BOOK I

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PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES

A Novel

by

GERTRUDE ATHERTON

Author of “A Whirl Asunder,” “The Doomswoman,”

“Before the Gringo Came,” etc.

John Lane: The Bodley Head

London and New York

1897

Copyright, 1895,

By Gertrude Atherton.

Copyright, 1897,

By John Lane.

All rights reserved.

University Press:

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

Book V

TO

M. PAUL BOURGET,

Who alone, of all foreigners, has detected, in its full significance,

that the motive power, the cohering force, the ultimate religion of that

strange composite known as “The American,” is Individual Will. Leaving

the ultra-religious element out of the question, the high, the low, the

rich, the poor, the man, the woman of this section of the Western world,

each, consciously or unconsciously, believes in, relies on himself

primarily. In the higher civilisation this amounts to intellectual

anarchy, and its tendency is to make Americans, or, more exactly, United

Statesians, a New Race in a sense far more portentous than in any which

has yet been recognised. As M. Bourget prophesies, destruction, chaos,

may eventuate. On the other hand, the final result may be a race of

harder fibre and larger faculties than any in the history of

civilisation. That this extraordinary self-dependence and independence

of certain traditions that govern older nations make the quintessential

part of the women as of the men of this race I have endeavoured to

illustrate in the following pages.

G. A.

Patience Sparhawk and Her Times

BOOK I

I

“Oh, git up! Git up! Did you ever see such an old slug? Billy! _Will_

you git up?”

“What’s the use of talking to him?” drawled a soft, inactive voice. “You

know he never goes one bit faster. What’s the difference anyhow?”

“Difference is my mother wants these groceries for supper. We’re all out

of sugar ’n flour ’n beans, and the men’s got to eat.”

“Well, as long as he won’t go, just be comfortable and don’t bother.”

“I wish I could be as easy-going as you are, Rosita, but I can’t: I

suppose it’s because I’m not Spanish. Guess I’ve got some Yankee in me,

if I am a Californian.” The little girl leaned over the dash-board of

the rickety buggy, thumping with her whip-stump the back of the aged

nag. Billy was blind, uncertain in the knees, and as languid as any

_caballero_ that once had sighed at _doña’s_ feet in these dim pine

woods. As far back as Patience could remember he had never broken his

record, and his record was two miles an hour. In a few moments she set

the whip in the socket with an irritable thump, wound the reins about

it, and sat down on the floor beside her companion. For some reason best

known to themselves, the girls preferred this method of disposition when

Billy led the way,—perhaps because he had an errant fondness for the

roughest spots of the rough road, making the high seat as uneasy and

precarious as thrones are still; perhaps because Patience rebelled at

habit, and in all her divagations was blindly followed by her Spanish

friend.

Billy ambled up and down the steep roads of the fragrant pine woods on

the hills behind Monterey, and the girls gave him no further heed.

Patience’s long plait having been shaken loose in her wild lurches over

the dash-board, she swung about, dangled her legs out of the buggy, and

commanded Rosita to braid her hair. The legs she kicked recklessly

against the wheel were not pretty. They were long and thin, clothed with

woollen stockings darned and wrinkled, and angled off with copper-toed

boots. She wore a frock of faded gingham, and chewed the strings of a

sunbonnet.

“Don’t pull so, and do hurry,” she exclaimed as the Spanish girl’s deft

slow fingers moved in and out of the scanty wisps.

“I’m not pulling, Patita, dear, and you know I can’t hurry. And I’m just

thinking that your hair is the colour of ashes.”

“I know it,” said Patience, gloomily, “but maybe it’ll be yellow when I

grow up. Do you remember Polly Collins? When she graduated she had hair

the colour of a wharf rat, and when she came back from San Francisco the

next year it was as yellow as the hills in summer.”

“I don’t care for yellow hair,” and Rosita moved her dark head with the

slow rotary motion which was hers by divine right.

“Oh, you’re pretty,” said Patience, sarcastically. “You want to be told

so, I suppose—There! you pulled my hair on purpose, you know you did,

Rosita Thrailkill.”

“I didn’t, Patita. Don’t fire up so.” And Rosita, who was the most

amiable of children, tied the end of the braid with a piece of tape,

rubbed her blooming cheek against the pale one, and was forgiven.

Patience drew herself into the buggy and braced her back against the

seat. Her face had little more beauty than her legs. It was colourless

and freckled. The mouth was firm, almost dogged, as if the contest with

life had already begun. Her brows and lashes were several shades darker

than her hair, but her eyes, wide apart and very bright, were a light,

rather cold grey. The nose alone was a beautiful feature, straight and

fine; and the hands, although rough and sunburned, were tapering and

slender, and very flexible.

In her red frock, the highly-coloured little Spanish girl glowed like a

cactus blossom beside a neglected weed. Her plump face was full of

blood; her large dark eyes were indolent and soft. Patience’s eyes

comprehended everything within their radius in one flashing glance;

Rosita’s, even at the tender age of fifteen, looked unswerving

disapproval of all exertion, mental or physical.

“I wonder if your mother is drunk?” she asked in her slow delicious

voice.

“Likely,” said Patience, with frowning resignation. “But let’s talk of

something more agreeable. Isn’t this perfume heavenly?”

The dark solemn woods were ravishing with the perfumes of spring, the

perfume of wild violet and lilac and lily, and the faint sweet odour the

damp earth gives up as the sun goes down. From above came the strong

bracing scent of the pines. Now and again the wind brought a salt whiff

from the ocean. No birds carolled, but the pines sang their eternal

dirge.

“What’s your ideal?” demanded Patience.

“Ideal? What ideal?”

“Why, of man, of course.”

“Oh, man!” contemptuously. “I haven’t thought much about men. I don’t

read novels like you do. I wish somebody would die and leave me a

thousand dollars so I could live in San Francisco and have a new dress

every day and go to the theatre every night. Miss Galpin says we mustn’t

think about boys, and I don’t—perhaps because the boys in Monterey are

so horrid.”

“Boys? Who said anything about boys?” The chrysalis elevated her

patrician nose. “I mean men.”

“Well, you’re mean to turn up your nose at boys. They like you a good

deal better than they do me, and a good many of the other girls.”

“That’s funny, isn’t it? and I not pretty. But I suppose it’s because I

talk. You just sit still and look pretty, and that’s not very

entertaining. I read in a novel that men like that; but boys have got to

be entertained. Goodness gracious! Don’t I know it? When I was at

Manuela’s party the other night in my old washed muslin frock and plaid

sash, didn’t I talk my throat sore to make them forget that I was the

worst dressed girl in the room and had the most freckles? Of course the

girls didn’t forget—nor some other things—” with a bitter lowering of

the lids—“but the boys did. Somehow I feel as if men would always be my

friends, if I’m not pretty.”

“What do you know about men, anyhow? You’re only fifteen, and you’ve

never met any but old Mr. Foord, and the farm hands and store keepers,

who,” aristocratically, “don’t count.”

“Haven’t I read novels? Haven’t I read Thackeray and Dickens and Scott

and ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Shakespeare and Plutarch’s

Lives, and the life of Napoleon and Macaulay’s ‘History of England’ and

Essays—those all ain’t novels, but they write about men, real men, too.

I’ve made my ideal out of a lot of them put together, and I’ll never

marry till I find him.”

“Well, I’d like to know where you’ll find him in Monterey,” said the

practical Rosita. “Miss Galpin says you’re too romantic, and that it’s a

pity, because you’re the brightest girl in the school.”

“Did Miss Galpin say that?” Patience took a brass pin out of her frock

and extracted a splinter from her thumb with a fine air of indifference;

but the pink flooded her cheek. “She’s always reading Howells and James,

and says they’d keep anybody from being romantic. But that’s about all

I’ve got, so I think I’ll hold on to it.”

The sun dropped below the horizon as they jolted out of the woods and

down the steep road toward Carmel Valley. They reached a ledge, and

Patience, forgetful of hungry men and an irascible parent, called:

“Whoa!” to which Billy responded with an alacrity reserved for such

occasions only.

“I never get tired of this,” she said. “Do you?”

“It’s pretty,” said Rosita, indifferently. “Why are you so fond of

scenery—nature, as Miss Galpin calls it—I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” said Patience, and at that age she did not. She was

responsive but dumb. She gazed down and out and upward with a pleasure

that never grew old. A great bleak mountain loomed on the other side of

the valley. It was as steep as if the ocean had gnawed it flat, but only

the peaceful valley lay under; out in the ocean it tapered to an immense

irregular mass of rock over which the breakers leapt and fought. Carmel

River sparkled peacefully beneath its moving willows. The blue bay

murmured to the white sands with the peace of evening. Close to the

little beach the old Mission hung its dilapidated head. Through its

yawning arches dark objects flitted; mould was on the yellow walls; from

yawning crevice the rank grass grew. Only the tower still defied

elements and vandals, although the wind whistled through its gaping

windows and the silver bells were no more. The huts about the church had

collapsed like old muscles, but in their ruin still whispered the story

of the past.

“Isn’t it splendid to think that we have a ruin!” exclaimed Patience.

“It’s a ruin sure enough; but there’s uncle Jim. He must think we’re

dead.”

A prolonged “Halloa!” came from the valley, and Patience, with a sigh,

bade Billy “Git up,” which he did in the course of a moment.

“Halloa, you youngsters, why don’t you hurry?” cried a nasal voice.

“I’ve been waiting here an hour.”

“Coming,” said Patience. “It’s too bad he had to wait.”

“Oh, he smoked and swore, so he’s all right,” said Rosita, who had not

taken the trouble to reply. None of the girls was allowed to visit

Patience at her house; but Mrs. Thrailkill, who was fond of her

daughter’s chosen friend, and pitiful in her indolent way, often allowed

Patience to drive Rosita as far as the branching of the roads, where the

Kentucky uncle met his niece and took her to his farm.

In the dusk below a wagon and two horses could be seen, and a big man

under a wide straw hat, sitting on the upper rail of a fence, his heels

hooked to the rail below. Patience inferred that he was chewing tobacco

and expectorating upon the poppies.

“Well, I reckon!” he exclaimed as the buggy reached the foot of the

hill. “You two do beat all. Do you s’pose I’ve got nothing better to do

than moon round pikes waiting on kids like you? How’s your ma, Rosita?

Well, Patience, I won’t keep you—much obliged for giving my lazy

Spanish niece a lift. Come on now; supper’s ready ’n after.”

The two little girls kissed each other affectionately. Mr. Thrailkill

lifted Rosita down, and Patience turned Billy in the direction of a

fiery eye and a dim column of smoke under the mountain. The evening

seemed very quiet after the rattle of Mr. Thrailkill’s team had become a

part of the distance. Only the roar of the surf, the moaning of the

pines, the harsh music of the frogs, the thousand vocal mysteries of

night—not a sound of man. Patience, after her fashion, rehabilitated

the Mission and peopled the valley with padres and Indians; but when

Billy came to a sudden halt, she sprang prosaically to the ground and

let down the bars of her mother’s ranch. After she had replaced them she

took hold of Billy’s bridle, and endeavoured, by jerks and

expostulation, to induce him to move more rapidly. The road now lay

through a ploughed field stretching gloomily on the east to the horizon,

where the stars seemed dropping into the dark. Cows roamed at will, or

lay heavily in their first sleep. Here and there an oak thrust out its

twisted arms, its trunk bent backward by ocean winds. The house soon

became plainly outlined, a long unpainted wooden story-and-a-half

structure, the type of ranch house of the second era. Castilian roses

clambered up the unpainted front. Clumps of gladiolus, pinks, and

fuschias struggled with weeds in the front garden. Beyond was a number

of out-buildings.

When Patience reached the porch she dropped Billy’s bridle, lifted out

the sugar, and stepping to the kitchen window, looked through it for a

moment before opening the door. Her mother was very drunk.

II

The room into which Patience frowned was a large rough kitchen of the

old familiar type. The rafters were festooned with cobwebs, through

which tin cans and aged pails were visible, and an occasional bundle of

rags. The board walls were unplastered and unpainted. Out of the uneven

floor, knots had dropped to the cellar below. The door of a cupboard,

built against the wall with primitive simplicity, stood open, revealing

a motley collection of cans, bottles, and cracked dishes. Pots and pans

were heaped on a shelf traversing two sides of the room. A table was

loaded with odds and ends, in the midst of which place had been made for

a lamp.

