The Californians

  XVI

  During the following week Don Roberto was very ill. The doctor camethree times a day. Mrs. Yorba and Magdalena sat up on alternate nights.Mr. Polk was constantly at the bedside. When he retired to snatch anhour's sleep, Don Roberto's temperature became alarming; of the presenceof his wife and daughter he took no notice whatever.

  As the ego must enter into all things, Magdalena, despite her alarm andpity, was grateful for the diversion. The interview with her father hadroused her abruptly and finally; and during that night her misery hadraged in every part of her. It is true that in the long watches thoughtfairly stamped in her brain, but it was rudely brushed aside everylittle while by the imperious wants of the sick man, or the whisperedremarks of the professional nurse. At other times she slept heavily orreceived the numerous friends who came to inquire for the eminentcitizen who had dined out too often during the gayest season in manyyears.

  Don Roberto recovered, and his convalescence was as memorable as hisprevious social activity. No nurse would remain more than thirty-sixhours at any price; and even his wife, whose ideas of marital duty wereas rigid as her social code, lost her patience upon one occasion andrated him soundly. Mr. Polk was the only person he treated with commondecency. As for Magdalena, he might have been a sultan and she hismeanest slave. But Magdalena was rather pleased than otherwise. Herconscience had flagellated her as the immediate cause of his illness,and she strove by every act of devotion to make amends.

  As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he was taken, in a specialcar, to Fair Oaks, to absorb the sun on his spacious verandahs.Magdalena had asked the doctor to order Southern California, but theorder had been received with such a roar of fury that the subject wasnot resumed. Magdalena was forced to return to Menlo Park.

  She spent the night walking the floor of her room, struggling forendurance to face the places eloquent of Trennahan. There were so manyof them! Helena simply would not have returned; no power short ofphysical force could have compelled her. More than once Magdalena wishedthat she was cast in her friend's anarchic mould. She felt that did hergrip upon herself relax she should scream aloud and grovel on the veryboards that had had their share in her brief love-life. But she wasMagdalena Yorba, the proudest woman in California; in the very hour ofher discovery, when she had been possessed of a blind terror rather thangrief, she had remembered to be thankful that the world could not pityher. Even the genuine sympathy of Tiny would have been gall in a rawwound. She was looking thinner and plainer than ever, but her father'sillness would account for that. She must set her features in steel andlock them, keep her emotions for the night.

  The next day she visited every spot associated with Trennahan,--notonce, but many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinctthat the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third dayshe had ordered the earlier associations on duty, and managed to confusethem somewhat with those which had held possession for so brief a time.She was determined to succeed. She had no right to love the husband ofanother woman, and suffering was something so much more terrible thananything her imagination had ever hinted that she was frantic to get ridof the load as quickly as possible. By and by she would go back to herwriting; and that, and her duties, should be every bit of her lifehenceforth.

  At the end of a week she discovered that she was still receptive to theaesthetic delights. It was early spring. The soft air caressed thesenses, perfumed with violet and lilac, Castilian roses, new clover, andthe breath of mountain forests, brought on the long sighs of the wind.Never was there such a _bouquet_ since Time began. Over a high bush onthe lawn opposite her window the long "bridal wreaths" tumbled. Themeadows were full of mustard, the bright green leaves hardly visible, sothick were the yellow blossoms.

  Once she rode to the foot-hills, escorted by Dick. They were coveredwith yellow and purple lupins, miniature jungles which harboured nothingmore sanguinary than the gopher and the cotton-tail. The tawny poppieshad hills all to themselves, a blaze of colour as fiery as the sun towhich they lifted their curved drowsy lips. The Mariposa lilies grew bythe creeks, in the dark shade of meeting willows. The gold-green mosswas like plush on the trees. From the hills the great valley looked likea dense forest out of which lifted the tower of an enchanted castle. Notanother signal of man was to be seen, nothing but the excrescence on thebig wedding-cake house of a Bonanza king. Beyond the hills rose theslopes of the mountains, with their mighty redwoods, their darkuntrodden aisles, their vast primeval silences. Magdalena was thankfulthat Nature had not ceased to be beautiful, and pressed her handsagainst her heart to stifle its demand; Nature commands union, and hasno sympathy for aching solitude.

  Meanwhile Don Roberto was recovering rapidly. From the hour that hecould walk briskly about the garden his voluble irascibility left him,and he reverted to something more than his old taciturnity; he rarelyopened his mouth except to put the plainest of food into it, even tospeak to Mr. Polk. His brows were lowered constantly over heavy broodingeyes; his lips seemed set with a spring. When he finally addressed hiswife, it was to tell her that she must manage with one butler and onehousemaid. Coincidently he dismissed two of the gardeners and commandedthe one retained, and Dick, to plant in a part of the lawns that theremight be less water used. Himself came from town every evening andworked in the garden for two hours, besides arising at five in themorning and working until breakfast. He sold his finest carriage horsesto Mr. Geary; and when one of the two remaining was temporarilydisabled, he rode to and from the station in the spring wagon. Themonthly allowance of his wife and daughter was suspended for the summer.

  Mrs. Yorba, tall, garbed in black, stalked about the house with theexpression of an outraged empress; Magdalena, being the cause of theoutrage, was rarely addressed. She ostentatiously made over several ofher old frocks and coldly requested her daughter to make her own bed.She kept all the windows in the house, with the exception of one in eachroom, closed and shuttered, as she was deprived of both service andwater. The house seemed perpetually expectant of funeral guests, itssilence only broken by Mrs. Yorba's heavy sighs.

  Magdalena had certainly succeeded in making three people miserable; shecould only hope that she had been more fortunate with the other two. Shespent most of her time out of doors, riding or walking until herstrength was exhausted. She was profoundly grateful that she was to takelittle part in the socialities of the summer. To dance and picnic andtennis and ride to the hills, exactly as she had done when quite anotherperson! She infinitely preferred the disapproval of her parents and thefreedom they gave her.