The Californians Part 23

Trennahan arrived late in the evening, and went directly to the Yorbas'

to dinner. He saw Magdalena alone for a moment before the others came downstairs, and his delight at meeting her again was so boyish that she could hardly have recalled his eventful forty years had she tried. He was one of those men, who, having a great deal of nervous energy, are possessed briefly by the high animal spirits of youth when in unusual mental and physical tenor,--with coincident obliteration of the bills of time. Trennahan was in the highest spirits this evening. He was delighted to get back to California, delighted to see Magdalena, whom he thought improved and almost pretty in her smart frock. Moreover, no woman had ever seemed to him half so sincere, half so well worth the loving, as this girl who said so little and breathed so much.

Don Roberto and Mr. Polk detained him some time after dinner, and Magdalena, who thought them most inconsiderate, awaited him in the green-and-brown reception-room. She knew the ugliness of these rooms now, and wondered, as Trennahan finally entered, if it clashed with his sentiment. But he gave no sign. He pushed a small sofa before the fire, drew her beside him, and demanded the history of the past four months.

He held her hand and looked at her with boyish delight. Even the lines had left his face for the moment, the grimness his mouth. He looked twenty-six.

"Your trip has done you more good than California did. You never looked so well here."

"I have been funereal since the day I left. This is pure reaction. I never felt so happy in my life. Couldn't we have a walk or ride somewhere to-morrow early--out to the Presidio? I want to be in the open air with you."

"I am afraid we couldn't. n.o.body does such things, you know--except Helena. Someone would be sure to see us, and it would be all over town before night. Then we should have to announce--I'd rather not do that until just before--I should hate being discussed."

"Well, but I must have you to myself in my own way. I wonder if your mother would bring you down to my house for a few days. Don Roberto and Mr. Polk could come down every evening."

"I think they would like it."

"And you?"

"Oh, I should like it. The woods must be lovely in winter."

"Who has been teaching you coquetry? Who has fallen in love with you since I left?"

"With me? No one. No one would ever think of such a thing but you--"

"I love you with an unerring instinct."

"They are all in love with Helena. I suppose you heard of her in New York."

"It certainly was not your fault if I did not."

"But surely you must have heard otherwise. She is a great, great belle."

"My dearest girl, you do not hear California mentioned in New York once a month. It might be on Mars. The East remembers California's existence about as often as Europe remembers America's. They don't know what they miss. When am I to see your Helena?"

"A week from to-night; she gives a ball then at Del Monte. She and her father have already gone, because each thought the other needed rest."

"Monterey,--that is the scene of your Ysabel's tragedy. We will explore the old part of the town together."

She moved closer to him, her eyes glistening. "That has been one of my dreams,--to be there with you--for the first time. We can guess where they all lived--and go to the cemetery on the hill where so many are buried--and there is the Custom House on the rocks, where the ball was and where Ysabel jumped off--it will be heaven!"

He laughed and caught her in his arms, kissing her fondly. "You dear little Spanish maid," he said. "You don't belong to the present at all.

No wonder you bewitched me. I am beginning to feel quite out of place in the present, myself. It is a novel and delightful sensation."

VIII

Mrs. Yorba decided that it would be wiser for them all to go to Fair Oaks; no one would know whether Trennahan were their guest or not. This was her first really gay winter, and could she have thought of a plausible excuse she would have delayed the marriage for a year or two.

But both Don Roberto and Trennahan were determined that the wedding should not take place later than June.

They were to spend five days at Fair Oaks. Then Don Roberto, Mrs. Yorba, and Magdalena would go to Monterey, Trennahan to follow on the evening of the ball.

The winter woods were wet and glistening. Thick in the brush were the vivid red berries and the firm little s...o...b..a.l.l.s. The air was of a wonderful freshness and fragrance, cool on the cheek, but striking no chill to the blood. The gra.s.s tips in the meadows were close and green.

There was no haze on the distant mountains: the redwoods stood out sharply; one could almost see the sun baldes crossing in their gloomy aisles. Close to the ground was a low, restless, continuous mutter,--the voluntary of Spring.