Over a large stove a woman was frying bacon and eggs. She wore a brown

calico garment, torn and smudged. Her fine black hair, sprinkled with

ashes, hung raggedly above magnificent dark eyes, blinking in a crimson

face. The thin nostrils and full mouth were twitching. In her ruin she

was still a beautiful woman, and she moved her tall bloated form with

the pride of race, despite the alcohol in her veins.

On a broken chair by the stove sat a young man in the overalls and

flannel shirt of a farm hand. His hair was clipped to his skull with

colourless result; his large red under lip curved down into a yellow

beard. In a long low room adjoining the kitchen a half dozen other men

were seated on benches about a table covered with white oilcloth and

chipped crockery. They also wore overalls and flannel shirts; and they

were bearded and seamed and brown. The Californian sun soon burns the

juices out of the flesh that defies it.

Patience flung open the kitchen door and threw the sugar on the table.

“Oscar,” she said peremptorily to the man by the stove, “take Billy

round to the barn and put him up, and bring in the flour and the beans.

They’re under the seat.” The man went out, muttering angrily, and she

turned to her mother, who had begun a tirade of abuse. “Keep quiet,” she

said. “So you’re drunk again? I thought you promised me that you

wouldn’t drink again for a week. Where did you get it?”

“Couldn’t help it,” muttered the woman, cowed by the bitter contempt in

her small daughter’s eyes, and thrusting a long fork into the sputtering

fat.

“Where did you get it?”

“Couldn’t help it.”

Patience opened the package of sugar with a jerk, and filling two bowls

with the coarse brown stuff carried them into the next room and set them

at opposite ends of the table. The men ceased talking as she entered,

and saluted her respectfully. They felt vaguely sorry for her; but they

were afraid of her, and she was not a favourite with them. Her mother,

“Madge,” as they called her to a man, they worshipped, despite or

because of her peccability. They went down before her deathless

magnetism, her coarse good nature, her spurious kind-heartedness. It was

only when very drunk that she became violent and vituperative, and even

then she fascinated them. Patience told herself proudly that she had no

attraction for “common men”—that she repelled them. Not being a seer,

she was saved the foreknowledge of a fatal gift in operation.

She took the large coffee-pot from the back of the stove and filled the

men’s cups with its thick fluid. Her mother’s rolling eyes followed her

with a malignant sparkle. She was afraid of her daughter, and resentment

had eaten deep into her perverted nature. Patience filled a plate with

bread and apple sauce, and went into the parlour to eat her supper in

solitude. She took all her meals in this room, which with little

difficulty she appropriated to her exclusive use: it was very small. She

kept it in fairly good order: she was not the tidiest of children. But

the old brussels carpet was clean, barring the corners, and the

horsehair furniture had been mended here and there with shoe thread. As

it still prickled, however, Patience had made a cushion for the clumsy

rocker out of an elderly gown which she had found in a trunk in the

garret with other relics of finery. She occupied the rocker impartially

whether eating or reading. The marble-topped table also served for

dining and study.

In a forlorn old bookcase were her only treasures, the few books, mostly

classics, which John Sparhawk had reserved when a succession of failures

had forced him to sell his library to Mr. Foord. In one corner was a

large family Bible on a small table. It was old and worn. Its gilt edges

shone dimly through a cobweb of infinite pains.

On the papered walls were two large coloured photographs of Mr. and Mrs.

Sparhawk, taken apparently when each was close on thirty years. The

woman’s face bore traces of dissipation even then, and the red mouth was

very sensual. But the cheeks were still delicate and there were no bags

under the large flaming eyes. The bare neck and arms and half revealed

bust were superb; the poise of the head, the curve of the short upper

lip, the fine arched nostril, were the delicate insignia of race; the

pride stamped on every feature was that of birth, not of defiance. The

man had a slender upright figure and a finely modelled head and face.

The deeply set eyes were cold and piercing, but between the stern curves

of the mouth there was much passion. Patience had studied these faces,

but she was as innocent as if she had been bred in a cloister, and their

mystery baffled while it allured her.

She ate her supper with a hearty appetite. Her mother’s lapses, being

accepted as part of the routine of existence, rarely depressed her

spirits. Nevertheless she frowned heavily as turbulent sounds pierced

the thin partition, not so much at her mother’s iniquity, as at the

prospect of being obliged to wash the supper dishes. The expected crash

came, and she ran into the kitchen. Her mother lay prone. Two of the men

lifted her immediately and carried her up the narrow stair. Patience

sullenly attacked the dishes. She dumped them into a large pan of hot

water, stirred them gingerly with a cloth fastened to a stick, drained

the water off, poured in a fresh pailful, and dried them hastily. She

filled the frying-pan with water and set it on the hottest part of the

stove to cook itself clean. Occasionally she coughed with angry

significance: the men in the next room were invisible behind a grey fog

of their own puffing. She spattered her clean pinafore, blackened her

hands, and devoutly wished herself alone on a desert island where she

could live on cocoanuts and bananas. At such times she forgot the few

compensations of her unfortunate life and felt herself only the

poverty-stricken drudge, the daughter of Madge Sparhawk.

III

Who Madge Sparhawk was before she married the Yankee rancher had at one

time been an absorbing topic for dispute in Monterey. One gossip averred

that she had been the dashing leader of the lower ten thousand of San

Francisco, another that she had come from the Eastern States as the

mistress of a wealthy man who had wearied and cast her off; a third

confidently affirmed that she had been a brilliant New York woman of

fashion who had gone wrong through love of drink, and been sent under an

assumed name to California by her afflicted family; a fourth swore that

she had been an actress, a fifth that she had been the high-tempered

queen of a gambling house. On one point all agreed: she was

disreputable, and John Sparhawk was a fool to marry her. However, they

were somewhat disappointed that they saw so little of her. They were not

called upon to snub nor tolerate her. She rarely came into the town;

never excepting on horseback with her husband, when her splendid beauty

drew masculine Monterey from its perch on the fence tops,—where it sat

and smoked and murmured the hours away,—and gathered it about her,

stirring the diluted rill of _caballero_ blood.

As far as the little world of Monterey could learn through the gossip of

servants, she was a helpful wife to a devoted husband who patiently

strove with the fiend that possessed her. When he was killed by the

accidental discharge of a gun her grief was so violent that only a

prolonged carouse could assuage it. Subsequently she recovered, and with

occasional advice from Mr. Foord attempted to run the farm. As John

Sparhawk had made no will, she was her child’s legal guardian, the

absolute mistress for eight years of what property her husband had left.

There was a little ready money, the dairy was remunerative, and the

ranch well stocked. But that was five years ago. Her habits had grown

upon her; the ranch was mortgaged and run down, the stock decreased by

half.

Patience had rebelled heavily at her father’s death, and wondered, with

childish logic, why, if one parent had to die, it could not have been

her mother. Her father’s manner had been cold, repellent, like her own;

but that his nature was deep and passionate even her young mind had

never doubted. She felt it in the close clasp of his arms as he held her

before him on his horse when galloping about the ranch; in his sudden

infrequent caress; in the strong pressure of his hand as they wandered

through the woods or along the shore at night, not a word spoken between

them.

It was not until after his death that she made acquaintance with her

social separateness. He had begun her education himself. Her only girl

companion was Rosita Thrailkill, the niece of a neighbour, whom her

father would not permit her to visit in Monterey. John Sparhawk’s only

friends were the Thrailkill brothers and Mr. Foord, an elderly

gentleman, who had lived in Monterey under the old régime, lost his

fortune in the great Bonanza time, and returned to the somnolent town to

end his days with his library, the memory of his dead Spanish wife, and

a few old friends, world-forgotten like himself. He lived in the

dilapidated Custom House on the rocks at the edge of the town, and

Patience had ruled his establishment since her baby days. It was the

only house in Monterey she was permitted to enter, and she entered it as

often as she could. A hundred times she had sat with the old gentleman

on the upper corridor and listened to the story of the capture of

Monterey by the United States fleet in 1846; stared breathlessly at the

crumbling fort—the _castillo_—on the hill above Junipero Serra’s

cross, as Mr. Foord verbally restored its former impregnability.

He told her tales of the days of light and life and joy when Monterey

was the capital of the Californians, and the Americans were not yet

come,—stories of love and revenge and the great free play of the

primitive passions, unpared by modern civilisation. For her those old

adobe houses in the town were alive once more with dark-eyed _doñas_ and

magnificently attired _caballeros_. Behind the high walls of the old

gardens fans fluttered among the Castilian roses and dueñas stealthily

prowled. The twisted streets were gay again with the court life of the

olden time, the grand parades of the governors, the triumphant returns

from the race on the restless silver-trapped steeds.

Every house had its history, and Patience knew them all. She wandered

with Mr. Foord along the dusty streets, lingered before the garden

walls, over which she could see and smell the nasturtiums and the sweet

Castilian roses. But gone were the _caballeros_ and the _doñas_. They

lay in the little cemetery of the _padres_ on the hill, over beyond the

yellow church which marked a corner of the old _presidio_, and well on

the road to a great hotel whose typical life was vastly different from

that old romantic time. They lay under their stones, forgotten. The

thistles and wild oats rioted under the gnarled old oaks. The new-comer

never paused to glance at the worn carvings on the thick rough slabs.

Behind the garden walls a few brown old women lived alone, too practical

to brood upon an enchanted past. Cows nibbled in the _plaza_ where once

the bull and the bear had fought while the gay jewelled people screamed

with delight. Gone was the tinkle of the guitar, the flutter of fan, the

graceful woman hastening down the street half hidden in her mantilla,

the lovely face behind the grating. The screaming of the sea-gulls, the

moaning of the pines, the roar of the surf, alone remained the same,

careless of change or decay. Wooden houses crowded between the old

adobes. Most of the Spanish families were half American: their women had

preferred the enterprising intruder to the indolent _caballero_. Arcadia

was no more. The old had kissed the hand of the new, and spawned a

hybrid.

After John Sparhawk’s death, Mr. Foord persuaded his widow to send

Patience to the public school. The little girl was delighted. She had

looked with envious longing at the stone building, painted a beautiful

pink, which stood well up on the hill at the right of the town and was

still known by the imposing name of Colton Hall; it had been built by

the first American _alcalde_, and was a court house for a brief while.

But it was not long before Patience learned the bitter lesson that she

was not as other girls, despite the fact that at that time she was well

dressed and that she drifted naturally to the head of her classes.

School girls are coarse and cruel. Children are the periodical relapse

of civilisation into savagery. These girls of Monterey excluded Patience

from their games and recess conversations, and intimated broadly that

her mother was not respectable.

At first Patience gave them little heed. She loved study, and was of a

wild happy nature beneath her prim exterior. Moreover, Rosita was her

loyal friend; and one of the older girls, Manuela Peralta, who had a

kind and independent heart, sheltered her as much as she could. But

Patience was too bright and observing to remain long in ignorance of her

hostile environment. When the awakening came her young soul was filled

with rage and bitterness. The full meaning of their innuendoes she was

too ignorant to understand, but that she was regarded as a pariah was

sufficiently evident.

Little as she loved her mother, a natural impulse sent her to her only

remaining parent with the story of her wrongs. Mrs. Sparhawk became

violently indignant and shortly after very drunk. The subject was never

mentioned between them again; nor did Patience speak of it with any one

but Rosita, whom she regarded as a second, beloved, and somewhat

inferior self. But her soul cried out for the strength that only a man’s

strong soul can give to woman at any age; and the man that had prayed to

live and defend her lay with the forgotten Californians on the hill.

Mr. Foord divined her trouble, and did what he could to make her life

endurable, although her shy reserve forbade any intimacy beyond the old

friendship. Miss Galpin, her teacher, made no secret of the fact that

Patience was her favourite scholar, and encouraged her to study and read

and forget.

Patience indulged in no further outbreak, even to herself. She

cultivated a cold and impassive exterior, an air of rigid indifference,

and studied until her small head ached. She was not old enough to

analyse; it was instinct only that made her assume callousness; but in

her young vague way she grappled with the social problem. She did not

approve of Mrs. Sparhawk any more than others did; but Mrs. Sparhawk’s

daughter behaved herself, and stood at the head of her classes, and had

been assured again and again that she “looked like a little lady:”

therefore she was at a loss to comprehend why Patience Sparhawk was not

as good as other girls. There was Panchita McPherson, who lied profusely

and whose mother sat in the sun all day and baked herself like an old

crocodile, while her husband sat on the fence by the Post Office and

smoked a pipe from the first of January until the thirty-first of

December. Yet Panchita was of the _haute noblesse_, and treated Patience

as she would a rag-picker. Francesca Montez never knew a lesson and was

so vulgar that she brought the blush to Patience’s cheek; but she lived

in an adobe mansion which once had been the scene of princely splendour,

and gave two parties a year. The American girls had not even the

prestige of the past; they could not reckon up a great-grandfather

between them, much less peeling portraits of _caballeros_ and trunks of

splendid finery; but they were bright and aggressive, and made

themselves a power in the school.

