"I have; and I love the husband, before; but so many years that ees now. You think ees possiblee keep on love when the other have been dead twenty years?"
"I think so."
"Ay! So I theenk once. But no was intend, I theenk, to live "lone alway."
"Then why have you never married again, dear senora!" Thorpe found the conversation very tiresome.
"Ay! The men here--all are alike the one to the other. Never I marry another Californian."
"Ah!"
"No!"
His restless eyes suddenly encountered hers. He felt the blood climb to his hair, his breath come short. His hands desperately sought his pockets.
"I am sure, if you went to San Francisco, you would be overwhelmed with offers--from Americans. This room is frightfully warm, don"t you think so, senora? Shall I open the door? Ah, what a nuisance! here comes Don Adan Menendez to talk to you, and two other admirers are in his wake. I must release you for the moment. _Hasta luego_, dear senora!"
He made his way rapidly down the room, and out of the house.
"Great heaven!" he thought. "It is well the week is over. Good G.o.d, what a travesty!" and he laughed aloud.
He pa.s.sed through the screaming crowd, which also had its _cascarones_, and walked rapidly and aimlessly up the valley until the white placid walls of the Mission were so close that he could count its arches. He sat down on a rock, and pressed his hands against his head.
He resented the quiet and beauty of the night, the repose of the Mission, the dark-blue spangled sky, the soft sobbing of the ocean. If Queen Mab and her train had come down to dance on the brink of h.e.l.l, the ant.i.thesis could not have jarred more hatefully than the night upon his thoughts. He felt a desire to strike something, and hit the rock with his fist. He dug his heel into the ground, then thought of the flour and tinsel on his hair, and laughed aloud. After a time he put his face into his hands and wept. The sobs convulsed him, straining his muscles; the tears seemed wrung from some inner frozen fountain.
The storm pa.s.sed. Calmer, he sat and thought. His love for Nina Randolph, during this interval of quiescence, had lost nothing of its iron. Idealised, she came back to him. Or, rather, he told himself he looked through the husk that the hideous circ.u.mstances of her life had bundled into shape, to the soul which spoke to his own. He worshipped her courage. He forgot himself and suffered with her. He hated himself for not having guessed the truth at once, and borne her burden. True, she had lied to him; but the lie was pardonable, and he attached no significance to it. If she had loved him less, she would have confessed the truth, indifferently. Others knew.
Her moods pa.s.sed in review, with keen allurement. He wondered that he had ever wished her a woman of even and tangible temperament. The thought of her variety intoxicated him. The very equilibrium of the world might be disturbed, but he would have her.
The horror of her impending fate jibbered at him. He set his teeth, and compelled his mind to practical deduction. Her mother was only insane at intervals; there was no reason why the daughter should be affected in a dissimilar manner. Why, indeed, should not her attacks be far less frequent, if she were happy and her life were alternately peaceful and diversified? He would have the best advice in Europe, and guard her unremittingly.
His impulse was to return to her at once. He cogitated until dawn, then concluded to take her father"s advice in part; he would remain away a month, then come down upon her unexpectedly. But he went to his room and wrote her a letter, begging for a word in return.
XXI
Early in the forenoon he started northward with the Brothertons and Estenegas. Reinaldo kissed him on both cheeks, much to his embarra.s.sment; but Prudencia accepted his farewells with chilling dignity, and did not invite him to return.
The Rancho de los Pinos was some ten miles from Monterey. Behind the house was a pine forest whose outposts were scattered along the edge of the Pacific; facing it were some eight thousand acres of rolling land, cut with willowed creeks, studded with groves of oaks, dazzling, at this season, with the gold of June. Thousands of cattle wandered about in languid content; the air lay soft and heavy on unquiet pulses.
The Brothertons and their guests "horse-backed" in the morning, but spent the greater part of the day in the hammocks swung across the long cool corridors. After supper, they rambled through the woods, sometimes as far as the ocean, where they sat on the rocks until midnight. The conversation rarely wandered from politics; for it was the summer of 1860, and the approaching national earthquake rumbled loudly.
Nevertheless, life on the Rancho de los Pinos was less in touch with the world than any part of the strange new land which Thorpe had visited; and he hardly felt an impulse to speed the lagging moments. Dona Eustaquia, who had been one of the very pulses of the old regime, still beat with loud and undiminished vigour; but Chonita was very restful, and the country enfolded one with a large sleepy content. He received nothing from Nina Randolph, but her father wrote once or twice saying that she was well, but taking little interest in the summer gaieties.
On the first of July, he took the boat from Monterey to San Jose. There he was the guest of Don Tiburcio Castro for a few days, and attended a bull fight, a race at which the men bet the very clothes off their backs, a religious festival, and three b.a.l.l.s; then took the stage which pa.s.sed Redwoods on its way to San Francisco. It was a ride of thirty miles under a blistering sun, through dust twelve inches deep which the heavy hoofs of the horses and the wheels of the lumbering coach tossed ten feet in the air, half smothering the inside pa.s.sengers, and coating those on top within and without. Thorpe had secured the seat by the driver, thinking to forget the physical discomforts in the scenery. But the tame prettiness of the valley was obliterated by the shifting wall of dust about the stage; and Thorpe closed his eyes, and resigned himself to misery. Even the driver would not talk, beyond observing that it was "the goldarndest hottest day he"d ever knowed, and that was saying a darned sight, _you_ bet!" It was late in the afternoon when the stage pulled up at the "hotel" of a little village.
