"Never I think I come to Monterey again," said Don Roberto, as the 'bus
which contained his party only drove from the little toy station to the
big toy hotel. "Once I hate all the Spanish towns, because so
extravagant I am before that I feel 'fraid, si I return, I am all the
same like then; but now I am old and the habits fixit; and now I know my
moneys go to be safe with Trennahan, I feel more easy in the mind and
can enjoy. But I no go to the town, for all is change, I suppose: all
the womens grown old and poor, and all the mens dead--by the drink,
generalmente. Very fortunate I am I no stay there; meeting Eeram in
time. Ay, yi! What kind de house is this? Look like paper, and the
grounds so artifeecial. No like much."
Magdaléna hardly knew her father these last months. From the day that he
found a reminiscent pleasure in the mild diversions of Menlo he had
visibly softened. From the day he was assured of Trennahan he had become
almost expansive, and at times was moved to generosity. Upon one
occasion he had doubled Magdaléna's allowance, and at Christmas he had
given her a hundred dollars; and he had paid the bills of the season
without a murmur. The fear which had haunted him during the last thirty
years,--that he should suddenly relapse into his native extravagance and
squander his patrimony and his accumulated millions, dying as the
companions of his youth had died,--he dismissed after he met Trennahan.
Polk had been the iron mine to the voracious magnet in his character. In
the natural course of things Polk would outlive him; but the possibility
of Polk's extermination by railroad accident or small-pox had been a
second devil of torment, and during the past year he had visibly failed.
Now, however, there was Trennahan to take his place. Don Roberto would
enjoy life once more, a second youth. He was almost happy. If he felt
his will rotting, he would transfer all his vast interests to Trennahan
in trust for his wife and daughter, retaining a large income. He did not
believe, at this optimistic period, that there was any real danger,
after an inflexible resistance of thirty years; but he also realised for
the first time what the strain of those thirty years had been.
Helena, dazzlingly fair in a frock of forest green, and surrounded by
five new admirers, three Eastern and two English tourists, awaited
Magdaléna on the verandah. The strangers gave Magdaléna a faint shock:
being the only well-dressed men she had ever seen except Trennahan, they
assumed a family likeness to him, and seemed to steal something of his
preeminence among men. She commented distantly on this fact as she went
up the stair with Helena.
"Oh, your little tin god on wheels is not the only one," replied Helena,
the astute. "There are five here with possibilities besides dress, and
more coming to-morrow. They _are_ such a relief! If I feel real wicked
to-morrow night--well, never mind!"
"Helena! You will not make those four young men any more miserable than
they are now?"
Helena shook her head. She was looking very naughty. "Four months, my
dear! I didn't realise what I had endured until I had this sudden
vacation. Two days of blissful rest, and then the variations for which I
was born."
They were in Helena's room, and Magdaléna sat down by the open window,
where she could smell the cypresses, and regarded her beloved friend
more critically than was her habit.
"I wonder if you will ever mature,--get any heart?" she said.
"'Léna! What do you mean! Heart? Don't I love you and my father; and the
other girls--some?"
"I don't mean that kind. Nor falling in love, either. I never expressed
myself very well, but you know what I mean."
"Oh, bother. What were men and women made for but to amuse each other?"
"Life isn't all play."
"It is for a time--when you're young. I am sure that that is what Nature
intended, and that the people who don't see it are those who make the
mistakes with their lives. Otherwise life would be simply
outrageous,--no balance, no compensation. After a certain age even fools
become serious: they can't help it, for life begins to take its revenge
for permitting them to be young at all, and to hope, and all that sort
of thing. Therefore those that don't make the most of youth and all that
goes with it are something more than fools."
Magdaléna looked at her in dismay. "How do you realise that, at your
age? I have lived alone, thought more--had more time to think and to
read--but I never should--"
"I have intuitions. And I've seen more of the world than you have. I see
everything that goes on--you can bet your life on that. Talk about my
powers of concentration! They're nothing to my antennae."
"But have you no principles of right and wrong? No morality? You would
not deliberately sacrifice others to your own pleasure, would you?"
"Wouldn't I? I don't take the least pleasure in cruelty, like some
women. If I could give people oblivion draughts, I'd do it in a
minute--for my vanity has nothing to do with it, either. But the world
is at my feet, and there it shall stay, no matter who pays the piper. I
love life. I love everything about it. I've never seen anything in the
world I thought ugly. I don't think anything is ugly. If it was, I
should hate it. I've never been through a slum,--a horrid slum, that
is,--and I don't want to. The beauty of the earth intoxicates me. When I
even think about it, much less look at it, I feel perfectly wild with
delight to think that I am alive. And my senses are so keen. I see so
far. I can hear miles. I believe I can hear the grass grow. I eat and
drink little, but that little gives me delight. A glass of cold spring
water intoxicates me. And, above all, I enjoy being loved. I never
forget how much you and papa love me. I couldn't exist without either of
you. Papa is looking much better since he came down. Don't you think so?