As Patience grew older she compelled the respect of her mates, and they

ceased to annoy her. The consciousness of social supremacy never faded,

not for an instant; but even tying a tin can to a dog’s tail becomes

monotonous in time, and they had numberless little interests to absorb

them. If Patience had been a rollicking emotional child she would

doubtless have kissed herself into popularity and been treated to much

good-natured patronage; but she scorned placation, and grew more

reserved as the years went by. She accepted her fate, and discovered

that there were times and hours when her mother, schoolmates, and social

problems could be forgotten. Her spirits were naturally buoyant, and her

mind grew philosophical; but as Mr. Foord once observed to Miss Galpin,

“her start in life had been all wrong, and it would matter more with her

than with some others.”

IV

After Patience had put the kitchen in order she went up to her room. She

slept at one end of the house, her mother at the opposite. Several of

the hired men occupied a dormitory between; the rest slept over the

dairy.

She lit her candle and began to undress, then extinguished the flame

suddenly and went down stairs and out of the house. She felt sullen and

heavy and depressed, and knew the remedy.

The moon was at the full; the great ploughed fields were a sea of

silver; the dark pines on the hills opened their aisles to cataracts of

crystal, splashing through the green uplifted arms. Strange shadows

moved amidst the showers of cold light, twisting rhythmically under the

touch of the night wind.

Patience loved nature too passionately to fear her in any mood or hour.

She sped over the rough field, climbed the fence, and walked hastily

toward the Mission, pausing now and again to inhale the rich perfumes of

Spring. The ruin looked like the skeleton of a mammoth caught in a

phantom iceberg. Even the dark things that haunted it were touched to

beauty by the silver light pouring through the storm-beaten rose window

over the massive doors, into the abysms between the arches.

Patience skirted the long body of the church with haste; mouldering

skeletons lay under the floor, and like all imaginative minds she had a

lively horror of the dead. She entered the open doorway and ascended the

steep spiral stair in the tower. The steps were cut from solid stone and

were worn by the trampling of many feet. As she neared the top she

called,—

“Tu wit! Tu woo!” and was promptly answered.

As her chin appeared above the floor of the little room, where the

moonlight came through hollow casements, an old grey owl, a large wise

solemn owl, advanced from the wall with slow and stately step; and

despite his massive dignity there was expectancy in his mien.

“Poor Solomon,” said Patience, contritely. “I forgot your supper.” She

climbed into the room and attempted to pat his head; but when he saw

that the hand was empty, he flapped his wings, and turning his back upon

her, retired to the wall, blinking indignantly.

Patience laughed, then sighed, and sank on her knees before the low

window overlooking the ocean. The blue bay still whispered to the white

sands sparkling like diamond dust in the moonlight, the yellow stars

winking in its clear depths. But the ocean was uneasy, and hurtled

reiterantly in great deep-throated waves at the rocky shore as if its

giant soul were in final rebellion against this conventional war with a

passive foe. About Point Lobos its voice waxed trumpet-toned. It

shouldered itself into mighty waves and tossed the spray into writhing

shapes. Everything else was at rest. The great forces of nature were the

angry prisoners of the tides. The moon grinned in his superior way. The

little stars seemed to say: “Up here we are quite composed, and as vain

as pretty women. If you would only keep quiet you would make such a fine

large looking-glass.”

As Patience gazed out upon the beautiful scene, her young mind shifted

its impressions. She forgot her life, and began to dream in a vague

sweet way. Not of a lover. Despite the fact that she had manufactured a

composite which occupied a pedestal in her imagination, she thought

little about love. Her reveries were a wandering of her ego through the

books she had read, environed by the nature whom she knew only in lovely

profile. Had she lived her fifteen years on the sterile plains of

Soledad, she might perhaps have been as harsh and bitter as its sands,

her soul as grey, so susceptible was she to the subtle influence of

great externals. But Monterey had saved her, and on nights like this she

felt as if she too were flooded with crystal light, now and again

clouded by something which perturbed, yet vibrated like the music of the

pines.

When in a particularly romantic mood, she imagined herself Mariana in

the “Moated Grange,” or hummed “The Long Long Weary Day,” and tried to

feel sad, but could not. She never felt sad in her tower, with the owl

on guard and the slighted dead in the church below. Sometimes she took

herself to task for not having a proper amount of sentiment, but

concluded that no one could be unhappy when so high above the world and

all its hateful details. Occasionally she looked longingly at the

perpendicular mountain: it was many times higher than her tower; but she

was a lazy little thing, and would not climb.

As she knelt, gazing out on the ocean, or up at the spangled night, she

was a very different-looking being from the sharp practical child that

had exhorted old Billy and berated her mother. The loosened hair clung

softly about her pale face, whose freckles the kind moon with his white

brush painted out. Her mouth had relaxed its stern lines. Her eyes were

full of the moon’s shimmer, and of something else,—the struggling light

of a developing soul.

Patience’s soul had taken care of itself and showed virility in spite of

the forces at war against it. What the little battling spark strove for,

puzzled Patience even at that unanalytical age. Religion—Christianity,

to be more exact—said nothing to her; it appealed to no want in her;

even the instinct was lacking. John Sparhawk had clung to the rigid

faith of his fathers with a desperation which Patience, child as she

was, had half divined. He had had prayers night and morning, and

compelled his daughter to learn her catechism and many chapters of the

Bible. After his death Mr. Foord took her to church on Sunday mornings

and occasionally read her a little lecture. She listened respectfully,

but felt no interest.

Nevertheless, when alone in her tower at night, when she had set her

foot on its lowest step with deliberate intent to get as high above the

earth as she could, she was conscious of an upreaching of the spiritual

entity within her, a wordless demand for the something higher and holier

of which the supreme beauty of the Universe is symbolical.

V

The next morning, Patience, after helping her convalescent parent to get

breakfast, stood on the porch debating whether she should go over to Mr.

Thrailkill’s ranch and see Rosita or spend the day in Mr. Foord’s

library.

The scholars of Colton Hall had a week’s vacation, and how to make the

most of seven long days of freedom in exquisite spring weather was a

serious question.

As she hesitated she bethought herself of Solomon. She ran to the safe,

and gingerly extracting a piece of raw meat wrapped it in a newspaper,

and went over to the Mission. The owl had not moved, apparently, from

the spot where he had taken his indignant stand the night before. When

he scented the meat, however, he walked majestically forward, and taking

no notice whatever of Patience, began at once upon the meal she spread

at his feet.

Patience had decided in favour of the library, and started leisurely for

Monterey. The ocean rested heavily after its labour of the night,

swinging forward at long intervals with deep murmur, or throwing an

occasional iridescent cloud of spray about Point Lobos. The keen air

sparkled under a flood of golden light. The earth was green with the

deep rich green of spring. Great bunches of it sprang from even the

ragged mountain side, and long blades struggled to life between the

broken tiles of the old Mission. Patience crossed the valley through

beds of golden poppies and pale blue baby-eyes struggling with infantile

pertinacity to raise themselves above the waving grass. She plucked a

poppy and held her nose in the great cup that covered half her face. She

liked the slight languor its heavy perfume induced.

She climbed the hill, and the woods shut out the world. Patience forgot

her destination and wandered happily and aimlessly in the dim fragrance.

She plucked some pine needles, and rubbing their juices free pressed her

hands about her face. On the whole she preferred their pungent freshness

to the poppy.

After a time she began to skip over the carpet of yellow violets and to

sing in a high childish treble. She was only a happy little girl with

her lungs full of oxygen, her veins warmed by the sun, her heart

exhilarated with the surpassing beauty of the morning. She threw pebbles

at the squirrels and laughed loudly when they scampered up the stately

trees. Spiritual problems did not trouble her, and social trials were

forgotten.

She dawdled away the earlier hours of the morning in the woods, then

descending the hill on the town side, regained her severe and elderly

demeanour. The ocean was not visible here, but a bay bluer than sapphire

curved into sands whiter than marble dust. The sun shone down on the

red-tiled white adobes, on the high garden walls pink with Castilian

roses, as gaily as in the old Arcadian time. But alas! it shone also on

cheap wooden cottages and shops which had invaded even the hill on the

right, where once a few stately mansions stood alone.

The town was very quiet. It was always quiet. Some holy unheard voice

seemed ever saying “Hush!” As Patience walked down Alvarado Street to

the Custom House, she saw a slender brown woman watering the roses

behind her garden wall. She had been the belle of Monterey in her time,

“La Tulita,” and tradition had it that she still watered a rose-bush

which General Sherman had planted.

On the next block several dark lads sat on a fence in the approved

Montereño style, smoking _cigaritos_. As Patience passed they lifted

their caps as gallantly as ever _caballero_ had done, although they did

not fling them at her feet.

She saw no one else until she reached the Custom House. Mr. Foord stood

on the corridor that overhung the rocks. He was a large round-shouldered

man, with a benign face the colour of aging marble and a brow of the old

time intellectual type. The eyes behind his spectacles were dim and

kind. The lower part of his face was humorous and stern. He wore a silk

hat, a well-brushed suit of broadcloth, and carried a gold-headed cane.

“You’re going to town!” cried Patience.

“I am,” he said smiling, “and I suppose you are going to read your eyes

out in the library. Well, I’ll not be back until to-morrow, so you’ll

have things all your own way. Tell Lola to cook you some dinner. I must

be off.”

“Bring me a box of candy,” she commanded, as she stood on tiptoe to give

him the little peck she called a kiss. It was her mark of supreme

consideration.

He promised, and she went into the library, a large room opening on the

corridor, where many a great ball had been given in the days before and

after the Americans came. A half dozen old-fashioned bookcases, crowded

with books, stood against the walls of the low room. The books were

bound in spotted calf or faded cloth, black cloth with peeling gilt

letters. One large case contained John Sparhawk’s library, and Patience

knew that it was practically hers. The floor was covered with a thick

red carpet. A large easy-chair was drawn before the deep fire-place, in

which a huge log crackled: it was still winter within adobe walls.

“Altogether,” thought the philosopher of fifteen, as she flung her

sunbonnet on the floor, “I guess that so long as I’ve got my tower and

the woods and this room, I’m not so badly off as some.”

She roamed about the room, opening the doors of the bookcases in turn.

One case had been filled with books selected for her especial use, but

Mr. Foord had not forbidden her the freedom of the others, being wiser

than many guardians. Nevertheless, certain books were placed on top

shelves, their titles concealed beneath the moulding of the case, and

Patience had looked speculatively at them more than once. To-day they

exerted a peculiar fascination. And it was rarely that she was alone in

the library.

She possessed an investigating and tentative mind, and this forbidden

territory appealed eloquently to her unruly will. But to get them out

was not an easy task. They were tightly packed, and the moulding was

like unto a prison bar. But Patience was a person of resource. She gave

one of the books a smart thump, and it slanted inward. She inserted her

thumb under its lifted edge and worried it out. It was a small volume

bound in black, its lettering worn away. She opened it and glanced

curiously at the titlepage. “Boccaccio’s Decameron” winked invitingly.

The pages were spotted with yellow. The drawings looked as if the

stories might be reasonably interesting.

Patience curled herself in the deep window-seat, quite sure that she had

found a treasure. The book had a furtive and apologetic air. “I have

grown old, at least,” it seemed to say. “I am but an elderly rake, and

can only mumble of the past.”

She read a few stories, then put the book back in its place with a

resentful shove. Being wholly without the knowledge for which Eve pined,

the stories were stupid and meaningless to her. She took down a thick

volume bound in ragged calf. On the back was one large word, “Byron.”

The leaves of this book were spotted too, but on the leaves were poems,

and she loved poetry. Even when it was uninteresting she enjoyed the

rhythm. She returned to the window-seat, and child-like, looked at the

pictures first. The portrait of Byron she fell in love with immediately,

and knocking her composite off its pedestal, lifted that proud

passionate face to the station of honour.

There was an immense-eyed picture of the Bride of Abydos which she

thought looked like Rosita, and one of the Corsair dashing in upon his

segregated love:—

“My own Medora, sure thy song is sad!”

Francesca and Paola gazed at each other across a table:—

“That day no further leaf we did uncover.”

A castle which looked older than the book loomed massively from the

page:—

“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls.”

