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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Daughter of the Vine, by Gertrude Franklin
+Horn Atherton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Daughter of the Vine
+
+
+Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 7, 2011  [eBook #35512]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by D Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/daughterofvine00atheuoft
+
+
+
+
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE
+
+by
+
+GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+Author of
+"Senator North," "The Californians," etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Dodd, Mead and Company
+1923
+
+Copyright, 1899
+By Dodd, Mead and Company
+
+Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+A Daughter of the Vine
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Two horses were laboriously pulling a carriage through the dense
+thickets and over the sandhills which in the early Sixties still made an
+ugly breach between San Francisco and its Presidio. The difficulties of
+the course were not abridged by the temper of the night, which was torn
+with wind and muffled in black. During the rare moments when the flying
+clouds above opened raggedly to discharge a shaft of silver a broad and
+dreary expanse leapt into form. Hills of sand, bare and shifting, huge
+boulders, tangles of scrub oak and chaparral, were the distorted
+features of the landscape between the high far-away peaks of the city
+and the military posts on the water's edge. On the other side of the
+bay cliffs and mountains jutted, a mere suggestion of outline. The ocean
+beyond the Golden Gate roared over the bar. The wind whistled and
+shrilled through the rigging of the craft on the bay; occasionally it
+lifted a loose drift and whirled it about the carriage, creating a
+little cyclone with two angry eyes, and wrenching loud curses from the
+man on the box.
+
+"It's an unusually bad night, Thorpe, really," said one of the two
+occupants of the carriage. "Of course the winters here are more or less
+stormy, but we have many fine days, I assure you; and they're better
+than the summer with its fogs and trade winds--I am speaking of San
+Francisco," he added hastily, with newly acquired Californian pride. "Of
+course it is usually fine in the country at any time. I believe there
+are sixteen different climates in California."
+
+"As any one of them might be better than England's, it is not for me to
+complain," said the other, good-naturedly. "But I feel sorry for the
+horses and the man. I don't think we should have missed much if we had
+cut this ball."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the world. Life would be suicidal in this
+God-forsaken country if it were not for the hospitality of the San
+Franciscans. Some months ago two officers whose names I won't mention
+met in a lonely spot on the coast near Benicia Fort, on the other side
+of the bay, with the deliberate intention of shooting one another to
+death. They were discovered in time, and have since been transferred
+East. It is better for us on account of San Francisco--Whew! how
+this confounded thing does jolt!--and the Randolph parties are always
+the gayest of the season. Mr. Randolph is an Englishman with the
+uncalculating hospitality of the Californian. He has made a pot of money
+and entertains lavishly. Every pretty girl in San Francisco is a belle,
+but Nina Randolph is the belle _par excellence_."
+
+"Is she a great beauty?" asked Thorpe, indifferently. He was wondering
+if the driver had lost his way. The wheels were zigzagging through
+drifts so deep that the sand shot against the panes.
+
+"No, I don't know that she is beautiful at all. Miss Hathaway is that,
+and Mrs. McLane, and two of the 'three Macs'. But she has it all her
+own way. It's charm, I suppose, and then--well, she's an only child and
+will come in for a fortune--a right big one if this place grows as
+people predict. She's a deuced lucky girl, is Miss Nina Randolph, and
+it will be a deuced lucky fellow that gets her. Only no one does. She's
+twenty-three and heart-whole."
+
+"Are you in love with her?"
+
+"I'm in love with her and Guadalupe Hathaway and the 'three Macs' and
+Mrs. McLane. I never met so many attractive women in one place."
+
+"Would it be Mrs. Hunt McLane--a Creole? I met her once in Paris--got to
+know her very well."
+
+"You don't say. She'll make things hum for you. There's something else I
+wanted to say. I thought I'd wait and see if you discovered it yourself,
+but I believe I won't. It's this: there's something queer about the
+Randolphs in spite of the fact that they're more to the front than any
+people in San Francisco. I never leave that house that I don't carry
+away a vague impression that there's something behind the scenes I
+don't know anything about. I've never spoken of it to anyone else; it
+would be rather disloyal, after all the kindness they've shown me; but
+I'm too curious to know how they will impress you. I've only been here
+six months, and only know what everybody else knows about them--"
+
+"Do you know, Hastings," said the Englishman abruptly, "I think
+something is wrong outside. I don't believe anyone is guiding those
+horses."
+
+Hastings lowered the window beside him and thrust out his head.
+
+"Hi, there, Tim!" he shouted. "What are you about?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"Hello!" he cried, thinking the wind might have miscarried his voice.
+
+Again there was no reply; but the horses, gratefully construing the
+final syllable to their own needs, came to a full stop.
+
+Hastings opened the door and sprang on to the hub of the wheel,
+expostulating angrily. He returned in a moment to his companion.
+
+"Here's the devil to pay," he cried. "Tim's down against the dashboard
+as drunk as a lord. There's nothing to do but put him inside and
+drive, myself. I'd chuck him into a drift if I were not under certain
+obligations of a similar sort. Will you come outside with me, or stay
+in with him?"
+
+"Why not go back to the Presidio?"
+
+"We are about half-way between, and may as well go on."
+
+"I'll go outside, by all means."
+
+He stepped out. The two men dragged the coachman off the box and huddled
+him inside.
+
+"We're off the road," said Hastings, "but I think I can find my way.
+I'll cut across to the Mission road, and then we'll be on level ground,
+at least."
+
+They mounted the box. Hastings gathered the reins and Thorpe lit a
+cigar. The horses, well ordered brutes of the livery stable, did their
+weary best to respond to the peremptory order to speed.
+
+"We'll be two hours late," the young officer grumbled, as they
+floundered out of the sandhills and entered the Mission Valley.
+
+"Damn the idiot. Why couldn't he have waited till we got there?"
+
+They were now somewhat sheltered from the wind, and as the road was
+level, although rutty, made fair progress.
+
+"I didn't mean to treat you to a nasty adventure the very night of your
+arrival," continued Hastings apologetically.
+
+"Oh, one rather looks for adventures in California. If I hadn't so much
+sand in my eyes I'd be rather entertained than otherwise. I only hope
+our faces are not dirty."
+
+"They probably are. Still, if we are not held up, I suppose we can
+afford to overlook the minor ills."
+
+"Held up?"
+
+"Stopped by road-agents, garroters, highway robbers--whatever you like
+to call 'em. I've never been held up myself; as a rule I go in the
+ambulance at night, but it's no uncommon experience. I've got a revolver
+in my overcoat pocket--on this side. Reach over and get it, and keep it
+cocked. I _couldn't_ throw up my hands. I'd feel as if the whole United
+States army were disgraced."
+
+Thorpe abstracted the pistol, but although the long lonely road was
+favourable to crime, no road-agents appeared, and Hastings drove into
+the outskirts of the town with audibly expressed relief.
+
+"We're not far now," he added. "South Park is the place we're bound for;
+and, by the way, Mr. Randolph projected and owns most of it."
+
+A quarter of an hour later he drove into an oval enclosure trimmed with
+tall dark houses, so sombre in appearance that to the old Californian
+they must now, in their desertion and decay, seem to have been grimly
+prescient of their destiny.
+
+As the carriage drew up before a brilliantly lighted house the door
+opened, and a man-servant ran down the steps.
+
+"Keep quiet," whispered Hastings.
+
+The man opened the door of the carriage, waited a moment, then put his
+head inside. He drew it back with a violent oath.
+
+"It's a damned insult!" he cried furiously.
+
+"Why, Cochrane!" exclaimed Hastings, "what on earth is the matter with
+you?"
+
+"Captain Hastings!" stammered the man. "Oh I--I--beg pardon. I
+thought--Oh, of course, I see. Tim had taken a drop too much. A most
+deplorable habit. Can I help you down, sir?"
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+He sprang lightly to the sidewalk, followed with less agility by the
+Englishman, who still held the cocked pistol.
+
+"I forgot about this thing," said Thorpe. "Here--take it. I suppose we
+don't enter the houses of peaceable citizens, even in California,
+carrying loaded firearms?"
+
+Cochrane led the horses into the little park which prinked the centre of
+the enclosure, and the young men ascended the steps.
+
+"I'd give a good deal to know what set him off like that," said
+Hastings. "Hitherto he's been the one thoroughly impassive creature I've
+met in California; has a face about as expressionless as a sentinel on
+duty."
+
+He pushed open the door and they entered a large hall lavishly decorated
+with flowers and flags. Many people were dancing in a room at the right,
+others were strolling about the hall or seated on the stair. These made
+way rather ungraciously for the late comers, who went hurriedly up to
+the dressing-room and regarded themselves in the mirror.
+
+"We're not dirty, after all," said the Englishman in a tone of profound
+relief. He was a tall thin man of thirty or less with a dark face lean
+enough to show hard ungraceful lines of chin and jaw. The mouth would
+have been sensual had it been less determined, the grey eyes cold had
+they been less responsive to humour. Mrs. McLane had told him once that
+he was the type of man for whom civilization had done most: that an
+educated will and humour, combined with high breeding, had saved him
+from slavery to the primal impulses. His voice was harsh in tone but
+well modulated. He held himself very erectly but without
+self-consciousness.
+
+Hastings' legs were his pride, and there were those who averred that
+they were the pride of the Presidio. His face was fair and round, his
+eyes were as talkative as his tongue. A past master of the noble art of
+flirting, no one took him more seriously than he took himself. He spoke
+with the soft rich brogue of the South; to-day it is hardened by years
+of command, and his legs are larger, but he is a doughty general, eager
+as ever for the hot high pulse of battle.
+
+"Come on, Dud," he said, "time is getting short."
+
+As they walked down the stair a man who was crossing the hall looked up,
+smiled charmingly, then paused, awaiting them. He was a small man of
+dignified presence with a head and face nobly modelled. His skin was
+faded and worn, it was cut with three or four deep lines, and his hair
+was turning grey, but his black eyes were brilliant.
+
+"Don't turn us out, Mr. Randolph," cried Hastings. "It was not
+indifference that made us late; it was an ill-timed combination of
+Tim and rum. This is the English friend you were kind enough to say
+I could bring," he added as he reached the hall. "Did I tell you his
+name?--Thorpe, Dudley Thorpe, of Hampshire. That may interest you.
+You English are almost as sectional as we are."
+
+Mr. Randolph had already grasped Thorpe's hand warmly and was bidding
+him welcome. "My home was further north--Yorkshire," he said. "Come into
+the parlour and meet my wife and daughter." As they pushed their way
+through the crowd he "sized up" the stranger with the rapid scrutiny of
+that period. "You must make yourself at home in my house," he said
+abruptly. "There are few English here and I am more glad than I can
+express to meet you."
+
+"Ah--thanks!" Thorpe was somewhat taken aback, then remembered that he
+was in the newest section of the new world. And he had heard of the
+hospitality of the Californian.
+
+They had entered a large room, canvassed for the evening and denuded of
+all furniture except the long rows of chairs against the walls. The
+musicians were resting. Men were fanning girls flushed and panting after
+the arduous labours of the waltz of that day. At one end of the room
+were some twenty or thirty older women.
+
+Thorpe looked about him curiously. The women were refined and elegant,
+many of them with beauty or its approximate; three or four were Spanish,
+black-eyed, magnetic with coquetry and grace. The men, even the younger
+men, had a certain alertness of expression, a cool watchful glance; and
+they were all gentlemen. This fact impressed Thorpe at once, and as
+they walked down the long room something he said betrayed his thoughts.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Randolph, quickly. "They are all from the upper walks of
+life--men who thought there would be a better chance for them in the new
+community than in even the older American ones. And they keep together
+because, naturally, they are the law-abiding class and responsible for
+the future of the country. That also accounts for what you find in their
+faces. This sort of life develops character very quickly. There is
+another element in California. You will see it--Ah! here is my wife."
+
+A tall raw-boned woman with weak blue eyes and abundant softly piled
+hair had arisen from the group of matrons and was advancing toward them.
+She was handsomely dressed in black velvet, her neck covered with point
+lace confined under the loose chin by a collar of diamonds.
+
+She looked cold and listless, but spoke pleasantly to the young men.
+
+"We are glad to welcome an Englishman," she said to Thorpe; and to
+Hastings: "You are not usually so late, and I have heard a round dozen
+inquiring for you."
+
+Thorpe, as he exchanged commonplaces with her, reflected that no woman
+had ever attracted him less. As he looked into the face he saw that it
+was cold, evil, and would have appeared coarse but for the hair and
+quiet elegance of attire. Despite her careful articulation, he detected
+the broad o and a of the Yorkshire people. The woman was playing the
+part of a gentlewoman and playing it fairly well. When the thin lips
+moved apart in an infrequent smile they displayed sharp scattered teeth.
+The jaw was aggressive. The hands in their well-adjusted gloves were
+large even for her unusual height. As Thorpe remarked that he was
+prepared to admire and enjoy California, one side of her upper lip
+lifted in an ugly sneer.
+
+"Probably," she replied coldly. "Most people catch it. It's like the
+measles. I wish Jim Randolph liked it less."
+
+Thorpe, for the first time, experienced a desire to meet Nina Randolph.
+
+Hastings disengaged him. "Come," he said, "I'll introduce you to Miss
+Randolph and one or two others, and then you can look out for yourself.
+I want to dance. Mrs. McLane is not here. There are the 'three Macs,'"
+indicating a trio surrounded by a group of men,--"Miss McDermott,
+classic and cold; Miss McAllister, languid and slight; Miss McCullum,
+stocky and matter-of-fact. But it will take you a week to straighten
+them out. Here--look--what do you think of this?"
+
+Thorpe directed his glance over the shoulders of a knot of men who
+surrounded a tall Spanish-looking girl with large haughty blue eyes and
+brown hair untidily arranged. She wore an old black silk frock with
+muslin bertha. Her face interested Thorpe at once, but in a moment he
+had much ado to keep from laughing outright. For she spoke never a word.
+She merely _looked_; taking each eager admirer in turn, and by some
+mysterious manipulation of eyelash, sweeping a different expression
+into those profound obedient orbs every time. As she saw Hastings she
+nodded carelessly, and, when he presented Thorpe, spoke for the first
+time. She merely said "Good-evening," but her voice, Spanish, low,
+sweet--accompanied by a look--made the stranger feel what a blessed
+thing hospitality was.
+
+"So that is your Miss Hathaway," he said, as Hastings once more led him
+onward. "What a pity that such a beautiful girl should be so poor. But
+she'll probably marry any one of these incipient millionaires she
+wants."
+
+"Poor?" cried Hastings. "Oh, her get-up. She affects to despise
+dress--or does. God forbid that I should presume to understand what goes
+on behind those blue masks. Her father is a wealthy and distinguished
+citizen. Her mother inherited a hundred thousand acres from one of the
+old grandees. What do you think of her?"
+
+"Her methods are original and entertaining, to say the least. Does she
+never--converse?"
+
+"When she has something to say; she's a remarkable woman. That must be
+Miss Randolph. Her crowd is always the densest."
+
+As Thorpe was presented to Nina Randolph he forgot that he was a student
+of heredity. He had never seen so radiant and triumphant a being. She
+seemed to him, in that first moment, to symbolize the hope and joy
+and individualism of the New World. Small, like her father, she was
+perfectly modelled, from her round pulsing throat to the tips of her
+tiny feet: ignoring the fashion, her yellow gown fitted her figure
+instead of a hoop-skirt. Her black hair was coiled low on her head, but,
+although unconfined in a net, did not, like Miss Hathaway's "waterfall,"
+suggest having been arranged in the dark. Her black eyes, well set and
+wide apart, sparkled with mirth. The head was thrown back, the chin
+uplifted, the large sweet human mouth, parted, showed small even teeth.
+The eyebrows were heavy, the nose straight and tilted, the complexion
+ivory-white, luminous, and sufficiently coloured.
+
+As she saw Hastings, she rose at once and motioned her group aside.
+
+"Whatever made you so late?" she exclaimed. "And this is Mr. Thorpe? I
+am so relieved that you have not been garotted, or blown into the bay.
+Captain Hastings is always the first to arrive and the last to leave--I
+was sure something had happened."
+
+"You look remarkably worried," murmured Hastings.
+
+"I cannot depress my other guests. They also have their rights." She
+gave Thorpe a gracious smile. "I have saved the fifth dance from this
+for you, and you are also to take me in to supper. Now I must go. _Hasta
+luego!_ Captain Hastings, as it's all your fault, I shall not give you a
+dance till after supper."
+
+She spun down the room in the clasp of an army officer little taller
+than herself. Thorpe's eyes followed the fluent pair darting through the
+mob of dancers with the skill and energy of that time. Miss Randolph's
+eyes glittered, her little feet twinkled. She looked the integer of
+happy youth; and Thorpe turned away with a sigh, feeling old for the
+moment under the pressure of his large experience of the great world
+beyond California. He became aware that Hastings was introducing him to
+several men, and a moment later was guided to the library to have a
+drink. When he returned, it was time to claim Miss Randolph.
+
+"Do you care to dance?" he asked as he plied her fan awkwardly. "I am
+rather rusty. To tell the truth, it's eight years since I last danced,
+and I never was very keen on it. I should say that I've been travelling
+a lot, and when I'm home I go in for sport rather more than for the
+social taxes."
+
+"What a relief to find a man who doesn't dance! Let us go into the
+conservatory. Have you been much in America? How is it that you and
+Captain Hastings are such great friends?"
+
+"He came over when a lad to visit some English relatives whose place
+adjoins ours, and we hit it off. Since then I have visited him in
+Louisiana, and we have travelled in Europe together."
+
+"I suppose he amuses you--you are certainly unlike enough."
+
+"Not in the least--he's the prince of good fellows. What a jolly place!"
+
+They had passed through the library and entered the conservatory: a
+small forest of palms, great ferns, and young orange-trees; brought,
+Miss Randolph explained, from Southern California. Chinese lanterns
+swung overhead. Rustic chairs and sofas, covered with the skins of
+panthers, wild cats, and coyotes, were grouped with much discretion.
+
+Miss Randolph threw herself into a chair and let her head drop against
+the yellow skin on the back. Thorpe drew his chair close in front of
+her. In a moment he discovered that her lids were inclined to droop, and
+that there were lines about her mouth.
+
+"You are tired," he said abruptly. "Shall I fetch you a glass of
+champagne?"
+
+"Oh, no; it wouldn't do me a bit of good. Hot rooms and dancing always
+tire me. I'm glad when the season is over. In another month or so
+we shall be going to Redwoods, our country home--about thirty miles
+south of San Francisco. You must come down with us; we have good
+shooting,--deer and quail in the mountains, and snipe and duck in the
+marshes."
+
+"You are very kind," he said, and his reply was as mechanical as her
+invitation. He knew that all but the edge of her mind was turned from
+him, and was sufficiently interested to wish to get down into her
+thought. He went on gropingly: "I will confide to you that army life
+bores me a good deal, and as I intend to spend six months in California,
+I shall travel about somewhat." Then he added abruptly: "You are
+utterly unlike an English girl."
+
+"I am a Californian. Blood does not go for much in this climate. You'll
+understand why, if you stay here long enough."
+
+"In what way is it so unlike other places? I feel the difference, but
+cannot define it."
+
+"It's the wickedest place on earth! I suppose there are wicked people
+everywhere, but California is a sort of headquarters. It seems to be a
+magnet for that element in human nature. I wish I had been born and
+brought up in England."
+
+"Why?" he asked, smiling but puzzled, and recalling Hastings'
+imaginings. "I never saw any one look less wicked than yourself. Are you
+wicked?" he added, audaciously.
+
+She flirted her fan at him, and her eyes danced so coquettishly that he
+no longer saw the drooping lids. "_Our_ wickedness takes the form of
+flirtation,--heartless and unprincipled. Ask Captain Hastings. We are
+all refusing him in turn. Talk to me about England, while I study you
+and determine which line to take. I haven't typed you yet--I never make
+the fatal mistake of generalising."
+
+As he answered the questions she put to him in rapid succession, his own
+impressions changed several times. He was charmed by her intelligence,
+occasionally by a flash of something deeper. Again, he saw only the
+thrilling beauty of her figure, and once something vibrated across his
+brain so fleeting that he barely realised it was an echo of the
+repulsion her mother had inspired.
+
+"Well? What are your conclusions?" she demanded suddenly.
+
+"I--what?"
+
+"You have been sizing me up. I want to know the result."
+
+"You shall not," he said stubbornly. "I--I beg pardon; I have lost the
+knack of polite fencing."
+
+"I had read that Englishmen were blunt and truthful beings--either
+through conscious superiority or lack of complexity, I forget which. My
+father and the few others out here are almost denationalised."
+
+"Well, I did beg pardon. And when a man is talking and receiving
+impressions at the same time, the impressions are not very well
+defined."
+
+"But you think quickly and jump at conclusions. And minds of that sort
+sometimes make mistakes."
+
+"I frequently make mistakes. Among the few things I have learned is
+not to judge people at sight--nor in a lifetime, for that matter. I
+certainly don't pretend to size up women, particularly women like
+yourself."
+
+"That was very neat. Why myself? I am a very transparent young person."
+She flirted her lashes at him, but he fancied he saw a gleam of defiance
+shoot between them.
+
+"You are not transparent. If you are kind enough to let me see a good
+deal of you, I fancy I shall know something of twenty Miss Randolphs by
+the time I leave California."
+
+"Some you will like, and some you will not," she replied, with calm
+disregard of her previous assertion. "Well, I shall know what you think
+of me before long--don't make any mistake about that. Shall we flirt,
+by the way, or shall we merely be friends?"
+
+"The last condition would give greater range to your inherent
+wickedness."
+
+She laughed, apparently with much amusement. "I have a good many
+friends, nevertheless,--real friends. I have made it my particular art,
+and have rules and regulations. When they transgress, I fine them."
+
+"Suppose we begin that way. I'd like to know the rules."
+
+"N-o, I don't think I want to. You see, the rule I most strictly
+enforce is that when the party of the other part transgresses, I never
+sit with him in a conservatory again."
+
+"Let us cut the rules by all means. I feel a poor helpless male, quite
+at your mercy: I haven't been in a conservatory for years. Although I've
+made a point of seeing something of the society of every capital I've
+visited, I've forgotten the very formula of flirtation. I might take a
+few lessons of Hastings--"
+
+"Oh, don't! What a combination that would be! I will teach you all that
+it is necessary for you to know."
+
+"Heaven help me. I shall be wise and sad when I leave California.
+However, I face my fate like a man; whatever happens, I shall not run.
+Just now it is my duty to wait on you. Shall I bring your supper here?"
+
+"Yes--do. You will find a table behind that palm. Draw it up. There. Now
+bring what you like for yourself, but only a few oysters for me."
+
+He returned in a few moments followed by a man, who spread the table
+with delicate fare.
+
+Miss Randolph nibbled her oysters prettily. Thorpe was about to fill her
+glass with champagne, when she shook her head.
+
+"I cannot," she said. "It goes to my head--one drop."
+
+"Then don't, by all means. I hope you like it, and are resisting a
+temptation."
+
+"I detest it, as it happens. If you want to see me in the high heroic
+role, which I infer you admire, you must devise a temptation of another
+sort."
+
+"I think your dear little sex should be protected from all temptation. I
+rather like the Oriental way of doing things."
+
+"Don't you flatter yourself that a wall fifteen feet high, and covered
+with broken glass, would protect a woman from temptations, if she wanted
+them. A man, to keep a woman inside that wall, must embody all the
+temptations himself."
+
+Thorpe looked at her, and drew his brows together.
+
+"That was a curious remark for a girl to make," he said, coldly.
+
+"You mean it would be if I were English. But I am not only American, but
+Californian, born and brought up in a city where they are trying to be
+civilised and succeeding indifferently well. Do you suppose I can help
+seeing what life is? I should be next door to an idiot if I could."
+
+"I hardly know whether you would be more interesting if you had been
+brought up in England. No," he added, reflectively, after a moment, "I
+don't think you would be."
+
+"What you really think is, that I should not be half so interesting, but
+much more ideal."
+
+"If I thought anything of the sort, it was by a purely mechanical
+process," he said, reddening. "I have lived out of England too much to
+be insular in all my notions."
+
+"I don't believe an Englishman ever changes on certain points, of which
+woman is one; heredity is too strong. If you sat down and thought it all
+over, you'd find that although you could generalise on a more liberal
+scale than some of your countrymen, your own personal ideals were much
+the same as theirs."
+
+"Possibly, but as I don't intend to marry till I'm forty,--when I intend
+to stand for Parliament,--I'm not bothering about ideals at present."
+
+"That was a more insular remark than you evidently imagine.
+However--speaking of ideals, I should say that California generated them
+more liberally than any other country--through sheer force of contrast.
+I have grown rather morbid on the subject of good people, myself. I grow
+more exacting every month of my life; and the first thing I look for in
+a new man's face is to see, first, whether he has a mind, and then,
+whether it controls all the rest of him. I've seen too much of practical
+life to have indulged much in dreams and heroes; but I've let my
+imagination go somewhat, and I picture a man with all the virtues that
+you don't see in combination out here, and living with him in some old
+European city where there are narrow crooked streets, and beautiful
+architecture, and the most exquisite music in the cathedrals."
+
+Her voice had rattled on lightly, and she smiled more than once during
+her long speech. But her eyes did not smile; they had a curious, almost
+hard, intentness which forced Thorpe to believe that her brain was
+casting up something more than the froth of a passing mood.
+
+"I am afraid you won't meet your hero of all the virtues," he said,
+"even in a picturesque old continental town. But I think I understand
+your feeling. It is the principle of good in you demanding its proper
+companionship and setting."
+
+"Yes, that is it," she said, softly. "That is it. I am no worse than
+other girls; but I flirt and waste my time abominably. It would be all
+right if I did no more thinking than they do; but I do so much that, if
+I were inclined to be religious, I believe I'd run, one of these days,
+into a convent. However, I can always look forward to the old European
+town."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"I suppose when your left eyebrow goes up like that you're trying to
+flirt. I don't know that I'd mind being alone, particularly. It would
+be several thousand times better than the society of some of the
+people I've been forced to associate with. I love art,--particularly
+architecture and music,--and I'm sure I could weave a romance round
+myself. Yes, I'm sure I should love it as much as I hate this country,"
+she added with such vehemence that Thorpe set down his fork abruptly.
+
+"You are very pale," he said; "I think you had better take a little
+champagne. Indeed, you must be utterly worn out. I can imagine what a
+lot you have had to do and think of to-day."
+
+He filled her glass, and she drank the champagne quickly.
+
+"I have a shocking head," she said; "but I _need_ this. I have been out
+eight nights in succession, and have been on the go all day besides.
+Mother never attends to anything; and father, of course, is too busy to
+bother with parties. Cochrane and I have to do everything."
+
+"Tell me some more of your ideals," said Thorpe. He was not sure that he
+liked her, but she piqued his curiosity.
+
+"Ideals? Who ever had an ideal after a glass of champagne--except to be
+in the wildest spirits for the rest of one's life? There will be no
+champagne in Bruges--that's the city I've settled on; but I can't even
+think of Bruges. Champagne suggests Paris, and they tell me Paris is
+even more wicked than San Francisco. Is it?"
+
+Her eyes were sparkling with merriment; but although she refilled her
+glass, there was no suggestion as yet of the bacchante about her. The
+colour had come back to her face, and she looked very charming.
+Nevertheless Thorpe frowned and shook his head.
+
+"I should prefer to talk about Bruges," he said. "I've been there, and
+can tell you all you'd like to know. When I go back, I'll send you some
+photographs."
+
+"Thanks--but I have a whole portfolio full. I want to hear about Paris.
+I'm afraid you're a bit of a prig."
+
+"No man could be less of a prig. I hope you are above the silly idea
+that, because we English have a slightly higher standard than other
+nations, it follows that we are prigs. You were entirely delightful a
+few moments ago; but I don't like to see a woman drink when it affects
+her as it does you."
+
+The colour flew from her cheeks to her hair, and her eyes flashed
+angrily. "You _are_ a prig, and you are extremely impertinent," she
+said.
+
+Thorpe sprang to his feet, plunging his hands into his pockets.
+
+"Oh--don't--don't--" he exclaimed. "I'm afraid I was rude. I assure you,
+I did not intend to criticise you. Please say you forgive me."
+
+She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "You look so really penitent,"
+she said gaily. "Sit down and fill my glass, and drink to
+our--friendship."
+
+He was about to remonstrate; but reflecting that it would be a bore to
+apologise twice in succession, and also that what she did was none of
+his affair, he filled her glass. She touched it to his, and threw
+herself back against the skins, sipping the wine slowly and chattering
+nonsense. He refilled her glass absently the fourth time; but when she
+pushed it across the table again, he said, with some decision:
+
+"Be careful. This champagne is very heady. I feel it myself."
+
+She drained the glass. For a moment they stared hard at each other in
+silence, Thorpe wondering at the sudden maturity in the face before him.
+All the triumphant young womanhood had gone out of it; the diabolical
+spirit of some ancestor entombed in the depths of her brain might have
+possessed her for the moment, smothering her own groping soul. The
+distant music filled the conservatory with a low humming sound, such as
+one hears in a tropical forest at noon. Suddenly Thorpe realised that
+the evil which is in all human souls was having its moment of absolute
+liberty, and that the two dissevered particles, his and hers, recognised
+each other. He had knocked his senseless many times in his life, but he
+felt no inclination to do so to-night; for so much more than what little
+was evil in this girl attracted and magnetised him. His brain was not
+clear, and it was reckless with its abrupt possession by the idea that
+this woman was his mate, and that, for good or for evil, there was no
+escaping her. He sprang to his feet, pushed the table violently aside,
+took her in his arms and kissed her. For a moment she was quiescent;
+then she slipped from his embrace and ran down the conservatory,
+thrusting the ferns aside. One fell, its jar crashing on the stone
+floor. He saw no more of her that night.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Two days later Thorpe was strolling up and down the beach before the
+Presidio. The plaza was deserted; here and there, on the verandahs of
+the low adobe houses surrounding it, officers lay at full length in
+hammocks, smoking or reading, occasionally flirting with some one in
+white.
+
+Every trace of the storm had fled. The warmth and fragrance and
+restlessness of spring were in the air. The bay, as calm as a mountain
+lake, reflected a deep blue sky with no wandering white to give it
+motion. Outside the Golden Gate, the spray leaped high, and the ocean
+gave forth its patient roar. The white sails on the bay hung limply.
+Opposite was a line of steep cliffs, bare and green; beyond was a
+stupendous peak, dense and dark with redwoods. Farther down, facing the
+young city, hills jutted, romantic with sweeping willows. Between was
+the solitary rock, Alcatraz, with its ugly fort of many eyes. Far to the
+east was a line of pink mountains dabbled with blue, tiny villages
+clinging to their knees.
