Mrs. Polk's large white face and throat had seemed to shed a measure of
light in the dark house; when she left, the gloom seemed to get down and
sit on one. Helena refused to enter by the front door, and lamenting
that she was too big to climb the pillar, paid her visits by way of the
kitchen and back stairs.
After the calls of condolence visitors came more and more rarely to the
Yorba house. They said it depressed them for days after, and that while
there they sat in mortal terror of hearing Don Roberto burst out of his
den with the yell of a maniac. And as for dear Mrs. Yorba and Magdaléna,
they never had had much to say, but now they had nothing. They would not
drop off altogether, for the old don was bound to follow his
brother-in-law in course of time, and then his widow would once more be
a useful member of society. Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Geary, and Mrs.
Cartright were more faithful than the others, but the affections Mrs.
Yorba had inspired during her long and distinguished sojourn in San
Francisco were not very deep and warm.
The girls were sorry for Magdaléna, and called frequently, conquering
their horror of the gloomy echoing house; but they had less to endure
than their elders, for they were received in Magdaléna's own
sitting-room, which, although sparsely and tastelessly furnished, was
always as cheerful as the weather would permit. They brought her all the
gossip of the outside world, discussed the new novels with her, and
occasionally induced her to spend a day with them.
At the end of the winter Ila was married; very grandly, in Grace Church.
All her friends but Magdaléna were bridesmaids. The omission was a
serious one, and all felt that it robbed the function of a last fine
finish: each of the girls had counted upon having the last of the Yorbas
for chief bridesmaid. Magdaléna went and sat in a corner of the church
and saw the first of her friends break the circle of their girlhood. Her
present had been very meagre: it had come out of her monthly allowance.
Mrs. Polk was much too indolent to consider whether her niece was
allowed an income suitable for her position or not, and Magdaléna was
much too proud to ask favours. She slipped out of the church just before
the end of the ceremony, feeling like a poor relation.
She rarely saw her father. Occasionally she met him in the hall; he
drifted past her like a ghost. Mr. Polk died in February. On the first
of June Don Roberto had not been out of the house for three months, nor
had he exchanged a word with his wife or daughter.
"He'll blink like an owl when he does go out," said Mrs. Yorba. "I
wonder if he remembers that it is time to go to the country?"
"He never forgets anything. I'll pack his things if you like."
But the day passed and the next, and Don Roberto gave no sign of
remembering that it was time to move. Then Mrs. Yorba drew several long
breaths, went downstairs, and knocked at his door. There was no
response, but she turned the knob and went in. Don Roberto's face was
between the large pages of a ledger. He looked round with a scowl.
"Everything is ready to move down. Are you not coming?"
"No; and you no going either. Letting the place."
If the President of the United States had let the White House, Mrs.
Yorba could not have been more astounded.
"Let Fair Oaks! Fair Oaks?"
"Yes."
"And where are we to go this summer?"
"We stay here."
"Robert! You cannot mean that. No one stays here in summer. The city is
impossible--those trade-winds--those fogs--"
"Need not go out. Can stay in the house." And Don Roberto returned to
his ledger.
Mrs. Yorba went straight to Magdaléna's room, and for the first time in
her daughter's experience of her, wept.
"To think of spending a summer in San Francisco! How I have looked
forward to the summer! Things are always bright and cheerful in Menlo
even with the house shut up, for one can sit on the verandah. But here!
And not a soul in town! And the house like a prison! What in Heaven's
name ails your father? He's not crazy. He's reading his ledgers, and
what he says is to the point, goodness knows! But I shall follow Hiram
if this keeps up. You're a real comfort to me, 'Léna. I don't know what
I should do without you."
Magdaléna said what she could to console her mother. The two had drawn
together during these trying months. She was bitterly disappointed that
she could not go to Menlo Park. She was tired of its efforts to amuse
itself, but she could live in its woods, its soft gracious air, find
companionship in the distant redwoods swimming in their dark-blue mists.