Never having heard of Byron, she was unable to enlarge her knowledge at

once with his most celebrated creations; but she liked the looks of

Conrad and Medora, and plunged into their fortunes. She read every line

of the poem, and when she had finished she read it over again. Then she

stared at the breakers booming to the rocks on the opposite horn of the

crescent, her eyes expanded and filled with a wholly new light. She

might be unlettered in woman’s wisdom, but the transcendent passion, the

pounding vitality of the poet, carried straight to intuition. The

insidious elixir drifted into the crystal stream. That incomparable

objectivity sang the song of songs as distinctly into her brain as had

it gathered the sounds of life for twenty years. Her cheeks were

flushed, her eyes were bright. She felt as if she were a musical

instrument upon which some divine unknown music were vibrating; and as

she was wont to feel in the tower—but with a substratum of something

quite different. She was filled with a soft tumult which she did not in

the least comprehend, and happy. She looked almost beautiful.

After a time she read “The Bride of Abydos,” and dreamed over that until

she discovered that she was hungry. She had forgotten to order dinner,

and went to the kitchen to beg a crust.

Lola, large, unwhaleboned, vibrating porcinely with every motion, her

brown coarsely moulded face beaming with good nature, her little black

eyes full of temper and kindness, her black hair in a neat small knot,

an unspotted brown and yellow calico garment secluding her person, stood

at a sink in a kitchen as brilliantly clean as a varnished boot. Even

the corners shone like glass, Patience often observed with a sigh. The

two tables were scrubbed daily. The stove was black, the windows white.

Not a pan nor a dish save those in the sink was in sight.

Patience made a sudden dash, a leap, and alighted on Lola’s back,

encircling the yielding waist with her supple legs. The woman emitted a

hoarse shriek, then laughed and pinched the legs. Patience plunged her

cold hands into the creases of Lola’s neck, gathering a quantity into

the palms. She was unrebuked. There were a few persons that loved

Patience, and Lola was of them.

“_Pobrecita!_” she exclaimed. “You are cold, no?”

“_Mucho frizo_,” murmured Patience, sliding the back of her hands down

the mountainous surface of Lola’s. “And hungry, _madre de dios_.”

“Hungry? You no have the dinner? When you coming?”

“Hours ago, Lola. How cruel of you not to call me to dinner! How mean

and piggish to eat it all yourself!”

“Ay, no call me the names. How I can know you are here _si_ you no tell?

Why you no coming here straight before going to the _librario_?”

“I forgot, Lola _mia_; and then I became—interested. But do give me

something to eat.”

“_Si._” And with Patience still on her back Lola waddled to the cupboard

and lifted down the remains of a corn cake rolled about olives and

cheese and peppers.

“An _enchilada_!” said Patience. “Good.”

Lola warmed the compound, and spread a napkin on a corner of one of the

tables; then, suddenly unloosening Patience’s arms and legs, tumbled her

headlong into a chair, laughing sluggishly as she ambled off. Patience

ate the steaming _enchilada_ as heartily as had Byron never been. In a

moment she begged for a cup of chocolate.

“_Si_,” said Lola, “I have some scrape already;” and she brewed

chocolate in a little earthen pot, then beat it to froth with her

_molinillo_. Patience kicked her heels together with delight, and sipped

it daintily while Lola stood by with fat hands on fat hips in reflex

enjoyment.

“Like it, _niña_?”

“You bet.” Then after a moment she asked dreamily: “Lola, were you ever

in love?”

“_Que!_ Sure. Was I not marry? Poor my Pedro! How he lika the

_enchilada_ and the chocolaty; and the lard cakes and the little pig

cooking with onions. And now the worms eating him. Ay, yi!” and Lola sat

herself upon a chair and wept.

VI

As Patience walked home through the woods subsequently to a long

afternoon with Byron, she was hazily sensible that she had stepped from

one phase of girlhood into another. She had an odd consciousness of

gazing through a veil of gauze upon an exquisite but unfamiliar

landscape over which was a dazzle of sunlight. She by no means

understood the mystery of her nature as yet; she was technically too

ignorant; but instinct was awake, and she felt somewhat as when she had

drained the poppy cup for long. She was in that transition state when

for the first and last time passion is poetry.

She arrived home in time to get supper. Mrs. Sparhawk was unexpectedly

sober, and very cross.

“My land, Patience Sparhawk!” she exclaimed, as her daughter opened the

door and untied her sunbonnet, “seems to me you might help cook dinner

in vacation instead of being off all day reading books or playing with

that Spanish girl.”

“Seems to me,” said Patience, restored to her practical self, “that as

you’re twice as big as I am and twice as strong, you’re pretty well able

to get it yourself. And as it’s your fault there ain’t any servant in

this house, I don’t see why I should make one of myself for you. Seems

to me you’re fixed up.”

Mrs. Sparhawk blushed, and smoothed her hair consciously. The hair had

been washed, and was decorated with a red bow. She wore a garment of

turkey red calico with a bit of cheap lace at the throat and wrists. Her

face was plastered with a whitewash much in vogue. She looked handsome,

but evil, and Patience stared at her with an uneasiness she was not able

to analyse. She turned away after a moment.

“I’d put on an apron,” she remarked drily. “You might get spots on that

gorgeous window curtain dress of yours.”

At that moment the man Oscar entered the room. He uttered a note of

admiration which made Patience turn about sharply. He was gazing upon

Mrs. Sparhawk’s enhanced charms with an expression which Patience did

not understand, but which filled her with sudden fury.

“Here!” she exclaimed roughly, “go into the dining room until supper’s

ready. This kitchen ain’t big enough for three.”

The man moved his eyes and regarded her angrily.

“Who’s boss here?” he demanded.

“It’s not your place to ask questions. You’re hired to work outside, and

when you come into this house there’s only one place for you. Now go

into the other room.” Her eyes were flashing, and she had drawn up her

shoulders. The man backed away from her much as dogs do when cats give

warning.

“That girl gives me a chill. I hate her,” he muttered to his mistress.

Mrs. Sparhawk gave a loud laugh which covered her embarrassment, and

slapped him heartily on the shoulder. “Go in, go in,” she said. “What’s

the use of family quarrels?”

The man slunk away, and Patience went about her work with vicious

energy. She fried liver and baked biscuits while her mother stirred the

steaming cherries and brewed tea. When supper was ready she filled

Oscar’s plate first and served him last, not hating herself in the least

for her spite and spleen. After Mrs. Sparhawk had taken her place at the

head of the table even her exuberant beauty could not dispel the frown

on the hired man’s brow, until, to Patience’s disgust, she divined the

cause of his surliness, and deftly exchanged her plate for his.

VII

That night Patience did not go to her tower, but wandered over the dark

fields, a drooping forlorn little figure in the crawling shadows. She

felt dull and tired and disheartened. By nine o’clock she was asleep.

She awoke as fresh as the morning. When Mr. Foord returned from San

Francisco in the afternoon he found her curled in the easy-chair by his

fire. She started guiltily as he entered, then tossed her head

defiantly, let Byron slide to the floor, and went forward to kiss him.

As he was about to take the chair she had occupied he espied the fallen

volume. He lifted it hastily.

“What is this?” he demanded.

Patience blushed furiously, but set her lips with an expression he

understood.

“It’s Byron, and I’m going to read it all. I’ve read a lot.”

He shifted the book from one hand to the other for a moment, his face

much perturbed. Finally he laid it on the table, merely remarking:

“Sooner or later, sooner or later.”

Patience offered him a piece of the candy he had brought her; but he

preferred his pipe, and she perched herself on the arm of his chair and

ate half the contents of her box without pause. She had not yet learned

the subtle delights of the epicure, and to enjoy until capacity was

exhausted was typical of her enthusiastic temperament. When she could no

longer look upon the candy without a shudder she climbed to the old

gentleman’s shoulder and scratched his bald pate with her ragged nails.

It was her emphatic way of expressing gratitude, and beloved by Mr.

Foord above pipe and _enchilada_.

Patience took Byron home with her that evening, Mr. Foord merely

shrugging his shoulders. After supper she read until dark, then hid the

book under the bed and went over to the tower. She ran up the twisted

stair, and astonished the owl by clasping him in her arms and kissing

him passionately. He manifested his disapproval by biting at her

shoulder fiercely. She shrieked and boxed his ears smartly. He flapped

his large wings wildly. A battle royal was imminent in that sacred tower

where once the silver bells had called the holy men to prayer. But

Patience suddenly broke into a laugh and sank on her knees by the

window, while Solomon retreated to the wall, and regarded her with a

round unwinking stare, brooding over problems which he did not in the

least understand.

Patience brooded also, but her lids drooped, and she barely saw the

beauty of ocean and rock and spray. The moon was not yet up, and the

half revealed intoning sea was full of mystery.

She was conscious that her mood was not quite what it had been during

her last visit. All of that was there—but more. She felt higher above

the earth than ever before, but more conscious of its magnetism.

Something hummed along her nerves and stirred in her veins. Her musings

shaped to definite form, inasmuch as they assumed the semblance of man.

Inevitably Byron was exhumed for duty; and if his restless soul were

prowling space and Carmel Valley, his famous humour, desuetous in

Eternity, must have echoed in the dull ears of roaming shapes.

Beside the white face of the child was the solemn and hebraic visage of

the owl. Some outworn chord of Solomon’s youth may have been stirred by

his friend’s tumultuous greeting, for he had stepped, with the dignity

of his years, to her side, and stood regarding, with introspective

stare, the reflection of the rising moon.

Patience did not see him. She was gazing upon Byron, whose moody

passionate face was distinctly visible among the stars. Alas! her vision

was suddenly obscured by a hideous black object. A bat flew straight at

Carmel tower. Patience sprang to her feet, tossed her skirt over her

head, and fled down the stair. The owl stepped to the stair’s head and

gazed into the winding darkness, his eyes full of unutterable nothing.

VIII

On Monday school re-opened, and Patience was late as usual. She loitered

through the woods, conning her lessons, having been too much occupied

with her poet to give them attention before. As she ascended the steps

of the schoolhouse the drone of the Lord’s Prayer came through the open

window, and she paused for a moment on the landing, swinging her bag in

one hand and her tin lunch-pail in the other.

She was not a picturesque figure. Her sunbonnet was of faded blue calico

dotted with white. The meagre braid projecting beneath the cape was tied

with a shoe string. The calico frock was faded and mended and much too

short, although the hem and tucks had been let out. The copper-toed

boots were of a greyish-green hue, and the coarse stockings wrinkled

above them. The nails of her pretty brown hands looked as if they had

been sawed off. But the eyes under the old sunbonnet were dreamy and

happy. The brain behind was full of new sensations. In the sparkling

atmosphere was an electric thrill. The day was as still as only the days

of Monterey can be. The pines, and the breakers had never intoned more

sweetly.

A voluminous A—men! startled Patience from her reverie. She went

hastily within, hung her bonnet and pail on a peg, and entered the

schoolroom, smiling half deprecatingly half confidently, at Miss Galpin.

The young teacher’s stern nod did not discompose her. As she passed

Rosita she received a friendly pinch, and Manuela looked up and smiled;

but while traversing the width of the room to her desk she became aware

of something unfriendly in the atmosphere. As she took her seat she

glanced about and met the malevolent eyes of a dozen turned heads. One

girl’s lip was curled; another’s brows were raised significantly, as

would their owner query: “What could you expect?”

Patience blushed until her face glowed like one of the Castilian roses

on the garden wall opposite the window. “They’ve found out about Byron,”

she thought. “Horrors, how they’ll tease me!”

School girls have a traditional habit of “willing” each other to “miss”

when in aggressive mood. To-day some twenty of the girls appeared to

have concerted to will that Patience should forget what little lore she

had gathered on her way to school. Patience, always sensitive to

impressions, was as taut as the strings of an Æolian harp from her

experience of the past week. Such natures are responsive to the core to

the psychological power of the environment, and once or twice this

morning Patience felt as if she must jump to her feet and scream. But

even at that early age she divined that the sweetest revenge is success,

and she strove as she had never striven before to acquit herself with

credit.

All morning the silent battle went on. Miss Galpin, who was beloved of

her pupils because she was pretty and dressed well, was a graduate of

the San Francisco High School, and an excellent teacher. Frankly as she

liked Patience she had never shown her any partiality in the schoolroom;

but to-day, noting the antagonism that was brought to bear on the girl,

she exerted all her cleverness to assist her in such subtle fashion that

Patience alone should appreciate her effort. In consequence, when the

morning session closed, Patience wore the doubtful laurels and the bad

blood was black.