+
+Thorpe's keen eye took in every detail. It pleased him more than
+anything he had seen for some time. After a long rainy day in quarters,
+trying to talk nonsense to the Presidio women in their cramped parlours,
+and giving his opinion of California some thirty times, he felt that he
+could hail the prospect of a week of fresh air and solitude with the
+enthusiasm of a schoolboy. He kept the tail of his eye on the square,
+ready to hasten his steps and disappear round the sand dunes, did any
+one threaten to intrude upon his musings.
+
+He saw a man ride into the plaza, dismount at the barracks, and a moment
+later head for the beach. Thorpe's first impulse was to flee. But he
+stopped short; he had recognised Mr. Randolph's butler.
+
+The man touched his hat as he approached.
+
+"A note from Miss Randolph, sir."
+
+Thorpe opened the note. It read:
+
+     MY DEAR MR. THORPE,--I should like to see you this afternoon, if
+     you are disengaged. If not, at your earliest convenience. I hope
+     you will understand that this is not an idle request, but that I
+     particularly wish to see you.
+
+                    Sincerely,
+                         NINA RANDOLPH.
+
+"Tell Miss Randolph that I will call at three," said Thorpe, promptly.
+
+He had no wish to avoid the interview; he was quite willing that she
+should turn the scorpions of her wrath upon him. He deserved it. He did
+not pretend to understand Nina Randolph, deeply as he had puzzled over
+her since their memorable interview; but that he had helped her to
+violate her own self-respect, there could be little doubt, and he longed
+to give her what satisfaction he could. He had lived his inner life very
+fully, and knew all that the sacrifice of an ideal meant to the higher
+parts of the mind. Whether Miss Randolph had ever kissed a man before
+or not, he would not pretend to guess; but he would have been willing to
+swear that she had never kissed another in the same circumstances; and
+he burned to think that he had been the man to cast her at the foot of
+her girlish pedestal. Whatever possibilities for evil there might be in
+her, instinct prompted him to believe that they were undeveloped. Her
+strong sudden magnetism for him had passed with her presence, and,
+looking back, he attributed it entirely to the momentary passion of
+which he was ashamed; but he felt something of the curious tie which
+binds thinking people who have helped each other a step down the moral
+ladder.
+
+After luncheon, he informed Hastings that he was going to the city, and
+asked for a horse.
+
+"I'll go with you--"
+
+"I don't want you," said Thorpe, bluntly. "I have a particular reason
+for wishing to go alone."
+
+"Oh, very well," said Hastings, amiably. "The savage loves his solitude,
+I know."
+
+The road between the army posts and San Francisco was well beaten.
+Thorpe could not have lost his way, even if the horse had not known
+every inch of it.
+
+He reached the city within an hour. It was less picturesque by day than
+by night. The board sidewalks were broken and uneven, the streets muddy.
+The tall frame buildings of the business section looked as if they had
+been pieced together in intervals between gambling and lynching.
+Dwelling-houses with gardens about them were scattered on the heights.
+
+Two miles south of the swarming, hurrying, swearing brain of the city
+was the aristocratic quarter,--South Park and Rincon Hill. The square
+wooden houses, painted a dark brown, had a solid and substantial air,
+and looked as if they might endure through several generations.
+
+The man, Cochrane, admitted Thorpe, and conducted him to the library.
+The room was unoccupied, and, as the door closed behind the butler,
+Thorpe for the first time experienced a flutter. He was about to have a
+serious interview with a girl of whose type he knew nothing. Would she
+expect him to apologise? He had always held that the man who kissed and
+apologised was an ass. But he had done Miss Randolph something more than
+a minor wrong.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and took his stand before the fireplace. She
+had sent for him; let her take the initiative. He knew woman well enough
+to follow her cues, be the type new or old. Then he looked about him
+with approval. One would know it was an Englishman's library, he
+thought. Book-shelves, closely furnished, lined two sides of the large
+and lofty room. One end opened into the conservatory--where palms did
+shelter and the lights were dim. The rugs and curtains were red, the
+furniture very comfortable. On a long table were the periodicals of the
+world.
+
+Miss Randolph kept him waiting but a few moments. She opened the door
+abruptly and entered. Her face was pale, and her eyes were shadowed; but
+she held her head very high. Her carriage and her long dark gown made
+her appear almost tall. As she advanced down the room, she looked at
+Thorpe steadily, without access of colour, her lips pressed together.
+He met her half way. His first impression was that her figure was the
+most beautiful he had ever seen, his next the keenest impulse of pity he
+had felt for any woman.
+
+She extended her hand mechanically, and he took it and held it.
+
+"Is it true that I kissed you the other night?" she asked, peremptorily.
+
+"Yes," he said, ungracefully.
+
+"And I had drunk too much champagne?"
+
+"It was my fault," he said, eagerly. "You told me that you had a bad
+head. I had no business to press it on you."
+
+"You must think I am a poor weak creature indeed, if my friends are
+obliged to take care of me," she said drily. "I was a fool to touch
+it--that is the long and the short of it. I have given you a charming
+impression of the girls of San Francisco--sit down: we look idiotic
+standing in the middle of the room holding each other's hand--I can
+assure you that there was not another girl in the house who would have
+done what I did, or whom you would have dared to kiss. In a new country,
+you know, the social lines are drawn very tight, and the best people
+are particular to prudery. It is necessary: there are so many dreadful
+women out here. I am positive that in the set to which Captain Hastings
+has introduced you, you will meet a larger number of well-conducted
+people than you have ever met in any one place before."
+
+"It is very good of you to put on armour for your city," he said,
+smiling. "I shall always think of it as your city, by the way. But I
+thought you did not like California."
+
+"It is my country. I feel great pride in it. You will find that it
+is a country with a peculiar influence. Some few natures it leaves
+untouched--but they are precious few. In the others, it quickens all
+the good and evil they were born with."
+
+Thorpe looked at her with a profound interest. He was eager to hear all
+that she had to say.
+
+"I have never before had occasion to speak like this to any man," she
+went on. "If I had had, I should not have done so. I should have carried
+it off with a high hand, ignored it, assumed that I was above criticism.
+I only speak to you so frankly because you are an Englishman. People of
+the same blood are clannish when away from their own land. I say this
+without coquetry: I care more for your good opinion than for that of any
+of the others--I am so tired of them!"
+
+"Thank you--even if you did rather spoil it. You have it, if it really
+matters to you. Surely, you don't think I misunderstand. I insist upon
+assuming all the blame--and--upon apologising."
+
+"Well, I am glad you apologised. Although you were not the most to
+blame, just for the moment it made me feel that you were. I have already
+forgiven you." She dropped her eyes for a moment, then looked at him
+again with her square, almost defiant regard. "There is something I have
+been trying to lead up to. It is this--it is not very easy to say--I
+want you to make a promise. There is a skeleton in this house. Some
+people know. I don't want you to ask them about it. My father will ask
+you here constantly. I shall want you to come, too. I ask you to promise
+to keep your eyes shut. Will you?"
+
+"I shall see nothing. Thanks, thanks." He got up and moved nervously
+about. "We will be friends, the best of friends, promise me that. No
+flirtation. No nonsense. There may be something I can do to help you
+while I am here. I hope there will be."
+
+"There will not, but I like you better for saying that--I know you are
+not demonstrative." She threw herself back in her chair and smiled
+charmingly. "As to the other part--yes, we shall be the best of friends.
+It was hard to speak, but I am glad that I did. I knew it was either
+that or a nodding acquaintance, and I had made up my mind that it should
+be something quite different. When we are alone and serious, we will
+not flirt; but I have moods, irrepressible ones. If, when we meet in
+society, I happen to be in a highly flirtatious humour, you are to flirt
+with me. Do you understand?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly, I agree--to keep you from flirting with other
+men."
+
+"Now fetch that portfolio over there,--it has Bruges in it,--and tell me
+something about every stone."
+
+They talked for two hours, and of much beside Bruges. Haphazardly as she
+had been educated in this new land, her natural intelligence had found
+nutrition in her father's mind and library. Thorpe noted that when
+talking on subjects which appealed to the intellect alone, her face
+changed strikingly: the heavy lids lifted, the eyes sparkled coldly, the
+mouth lost its full curves. Even her voice, so warm and soft, became,
+more than once, harsh and sharp.
+
+"There are several women in her," he thought. "She certainly is very
+interesting. I should like to meet her again ten years hence."
+
+He did.
+
+"Why don't you travel?" he asked. "It would mean so much more to you
+than to most women. Even if Mr. Randolph cannot leave this fair young
+city he is building up, and your mother won't leave him, you could go
+with some one else--"
+
+"I never expect to leave California," she said shortly. Then, as she met
+his look of surprise, she added: "I told you a fib when I said that I
+did not dream, or only a little. I get out of my own life for hours at
+a time by imagining myself in Europe, cultivating my mind, my taste for
+art, to their utmost limit, living a sort of impersonal life--Of course
+there are times when I imagine myself with some one who would care for
+it all as much as I, and know more--and all that. But I try to keep to
+the other. I have suffered enough to know that in the impersonal life is
+the surest content. And as for the other--it could not be, even if I
+ever met such a man. But dreams help one enormously, and I am the richer
+for all I have indulged in."
+
+Thorpe stood up again. Under a rather impassive exterior, he was a
+restless man, and his acquaintance with Nina Randolph had tried his
+nerves.
+
+"I wish you had not given me half confidences, or that you would refrain
+from rousing my curiosity--my interest, as you do. It is hardly fair. I
+don't wish to know what the family skeleton is, but I do want to know
+_you_ better. If you want the truth, I have never been so _intrigue_ by
+a woman in my life. And I have never so wanted to help one. I have been
+so drawn to you that I have had a sense of having done you a personal
+wrong ever since the other night. A man does not usually feel that way
+when he kisses a girl. I see it is no use to ask your confidence now;
+but, mind, I don't say I sha'n't demand it later on."
+
+At this moment the butler entered with the lamps. He was followed
+immediately by Mr. Randolph, who exclaimed delightedly:
+
+"Is it really you, Mr. Thorpe? I have just sent you a note asking you to
+dine with us on Sunday. And you'll stay to dinner to-night--no, I won't
+listen to any excuses. If you knew what a pleasure it is to meet an
+Englishman once more!"
+
+"Hastings will think I am lost--"
+
+"I'll send him a note, and ask him to come in for the evening, and I'll
+get in a dozen of our neighbours. We'll have some music and fun."
+
+"Very well--I am rather keen on staying, to tell you the truth. Many
+thanks."
+
+"Sit down. You must see something of sport here. It is very interesting
+in this wild country."
+
+"I should like it above all things." Thorpe sat forward eagerly,
+forgetting Miss Randolph. "What have you that's new? I've killed pretty
+nearly everything."
+
+"We will have an elk hunt."
+
+"I want to go, too," said Nina, authoritatively.
+
+Thorpe turned, and smiled, as he saw the hasty retreat of an angry
+sparkle.
+
+"I am afraid you would be a disturbing influence," he said gallantly.
+
+"I shouldn't disturb you," she said, with the pertness of a spoilt
+child. "I am a good shot myself. I can go--can't I, papa?"
+
+Mr. Randolph smiled indulgently. "You can do anything you like, my
+darling," he said. "I wonder you condescend to ask."
+
+Nina ran over and kissed him, then propped her chin on top of his head
+and looked defiantly at Thorpe.
+
+"If you don't take me," she remarked, drily, "there will be no hunt."
+
+"On the whole, I think my mind would concentrate better if you were not
+absent," he said.
+
+She blew him a kiss. "You _are_ improving. _Hasta luego!_ I must go and
+smooth my feathers." And she ran out of the room.
+
+The two men talked of the threatened civil upheaval in the United States
+until dinner was announced, a half hour later.
+
+Mrs. Randolph did not appear until the soup had been removed. She
+entered the dining-room hurriedly, muttering an apology. Her toilette
+had evidently been made in haste: her brooch was awry; and her hair,
+banded down the face after the fashion of the time, hung an inch below
+one ear and exposed the lobe of the other, dealing detrimentally with
+her dignity, despite her fine physique.
+
+She took no part in the conversation for some time. It was very lively.
+Mr. Randolph was full of anecdote and information, and enjoyed
+scintillating. He frequently referred to Nina, as if proud of her
+cleverness and anxious to exhibit it; but the guest noticed that he
+never addressed a word--nor a glance--to his wife.
+
+Suddenly Thorpe's eyes rested on a small dark painting in oils, the head
+of an old man.
+
+"That is rather good," he said, "and a very interesting face."
+
+"You have probably never heard of the artist, unless you have read the
+life of his sister. I was so fond of the man that I resent his rescue
+from oblivion by the fame of a woman. His name was Branwell Bronte, and
+that is a portrait of my grandfather."
+
+"If Branwell 'ad a-conducted hisself," said a heavy voice opposite,
+"'ee'd a-been the wonder of the family. Mony a time a 've seen 'im coom
+into tha Lord Rodney Inn, 'is sharp little face as red as tha scoollery
+maid's 'ands, and rockin' from one side of tha 'all to tha hother, and
+sit doon at tha table, and make a carica_chure_ of ivvery mon thot coom
+in. And once when 'ee was station-master at Luddondon Foote a 've 'eard
+as 'ow a mon coom runnin' oop just as tha train went oot, and said as
+'ow 'ee was horful anxious to know if a certain mon went hoff. 'Ee tried
+describin' 'im, and couldn't, so Branwell drew pictures of all the
+persons as 'ad left, and 'ee recog_nised_ the one as 'ee wanted."
+
+There was a moment's silence, so painful that Thorpe felt his nerves
+jumping and the colour rising to his face. He recalled his promise, and
+looked meditatively at the strange concoction which had been placed
+before him as Mrs. Randolph finished. But his thought was arbitrary. An
+ignorant woman of the people, possibly an ex-servant, who could only
+play the gentlewoman through a half-dozen rehearsed sentences, and
+forget the role completely at times! He had not expected to find the
+skeleton so soon.
+
+"That is _carne con agi_, a Chile dish," said Mr. Randolph, suavely.
+"I'm very fond of Spanish cooking, myself, and you had better begin your
+education in it at once: you will get a good deal out here."
+
+"I am jolly glad to hear it. I'm rather keen on new dishes." He glanced
+up. Mr. Randolph was yellow. The lines in his face had deepened. Thorpe
+dared not look at Nina.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Some eight or ten people, including Hastings, came in after dinner.
+Mrs. Randolph had gone upstairs from the dining-room, and did not
+appear again. Her dampening influence removed, Mr. Randolph and Nina
+recovered their high light spirits; and there was much music and more
+conversation. Miss Randolph had a soprano voice of piercing sweetness,
+which flirted effectively with Captain Hastings' tenor. Thorpe thought
+Hastings an ass for rolling his eyes out of his head, and finally turned
+his back on the piano to meet the large amused glance of Miss Hathaway.
+He sat down beside her, and, being undisturbed for ten minutes, found
+her willing to converse, or rather to express a number of decided
+opinions. She told him whom he was to know, what parts of California he
+was to visit, how long he was to stay, and after what interval he was to
+return. Thorpe listened with much entertainment, for her voice was not
+tuned to friendly advice, but to command. Her great eyes were as cold as
+icicles under a blue light; but there was a certain cordiality in their
+invitation to flirt. Thorpe did not respond. If he had known her first,
+he reflected, he should doubtless have made an attempt to dispossess
+her court; but the warm magnetic influence of Nina Randolph held him,
+strengthened by her demand upon his sympathy. Still he felt that Miss
+Hathaway was a person to like, and remained at her side until he was
+dismissed in favour of Hastings; when he talked for a time to the
+intellectual Miss McDermott, the sweet and slangy Miss McAllister, who
+looked like an angel and talked like a gamin, to Don Roberto Yorba, a
+handsome and exquisitely attired little grandee who was trying to look
+as much like an American as his friend Hiram Polk, with his lantern jaws
+and angular figure. It was the first city Thorpe had visited where there
+was no type: everybody suggested being the father or mother of one, and
+was of an individuality so pronounced that the stranger marvelled they
+were not all at one another's throats. But he had never seen people more
+amiable and fraternal.
+
+He did not see Nina alone again until a few moments before he left. He
+drew her out into the hall while Hastings was saying good-night to Mr.
+Randolph.
+
+"May I come often?" he asked.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"I certainly shall."
+
+"Will you talk to me about things that men scarcely ever talk to girls
+about,--books and art--and--what one thinks about more than what one
+does."
+
+"I'll talk about anything under heaven that you want to talk
+about--particularly yourself."
+
+"I don't want to talk about myself."
+
+Her face was sparkling with coquetry, but it flushed under the intensity
+of his gaze. His brown skin was paler than when he had entered the
+house, his hard features were softened by the shaded lamp of the hall,
+and his grey eyes had kindled as he took her hand. She looked very
+lovely in a white gown touched up with red velvet bows.
+
+"I believe you'll be a tremendous flirt by the time you leave here," she
+said, trying to draw her hand away. "And don't tell me this is your
+first experience in eight years."
+
+"I've known a good many women," he said, bluntly. "At present I am only
+following your cues--and there are a bewildering lot of them. When you
+are serious, I shall be serious. When you are not--I shall endeavour to
+be frivolous. To be honest, however, I have no intention of flirting
+with you, fascinating and provocative as you are. I'd like awfully to be
+your intimate friend, but nothing more. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+South Park in the Fifties and Sixties was the gayest quarter of
+respectable San Francisco, with not a hint of the gloom which now
+presses about it like a pall. The two concave rows of houses were the
+proudest achievements of Western masonry, and had a somewhat haughty
+air, as if conscious of the importance they sheltered. The inner park
+was green and flowered; the flag of the United States floated proudly
+above. The whole precinct had that atmosphere of happy informality
+peculiar to the brief honeymoon of a great city. People ran, hatless,
+in and out of each other's houses, and sat on the doorsteps when the
+weather was fine. The present aristocracy of San Francisco, the landed
+gentry of California whose coat-of-arms should be a cocktail, a side of
+mutton, or a dishonest contract, would give not a few of their dollars
+for personal memories of that crumbling enclosure at the foot of the
+hill: memories that would be welcome even with the skeleton which,
+rambling through these defaced abandoned houses, they might expect to
+see grinning in dark spidery corners or in rat-claimed cupboards. Poor
+old houses! They have kept silent and faithful guard over the dark tales
+and tragic secrets of their youth; curiosity has been forced to satisfy
+itself with little more than vague and ugly rumour. The memories that
+throng them tell little to any but the dead.
+
+There lived, in those days, the Randolphs, the Hathaways, the Dom Pedro
+Earles, the Hunt McLanes, the three families to which the famous "Macs"
+belonged, and others that have no place in this story. Before his second
+week in California was finished, Thorpe knew them all, and was petted
+and made much of; for San Francisco, then as now, dearly loved the
+aristocratic stranger. He rode into the city every day, either alone or
+with Hastings, and rarely returned without spending several moments or
+hours with Nina Randolph. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes companioned
+by her intimate friend, Molly Shropshire,--a large masculine girl of
+combative temper and imbued with disapproval of man. She made no
+exception in favour of Thorpe, and when he did not find her in the way,
+he rather enjoyed quarrelling with her. Mrs. Randolph made no more
+abrupt incursions into the table talk and spent most of her time in her
+room. Occasionally Thorpe met in the hall a coarse-looking woman whom he
+knew to be a Mrs. Reinhardt and the favoured friend of Mrs. Randolph.
+Mr. Randolph was often in brilliant spirits; at other times he looked
+harassed and sad; but he always made Thorpe feel the welcome guest.
+
+Thorpe, during the first fortnight of their acquaintance, snubbed his
+maiden attempt to understand Nina Randolph; it was so evident that she
+did not wish to be understood that he could but respect her reserve.
+Besides, she was the most charming woman in the place, and that was
+enough to satisfy any visitor. Just after that he began to see her alone
+every day; Miss Shropshire had retired to the obscurity of her chamber
+with a cold, and socialities rarely began before night. They took long
+walks together in the wild environs of the city, once or twice as far as
+the sea. Both had a high fine taste in literature, and she was eager for
+the books of travel he had lived. He sounded her, to discover if she
+had ambition, for she was an imperious little queen in society; but she
+convinced him that, when alone or with him, she rose high above the
+petty strata of life. With a talent, she could have been one of the most
+rapt and impersonal slaves of Art the world had ever known; and, as it
+was, her perception for beauty was extraordinary. Thorpe wished that she
+could carry out her imaginings and live a life of study in Europe; it
+seemed a great pity that she should marry and settle down into a mere
+leader of society.
+
+Toward the end of the second fortnight, he began to wonder whether he
+should care to marry her, were he ready for domesticity, and were there
+no disquieting mystery about her. He concluded that he should not, as he
+should doubtless be insanely in love with her if he loved her at all,
+and she was too various of mood for a man's peace of mind. But in the
+wake of these reflections came the impulse to analyse her, and he made
+no further attempt to snub it.
+
+He went one evening to the house of Mrs. Hunt McLane, a beautiful young
+Creole who held the reins of the infant city's society in her small
+determined hands. Born into the aristocracy of Louisiana, she had grown
+up in the salon. Her husband had arrived in San Francisco at the period
+when a class of rowdies known as "The Hounds" were terrorising the city,
+and, when they were finally arrested and brought to trial, conducted the
+prosecution. The brilliant legal talent he displayed, the tremendous
+personal force which carried every jury he addressed, established
+his position at the head of the bar at once. His wife, with her wide
+knowledge of the world, her tact, magnetism, and ambition, found no one
+to dispute her social leadership.
+
+As Thorpe entered, she was standing at the head of the long parlour; and
+with her high-piled hair, _poudre_, her gown of dark-red velvet, and her
+haughty carriage, she looked as if she had just stepped from an old
+French canvas.
+
+She smiled brilliantly as Thorpe approached her, and he was made to feel
+himself the guest of the evening,--a sensation he shared with every one
+in the room.
+
+"I have not seen you for three days and seven hours," she said. "How
+are all your flirtations getting on?"
+
+"All my what?"
+
+"Dominga Earle is making frantic eyes at you," indicating, with a rapid
+motion of her pupils, a tall slender Mexican who undulated like a snake
+and whose large black fan and eyes were never idle. "'Lupie Hathaway is
+looking coldly expectant; and Nina Randolph, who was wholly animated a
+moment ago, is now quite listless. Not that you are to feel particularly
+flattered; you are merely something new. Turn over the pages,--Dominga
+is going to sing,--and I am convinced that she will surpass herself."
+
+Mrs. Earle was swaying on the piano stool. Her black eyes flashed a
+welcome to Thorpe, as he moved obediently to her side. Then she threw
+back her head, raised her eyebrows, dilated her nostrils, and in a
+ringing contralto sang a Spanish love-song. Thorpe could not understand
+a word of it, but inferred that it was passionate from the accompaniment
+of glance which played between himself and a tall blonde man leaning
+over the piano.
+
+When the song and its encore finished, she was immediately surrounded,
+and Thorpe slipped away. Miss Randolph was barricaded. He went over to
+Miss Hathaway, who sat between Hastings and another officer, _looking_
+impartially at each. They were dismissed in a manner which made them
+feel the honour of her caprice.
+
+"That was good of you," said Thorpe, sinking into a chair opposite her.
+"It is rarely that one can get a word with you, merely a glance over
+three feet of shoulder."
+
+Miss Hathaway made no reply. It was one of her idiosyncrasies never to
+take the slightest notice of a compliment. She was looking very
+handsome, although her attire, as ever, suggested a cold disregard of
+the looking-glass. Thorpe, who was beginning to understand her, did not
+feel snubbed, but fell to wondering what sort of a time Hastings would
+have of it when he proposed.
+
+She regarded him meditatively for a moment, then remarked; "You are
+absent-minded to-night, and that makes you look rather stupid."
+
+Again Thorpe was not disconcerted. Speeches of this sort from Miss
+Hathaway were to be hailed as signs of favour. If she did not like a
+man, she did not talk to him at all. He might sit opposite her
+throughout the night, and she would not part her lips.
+
+"I am stupid," he replied. "I have been all day."
+
+"What is the matter?" Her voice did not soften as another woman's might
+have done, but it betrayed interest. "Are you puzzling?"
+
+He coloured, nettled at her insight; but he answered, coldly:--
+
+"Yes; I am puzzling."
+
+"Do not," said Miss Hathaway, significantly. "Puzzle about any one else
+in California, but not about Nina Randolph."
+
+"What is this mystery?" he exclaimed impatiently, then added hastily,
+"oh, bother! I am too much of a wanderer to puzzle over any one."
+
+Miss Hathaway fixed her large cold blue regard upon him. "Do you love
+Nina Randolph?" she asked.
+
+"I am afraid I love all women too much to trust to my own selection of
+one."
+
+"Now you are stupid. Go and talk to Nina." She turned her back upon him,
+and smiled indulgently to a new-comer.
+
+He crossed the room; a group of men parted with indifferent grace, and
+he leaned over Nina's chair.
+
+She was looking gay and free of care, and her eyes flashed a frank
+welcome to Thorpe. "I thought you were not coming to talk to me," she
+said, with a little pout.
+
+"Duty first," he murmured. "Come over into the little reception-room and
+talk to me."
+
+"What am I to do with all these men?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You are very exacting--for a friend."
+
+"If you are a good friend, you will come. I am tired and bored."
+
+She rose, shook out her pretty pink skirts, nodded to her admirers, and
+walked off with Thorpe.
+
+He laughed. "Perhaps they will console themselves with the reflection
+that as they have spoiled you, they should stand the consequences."
+
+They took possession of a little sofa in the reception-room. Another
+couple was in the window curve, and yet another opposite.
+
+"We have not had our hunt," said Nina; "the country has been a mud-hole.
+But we are to have it on Monday, if all goes well."
+
+"Who else is to be of the party?"
+
+"Molly, Guadalupe, and Captain Hastings. Don't speak of it to any one
+else. I don't want a crowd."
+
+She lay back, her skirts sweeping his feet. A pink ribbon was twisted in
+her hair. The colour in her cheeks was pink. The pose of her head, as
+she absently regarded the stupid frescoes on the ceiling, strained her
+beautiful throat, making it look as hard as ivory, accentuating the
+softer loveliness of the neck. Thorpe looked at her steadily. He rarely
+touched her hand.
+
+"I have something else in store for you," she said, after a moment.
+"Just beyond the army posts are great beds of wild strawberries. It was
+a custom in the Spanish days to get up large parties every spring and
+camp there, gather strawberries, wander on the beach and over the hills,
+and picnic generally. We have kept it up; and if this weather lasts, if
+spring is really here, a crowd of us are going in a couple of weeks--you
+included. You have no idea what fun it is!"
+
+"I shall not try to imagine it." He spoke absently. He was staring at a
+curling lock that had strayed over her temple. He wanted to blow it.
+
+"I am tired," she said. "Talk to me. I have been gabbling for an hour."
+
+"I'm not in the mood for talking," he said, shortly. "But keep quiet, if
+you want to. I suppose we know each other well enough for that."
+
+The other people left the room. Nina arranged herself more comfortably,
+and closed her eyes. Her mouth relaxed slightly, and Thorpe saw the
+lines about it. She looked older when the animation was out of her face,
+but none the less attractive. His eyes fell on her neck. He moved
+closer. She opened her eyes, and he raised his. The colour left her
+face, and she rose.
+
+"Take me to papa," she said; "I am going home."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The party for the elk-hunt assembled at Mr. Randolph's door at four
+o'clock on Monday morning. Miss Hathaway's large Spanish eyes were heavy
+with the languor of her race. Miss Shropshire looked cross. Even the men
+were not wholly animate. Nina alone was as widely awake as the
+retreating stars. She rode ahead with Thorpe.
+
+They made for the open country beyond the city. What is now a large and
+populous suburb, was then a succession of sand dunes, in whose valleys
+were thickets of scrub oak, chaparral, and willows. A large flat lying
+between Rincon Hill and Mission Bay was the favourite resort of elk,
+deer, antelope, and the less aristocratic coyote and wild cat. It was to
+this flat that Mr. Randolph's party took their way, accompanied by
+vaqueros leading horses upon which to bring back the spoils of the
+morning.
+
+The hour was grey and cold. The landscape looked inexpressibly bleak. A
+blustering wind travelled between the sea and the bay. From the crests
+of the hills they had an occasional glimpse of water and of the
+delapidated Mission, solitary on its cheerless plain. In the little
+valleys, the thickets were so dense they were obliged to bend their
+heads. The morning was intensely still, but for the soft pounding of the
+horses' hoofs on the yielding earth, the long despairing cry of the
+coyote, the sudden flight of a startled wild cat.
+
+"We are all so modern, we seem out of place in this wilderness," said
+Thorpe. "I can hardly accept the prophecy of your father and other
+prominent men here, that San Francisco will one day be the great
+financial and commercial centre of Western America. It seems to me as
+hopeless as making cake out of bran."
+
+"Just you wait," said Nina, tossing her head. "It will come in our time,
+in my father's time. You haven't got the feel of the place yet, haven't
+got it into your bones. And you don't know what we Californians can do,
+when we put our minds to it."
+
+"I hope I shall see it," he replied, smiling; "I hope to see California
+at many stages of her growth. I am a nomad, you know, and I shall make
+it the objective point of my travels hereafter. The changes--I don't
+doubt if they come at all they will ride the lightning--will interest me
+deeply. May there be none in you," he added, gallantly. "I cannot
+imagine any."
+
+Her eyes drooped, and her underlids pressed upward,--a repellant trick
+that had made Thorpe uncomfortable more than once. "That is where you
+will find the changes upon which the city will not pride itself," she
+said. "Fortunately, there won't be many of them."
+
+"You are unfair," he said, angrily. "You told me to ask you no
+questions, and this is not the first time you have deliberately pricked
+my curiosity--that is not the word, either. The first night I dined at
+your house--" he stopped, biting his lip. He had said more than he
+intended.
+
+"I know. You thought you had discovered the secret--I know exactly what
+you thought. But you have come to the conclusion since that there is
+more behind. Well, you are right."
+
+"What is your secret? I have had opportunities to discover. I hope I
+need not tell you that I have shut my ears; but I wish you would tell
+me. I don't like mystery. It is sensational and old-fashioned. Between
+such friends as ourselves, it is entirely without excuse. It is more
+than possible that, girl-like, you have exaggerated its importance, and
+you are in danger of becoming morbid. But, whether it is real or
+imaginary, let me help you. Every woman needs a man's help, and you can
+have all of mine that you want. Only don't keep prodding my imagination,
+and telling me not to think. I am close upon thinking of nothing else."
+
+"Well, just fancy that that is my way of making myself interesting;
+that I cannot help flirting a little, even with friends." She laughed
+lightly; but her face, which was not always under her control, had
+changed: it looked dull and heavy.
+
+"That is pure nonsense," he said, shortly. "Do you suppose you make
+yourself more interesting by hinting that your city will one day be
+ashamed of you?"