The girls all invited her to visit them, but she would not leave her
mother, even could her father's consent be obtained. Mrs. Yorba was
genuinely unhappy. Without mental resources, and deprived of even an
occasional hour with her friends, she was further harassed by the fear
that her husband would die and leave her with a pittance: he certainly
appeared to hate the sight of his family. It consoled her somewhat to
reflect that wills were easily broken in California. Why had her brother
left her nothing? With a full purse she could at least have the
distractions of philanthropy. She took to novel-reading with a voracious
appetite, and her taste grew so exacting that she would have nothing
that was not magnificently sensational. She thought on Boston with a
shudder, but concluded that it was enough to have been intellectual when
young.
Magdaléna plodded on with her work. She described the customs and
manners of the old times with much accuracy, and felt that her beloved
creations were rather more than puppets; and it was as much for their
sake as for her own that she wanted these little histories to be
triumphs of art, that they might arrest the attention of the world.
Alvarado and Castro were great heroes to her: it was unjust and cruel
that the big world outside of California should know nothing of them; to
the present Californian, for that matter, they were not even names. And
forty years before the Californias had bent to their nod! They had lived
with the state of princes, and the wisdom with which the one had ruled
and the other had managed his armies would have given them lasting fame
had not their country then been as remote from Earth's greater
civilisations as had it been on Jupiter. If she could only immortalise
them! That would be a sufficient reason for living, compensate her for
the wreck of her personal life. It might take a lifetime, but what of
that if she succeeded in the end?
She took long walks daily; alone, for the French maid had been dismissed
long since. The walks were not pleasant, for when the sand from the
outlying dunes was not swept through the city by the bitter trades, the
fog was crawling into one's very marrow. And the hills were steep.
Sometimes she took the cable car to the end of the line, then walked to
the Presidio; but that brought the sand-hills nearer, and she went home
with smarting eyes. Protected by her window, she found beauty even in
the summer mood of San Francisco; and sometimes she went up into the
tower of the Belmont house and watched the long clouds of dust roll
symmetrically down the streets of the city's valleys; or the delicate
white mist ride through the Golden Gate to wreathe itself about the
cross on Calvary, then creep down the bare brown cone to press close
about the tombs on Lone Mountain; then onward until all the city was
gone under a white swinging ocean; except the points of the hills
disfigured with the excrescences of the rich. Into the cañons and rifts
of the hills beyond the blue bay the fog crept daintily at first,
hanging in festoons so light that the very trades held aloof, then
advancing with a rush,--a phantom of the booming ocean whence it came.
And Trennahan? He made no sign. Whether he were dead or alive, the
victim or the captor of his old familiars, careless, or nursing an open
wound, Magdaléna was miserably ignorant. The time had come when she
waited tensely as mails were due, feeling that an empty envelope covered
with his handwriting would give her solace. She cherished no hope that
he would ever return to her, but he had promised her his lasting
friendship. Sometimes she wondered at the cruelty of men. Why should he
not help her? Even if he really believed in the extinction of her love,
he might guess that she needed his friendship. She had yet to learn that
the one thing that man never gives to woman is spiritual help.
Helena wrote that her father was so anxious for her to marry Alan Rush
that she was officially engaged to that much-enduring youth and really
liked him. Menlo Park was the same as ever; not so gay as last year, but
the same in quality. No one had called on the lessees of Fair Oaks. They
were new people whom nobody knew, and it would be horrid to go there,
anyhow. Caro was engaged to marry an Englishman who had bought a
grape-ranch some twenty miles from Menlo. Tiny was prettier and more
bored than usual. Rose wrote that she certainly could not stand another
summer of Menlo and should go East in the autumn. Ila wrote from Paris,
London, and Homburg that life was quite perfect. It was so interesting
to be named Washington,--everybody stared so; as the English had never
read a line of United States history, they thought her George was a
lineal descendant of the immortal head of his house; and she had
thirty-two trunks of Paris clothes and ever so many men in love with
her.
And Magdaléna lived this life for three years. Its monotony was broken
by one event only.