That same day she was installed in the old Montgomery house on Rincon
Hill. It was a low irregularly built house, wooden, but substantial.
The walls of the lower storey were panelled, and covered with portraits
of Southern ancestors and relations. The furniture and carpets
were worn, but as both had been bought in the golden days of Mr.
Montgomery’s career, before he, like Hayward Tarleton, had speculated
and lost, they were of the first quality, and would last for many years
to come. Moreover, his widow had picked up many bibelots and much
antique furniture in Europe, which added to the reserved, aristocratic,
and un-Californian atmosphere of the house. And her silver and crystal
were the finest in San Francisco.
Mrs. Montgomery was no longer wealthy, but she was as exclusive as in
the Fifties, when exclusiveness meant self-protection, and, if not
a social power, a person whom it showed a proper pride to know. Mr.
Montgomery had not lost his entire fortune, by any means, and what his
wife and the unmarried children inherited was unencumbered. It was
also sufficient to enable Mrs. Montgomery to indulge her passion for
travelling, to educate Tiny in Paris, to give Randolph his leisurely
choice of careers, to keep up the Rincon Hill and the Menlo Park
property, and to enable the family generally to live as became one of
the “old families of California,” _i. e._, of the early Fifties.
The house was on the crest of the hill, and commanded a fine view of
the city and mountains and water. It stood in a dilapidated high-walled
garden, full of the Castilian roses, pinks, gladiolus, and fuchsias
of the older time. In one corner was a large weeping-willow, and in
the middle the remains of a stone fountain. The hum of the city on the
plain, and on the heights beyond, never reached that quiet old garden,
which symbolised a phase of California’s life already remote.
Lee was given a pretty blue bedroom overlooking the city, and found
her new life very pleasant, albeit her roving propensities could no
longer be gratified. Mrs. Montgomery, indulgent and yielding in most
things, was inexorable on all points of deportment, and gave Lee
strict orders that she must never put her foot outside the gate alone.
She also missed not being obliged to think for herself, to have no
responsibility but punctuality at meals; even her studies were over
for the summer. But she was very young; the artificial habits of the
last five years fell from her, and the instincts of her nature reached
forth to the conditions which had been hers during her earlier years
and her mother’s before her. She was never quite so young and so
dependent as other children, but in less than a month she would have
shuddered at the mere mention of Market Street; and she loved the
repose and low-toned richness of her surroundings after the clatter
and vulgarities of a boarding-house. She still mourned her mother with
sudden childish outbursts, but she enjoyed the unbroken rest of her
nights, and felt strong and unfatigued as a little girl should.
Randolph was a dark handsome boy--“exactly like his father, who was the
picture of his grandfather, who was a perfect cavalier, my dear!”--and
so polite that he made Lee feel like a Red Indian. When she rose to
leave the room he opened the door. He never sat until she had placed
herself, and he rose when she rose, ignoring the gulf between sixteen
and childhood. He was always on hand to adjust her cape, and his
attentions at table were really beautiful. He treated his mother with
a deference which was surely Southern, and when Lee lamented that she
was “so gawky,” and that Lord Barnstaple had told her so, he assured
her that the traditionally irreproachable Tiny had been quite gauche
by comparison at the age of eleven. After that compliment Lee almost
wavered in her allegiance to Cecil, who doubtless would have told her
the truth and asked her why she bothered about “such things.” But she
felt that she certainly was improving, with her well-brushed hair in
a tight plait, her dainty white frocks, her thin boots, and hands no
longer discoloured by liniments, but washed in bran water and manicured
once a week. She gave strict attention to her poses, and forbade her
legs to fly up and herself to bounce down on the edge of her backbone.
The mere fact that her skirts were the same length all round made her
feel less awkward.
She renewed her baby acquaintance with Coralie Brannan, a fair delicate
child who promised a few years of ethereal beauty before withering like
a hot-house plant in the rude winds of life. She was sweet and bright
and adaptable, and adored Lee at once, succumbing to the stronger
nature, but companionable through the liveliness of her mind. Of
course she was permitted to read Cecil’s letters; and she was volubly
sympathetic over every phase of that extraordinary friendship.
The summer months were passed in Menlo Park, which, although it boasted
a village and a very smart railway station of the English pattern, was
practically a collection of large plain substantial country houses
with deep verandahs, and surrounded by grounds more or less extensive.
These were scattered over an area of some six miles in the great San
Mateo Valley, along whose western rim towered a mountain range covered
with redwood forests. The Montgomery, Yorba, Geary, Belmont, Brannan,
Randolph, Folsom, and Washington estates dated, in their present
sub-division, from the early Fifties: and these families (not all of
whom appear in this chronicle) may be said, for want of a better term,
to have represented the landed aristocracy of California’s second
era--counting the arcadian episode of the Spaniards as the first.
Cecil wrote with a praiseworthy attempt at regularity. He had returned
at once to Eton and to cricket. His parents were living in comparative
harmony, and his stepmother had promised him a new horse and a boat.
His letters were very brief, and there was the creak of protesting
machinery in every line, but he rarely failed to assure Lee that her
letters were “jolly,” and to beg her to be faithful, as he did so love
to get mail.
When Lee returned to town in the autumn, plump and strong and pink,
she settled down at once with Coralie to hard study under private
tutors. She was not only to be “thoroughly educated,” but “highly
accomplished.” Her studies were conducted entirely in French. She
pounded the piano daily until her back ached, covered countless pads
with birds and flowers and trees, tinkled the guitar with her head
on one side, attacked the German language, and took three dancing
lessons a week. These studies were pursued in the old schoolroom at
the back of the house, where there was always a big fire roaring, and
a polished floor. Randolph and Tom Brannan attended the dancing-class
when at home, and bestowed their favours impartially. Tom was fourteen,
a round-faced youth with a large mouth, an amiable temper, and an
inflammable heart. He sent Lee an immense package of peanuts the day
after he met her, and announced himself violently in love. Both he
and Randolph danced to perfection, and between the two Lee rapidly
developed the inherent grace of her creole blood.