+
+"Ah, perhaps _that_ was an exaggeration."
+
+"I should hope so."
+
+"I meant one's city need not know everything."
+
+"You are unpleasantly perverse this morning. I choose to take what you
+said as an exaggeration; but there is something behind, and I feel
+strongly impelled to say that if you don't tell me I shall leave."
+
+"If I did, you would take the next steamer."
+
+"I am the one to decide that. At least give me the opportunity to reduce
+your mountain to a mole-hill."
+
+"Even you could not. And look--I see no reason why friends should wish
+to get at one another's inner life. The companionship of friends is
+mental only. I have given you my mind freely. You have no right to ask
+for my soul. You are not my lover, and you don't wish to be, although I
+don't doubt that at times you imagine you do."
+
+"I am free to confess that I have imagined it more than once. I will
+set the example by being perfectly frank with you. If I could understand
+you, if I were not tormented by all sorts of dreadful possibilities,
+I should have let myself go long before this. Does that sound
+cold-blooded? I can only say in explanation that I was born with a good
+deal of self-control, and that I have strengthened my will by exercise.
+It would be either one extreme or the other with me. At first I thought
+I should not want to marry you in any case. I am now sufficiently in
+love with you to long to be wholly so."
+
+Nina stole a glance at him with a woman's uncontrollable curiosity, even
+in great moments. But he had turned his head from her, and was hitting
+savagely at his boot.
+
+"I will be frank to this extent, by way of return: The barrier between
+us is insurmountable, and you would be the first to admit it. I will
+tell you the whole truth the day before you leave; that must content
+you. And, meanwhile, nip in the bud what is merely a compound of
+sympathy and passion. I know the influence I exert perfectly. I have
+seen more than one man go off his head. It humiliates me beyond
+expression."
+
+"It need not--although it is extremely distasteful to me that you should
+have seen men go off their heads, as you express it. But passion is the
+mightiest factor in love; there is no love without it, and it is bound
+to predominate until it is satisfied. Then the affections claim their
+part; and a dozen other factors, mental companionship for one, enter in.
+But, for Heaven's sake, don't add to your morbidity by despising
+yourself because you inspire passion in men. The women who do not are
+not worth considering."
+
+"Is that true? Well, I am glad you have suggested another way of looking
+at it. I don't think I am morbid. At all events no one in this world
+ever made a harder fight not to be."
+
+They were riding through a thicket, and he turned and brought his face
+so close to hers that she had only a flashing glimpse of its pallor and
+of the flame in his eyes.
+
+"It is your constant fight that wrings my heart," he said. "Whatever it
+is against, I will make it with you, if you will let me. I am strong
+enough for both. And who am I that I should judge you? I have not lived
+the life of a saint. We all have our ideals. Mine has been never to give
+way except when I chose, never to let my senses control my mind for an
+instant. I believe, therefore, that I am strong enough to help and
+protect you against everything. And, whatever it is, you shall never be
+judged by me."
+
+They left the thicket at the moment, and she pushed her horse aside,
+that she might no longer feel Thorpe's touch, his breath on her neck.
+"You are the most generous of men," she said; "and you can have the
+satisfaction of knowing that you have made me think better of myself and
+of human nature than I have ever thought before. But I cannot marry you.
+Not only is the barrier insurmountable, but I don't love you. Here we
+are."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Thorpe at this time spent few hours in his own company. There was
+abundant distraction: either a social entertainment every day or
+evening, or a lark in the city. The wild life about the plaza, the
+gambling houses, the saloons, the fatal encounters in the dark
+contiguous streets, the absolute recklessness of the men and women,
+interested him profoundly. As he spent money freely, and never passed a
+gaming table without tossing down a handful of coin as ardently as any
+adventurer, he was popular, and free to come and go as he liked.
+
+The scene which he most frequented, which rose most vividly when he was
+living his later life in England, was El Dorado. It had three great
+windows on the plaza and six in its length,--something over a hundred
+and twenty feet. The brilliant and extraordinary scene within was
+visible to those who shunned it but stood with a fascinated stare; for
+its curtains were never drawn, its polished windows were close upon
+the sidewalk. On one side, down its entire length, was a bar set with
+expensive crystal, over which passed every variety of drink known to
+the appetite of man. Behind the bar were mirrors from floor to ceiling,
+reflecting the room, doubling the six crystal blazing chandeliers, the
+forty or fifty tables piled high with gold and silver, the hard intent
+faces of the gamblers, the dense throng that ever sauntered in the
+narrow aisles. At the lower end was a platform on which musicians played
+droning tunes on hurdy-gurdies, and Mexican girls, who looked like
+devils, danced. In the middle of the platform, awaiting the counters of
+the patrons of the bar, one woman sat always. She was French, and dark,
+and handsome, and weighed three hundred pounds. Dressing such a person
+was expensive in those days of incredible prices, and that room was very
+warm; she wore but a yard or two of silk somewhere about the belt.
+
+Thorpe often sat and watched the faces of the gamblers: the larger
+number were gently born, and more than one told him that he had been a
+schoolmaster, a college professor, a clergyman, a lawyer, a doctor--all
+had failed, or had been ambitious for quicker betterment, and drifted
+to the golden land, there to feel the full weight of their own
+incompetence. They came there night after night, and when they had no
+money to gamble with they sauntered with the throng, or leaned heavily
+against the noble pillars which supported the ceiling. Thorpe afterward
+often wondered what had become of them. It is doubtful if there is a
+living soul who knows.
+
+Occasionally Thorpe picked up a heap of woman in the street, put it in
+a carriage, and saw it safely to a night's lodging. Sometimes the woman
+mumbled feeble gratitude, as often cursed him because he would not give
+her drink. One night, when rambling about alone, he knocked down a man
+who was beating a pretty young Mexican woman, then collared and carried
+him off to the calaboose. The girl died, and a few days later he went to
+the court-house to testify. The small room was packed; the jurors were
+huddled in a corner, where they not only listened to the testimony, but
+were obliged to talk out their verdict, there being no other
+accommodation.
+
+The trial was raced through in San Francisco style, but lasted several
+hours. Thorpe sat it out. There was no testimony but his and that of the
+coroner; but the lawyer and the district-attorney tilted with animus and
+vehemence. When they had concluded, the judge rose, stretched himself,
+and turned to the jury.
+
+"You've heard the whole case," he remarked. "So you do your level best
+while I go out for a drink. He killed her or he didn't. It's swing or
+quit." And, expectorating impatiently among the audience, he sauntered
+out.
+
+The jury returned a verdict of "not guilty," and the man was lynched in
+the quiet and orderly manner of that time.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A week later forty or fifty people were camped beside the strawberry
+fields on the hills beyond the army posts and sloping to the ocean. Mr.
+Randolph and Nina, the McLanes, Miss Hathaway, Miss Shropshire, the
+"three Macs," the Earles, and a half-dozen young men were domiciled in a
+small village of tents on the eminence nearest the city. The encampments
+were a mile apart; and in the last of them a number of the Californian
+grandees who had made the land Arcadia under Mexican rule enjoyed the
+hospitality of Don Tiburcio Castro, a great rancher who was making an
+attempt to adapt himself to the new city and its enterprising promoters.
+
+Thorpe and Hastings walked over from the Presidio. They found the
+entire party assembled before the largest tent, which flew the American
+flag. As the young men approached, all of the ladies formed quickly into
+line, two and two, and walked forward to meet them. The men, much
+mystified, paused, raised their caps, and stood expectant. Mrs. McLane
+stepped from the ranks, and, with much ceremony, unrolled several yards
+of tissue paper, then shook forth the silken folds of the English flag,
+and presented it to Thorpe.
+
+"It is made from our sashes, and we all sewed on it," she announced.
+"You will sleep better if the Union Jack is flying over your tent."
+
+"How awfully jolly--what a stunning compliment," stammered Thorpe,
+embarrassed and pleased. "It shall decorate some part of my surroundings
+as long as I live."
+
+Mr. Randolph himself fixed the flag, and Thorpe exclaimed impulsively to
+Mrs. McLane, with whom he stood apart: "Upon my word, I believe I am
+coming under the spell. I wonder if I shall ever want to leave
+California?"
+
+"Why not stay? Unless you have ambitions, and want to run for Parliament
+or be a diplomat or something, or are wedded to the English on their
+native heath, I don't see why you shouldn't remain here. It is rather
+slow for us women: we are obliged to be twice as proper as the women of
+older civilisations; but a man, I should think, especially a man of
+resource like you, ought to find twenty different ways of amusing
+himself. You not only can have all that is exciting in San Francisco,
+watching a city trying to kick out of its long clothes, but you can
+saunter about the country and see the grandees in their towns and on
+their ranchos, to say nothing of the scenery, which is said to be
+magnificent."
+
+"It isn't a bad idea. My past is not oppressing me, but I believe I
+should enjoy the sensation of beginning life over again. It would be
+that--certainly. But then I am an Englishman, you know, and English
+roots strike deep. Still, I have a half mind to buy a ranch here and
+come back every year or so. And I have a favourite brother who is rather
+delicate; it would be a good life for him."
+
+"Do think of it," said Mrs. McLane, in the final tone with which she
+dismissed a subject that could claim her interest so long and no longer.
+She had liked Thorpe more in Paris, where he was not in love with
+another woman. She moved away with her husband, a big burly man with a
+face curiously like Sir Walter Scott's, and Thorpe plunged his hands in
+his pockets and strolled over the hill. The slopes were covered with
+strawberry vines down to the broad white beach. The large calm waves of
+the Pacific rolled ponderously in and fell down. Cityward was the Golden
+Gate with its white bar. Beyond it were steep cliffs, gorgeous with
+colour.
+
+"Does England really exist?" he thought. "One could do anything reckless
+in this country."
+
+He had been the only man to miss his elk at the hunt, and he had spent
+the rest of the day in hard riding. When the fever wore off, his reason
+was thankful that Nina Randolph had refused him, and he made up his mind
+to leave California by the next steamer. He had heard of the wonders
+worked by Time, and none knew better than he how to make life varied
+and interesting. He persuaded himself that he was profoundly relieved
+that she did not love him. Once or twice he had been nearly sure that
+she did. He had not seen her alone since the morning of the hunt, and,
+when they had met, her manner had been as frank and friendly as ever.
+
+He joined Mrs. Earle, who had draped a reboso about her head, and was
+fluttering an immense fan. For the first time since his arrival in San
+Francisco, he plunged into a deliberate flirtation. Mrs. Earle was one
+of those women who flirt from the crown of her head to the sole of her
+foot, and she was so thin that Thorpe fancied he could see the springs
+which kept her skeleton in such violent motion. Her eyebrows were
+marvels of muscular ingenuity, and all the passions were in a pair of
+great black eyes which masked a brain too shrewd to try the indulgence
+of old Dom Pedro Earle, a doughty Scot, too far.
+
+Once, as they repassed a tent, Thorpe saw a vibration of the door, and a
+half moment later heard a loud crash. Mrs. Earle's eyebrows went up to
+her hair, but she only said:
+
+"Your eyes are as grey and cold as that sea, senor; but they will get
+into a fine blaze some day, and then they will burn a hole in some poor
+woman's heart. And your jaw! _Dios de mi alma!_ What a tyrant you must
+be--over yourself most of all! I flirt with you no more. You are the
+sort of man that husbands are so jealous of, because you do not know how
+to trifle. _Adios, senor, adios!_"
+
+She swayed over to her husband; and at the same moment Nina ran out of
+the tent which had attracted Thorpe's attention. She wore a short white
+frock and a large white hat, which made her look very young. In her hand
+she carried a small tin horn, upon which she immediately gave a shrill
+blast.
+
+"That means work," she cried. "Get down to the patch."
+
+The servants spread a long table on a level spot, and fetched water from
+a spring, carrying the jugs on their shoulders. The cook, in a tent
+apart, worked leisurely at a savory supper. The guests scattered among
+the strawberry-beds, and plucked the large red fruit. Each had a small
+Mexican basket, and culled as rapidly as possible; the positions they
+were forced to assume were not comfortable. All were very gay, and now
+and then fought desperately for a well-favoured vine.
+
+Nina, who had been ousted by Mrs. Earle's long arms, which flashed round
+a glowing patch like two serpents, sprang up and ran down to the foot of
+the hill, where the vines were more straggling and less popular. Thorpe
+followed, laughing. Her hat had been lost in the fray; her hair was down
+and blown about in the evening wind, and her cheeks were crimson.
+
+"I hate long-legged long-armed giantesses," she exclaimed, attacking a
+vine spitefully. "And Spanish people are treacherous, anyhow. That patch
+was mine."
+
+Thorpe laughed heartily. Her temper was genuine. His spirits suddenly
+felt lighter; she looked like a spoilt child, not like a girl with a
+tragic secret.
+
+"She upset my basket, too," continued Nina, viciously. "But she upset
+half her own at the same time, and I trod on them, on purpose."
+
+"Here, let me fill your basket while you make a mud pie." He plucked his
+portion and hers, while she dug her fingers into the sand, and recovered
+her temper. As Thorpe dropped the replenished basket into her lap, she
+tossed her hair out of her eyes, and smiled up at him.
+
+"Sit down and rest," she said, graciously. "Supper won't be ready for a
+half hour yet, and that hill is something to climb."
+
+The others had finished their task, and disappeared over the brow of the
+hill. The west was golden; even the sea was yellow for the moment.
+
+"We know how to enjoy ourselves out here," said Nina, contentedly,
+sinking her elbow into the sand. "I should think it a good place to
+pitch your tent."
+
+She flirted her eyelashes at him, and looked so incapable of being
+serious that he answered, promptly,--
+
+"I shall, if I can find some one to make it comfortable."
+
+"You don't need to go begging. You're quite the belle. Several that are
+more or less _eprises_ are splendid housekeepers."
+
+"I am not looking for a housekeeper."
+
+"What are you looking for?" she asked, audaciously. Her chin was in her
+hand; her unbound hair clung about her; her tiny feet moved beneath the
+hem of her frock.
+
+He also was lying on his elbow, his face close to hers. He had always
+followed her cues, and if she wished to flirt at this late date he was
+quite willing to respond. He made up his mind abruptly to dismiss all
+plans and drift with the tide.
+
+"You," he said, softly.
+
+"Are you proposing to me?"
+
+He noted that she ignored his actual proposal, and commended her tact.
+
+"I am not so sure that I am; I am surer that I want to."
+
+"You are a cautious calculating Englishman."
+
+"I believe I am--up to a certain point."
+
+"Your face looks so hard and brown in that shadow. I've had men propose
+the third time they met me."
+
+"Probably."
+
+"You can propose, if it will ease your mind. I shall never marry."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I think it would be heavenly to be an old maid, and make patchwork
+quilts for missionaries."
+
+"I shall take pleasure in imagining you in the role when I am digging
+away at Blue Books and Reports."
+
+"Ah, never, never more!" she chanted, lightly.
+
+He paled slightly, then lifted a strand of her hair and drew it across
+his lips. It was the first caress he had given her in their six weeks of
+friendly intimacy, and her colour deepened. He shook the hair over her
+face. Her eyes peered out elfishly.
+
+"I suspect we are going to flirt this week," she said, drily.
+
+"If you choose to call it that." Her hair was clinging about his
+fingers.
+
+"Suppose we make a compact--to regard nothing seriously that may occur
+this week."
+
+"Why are you so afraid of compromising yourself?"
+
+"That belongs to the final explanation. But it is a recognised canon of
+strawberry-week ethics that everybody flirts furiously. Friendship is
+entirely too serious. Of course I shall flirt with you,--I shall let
+Dominga Earle see that at once,--as I am tired of all the others. Will
+you make the compact?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The sun had dropped below the ocean; only a bar of paling green lay on
+the horizon. Voices came faintly over the hill, and the shadows were
+rapidly gathering.
+
+Thorpe's face moved suddenly to hers. He flung her hair aside and kissed
+her. She did not respond, nor move. But when he kissed her again and
+again, she did not repulse him.
+
+"I want you to understand this," he said, and his voice had softened, a
+rare variation, nor was it steady. "I have not let myself go because you
+proposed that compact. I am quite willing to forget it."
+
+"But I am not. I expect you to remember it."
+
+"Very well, we can settle that later. Meanwhile, for this week, we will
+be happy. Have you ever let any man kiss you before?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You don't know? What a thing to say!"
+
+"Some one may have found me napping, you know."
+
+"You are very fond of being enigmatical. Why can't you give a straight
+answer to a straight question?"
+
+"Well--what I meant was that you should not ask impertinent questions.
+But, if you insist,--as far as I know, only two men have kissed me,--you
+and my father."
+
+He drew a quick breath. The ugliest fear that had haunted him took
+flight. He believed her to be truthful.
+
+He stood up suddenly, and drawing her with him, held her closely until
+he felt her self-control giving way. When he kissed her again, she put
+up her arms and clung to him, and kissed him for the first time. He knew
+then, whatever her reason for suggesting such a compact, or her ultimate
+purpose, that she loved him.
+
+The mighty blast of a horn echoed among the hills and cliffs. Nina
+sprang from Thorpe's arms.
+
+"That is one of papa's jokes," she said. "It isn't the horn of the
+hunter, but of the farmer. Come, supper is ready. Oh, dear!" She
+clapped her hands to her head. "I can't go up with my hair looking like
+this. I can just see the polaric disgust of the Hathaway orbs; it goes
+through one like blue needles. And then the malicious snap of Mrs.
+Earle's, and the faint amusement of Mrs. McLane's. And I've lost my
+hairpins! And I never--never--can get to my tent unseen. I'm living with
+'Lupie and Molly, and they're sure to be late--on purpose; I hate
+women--Here! Braid it. Don't tell me you can't! You must!"
+
+She presented her back to Thorpe, who was clumsily endeavouring to adapt
+himself to her mood. The discipline of the last six weeks stood him in
+good stead.
+
+"Upon my word!" he exclaimed, in dismay, "I never braided a woman's hair
+in my life."
+
+"Quick! Divide it in three strands--even--then one over the other--Oh,
+an idiot could braid hair! Tighter. Ow! Oh, you _are_ so clumsy."
+
+"I know it," humbly. "But it clings to my fingers. I believe you have it
+charged with electricity. It doesn't look very even."
+
+"I don't imagine it does. But it feels as if it would do. Half way down
+will be enough--"
+
+"Hallo!" came Hastings's voice from the top of the hill. "Are you two
+lost in a quicksand?"
+
+"Coming!" cried Nina. She sprang lightly up the hill, chattering as
+merrily as if she and the silent man beside her had spent the last
+half-hour flinging pebbles into the ocean.
+
+They separated on the crest of the hill, and went to their respective
+tents. A few moments later Nina appeared at the supper-table with her
+disordered locks concealed by a network of sweet-brier. The effect was
+novel and bizarre, the delicate pink and green very becoming.
+
+"Heaven knows when I'll ever get it off," she whispered to Thorpe, as
+she took the chair at his side. "It has three thousand thorns."
+
+The girls were in their highest spirit at the supper-table. Mr. McLane
+and Mr. Randolph were in their best vein, and Hastings and Molly
+Shropshire talked incessantly. Thorpe heard little that was said; he was
+consumed with the desire to be alone with Nina Randolph again.
+
+But she would have no more of him that night. After supper, a huge
+bonfire was built on the edge of a jutting cliff, and the entire party
+sat about it and told yarns. The women stole away one by one. Nina was
+almost the first to leave.
+
+The men remained until a late hour, and received calls from hilarious
+neighbours whose bonfires were also blazing. Don Tiburcio Castro dashed
+up at one o'clock, and invited Mr. Randolph to bring his party to a
+grand _merienda_ on the last day but one of their week, and to a ball at
+the Mission Dolores on the evening following.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+When the party broke up for the night Thorpe walked a half mile over the
+dunes, until, for any evidence of civilisation, he was alone in the
+wilderness, then lay down on the warm sand and took counsel with
+himself.
+
+He had taken the plunge, and he had no regrets. He recalled his doubts,
+his certainty that the Randolph skeleton was not the figment of a
+girl's morbid imagination, his analysis of a temperament which he was
+only beginning to understand, and wherein lay gloomy foreshadowings, the
+fact that her first appeal had been to his animalism and that the appeal
+had been direct and powerful. Until the morning of the elk-hunt, he had
+not admitted that he loved her; but in a flash he had realised her
+tragic and desolate position, little as he guessed the cause, and
+coincidently his greater love for her had taken form so definitely that
+he had not hesitated a moment to ask her to marry him. Later, he had
+persuaded himself that he was well out of it; but between that time and
+this he had allowed himself hardly a moment for meditation.
+
+To-night he had not a regret. The certainty that she loved him put his
+last scruple to flight, and changed his attitude to her irrevocably. He
+had never loved before, nor had she. She seemed indivisibly and
+eternally a part of him, and he recalled the sense of ownership he had
+experienced the night he had met her, when the evil alone in her claimed
+him. To-night the sense was stronger still, and he no longer believed
+that there was a spark of evil in her; the moment he became a lover, he
+became an idealist. He exaggerated every better quality into a
+perfection; and all other women seemed marionnettes beside the one who
+could make him shiver with hopes and fears, affect his appetite, and
+control his dreams, who made him wild to surrender his liberty before he
+was thirty, and accept a woman of the people as a mother-in-law.
+
+The full knowledge suddenly poured into his brain that he was in love,
+he,--Dudley Thorpe, who had crammed his life so full of other interests
+that he had rarely thought of love, believing serenely that it would
+arrive when he was forty, and ready for it. He lay along the sands and
+surrendered himself to the experience, the most marvellous and delicious
+he had ever known. Once he caught himself up and laughed, then felt that
+he had committed a sacrilege. He knew that as he felt then, as he might
+continue to feel during his engagement, was an isolated experience in a
+man's life. He felt like clutching at even the tremours and fears that
+assailed him, and cutting them deep in his brain, that he might have
+their memory sharp and vivid when he was long married and serenely
+content. He was happier in those moments, lying alone on the dry warm
+sand under the crowding stars which had outlived so many passions, than
+when he had held her in his arms. He felt that something had escaped him
+when they had been together, some thought had strayed; and he determined
+to concentrate his faculties more fully and to become a master in love.
+He did nothing by halves, and he would be completely happy.
+
+Then his thoughts became practical once more. Her admission that she
+loved him had given him a right to control her life, to protect her, to
+think for both. He was a very high-handed man, and, having made up his
+mind to marry Nina Randolph, he regarded her opposition as non-existent.
+He would argue it out with her, when she was ready to speak, knowing
+that the mental tide of woman, when undammed, must have its way; but he
+alone would decide the issue.
+
+He should no longer torment himself with imaginings, rehearsing every
+ill that could befall a woman, whether the act of her own folly or the
+cruel hatching of Circumstance. It mattered nothing; he should marry
+her. His want of her was maddening. The desire to pluck her from her
+present life, to make her happy, possessed him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The next morning all were up at eight and picking strawberries for
+breakfast. The prolonged and vociferous music of the horn had precluded
+all hope of laziness, and the late seekers after sleep were obliged to
+turn out with the best grace possible. A plunge in the sea had animated
+the men for the day, and the women were very fresh and amiable.
+
+After breakfast they scattered about the hills and beach. It was a
+cloudless dark-blue day. The air was warm and dry. The bleak sand dunes
+were reclaimed for a brief season by the vivid green of willow and oak,
+the fields of purple lupin and yellow poppy; the trade winds were
+elsewhere, and the vegetation of San Francisco enjoyed its brief span of
+life. A ship with all her sails spread drifted, sleepily, over the bar.
+
+Thorpe and Nina climbed an eminence from which they could see the
+Mission Dolores, far on the right, the smoke curling languidly from its
+great chimneys; the square Presidio of romantic memories and prosaic
+present; the distant city, whose loud feverish pulse they fancied they
+could hear.
+
+They sat down under a tree. Nina took off her hat, and threw back her
+head. "I think I am the re-embodiment of some pagan ancestor," she said.
+"On days like this, I care nothing for a single responsibility in life,
+nor for what to-morrow will bring, nor for a religion nor a creed, nor
+for the least nor greatest that civilisation has accomplished. I don't
+even long for Europe and the higher intellectual life. It is enough that
+I am alive, that my eyes see only beauty, and my skin feels warmth. I
+worship the sun and the sky and the flowers and the trees and the sea,
+above all the warm quick atmosphere. They seem to me the only things
+worth loving."
+
+"They are not the only things you love, however."
+
+"No, I love you and my father. I hate my mother. But I always manage to
+forget her existence when I am off like this, and she is out of my
+sight--"
+
+"Why do you hate your mother?"
+
+"That is one of the things you are not to know yet. This week you are to
+hear nothing that is not pleasant. I wish you to feel like a pagan,
+too."
+
+"I do. Some of your mandates are very easy to observe. We are reasonably
+sympathetic on more points than one."
+
+"We will imagine that all life is to be like this week--only no allusion
+is to be made during this week to the future, and no allusion in the
+future to this week."
+
+"I will do all I can to respect your wishes as to the first. The second
+is too ridiculous to notice. We will settle all that when the time
+comes."
+
+To this she vouchsafed no reply, but peered up into the boughs. Her
+expression changed after a moment; it became impersonal, and her eyes
+hardened as they always did when her mind alone was at work.
+
+"So far, California has evolved no literature," she said. "When it
+does, I don't doubt it will be a literature of light and charm and
+comedy--and pleasurable pathos. Writers will continue to go to the
+dreary moorlands, the dun-coloured skies of England for tragedy
+settings, and for the atmosphere of tradition and history. It will be
+hard for any writer who has travelled over the wonderful mountains and
+valleys of California--you have only seen the worst of it so far--to
+imagine tragedy in a land of such exultant beauty, under a sun that
+shines in a blue sky for eight months of the year. Fancy Emily Bronte
+writing 'Wuthering Heights' in California! The setting is all wrong for
+anything deeper than the picturesque crimes of desperadoes. But it is
+the very contrast, this very accompaniment of unreality, that makes our
+tragedies the harder to bear. I have thought sometimes that if I could
+come out here on a furious day in winter, and wander about the sand
+hills by myself, I'd feel as if I had a better right to be miserable--"
+
+"I thought we were to have no more such hints this week. I am tired of
+innuendoes. As I have remarked before, you take an unfair advantage. Let
+down your hair. It looks full of gold and red in this light, and I want
+to see it spread out in the sun."
+
+"Very well, put my hairpins in your pocket. Take it down yourself, and
+don't pull, on your life."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+The week passed very gaily; the mornings in long rambles, the early
+afternoon in siesta, its later hours in visits to neighbouring camps,
+followed by strawberry picking and long evenings about the fire or
+walking on the beach.
+
+Thorpe and Nina were comparatively alone most of the time; and her high
+spirits, her lavish charm, her sudden moments of seriousness, and her
+outbursts of passionate affection completed his enthralment. Several
+times Thorpe caught Mr. Randolph's eyes following him with an expression
+of peculiar anxiety, and it chafed him not to be able to declare his
+purpose plainly; but for the week he was bound.
+
+On the whole, it was a happy week. As it neared its end, Thorpe knew
+that his mind was possessing hers, that her will was weakening, and
+love flooding reason. Once or twice she gave him a glance of timid
+appeal; but she would not discuss the position. His mastery was the more
+nearly complete as he kept his promise and ignored the future.
+
+On the last day but one the party went down the coast to attend Don
+Tiburcio's _merienda_. It was to be given in a valley about a half-mile
+inland, which the guests must approach through a narrow canyon fronting
+the sea.
+
+The walk along the beach and inland trail was easy and pleasant, but the
+canyon was sown with rocks and sweet-brier; and the way was picked with
+some discomfort.
+
+"If I stub my toe, you can carry me," said Nina.
+
+"I will," said Thorpe, gallantly. He was feeling particularly light of
+heart. The week was almost over. Delightful in many ways as it had been,
+he was eager to take the reins into his own hands.
+
+"Look! look!" exclaimed Nina, and the party paused simultaneously.
+
+Don Tiburcio Castro had suddenly appeared at the head of the canyon. He
+was mounted on a large horse of a breed peculiar to the Californias,
+golden bronze in colour with silver mane and tail. The trappings of the
+horse were of embossed leather, heavily mounted with silver. His own
+attire was magnificent. He wore the costume of the grandees of his
+time,--a time which had fallen helplessly into the past during the
+fourteen years of American possession; indeed, Don Tiburcio, who, like
+many of his brethren, had for every day use adopted the garb of modern
+civilisation, had the effect, as he sat motionless on his burnished
+steed at the head of the canyon, of a symbolic figure at the end of a
+perspective.
+
+He wore short clothes of red silk, the jacket open over a lace shirt
+clasped with jewels. His long botas of yellow leather were wound about
+with red and blue ribbons; his broad sombrero was heavy with silver
+eagles.
+
+"I begin to feel the unreality of California," said Thorpe. "It is like
+a scene out of a picture-book."
+
+"After all, it is but one phase," replied Nina.
+
+Don Tiburcio lifted his sombrero and rode down the canyon, the horse
+stepping daintily over the rocks. The women waved their handkerchiefs,
+the men their caps. Then the end of the perspective was closed once
+more, this time by a group of women. And they wore full flowered gowns
+with pointed bodice, rebosos draped about their dark graceful heads. Two
+tinkled the guitar. The others wielded large black fans.
+
+"Ay!" exclaimed Mrs. Earle. "Why did I not bring my reboso? 'Lupie, we
+shall be forgotten."
+
+"There are men," replied Miss Hathaway, as several dark beribboned heads
+appeared above the rebosos. "They, too, may want a change. You can
+desert me, Captain Hastings. I shall amuse myself."
+
+"I don't doubt it," said Hastings, gloomily. "I don't flatter myself
+that I could make you jealous."
+
+"I welcome you," said Don Tiburcio, choosing his English very slowly,
+and reining in. "The day ees yours, my friends. I am your slave. I have
+prepare a little entertainment, but if it no is to your taste, but say
+the word, and all shall be change."
+
+Mr. Randolph made a terse and suitable reply. Don Tiburcio stood aside
+that all might pass him, bowing repeatedly; and the party made its way
+as quickly as possible to the entrance.
+
+Dona Eustaquia Carillo de Brotherton, one of the most famous women of
+the old regime, stood there, the girls making way for her, and for Dona
+Jacoba Duncan, Mrs. Polk,--she who was beautiful Magdalena Yorba,--and
+Dona Prudencia Iturbi y Moncada. The first was happy with her American
+husband; the second was not; Dona Jacoba's lines were as stern as when
+she had beaten her beloved children with a green hide reata, her smile
+as brilliant; and Dona Prudencia, who still (presumably) lamented the
+late Reinaldo, had found mitigation in her great social importance, and
+in her maternal devotion to the heir of her father-in-law's vast
+estates.