As the girls trooped down into the yard Rosita laid her arm about

Patience and endeavoured to lead her away. Manuela conferred in a low

tone with the foe, voice and gestures remonstrant. But there was blood

in the air, and Patience squared her shoulders and awaited the

onslaught. Incidentally she inspected her nails and copper toes.

Several of the girls walked rapidly up to her. They were smiling

disagreeably.

“Can’t you keep her at home?” asked one of them.

“Think she’ll marry him?” demanded another.

Patience, completely taken aback, glanced helplessly from one to the

other.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Come, Patita,” murmured Rosita, on the verge of tears.

Manuela exclaimed: “You are fiends, _fiends_!” and walked away.

“Mean? Do you mean to say she got off without you knowing it?”

“Knowing what?” A horrible presentiment assailed Patience. Her fingers

jerked and her breath came fast.

“Why,” said Panchita McPherson, brutally, “your mother was in here

Saturday night with her young man and regularly turned the town upside

down. They were thrown out of three saloons. Can’t you keep her at

home?”

Patience stared dully at the girls, her dry lips parted. She knew that

they had spoken the truth. She had gone to bed early on Saturday night.

Shortly afterward she had heard the sound of buggy wheels and Billy’s

uncertain gait. Many hours later she had been awakened by the sound of

her mother stumbling upstairs; but she had thought nothing of either

incident at the time.

Panchita continued relentlessly, memories of many class defeats rushing

forward to lash her spleen: “You’ll please understand after this that we

don’t care to have you talk to us, for we don’t think you’re

respectable.” Whereupon the other girls, nodding sarcastically at

Patience, entwined their arms and walked away, led by the haughty Miss

McPherson.

For a few moments Patience hardly realised how she felt. She stood

impassive; but a cyclone raged within. All the blood in her body seemed

to have rushed to her head, to scorch her face and pound in her ears.

She wondered why her hands and feet were cold.

“Come, Patita, don’t mind them,” said Rosita, putting her arm round her

comrade. “The mean hateful nasty—_pigs!_” Never before had the indolent

little Californian been so vehement; but Patience slipped from her hold,

and running through a gate at the back of the yard crouched down on a

box. Rosita’s words had broken the spell. She was filled with a volcano

of hate. She hated the girls, she hated Monterey, she hated life; but

above all she hated her mother.

After a time all the hate in her concentrated on the woman who had made

her young life so bitter. She had never liked her, but not until the

dreadful moments just past had she realised the full measure of her

inheritance. The innuendoes she had not understood, but it was enough to

know that her mother had disgraced her publicly and insulted her

father’s memory. Her schoolmates she dismissed from her mind with a

scornful jerk of the shoulders. She had beaten them too easily and often

in the schoolroom not to despise them consummately. They could prick but

not stab her.

The bell rang; but she had an account to settle, and bonnetless she

started for home.

Mrs. Sparhawk was sitting on the porch reading a novel when Patience

walked up to her, snatched the book from her hand, and flung it into a

rose-tree. The woman was sober, and quailed as she met her daughter’s

eyes. Patience had walked rapidly under a hot sun. Her face was scarlet,

and she was trembling.

“I hate you!” she sobbed. “I hate you! It doesn’t do any good to tell

you so, but it does me good to say it.”

The girl looked the incarnation of evil passions. She was elemental

Hate, a young Cain.

“I wish you were dead,” she continued. “You’ve ruined every bit of my

life.”

“Why—what—what—” mumbled the woman. But the colour was coming to her

face, and her eyes were beginning to glitter unpleasantly.

“You know well enough what. You were in town drunk on Saturday night,

and were in saloons _with a farm hand_. To make a brute of yourself was

bad enough—but to go about with a common man! Are you going to marry

him?”

Mrs. Sparhawk laughed. “Well, I guess not.”

Patience drew a quick breath of relief. “Well, that’s what they’re

saying—that you’re going to marry him—a man that can’t read nor write.

Now look here, I want one thing understood—unless you swear to me

you’ll not set foot in that town again I’ll have you put in the Home of

the Inebriates—There! I’ll not be disgraced again; I’ll do it.”

Mrs. Sparhawk sprang to her feet, her face blazing with rage. “You will,

will you?” she cried. She caught the girl by the shoulders, and shaking

her violently, boxed first one ear, then the other, with her strong

rough hands. For an instant Patience was stunned, then the blood boiled

back to her brain. She screamed harshly, and springing at her mother

clutched her about the throat. The lust to kill possessed her. A red

curtain blotted even the hated face from sight. Instinctively she

tripped her mother and went down on top of her. The crash of the body

brought two men to the rescue, and Patience was dragged off and flung

aside.

“My land!” exclaimed one of the men, his face white with horror. “Was

you going to kill your ma?”

“Yes, that she was,” spluttered Mrs. Sparhawk, sitting up and pulling

vaguely at the loose flesh of her throat. “She’d have murdered me in

another minute.”

Patience by this time was white and limp. She crawled upstairs to her

room and locked the door. She sank on the floor and thought on herself

with horror.

“I never knew,” she reiterated, “that I was so bad. Why, I’m fifteen,

and I never wanted to kill even a bird before. I wouldn’t learn to

shoot. I’d never drown a kitten. When the Chinaman stuck a red-hot poker

through the bars of the trap and burnt ridges in the live rat I screamed

and screamed. And now I’ve nearly killed my mother, and wanted to. Who,

who would have thought it?”

When she was wearied with the futile effort to solve the new problem,

she became suddenly conscious that she felt no repentance, no remorse.

She was horrified at the sight of the black veins in her soul; but she

felt a certain satisfaction at having unbottled the wrath that consumed

her, at having given her mother the physical equivalent of her own

mental agony. Over this last cognisance of her capacity for sin she

sighed and shook her head.

“I may as well give myself up,” she thought with young philosophy. “I am

what I am, and I suppose I’ll do what I’m going to do.”

She went downstairs and out of the house. She passed a group of men;

they stared at her in horror. Then another little seed from the vast

garden of human nature shot up to flower in Patience’s puzzled brain.

She lifted her head with an odd feeling of elation: she was the

sensation of the hour.

She went out on Point Lobos and listened to the hungry roar of the

waves, watched the tossing spray. Nature took her to her heart as ever,

and when the day was done she was normal once more. She returned to the

house and helped to get supper, although she refused to speak to her

equally sullen parent.

IX

It was several days before the story reached Monterey. When it did, the

girls treated Patience to invective and contumely, but delivered their

remarks at long range. The mother of Manuela said peremptorily that

Patience Sparhawk should never darken the doors of the Peralta mansion

again, and even Mrs. Thrailkill told the weeping Rosita that the

intimacy must end.

Miss Galpin was horrified. When school was over she took Patience firmly

by the hand and led her up the hill to her boarding-place, the widow

Thrailkill’s ancestral home. The long low adobe house was traversed from

end to end by a pillared corridor. It was whitewashed every year, and

its red tiles were renewed at intervals, but otherwise the march of

civilisation had passed it by. Mrs. Thrailkill, large and brown, with a

wart between her kind black eyes, and a handsome beard, was rocking

herself on the corridor. When she recognised the teacher’s companion she

arose with great dignity and swung herself into the house.

Miss Galpin led Patience down the corridor to a room at the end, and

motioned her to a chair. Several magazines lay on a table, and Patience

reached her hand to them involuntarily; but Miss Galpin took the hand

and drew the girl toward her. The young teacher’s brown eyes wore a very

puzzled expression. Even her carefully regulated bang had been pushed

upward with a sudden dash of the hand. She was only twenty-two, and her

experience of human nature was limited. Her ideas of life were

accumulated largely from the novels of Mr. Howells and Mr. James, whom

she revered; and neither of these gentlemen photographed such characters

as Patience. It had probably never occurred to them that Patiences

existed. She experienced a sudden thrill of superiority, then craved

pardon of her idols.

“Patience, dear,” she said gently, “is this terrible story true?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Patience, standing passively at Miss Galpin’s knee.

“You actually tried to kill your mother?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Galpin gasped. She waited a moment for a torrent of excuse and

explanation; but Patience was mute.

“And you are not sorry?” she faltered.

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh, Patience!”

“I’m sorry you feel so badly, ma’am. Please don’t cry,” for the

estimable young woman was in tears, and mentally reviling her

preceptors.

“How can I help feeling terribly, Patience? You break my heart.”

“I’m sorry, dear Miss Galpin.”

“Patience, don’t you love God?”

“No, ma’am, not particularly. Leastways, I’ve never thought much about

it.”

“You little heathen!”

“No, ma’am, I’m not. My father was very religious. But please don’t talk

religion to me.”

“Patience, I don’t know what to make of you. I am in despair. You’re not

a bad girl. You give me little trouble, and I’ve always said that you

had finer impulses than any girl I’ve ever known, and the best brain.

You ought to realise better than any girl of your age the difference

between right and wrong. And yet you have done what not another girl in

the school would do, inferior as they are—”

“How do you know, ma’am? I never thought I would. Neither did you think

I would. You can’t tell what you’ll do till you do it.”

Miss Galpin was distracted. She resumed hurriedly:

“I want you to be a good woman, Patience,—a good as well as a clever

woman. And how can you be good if you don’t love God?”

“Are all people good the same way?”

“Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end.” Miss Galpin blessed

the evolution of verbiage.

“Are all religious people good?”

“Certainly.”

“These girls are religious, especially the Spanish ones, and they’ve

behaved to me like devils. So have their mothers, and some of them go to

five o’clock mass.”

“Girls are undisciplined, and mothers often have a mistaken sense of

duty.”

“You are good, and Mr. Foord is good,” pursued the terrible child. “But

you’d be just as good if you weren’t religious. It’s born in you, and

you’re refined and kind-hearted. Those people are just naturally vulgar,

and religion won’t make them any better.”

Miss Galpin drew the girl suddenly to her lap and kissed her. “I’m

terribly sorry for you, dear,” she said. “I wish I understood you

better, and could help you, but I don’t. I never knew any one in the

least like you. I worry so about your future. People that are not like

other people don’t get along nicely in this world. And you have such

impulses! But I love you, Patience, and I’ll always be your friend. Will

you remember this?”

Patience was undemonstrative, but she kissed Miss Galpin warmly and

arranged her bang.

“Now, let’s talk about something else,” she said. “Are you going to get

up those private theatricals for the night that school closes?”

Miss Galpin sighed and gave up the engagement. “Yes,” she said. Then,

hesitatingly: “Do you wish to take part?”

“No, of course I don’t. I’ll have nothing more to do with those girls

than I can help. You can bet your life on that. But I can help drill

Rosita. What’s the play?”

“I’ll read it to you.” Miss Galpin took a pamphlet from a drawer and

read aloud the average amateur concoction. Rosita was to take the part

of an indolent girl with the habit of arousing herself unexpectedly. In

one act she would have to dash to the front of the stage and dance a

parlour breakdown.

“I am afraid Rosita cannot act,” said Miss Galpin, in conclusion, “but

she is so pretty I couldn’t leave her out.”

“Rosita can act,” said Patience, emphatically. “I’ve seen her imitate

every actress that has been here, and take off pretty nearly every crank

in Monterey. And Mrs. Thrailkill can teach her one of the old

Californian dances—and a song. Rosita has a lovely voice, almost as

pretty as a lark’s.”

“Really? Well, I’ll talk to Mrs. Thrailkill and persuade her to forgive

you, and then you can come here every afternoon and drill Rosita. And

now will you promise me to be a good little girl?”

“Yes, ma’am—leastways I’ll try. Good-bye,” and Patience gave her a

little peck, seized her sunbonnet, and went hurriedly out.

“I suppose,” she thought as she sauntered down the hill, “I’d better go

and have it out with Mr. Foord. It’s got to come, and the sooner it’s

over the better. Poor man, I’ll make it as easy for him as I can. It’ll

be harder on him than on me, for I’m used to it now.”

The old gentleman was walking up and down the corridor as she turned the

corner of the custom house. He looked very yellow and feeble, and

supported himself with a stick.

“Oh, Patience!” he exclaimed.

For the first time Patience felt inclined to cry, but her aversion to

display feeling controlled her. She merely approached and stood before

him, swinging her sunbonnet.

“Don’t let us talk about it,” he said hastily. “I have something else to

say to you. Sit down.”

They sat down side by side on a bench.

“You know,” the old gentleman continued, “I have a half-sister in the

east—Harriet Tremont, her name is—in Mariaville-on-Hudson, New York.