Trennahan and Magdalena rode or strolled in the woods during most of the hours of light. They could not sit on the damp ground, but they swung hammocks by the path-side to sit in when tired. Trennahan would have slept on the verandah had not his enthusiasm for outdoor delights been controlled by his matter-of-fact brain, but he grudged the hours at table, and persuaded Magdalena to go early to bed that she might rise and go forth at five in the evening of night. After four months of snow and nipping winds and furnace heat, small wonder that he was as happy as a boy out of school, and that he made Magdalena the most wonderingly happy of women. He did little love-making; he treated her more as a comrade upon whose constant companionship he was dependent for happiness,--his other part, with which he was far better satisfied than with the original measure.

"We will camp out up there during all of July and August," he said to her one morning, as they stood on the edge of the woods and watched the rising sun pick out the redwoods one by one from the black ma.s.s on the mountain. "I can't imagine a more enchanting place for a honeymoon than a redwood forest. We'll take a servant, and a lot of books; but I doubt if we shall read much,--we'll shoot and fish all day. If we like it as much as I am sure we shall, we'll build a house there. Do you think you should like it?"

"Oh, I should! I should!"

"You are so sympathetic in your own particular way; not temperamentally so, which is pleasant but means little, but with a slow, sure understanding which goes forth to few people, but is unerring and permanent."

"I love no one but you and Helena. I have never cared to understand anyone else."

"We all have great weaknesses in us. I wonder if mine were ever revealed to you--which G.o.d forbid!--if you have sympathy enough to cover those, too."

"I am sure that I have. I am neither quick nor generally affectionate, but I do nothing by halves."

"I believe you. You are the one person on whose mercy I would throw myself. However,--it is a long time since we have spoken of another subject. Do you think no further of writing?"

"I haven't lately. There has been no time. Some day--Oh, yes, I think I should never wholly give it up. Should--should you object?"

"Not in the least. But I am afraid I sha'n't give you much time, either.

What were you writing,--your Old-California tales?"

"No,--an--an historical novel--English."

"Of course! And with fresh and fascinating material begging for its turn. I arrived in the nick of time. When you have transcribed those stories into correct and distinguished English, you will have taken your place among the immortals. But style alone will give you a place in letters worth having. Always remember that. The theme determines popular success, the manner rank. Don't misunderstand me; there is no greater fraud or bore than the writer who has acquired the art of saying nothing brilliantly. You must have both. And you are too ambitious, too intellectual, as distinguished from clever, too serious and logical, to be contented with anything short of perfection. I shall be your severest critic; but you yourself will work for years before you produce a line with which you are wholly satisfied. Is not this true?"

"Yes; I should always be my severest critic."

He drew a long breath of relief. He had no desire for a literary wife; nor to be known as the husband of one. Magdalena should be as happy as he could make her, but the sooner she realised that genius was not her portion, the better.

IX

"Never I think I come to Monterey again," said Don Roberto, as the 'bus which contained his party only drove from the little toy station to the big toy hotel. "Once I hate all the Spanish towns, because so extravagant I am before that I feel 'fraid, si I return, I am all the same like then; but now I am old and the habits fixit; and now I know my moneys go to be safe with Trennahan, I feel more easy in the mind and can enjoy. But I no go to the town, for all is change, I suppose: all the womens grown old and poor, and all the mens dead--by the drink, generalmente. Very fortunate I am I no stay there; meeting Eeram in time. Ay, yi! What kind de house is this? Look like paper, and the grounds so artifeecial. No like much."

Magdalena hardly knew her father these last months. From the day that he found a reminiscent pleasure in the mild diversions of Menlo he had visibly softened. From the day he was a.s.sured of Trennahan he had become almost expansive, and at times was moved to generosity. Upon one occasion he had doubled Magdalena's allowance, and at Christmas he had given her a hundred dollars; and he had paid the bills of the season without a murmur. The fear which had haunted him during the last thirty years,--that he should suddenly relapse into his native extravagance and squander his patrimony and his acc.u.mulated millions, dying as the companions of his youth had died,--he dismissed after he met Trennahan.

Polk had been the iron mine to the voracious magnet in his character. In the natural course of things Polk would outlive him; but the possibility of Polk's extermination by railroad accident or small-pox had been a second devil of torment, and during the past year he had visibly failed.

Now, however, there was Trennahan to take his place. Don Roberto would enjoy life once more, a second youth. He was almost happy. If he felt his will rotting, he would transfer all his vast interests to Trennahan in trust for his wife and daughter, retaining a large income. He did not believe, at this optimistic period, that there was any real danger, after an inflexible resistance of thirty years; but he also realised for the first time what the strain of those thirty years had been.