+
+The women all kissed each other, and those that could talk Spanish made
+a soft pretty babel of sound that suggested perpetuity. The men were
+presented, and those of the Randolph party taken prompt possession of by
+the coquettish Californian girls. The men of the South were inclined to
+be haughty at first, but shortly succumbed to the novel charm of the
+American women.
+
+"One can hardly realise the life they suggest," said Mr. Randolph to
+Thorpe. "Not fifty miles from San Francisco, they are still living in
+much of their primitive simplicity and state. In the south they are
+still farther removed from all that we have done. Dona Prudencia lives
+the life of a dowager empress."
+
+They were in an open valley, shaded here and there with large oaks,
+carpeted with flowers. The women seated themselves on the warm dry
+ground, the caballeros,--as resplendent as Don Tiburcio,--and the more
+modest Americans lying at their feet, smoking the cigarito. The
+Californian girls tinkled their guitars and sang, with accompaniment of
+lash and brow. The older women smoked daintily, and talked of the gay
+old times. Thorpe, who was in no mood to parry coquetry,--and Nina was
+receiving the court of no less than three caballeros,--bestowed himself
+between Dona Eustaquia and Dona Prudencia, and charmed them with his
+unfeigned interest.
+
+In the middle of the valley was a deep excavation. From stout poles hung
+two bullocks. In the course of an hour, the high beds of coals beneath
+the beasts were ignited, and the smell of roast meat mingled with the
+drowsy scent of the poppy and the salt of the sea.
+
+When the bullocks were cooked, and the repast was spread some yards
+away, the guests found on the table every delicacy known to the old
+time. It was a very lively and a very picturesque feast, and no one felt
+the exhilaration of it more than Thorpe. He could not see Nina. She was
+on his side of the table, and eight or ten people were between; but it
+was enough to know that she was there, and that before the day was over
+they should find an hour together.
+
+The wines until after the dessert were American; but as luncheon was
+concluding a servant brought a great tray covered with small glasses
+containing a colourless liquid.
+
+"You must all dreenk with me to the glory and prosperity of California
+in my native wine, the fierce mescal," said Don Tiburcio, rising. "Every
+one--ah, yes, ladies, it ees strong: I would not advise you that you
+take mooch; but one seep, just for the toast--ah, _muchas gracias_."
+
+The company rose. The American women made a doubtful little peck at the
+innocent-looking beverage, and shivered. The men consumed it heroically,
+repressing their tears. Thorpe felt as if he were swallowing live
+hornets; but, as he placed his glass on the table and bowed to the host,
+his face was quite stolid.
+
+The company drove home, and retired at once to siesta. The strawberry
+picking was belated, and Nina gathered hers with the help of Mr. McLane.
+At dinner she sat between Mr. McLane and Hastings, and did not look at
+Thorpe. He racked his brain to remember what he could have done to
+offend her.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+They did not walk on the beach that evening, but sat about the fire,
+somewhat fatigued, but still in high spirits. Nina alone was quiet.
+After a time she stole away, and went down to the water. Thorpe was
+forced to infer that she wished to be alone, and did not follow her at
+once. When at the end of a half-hour she had not returned, his
+ill-carried impatience mastered him.
+
+His feet made no sound on the sandy slope, nor on the beach. It was a
+night of perfect peace and calm and beauty. The ocean was quiet. The
+stars were thick; a thin young moon rode past them. But Nina was not
+within the flood of light about him. He turned the corner of a jutting
+rock, and came upon her.
+
+She was sitting on a high stone, her hands pressed hard on her knees,
+staring out to sea. Thorpe had seen her face bitter, tragic, passionate;
+but he had never seen it look as it looked to-night. It might have been
+the face of a woman cast up by the ocean, out of its depths, or a face
+of stone for forty years. All the youth and life were out of it. It was
+fixed, awful. Thorpe stood appalled. The sweet intercourse of the past
+week seemed annihilated, the woman removed from him by a sudden breach
+in time, or some tremendous crash in Circumstance. He dared not speak,
+offer her sympathy. He felt that whether she had loved him or not in
+this hour of abandonment to her despair, he must be an insignificant
+feature in her life.
+
+He stole away and sat down, dropping his face in his hands. His brain,
+usually clear and precise, whirled disobediently. He felt helpless, his
+manhood worthless. Nothing but a jut of rock stood between himself and
+Nina Randolph, and it might have been the grave of one of them. Chaos
+was in him, a troop of hideous imaginings. He wondered vaguely if the
+mescal had affected him. It was cursed stuff, and the blood had been in
+his head ever since he had drunk it.
+
+He knelt down, and dashed the cold sea-water over his face and head, not
+once, but several times. When he stood up, his brain was cool and
+steady.
+
+"I must either go to her," he thought, "or despise myself. It is not an
+intrusion; I certainly have my rights."
+
+He went rapidly round the bend, and lifted her from the stone before she
+was aware of his presence, then held her at arm's length, a hand on each
+shoulder.
+
+The fixity left the muscles of her face. They relaxed in terror.
+
+"What is your secret?" he demanded, peremptorily. "Have you had a
+lover--a child? Is that it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"On your word of honour?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are your parents unmarried?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"Have you loved some man that is dead?"
+
+"I have never loved any man but you."
+
+"Have you committed a crime? Are you in constant terror of discovery?"
+
+"I have never injured any one but myself."
+
+"Is there insanity in the family, cancer, consumption?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, in God's name, what is it? I have the right to know, and I demand
+it; and the right to share your trouble and help you to bear it. I give
+you my word of honour that, no matter what it is, it shall make no
+difference to me."
+
+She hung her head, and he felt her quiver from head to foot. Then she
+fell to weeping silently, without passion, but shaking painfully. He
+took her in his arms, and did what he could to comfort her, and he
+could be very tender when he chose. Later, he coaxed and implored and
+threatened, but she would not speak. Once she made as if to cling to
+him, then put her arms behind her and clasped her hands together. The
+act was significant; but Thorpe took no notice of it. He knew now that
+it was going to be more difficult to marry her than he had anticipated,
+that infinite tact and patience would be necessary. After a time, he
+dried her eyes and led her up the hill to the door of her tent. The
+others were still about the fire, and she went in unseen.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Thorpe slept little that night. He wandered about the sand hills until
+nearly dawn. It seemed to him that he had exhausted the category of
+possible ills; he could think of nothing else. After all, it did not
+matter. The woman alone mattered. He knew that when he had persuaded her
+to marry him (he never used the word "if"), he could control her
+imagination and make her happy; and no other man alive could do it. In
+twenty different ways he could make her forget everything but the fact
+that she was his wife.
+
+The next day Nina did not appear until the party was gathered about the
+table for luncheon. She explained that she had slept late in order to be
+in good trim for the party that night, and had spent the rest of the
+morning making an alteration in her evening frock.
+
+She nodded gaily to Thorpe, and took a seat some distance from him. She
+looked very pretty. Her spirits, like her colour, were high, her eyes
+brilliant. Nevertheless, there was a change in her, indefinable at
+first; then Thorpe decided that she had acquired a shade of defiance, of
+hardness.
+
+But he had no time for thought. Mrs. Earle's flashing eyes were
+challenging him on one side, Miss Hathaway's fathomless orbs on the
+other. Opposite, Miss Shropshire, for the first time, displayed an
+almost feverish desire to engage his attention, and made herself
+uncommonly agreeable.
+
+The afternoon was spent in packing and resting for the dance. The only
+woman to be seen without the tents was Miss Shropshire, who took Thorpe
+for a long walk and entertained him with many anecdotes of Nina's
+eccentricities.
+
+"She is very mutable," said Thorpe, at length; "but I should not have
+called her eccentric."
+
+"Should not you?" demanded Miss Shropshire. "Now, I should. But then you
+have seen so much of the world, so many varieties of women. Nina seems
+very original to us out here. I often wonder, well as I know her, what
+she will say and do next. Oh, Mr. Thorpe, does not that ship look
+beautiful?"
+
+But Thorpe, who found a certain satisfaction in talking of the beloved
+object, gently led her back to her former theme, and learned much of
+Nina's childhood and school-girl pranks. There was no hint of the
+mystery, nor did he wish that there should be.
+
+Shortly after supper they started on horseback for the Mission, the
+evening gear following in a wagon. Horses and conveyance had been sent
+by Don Tiburcio.
+
+Nina rode between Mr. McLane and Captain Hastings, and kept them
+laughing heartily. The day had passed and Thorpe had not had a word
+with her. He rode last, with Miss Hathaway, glad of her society; for she
+never expected a man to talk when he was not in the mood. Scarcely a
+word passed between them; once or twice he had an uncomfortable
+impression that her large cold inscrutable eyes were watching him
+intently.
+
+They rode through the heavy dusk of a Californian night, perfume and the
+odd abrupt sounds of the New World about them. The landscape took new
+form in the shadows. The stunted brush seemed to crouch and quiver,
+ready to spring. The owl hooted across the sandy waste; and coyotes
+yapped dismally. Many of the party were silent; but Nina's fresh
+spontaneous laugh rang out every few moments, striking an incongruous
+note. California itself was a mystery in that hour and did not consort
+with the lighter mood of woman.
+
+Suddenly they looked down upon the Mission. The church was dark, but the
+long wing beside it flared with light. They rode rapidly down the hill
+and across the valley. As they approached, they saw Don Tiburcio
+standing on the corridor before one of the open doors. He wore black
+silk short clothes and a lace shirt, his hair tied back with a ribbon.
+Diamonds blazed among his ruffles and on his long white hands.
+
+As he was making one of his long and stately speeches, Miss Hathaway
+laid her hand on Thorpe's arm.
+
+"Take my advice," she said, in her cool even tones. "Do not go near Nina
+to-night. Let her alone. I think she wishes it."
+
+Thorpe made no reply. Miss Hathaway might as well have asked him to hold
+his breath until the entertainment was over.
+
+The ladies went at once to a large room set aside for their use and
+donned their evening frocks. These frocks were very simple for the most
+part, organdie or swiss, and they were adjusted casually before the
+solitary mirror.
+
+Nina's gown was of white nainsook ruffled to the waist with lace, and
+very full. The low cut bodice was gathered into the belt like a child's.
+Sometime since a local goldsmith of much cunning had, out of a bar of
+native gold, fashioned for her three flexible serpents. She wore one
+through her hair, one on her left arm, and a heavier one about her
+waist.
+
+"_Dios de mi alma_, Nina," exclaimed Mrs. Earle; "you look like an imp
+to-night. What is the matter with you? Your eyes look--look--I hardly
+know what you do look like."
+
+"Are you well, Nina?" asked Miss Hathaway, turning and smiting the girl
+with her polaric stare. "Have not you a headache? Why not lie down and
+not bother with this ball?"
+
+For a moment Nina did not reply. She brought her small teeth together,
+and looked into Miss Hathaway's eyes with passionate resentment.
+
+"Just mind your own business, will you?" she said, pitching her voice
+for the other woman's ear alone. "And you'd oblige me by transfixing
+some one else for the rest of the evening. I've had enough of your
+attentions for one day."
+
+Then she shook out her skirts as only an angry woman can, and left the
+room.
+
+"Nina is in one of her unpleasant moods to-night," said Mrs. McLane,
+attempting a glimpse of herself over Miss McDermott's shoulder, that she
+might adjust a hairpin. "I have not seen her like this for some
+time--seven weeks," and she smiled.
+
+"She looks like a little devil," said Mrs. Earle. "I have not been here
+long enough to become intimate with her moods, and I must say I prefer
+her without them. What are you scowling about, 'Lupie? Is your sash
+crooked? Can I fix it? But I forgot: you are above such trifles--Holy
+Mary! Guadalupe Hathaway! what on earth is the matter with your back?"
+
+"What?" asked Miss Hathaway, presenting her back squarely. There was a
+simultaneous chorus of shrieks.
+
+"Guadalupe, for Heaven's sake, what have you been doing?" cried Mrs.
+McLane. "Your back is striped--dark brown and white."
+
+"Oh, is that all?" asked Miss Hathaway, gathering up her fan and gloves.
+"I suppose it got sunburned this morning at croquet. I had on a blouse
+with alternate thick and thin stripes. _Hasta luego!_" and she moved
+out, not with any marked grace, but with a certain dignity which saved
+the stripes from absurdity.
+
+"_Bueno!_" exclaimed Mrs. Earle, "I'd like to have as little vanity as
+that. How peaceful, and how cheap!"
+
+"I suspect that it is her vanity to have no vanity," said Mrs. McLane,
+who was the wisest of women. "And if she did not happen to be a
+remarkably handsome girl, I fancy her vanity would take another form.
+But come, come, _mes enfants_, let us go. I feel half dressed; but as
+this is a picnic I suppose it does not matter."
+
+The guests were assembled in the large hall of the Mission: Mr.
+Randolph's party, Don Tiburcio's, and several priests. The musicians
+were on the corridor beyond the open window. Dona Eustaquia, Dona
+Jacoba, Dona Prudencia, Mrs. Polk, and the priests sat on a dais at the
+end of the room; behind them was draped a large Mexican flag. The rest
+of the room was hung with the colours of the United States. The older
+women of the late regime wore the heavy red and yellow satins of their
+time, the younger flowered silks, their hair massed high and surmounted
+by a comb. The caballeros were attired like their host.
+
+The guests were standing about in groups after the second waltz, when
+Don Tiburcio stepped to the middle of the room and raised his hand.
+
+"My friends," he said, "my honoured compatriots, Don Hunt McLane and Don
+Jaime Randolph have request that we do have the contradanza. Therefore,
+if my honoured friends of America will but stand themselves against the
+wall, we of California will make the favourite dance of our country."
+
+The Americans clapped their hands politely. Don Tiburcio walked up to
+Mrs. Earle, bowed low, and held out his hand. She rattled her fan in
+token of triumph over her Northern sisters, and undulated to the middle
+of the room, her hand in her host's.
+
+The swaying, writhing, gliding dance--the dance in which the backbone of
+men and women seems transformed into the flexible length of the
+serpent--was half over, the American men were standing on tiptoe,
+occasionally giving vent to their admiration, when Nina, her eyes
+sparkling with jealously and excitement, moved along the wall behind a
+group of people and stood beside Thorpe. He did not notice her approach.
+His hands were thrust into his pockets, his eyes eagerly fixed on the
+most graceful feminine convolutions he had ever seen.
+
+"Dudley!" whispered Nina. He turned with a jump, and forgot the dancers.
+
+"Well?" he whispered. "Nina! Nina!"
+
+She slipped her hand into his. He held it in a hard grip, his eyes
+burning down into hers. "Why--why?--I must respect your moods if you
+wish to avoid me at times--but--"
+
+"Do you admire that?"
+
+"I did--a moment ago."
+
+"Tell me how much."
+
+"More than any dancing I have ever seen, I think," his eyes wandering
+back to the swaying colorous groups of dancers. "It is the perfection of
+grace--"
+
+"Would you like to see something far, _far_ more beautiful?"
+
+"I fear I should go off my head--"
+
+"Answer my question."
+
+"I should."
+
+"You say you respect my moods. I don't want--I particularly don't want
+to kiss you to-night. Will you promise not to kiss me if we should
+happen to be alone?"
+
+Thorpe set his lips. He dropped her hand. "You are capricious--and
+unfair," he said; "I have not seen you alone for two days."
+
+"It is not because I love you less," she said, softly. "Promise me."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"It is now ten. We shall have supper at twelve. At one, go down the
+corridor behind this line of rooms to the end. Wait there for me. Ask no
+questions, or I won't be there. This waltz is Captain Hastings'. I am
+engaged for every dance. _Au revoir._"
+
+Thorpe got through the intervening hours. He spent the greater part of
+them with the four donas of the dais, and was warmly invited to visit
+them on their ranchos and in the old towns; and he accepted, although he
+knew as much of the weather of the coming month as of his future
+movements.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In the supper-room he sat far from Nina; but promptly at one he stole
+forth to the tryst. The windows looking upon the back corridor were
+closed. No one was moving among the mass of outbuildings. Not far away
+he could see the rolling surface and stark outlines of the Mission
+cemetery. A fine mist was flying before the stars; and a fierce wind,
+the first of the trades, was screaming in from the ocean.
+
+Nina kept him waiting ten or fifteen minutes. Her white figure appeared
+at the end of the corridor and advanced rapidly. Thorpe met her half
+way, and she struck him lightly with her fan.
+
+"Remember your promise," she said. "And also understand that you are not
+to move from the place where I put you until I give you permission. Do
+you take that in?"
+
+"Yes," he said, sullenly; "but I am tired of farces and promises."
+
+"Shh, don't be cross. This has been a charming evening. I won't have it
+spoiled."
+
+"Are you quite well? Your colour is so high, and your eyes are
+unnaturally bright."
+
+"Don't suggest that I am getting anything," she cried, in mock terror.
+"Small-pox? How dreadful! That is our little recreation, you know. When
+a San Franciscan has nothing else to do he goes off to the pest-house
+and has small-pox. But come, come."
+
+He followed her into the room at the end of the corridor, and she lit a
+taper and conducted him up a steep flight of stairs which was little
+more than a ladder. At the top was a narrow door. It yielded to the
+knob, and Thorpe found himself in what was evidently the attic of the
+Mission.
+
+"I was up here a month or two ago with the girls," said Nina. Her voice
+shook slightly. "I know there are candles somewhere--there were, at
+least. Stand where you are until I look."
+
+She flitted about with the taper, a ghostly figure in the black mass of
+shadows; and in a few moments had thrust a half-dozen candles into the
+necks of empty bottles. These she lit and ordered Thorpe to range at
+intervals about the room. He saw that he was in a long low garret, at
+one end of which was a pile of boxes, at the other a heap of carpeting.
+
+To the latter Nina pointed with her lighted taper. "Sit down there," she
+said, and disappeared behind the boxes.
+
+Thorpe did as he was bidden. His hands shook a little as he adjusted the
+carpet to his comfort. The windows were closed. A tree scraped against
+the pane, jogged by the angry wind. The candles shed a fitful light,
+their flames bending between several draughts. The floor was thick with
+dust. Rafters yawned overhead, black and festooned with cobwebs. It was
+an uncanny place, and the sudden apparition of a large and whiskered rat
+scuttling across the floor in terrified anger at having his night's rest
+disturbed was not its most enlivening feature.
+
+"Dudley!" said Nina, sharply.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Was that a rat?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"Oh, dear! dear! I never thought of rats. However," firmly, "I'm going
+to do it. I told you that you were not to move; but if you should happen
+to see a rat making for me, you go for him just as quickly as you can."
+
+"The rats are much more afraid of you. The only danger you need worry
+about is pneumonia. I expect to sneeze throughout your entire
+performance--whatever it is to be."
+
+"You press your finger on the bridge of your nose: if you sneeze, it
+will spoil the effect of--of--a poem. Now, keep quiet."
+
+For a moment he heard no further sound. Then something appealed to his
+ear which made him draw a quick breath. It was a low sweet vibrant
+humming, and the air, though unfamiliar, indicated what he had to
+expect. Sinking deeper into his dusty couch, he propped his chin on his
+hand; and, simultaneously, a vision emerged and filled the middle
+distance.
+
+For a moment it stood motionless, poised, then floated lightly toward
+him, scarcely touching the floor, with a lazy rhythmic undulation which
+was music in itself. The full soft gown with its ruffles of lace rose
+and fell like billows of cloud, and in and out of a strip of crimson
+silk she twined and twisted herself to the slow scarce-audible vibration
+of her voice. She did not approach him closely, but danced in the middle
+and lower part of the room, sometimes in the full light of the candles,
+such as it was, at others retreating into the shadows beyond; where all
+outline was lost, and she looked like a waving line of mist, or a
+wraith writhing in an unwilling embrace.
+
+And Thorpe? Outside, the storm howled about the corner of the Mission,
+or whistled a discord like a devil's chorus; but in the brain of the man
+was a hot mist, and it clouded his vision and played him many a trick.
+The dust of the floor, the grime of the walls, the unsightly rafters
+were gone. He lay on a couch as imponderable as ether. Overhead were
+strangely carven beams, barely visible in the dusk of the room's great
+arch. A gossamer veil of many tints, stirring faintly as if breathed
+upon, hung before walls of unimaginable beauty. The floor trembled and
+exhaled a delicious perfume. Flame sprang from opal bowls. But nothing
+was definite but the floating undulating shape which had wrought this
+enchantment. Its full voluptuous beauty, he recalled confusedly; dimmed
+by the shadows which clung to it even in the light, it looked vaporous,
+evanescent, the phantasm of a lorelei riding the sea-foam. Its swaying
+arms gleamed on the dark; the gold-scaled sea-serpents glided and
+twisted from elbow to wrist. Only the eyes were those of a woman, and
+they burned with a languid fire; but they never met his for a moment.
+
+Suddenly, with abrupt transition, she changed the air, which had been
+almost a chant, and began dancing fast and furiously. Flinging aside the
+scarf, she clasped her hands under rigid arms, as if leaning on them the
+full weight of her tiny body. She danced with a headlong whirl that
+deprived her of her wraith-like appearance, but was no less graceful.
+With a motion so swift and light that her feet seemed continually
+twinkling in space, she sped up and down the garret like a mad thing;
+then, unlocking her hands, she flung them outward and spun from one end
+of the room to the other in a whirl so dizzy that she looked like a
+cloud blown before the wind, streaming with a woman's hair and cut with
+yellow lightning.
+
+She flew directly up to where Thorpe lay, and paused abruptly before
+him. For the first time their eyes met. He forgot his promise. He
+stumbled to his feet, grasping at her gown even before he was risen. For
+a second she stood irresolute; then her supple body leaped backward,
+and a moment later had flashed down the room and through the door.
+Thorpe reached the door in three bounds. She was scrambling backward
+down the stair, her white frightened excited face dropping through the
+heavy dark. Thorpe got down as swiftly as he could; but she was far
+ahead, and he could not chase her into the Mission. When he re-entered
+the ball-room some time after, the guests were on the corridor waiting
+for their char-a-bancs. He returned to the Presidio in the ambulance.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+The next day Thorpe called at the Randolphs'. The man, Cochrane, who,
+himself, looked yellow and haggard, informed him that the ladies were
+indisposed with severe colds. Thorpe went home and wrote Nina a letter,
+making no allusion to the performance at the Mission, but insisting that
+she recognise his rights, and let him know when he could see her and
+come to a definite understanding. A week passed without a reply. Then
+Thorpe, tormented by every doubt and fear which can assail a lover,
+called again. The ladies were still indisposed. It was Sunday. Thorpe
+demanded to see Mr. Randolph, and was shown into the library.
+
+Mr. Randolph entered in a few moments, and did not greet Thorpe with his
+customary warmth. There were black circles about his eyes. His cheeks
+looked thinner and his hand trembled.
+
+"Have you been ill, too?" asked Thorpe, wondering if South Park were a
+healthy locality.
+
+"No; not ill. I have been much harassed--business."
+
+"Nothing serious, I hope."
+
+"It will right in time--but--in a new city--and with no telegraphic
+communication with the rest of the world--nor quick postal
+service--there is much to impede business and try the patience."
+
+Thorpe was a man of quick intuitions. He knew that Mr. Randolph was
+lying. However, that was not his business. He rose and stood before the
+fire, nervously flicking his trousers with his riding-whip.
+
+"Has it occurred to you that I love your daughter?" he asked, abruptly.
+"Or--perhaps--she has told you?"
+
+"She has not spoken to me on the subject; but I inferred as much."
+
+"I wish, of course, to marry her. You know little about me. My
+bankers--and Hastings--will tell you that I am well able to take care of
+your daughter. In fact, I am a fairly rich man. This sort of thing has
+to be said, I suppose--"
+
+"I have not misunderstood your motives. I misjudge few men; I have lived
+here too long."
+
+"Oh--thanks. Then you have no objection to raise?"
+
+"No; I have none."
+
+"Your daughter loves me." Thorpe had detected a slight accent on the
+pronoun.
+
+"I am sure of that."
+
+"Do you mean that Mrs. Randolph might object?"
+
+"She would not be consulted."
+
+Thorpe shifted his position uneasily. The hardest part was to come.
+
+"Nina has intimated to me," he said, haltingly, "that there is a--some
+mysterious reason which would prevent her marrying. I have utterly
+disregarded that reason, and shall continue to do so. I purpose to marry
+her, and I hope you will--will you?--help me."
+
+Mr. Randolph leaned forward and twisted his nervous pale hands together.
+It was at least three minutes before he spoke, and by that time Thorpe's
+ear-drums were pounding.
+
+"I must leave it to her," he said, "utterly to her. That is a question
+which only she can decide--and you. Of course she will tell you--she is
+too honest not to; but I am afraid she will stave it off as long as
+possible. I cannot tell you; it would not be just to her."
+
+"But you will do nothing to dissuade her?"
+
+"No; she is old enough to judge for herself. And if she decides in your
+favour, and you--are still of the same mind, I do not deny that I shall
+be very glad. I should even be willing for you to take her to England,
+to resign myself never to see her again--if I could think--if you
+thought it was for the best."
+
+"I wish I knew what this cursed secret was," said Thorpe, passionately.
+"I am half distracted with it."
+
+"Have you no suspicion?"
+
+"It seems to me that I have thought of everything under heaven; and she
+denied one question after the other. I am bound to take her word, and to
+believe that the truth was the one thing I did not hit upon."
+
+"Yes; if you had guessed, I think she would have told you, whether she
+was ready or not. It is very strange. You are one of the sharpest men I
+have ever met. Still, it is often the way."
+
+"When can I see Nina?"
+
+"In a few days--a week, I should say. Her cold is very severe."
+
+"I have written to her, and she has not answered. Is it possible that
+her illness is serious? I have put it down to caprice or some new
+qualm."
+
+"There is no cause for alarm. But she has some fever, and pain in her
+eyes, and is irritable. When she is well I will take it upon myself to
+see that you have an interview."
+
+"Thank you." Mr. Randolph had not risen, but Thorpe felt himself
+dismissed. He left the house in a worse humour than he had entered it.
+He felt balked, repulsed, and disagreeably prescient. For the first time
+in his life, he uneasily admitted that an iron will alone would not keep
+a man on the straight line of march to his goal, that there was a chain
+called Circumstance, and that it was forged of many metals.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Thorpe determined not to go to the house again until either Nina or Mr.
+Randolph sent for him. He would not run after any woman, he told himself
+angrily; and once or twice he was in a humour to snap the affair in two
+where it was and leave the country. But, on the whole, the separation
+whetted his passion. That airy fabric of sentiment, imagination, and
+civilisation called spiritual affinity, occasionally dominated him, but
+not for long. His last experience of her had gone to his head: it was
+rarely that of all the Nina Randolphs he knew he could conjure any but
+the one that had danced his promise out of memory. There were times
+when he hated himself and hated her. Then he told himself that this
+phase was inevitable, and that later on, when the better part of their
+natures were free to assert themselves, they would find each other.
+
+A week after his interview with Mr. Randolph, he found himself in South
+Park a little after eleven at night. He had dined on Rincon Hill, and
+purposed spending the night at the Oriental Hotel; he rarely returned to
+the Presidio after an evening's entertainment.
+
+He had avoided the other men, and started to walk into town. Almost
+mechanically he turned into South Park, and halted before the tall
+silent house which seemed such a contemptible barrier between himself
+and the woman he wanted. His eyes, travelling downward, noted that a
+basement window had been carelessly left open. He could enter the house
+without let--and the opportunity availed him nothing. He wished that he
+were a savage, with the traditions and conventions of a savage, and that
+the woman he loved dwelt in a tent on the plain.
+
+Lights glimmered here and there in the houses of South Park, but the
+Randolphs' was blank; everybody, apparently, was at rest. To stand there
+and gaze at her window was bootless; and he cursed himself for a
+sentimental ass.
+
+He walked up the semi-circle and returned. This time he moved suddenly
+forward, lifting his head. It seemed to him that a sound--an odd
+sound--came from the bedroom above the parlour, a room he knew to be
+Mrs. Randolph's.
+
+At first the sound, owing to the superior masonry of the walls, was
+muffled; but, gradually, Thorpe's hearing, naturally acute, and
+abnormally sensitive at the moment, distinguished the oral evidence of a
+scuffle, then the half-stifled notes of angry and excited voices. He
+listened a moment longer. The sounds increased in volume. There was a
+sudden sharp note, quickly hushed. Thorpe hesitated no longer. If the
+house of a man whose guest he had been were invaded by thieves, and
+perhaps murderers, it was clearly his duty to render assistance, apart
+from more personal reasons.
+
+He took out his pistol, cocked it, then vaulted through the window, and
+groping his way to a door opened it and found himself in the kitchen
+entry. A taper burned in a cup of oil; and guided by the feeble light he
+ran rapidly up the stair.
+
+He opened the door at the head, paused a a moment and listened intently.
+The house teemed with muffled sounds; but they fell from above, and
+through closed doors, and from one room. Suddenly the hand that held the
+pistol fell to his side. The colour dropped from his face, and he drew
+back. Was he close upon the Randolph skeleton? Had he not better steal
+out as he had come, refusing to consider what the strange sounds
+proceeding from the room of that strange woman might mean? There were no
+signs of burglars anywhere. A taper burned in this hall, likewise, and
+on the table beside it was a gold card-receiver. There had been a heavy
+rainfall during the evening, but there was no trace of muddy boots on
+the red velvet carpet.
+
+Then, as he hesitated, there rang out a shriek, so loud, so piercing, so
+furious, that Thorpe, animated only by the instinct to give help where
+help was wanted, dashed down the hall and up the stair three steps at a
+time. Before he reached the top, there was another shriek, this time
+abrupt, as if cut short by a man's hand. He reached Mrs. Randolph's room
+and flung open the door. But he did not cross the threshold.
+
+The room flared with light. The bedding was torn into strips and
+scattered about. Every fragile thing the room contained was in ruins and
+littered the carpet. And in their midst, held down by Mr. Randolph and
+his servant, Cochrane, was a struggling, gurgling, biting thing which
+Thorpe guessed rather than knew was the mother of Nina Randolph. Her
+weak evil face was swollen and purple, its brutality, so decently
+cloaked in normal conditions, bulging from every muscle. Her ragged hair
+hung in scant locks about her protruding eyes. Over her mouth was the
+broad hand of the man, Cochrane. Mrs. Rinehardt, her face flushed and
+her dress in disorder, stood by the mantel crying and wringing her
+hands.
+
+Thorpe's brain received the picture in one enduring flash. He was dimly
+conscious of a cry from unseen lips, and the vanishing train of a
+woman's gown. And then Mr. Randolph looked up. He relaxed his hold and
+got to his feet. His face was ghastly, and covered with great globes of
+sweat.
+
+"Thorpe!" he gasped. "You! Oh, go! go!"
+
+Thorpe closed the door, his fascinated gaze returning for a second to
+the Thing on the floor. It no longer struggled. It had become suddenly
+quiet, and was laughing and muttering to itself.