And I like to see love in the eyes of men I don't care a rap about.
Their eyes are like impersonal mirrors for me to read the secrets of the
future in. And I don't really hurt them. Most men have a lot of
superfluous love in them. I may as well have it as another. It won't
interfere with the destination of the reserve in the least."
"Helena!" exclaimed Magdaléna, with a sinking heart. "I believe you are
a genius."
"I have the genius of personality, but I couldn't do a thing to save my
life."
Magdaléna breathed freely again.
X
Trennahan, who was to have arrived in time to dine with the Belmonts and
Yorbas, missed his train and took his dinner alone. Afterward, he saw
Magdaléna for a few moments in the Yorbas' private parlour, but she had
to dress, and he went off to smoke in the grounds with Don Roberto, Mr.
Polk, Mr. Washington, and Colonel Belmont. They subsequently had a game
of bowls, and--excepting Colonel Belmont--several cocktails. When they
suddenly remembered that a ball was in progress to which they were
expected, it was eleven o'clock, and Trennahan was not dressed.
It was Helena's ball, but she had made every man promise to look after
the wall-flowers, that she might be at liberty to enjoy herself. Her
aunt, Mrs. Yorba, and Magdaléna received with her; and as all the guests
had arrived by the same train, and had dressed at about the same time,
the arduous duty of receiving was soon over. Helena left the stragglers
to her chaperons and prepared to amuse herself. As usual, she had
refused to engage herself for any dances, but she gave the first two to
her devoted four, then announced her intention to dance no more for the
present. The truth was that one of her minute high-heeled slippers
pinched, but this she had no intention of acknowledging; if men wished
to think her an angel, so they should. She was a sensible person, far
too practical to reduce the sum of her happiness by physical discomfort;
but the slippers, which she had never tried on, matched her gown, and
she had no others with her that did. But the one rift in her lute
induced a sympathetic rift in her temper.
The party was very gay and pretty. The rooms had been fantastically
decorated with red berries and snowballs, pine, and cedar. The leader of
the band was in that stage of intoxication which promised music to make
the soles of the dado tingle. All the girls had brought their prettiest
frocks, and all the matrons their diamonds. There were no tiaras in the
Eighties, but there were a few necklaces, stars, and ear-rings--of the
vulgar variety known as "solitaires." It is true that certain of the
Fungi looked like crystal chandeliers upon occasion; but Helena would
have none of them.
Herself had rarely been more lovely,--in floating clouds of pale pink
tulle, which looked like a shower of almond blossoms. Her hair was roped
up with pearls, hinting the head-dress of Juliet, but stopping short of
eccentric effect. She wore nothing to break the lines of her throat and
neck, but on her arms were quantities of odd and beautiful "bangles,"
many made from her own suggestions, others picked up in different parts
of the world.
She was standing opposite the door in the middle of the room as
Trennahan entered, leaning lightly upon a little table to rest her
mischievous foot. Only one man was beside her at the moment, and
Trennahan's view of her was uninterrupted. He knew at once who she was.
His second impression was that he had seen few girls so beautiful. His
third, that she possessed something more potent than beauty, and that he
was responding to it with a certain wild flurry of the senses, and a
certain glad exultation in youth and danger which had not been his
portion for many a long year. The instinct of the hunter leaped from its
tomb, shocked into the eager quivering life of its youth. Trennahan was
appalled to hear the fine web he had spun between his senses and his
spirit rent in a second, then gratified at the youthful singing in his
blood. The old joy in recklessness, in surrender to the delirium of the
senses, came back to him. He pushed them roughly aside, and looked about
for Magdaléna. She was listening to the rapid delivery of Mr. Rollins.
He thought she looked ill, and was about to go to her when Colonel
Belmont took him by the arm.
"You must meet my daughter," he said. "Oh, bother! There go half a
dozen."
When Trennahan reached Helena, he was presented in the same breath with
two other new arrivals, and her slipper was fairly biting. She did not
even hear his name. She was in a mood to make her swains unhappy; and
she liked Trennahan's face, and what she saw there. There was eager
admiration in his eyes and nostrils, and on his face the record of a man
who might possibly be her match. Of man's deeper and more personal life
she never thought. She had heard that men sometimes loved married women,
and others whose like she had never seen; but she hated the mere fact of
vice as she did all forms of ugliness, and dismissed it from her mind.
She read in Trennahan's face that he had had many flirtations, nothing
more.
"I am not going to dance any more to-night," she announced. She placed
her hand in Trennahan's arm. "Take me to the conservatory," she said.
There was really nothing for him to do but take her. But it was three
hours before either was seen again.