She is the best woman in the world, the most sinless creature I ever

knew, yet full of human nature and never dull. She is very religious,

has given up her life to doing good, and has some eccentric notions of

her own. She writes me dutifully twice a year, although we have not met

for thirty, and in her last letter she told me she intended to adopt a

child, rescue a soul as she called it, and furthermore that she should

adopt the child of the most worthless parents she could discover in her

work among the worthless. Since—lately—I have been thinking strongly

of sending you to her. You must get away from here. You must have a

chance in life. If you remain here you will grow up bitter and hard, and

the result with your brain and temperament may be terrible. You are

capable of becoming a very bad or a very good woman. You are still

young—but there is no time to lose. Should you care to go?”

“Of course I should,” cried Patience, enchanted with the idea of an

excursion into unknown worlds. Then her face fell. “But I shouldn’t like

to be adopted. That is too much like charity.”

“Is the ranch entirely mortgaged?”

Patience nodded.

“Well, let us look at it as a business proposition. You will be little

expense to her—she is fairly well off; and one more in the household

makes no appreciable difference. You will attend the public schools with

the view to become a teacher, and when you are earning a salary you can

repay her for what little outlay she may have made. Do you see?”

“Yes. I don’t mind if you look at it that way.”

“I’ll see your mother in a day or two. You don’t think she’ll object, do

you?”

“Object? What has she got to say about it?”

“A great deal, unfortunately. She is your legal guardian. But she

doesn’t love you, and I think can be persuaded. I shall miss you, my

dear. What shall I do without my bright little girl?”

Patience nestled up to him, and the two strangely assorted companions

remained silent for a time watching the seagulls sweep over the blue

bay. Then Mr. Foord drifted naturally into the past, and Patience grew

romantic once more.

X

That night Patience felt no inclination for either bed or tower. She

wandered over the field, entered the pine forest, and walked to the

coast. The tall straight trees grew close together; their aisles were

very gloomy. From the ground arose the ominous voices of the night, and

the wind in the treetops moaned heavily. But Patience was not afraid.

She revelled in the vast dark silence, and felt that the world was all

her own.

As she left the forest she saw great clouds of spray tossed high into

the starry dark, heard the ocean rush at the outlying rocks, breaking

into mist or leaping to the shore. The sea lions were talking loudly;

the seagulls, huddled on the high points of the coast, scolded hoarsely.

On the edge of the forest was a cabin. Patience walked toward it. She

knew the old man that lived there. He was evidently awake, for the open

window was yellow with light. As she passed it on her way to the door

she glanced within. Her skin turned cold; her hair stiffened. A sheeted

corpse lay on the bed. Candles burned at head and foot. Patience, brave

as she was, abjectly feared the corpse. She believed that she could

survive a ghost, but she knew that if shut up with a dead body for ten

minutes she should go mad. To-night she would have fled shrieking were

it not that the room had a living occupant.

In a chair beside the bed sat a man gazing at the floor, his chin

dropped to his chest. He wore rough clothes, but they were the

affectations of the gentleman, not the garb of the dead man and his

friends. Nor had Patience ever seen so noble a head. The profile was

beautiful, the expression mild and intellectual, and most melancholy.

Patience forgot her terror as she wondered who the stranger could be;

but in a moment it was renewed tenfold. Down the ocean road from

Monterey came a wild hideous yell. The man by the corpse raised his head

apprehensively, rose as if to flee, then sank wearily to his chair

again. The clatter of hoofs on the hard road mounted above the thunder

of the waves. Patience staring into the dark suddenly saw the leaping

fire of torches, and a moment later tall figures riding recklessly. The

yelling was incessant and demoniac.

“The man murdered Jim and they’re lynchers,” thought Patience. She

glanced about wildly. A small tree stood near. She scampered up the

trunk like a squirrel, and hid in the branches. None too soon. In

another moment those terrible figures were screaming and gesticulating

before the hut.

The smoky flames revealed an extraordinary sight to Patience’s distended

eyes. These men were bearded like the men of modern civilisation, even

their hair was properly cut; but they wore the garments of Greece and

Japan, flowing robes of white and red; one dark sinister-looking being

upheld a glittering helmet.

Patience rubbed her eyes. Did she dream over her Byron? But no mortal,

none but the sheeted dead, could have slept and dreamed in that infernal

clamour. Only the man by the bed sat immobile. He did not raise his

head. Out of the pandemonium of sound Patience at last distinguished one

word: “Charley! Charley!” If “Charley” were the man within the hut he

gave no sign; nor when they threw back their heads and as from one

throat gave forth a rattling volume of ribald laughter.

Suddenly Patience, who, seeing no rope, began to recover her courage,

noticed that one of the men had ridden beneath her tree, taking no part

in this singular drama. Once he turned his head, and an aquiline

profile, fine and strong, with black hair falling above it, was sharply

revealed against the red glare. Impulsively Patience leaned down and

touched his shoulder. He looked up with a start, and saw a small white

face among the leaves.

“What on earth is this?” he asked. “Is it a child?” His voice was rich

and deep, with a gentle hint of brogue.

“What are they?” asked Patience. “Are they real devils, or only men? And

are they going to kill him?”

The man laughed. “I certainly should ask the same question if I had not

happened to come with them. Oh, they won’t do any murder, unless they

happen to frighten some one to death. They’re members of the Bohemian

Club of San Francisco—newspaper men and artists—who are down here on a

lark.”

“Who’s the man in there by him, and why do they yell at him so?”

“Oh, he is a solitary spirit, a man of genius. He got tired of them and

gave them the slip to-night. This is revenge.”

“They have the Estrada house on Alvarado Street,” said Patience. “I

heard they were here.” Then she noticed that her companion wore the

common garb of American civilisation. “Why aren’t you rigged up, too?”

she asked.

“Oh, I’m hardly one of them. I’m only an Eastern man—a New Yorker—and

am staying at Del Monte for a day or two. I rode over to see them this

afternoon, and they insisted upon my staying for dinner. What on earth

are you doing here by yourself at this time of night?”

Patience explained. Then she added wistfully, “I shall be frightened to

death going home through those woods alone. I’ll imagine that that

corpse and those dreadful-looking men are behind me at every step.”

“Just drop onto my horse and I’ll take you home. I’m pretty tired of all

this.” He raised his arms and lifted her down, placing her in front of

him. “Lucky I had an English saddle,” he said, and as he bent his head

Patience could see that he was smiling. “Oh!” he added abruptly, “I have

seen you before. Now—tell me where to go.”

Patience directed him, and they cantered away unobserved.

“Where did you see me?” she asked, “and how odd that you should remember

_me_!”

“You have wonderful eyes. Although I’m an Irishman I won’t go so far as

to say they are pretty, but they look as if they had been born to see so

much. It would be difficult to forget them. Upon me soul you are

actually trembling. Did you never have a compliment before?”

“Never! And I guess I’ll remember it longer than you remember my eyes.

Where did you see me?”

“I was standing at the window of the house in Alvarado Street when you

came along from school with a dozen or more of the girls. You all

stopped to gaze at a passing circus troupe, and—I noticed you first

because you stood a little apart from the others.”

“I usually do,” said Patience, drily.

He did not add that, attracted by the eagerness of her gaze and her

rapid changes of expression, he had asked who she was, and that a

Montereño present had related the family history and her own notable

performances in no measured terms. “She’s got bad blood in her and the

temper of Old Nick himself. She’ll come to no good, homely as she is,”

the man had concluded. “Curious enough, the boys all like her and would

spark her if they got a show; but she’s hell-set on gettin’ an education

at present and doesn’t notice them much.”

Patience made him talk on for the pleasure of hearing his voice. “Are

you a real Irishman?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been an American for twenty years, but there’s a good deal

of Irish left in me yet, especially in me tongue.”

“I’d keep it, if I were you. It’s nicer even than the Spanish. Do you

think our voices are horrid?”

“I think that if you’d pitch yours a little lower it would be an

improvement,” he said, smiling. And Patience registered a vow which she

kept. In after years when great changes had come upon her, her voice was

envied and emulated.

As they left the forest and entered Carmel Valley Patience pointed to

her home, then suddenly took the reins from his hand and directed the

horse toward the Mission. The waning moon hung over the ocean, and the

Mission stood out boldly.

“Come up to my tower,” said Patience; “the view is _something_! That

will be your reward. I never took any one there before.”

“All right,” he said, “I may as well make a night of it.” He tethered

his horse and followed her up the spiral stair.

“Solomon is not here,” she said regretfully. “He’s out foraging. Now!”

The young man walked to the window and inspected the view. Patience

regarded him with rapt admiration. He was tall and strong and well

dressed. She had never dreamed that anything romantic could really

happen to her; and as she was sure that it would be her last experience

as well as her first, she suddenly felt depressed and miserable, her

imagination leaping to the finish.

He turned and met her eyes. “What are you thinking of?” he asked.

But Patience was too shy to tell him, and asked him if he liked the

view.

“It’s a jolly view and no mistake. You’re not a happy child, are you?”

he added, abruptly. With the enthusiasm and spontaneous kindness of his

Irish blood he had conceived the idea of dropping a seed in this plastic

soil, and was feeling his way toward the right spot.

“I don’t know that I am,” said Patience, haughtily. “I suppose some of

those people told you things.”

“Well, they did, that’s a fact. But you mustn’t get angry with me,

please, for upon me word I like you better than any one I’ve met in

California.”

“Don’t you live here?”

“My home is in New York, and I return to-morrow.”

“Oh! Well, I don’t see how I should interest you.”

“You do, though, and that’s all there is to it. I’m neither as cautious

as an Englishman nor as practical as an American—though God rest the

two of them; I mean nothing to their detriment. But there’s a force in

you, and force doesn’t go to waste, although it’s more often than not

misdirected. I can feel yours myself; and I’m told that you’re the

cleverest girl in the town as well as the proudest and most ambitious.

Now, what do you intend to do with yourself?”

“I suppose I’ll be a teacher; and if Mrs. Sparhawk has no objections I

may go East soon and live with a religious old lady.”

“Well, that’s not so bad; only I doubt if that life will suit you any

better than this.” He put his finger under her chin and turned her face

to the light. “I am a lawyer, you know,” he added, “and features and

lines and curves mean a good deal to me. You’ve got a good will, begad,

and like all first-class American women, you’ll keep your head up until

you drop. And you have all her faculty of beginning life over again

several times, if necessary. You’ll never rust nor mould, nor write

polemical novels if things don’t go your way. You’ve got a good strong

brain behind those eyes, and although you’ll make mistakes of various

sorts, you’ll kick them behind you when you’re done with them, begin

over and be none the worse. Remember that no mistake is irrevocable;

that there are as many to-morrows as yesterdays; that only the incapable

has a past. It is all a matter of will as far as the world is concerned,

and ideals as far as your own soul goes. No matter how often

circumstances and your own weakness compel you to let go your own

private ideals, deliberately put them back on their pedestal the moment

you have recovered balance, and make for their attainment as if nothing

had happened. Then you’ll never acquire an aged soul and never lose your

grip. Can you remember all that?”

“You bet I can.”

He laughed. “I believe you. I might add: Don’t love the wrong man, but

I’ll not throw away good advice. You’ll not be wholly guided by reason

in those matters. I will merely say, Rub the first experience in hard

and let a long while elapse before your second, or it will be the

greater mistake of the two. Your reactions will be very violent, I

should say. Well, I’ll be going now.”

“I’d rather you’d stay and talk.”

“Would you? Well, being a lawyer, I know where to stop. Besides, I’ll

have all those fellows after me if I stay too long. We’ll doubtless meet

again. The world is small these days.”

Patience followed him reluctantly down the stair, and he walked beside

her across the valley, leading his horse. When they reached the

farmhouse he shook hands with her warmly, wished her good luck, and rode

away. She ran up to her room, and, lighting a candle, transcribed his

words into an old copybook.

XI

Miss Galpin expostulated with Mrs. Thrailkill to such effect that

Patience spent two hours each afternoon in the family garret rehearsing

Rosita while the astonished rats took refuge in the chimney. Patience

could not act, but she had dramatic appreciation and an intellectual

conception of any part not beyond her years. Rosita was not

intellectual, but, as Patience had discerned, the spirit of Thalia was

in her. She quickly became enamoured of her unsuspected resources and at

the prospect of exhibiting herself on a platform. Not only did she rouse

herself to something like exertion, but she faithfully followed the

instructions of her strenuous teacher and discovered a talent for posing

and little tricks of manner all her own. Her mother taught her the song

and dance, which were to be the sensation of the evening.

It was on the fourth day that Patience, returning home late in the

afternoon, met Mr. Foord in the woods. The old gentleman looked sad and

perplexed, and Patience sprang upon the step of his buggy and demanded

to know what was the matter.