+
+He left the house, and walked out of the park and city, and toward the
+Presidio. It was a long walk, over sand drifts and rocks, and through
+thickets whose paths he had forgotten. The cold stars gave little light,
+for the wind drove a wrack aslant them; and when the colder dawn came,
+greying everything, the flowers that looked so brilliant in the
+sunlight, the heavy drooping trees, the sky above, he found himself
+climbing a high sand hill, with no apparent purpose but to get to the
+top; a cut about its base would have shortened the journey. He reached
+the summit, and saw the grey swinging ocean, the brown forts in their
+last sleep.
+
+He sat down, and traced figures on the sand with his stick. Chaos had
+been in him; but the tide had fallen, and his thoughts were shaping
+themselves coherently. Nina Randolph was the daughter of a madwoman, and
+the seeds were in her. Her strange moods, her tragic despair, her hints
+of an approaching fate, her attitude to himself, were legible at last.
+And Miss Hathaway knew, and had tried to warn him. Doubtless others
+knew, but the secret had been well kept.
+
+He was filled with bitterness and dull disgust, and his heart and brain
+were leaden. The mad are loathsome things; and the vision of Nina,
+foaming and hideous and shrieking, rose again and again.
+
+That passed; but he saw her without illusion, without idealisation. She
+had been the one woman whose faults were entrancing, whose genuine
+temperament would have atoned for as many more. She seemed now a very
+ordinary, bright, moody, erratic, seductive young person who was making
+the most of life before she disappeared into a padded cell. He wondered
+why he had not preferred Miss Hathaway, or Mrs. Earle, or Miss
+McDermott. He had not, and concluded that her first influence had been
+her only one, and that his imagination had done the rest.
+
+The sunrise gun boomed from the Presidio. The colours of dawn were on
+horizon and water. He rose and walked rapidly over the hills and levels;
+and when he reached his room, he went to bed and slept.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+At two o'clock, just after Thorpe had breakfasted, Mr. Randolph's card
+was brought to him, and he went at once into the general sitting-room.
+No one but Mr. Randolph occupied it at the moment. He was sitting
+listlessly on the edge of a chair, staring out of the window. Commonly
+the triggest of men, his face to-day was unshaven, and he looked as if
+he had not been out of his clothes for forty-eight hours. And he looked
+as if he had been picked up in the arms of Time, and flung across the
+unseen gulf into the greyness and feebleness of age.
+
+As he rose mechanically, Thorpe took his hand in a strong clasp,
+forgetting himself for the moment.
+
+Mr. Randolph did not return the pressure. He withdrew his hand
+hurriedly, and sat down.
+
+"An explanation is due you," he said, and even his voice was changed.
+"You have stumbled upon an unhappy family secret."
+
+Thorpe explained how he had come to enter the house.
+
+"I supposed that it was something of the sort, or rather Cochrane did;
+he found the window and lower door open. It was a kind and friendly act.
+I appreciate the motive." He paused a moment, then went on, "As I said
+just now, an explanation is due you, if explanation is necessary. As you
+know, I had recognised that as Nina's right--to speak when she saw fit.
+That is the reason I did not explain the other day--I usually manage to
+have her in the country at such times," he added, irrelevantly.
+
+"Such attacks are always more or less unexpected, I suppose." Thorpe
+hardly knew what to say.
+
+Mr. Randolph fumbled at his hat, "More or less."
+
+"Were any other members of her family--similarly afflicted?"
+
+"Her father and mother were well-conducted people. I know nothing of any
+further antecedents."
+
+"It sometimes skips a generation," said Thorpe, musingly.
+
+Mr. Randolph brought his hand close above his eyes, and pressed his lips
+together. He opened his mouth twice, as if to speak, before he
+articulated, "Sometimes, not always."
+
+Thorpe rose abruptly and walked to the window, then returned, and stood
+before Mr. Randolph.
+
+"And Nina?" he demanded, peremptorily. "What of her?"
+
+Mr. Randolph pressed his hand convulsively against his face.
+
+Thorpe turned white; his knees shook. He went out and returned with some
+brandy. "Here," he said. "Let us drink this and brace up and have it
+out. We are not children."
+
+Mr. Randolph drank the brandy. Then he replied, "She is on the way. In a
+few years she will be as you saw her mother last night; no power on
+earth can save her. I would give my wretched failure of a life, I would
+burn at the stake--but I can do nothing."
+
+"Perhaps I can. I intend to marry her."
+
+"No! No! She, who is stronger than I, would never have permitted it. She
+told me that this morning. For the matter of that I am her ambassador
+to-day. She charged me to make it clear to you that she expected you to
+stand by your part of the compact. She is immovable; I know her."
+
+"Tell her that I will take no messages at second hand, not even from
+you. Unless she sees and comes to an understanding with me, I shall
+consider myself engaged to her, and shall announce it."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you would marry her, knowing what you do?"
+
+"I would rather I had known it when I first came. I should have avoided
+her, or left the place. But I gave her my word, voluntarily, that
+nothing, no matter what, should interfere with my determination to
+marry her, and nothing shall."
+
+"You _are_ an Englishman!" said Mr. Randolph, bitterly. "I wish I were
+as good a one; but I am not. My record is clean enough, I suppose; but I
+am a weak man in some respects, and I started out all wrong. I wish to
+God that everything were straight, Thorpe; I would rather you married
+her than any man I have ever known."
+
+"Thank you. Will you arrange an interview for me?"
+
+Mr. Randolph fidgeted, "I tell you what I think, Thorpe; you had
+better wait a little. She is in no mood to listen to reason, nor
+for love-making--take my word for that. I have never seen her in so
+black a mood. But women are naturally buoyant, and she particularly so.
+Go and take your trip through the State. Let it last--say two months,
+and then appear unexpectedly at Redwoods. I do not give you any
+encouragement,--in all conscience you ought not to want any; but I think
+that under the circumstances I suggest your final interview will at
+least not be an unpleasant one. Nina lives an out of door life there
+and is with the other girls most of the time."
+
+"Very well. I don't know but that I prefer it that way. Meanwhile, will
+you tell her all that I have said?--except that I would rather I had
+known it sooner."
+
+Mr. Randolph rose and gathered up his hat and gloves. "I will tell her,"
+he said. "Good-bye. You are badly broken up, but you may be thankful
+that you are in your shoes, not mine."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Dona Prudencia had sent Thorpe a pressing invitation to be a guest at
+Casa Grande during the festivities celebrating the nineteenth birthday
+of her son. The day after his interview with Mr. Randolph, in company
+with Don Tiburcio Castro, Captain Brotherton and his wife, Dona
+Eustaquia, Mrs. Polk, and a half-dozen other native Californians, he
+took passage on a steamboat bound for Santa Barbara. The journey lasted
+four days, and was very uncomfortable; but the happy careless Spanish
+people were always entertaining, and the girls demanded the constant
+attentions of the Englishman. Thorpe had little time for thought and
+wished for none. When not playing squire to the women, he listened to
+Don Tiburcio's anecdotes of Old California, or discussed the future of
+the territory with Captain Brotherton, who was living a life of peace
+and plenty on a rancho, but nevertheless took an unfailing interest in
+the country his gallantry had helped to capture and hold.
+
+The ship rode to anchor in the Santa Barbara channel before an animated
+scene. The adobe walls of Casa Grande had a new coat of white, the tiles
+a new coat of red; so had the great towers and arches and roof of the
+Mission, jutting before the green of its hills, a mile beyond. The
+houses about the fort looked fresh and gay. Many horses, richly
+caparisoned, pranced in the open court of Casa Grande, or pawed the
+ground by neighbouring trees. Caballeros, in their rich native costumes,
+were sauntering about, smoking cigaritos. On the corridors of the great
+and lesser houses were the women, brilliantly dressed, their heads
+draped with the reboso or mantilla, manipulating the inevitable fan.
+
+Indians in bright calico garments stood on the beach, awaiting the
+luggage of the guests. Between them and the houses was a large booth,
+defiantly flaunting the colours of Mexico. Far to the left was a rude
+street, flanked on either side by a row of cheap wooden houses, the ugly
+beginning of an American town.
+
+"It is all like a scene out of a picture-book," said Thorpe. "Can San
+Francisco--awful San Francisco!--be in the same territory? It looks like
+Arcadia."
+
+"Si, is pretty," said Mrs. Polk, with a pensive sigh. "But no all the
+same like before, senor. Not the same spirit, for all know that their
+country is gone for ever, and that by and by the Americanos live in all
+the towns, so that the Spanish towns will be no more--and in a few
+years. But they like to meet and try to think is the same, and forget."
+
+The passengers were landed in boats. The young heir, a tall lad with a
+handsome indolent face, and a half-dozen of his guests, came down to
+the shore to welcome the newcomers.
+
+"Very good look, that boy," said Dona Eustaquia. "I not have seen him
+for some years, so uncomfortable this treep. But he have the face weak,
+like the father. Never I like Reinaldo Iturbi y Moncada; but I wish he
+not have been kill by Diego Estenega. Then, how different is
+California!"
+
+As the boat touched the sands young Reinaldo came forward with a
+charming grace to help the ladies to land, and was kissed by each, with
+effusion. Indeed, there was so much kissing, and such an immediate high
+shrill chattering, such a profusion of "_queridas_," and "_mijitas_,"
+and "_mi amigas_," that Thorpe, after exchanging a few words with his
+host, made haste to the house.
+
+Dona Prudencia, clad in the richest of black satins, with a train a yard
+long and a comb six inches high, came forward to the edge of the
+corridor to greet him. She looked very pretty and plump and
+consequential.
+
+"So good you are to come, Senor Torp," she said softly, giving him her
+little hand with a gesture which drew down his lips at once.
+
+"I shall never forget how good you have been to ask me," he said,
+enthusiastically. "This picture alone was worth coming to California
+for."
+
+"Ay! You shall see more than theese, Senor Torp. It ees an honour to
+receive you in the _casa_ of the Iturbi y Moncadas. It ees yours, senor,
+burn it if you will. Command my servants like they are your own."
+
+Thorpe, by this time, knew something of the peculiar phrasing of native
+Californian hospitality, and merely bowed and murmured acknowledgments.
+
+The other guests came up at the moment, and there was another Spanish
+chorus, an agitated wave along the three-sided corridor. Thorpe glanced
+curiously about him. The black-eyed women were undulating and coquetting
+for the benefit of the new men, while throwing kisses and rapturous
+exclamations to Dona Eustaquia and the girls in her charge. Thorpe
+looked over more than one big fan. Suddenly his attention was attracted
+by a woman on the opposite corridor. She had risen, and was looking
+intently at Dona Eustaquia, who as yet had not glanced across the court.
+She was a very beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman Thorpe had
+seen in California, and her face was vaguely familiar. She looked very
+Spanish, but her hair was gold and her eyes were as green as the spring
+foliage. Then there was a sharp feminine shriek behind him; he was
+thrust aside, and Dona Eustaquia ran past him, crying, "Chonita!
+Chonita!" The beautiful stranger met her half way, and they embraced
+and kissed each other on either cheek some fifteen times.
+
+"Que! Que! Que!" the women of his party were exclaiming, and then
+followed a deluge of words of which he could separate only "Chonita
+Estenega." They, in turn, ran forward, and were received with a manner
+so polished that it was almost cold. Thorpe had recognised her. He had
+met her at a court ball in Austria, where, as the wife of the Mexican
+minister, she had been the most admired woman in the palace.
+
+"Is Don Diego Estenega here?" he asked Prudencia. "I met him a number of
+times in Vienna, and should like to meet him again."
+
+Prudencia drew up her small important person with an expression of
+conscious virtue that did not confine itself to her face, but made her
+very gown swell and rustle.
+
+"Si!" she said. "He ees here--for the firs' time in mos' twenty years,
+senor. You never hear? He killing my husban'. But I forgive him because
+ees in the fight and no can help. Reinaldo attack, and Diego mus'
+defend, of course. Still, he _kill_ him, and I am the wife. But bime by
+I forgive, for that ees my religion. And I love Chonita. So she come to
+the old house, the firs' time in so many years, for the birfday de my
+son. Diego is horseback now, but come back soon. You no like go to your
+room? So dirt that treep, no? Reinaldo!" Her son came forward at once.
+"Show the Senor Torp to his room, no? and the other gentlemens."
+
+Thorpe followed young Iturbi y Moncada down the corridor and into a
+small room. The floor was bare, the furniture prison-like; but he had
+heard of the simplicity of the adobe mansions of Californian grandees.
+
+Reinaldo jerked open the upper drawer of the bureau, disclosing several
+rows of large goldpieces.
+
+"At your service, senor," he said with a bow. "I beg that you will use
+it all."
+
+Thorpe reddened to his hair. He hardly knew whether to be angry or not.
+Did these haughty grandees take him for a pauper? However, he merely
+bowed and thanked the youth somewhat drily, and at the same moment
+Captain Brotherton entered the room.
+
+"The hospitality of the Californian!" he cried, taking in the situation
+at a glance. "Reinaldo, I see the new generation has forgotten nothing,
+despite the Americans."
+
+"No, senor," said the young man, proudly. "What ours is, is our guests.
+That is right always, no? But perhaps the gentleman no like, perhaps he
+no have the custom in his country."
+
+"We have not, I regret to say, Don Reinaldo. We are a tight-fisted
+practical race. But I can the more deeply appreciate your hospitality;
+and, believe me, I do appreciate it."
+
+"And you will use it--all, senor?"
+
+Thorpe hesitated the fraction of a moment, then replied with some
+difficulty, "Certainly, senor. I will use it with the greatest
+pleasure."
+
+"Many thanks, senor. _Hasta luego!_" And he left the room.
+
+"What an extraordinary custom!" exclaimed Thorpe. "I can't use that
+man's money."
+
+"Oh, you must! He'd be terribly cut up if you did not--think you flouted
+him."
+
+"Well, I'll gamble with him, and let him win it back. I suppose he
+gambles."
+
+"Rather. Before he is forty the Americans will have had his last acre,
+and he inherits four hundred thousand. They have not even the soil in
+which to plant a business instinct, these Californians. I am glad you
+have come in time. They are worth seeing, and their like will never be
+seen again."
+
+"I should think they were worth seeing. What did Dona Prudencia mean by
+saying that Diego Estenega killed her husband?"
+
+"There was a fight to the death between them, and it was one or the
+other. Chonita, to the surprise of everybody, and to the horror of
+some--including the clergy--married Estenega at once, and went with him
+to Mexico. The old gentleman was in a towering rage, but forgave them
+later and visited them several times. He had large sums of money
+invested in Mexico which he left to Chonita. His Californian estates he
+left to young Reinaldo, whom he idolised. Estenega had had great hopes
+and plans in connection with this country which were dashed by Iturbi y
+Moncada's death. However, it was as well, for he is now one of the
+wealthiest and most powerful men in the Mexican government, and has been
+ambassador or minister abroad several times. But my wife will tell you
+the whole story when you come to visit us. Perhaps she will read it to
+you, for she has made a novel out of it, which may or may not be
+published after the death of all concerned. Here is your trunk. I'll
+leave you to clean up."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Thorpe dressed for dinner, pocketed a roll of the gold with a wry face,
+and went to the _sala_, a long room opening on the middle corridor.
+Prudencia, in a red-satin gown, so thick that it stood out about her as
+if hooped, and flashing jewels on a great deal of white skin, her hair
+piled high and surmounted with a diamond comb, sat in the middle of the
+room talking volubly to her sister-in-law, who stood by the mantel
+looking sadly about her. Chonita had lost little of her beauty. She had
+had but two children; and vanity had kept the lines of her figure, the
+gliding grace of her walk, unchanged. She had known, during the twenty
+years of her married life, the great joys and the great disappointments,
+the exaltation and the terrified recognition of mortal weakness and
+limitations, inseparable to two such natures. But, on the whole, she was
+happy, and she and her husband were very nearly one.
+
+"No, no, my Chonita!" Prudencia was exclaiming in her own tongue. "Why
+shouldst thou be sad? It is nearly twenty years; one cannot remember so
+long. Thou hast thine own house, far more elegant than this, I am told:
+why shouldst thou feel sad to come back? Thou art wealthy, and hast a
+devoted husband,--_ay de mi_, my Reinaldo! (but I could have had
+others),--and art as beautiful as ever, although I do not agree with
+some that thou hast not grown a day older. Thou hast the expression of
+years, if not its lines and grey hairs. I need not have grown stout; but
+I have no vanity, and walking is such trouble, and I love _dulces_.
+Besides, we do not carry our flesh into the next world; so Reinaldo, who
+hated fat women--Ay, Senor Torp, pardon me, no? I not did see you. I
+wish mooch to present you to my sister-in-law--Dona Chonita Iturbi y
+Moncada de Estenega, Senor Torp of Eengland, _mijita_."
+
+Chonita came forward and held out her hand, smiling. "I remember meeting
+you in Austria," she said. "It was so warm that night in the palace, I
+remember, it made me talk of California to you. My husband is very glad
+to think that he shall meet you again."
+
+"I am glad you come to cheer her up, Senor Torp," said Prudencia. "She
+feel blue because coming to the old house once more."
+
+Thorpe looked at Chonita with the quick sympathy of the Englishman for
+terra ego, and Chonita flashed her acknowledgment. "Yes, I am a little
+sad," she said; "not only because it is the first time in so many years,
+but because it is probably for the last time in my life. My husband does
+not care for California. Here he is."
+
+Estenega entered with several other men, and, recognising Thorpe at
+once, greeted him with a warmth that was more cosmopolitan than
+Californian, but none the less sincere. He showed the wear and tear of
+years. Ambitions, scheming, hard work had left their furrows, and the
+grey was in his hair. But his nervous vitality was undiminished, and
+his air of command even more pronounced than in the old days. He
+carried Thorpe off to discuss the growing complications between the
+North and South; and the conversation was resumed after dinner,
+despite the attractions of the _sala_; for news of the great world came
+infrequently to California, and the stranger who had recently lived in
+the midst of affairs was a welcome acquisition. Thorpe spent the greater
+part of the night in the billiard-room with Reinaldo, and got rid of his
+gold.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+At sunrise he was awakened by the booming of cannon and the ringing of
+bells. He sprang out of bed, thinking that the United States was firing
+on the Mexican flag, then remembered that it was the birthday of the
+young heir, and turned in again.
+
+Two hours later, he was shaken out of his morning nap by Estenega.
+
+"How would you like a dip before breakfast? They are all up at mass,
+and Brotherton and I are going down to a very good cove I know of."
+
+"Get out, and I'll be with you in ten minutes."
+
+Santa Barbara looked like a necropolis when he emerged. Every soul in
+the town, with the exception of himself, Estenega, Brotherton, and the
+servants preparing the birthday breakfast, was on his knees in the
+Mission mumbling aves for young Reinaldo. The three men walked down to
+the bright-blue channel motionless under a bright-blue sky. The air was
+warm; the waves were warm; the fruit was ripening on the walls. The
+poppies were opening their deep yellow lips, breathing forth the languor
+of the land. The palms were tall and green. The spiked cactus had burst
+into blood-red flower.
+
+"This is not America," said Thorpe. "It is Italy or Spain or Greece. It
+is another atmosphere, physical as well as mental. One could lie on the
+sands all day and think of nothing."
+
+"California has a physical quality which the Americans and all the
+other races that will eventually pour into her can never change," said
+Estenega. "She will never cease to protest that she was made for love
+and wine and to enfold with content in the mere fact of existence, to
+delight the eye, the soul, and the body, to inspire poetry and romance,
+and that the introduction of the commercial element is an indignity. I
+used to think differently when California and my own ambitions seemed
+identical; but San Francisco gave me a nightmare."
+
+"On the ranches it is much the same as ever," said Captain Brotherton,
+"and will remain so long beyond our time. You will return with us, Mr.
+Thorpe? Estenega and Chonita go too."
+
+And Thorpe gratefully accepted.
+
+As they returned, they saw the great company streaming down from the
+Mission, a mass of colour. Few were on foot. No Californian walked a
+mile, if he had a horse to ride.
+
+Thorpe hastened to his room to make his morning toilet. When he left it,
+the court and corridors were crowded with the brilliantly plumaged men
+and women. Reinaldo, in blue silk, was strutting about among the girls,
+as proud and happy as a girl dressed for her first party. There was no
+question in his mind who was the most important young man in California
+that morning. He was the head and front of California's wealthiest
+and haughtiest family, the scion of the only aristocracy that great
+territory would ever know. The Americans he regarded as a mere
+incident,--a brusque unpolished breed whose existence he rarely
+recalled. The Jews, up in the town, he considered with more favour; his
+fond mamma was inclined to be close-fisted with growing sons.
+
+The tables had been set about the three corridors, as not only the
+neighbours were bidden to the breakfast, but many from distant ranchos.
+The poor were fed in the open beyond, on pigs roasted whole, and many
+dulces. The Presidio band played the patriotic and sentimental airs of
+Mexico.
+
+Thorpe sat between Prudencia (who appeared to have marked him for her
+own) and Dona Eustaquia. Chonita was opposite, between two of her old
+admirers.
+
+"It is the same, yet not the same--like the old time," said Dona
+Eustaquia, with a sigh.
+
+"It is not the same at all," said Chonita. "It is a theatre, and we are
+performing--for Mr. Thorpe's benefit."
+
+"No is theatre at all," said Prudencia, disapprovingly. "All is
+exactamente the same. Few years older, no more; but no one detail
+differente. And next year the same, and every year,--one, two, three
+hundred years what coming."
+
+Chonita shrugged her shoulders, and did not condescend to answer,
+although every Californian within earshot, except Dona Eustaquia,
+assured her that Prudencia was right.
+
+To Thorpe, who had no fond reminiscences, it all seemed natural
+and surpassingly picturesque. The highly seasoned dishes held hot
+controversy with his English stomach; and he found it hard to catch the
+meaning of the pretty broken-English wafted to him from prettier lips;
+but he was deeply thankful that for the moment his personal life could
+have no voice in so incongruous a setting.
+
+After breakfast, the party went at once to a large arena near the
+pleasure-grounds of Casa Grande, and sat upon the raised seats about the
+ring, while Reinaldo and other young caballeros exhibited their skill
+and prowess against the pugnacious bull.
+
+After siesta the people danced their national jigs in the court of Casa
+Grande, while the men and women of the aristocracy lounged over the
+railing of the corridors and encouraged them with handfuls of silver
+coins.
+
+Thorpe, Estenega, and Captain Brotherton, in the ugly garb of a wider
+civilisation, stood apart.
+
+"They are an anachronism," said the Englishman, "and will never be able
+to hold their own, namely, their vast possessions, against the
+sharp-witted American."
+
+"Not ten years," said Estenega. "The sharpers are crouching like
+buzzards on the edge of every town. Up there in the village they have
+wares to tempt the Californians,--fashions and ornaments that cannot be
+bought otherwise without a trip to San Francisco. As there is little
+ready money, the Californians--who make their purchases by the
+wholesale, and would disdain to buy less than a 'piece' of silk or
+satin--mortgage small ranchos at an incredible rate of interest, against
+the next hide yield. Then the squatters have come, imperturbable and
+patient, knowing that when their case is tried, it will be before an
+American judge. When my father-in-law asked me whether I would prefer at
+his death his Mexican investments or half of his Californian leagues, I
+chose the former unhesitatingly: although he reckoned his landed estates
+at twice the value of the other. But I had no wish to come back here to
+live, and could trust no one else to look after my interests. Eustaquia
+is all right, for she has Brotherton. I notice the Californian women are
+marrying Americans wherever they can."
+
+"And the matches are rather successful," said Brotherton, laughing.
+"Unfortunately, the American girls won't marry Californians, or the
+problem would be easily solved."
+
+The day finished with a dance in the sala; and later, in Reinaldo's
+room, Thorpe lost the last of his host's gold and a roll of his own. The
+game was monte, and the young Californians grew so excited that Thorpe
+momentarily expected to see the flash of knives. They shouted and swore;
+and Reinaldo even wept with rage, and vowed that Thorpe was his only
+friend on earth. However, the night ended peacefully. When the young
+men had become so laden with mescal that they could no longer see their
+cards, they embraced affectionately and went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The next day there were races, and in the evening another dance, on the
+day following a _rodeo_ and _merienda_.
+
+"How long do they keep this thing up without breaking down?" asked
+Thorpe, on the evening of the sixth day, and after another race where
+the women had screamed themselves hoarse, and one man had stabbed
+another. All were now fraternal and enthusiastic in a _cascarone_
+frolic.
+
+"They are made of elastic, as far as pleasure is concerned," replied
+Estenega. "If they had to work six hours out of twenty-four, they would
+be haggard, and weak in the knees."
+
+Thorpe entered the sala. The furniture, with the exception of the
+tables, had been removed; and men and women, with the abandon of
+children, were breaking eggshells, filled with cologne, tinsel, and
+flour, on the back of each other's heads. Black hair was flowing to the
+floor; white teeth were set behind arch tense lips; black eyes were
+snapping; nostrils were dilating. Even Dona Eustaquia and Chonita had
+joined in the romp. Prudencia, alone, ever mindful of her dignity,
+stood in a corner, the back of her head protected by the wall. She
+raised her fan to Thorpe, and he made his way to her under a shower of
+_cascarones_. The cologne ran down his neck, and made a paste of flour
+and tinsel on his head.
+
+"Ay, senor!" exclaimed the chatelaine of Casa Grande, as he bowed before
+her. "No is unbecome at all. How you like the way we make the fun?"
+
+Thorpe assured her that life was unmitigated amusement for the first
+time.
+
+"No? You no laughing at us, senor?"
+
+"It has been my good fortune to laugh with you for six days."
+
+"Si: I theenk you like. I watching you." Prudencia gave her head a
+coquettish toss. She was still a very pretty woman, despite her flesh.
+
+"Oh, now you flatter me awfully. Why should you watch your most
+insignificant guest?"
+
+"You no are the more--how you call him?--eens--_bueno! no importa_. You
+are the more honour guest I have. Si you like California, Senor Torp,
+why you no living here?"
+
+"Oh--I--" He had heard that question before, in different circumstances.
+He was standing with his back to the wall. The brilliant picture before
+him became the mise-en-scene of an opera, the babble of voices its
+chorus. To his reversed vision, it crowded backward and cohered. And
+upon its shifting front, upon the wall of light and laughter and beauty,
+was projected the tragic figure of Nina Randolph.
+
+Thorpe felt that his dark face was visibly paling. A small angry fist
+seemed to strike his heart, and all his being ached with sudden pity and
+longing.
+
+A soft hand brushed his. He turned with a start and looked down into the
+coquettish eyes of his hostess. He noted mechanically that she had a
+very determined mouth, and that her colour was higher than usual.
+
+"I beg pardon?" he stammered.
+
+"Why you no stay here?" whispered Prudencia.
+
+"Well, I may, you know; my plans are very unsettled."
+
+"You ever been marry, senor?"
+
+"No, senora."
+
+"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 God, what
+a travesty!" and he laughed aloud.
+
+He passed 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 hell, the
+antithesis 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 passed. 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 circumstances 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 passed 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
+embarrassment; 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 balls; then took the stage which
+passed 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 passengers, 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 mass of trees on rising ground. "Evenin'. I wish I wuz you."
+
+The hotel seemed principally 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 pronounce 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
+coarse 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 butter 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 assaults 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
+ass, 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 unobserved. 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 coarse 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 destitute 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 glass. 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 glass."
+
+"I am sitting here to test my strength. I shall not touch it."
+
+Mrs. Randolph laughed, coarsely 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 glass 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 glass
+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, snatched 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.
+
+Mrs. Randolph, cursing, returned to the table and consoled herself with
+a brimming glass. Outside, the man's imagination played him an ugly
+trick. A picture flashed upon it, vivid as one snatched from the dark by
+the blaze of lightning. A struggling distorted foaming thing was on the
+floor, held down by the strong arms of two men, and the face of the
+thing was not the face of Mrs. Randolph. She stood apart, looking down
+upon her perfected work with a low continuous ripple of contented
+laughter. The vision passed. Thorpe leaped from the verandah and
+wandered aimlessly about the grounds. He cursed audibly and repeatedly,
+not caring whether he might be overheard or not. He felt as if every
+nerve in his body were a separate devil. He hated the thought of the
+next day's sunlight, and wondered if it would shine on a murderer or a
+suicide; he felt capable of crime of the blackest variety.
+
+Fascinated, he returned to the verandah. Mrs. Randolph had fallen
+forward on the table. The man Cochrane entered and took her by the
+shoulders. She flung out her arm and struck him.
+
+"Give oop! Give oop!" she muttered. But he jerked her backward, and half
+dragged, half carried her from the room. Mrs. Reinhardt staggered after,
+slamming the door behind her. Then Nina rose and came forward, and
+leaned her finger-tips heavily on the table.
+
+"Come in," she said; and Thorpe entered.
+
+They faced each other in silence. For a moment Thorpe was conscious only
+of the change in her. Her cheeks were sunken and without colour; her
+eyes patched about with black. The features were so controlled that they
+were almost expressionless.
+
+"Sit down," she said. "I will tell you the story."
+
+He took the chair Mrs. Reinhardt had occupied, Nina her mother's. She
+pressed her knuckles against her cheeks, and began speaking rapidly, but
+without excitement.
+
+"My father's home in Yorkshire was near the town of Keighley, which is a
+few miles from Haworth, the village where the Brontes lived. He and
+Branwell Bronte were great friends, and used to meet at the Lord Rodney
+Inn in Keighley, as Haworth is an almost inaccessible place. They were
+both very brilliant young men; and many other young men used to drop in
+on Saturday evenings to hear them talk politics. Of course the night
+ended in a bout, which usually lasted over Sunday. My mother was
+bar-maid at that inn. She made up her mind to marry my father. It is
+said that at that time she was handsome. She had an insatiable thirst
+for liquor, but was clever enough to keep my father from suspecting it.
+Once my father--who cared little for drink, beyond the conviviality of
+it--and Bronte went on a prolonged spree, the result of a bet. When he
+came to himself, he found that he had married her before the registrar.
+He belonged to one of the oldest families in the county. He had married
+a woman who could neither read nor write, and who talked at all times as
+she does now when she is drunk. Nevertheless, he determined to stand by
+her, because he thought he deserved his fate, and because he thought she
+loved him. But he left the country. To introduce her to his people and
+friends was more than he was equal to. To bury himself with her on his
+estate, denying himself all society but hers, was equally unthinkable,
+to say nothing of the fact that he was ashamed to introduce her to the
+servants. He wished to go away and be forgotten, begin life over in a
+new land where social conditions were as the builders made them. He came
+to California. She was furious. She had married him for the position she
+had fancied such a marriage would give her: she wanted to be a lady. Her
+mind was somewhat diverted by travel, and she kept her peace until she
+reached San Francisco--Yerba Buena, it was called then. It was a tiny
+place: a few adobe houses about the plaza, and a warehouse or two at the
+docks. Then there was a frightful scene between the two. My father
+learned why she had married him, and that she had instigated the wager
+which led to the spree which enabled her to accomplish her purpose. She
+ordered him to take her back to England at once, threatening to punish
+him if he did not. He refused, and she went on a prolonged drinking
+bout. This was shortly before my birth. They were the guests of Mr.
