
major-domo was in charge. Magdaléna reflected that it was not necessary
to bother her uncle, who had seemed ill and restless of late; the
Chinaman could attend to the matter.
She went downstairs and through the gardens to the adjoining house. The
weeds grew high behind it; the windows were dusty; the side door at
which she rang needed painting. The Chinaman answered in his own good
time. He looked a little sodden; doubtless he employed much of his large
leisure with the opium pipe. Magdaléna bade him follow her to her aunt's
apartments. As she ascended the imposing staircase she withdrew her hand
hastily from the banister.
"Why do you not keep things clean?" she asked disgustedly.
"Whattee difflence? Nobody come," he replied with the philosophy of his
kind.
The very air was musty and dusty. The black walnut doors, closed and
locked, looked like the sealed entrances to so many vaults. The sound of
a rat gnawing echoed through the hollow house. It seemed what it was,
this house,--the sarcophagus of a beautiful woman's youth and hopes.
For a year or two after the house was built Mrs. Polk had given
magnificent entertainments, scattering her husband's dollars in a manner
that made his thin nostrils twitch, and without the formality of his
consent. Magdaléna paused at a bend of the stair and tried to conjure up
a brilliant throng in the dark hall below, the great doors of the
parlours rolled back, the rooms flooded with the soft light of many
candles; her aunt, long, willowy, of matchless grace, her marvellous
eyes shooting scorn at the Americans crowding about her, standing
against the gold-coloured walls in the blood-red satin she had shown
once to her small admirers. But the vision would not rise. There was
only a black well below, a rat crunching above.
She reached the door of her aunt's private apartments on the second
floor and entered. She stepped back amazed. There was no dust here, no
musty air, no dimness of window. A fire burned on the hearth. The gas
was lit and softly shaded. The vases on the mantel were full of flowers.
On one table was a basket of fruit; on another were the illustrated
periodicals.
"Mrs. Polk is here?" she said to Ah Sin.
"No, missee."
"She is expected, then? How odd--"
"Donno, missee. Evey day, plenty days, one, two, thlee weeks, me fixee
rooms all same this."
"But why?"
"Kin sabbee, missee. Mr. Polk tellee me, and me do allee same whattee he
say."
Magdaléna's lips parted, and her breath came short.
She gave the necessary instructions about the picture. The Chinaman
followed her down the stairs and opened the door. As she was passing
out, she turned suddenly and said to him,--
"It is not necessary to tell Mr. Polk about this, nor that I have been
here. He does not like to be bothered about little things."
"Allight, missee."