“It’s very odd,” he said, “but she won’t let you go.”

“Won’t let me go?” cried Patience, furiously. “Well, I’ll go anyhow.”

“You can’t, my dear. The law won’t let you.”

“Do you mean to say that the law won’t protect me from that woman?”

“I am afraid she has the best of it.” He recalled the woman’s angry

cunning face, as he had pleaded with her, and shook his head. “You see

she was never in the town in that condition before. The men out there

are so devoted to her that—so she has informed me—they would swear to

a man that they had never seen her drunk. And, you see, she’s never

abused you—the only time she struck you she had provocation—you must

admit that. You are under her control until you are eighteen, and I

don’t see that we can do anything. I’m very sorry. I never felt so

defeated in my life.”

“But for gracious goodness sake why won’t she let me go? I’m no good to

speak of about the place, and she certainly isn’t keeping me for love.”

“Well—I think it’s revenge. She remarked that she had a chance to pay

up and she’d do it.”

“I’ll just run away, that’s all.”

“The law would bring you back, and arrest me for abduction.”

“I hate the law,” said Patience, gloomily. “Seems to me I’m always

finding something new to hate.”

“You must not hate, my child,” and he quoted the Bible dutifully,

although in entire sympathy with her. “That is what I am so afraid

of—that you will become hard and bitter. I want to save you from that.

Well, perhaps she’ll relent. I shall see her again and again. I must go

on, Patience.”

She kissed him and walked sullenly homeward. As she entered the kitchen

her mother looked up and laughed. Her face was triumphant and malignant.

“You don’t go,” she said. “Not much. I’ve got the whip hand this time

and I’ll keep it. Here you’ll stay until you’re eighteen—”

Patience turned abruptly and ran upstairs. As she locked her door she

thought with some satisfaction: “Now that I know myself I can control

myself. If I’d jumped on her then she’d have fallen in the stove.”

As her imagination had not dwelt at great length upon the proposed

change the disappointment was not as keen as it might have been, much as

she desired to leave Monterey. Moreover, she was occupied with Rosita

and the coming examinations. And did she not have her Byron? She rose at

dawn and read him. In the evening she went over to the tower and

declaimed him to the grey ocean whose passions were eternal. The owl,

who regarded Byron as a great bore, closed his eyes when she began and

went to sleep. Sometimes—when the sun rode high—she sat upon the

rubbish over Junipero Serra’s bones, and with one eye out for rats and

snakes and tarantulas, conned a new poem. She liked the contrast between

the desolation and death in the old ruin and the warm atmosphere of the

poetry. As often Byron was unheeded, and she dreamed of the mysterious

stranger who had so magnetised her that she had forgotten to ask his

name. She had only to close her eyes to hear his voice, to recall the

words which seemed forever moving in one or other chamber of her mind,

to see the profile which she admired quite as much as Byron’s. As for

the voice, it had a possessing quality which made her understand the

wherefore of the thrilling notes of the male bird in spring-time. She

invested her ambitious young lawyer with all the dark sardonic

melancholic fascinations of Lara, Conrad, Manfred, and Don Juan. The

wild sweet sting of spring was in her veins. Her mind was full of vague

illusions, very lovely and very strange, shifting of outline and wholly

inexplicable.

XII

On the afternoon of the last day of school several of the girls

decorated the hall with garlands and flags. Carpenters erected a stage,

and Patience arranged the “properties.” When the great night arrived and

Monterey in its best attire crowded the room, no curtain in the sleepy

town had ever been regarded with more complacent expectation. The

Montereñas were thoroughly satisfied with their offspring, and

performances of any sort were few.

The programme was opened by Manuela, who wore an old pink satin frock of

her mother’s cut short and trimmed with a flounce of Spanish lace. Her

brown shining face looked good will upon all the world as she recited

“The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Then came a dialogue in which all the

little participants wore white frocks and crimped hair.

Meanwhile, in the dressing-room, Rosita was limp in Patience’s arms.

“Oh, Patita!” she gasped, “I can’t! I can’t! I’m frightened to death!

What shall I do?”

“Do?” cried Patience, angrily, who was so excited herself that she

pumped Rosita’s arms up and down as if the unfledged Thespian had just

been rescued from the bay. “Do? You must brace up. When you get there

you’ll be all right. And you _must not_ get stage fright. Rosita, you

_must_ make a success. Remember you’ve got the star part. Don’t, _don’t_

make a fool of yourself.”

“Oh, if you could only hold my hand,” wailed Rosita.

“Well, I can’t, and that’s the end of it. Now! brace up quick.” The

prompter was calling in a loud whisper,—

“Miss Thrailkill, be ready when I say, ‘Life.’”

“_Ay, dios de mi alma_,” almost sobbed Rosita.

Patience dragged her to the wings and held her there. When the cue was

spoken she gave her a hard pinch, then a shove. Rosita gasped and

disappeared.

Patience slipped round into the audience, her heart in her throat, her

eyes black with excitement. If Rosita broke down she felt that she

should have hysterics.

At first Rosita had nothing to say. Upon entering she had merely to

fling herself upon a divan in an indolent attitude whilst the others

carried on a spirited dialogue. Patience saw that she had managed to get

to the sofa without falling prone, but also observed that her bosom was

heaving. Nevertheless, when her time came she managed to drawl her

lines, although with as little expression as she told her rosary.

Patience stamped her foot audibly.

But as the play progressed it was evident that Rosita was recovering her

poise. When she finally had to come forward she moved with all the

indolent grace of her blood, and delivered her little speech with such

piquant fire that the audience applauded loudly. And with that clatter

of feet and hands a new light sprang into the Spanish girl’s eyes, an

expression half of surprise, half of transport. From that time on she

acted in a manner which astonished even her instructor.

She looked exquisitely pretty. Her white rounded neck and arms were

bare. Her black soft hair hung to her knees, unbound, caught back above

one little ear with a pink rose. Her dress was of black Spanish lace

covered with natural roses. On her tiny feet she wore a pair of black

satin slippers which had belonged to her grandmother and twinkled many a

time to the music of El Son.

When, upon being twitted with her indolence, she suddenly sprang to the

front of the stage, and after singing an old Spanish love-song to the

music of her own guitar, danced El Son with all the rhythmic grace of

the beautiful women of the old gay time, she was no longer an actress

but an impersonator. The more the delighted audience applauded the more

poetically she danced, the more significantly her long eyes flamed. Once

when the applause deafened she swayed as if intoxicated. As the dance

finished, her red lips were parted. She was panting slightly.

When the curtain fell Patience rushed into the dressing-room and

embraced her rapturously. “Rosita!” she cried, “you were simply,

mag-_nif_-icent.”

Rosita, who was trembling violently, hung about Patience’s neck.

“Oh, Patita!” she gasped. “I was in heaven. I never was so happy. You

don’t know what it is to have a hundred people thinking of nothing but

you and applauding as if they were mad. Oh, I’m going to act, act, act

forever! I never want to do anything else. And isn’t my skin white? I

wish I had two necks and four arms.”

XIII

The next morning prizes were distributed. Patience took most of them,

but Rosita was still the sensation of the hour, although she had not

passed an examination. At noon she had a luncheon party. She sat at the

head of her table in a white dotted Swiss frock and Roman sash, and

talked faster than she had ever talked in her life before. Altogether

she was by no means the Rosita of twenty-four hours ago.

Mrs. Thrailkill had prepared a luncheon of old time Spanish dishes, and

hovered, large and brown and placid, about a table loaded with chickens

under mounds of yellow rice, _tamales_, and _dulces_. Patience, between

Manuela and a young cousin of Rosita’s, was not unhappy. Her prizes lay

on the window seat, she liked good things, and was infected with the

gaiety of the hour. True, she wore her old muslin frock and a plaid sash

made from an ancient gown of her mother’s, and the rest of the girls

looked like a bed of newly blossomed flowers; but at fifteen the spirits

rise high above trifles.

When she started for home she was as light of heart as her more favoured

mates; but in the wood a dire affliction smote her. One of her teeth

began to ache. She had seen her mother many times with head tied up and

distorted face, and had wondered scornfully how any one could make a

fuss about a mere tooth. Now, however, when her own suddenly felt as if

impaled on a needle, she uttered a loud wail, and ran toward home as

fast as her legs could carry her. She found her mother similarly

afflicted, and a bottle of drops on the kitchen table. Mrs. Sparhawk

condescended to apply the remedy, and the agony left as suddenly as it

had come.

After supper Patience went over to her tower, and as ever floated

between Carmel Valley and the stars, enveloped with warm ether, which

swirled to towers and turrets inhabited by a projection of herself which

she saw only as a lover. Unfortunately all this rapture was enacted in a

strong draught. Even Solomon uttered a sound once or twice which

resembled a sneeze. Again Patience’s tooth was punctured by a red-hot

needle. Her castles vanished. She caught her cheek with her hand,

stumbled down the winding stair, and flew across the valley, the needle

developing into a screw.

The house was quiet, the kitchen dark. She lit a candle and searched

frantically for the drops. They were not to be found. Then it occurred

to her that her mother must have taken them to her room, and she ran up

the stair.

XIV

At dawn next morning Patience found herself on the summit of the

mountain behind the house. Her progress thither had skimmed the surface

of memory and left no trace.

The sea was grey, the sky was grey. A grey mist moved in the valley.

Beyond, the wood on the hill loomed in faint black outline. The birds in

the trees, the seagulls on the rocks, the very ocean itself, were locked

in the heavy sleep of early morning. Once, from the tower of the

Mission, came the plaintive hooting of the owl.

After a time Patience plucked a number of stickers from her stockings,

and wiped blood from her torn hands with a large leaf wet with dew. She

clasped her hands inertly about her knees and stared down upon the

ocean. Horror was in her sunken eyes. The skin of her face looked faded

and old. Her nose and chin were as pinched as the features of the dead.

She did not look like the same child. Nor was she.

Her eyes closed heavily, her head dropped. She roused herself. She felt

that she had no right to do anything again so natural as to sleep. But

suddenly she toppled over and lay motionless; until the sun sent its

slanting rays under her eyelids. Then she stretched herself lazily,

rubbing her eyes, and smiling as children do when waking. But the smile

froze to a ghastly grin.

She raised herself stiffly and descended the mountain, clinging to the

brush, the stones rolling from beneath her feet. She ran across the

valley and plunged into the pine woods, but did not linger in those

fragrant aisles.

When she reached the edge of the town she paused and half turned back;

but there was one thing she dreaded more than to meet the people of

Monterey, and she went on.

She skirted the town and made her way toward the Custom House by a

roundabout path. She passed a group of boys, and averted her head with a

gesture of loathing. One boy, a gallant admirer, ran after her.

“Patience!” he cried, “wait a minute.” But Patience took to her heels

and never paused until she reached the Custom House. The perplexed

knight stood still and whistled.

“Well,” he exclaimed to his jeering comrades, “I always knew Patience

Sparhawk was a crank, but this lets _me_ out.”

Patience stood for a few moments on the rocks, then went slowly to the

library and opened the door. Mr. Foord sat by the fire. He looked up

with a smile.

“Ah, it’s you,” he said. “I’m very proud of you.—Why, what’s the

matter?”

Patience, her eyes fixed on the floor, took a chair opposite him.

“What is it, Patience?”

She did not look up. She could not. Finally she moved her face from him

and stared at the mantel.

“I’ve left home,” she said. “I’d like to stay here for a while.”

“Why, of course you can stay here. I’ll tell Lola to put a cot in her

room. But what is the matter? Has your mother been drinking again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has she struck you again?”

“No.”

“Well, what is it, my dear child? You know that you are always more than

welcome here; but you must have some excuse for leaving home.”

“I have an excuse. I can’t tell it. Please don’t say anything more about

it. I don’t think she’ll send for me.”

“Well, well, perhaps you’ll tell me after a time. Meanwhile make

yourself at home.”

He was much puzzled, but reflected that Patience was not like other

children; and he knew Mrs. Sparhawk’s commanding talent for making

herself disagreeable. Still, he was shocked at her appearance; and as

the day wore on and she would not meet his eye, but sat staring at the

floor, his uneasy mind glimpsed ugly possibilities. At dinner she ate

little and did not raise her eyes from her plate, although she made a

few commonplace remarks.

At four o’clock Billy, the buggy, and a farm hand stopped before the

Custom House. The man handed a note to Lola, asking her to give it to

Patience.

The note read:

You come home—hear? If you don’t, I’ll see that you do.