+Leese, a German who had married a native Californian and settled in the
+country. These people were very kind; but it was horribly mortifying for
+my father. He built her a house as quickly as possible, in order to hide
+her in it. I forgot to say that he had brought over Cochrane, who took
+charge of his household affairs. At the end of a year there was another
+scene, in which my father made her understand that he would never return
+to England; and that, were it not for me, he would turn her out of the
+house and let her go to the devil as fast as she liked. It was the
+mistake of his life that he did not, both for himself and for me. He
+should have taken or sent me back to England, and left her with a
+subsistence in the new country. But he is a very proud man. He feared
+that she would follow him home, and publish the story. There is no
+getting away from a woman like that.
+
+"She was forced to accept the position; but she hated him mortally, and
+no less than he hated her. She had threatened again to make him rue his
+refusal to return to England, but refused to explain her meaning. This
+is what she did. He idolised me. She put whisky in my baby food until I
+would not drink or eat anything that was not flavoured with it. She was
+very cunning: she habituated my system to it gradually, so that it never
+upset me. She also gave it to me for every ailment. My father suspected
+nothing. There were depths of depravity that neither his imagination nor
+his observation plumbed. When I was about thirteen, he left us in
+charge of Cochrane--who had more influence over my mother than any
+one--and went off to the Crimean war, rejoining his old regiment. The
+necessity to get away from her for a time overrode his paternal
+instinct--everything. Moreover, he wanted to fight somebody. He
+distinguished himself. Just after his return, he discovered what my
+mother had made of me. His rage was awful; he beat her like a navvy. For
+once she was cowed. I went off my head altogether. When I came to, he
+was crouching in a corner as if some one had flung him there, sobbing
+and gasping. It was awful--awful! Then he sent me to the Hathaways to
+study with the girls. They knew, and promised to keep me away from her,
+and to see that I had nothing to drink. My mother sent me a bottle of
+whisky every week in my clean clothes. I did not tell him, for I wanted
+it. He found that out, too, and then debated whether he had not better
+send me away from the country. But he knew that the cry was in my blood,
+and that if I went to his people in England the chances were I would
+disgrace him. Then he made his second mistake: he did not throw her
+out. He ordered her to go, and she laughed in his face and asked him how
+he would like to read every morning in the _Golden Era_ that James
+Randolph's wife had spent the night in the calaboose. Now, only two or
+three people besides the Hathaways and Shropshires even suspected it, so
+carefully had Cochrane watched her.
+
+"He sent me to boarding-school. She kept me in money, and I got what I
+wanted, although my father's pride was in me, and I never took enough to
+betray my secret. It was not until I had finished school that I really
+gave way to the appetite. My father, closely as he watched me, did not
+suspect for a long time. He was very busy,--he threw himself heart and
+soul into the development of the city,--and when the appetite mastered
+me, I either feigned illness or went to the country. At last he found it
+out. There have been many bitter hours in my life, but that was
+incomparably the bitterest. I had always loved him devotedly. When he
+went down on his knees and begged me to stop, of course I swore that I
+would. I kept my promise for six months, she doing all she could to
+entice me the while. Then I yielded. After that, after another interview
+with my father, I restrained the intolerable craving for another six
+months. Then it went on irregularly. I don't know that I began to think
+much, to look into the future, until about a year ago--it was when I
+first saw her as you saw her that night. Then I aged suddenly. My moral
+sense awakened, my sense of personal responsibility. I loathed myself.
+I looked upon what I had become with horror. I struggled fiercely,--but
+with indifferent success,--although, I must add, there were weeks at a
+time when I never thought of it; for I have the _joie de vivre_, and
+there are many distractions in society. Then you came. For a time I
+was happy and excited, and the thing was in abeyance. I touched
+nothing: that was my only chance. I fought it under,--after that first
+night,--and the desire did not come again until I drank the mescal at
+Don Tiburcio's _merienda_. But I had known that it would come back
+sooner or later, and was determined not to marry you, nor to let myself
+fall seriously in love with you. But after that first night out on
+the strawberry patches I knew that I loved you, and, as I am not a
+light-minded person, irrevocably. But I made up my mind to enjoy that
+week, and look no farther. You know the rest. What I have suffered
+since perhaps you can divine, if you love me. If you don't, it doesn't
+matter." Her monotonous calm left her suddenly. She brought her fist
+down on the table. "This room is full of the smell of it!" she cried.
+"And I want it! I want it!"
+
+She pushed back her chair. "Come," she said, "let us go outside."
+
+She ran out to the verandah. He followed, and she grasped his arm. "Let
+us go for a ride," she said. "I shall go off my head, if I keep still
+another moment. I want motion. Are you tired?"
+
+"No, I am not tired."
+
+She led the way to the stables. The men in charge had gone to bed. She
+and Thorpe saddled two strong mustangs, rode rapidly down the avenue
+and out into the high road. For some time they followed the stage-route,
+then struck into a side road leading to the mountains. Nina did not
+speak, nor did Thorpe. He was thankful for the respite. Once he touched
+his cheek mechanically, wondering if it had fallen into wrinkles.
+
+They rode at a break-neck pace. The night had become very dark: a great
+ocean of fog had swept in from the Pacific, blotting out mountains and
+stars. The mustangs moderated their pace as they began to ascend the
+foot-hills. The long rush through the valley had quickened Thorpe's
+blood without calming his brain. He did not speak. There seemed to be
+a thousand words struggling in his brain, but they would not combine
+properly. He could have cursed them free, but although he was too bitter
+and excited to have tenderness or pity for the woman beside him, he
+considered her in a half blind way; she was the one woman on earth who
+had ever sent him utterly beside himself. They ascended, two black spots
+of shifting outline in the fog, for an hour or more. Neither below nor
+above could an object be seen, not a sound came to them. It was unreal,
+and ghostly, and portentous. Then, almost abruptly, they emerged, the
+mustangs trotting on to the flat summit of a hill. Nina sprang to the
+ground.
+
+"Tie the horses," she said; and Thorpe led them to a tree some yards
+away.
+
+Nina stood with her back to him, her hands hanging listlessly at her
+sides, looking downward. Thorpe, after he had tethered the horses,
+paused also.
+
+The world below was gone. In its place was a vast ocean of frothy
+milk-white fog. On each side, melting into the horizon in front, until
+it washed the slopes of the Contra Costa range, lay this illimitable
+ocean pillowed lightly on sleeping millions. Now calm and peaceful, now
+distorted in frozen wrath, it was so shadowy, so unreal, that a puff of
+wind might have blown it to the stars. Out of it rose the hill-tops,
+bare weather-beaten islands. Against them the sea had hurled itself,
+then clung, powerless to retreat. Upon some it had cast its spray half
+way to the crest, over others it rushed in mighty motionless torrents;
+here and there it but half concealed the jagged points of ugly rocks.
+Beating against solitary reefs were huge, still, angry breakers,
+sounding no roar. A terrible death-arrested storm was there in
+mid-ocean,--a storm which appalled by its very silent wrath. On one of
+the highest and barest of the crags an old building looked, in that
+sunless light, like a castle in ruin. Above, the cold blue sky was
+thickly set with shivering stars. The grinning moon hung low.
+
+There was not a sound; not a living creature was awake but themselves.
+They might have been in the shadowy hereafter, with all space about
+them; in the twilight of eternity. Where they rested, the air was clear
+as a polar noon; not a stray wreath of that idle froth floated about
+them.
+
+"I came here," said Nina, turning to Thorpe, "because I knew it would be
+like this. It will be easier to hear what you think of me, than it would
+have been down there."
+
+He brought his hands down on her shoulders, gripping them as if
+possessed of the instinct to hurt.
+
+"Once or twice I could have killed you as you spoke," he said. "I shall
+marry you and cure you, or go to hell with you. As I feel now, it does
+not matter much which."
+
+And then he caught her in his arms and kissed her, with the desire which
+was consuming him.
+
+"But even you cannot conquer me," she said to him an hour later. "I
+shall not marry you until I have conquered myself. I believe now that I
+can. I got your letter. I very nearly knew that you would say what you
+have done, after I told you the truth. I won't marry you, knowing that,
+in spite of your love, which I do not doubt, at the bottom of your
+intelligence, you despise me. I have always felt that if I could make
+a year's successful fight, I should never fall again. There may be
+no reason for this belief; but we are more or less controlled by
+imagination. There is no doubt in my mind on this point. If I win
+alone, you will respect me again, and love me better."
+
+"I do not despise you. I hardly know what I felt for you five weeks ago.
+But I have only sympathy for you now--and love! You must let me do the
+fighting. It will knit us the more closely--"
+
+"It would wear me out, kill me, knowing that you were watching my
+struggles, no matter how lovingly. Besides, I know myself; my moods are
+unbearable at such times. I cannot control my temper. Before the year
+was over, we should have bickered our love into ruins. We could not
+begin over again. If you will do as I wish, I believe we can be happy.
+It is not long to wait--we are both young. Cannot you see that I am
+right?"
+
+"I don't want to leave you, not for a day again!"
+
+"And I don't want you to go! But I know that it is our only chance. If
+you marry me now, you will hate me before the year is over; and, what is
+worse, I shall hate you. The steamer sails to-morrow. Will you go?"
+
+He hesitated, and argued, a long while; but finally he said: "I will
+go."
+
+"Don't go all the way back to England. I should like to think you were
+in America; that would help me."
+
+"I will stay in New Orleans, and write by every steamer."
+
+"Oh, do, do! And if I do not write as regularly, you will understand.
+There will be times when I simply cannot write. But promise that, no
+matter what you hear, you will not lose faith in me."
+
+"I promise." Involuntarily his mouth curled into a grin. The ghosts of a
+respectable company of extorted promises capered across his brain, as
+small irreverent ghosts have a habit of doing in great moments. But his
+mouth was close upon hers, and she did not see it.
+
+An hour later she pointed outward. Far away, above the Eastern
+mountains, was a line of flame. The sun rose slowly. It smiled down upon
+the phantom ocean and flung bubbles of a thousand hues to the very feet
+of the mortals on the heights.
+
+Then slowly, softly, the ocean moved. It quivered as if a mighty hand
+struck it from its foundations, swayed, rose, fled back to the sea that
+had given it birth.
+
+A moment more and the world was visible again, awake, and awaiting them.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Mr. Randolph owned a large ranch in Lake County which was managed by an
+agent. A mile distant from the farm-house in which the agent lived with
+the "hands" was a cottage, built several years since at Nina's request.
+As Lake County was then difficult of access, Mr. Randolph seldom visited
+his ranch, his wife never; but once a year Nina took a party of girl
+friends to the cottage, usually in mid-summer. This year she went alone.
+Immediately after Thorpe's departure she told her father of the
+conditional engagement into which she had entered.
+
+"And I wish to spend this year alone," she added. "Not only because I
+want to get away from my mother, but because I believe that nothing will
+help me more than entire change of associations. And solitude has no
+terrors for me. I simply cannot go on in the old routine. I am bored to
+death with the meaninglessness of it. That has come suddenly: probably
+because I have come to want so much more."
+
+"But wouldn't you rather travel, Nina?" Mr. Randolph was deeply anxious;
+he hardly knew whether to approve her plan or not. A year's solitude
+would drive him to madness.
+
+"No, I want to live with myself. If I rushed from one distraction to
+another I should not feel sure of myself at the end. I have thought and
+thought; and, besides, I want to see and live Europe with Dudley Thorpe
+alone. I feel positive that my plan is the right one. Only keep my
+mother away."
+
+"I will tell her plainly that if she follows you, I'll shut her up in
+the Home of the Inebriates; and this time I'll keep my word. What excuse
+shall you give people?"
+
+"You can tell them of my engagement, and say that as we have agreed it
+shall last a year, I have my own reasons for spending the interval by
+myself. Their comments mean nothing to me."
+
+"Shall you see no one?"
+
+"Molly will come occasionally, and you,--no one else. I shall fish and
+hunt and sail and ride and read and study music. Perhaps you will send
+me a little piano?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"I shall live out of doors mostly. I love that sort of life better than
+any; I like trees better than most people."
+
+"Very well. If you change your mind, you have only to return. I will
+send to New York for all the new books and music. Cochrane will go ahead
+and put things in order. I will also send Atkins to look after the
+horses; and he and his wife will sleep in the house and look after you
+generally. I hope to God the experiment will prove a success. I think
+you are wise not to marry until the fight is over."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The cottage was on the side of a hill over-looking one of the larger
+lakes. Beyond were other lakes, behind and in front the pine-covered
+mountains. The place was very wild; it was doubtful if civilisation
+would ever make it much less so. The cottage was dainty and comfortable.
+Nina sailed a little cat-boat during the cooler hours of the day; and
+she was a good shot. She wrote a few lines or pages every night to
+Thorpe; but it was several days before she opened a book. She roamed
+through the dark forests while it was hot, and in the evenings. She had
+for California that curious compound of hatred and adoration which it
+inspires in all highly strung people who know it well. It filled her
+with vague angry longings, inspired her at times with a fierce desire to
+flee from it, and finally; but it satisfied her soul. At times, a vast
+brooding peace seemed lying low over all the land. At others, she
+fancied she could hear mocking laughter. More than once she hung out of
+the window half the night, expecting that California would lift up her
+voice and speak, so tremendous is the personality of that strange land.
+She longed passionately for Thorpe.
+
+The weeks passed, and, to her astonishment, the poison in her blood made
+no sign. Three months, and there had not been so much as a skirmish with
+the enemy. She felt singularly well; so happy at times that she wondered
+at herself, for the year seemed very long. Thorpe wrote by every
+steamer, such letters as she had hoped and expected to get. Some of his
+vital personality seemed to emanate from them; and she chose to believe
+that it stood guard and warned off the enemy.
+
+She was swinging in her hammock on the verandah one hot afternoon, when
+a wagon lumbered to the foot of the hill, and her father and Molly
+Shropshire emerged from the cloud of dust that surrounded it. She
+tumbled out of the hammock, and ran down to meet them, her loose hair
+flying.
+
+"She looks about ten," thought Mr. Randolph, as she rushed into his
+arms; "and beautiful for the first time in her life."
+
+"We thought that you had had as much solitude as was good for you at one
+time," said Miss Shropshire, in her hard metallic voice, which, however,
+rang very true. "I am going to stay a month, whether I am wanted or
+not."
+
+"We have an addition to our family," said Mr. Randolph, as he sat
+fanning himself on the piazza. "Your cousin has arrived."
+
+"My what? What cousin?"
+
+"Your mother, it seems, has a brother. If I ever knew of his existence,
+I had forgotten it. But it seems that I have had the honour of educating
+his son and of transforming him into a sort of pseudo-gentleman."
+
+"He is not half bad, indeed," said Miss Shropshire.
+
+"He is the sort of man who inspires me with a desire to lift my boot
+every time he opens his mouth. But I must confess that his appearance is
+fairly creditable. The obsolete term 'genteel' describes him better than
+any other. He has got Yorkshire off his back, has studied hard,--he is
+a doctor with highly creditable certificates and diplomas,--and dresses
+very well. His manners are suave, entirely too suave: I felt disposed to
+warn the bank; and his hands are so soft that they give me a 'turn' as
+the old women say. He has reddish hair, a pale grey shifty eye, a snub
+nose, and a hollow laugh. There you have your cousin--Dr. Richard
+Clough, aged twenty-eight or thereabouts. In my days, he probably wore
+clogs. At present his natty little feet are irreproachably shod, and he
+makes no more noise than a cat. I feel an irrepressible desire for a
+caricature of him."
+
+Nina laughed heartily. "Poor papa! And you thought you had had the last
+of the Cloughs. I hope he is not quartered on you."
+
+"He is, but is looking about for an opening. To do him justice, I don't
+think he is a sponge. He seems to have saved something. He wanted to
+come up here and pay his _devoirs_ to you, but I evaded the honour. I
+have a personal suspicion which may, of course, be wide of the mark,
+that the object of his visit to California is more matrimonial than
+professional; if that is the case, he might cause you a great deal of
+annoyance: there is a very ugly look about his mouth."
+
+Mr. Randolph remained several days; they were very happy days for him.
+It was impossible to see Nina as she was at that period, to catch the
+overflow of her spirits, without sharing her belief in the sure
+happiness of the future.
+
+Miss Shropshire fell in easily with all of Nina's pursuits. There was
+much of Nina Randolph that she could never understand; but she was as
+faithful as a dog in her few friendships and, with her vigorous sensible
+mind, she was a companion who never bored. She was several years older
+than Nina. Their fathers had been acquaintances in the island which had
+the honour of incubating the United States.
+
+"I approve of your engagement," said Miss Shropshire, in her downright
+way. "I know if I don't you will hate me, so I have brought myself to
+the proper frame of mind. He is selfish; but he certainly grows on one,
+and no one could help respecting a man with that jaw."
+
+But Nina would not discuss Thorpe even with Molly Shropshire. When she
+felt obliged to unburden her mind, she went up and talked to the pines.
+
+The girls returned home one morning from a stiff sail on the lake to be
+greeted by the sight of a boot projecting beyond the edge of one of the
+hammocks, and the perfume of excellent tobacco.
+
+"What on earth!" exclaimed Miss Shropshire. "Have we a visitor? a man?"
+
+Nina frowned. "I suspect that it is my cousin. Papa wrote the other day
+that Richard had heard of a practice for sale in Napa, and had come up
+to look into it. I suppose it was to be expected that he would come
+here, whether he was invited or not."
+
+As the girls ascended the hill, the occupant of the hammock rose and
+flung away his cigar. He was a dapper little man, and walked down the
+steep path with a jaunty ease which so strikingly escaped vulgarity as
+to suggest the danger.
+
+"Dear Cousin Nina!" he exclaimed. "Miss Shropshire, you will tell
+her that I am Richard? Will you pardon me for taking two great
+liberties,--first, coming here, and then, taking possession of your
+hammock and smoking? The first I _couldn't_ help. The last--well, I
+have been waiting two hours."
+
+"I am glad you have made yourself at home," said Nina, perfunctorily;
+she had conceived a violent dislike for him. "Your trip must have been
+very tiresome."
+
+"It was, indeed. This California is all very well to look at, but for
+travelling comforts--my word! However, I am not regretting. I cannot
+tell you how much I have wanted--"
+
+"You must be very hungry. There is the first dinner-bell. Are you dusty?
+Would you like to clean up? Go to papa's room--that one.
+
+"Detestable man!" she said, as he disappeared. "I don't believe
+particularly in presentiments, but I felt as if my evil genius were
+bearing down upon me. And such a smirk! He looks like a little
+shop-keeper."
+
+"I think he cultivates that grin to conceal the natural expression of
+his mouth--which is by no means unlike a wolf's. But he is a harmless
+little man enough, I have no doubt. I've been hasty and mistaken too
+often; only it's a bore, having to entertain him."
+
+But Dr. Clough assumed the burdens of entertaining. He talked so
+agreeably during dinner, told Nina so much of London that she wished to
+know, betrayed such an exemplary knowledge of current literature, that
+her aversion was routed for the hour, and she impulsively invited him to
+remain a day or two. He accepted promptly, played a nimble game of
+croquet after supper, then took them for a sail on the lake. He had a
+thin well-trained tenor voice which blended fairly well with Miss
+Shropshire's metallic soprano; and the two excited the envy of the frogs
+and the night-birds. He was evidently a man quick to take a hint, for he
+treated Nina exactly as he treated Molly: he was merely a traveller in a
+strange land, delighted to find himself in the company of two charming
+women.
+
+"Upon my word," said Molly, that night, "I rather like the little man.
+He's not half bad."
+
+"I don't know," said Nina. "I'm sorry I asked him to stay. I'll be glad
+to see him go."
+
+The next day he organised a picnic, and made them sit at their ease
+while he cooked and did all the work. They spent the day in a grove of
+laurels, and sailed home in the dusk. It was on the following day that
+Nina twice caught him looking at her in a peculiarly searching manner.
+Each time she experienced a slight chill and faintness, for which she
+was at a loss to account. She reddened with anger and terror, and he
+shifted his eyes quickly. When he left, the next morning, she drew a
+long sigh of relief, then, without warning, began to sob hysterically.
+
+"There is something about that man!" she announced to the alarmed Miss
+Shropshire. "What is it? Do you suppose he is a mesmerist? He gave me
+the most dreadful feeling at times. Oh, I wish Dudley were here!"
+
+"Why don't you send for him?"
+
+"I don't know! I don't know! I wish the year were over!"
+
+"It is your own will that makes it a year. I don't see any sense in it,
+myself. I believe this climate, and being away from everything, has set
+you up. Why not send for him, and live here for some months longer? He
+is your natural protector, anyhow. What's a man good for?"
+
+"Oh, I feel as if I must! Wait till to-morrow. That man has made me
+nervous; I may feel quite placid to-morrow, and I ought to wait. It is
+only right to wait."
+
+And the next day she was herself again, and dismissed the evil spell of
+Dr. Clough with a contemptuous shrug. Nor would she send for Thorpe.
+
+"I may cut it down to eight months," she said. "But I must wait that
+long."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+A week later Miss Shropshire returned to San Francisco. Nina was not
+sorry to be alone again. She drifted back into her communion with the
+inanimate things about her, into the exaltation of spirit, impossible in
+human companionship, and lived for Thorpe's letters.
+
+One day she received a letter from Dr. Clough.
+
+     "DEAR COUSIN NINA," it ran. "I am to have the practice in Napa, but
+     not for two or three months, unfortunately, for I look forward to
+     meeting you again. Those few days with you and Miss Molly were
+     delightful to the lonely wanderer, who has never known a home."
+     ("Not since he wore clogs," thought Nina.) "Perhaps some day I
+     shall make substantial acknowledgment of my gratitude. This is a
+     world of vicissitudes, as we all know. Remember this--will you,
+     Nina?--when you need me _I am there._ There are crises in life when
+     a true friend, a relative whose interests merge with one's own, is
+     not to be despised. Don't destroy this letter. Put it by. It is
+     sincere.
+
+                    "Your faithful and obd't servant,
+                         "RICHARD CLOUGH."
+
+Nina tossed the letter impatiently on the table, then caught it up again
+and re-read the last pages.
+
+"That sounds as if it were written _avec intention_," she thought. "Can
+papa be embarrassed? But what good could this scrubby little man do me,
+if he were? Most likely it is the first gun of the siege. Thank Heaven
+the guns must be fired through the post for a while."
+
+December was come, but it was still very warm. The lake was hard and
+still and blue. The glare was merciless.
+
+Nina, followed by a servant bearing cushions, climbed wearily up the
+hill to the forest. Once or twice she paused and caught at a tree for
+support.
+
+"If I ever get into the forest, I believe I'll stay there until this
+weather is over," she thought. "It has completely demoralised me."
+
+The servant arranged the cushions in a hammock between two pines whose
+arms locked high above,--a green fragrant roof the sun could not
+penetrate. Nina made herself comfortable, and re-read Thorpe's last
+letter, received the day before. It was a very impatient letter. He
+wanted her, and life in the South was a bore after the novelty had worn
+off.
+
+She lay thinking of him, and listening to the drowsy murmur of forest
+life about her. Squirrels were chattering softly, somewhere in the
+arbours above those slender grey pillars. A confused hum rose from the
+ground; from far came the roar of a torrent. She could see the blue lake
+with its ring of white sand, the bluer sky above, and turned her back:
+the sight brought heat into those cool depths. Above her rose the dim
+green aisles, the countless columns of the forest. She was very tired
+and languid. She placed Thorpe's letter under her cheek and slept; and
+in her sleep she dreamed.
+
+She was still in the forest: every lineament of it was familiar. For a
+time there were none of the changes of dreams. Then from the base of
+every pine something lifted slowly and coiled about the tree,--something
+long and green and horridly beautiful. It lifted itself to the very
+branches, then detached itself a little and waved a foot of its upper
+length to and fro, its glittering eyes regarding her with sleepy
+malice. The squirrels had hidden in their caves; not a sound came from
+the earth; the waters had hushed their voice. Nothing moved in that
+awful silence but the languid heads of the snakes.
+
+Then came a sudden brisk step; her cousin entered. He did not notice the
+sleeper, but went to each constrictor in turn and stroked it lovingly.
+Once he caught a coil close to his breast and laughed. The small
+malignant eyes above moved to his, their expression changing to
+friendliness, albeit shot with contempt. To Nina's agonised sense the
+scene lasted for hours, during which Clough fondled the reptiles with
+increasing ardour.
+
+But at last the scene changed, and abruptly. She was on the mountain
+above the fog-ocean, close to the stars. Thorpe's arms were strong about
+her. It had seemed to her in the past five months that she had never
+really ceased to feel the strength of his embrace, to hear the loud
+beating of his heart on her own. This time he withdrew one arm and,
+thrusting his fingers among her heartstrings, pulled them gently.
+Something vibrated throughout her. She had been happy before, but that
+soft vibration filled her with a new and inexplicable gladness. She
+asked him what it meant. He murmured something she could not understand,
+and smote the chords again. Her being seemed filled with music.
+
+She awoke. The woods were dark. She tried to recall the ugly prelude to
+her dream, but it had passed. She put her hands against her shoulders,
+fancying she must encounter the arms that had held her, for their
+pressure lingered. Then she drew her brows together, and craned her neck
+with an expression of wonder. But several moments passed before she
+understood. She was very ignorant of many things, and her experience up
+to the present had been exceptional.
+
+But she was a woman, and in time she understood.
+
+Her first mental response was a wild unreasoning terror, that of the
+woman who is in sore straits, far from the man who should protect her
+and evoke the hasty sanction of the law. But the mood passed. She was
+sure of Thorpe, and she had all the arrogance of wealth. He would
+hasten at her summons, and they would live in this solitude for a year
+or more; no one beyond the necessary confidants need ever know.
+
+The maternal instinct had awakened in her dream. She folded herself
+suddenly in her own arms. Her imagination flew to the future. Every
+imaginative woman who loves the man that becomes her husband must have
+one enduring regret: that in a third or more of his life she had no
+part; he grew to manhood knowing nothing of her little share in the
+scheme of things, met her when two at least of his personalities were
+coffined in the yesterday that is the most vivid of all the memories.
+And if his child be a boy, she may fancy it the incarnation of her
+husband's lost boyhood and youth, and thus complete the circle of her
+manifold desire.
+
+And then Nina knew what had scotched the monster of heredity; she could
+see the tiny hands at its throat. She lay and marvelled until the
+servants, alarmed, came to look for her. The world took on a new and
+wonderful aspect; she was the most wonderful thing in it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+After supper she went into the sitting-room and wrote to Thorpe. As she
+finished and left the desk, her eye fell on Richard Clough's letter,
+which lay, open, on the table. The same chill horror caught her as when
+she had encountered his searching eyes on the last day of his visit, and
+she understood its meaning. He knew; there was the key to his verbiage.
+
+She dropped upon a chair, feeling faint and ill. Like many women, she
+had firm trust in her intuitions. If they had seemed baseless before,
+they rested on a firm enough foundation now. She was in this man's
+power; and the man was an adventurer and a Clough. Would he tell her
+father? Or worse--her mother! She pictured her father's grief; his rage
+against Thorpe. It would be more than she could endure. When Thorpe
+came, it would not matter so much. And if her father were not told, it
+was doubtful if he would ever suspect: he was very busy, and hated the
+trip from San Francisco to Lake County. After Thorpe's arrival, it was
+hardly likely that he would visit her.
+
+A few moments' reflection convinced her that Clough would keep her
+secret. His was the mind of subtle methods. He would make use of his
+power over her in ways beyond her imagining.
+
+Terror possessed her, and she called loudly upon Thorpe. With the sound
+of his name, her confidence returned. He would be with her in something
+under three months. Meanwhile, she could defy Clough. Later, he would
+meet more than his match.
+
+The next day she wrote to Molly Shropshire, telling her the truth and
+giving her many commissions. Miss Shropshire's reply was characteristic:
+
+    "I have bought everything, and start for the cottage on Tuesday.
+    It is fortunate that I have two married sisters; I can be of much
+    assistance to you. I have helped on several wardrobes of this sort,
+    and acquired much lore of which you appear to be painfully ignorant.
+    I am coming with my large trunk; for I shall not leave you again."
+
+The momentous subject was not broached for some hours after her arrival.
+Then--they were seated before the fire in the sitting-room, and the
+first rain of winter was pelting the roof--Miss Shropshire opened her
+mouth and spoke with vicious emphasis.
+
+"I hate men. There is not one I'd lift my finger to do a service for. My
+sisters are supposed to have good husbands. One--Fred Lester--is a
+grown-up baby, full of whims and petty vanities and blatant selfishness,
+who has to be 'managed.' Tom Manning is as surly as a bear with a sore
+head when his dinner disappoints him; and when things go wrong in the
+office there is no living in the house with him. My brother's life is
+notorious, and his wife, what with patience and tears, looks like a pan
+of skim-milk. Catch me ever marrying! Not if Adonis came down and staked
+a claim about a mountain of gold quartz. As for Dudley Thorpe!" her
+voice rose to the pitch of fury. "What is a man's love good for, if it
+can't think of the woman first? Aren't they our natural protectors?
+Aren't they supposed to think for us,--take all the responsibilities of
+life off our shoulders? This sort of thing is in keeping with the
+character, isn't it? Why don't you hate him? You ought to. _I'd_ murder
+him--"
+
+Nina plunged across the rug, and pressed both hands against Miss
+Shropshire's mouth, her eyes blazing with passion.
+
+"Don't you dare speak of him like that again! If you do, it will be the
+last time you will ever speak to me. I understand him--as well as if he
+were literally a part of myself. I'll never explain to you nor to any
+one, but _I know_. And there is nothing in me that does not respond to
+him. Now, do you understand? Will you say another word?"
+
+"Oh, very well. Don't stifle me!" Miss Shropshire released herself.
+"Have it that way, if it suits you best. I didn't come here to quarrel
+with you."
+
+Nina resumed her seat. After a few moments she said: "There is another
+thing: Richard Clough knows." And she told Miss Shropshire of his
+letter.
+
+"Um, well, I don't know but that that will be as good an arrangement as
+any. Some one must attend you, and a relative--"
+
+"What! Do you think I'd have that reptile near me?"
+
+"Now, Nina, look at the matter like a sensible woman. We shall have to
+get a doctor from Napa. If it storms, he may be days getting here. If he
+has a wife, she'll want to know where he has been, and will worm it out
+of him. If he hasn't, he'll let it out some night when he has his feet
+on the table in his favourite saloon, and is outside his eighth glass of
+punch. It will be to Richard's interest to keep the matter quiet--you
+can make it his interest: I don't fancy he's above pocketing a couple of
+thousands. And he'll not dare annoy you after Dudley Thorpe is here.