"That there"s Redwoods," said the driver, pointing with his whip toward a ma.s.s of trees on rising ground. "Evenin". I wish I wuz you."
The hotel seemed princ.i.p.ally saloon; but the proprietor, who was chewing vigorously, told Thorpe he guessed he could accommodate him, and led him to a small room whose very walls were crackling with the heat.
Thorpe distinctly saw the fleas jumping on the bare boards, and shuddered.
"Can I have a bath?" he asked.
"A what?"
"A bath."
"Oh!--we don"t p.r.o.nounce it that way in these parts. And bath-tubs is a luxury you"ll have to go to "Frisco for, I guess."
"Hav"n"t you any sort of a tub you could bring me? I have a call to pay, and I must clean up."
"Perhaps the ole woman"d let you have one of her wash-tubs. I"ll ask her."
"Do. And I should like supper as soon after as possible."
The old woman contributed the tub. It leaked, and it was redolent of coa.r.s.e soap and the indigo that escapes from overalls. Thorpe got rid of his dust; but the smells, and the hot room, and the cloud of dust that sprang back from his clothes as he shook them out of the window, improved neither his aching head nor his temper. To make matters worse, the steak for his supper was fried, the potatoes were swimming in grease, the b.u.t.ter was rancid, and the piecrust hung down with its own weight. He ate what little of this typical repast he could in a close low room, crowded with men in their shirt-sleeves, who expectorated freely, mopped their faces and necks with their napkins, and smelt. The flies swarmed, a million strong, and invaded the very plates; a previous battalion lay, gasping or dead, on the tables, some overcome by the heat, others by the sharp a.s.saults of angry napkins. When Thorpe left the room, he had half made up his mind not to call on Nina Randolph that evening; he felt in anything but a loverlike mood. Moreover, such an introduction to a reunion was grotesque; but after he had smoked his cigar in the open air, he felt better, concluded not to be a romantic a.s.s, and started for the house.
He climbed the dusty road toward the two tall redwoods (the only ones in the valley) that gave her home its name, then turned into a long cool avenue. Beside it ran a creek, dry already, its sides thick with fragrant shrubs. So closely planted was the avenue that he did not catch a glimpse of the house until he came suddenly upon it; then he paused a moment, regarding it with pleasure. It looked like a fairy castle, so light and delicate and mediaeval of structure was it. The yellow plaster of its walls, the vivid bloom of the terrace on which it stood, were plainly visible in the moonlight. The dark mountains, covered with their redwood forests, seemed almost directly behind, although they were twenty miles away. Thorpe was glad he had come. The hideous afternoon and evening slipped out of his thought.
The front doors were open. Cochrane was walking up and down the hall, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent. He looked like a man who was listlessly awaiting a summons.
Light streamed from open windows to the verandah on the right of the house. Thorpe, conceiving that Nina was there, determined to look upon her for a moment un.o.bserved. He skirted the house, and heard Nina"s voice. To command a view of the interior, he must reach the verandah.
He mounted the steps softly, but other sounds rose high above his footfalls as he walked toward the window. A peal of coa.r.s.e laughter burst forth. The light swept obliquely across the verandah; he stood in the shadows just beyond it, and looked into the room.
Nina sat in a corner, her elbows on her knees, her eyes fixed on the floor. Her black dress was dest.i.tute of any feminine device.
Mrs. Randolph and Mrs. Reinhardt sat on opposite sides of a table.
Between them was a steaming bowl of punch. There were two unopened brandy-bottles on the table. The faces of both women were flushed, and their hair was disordered.
"Tha"t a fool, Nina," remarked Mrs. Randolph, in a remarkably steady tone. "Coom and "ave a gla.s.s. My word! it"s good."
Nina made no reply.
"Such nonsense," wheedlingly. "It"s the best a iver made, and the Lord knows a"ve made mony. Coom and try just one gla.s.s."
"I am sitting here to test my strength. I shall not touch it."
Mrs. Randolph laughed, coa.r.s.ely and loudly. "Tha"t a fool. Tha doon"t knoo what tha"t talking aboot. It strikes me a "ve "eard thot before.
Coom. Tha mought as well give in, fust as last."
Nina made no reply.
Mrs. Randolph"s evil eyes sparkled. She filled an empty gla.s.s with the punch, and walked steadily over to where her daughter sat. Nina sprang from her chair, overturning it, thrusting out her hands in a gesture eloquent with terror, and attempted to reach the door. Mrs. Randolph was too quick for her; with a dexterous swoop, she possessed herself of the girl"s small hands and pressed the goblet to her nostrils. Nina gave a quick gasp, and, throwing back her head, staggered slightly, the gla.s.s still against her face. Outside Thorpe reeled for a moment as if he too were drunk. The blood pounded in his ears; his fingers drew inward, rigid, in their desire to get about the throat of some one, he did not much care whom.
Nina wrenched one hand free, s.n.a.t.c.hed the goblet and held it with crooked elbow, staring at her mother. Mrs. Randolph laughed. Mrs.
Reinhardt held her breath in drunken awe at the tragedy in the girl"s face. Nina brought the goblet half way to her lips, her eyes moving to its warm brown surface with devouring greed. Then she flung it at her mother"s breast, and sank once more to her chair, covering her face with her hands.