M. SPARHAWK.

Patience went out to the man, who still sat in the buggy. “Tell her,”

she said, looking at Billy, “that I’m not going home,—not now nor at

any other time. Just make her understand that I mean it.”

The man stared, but nodded and drove off.

XV

At midnight Patience was awakened by a frantic clamour in the street.

“Those dreadful Bohemians,” she thought sleepily, then sat up with

thumping heart.

“They say your name, _niña_, no?” said Lola, whose sonorous slumbers had

also been disturbed.

Patience slipped to the floor and looked through the window. The moon

flooded the old town. The ruined fort on the hill had never looked more

picturesque, the pines above more calm. In the hollow near the blue

waters the white arms of Junipero Serra’s cross seemed extended in

benediction. The old adobes were young for the hour. One might fancy

Isabel Herrara walking down from the long house on the hill, her

_reboso_ fluttering in the night wind, old Pio Pico, glittering with

jewels, beside her.

And in the wide street before the Custom House, surrounded by a hooting

mob, the refuse of the saloons, was a cursing gesticulating woman. Her

black hair was unbound, her garment torn. She flung her fists in the

face of those that sought to hold her.

“Patience Sparhawk!” she shrieked. “Patience Sparhawk! Come down here to

your mother. Come down here this minute. Come, I say,” and a volley of

oaths followed, greeted with a loud cackling laugh by the rabble.

Patience saw Mr. Foord, clad in his dressing-gown, go forth. She flung

on her clothes hastily and ran down the stair. Her mother and Mr. Foord

were in the kitchen.

“Oh, she’ll come back,” Mrs. Sparhawk was saying. “I’ll see to that. How

do you like a row under your windows? Well, I’ll come here every night

unless she comes home. You’ll put me in the Home of the Inebriates, will

you? Think she’ll like to have that said of her mother when she’s grown

up? Not Patience Sparhawk. I know her weak point. She’s as proud as

hell, and I’m not afraid of going to any Home of the Inebriates.”

Patience pushed open the door. “I’m going with you,” she said. “Now get

out of this house as fast as you can.”

“Oh, Patience,” exclaimed Mr. Foord. His old cheeks were splashed with

tears.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” said Patience, her hands clenching and

quivering. “I didn’t think she’d do this, or I wouldn’t have stayed.

What a return for all your kindness!”

“Patience,” said the old gentleman, “promise me that you will come to

see me to-morrow. Promise, or I shall not let you go. She can do her

worst.”

“Well, I’ll come.”

She ordered her mother to follow her out of the back door that they

might avoid the expectant mob. Mrs. Sparhawk walked unsteadily, but

received no assistance from her daughter. If she had fallen, Patience

could not have forced herself to touch her. Had the woman been a reeling

mass of physical corruption, a leper, a small-pox scab, the girl could

not have shrunken farther from her.

They did not speak until they ascended the hill behind the town and

entered the woods. Patience never recalled that night without inhaling

the balsamic odour of the pines, the heavy perfume of forest lilies,

without seeing the great yellow stars through the uplifted arms of the

trees. It was a night for love, and its guest was hate.

No more terrible conversation ever took place between mother and

daughter. After that night they never spoke again.

XVI

The next morning Patience, after breakfast, carried a pair of tongs and

a newspaper up to her room. She spread the newspaper on the table, then

with the tongs extracted Byron from beneath the bed and laid it on the

paper. She wrapped it up and tied it securely without letting her hands

come in contact with the cover. That same afternoon she carried the book

to the Custom House and threw it behind a row of tall volumes in one of

the cases. Long after, Mr. Foord found it there and wondered. He was not

at home when she arrived. When he returned she was deep in his

arm-chair, reading Gibbon’s “Rome.” He was not without tact, and

determined at once to ignore the events of the previous day and night.

“What!” he exclaimed, “are you really giving poor old Gibbon a trial at

last? And after all your abuse? But perhaps you won’t find him so dry,

after all.”

“I wish to read what is dry,” said Patience. “I’m going to take a course

in ancient history.”

“No more poetry and novels?”

“Not a line.” She spoke harshly, and compelled herself to meet Mr.

Foord’s eyes. Her own were as hard and as cold as steel. All the soft

dreaming light of the past two months had gone out of them. They were

the eyes neither of a girl nor of a woman. They looked the eyes of a

sexless intellect.

Patience had done the one thing which a girl of fifteen can do when

crushed with problems; she had twitched her shoulders and flung them

off. She comprehended that her intellect was her best friend, and

plunged her racked head into the hard facts which required utmost

concentration of mind. The sweet vague dreams of the past were turned

from in loathing. If she thought of them at all it was with fierce

resentment that she had become conscious of her womanhood. The stranger

was thrust out of memory. She went no more to the tower. The owl hooted

in his loneliness, and she drew the bed-clothes over her ears. When she

walked through the woods, to and from the town, she recited Gibbon in

synopsis. She spent the day in Mr. Foord’s library, returning home in

time to get supper. She did her household duties mechanically, and the

eyes of mother and daughter never met. The man Oscar kept out of her

way.

Miss Galpin had gone to San Francisco and would return no more: she was

to marry. Rosita was visiting in Santa Barbara. Manuela, now a young

lady, was devoting the greater part of her time to the Hotel Del Monte,

where the flower and vegetables of San Francisco gather in summer. She

went up to the tanks in the morning and to the dances in the evening;

and informed Patience, one day as they met on the street, that she was

having a perfectly gorgeous time, and had met a man who was too lovely

for words.

The long hot days and the foggy nights wore slowly away. Patience grew

thinner, her face harder. Mr. Foord did his best to divert her, but his

resources were limited. She peremptorily forbade him to allude to the

romance of Monterey, and he took her out in his old buggy and talked of

Gibbon’s “Rome.”

Once they drove through the grounds of Del Monte,—the trim artificial

grounds that are such an anomaly in that valley of memories. On the long

veranda of the great hotel of airy architecture people sat in the bright

attire of summer. Matrons rocked and gossiped; girls talked eagerly to

languid youths that sat on the railing. It was all as unreal to Patience

as the fairy-land of her childhood, when she had hunted for fays and

elves in the wood. She stared at the scene angrily, for the first time

feeling the sting of the social bee.

“A vain frivolous life those people lead,” remarked Mr. Foord, who

disapproved of The World. “A waste of time and God’s best gifts, which

makes them selfish and heartless. Empty heads and hollow hearts.”

But Patience, gazing at those girls in their gay dainty attire, the like

of which she had never seen before, experienced a sudden violent wish to

be of them, empty head, hollow heart, and all. They looked happy and

free of care. The very atmosphere of the veranda seemed full of colour

and music. Above all, they were utterly different from Patience

Sparhawk, blessed and enviable beings. Even the frivolity of the scene

appealed to her, so sick unto death of serious things.

XVII

One day, late in September, Patience, as usual, left Monterey at half

past four in order to reach home in time to cook the supper. Nature had

smiled for so many successive days that she wondered if the lips so

persistently set must not soon strain back and reveal the teeth. The

sun, poised behind the pine woods, flooded them with yellow light. As

Patience walked through the soft radiance she set her teeth and recalled

the chapters of Thiers’ “French Revolution,” through which she had that

day plodded. But her head felt dull. She realised with a quiver of

terror that she was beginning to feel less like an intellect and more

like a very helpless little girl. Once she discovered her curved arm

creeping to her eyes. She flung it down and shook her head angrily. Was

she like other people?

Mingling with the fragrance of the pines it seemed to her that she smelt

smoke. She hoped that her woods were not on fire. She walked slowly,

indisposed as ever to return home, the more so to-day as she felt

herself breaking.

“I wish the sun would not grin so,” she thought. “I’ll be glad when

winter comes.”

The smell of smoke grew stronger. She left the woods. A moment later she

stood, white and trembling, looking down upon Carmel Valley. The

Sparhawk farmhouse was a blazing mass of timbers. A volume of smoke, as

straight and full as a waterspout, stood directly above it. Men were

running about. Their shouts came faintly to her.

Patience pressed her hands convulsively to her eyes. She clutched her

head as if to tear out the terrible hope clattering in her brain, then

ran down the hill and across the valley, feeling all the while as if

possessed by ten thousand devils.

“Oh, I’m bad, bad, bad!” she sobbed in terror. “I don’t, I don’t!”

As she reached the scene the roof fell in. She glanced hastily about.

The men, withdrawn to a safe distance, were gathered round the man

Oscar. One was binding his hands and face. As they saw Patience they

turned as if to run, then stood doggedly.

“Where is she?” Patience asked.

There was an instant’s pause. The crackling of the flames grew louder,

as if it would answer. Then one of the men blurted out: “Burnt up in her

bed. She was drunk. We was all in the field when the fire broke out.

When we got here Oscar tried to get at her room with a ladder, but it

was no go. Poor old Madge.”

Patience without another word turned and ran back to the woods. She ran

until she was exhausted, more horrified at herself than she had been at

any of her unhappy experiences. After a time she fell among the dry pine

needles, her good, as she expressed it, still trying to fight down her

bad. She felt that the demon possessing her would have sung aloud had

she not held it by the throat. She conjured up all the horrible details

of her mother’s death and ordered her soul to pity; but her brain

remarked coldly that her mother had probably felt nothing. She imagined

the charred corpse, but it only offended her artistic sense.

Finally she fell asleep. The day was far gone when she awoke. She lay

for a time staring at the dim arches above her, listening to the night

voices she had once loved so passionately. At last she drew a deep sigh.

“I might just as well face the truth,” she said aloud. “I’m glad, and

that’s the end of it. It’s wicked and I’m sorry; but what is, is, and I

can’t help it. We’re not all made alike.”

XVIII

Patience was once more installed in Lola’s room. Mr. Foord applied for

letters of guardianship, which were granted at once. But as he had

feared, she was left without a penny. He wrote to his half-sister,

asking her if she would take charge of his ward. Miss Tremont replied in

enthusiastic affirmation. Miss Galpin invited Patience to spend two

weeks with her in San Francisco, offering to replenish the girl’s

wardrobe with several of her own old frocks made over.

Those two weeks seemed to Patience the mad whirl of excitement of which

she had read in novels. She had never seen a city before, and the very

cable cars fascinated her. To glide up and down the hills was to her the

poetry of science. The straggling city on its hundred hills, the crowded

streets and gay shop windows, the theatres, the restaurants, China Town,

the beautiful bay with its bare colorous hills, surprised her into

admitting that life appeared to be quite well worth living after all.

When she returned to Monterey she talked so fast that Mr. Foord clapped

his hands to his ears, and Rosita listened with expanded eyes.

“Ay, if I could live in San Francisco!” she said, plaintively. “I acted

all summer, Patita, but I got tired of the same people, and I want to go

to the big theatres and see the real ones do it. I’d like to hear a

great big house applauding, only I’d be so jealous of the leading lady.”

Patience was to start, immediately after Christmas, by steamer for New

York. Mr. Foord spent the last days giving her much good advice. He said

little of his own sorrow to part from her. Once he had been tempted to

keep her for the short time that remained to him, but had put the

temptation aside with the sad resignation of old age. He knew Patience’s

imperative need of new impressions in these her plastic years.

The day before she left she went over to Carmel to say good-bye to

Solomon. He flapped his wings with delight, although he could not see

her, and nestled close to her side in a manner quite unlike his haughty

habit. Patience thought he looked older and greyer, and his wings had a

dejected droop. She took him in her arms with an impulse of tenderness,

and this time he did not repulse her.

“Poor old Solomon,” she said, “I suppose you are lonely and forlorn in

your old age, but this old tower wouldn’t be what it is without you.

It’s too bad I can’t write to you as I can to my two or three other

friends, and you’ll never know I haven’t forgotten you, poor old

Solomon. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I wonder if owls do suffer too. You look so

wise and venerable, perhaps you are thinking that lonely old age is

terrible—as I know Mr. Foord does.”

Solomon pecked at her mildly. Her gaze wandered out over the ocean. She

wondered if a thousand years had passed since she had dreamed her

dreams. Their very echoes came from the mountains of space.

When she went away Solomon followed her to the head of the stair. She

looked upward once and saw him standing there, with drooping wings and

head a little bent. The darkness of the stair gave him vision, and he

fluttered his wings expectantly, as she paused and lifted her face to

him. But when she did not return he walked with great dignity to his

accustomed place against the wall, nor even lifted up his voice in

protest.

The next morning Rosita accompanied her to the station and wept loudly

as the train approached. But Patience did not cry until she stood in her

stateroom with Mr. Foord.