+I'll do Dudley Thorpe this much justice: he could whip most men, and he
+wouldn't stop to think about it, either. Don't let us discuss the matter
+any further now. Just turn it over in your mind. I am sure you will come
+to the conclusion that I am right. If you ignore Richard, there's no
+knowing what he may do."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The next day Miss Shropshire cut out many small garments, Nina watching
+her with ecstatic eyes. Both were expert needlewomen,--most Californian
+girls were in those days of the infrequent and inferior dressmaker,--and
+in the weeks that came they fashioned many dainty and elegant garments.
+Nina no longer went to the forest, rarely on the lake. Miss Shropshire
+could hardly persuade her to go out once a day for a walk, so enthralled
+was she by that bewildering mass of fine linen and lace. She was prouder
+of her tucks than she had ever been of a semi-circle of admirers, four
+deep; and when she had finished her first yoke she wept with delight.
+
+Miss Shropshire often watched her curiously, half-comprehending. She
+abominated babies. Her home was with one of her married sisters, and a
+new baby meant the splitting of ear-drums, the foolish prattle and
+attenuated vocabulary of the female parent, and the systematic
+irritations of the inefficient nurse-maid. Why a woman should look as if
+heaven had opened its gates because she was going to have a baby, passed
+her comprehension, particularly in the embarrassing circumstances.
+
+Nina was alone when Thorpe's next letter arrived.
+
+    "I am starting for Cuba," it began. "My brother Harold has joined
+    me; and as his chest is in a bad way, he thinks of settling in a hot
+    country. I have suggested California; but he is infatuated with the
+    idea of Cuba. You will forgive me for leaving the United States for
+    a short period, will you not, dearest? I can do you no particular
+    good by remaining here, and I am bored to extinction. If you would
+    but give me the word, I should start for California on the next
+    steamer; but as you hold me to the original compact, perhaps
+    you will give me a little latitude. The talk here is war, war,
+    war,--never a variation by any possible chance. My sympathies are
+    with the South, and if they fight I hope they'll win; but as I have
+    no personal interest in the matter I feel like a man condemned
+    to a long course of one highly seasoned dish, with no prospect of
+    variety. Address as usual; your letters will be forwarded, unless I
+    return in a few weeks, as I think I shall."
+
+Then followed several closely written pages which advised her of the
+unalterable state of his affections.
+
+Nina put the letter down, and stared before her with a wide
+introspective gaze. When Miss Shropshire entered, she handed her the
+first two pages. The older girl shut her lips.
+
+"I don't like it," she said. "It means delay, and every week is
+precious. It looks--" She paused.
+
+"Unlucky; I have been wondering. I have a queer helpless feeling, as if
+I were tangled in a net, and even Dudley, with all his love and will,
+could not get me out. I suppose there is something in fate. I feel very
+insignificant."
+
+"Come, come, you are not to get morbid. Nobody's life is a straight
+line. You must expect hard knots, and rough by-ways, and malaria, and
+all the rest of it. Don't borrow trouble. You are sure of him, anyhow."
+
+"Sometimes I hate California. One might as well be on Mars. It's
+thousands of miles from New Orleans, and New Orleans is hundreds of
+miles from Cuba. And now that everything is getting so upset, who knows
+if he'll ever get my letters? I wish I'd started straight for New
+Orleans the moment I knew. I am utterly at the mercy of circumstances."
+
+"Well, thank Heaven you're rich," said Miss Shropshire, bluntly. "Just
+fancy if you were some poor little wretch deserted by the man, and with
+no prospect but the county hospital; then you might be blue."
+
+"Oh, I suppose it might be worse!" replied Nina.
+
+The next day her buoyant spirits were risen again, and she resolved to
+accept the immediate arrangement of her destiny with philosophy; peace
+and happiness would be hers eventually. She could not violate the most
+jealous of social laws and expect all the good fairies to attend the
+birth of her child. But she longed by day for the luxury of the night,
+when she could cry, and beg Thorpe under her breath to come to her.
+
+When the next steamer arrived it brought her no letter from Thorpe. But
+this was to be expected. Another steamer arrived; it brought nothing.
+She turned very grey.
+
+"Make a close calculation," she said to Miss Shropshire. "You know how
+long it takes to go to Cuba and back. Has there been time?"
+
+"Yes, there has been time."
+
+It was the middle of February, the end of a mild and beautiful winter.
+Little rain had fallen. Nature seemed to Nina more caressing than ever.
+The sun rarely veiled his face with a passing cloud. She worked with
+feverish persistence, keeping up her spirits as best she could. There
+was a bare chance that the next steamer would bring Thorpe.
+
+Her father had paid her another visit, and gone away unsuspicious. He
+had, in fact, talked of nothing but the approaching rebellion of the
+Southern States, and the possible effect on the progress of the country.
+It was not likely that he would come again, for he had embarked on two
+new business enterprises, and he allowed himself to believe that Nina
+had passed the danger point.
+
+The third steamer arrived. It brought neither Thorpe nor a letter. Then
+Nina gave way. For twenty-four hours she wept and sobbed, paying no
+attention to expostulations and threats. Miss Shropshire was seriously
+alarmed; for the first time she fully realised the proportions of the
+responsibility she had assumed. She longed for advice. She even
+contemplated sending for Mr. Randolph; for with all her dogged strength
+of character she was but a woman, and an unmarried one. Finally she
+wrote to Clough, who had arrived in Napa a fortnight before. She could
+not bring herself to betray Nina's confidence; but Clough already knew.
+Then she went to her room, and cursed Thorpe roundly and aloud. After
+that she felt calmer, and returned to Nina.
+
+"I can't think he is dead," said Nina, abruptly, speaking coherently for
+the first time. "If he were, I should know it. I should _see_ him." Miss
+Shropshire shivered, and cast an apprehensive glance into the dark
+corners of the room. "But he is ill; that is the only explanation. You
+don't doubt him?" turning fiercely to her friend.
+
+"No; I can't say that I do. No--" with some reluctance, "decidedly not.
+He's not that sort. Like most men, he will probably cool off in time;
+but he's no weathercock, and one could hardly help believing in his
+honesty."
+
+Nina kissed her with passionate gratitude. "I couldn't stand having you
+doubt him," she said. "I never have, not for a moment; but--oh--what
+does it matter what is the reason? He hasn't come, and I haven't heard
+from him. That is enough!"
+
+"There will be one more steamer. There is just time."
+
+"He won't come. I _feel_ that everything is going wrong. One way and
+another, my life is going to ruin--"
+
+"Nonsense, you are merely overwrought and despondent--"
+
+"That is not all. And I know myself. Listen--if my baby dies, and he
+does not come, I shall go down lower than I have ever been, and I shall
+stay there. I'd never rise again, nor want to--"
+
+"Then, for Heaven's sake, don't do your best to kill it! Brace up. I
+believe that a good deal of what you say is true. Some people are strong
+for the pleasure of giving other people a chance to add to the
+platitudes of the world; but you are not that sort. So take care of
+yourself."
+
+"Very well; put me to bed. I will do what I can."
+
+She did not rise the next day, and, when Clough came, consented,
+listlessly, to see him. In this interview he made no impression on her
+whatever; he might have been an automaton. Her brain realised no man but
+the one for whom her weary heart ached.
+
+She made an effort on the following day, and embroidered, and listened
+while Miss Shropshire read aloud to her. The effort was renewed daily;
+and every hour she fought with her instinct to succumb to despair.
+Physically, she was very tired. She longed for the care and tenderness
+which would have been hers in happier circumstances.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Miss Shropshire took the precaution to ask Clough to come to the cottage
+a day or two before the next steamer was due, and to be prepared to
+remain. The steamer arrived, and with it nothing of interest to Nina
+Randolph.
+
+She was very ill. Even Clough, who was inimitable in a sick room, looked
+grey and anxious. But it passed; and the time came when the housekeeper,
+who had had many babies in her time, placed a little girl in Nina's
+arms.
+
+Nina, who had been lying with closed eyes, exhausted and wretched,
+turned her face toward the unfamiliar weight, and looked wonderingly
+into the face of the child. For a moment she hardly realised its
+significance, vivid as had been her imaginings. The baby's colour was
+fair and agreeable, and its large blue eyes moved slowly about with an
+expression of sober inquiry.
+
+Nina glanced hastily outward. She was alone for the moment. Miss
+Shropshire had gone to her well-earned rest, and Dr. Clough was in the
+dining-room, attended by Mrs. Atkins. Nina drew the baby closer, and
+kissed it. For the moment she held Dudley Thorpe in her arms,--for she
+could not grasp their separateness,--and peace returned. Thorpe was ill,
+of course; but he was hardy and young, and would recover. The rapture of
+young motherhood possessed her. She kissed the baby many times, softly,
+fearing that it might break, then drew back and gazed at it with rapt
+adoration. Once she met its wise solemn eyes, and the first soul of
+Dudley Thorpe looked from their depths. She moved it with trembling
+care, and laid its head on her breast.
+
+She gave no thought to the time when the world must know; the world no
+longer existed for her. Dudley Thorpe was her husband, and his child was
+in her arms,--an actual tangible beautiful certainty; all the rest that
+went to make up life was nebulae.
+
+It was a very good baby, and gave little trouble; consequently Nina was
+permitted to hold it most of the time. She felt no desire to rise from
+the bed, to take an active part in life again. She would have liked to
+remain there until Thorpe came and sat beside her. She spoke little,
+excepting to the child, and perhaps those hours, despite the great want,
+were the happiest of her life.
+
+"What are some women made of?" demanded Miss Shropshire of Dr. Clough.
+"What is she going to do with that baby? That's what I want to know. It
+may be months before Dudley Thorpe gets here, and it certainly won't be
+long before Mr. Randolph comes up again. I don't believe she has given a
+thought to the consequences--and I have always thought her an unusually
+bright and level-headed woman."
+
+"I see nothing to do but let matters take their course." He hesitated a
+moment, then gave Miss Shropshire a swift tentative glance, shifting his
+eyes hastily. "Would you--you believe in my disinterestedness, do you
+not, Miss Molly?"
+
+"I do, indeed. You have been a real friend. I'm sure I don't know what I
+should have done without you."
+
+"Then--if Mr. Thorpe does not return, when she has become convinced
+that he does not mean to return, will you help me to make her understand
+that I am only too willing to marry her and adopt her child?"
+
+Miss Shropshire stared, then shook her head. "You don't know Nina. It
+would be years before she got over her infatuation for Dudley Thorpe, if
+ever; and by that time everybody would know. Besides, I don't share your
+distrust of Thorpe. He is selfish, and is probably travelling beyond the
+reach of mails; but he is the soul of honour: no one could doubt that."
+
+"He may be dead."
+
+"We should have heard by this time; and it would not help you if he
+were. Most likely it would kill her."
+
+"We don't die so easily."
+
+"The thing to consider now is that baby. It's a dear little thing, and
+looks less like putty than most babies; I can actually see a resemblance
+to Thorpe. But, all the same, its presence is decidedly embarrassing."
+
+The baby solved the problem. It died when it was ten days old. Even Miss
+Shropshire, who scorned the emotions, shuddered and burst into tears at
+the awful agony in Nina's eyes. Nina did not cry, nor did she speak.
+When the child was dressed for its coffin, the housekeeper brought it to
+the bedside. Nina raised herself on her elbow, and gave it a long
+devouring glance. It looked like marble rather than wax, and its
+likeness to Dudley Thorpe was startling. The contours of infancy had
+disappeared in its brief severe illness, and the strong bold outlines of
+the man who had called it into being were reproduced in little. The dark
+hair fell over its forehead in the same way, the mouth had the same
+arch.
+
+Miss Shropshire entered the room, and Nina spoke for the first time
+since the baby had given its sharp cry of warning.
+
+"Take it up into the forest, and bury it between the two pines where my
+hammock was." And then she turned her back and stared at the wall.
+
+Shortly after, Mr. Randolph was informed that Nina had had a brief but
+severe attack of rheumatic fever, and he paid her a hurried visit. He
+wondered at the change in her, but did not suspect the truth.
+
+"She is pining for Thorpe, I suppose," he said to Miss Shropshire. "I
+cannot understand his silence; and now God knows when we'll hear from
+him, unless he managed to get North before April 19th. Something has
+happened, I am afraid. Poor child, she was not born under a lucky star!
+Is she all right otherwise?"
+
+"Yes, it looks as if she were cured. But when she goes to San Francisco,
+she had better stay with me for a time. I don't think her mother's
+society would be the best thing for her while she is so despondent."
+
+"By all means. And that detestable Clough?"
+
+"He is really a first-rate doctor, and has been devotion itself."
+
+"Very well: I shall send him a handsome cheque. But if he has any
+matrimonial designs, let him look out. Don't imagine I am blind. A man
+does not neglect a fresh practice for cousinly affection. I cannot
+suppose for a moment that she would tolerate him, but when a woman is
+listless and despondent, and thinks that all her prospects of happiness
+are over, there's no telling what she will do; particularly if the
+besieger has the tenacity of a bull dog. I'd rather see her in her
+coffin than married to Richard Clough."
+
+Miss Shropshire was very anxious to return to San Francisco. She loved
+Nina Randolph; but she had immured herself in the cause of friendship
+long enough, and thought that her afflicted friend would be quite as
+well off where distractions were more abundant. When she suggested
+return, Nina acquiesced indifferently, and Mrs. Atkins packed the trunks
+with a hearty good-will. Dr. Clough brought a hack, at great expense,
+from Napa, and packed her into it as if she were a baby. As it drove
+off, she looked through the window up to the forest where her baby lay.
+She had not been strong enough to climb to the grave. She knew that she
+should never see it.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+When Thorpe left New Orleans his plan was to return on the next steamer
+but one, then to go North to New York or Boston,--he had friends in both
+cities,--and amuse himself in new fields until he was permitted to
+return to California. He sought distraction, for although he was
+reasonably sure of Nina's power to conquer herself, and intended to
+marry her whether she did or not, separation and time deepened his
+passion for her, and he only found peace of mind in filling his hours to
+the brim. It is doubtful if he would have consented to remain the year
+out were it not that he wished to admire her as much as she longed to
+have him. Her pride and confidence in herself would invigorate the
+happiness of both.
+
+He left orders in New Orleans to have his mail held over until his
+return. Harold was very ill on the voyage. Almost immediately upon
+landing in Havana his health began to mend, and he declared himself
+ready to kiss the soil, as he could not bestow a similar mark of favour
+on the climate. He announced his intention of sending for his affianced
+and spending the rest of his life in the West Indies. Thorpe did not
+take him too seriously, but seeing that there was no prospect of getting
+away for some time, and believing that Cuba would offer himself
+entertainment for several months, he sent to New Orleans for his mail,
+and wrote to Nina announcing his present plans. Whether the letters
+never left the Havana post-office, or whether the mail sack was lost
+overboard later, or ignored in the excitement at New Orleans, no one
+will ever know. Nor does it matter; they were never received, and that
+is all that concerns this tale. Thorpe and Harold started inland
+immediately, and finally determined to go to Jamaica and San Domingo
+before returning to Havana. He knew it was worse than folly to trust
+letters to the wretched inland post-offices, and he had told Nina in his
+letter of explanation not to expect another for some time. He should be
+in New Orleans on the first of May, and, meanwhile, he kept a diary for
+her future entertainment.
+
+While exploring the mountain forests in the central part of Hayti, their
+guide was murdered, and they were two months finding their way to San
+Domingo. They were months of excitement, adventure, and more than one
+hair-breadth escape. Thorpe would have been in his element had it been
+possible to communicate with Nina, and could he have been sure of
+getting out of the West Indies before the rainy season began. They came
+unexpectedly upon San Domingo; and he learned that war had broken out in
+the United States during April. They made what haste they could to
+Havana, Harold as eager to return to civilisation as his brother; for
+vermin and land-crabs had tempered his enthusiasm, and he had acquired a
+violent dislike for the negro. At Havana, Thorpe found no letters
+awaiting him. He also learned from an American resident that postal
+communication had ceased between the North and South on May 31st. He
+wondered blankly at his stupidity in not going North while there was
+yet time, but like many others, he had heard so much talk of war that he
+had ceased to believe in its certainty. He could only hope that his
+letter had reached Nina, but knew that it was more than doubtful. The
+Southern ports were in a state of blockade. He and his brother ran it in
+a little boat rowed by themselves. In New Orleans he read the packet of
+letters from Nina, that awaited him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The great change in Nina Randolph's appearance and manner induced no
+small amount of gossip in San Francisco. Women are quick to scent the
+sin that society loves best to discuss, and there were many that
+suspected the truth: her long retirement had prepared them for an
+interesting sequel. Nina guessed that she was dividing with the war the
+honours of attention in a small but law-making circle, but was quite
+indifferent. She rarely went down to the parlour when people called, but
+sat in her bedroom staring out at the bay; the Lester house was on the
+summit of Clay Street hill.
+
+Her father was deeply anxious, full of gloomy forebodings. He believed
+Thorpe to be dead, and shook with horror when he thought of what the
+consequences might be.
+
+"Wouldn't you like a change?" he asked her one day. "How would you like
+go to New York? Molly and Mrs. Lester could go with you."
+
+Nina shook her head, colouring faintly.
+
+"I see. You are afraid of missing Thorpe. I wish there were some way of
+finding out--"
+
+She turned to him with eager eyes. "Would you go, papa,--to New Orleans?
+I haven't dared to ask it. Go and see what is the matter."
+
+"My child, I could not get there. The ports are blockaded; if I
+attempted the folly of getting to New Orleans by land, I should probably
+be shot as a spy. It is for those reasons that he will have great
+difficulty in getting here, as he did not have the forethought to leave
+the South in time."
+
+To this Nina made no reply, and as she would not talk to him, he left
+her.
+
+That evening Miss Shropshire came into Nina's room, and spoke twice
+before she was answered. The room was dark.
+
+"Look here, Nina!" she said peremptorily. "You've got to brace up.
+People are talking. I know it!"
+
+"Are they? What does it matter? I have no more use for them. I may as
+well tell you I have come to the conclusion that Dudley Thorpe ceased to
+care for me, and that is the reason of his silence. He has gone back to
+England."
+
+"I don't believe it. You're growing morbid. Women frequently do after
+that sort of experience. I remember Beatrix sat in one position for
+nearly a month, staring at the floor: wouldn't even brush her teeth. You
+have too much brains for that sort of thing."
+
+"I believe it. I have made up my mind. He is in England. He wrote me
+once that if it were not that I had asked him not to leave the country,
+he would run over, he was so tired of America. He went, and stayed."
+
+"Well, then, go out in the world and flirt as you used to. Don't let any
+man bowl you over like this; and, for Heaven's sake, don't mope any
+more!"
+
+"I hate the thought of every man in San Francisco. When I knew them, I
+was an entirely different woman. I couldn't adapt myself to them if I
+wanted to--which I don't."
+
+"But there are always new ones--"
+
+"Oh, don't! Haven't you imagination enough to guess what this last year
+has made of me? If I got as far as a ball-room I'd stand up in the
+middle of the floor and shriek out that since I was there last my heart
+had lived and been broken, that I had lost a husband and buried a
+baby--"
+
+"Then, for Heaven's sake, stay at home! But I think," with deep meaning,
+"that you had better try a change of some sort, Nina. If you don't want
+to risk going East, why not visit some of the Spanish people in Southern
+California?"
+
+"I shall stay here."
+
+It was during the next night that Nina left her bed suddenly, flung
+herself into a chair, and pressed her elbows hard upon her knees. She
+had barely slept for three nights. Her nerves were in a highly irritable
+state. If any one had entered she would not have been able to control
+her temper. Black depression possessed her; the irritability of her
+nerves alternated with the sensation of dropping through space; and her
+relaxed body cried for stimulant.
+
+She twisted her hands together, her face convulsed. "Why should I
+fight?" she argued aloud. "In that, at least, I should find temporary
+oblivion. And what else have I left? Down deep, ever since I got his
+last letter, I have known that I should never see him again. It is my
+destiny: that is the beginning and the end of it. This is the second
+time I have wanted it since the baby died. I _beat_ it out of me the
+first time. I hoped--hoped--and if he were here I should win. If I could
+be happy, and go away with him, it would not come again: I know--_I
+know_. He could have got me some word by this. He is not dead. There is
+only one other explanation. Men are all alike, they say. Why should I
+struggle? For what? What have I to live for? I am the most wretched
+woman on earth."
+
+But she did struggle. The dawn found her sitting there still, her
+muscles almost rigid. Her love for Thorpe had undergone no change; it
+took the fight into its own hands. And it seemed to her that she could
+hear her soul beg for its rights; its voice rose above the persistent
+clamour of her body.
+
+She went to bed and slept for a few hours; but when she awoke the desire
+in her nerves was madder than ever. Every part of her cried out for
+stimulant. She had no love for the taste of liquor; the demand came from
+her nerve-centres. But still she fought on, materialising the monster,
+fancying that she held it by the throat, that she cut its limbs off, its
+heart out; but it shook itself together with magnificent vitality, and
+laughed in her face.
+
+Days passed. The clamour in her body strove to raise itself above the
+despairing cry in her soul. But still, mechanically, without hope, she
+lifted her ear to the higher cry, knowing that if she fell now she
+should never rise again in her earthly life, nor speak with Dudley
+Thorpe, should he, perhaps, return.
+
+She invoked the image of her baby, the glory of the few days she had
+known it. But a bitter tide of resentment overwhelmed the memory of that
+brief exaltation. If she was to be saved, why had not the baby been
+spared? Those who shared her secret had attempted to console her by
+assuring her that its death was a mercy for all concerned. She had not
+answered them; but her grief was cut with contempt for their lack of
+vision. The baby might have cost her her social position, but it would
+have stood between her soul and perdition. It had been taken--by One who
+was supposed to know the needs of all His creatures. Therefore it was
+only reasonable to assume that He wished her to be destroyed.
+
+She thought of nothing else, but cunningly pretended to be absorbed in
+her books.
+
+There came a night when her nerves shrieked until her brain surged with
+the din of them, and her hands clutched at the air, her eyes hardened
+and expanded with greed, her lips were forced apart by her panting
+breath. She jerked the stopper out of a bottle of cologne and swallowed
+a quarter of the contents, then flung her wraps about her, stole
+downstairs and out of the house, found a carriage, and was driven to
+South Park.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Two weeks later she sat huddled over the fire in the library. Her face
+was yellow; her eyes were sunken and dull; her hands trembled. She
+looked thirty-five.
+
+In her lap lay a letter from Dudley Thorpe. He and his brother, at the
+risk of their lives, had got through the lines and reached New York. The
+excitement, fatigue, and exposure had nearly killed Harold, who was in a
+hospital in a precarious condition. Thorpe could not leave him. He
+implored her to come on to New York at once; and he had never written a
+more tender and passionate letter.
+
+Cochrane opened the door, and announced that Dr. Clough had called.
+
+"Tell him to come here," she said.
+
+Dr. Clough wore his usual jaunty air, and he made no comment on her
+appearance; he had come straight from Miss Shropshire.
+
+"Sit down," said Nina, curtly, interrupting his demonstrations. "You
+come at the right moment. I was about to send for you."
+
+"My dear cousin Nina! I hope there is no--"
+
+"Let me talk, please. Do you wish to marry me?"
+
+Clough caught his breath. He flushed, despite his nerve. "Of course I
+do," he stammered. "What a question! Certainly there never was a woman
+so original. It is like you to settle matters in your own way."
+
+"Don't delude yourself for a moment that I even like you. Of all the men
+I have ever known, the sort of person I take you to be has my most
+unmitigated contempt. It is for that reason I marry you. I must marry
+some one at once to keep myself from ruining the life of Dudley Thorpe.
+I choose you, because, in the first place, I am so vile a thing that no
+punishment is severe enough for me; and, in the second, Fate has
+acquitted herself so brilliantly in regard to my humble self that I feel
+a certain satisfaction in giving her all she wants."
+
+"My dear Nina, you are morbid." He spoke pleasantly, but he turned away
+his eyes.
+
+"Possibly; it would be somewhat remarkable if I were not. Do you still
+wish to marry me?"
+
+"Certainly. I do not take your rather uncomplimentary utterances
+seriously. In your present frame of mind--"
+
+"It is the only frame of mind I shall ever be in. You will have an
+unpleasant domestic life; but you will have all the money you want.
+Don't flatter yourself for a moment that you will either control or cure
+me. You will be no more in my house than a well-paid butler--after my
+father has been induced to accept you, which will not be in a hurry.
+Meanwhile, you will probably beat me: you are quite capable of it; but
+you may save yourself the exertion."
+
+"I shall not beat you, Nina, dear." He spoke softly, with an assumption
+of masculine indulgence; but his small pointed teeth moved suddenly
+apart.
+
+"You will understand, of course, that this engagement must not get to my
+father's ears. He would lock me up before he would permit me to marry
+you. He has all the contempt of the gentleman for the cad, of the real
+man for the bundle of petty imitations: and you are his pet aversion. On
+the tenth, he is obliged to go to San Jose to attend an important
+law-suit. He will be detained not less than three days. We shall marry
+on the eleventh--at Mrs. Lester's. I shall not tell my mother, for I
+will not give her the pleasure of conspiring against my father. I
+suppose that I shall break my father's heart; but I don't know that I
+care. He might have saved me, if he had been stronger, and I am no
+longer capable of loving any one--"
+
+"Suppose Mr. Thorpe should come out here after you, anyhow, married or
+not."
+
+"He will do nothing of the sort. One reason you would be incapable of
+understanding, should I attempt to explain; the other is, that he will
+no longer want me after I have been the wife of a person of your sort."
+
+"My word, Nina, you are rather rough on a fellow; but give me a kiss,
+and I'll overlook it."
+
+She lifted her face, and let him kiss her, then struck him so violent a
+blow that the little man staggered.
+
+"Now go," she said, "and don't let me see you again until the eleventh.
+If you have anything to say, you can write it to Molly Shropshire."
+
+When he had gone, she drew her hand across her lips, then looked closely
+at it as if expecting to see a stain. Then she shuddered, and huddled
+closer to the fire, and in a few moments threw Dudley Thorpe's letter on
+the coals.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"Well, some women _are_ remarkable!" exclaimed Miss Shropshire to her
+sister, Mrs. Lester. "The idea of her having a wedding dress,--white
+satin, train, and all. She even fussed over at least twenty pairs of
+slippers, and I was almost afraid to bring home that bridal veil for
+fear it wouldn't suit her."
+
+"I suppose she thinks that weddings, white satin ones, at least, only
+come once in a lifetime." Mrs. Lester was a tired little woman, quite
+subservient to her strong-minded sister. The wedding was to take
+place in her back parlour at an hour when Mr. Lester, occupied and
+unsuspecting, would be away from home. She did not approve of the plot;
+but her opinion, much less her consent, had not been asked.
+
+"I'd like to thoroughly understand Nina Randolph, just for once," said
+Miss Shropshire, meditatively. "It would be interesting, to say the
+least."
+
+The night before the wedding she went into Nina's room, and found her
+standing before the mirror arrayed in her bridal finery,--veil, gloves,
+slippers, all. She had regained her natural hues; but her eyes were
+still sunken, her face pinched and hard. She was almost plain.
+
+"Nina! Why on earth have you put on those things? Don't you know it's
+bad luck?"
+
+Nina laughed.
+
+Miss Shropshire exclaimed, "_Umburufen!_" and rapped loudly three times
+on the top of a chair. "There! I hope that will do some good. I know
+what you are thinking--you are so unlucky, anyhow. But why tempt fate?"
+She hesitated a moment. "It is not too late. Put it off for six months,
+and then see how you feel about it. You are morbid now. You don't know
+what changes time might--"
+
+"No earthly power can prevent me from marrying Richard Clough
+to-morrow."
+
+"Very well, I shall stand by you, of course. That goes without saying.
+But I believe you are making a terrible mistake. I would rather you
+married almost any one else. There are several gentlemen that would be
+ready and willing."
+
+"I don't wish to marry a gentleman."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next afternoon Nina, Mrs. Lester, and Miss Shropshire were in the
+back parlour awaiting the arrival of Clough, his best man, and the
+clergyman, when there was a sudden furious pull at the bell of the front
+door. Nina sprang to her feet. For the first time in many weeks
+animation sprang to her eyes.
+
+"It is my father!" she said. "Close the folding-doors. Molly, I rely on
+you! Do you understand? Send him away, and as quickly as possible. Tell
+a servant to watch outside, and take the others round the back way."
+
+Before she had finished speaking, Mr. Randolph's voice was heard in the
+hall, demanding his daughter. The servants had been given orders to deny
+the fact of Miss Randolph's presence in the house to any one but Dr.
+Clough. Nevertheless, Mr. Randolph brushed past the woman that opened
+the door, and entered the front parlour. Miss Shropshire joined him at
+once. Every word of the duologue that followed could be heard on the
+other side of the folding-doors.
+
+"Why, Mr. Randolph!" exclaimed Miss Shropshire, easily. "Why this
+unexpected honour? I thought you were in San Jose."
+
+"Is my daughter here?" He was evidently much excited, and endeavouring
+to control himself.
+
+"Nina? No. Why? Is she not at Redwoods? She was to go down yesterday."
+
+"She is not at Redwoods. I have received private and reliable
+information that she is to marry Richard Clough this afternoon, and I
+have reason to think that she is in this house."
+
+"What? Nina going to marry that horrid little man? I don't believe it!"
+Miss Shropshire was a woman of thorough and uncompromising methods.
+
+"Is Nina in this house or not?"
+
+"Mr. Randolph! Of course she is not. I would have nothing to do with
+such an affair."
+
+Mr. Randolph swallowed a curse, and strode up and down the room several
+times. Then he paused and confronted her once more.
+
+"Molly," he said, "I appeal to you as a woman. If you have any
+friendship for Nina, give her up to me and save her from ruin, or tell
+me where she is. It is not yet too late. I will risk everything and take
+her abroad. She is ruining her own life and Thorpe's and mine by a
+mistaken sense of duty to him, and contempt for herself: I know her so
+well that I feel sure that is the reason for this act she contemplates
+to-day. I will take her to Thorpe. He could reclaim her. Clough--you can
+perhaps imagine how Clough will treat her! Picture the life she must
+lead with that man, and give her up to me. And, if you have any heart,
+keep my own from breaking. She is all that I have. You know what my home
+is; I have lived in hell for twenty-four years for this girl's sake. I
+have kept a monster in my house that Nina should have no family scandal
+to reproach me with. And all to what purpose if she marries a cad and a
+brute? I would have endured the torments of the past twenty-five years,
+multiplied tenfold, to have secured her happiness. If she marries
+Richard Clough, it will kill me."
