Part 7 (2/2)
structures to pieces as best she could and giving all attention to parts and details.
She had had a nebulous idea in her mind for some time. It had troubled her that it did not a.s.sume definite form, but she trusted to that inspiration of the pen of which she had read much.
Her hand trembled so that she could not write for a few moments. She put the pencil down, not covering her face with her hands as a more demonstrative girl would have done, but biting her lips. Her heart beat suffocatingly. For the first time she fully realised what the power to write would mean to her. Her religion had gone, that dear companion of many years; she had practised faithfully until six months ago, when she had asked her teacher to tell her father that she could never become even a third-rate musician; and Don Roberto had, after a caustic hour, concluded that he would ”throw no more good money after bad;” she had had long and meaning conferences with her mirror, conjuring up phantasms of the beautiful dead women of her race, and decided sadly that the wors.h.i.+p of man was not for her. She had never talked for ten consecutive minutes with a young man; but she had a woman's instincts, she had read, she had listened to the tales of her aunt, and she knew that what man most valued in woman she did not possess. Her great position and the graces she hoped to cultivate might gratify her ambitions in a measure, but they would not companion her soul. Books were left; but books are too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason for being alive. She had read of the jealous absorption of art, of the intense exclusive love with which it inspired its votaries. She had read of the joys of creation, and her whole being had responded; she felt that did her brain obey her will and shape itself to achievement, she too would know ecstasy and ask nothing more of life.
Her nerves settled, and she began to write. Her reading had been confined to the cla.s.sics of the old world: not only had she not read a modern novel, but of the regnant lights of her own country, Mr. Howells and Mr. James, she had never heard. She may have seen their names in the ”Literary Bulletin” her bookseller sent her, but had probably gathered that they were biologists. There was no one to tell her that the actors and happenings within her horizon were the proper substance for her creative faculty. California had whispered to her, but she had not understood. Her intention was to write a story of England in the reigns of Oliver Cromwell and Charles the Second. The romance of England appealed to her irresistibly. The ma.s.s of virgin ore which lay at her hand did not provoke a flash of magnetism from her brain.
She wrote very slowly. An hour pa.s.sed, and she had only covered a page.
Her head ached a little from the intense concentration of mind. Her fingers were stiff. Finally, she laid her pencil aside and read what she had written. It was a laboured introduction to the story, an attempt to give a picture of the times. She was only nineteen and a novice, but she knew that what she had written was rubbish. It was a trite synopsis of what she had read, of what everybody knew; and the English, although correct, was commonplace, the vocabulary cheap. She set her lips, tore it up, and began again. At the end of another hour she destroyed the second result.
Then she determined to skip the prologue for the present and begin the story. For many long moments she sat staring into the brush, her brain plodding toward an opening scene, an opening sentence. At last she began to write. She described the hero. He was walking down the great staircase of a baronial hall,--in which he had lain concealed,--and the company below were struck dumb with terror and amazement at the apparition. She got him to the middle of the stair; she described his costume with fidelity; she wrote of the temper of the people in the great hall. Then she dropped the pencil. What was to happen thereafter was a blank.
She read what she had written. It was lifeless. It was not fiction. The least of Helena's letters was more virile and objective than this.
Again that mysterious indefinable presentiment a.s.sailed her. It was the first time that it had come since that night she had stood on the balcony and opened her brain to literary desire. Had that presentiment meant anything since compa.s.sed? Her father's cruel treatment? Her terrible experience in the street of painted women? Her illness? The loss of her religion? It was none of these things. So far, it had not been fulfilled; and it had struck its warning note again. She s.h.i.+vered, then discovered that the yellow light was no longer about her, and that her head ached. She rose stiffly and put the torn sc.r.a.ps of paper in her pocket. As she left, she cast a curious glance about her retreat, not knowing what prompted it. The scent of newly upturned earth came to her nostrils; a bird flew down on the rat's nest, starting along the sides a shower of loose earth; the frogs were chanting hoa.r.s.ely.
XIII
The next morning the natural buoyancy of youth a.s.serted itself; she reasoned that a long hard apprentices.h.i.+p had been the lot of many authors, and determined that she would write a page a day for years, if need be, until her tardy faculty had been coaxed from its hard soil and trained to use.
She could not go to the woods that day: her mother expected callers.
”Your birthday is a week from Wednesday,” Mrs. Yorba said as they sat on the verandah. ”Your father and I have decided to give a dinner. You will not come out formally, of course, until winter; but a little society during the summer will take off the stiffness.”
Magdalena turned cold. ”But, mamma! I cannot talk to young men.”
”You expect to begin sometime, do you not? I shall also take you to any little entertainment that is given in Menlo this summer; and as the Brannans and Montgomerys are back from Europe,--they arrived last Thursday,--there may be several. The older girls gave little parties before they married; but there have not been any grown girls in Menlo for some years now. Rose Geary and Caro Folsom, who spent last summer in the East, will spend this in Menlo, so that there will be five of you, besides Nelly Was.h.i.+ngton.”
Magdalena knew that the matter was settled. She had given a good deal of imagination to the time when she should be a young lady, but the immediate prospect filled her with dismay. Then, out of the knowledge that her lines had been chosen for her, she adapted herself, as mortals do, and experienced some of the pleasures of antic.i.p.ation.
”I believe I did not tell you,” her mother resumed, ”that I wrote to Helena some time ago asking her to bring back four dresses for you,--a ball dress for your debut, an English walking suit, a calling dress, and a dinner dress.”
Magdalena had never given a thought to dress; but this sudden announcement that she was to have four gowns from Paris and London p.r.i.c.ked her with an intimation that the interests of life were more varied than she had suspected. She wondered vividly what they would be like, and recalled several of Nelly Was.h.i.+ngton's notable gowns.
”You are to have forty dollars a month after your birthday, and your father will permit me to get you three dresses a year; everything else must come out of your allowance. You will keep an account-book and show it to your father every month, as I do. Oh--and there is another thing: a Mr. Trennahan of New York has brought letters to your father. He is a man of some importance,--is wealthy and has been Secretary of Legation twice, and comes of a distinguished family; we must do something for him, and have decided to ask him down to your dinner. That will kill two birds with one stone. He can also stay a day or two, and we will show him the different places.”
”A strange man in the house for two days,” gasped Magdalena, forgetting that she was to have forty dollars a month.
”He can take care of himself most of the time. Here come Nelly.”
Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton's ponies were rounding the deer park. Magdalena craned her neck.
”She has some one with her,” she said. And in another half-moment: ”Tiny Montgomery and Ila Brannan.”
Magdalena clasped her hands tightly to keep them from trembling. What would they think of her? She saw that they were smartly dressed.
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