+
+"She is not here," replied Miss Shropshire.
+
+Mr. Randolph trembled from head to foot. "My God!" he cried, "have you
+women no heart? Are all women, I wonder, like those I have known? My
+wife, a demon who nursed her baby on brandy! My daughter, repaying the
+devotion of years with blackest ingratitude! And you--" He fell, rather
+than dropped to his knees, and caught her dress in his hands.
+
+"Molly," he prayed, "give her to me. Save her from becoming one of the
+outcast of the earth. For that is what this marriage will mean to her."
+
+Miss Shropshire set her teeth. "Nina is not here," she said.
+
+Mr. Randolph stumbled to his feet, and rushed from the house. He walked
+rapidly down the hill toward Old Trinity in Pine Street, the church Nina
+attended, his dislocated mind endeavouring to suggest that he wait for
+her there. His agitation was so marked that several people turned and
+looked after him in surprise. He reached the church. A carriage
+approached, passed. Its occupants were Richard Clough, a well-known
+gambler named Bell, and a man who carried the unmistakable cut of a
+parson.
+
+Mr. Randolph rushed to the middle of the street, ordering the driver
+to stop. The window of the carriage was open. He caught Clough by the
+shoulder.
+
+"Are you on your way to marry my daughter?" he demanded.
+
+"My dear Uncle James," replied the young man, airily, "you are all
+wrong. I am on my way to marry--it is true; but the unfortunate lady
+is Miss McCullum."
+
+Mr. Randolph turned to the gambler, and implored him, as a man of
+honour, to tell him the truth.
+
+Bell replied: "As a man of honour, I dare not."
+
+Mr. Randolph appealed to the clergyman, but met only a solemn scowl, and
+mechanically dropped back, with the sensation of having lost the
+good-will of all men. A moment later the carriage was rattling up the
+street at double speed, and he cursed his stupidity in not forcing an
+entrance, or hanging on behind. There was no other carriage in sight.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The days were very long to Dudley Thorpe. The invalid recovered slowly,
+and demanded much of his time. Before an answer to his letter could be
+expected, Harold was sufficiently mended to be removed to the house
+of a friend on Long Island. He declared his intention of sailing for
+California as soon as he could obtain the doctor's permission to travel.
+The lady to whom he was betrothed came over from England and married
+him; and Thorpe had little to do but to think.
+
+He bitterly reproached himself that he had asked Nina to come to New
+York, instead of trusting to his brother's recuperative powers, and
+starting at once for California. He dared not go now, lest he pass her.
+But he was beset by doubts, and some of them were nightmares. She would
+come if her child had lived, and she had weathered her year. If she had
+not! He knew what she had suffered during that year, would have guessed
+without the aid of the few letters she had written after letters from
+him had ceased to reach California. Exposure and shame might have come
+to her since. If he could have been sure that she believed in him, he
+would have feared little; but it was not to be expected that she had
+received a letter he had sent her from the West Indies. The telegraph
+has averted many a tragedy, but there was none across the United States.
+With all his will and health and wealth and love, he had been as
+powerless to help her in the time of her great trouble, was as powerless
+to help her now, as if he were in the bottom of a Haytian swamp. All
+that was fine in him, and there was much, was thoroughly roused. He not
+only longed for her and for his child, but he vowed to devote the rest
+of his life to her happiness. It seemed to him incredible that he could
+have committed such a series of mistakes; that no man who loved a woman
+with the passion of his life had ever so consistently done the wrong
+thing. But mistakes are not isolated acts, to be plucked out of life and
+viewed as an art student views his first model, in which he finds
+only a few bald lines; even when the pressure of many details is not
+overwhelming it often clouds the mental vision. Years after, Thorpe
+accepted the fact that the great links in that year's chain of events
+were connected by hundreds of tiny links as true of form; but not then.
+
+One day a budget of mail got through the lines, and in it was a letter
+for him. It was from Nina, and was dated shortly after the last he had
+found awaiting him when he arrived from Cuba.
+
+     I don't know where you are, if you will ever get this; but I must
+     write to you. The baby is dead. It was a little girl. It is buried
+     in the forest.
+
+                    NINA.
+
+The steamer by which he expected her arrived a few days later. It
+brought him the following letter:
+
+     I was married yesterday. My name is Mrs. Richard Clough. My husband
+     is the son of a Haworth cobbler. I received your letter.
+
+                    NINA RANDOLPH CLOUGH.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Harold Thorpe sailed on the next steamer for California.
+Dudley Thorpe worked his way South, offered his services to the
+Confederacy, fought bitterly and brilliantly, when he was not in
+hospital with a bullet in him, rose to the rank of colonel, and made
+a name for himself which travelled to California and to England. At
+the close of the war, he returned home and entered Parliament. He
+became known as a hard worker, a member of almost bitter honesty,
+and a forcible and magnetic speaker. Socially he was, first, a lion,
+afterward, a steady favourite. Altogether he was regarded as a success
+by his fellow-men.
+
+It was some years before he heard from his brother. Harold was delighted
+with the infinite variety of California; his health was remarkably good;
+and he had settled for life. Only his first letter contained a reference
+to Nina Randolph. She had lived in Napa for a time, then gone to
+Redwoods. She never came to San Francisco; therefore he had been unable
+to call, had never even seen her. All Thorpe's other friends had been
+very kind to himself and his wife.
+
+Thorpe long before this had understood. The rage and disgust of the
+first months had worn themselves out, given place to his intimate
+knowledge of her. Had he returned to California it would have been too
+late to do her any good, and would have destroyed the dear memory of
+her he now possessed. He still loved her. For many months the pain of
+it had been unbearable. It was unbearable no longer, but he doubted if
+he should ever love another woman. The very soul of him had gone out to
+her, and if it had returned he was not conscious of it. As the years
+passed, there were long stretches when she did not enter his thought,
+when memory folded itself thickly about her and slept. Time deals kindly
+with the wounds of men. And he was a man of active life, keenly
+interested in the welfare of his country. But he married no other woman.
+
+It was something under ten years since he had left California, when he
+received a letter from his sister-in-law stating that his brother was
+dead, and begging him to come out and settle her affairs, and take her
+home. She had neither father nor brother; and he went at once, although
+he had no desire to see California again.
+
+There were rails between New York and San Francisco by this time, and he
+found the latter a large flourishing and hideous city. The changes were
+so great, the few acquaintances he met during the first days of his
+visit looked so much older, that his experience of ten years before
+became suddenly blurred of outline. He was not quite forty; but he felt
+like an old man groping in his memory for an episode of early youth. The
+eidolon of Nina Randolph haunted him, but with ever-evading lineaments.
+He did not know whether to feel thankful or disappointed.
+
+He devoted himself to his sister-in-law's affairs for a week, then,
+finding a Sunday afternoon on his hands, started, almost reluctantly,
+to call on Mrs. McLane.
+
+South Park was unchanged.
+
+He stood for a moment, catching his breath. The city had grown around
+and away from it; streets had multiplied, bristling with the ugliest
+varieties of modern architecture; but South Park, stately, dark, solemn,
+had not changed by so much as a lighter coat of paint. His eyes moved
+swiftly to the Randolph house. Its shutters were closed. The dust of
+summer was thick upon them. He stood for fully five minutes staring at
+it, regardless of curious eyes. Something awoke and hungered within him.
+
+"My vanished youth, I suppose," he thought sadly. "I certainly have no
+wish to see her, poor thing! But she was very sweet."
+
+He walked slowly round the crescent on the left, and rang the bell at
+Mrs. McLane's door. As the butler admitted him he noted with relief that
+the house had been refurnished. A buzz of voices came from the parlour.
+The man lifted a portiere, and Mrs. McLane, with an exclamation of
+delight, came forward, with both hands outstretched. Her face was
+unchanged, but she would powder her hair no more. It was white.
+
+"Thorpe!" she exclaimed. "It is not possible? How long have you been
+here? A week! Mon Dieu! And you come only now! But I suppose I am
+fortunate to be remembered at all."
+
+Thorpe assured her that she had been in his thoughts since the hour of
+his arrival, but that he wished to be free of the ugly worries of
+business before venturing into her distracting presence.
+
+"I don't forgive you, although I give you a dinner on Thursday. Will
+that suit you? Poor little Mrs. Harold! We have all been attention
+itself to her for your sake. Come here and sit by me; but you may speak
+to your other old friends."
+
+Two of the "Macs" were there; the other was dead, he was told later.
+Both were married, and one was dressed with the splendours of Paris.
+Mrs. Earle was as little changed as Mrs. McLane, and her still flashing
+eyes challenged him at once. Guadalupe Hathaway was unmarried and had
+grown stout; but she was as handsome as of old.
+
+They all received him with flattering warmth, "treated him much better
+than he deserved," Mrs. McLane remarked, "considering he had never
+written one of them a line;" and he felt the past growing sharp of
+outline. There were several very smart young ladies present, two of whom
+he remembered as awkward little girls. The very names of the others were
+unknown to him. They knew of him, however, and one of them affected to
+disapprove of him sharply because he had "fought against the flag." Mrs.
+McLane took up the cudgels for her South, and party feeling ran high.
+
+Nina Randolph's name was not mentioned. He wondered if she were dead.
+Not so much as a glance was directed toward the most momentous episode
+of his life. Doubtless they had forgotten that he had once been somewhat
+attentive to her. But his memory was breaking in the middle and
+marshalling its forces at the farther end; the events of the intervening
+ten years were now a confused mass of shadows. Mrs. Earle sang a Mexican
+love-song, and he turned the leaves for her. When he told Guadalupe
+Hathaway that he was glad to find her unchanged, she replied:--
+
+"I am fat, and you know it. And as I don't mind in the least, you need
+not fib about it. You have a few grey hairs and lines; but you've worn
+better than our men, who are burnt out with trade winds and money
+grubbing."
+
+He remained an hour. When he left the house, he walked rapidly out of
+the Park, casting but one hasty glance to the right, crossed the city
+and went straight to the house of Molly Shropshire's sister. It also was
+unchanged, a square ugly brown house on a corner over-looking the blue
+bay and the wild bright hills beyond. The houses that had sprung up
+about it were cheap and fresh, and bulging with bow-windows.
+
+"Yes," the maid told him, "Miss Shropshire still lived there, and was at
+home." The room into which she showed him was dark, and had the musty
+smell of the unpopular front parlour. A white marble slab on the centre
+table gleamed with funereal significance. Thorpe drew up the blinds, and
+let in the sun. He was unable to decide if the room had been refurnished
+since the one occasion upon which he had entered it before; but it had
+an old-fashioned and dingy appearance.
+
+He heard a woman's gown rustle down the stair, and his nerves shook.
+When Miss Shropshire entered, she did not detect his effort at
+composure. She had accepted the flesh of time, and her hair was
+beginning to turn; but she shook hands in her old hearty decided
+fashion.
+
+"I heard yesterday that you were here," she said. "Take that armchair. I
+rather hoped you'd come. We used to quarrel; but, after all, you are an
+Englishman, and I can never forget that I was born over there, although
+I don't remember so much as the climate."
+
+"Will you tell me the whole story? I did not intend to come to see you,
+to mention her name. But it has come back, and I must know all that
+there is to know--from the very date of my leaving up to now. Of course,
+she wrote me that you were in her confidence."
+
+She told the story of a year which had been as big with import for one
+woman as for a nation. "Mr. Randolph died six months after the wedding,"
+she concluded, wondering if some men were made of stone. "It killed
+him. He did not see her again until he was on his death-bed. Then he
+forgave her. Any one would, poor thing. He left his money in trust, so
+that she has a large income, and is in no danger of losing it. She lives
+with her mother at Redwoods. Clough died some years ago--of drink. It
+was in his blood, I suppose, for almost from the day he set foot in
+Redwoods he was a sot."
+
+"And Nina?"
+
+"Don't try to see her," said Miss Shropshire, bluntly. "You would only
+be horrified,--you wouldn't recognise her if you met her on the street.
+She is breaking, fortunately. I saw her the other day, for the first
+time in two years, and she told me she was very ill."
+
+"Have you deserted her?"
+
+"Don't put it that way! I shall always love Nina Randolph, and I am
+often sick with pity. But she never comes here, and one _cannot_ go to
+Redwoods. It is said that the orgies there beggar description. Even the
+Hathaways, who are their nearest neighbours, never enter the gates. It
+is terrible! And if your letter had come six days earlier, it would all
+have been different. But she was born to bad luck."
+
+Thorpe rose. "Thank you," he said. "Are your sisters well? I shall be
+here only a few days longer, but I shall try to call again."
+
+She laid her hand on his arm. She had a sudden access of vision. "Don't
+try to see Nina," she said, impressively.
+
+"God forbid!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+He slept not at all that night. He had thought that his days of
+poignant emotion were over, that he had worn out the last of it on the
+blood-soaked fields of Virginia, on nights between days when Death rose
+with the sun; but up from their long sleep misery and love rose with the
+vigour of their youth, and claimed him. And the love was for a woman who
+no longer existed, whose sodden brain doubtless held no memory of him,
+or remembered only to curse him. He strove to imagine her as she must
+be. She rose before him in successive images of what she had been: from
+the night he had met her to the morning of their last interview on the
+mountain,--a series of images sometimes painful, always beautiful. Then
+his imagination created her as she must have been during the months of
+her solitude in the midst of a wild and beautiful country, when in her
+letters she had sent him so generous and so exquisite a measure of
+herself; then the last months, when he would have been half mad with
+love and pity if he had known. Nor was that all: it seemed to him in the
+torments of that night that he realised for the first time what he had
+lost, what poignant, enduring, and varied happiness might have been his
+during the past ten years. Instead, he had had excitement, honours, and
+mental activity; he had not been happy for an hour. And the possibility
+of such happiness, of union with the one woman whom he was capable
+of passionately loving with soul and mind and body, was as dead as
+his youth, buried with the soul of a woman whose face he would not
+recognise. She was above ground, this woman, and a different being! He
+repeated the fact aloud; but it was the one fact his imagination would
+not grasp and present to his mental vision. It realised her suffering,
+her morbid despair, her attitude to herself, to the world, and to him,
+when she had decided to marry Clough; but the hideous metamorphosis of
+body and spirit was outside its limitations.
+
+In the morning he asked his sister-in-law if she would leave California
+at the end of the week. She was a methodical and slow-moving little
+person, and demurred for a time, but finally consented to make ready.
+Her business affairs--which consisted of several unsold ranches--could
+be left in the hands of an agent; there was little more that her
+brother-in-law could do.
+
+Harold's remains had been temporarily placed in the receiving vault on
+Lone Mountain. Thorpe went out to the cemetery in the afternoon to make
+the final arrangements for removing them to England.
+
+Lone Mountain can be seen from any part of San Francisco; scarcely a
+house but has a window from which one may receive his daily hint that
+even Californians are mortal. Here is none of the illusion of the
+cemetery of the flat, with its thickly planted trees and shrubbery,
+where the children are taken to walk when they are good, and to wonder
+at the glimpses of pretty little white houses and big white slates with
+black letters. The shining tombs and vaults and monuments, tier above
+tier, towering at the end of the city, flaunt in one's face the
+remorselessness and the greed of death. In winter, the paths are running
+brooks; one imagines that the very dead are soaked. In summer, the dusty
+trees and shrubs accentuate the marble pride of dead and living men.
+Behind, higher still, rises a bare brown mountain with a cross on its
+summit,--Calvary it is called; and on stormy nights, or on days when the
+fog is writhing in from the ocean, blurring even that high sharp peak,
+one fancies the trembling outlines of a figure on the cross.
+
+To-day the tombs were scarcely visible within the fine white mist which
+had been creeping in from the Pacific since morning and had made a
+beautiful ghost-land of the entire city. The cross on Calvary looked
+huge and misshapen, the marbles like the phantoms of those below. The
+mist dripped heavily from the trees, the walks were wet. It is doubtful
+if there is so gloomy, so disturbing, so fascinating a burying-ground on
+earth as the Lone Mountain of San Francisco.
+
+The sexton's house was near the gates. Thorpe completed his business,
+and started for the carriage which had brought him. He paused for a
+moment in the middle of the broad road and looked up. In the gently
+moving mist the shafts seemed to leave their dead, and crawl through the
+groves, as if to some ghoulish tryst. Thorpe thought that it would be a
+good place for a man, if lost, to go mad in. But, like all the curious
+phases of California, it interested him, and in a moment he sauntered
+slowly upward. His own mood was not hilarious, and although he had no
+wish to join the cold hearts about him, he liked their company for the
+moment.
+
+Some one approached him from above. It was a woman, and she picked her
+way carefully down the steep hill-side. She loomed oddly through the
+mist, her outlines shifting. As she passed Thorpe, he gave her the
+cursory glance of man to unbeautiful woman. She was short and stout; her
+face was dark and large, her hair grizzled about the temples, her
+expression sullen and dejected, her attire rich. She lifted her eyes,
+and stopped short.
+
+"Dudley!" she said; and Thorpe recognised her voice.
+
+He made no attempt to answer her. He was hardly conscious of anything
+but the wish that he had left California that morning.
+
+"You did not recognise me?" she said, with a laugh he did not remember.
+
+"No."
+
+He stared at her, trying to conjure up the woman who had haunted him
+during the night. She had gone. There was a dim flash in the eyes, a
+broken echo in the voice of this woman, which gave him the impression of
+looking upon the faded daguerreotype of one long dead, or upon a bundle
+of old letters.
+
+Her face dropped under his gaze. "I had hoped never to see you again,"
+she muttered. "But I don't know that I care much. It is long since I
+have thought of you. I care for one thing only,--nothing else matters.
+Still, I have a flicker of pride left: I would rather you should not
+have seen me an ugly old sot. I believe I was very pretty once; but I
+have forgotten."
+
+Thorpe strove to speak, to say something to comfort the poor creature in
+her mortification; but he could only stare dumbly at her, while
+something strove to reach out of himself into that hideous tomb and
+clasp the stupefied soul which was no less his than in the brief day
+when they had been happy together. As long as that body lived on, it
+carried his other part. And after? He wondered if he could feel more
+alone then than now, did it take incalculable years for his soul to find
+hers.
+
+She looked up and regarded him sullenly. "You are unchanged," she said.
+"Life has prospered with you, I suppose. I haven't read the papers nor
+heard your name mentioned for years; but I read all I could find about
+you during the war; and you look as if you had had few cares. Are you
+married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You have been true to me, I suppose." And again she laughed.
+
+"Yes, I suppose that is the reason. At least I have cared to marry no
+other woman."
+
+"Hm!" she said. "Well, the best thing you can do is to forget me. I'm
+sorry if I hurt your pride, but I don't feel even flattered by your
+constancy. I have neither heart nor vanity left; I am nothing but an
+appetite,--an appetite that means a long sight more to me than you ever
+did. To-morrow, I shall have forgotten your existence again. Once or
+twice a year, when I am sober,--comparatively,--I come here to visit my
+father's tomb. Why, I can hardly say, unless it is that I find a certain
+satisfaction in contemplating my own niche. I am an unconscionable time
+dying."
+
+"Are you dying?"
+
+"I'm gone to pieces in every part of me. My mother threw me downstairs
+the other day, and that didn't mend matters."
+
+"Come," he said. "I have no desire to prolong this interview. There is a
+private carriage at the gate. Is it yours? Then, if you will permit me,
+I will see you to it."
+
+She walked beside him without speaking again. He helped her into her
+carriage, lifted his hat without raising his eyes, then dismissed his
+carriage, and walked the miles between the burying-ground and his hotel.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Four days later he received a note from Miss Hathaway:--
+
+     "Nina Randolph is dying; I have just seen her doctor, who is also
+     ours. I do not know if this will interest you. She is at Redwoods."
+
+An hour later Thorpe was in the train. He had not stopped to deliberate.
+Nothing could alter the fact that Nina Randolph was his, and eternally.
+He responded to the summons as instinctively as if she had been his
+wife for the past ten years. Nor did he shrink from the death-bed scene;
+hell itself could not be worse than the condition of his mind had been
+during the past four days.
+
+There was no trap for hire at the station; he walked the mile to the
+house. It was a pale-blue blazing day. The May sun shone with the
+intolerable Californian glare. The roads were already dusty. But when he
+reached the avenue at Redwoods, the temperature changed at once. The
+trees grew close together, and the creek, full to the top, cooled the
+air; it was racing merrily along, several fine salmon on its surface. He
+experienced a momentary desire to spear them. Suddenly he returned to
+the gates; he had carried into the avenue a sense of something changed.
+He looked down the road sharply,--the road up which he had come the last
+time he had visited Redwoods, choking on a lumbering stage. Then he
+looked up the wooded valley, and back again. It was some moments before
+he realised wherein lay the change that had disturbed his introspective
+vision; one of the great redwoods that had stood by the bridge where
+the creek curved just beyond the entrance to the grounds, was gone. He
+wondered what had happened to it, and retraced his steps.
+
+The house, the pretty little toy castle with its yellow-plastered
+brown-trimmed walls, looked the same; he had but an indistinct memory of
+it. Involuntarily, his gaze travelled to the mountains; they were a mass
+of blurred redwoods in a dark-blue mist. But they were serene and
+beautiful; so was all nature about him.
+
+He rang the bell. Cochrane opened the door. The man had aged; but his
+face was as stolid as ever.
+
+"Mr. Thorpe, sir?" he said.
+
+"Yes; I wish to see Miss--Mrs. Clough."
+
+"She won't live the day out, sir."
+
+"Show me up to her room. I shall stay here. Is any one else with her?"
+
+"No, sir; Mrs. Randolph has been no good these two days, and the maid
+that has been looking out for Miss Nina is asleep. I've been giving her
+her medicine. We don't like strange nurses here. Times are changed, and
+everybody knows now; but we keep to ourselves as much as possible.
+There've been times when we've had company--too much; but I made up my
+mind they should die alone. You can go up, though."
+
+"Thanks. You can go to sleep, if you wish."
+
+Cochrane led him down the hall with its beautiful inlaid floor,
+scratched and dull, up the wide stair with its faded velvet carpet, and
+opened the door of a large front room.
+
+"The drops on the table are to be given every hour, sir; the next at
+twenty minutes to two." He closed the door and went away.
+
+The curtains of the room were wide apart. The sun flaunted itself upon
+the old carpet, the handsome old-fashioned furniture. Thorpe went
+straight to the windows, and drew the curtains together, then walked
+slowly to the bed.
+
+Nina lay with her eyes open, watching him intently. Her face was pallid
+and sunken; but she looked less unlike her old self. She took his hand
+and pressed it feebly.
+
+"I am sorry I spoke so roughly the other day," she said. "But I was not
+quite myself. I have touched nothing since; I couldn't, after seeing
+you. It is that that is killing me; but don't let it worry you. I am
+very glad."
+
+Thorpe sat down beside her and chafed her hands gently. They were cold.
+
+"It was a beautiful little baby," she said, abruptly. "And it looked so
+much like you that it was almost ridiculous."
+
+"I was a brute to have left you, whether you wished it or not. It is no
+excuse to say that the consequences never entered my head, I was half
+mad that morning; and after what you had told me, I think I was glad to
+get away for a time."
+
+"We both did what we believed to be best, and ruined--well, my life, and
+your best chance of happiness, perhaps. It is often so, I notice. Too
+much happiness is not a good thing for the world, I suppose. It is only
+the people of moderate desires and capacities that seem to get what
+they want. But it was a great pity; we could have been very happy. Did
+you care much?"
+
+He showed her his own soul then, naked and tormented,--as it had been
+from the hour he had received her letters upon his return from the West
+Indies until Time had done its work upon him,--and as it was now and
+must be for long months to come. Of the intervening years he gave no
+account; he had forgotten them. She listened with her head eagerly
+lifted, her vision piercing his. He made the story short. When he had
+finished, her head fell back. She gave a long sigh. Was it of content?
+She made no other comment. She was past conventions; her emotions were
+already dead. And she was at last in that stage of development wherein
+one accepts the facts of life with little or no personal application.
+
+"It didn't surprise me when you came in," she said, after a moment. "I
+felt that you would come--My life has been terrible, terrible! Do you
+realise that! Have they told you? No woman has ever fallen lower than I
+have done. I am sorry, for your sake; I can't repent in the ordinary
+way. I have an account to square with God, if I ever meet Him and He
+presumes to judge me. If you will forgive me, that is all that I care
+about."
+
+"I forgive you! Good God, I wonder you don't hate me!"
+
+"I did for a time, not because I blamed you, but because I hated
+everybody and everything. There were intervals of terrible retrospect
+and regret; but I made them as infrequent as I could, and finally I
+stifled them altogether. I grew out of touch with every memory of a life
+when I was comparatively innocent and happy. I strove to make myself so
+evil that I could not distinguish an echo if one tried to make itself
+heard; and I succeeded. Now, all that has fallen from me,--in the last
+few hours, since I have had relief from physical torments,--for I could
+not drink after I saw you, and I had to pay the penalty. It is not odd,
+I suppose, that I should suddenly revert: my impulses originally were
+all toward good, my mental impulses; the appetite was always a purely
+physical thing; and when Death approaches, he stretches out a long hand
+and brushes aside the rubbish of life, letting the soul's flower see the
+light again for a few moments. Give me the drops. Now that you are here,
+I want to live as long as I can."
+
+He lifted her head, and gave her the medicine. She lay back suddenly,
+pinioning his arm.
+
+"Let it stay there," she said.
+
+"Are you sure, Nina, that your case is so bad?" he asked. "Couldn't you
+make an effort, and let me take you to England?"
+
+She shook her head with a cynical smile. "My machinery is like a
+dilapidated old engine that has been eaten up with rust, and battered by
+stones for twenty years. There isn't a bit of me that isn't in pieces."
+
+She closed her eyes, and slept for a half hour. He put both arms about
+her and his head beside hers.
+
+"Dudley," she said, finally.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I had not thought of the baby for God knows how many years. It was no
+memory for me. But since the other day I have been haunted by that poor
+little grave in the big forest--"
+
+"Would you like to have it brought down to Lone Mountain?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, then shook her head.
+
+"No," she said. "In the vault with my mother and--and--_him_? Oh, no!
+no!"
+
+"If I build a little vault for you and her will you sign a paper giving
+me--certain rights?"
+
+Her face illuminated for the first time. "Oh, yes!" she said. "Oh, yes!
+Then I think I could sleep in peace."
+
+Thorpe rang for Cochrane and the gardener, wrote the paper, and had it
+duly witnessed. It took but a few moments, and they were alone again.
+
+"I wonder if I shall see _her_--and you again, or if my unlucky star
+sets in this world to rise in the next? Well, I shall know soon.
+
+"I am going, I think," she said a few moments later. "Would you mind
+kissing me? Death has already taken the sin out of my body, and down
+deep is something that never was wholly blackened. That is yours. Take
+it."
+
+It was an hour before she died, and during that hour he kissed her many
+times.
+
+
+
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+It was some twelve years later that Thorpe received a copy of a San
+Francisco newspaper, in which the following article was heavily
+marked:--
+
+     WHAT AM I BID?
+
+     AN AUCTION SALE OF FUNERAL AND WEDDING TRAPPINGS
+
+     "What am I offered?"
+
+     "Oh, don't sell that!" said one or two bidders.
+
+     The auctioneer held up a large walnut case. It contained a funeral
+     wreath of preserved flowers.
+
+     "Well, I've sold coffins at auction in my time, so I guess I can
+     stand this," replied the auctioneer. "What am I offered?"
+
+     He disposed of it, with three other funeral mementos, very cheap,
+     for the bidding was dispirited. It was at the sale yesterday, in a
+     Montgomery Street auction-room, of the personal effects, jewelry,
+     silverware, and household bric-a-brac of a once very wealthy San
+     Francisco family. The head of the family was a pioneer, a citizen
+     of wealth and high social and commercial standing. It was he who,
+     in early days, projected South Park. There was no family in the
+     city whose society was more sought after, or which entertained
+     better, than that of James Randolph.
+
+     "What am I offered for this lot?"
+
+     He referred to the lot catalogued as "No. 107," and described as
+     "Wedding-dress, shoes, etc."
+
+     "Don't sell _that_!" The very old-clo' man remonstrated this time.
+
+     It seemed worse than the sale of the funeral wreath. The dress was
+     heavy white satin--had been, that is; it was yellowed with time.
+     The tiny shoes had evidently been worn but once.
+
+     "What am I offered? Make a bid, gentlemen. I offer the lot. What am
+     I offered?"
+
+     "One dollar."
+
+     "One dollar I am offered for the lot--wedding-dress, shoes, etc.
+     One dollar for the lot. Come gentlemen, bid up."
+
+     Not an old-clo' man in the room bid, and the outsider who bid the
+     dollar had the happiness to see it knocked down to him.
+
+     "What am I bid for this photograph album? Bid up, gentlemen. Here's
+     a chance to get a fine collection of photographs of distinguished
+     citizens, their wives, and daughters."
+
+     A gentleman standing on the edge of the crowd quietly bid in the
+     album. When it was handed to him, he opened it, took out his own
+     and the photographs of several ladies, dressed in the fashion of
+     twenty years ago, and tossed the album, with the other photographs,
+     in the stove, remarking: "Well, _they_ won't go to the junk-shop."
+
+     "What am I offered, gentlemen, for this? There is just seventeen
+     dollars' worth of gold in it. Bid up."
+
+     The auctioneer held up an engraved gold medal. It was a Crimean war
+     medal which its owner was once proud to wear. There was a time in
+     his life when no money could have purchased it. He had risked his
+     life for the honour of wearing it; and after his death it was
+     offered for old gold.
+
+     "Twenty dollars."
+
+     "Twenty dollars; twenty, twenty, twenty! Mind your bid, gentlemen.
+     Seventeen dollars for the gold, and three for the honour. Twenty,
+     tw-en-ty, and going, going, gone! Seventeen dollars for the gold,
+     and three for the honour."
+
+     In this way an ebony writing-desk, with the dead citizen's private
+     letters, was sold to a hand-me-down shop-keeper. A tin box with
+     private papers went to a junk-dealer; and different lots of
+     classical music, some worn, some marked with the givers' names,
+     some with verses written on the pages, were sold to second-hand
+     dealers. "What am I bid?" The sale went rapidly on. Sometimes an
+     old family friend would bid in an article as a souvenir. But the
+     junk-dealers, second-hand men, and hand-me-down shop-keepers took
+     in most of the goods.
+
+     The above articles were the contents of a chest, and were the
+     personal effects of Mrs. Richard Clough, the late daughter of the
+     late James Randolph, of San Francisco. She had evidently carefully
+     packed them away at some time before her death; and the chest had
+     been mislaid or overlooked, until it made its way, intact, and
+     twelve years after, into the hands of the public.
+
+And that was the last that Dudley Thorpe heard of Nina Randolph in this
+world.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
+intent.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE***
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