Part 17 (1/2)
”There's the music,” he said. ”Suppose we go out in the hall by ourselves, and I will give you a little lesson. No?”
Magdalena was delighted, but she merely stood up in her unbending dignity and said that she was glad to take advantage of his kindness.
He was a man who danced so well that he compelled some measure of facility in his partner. Magdalena felt inspired at once, and carefully obeyed every instruction.
”We will have a great many other lessons, no?” he said as the music finished. ”By the time that famous coming-out party of yours comes off, you will be in great form.”
”Will you open it with me?”
”I shall be delighted, and to help you all I can.” They were walking down the hall, and he was bending over her with an air of devotion which she thought very pleasant. His accomplished eyes appealed to the instinct of coquetry, buried deep in the seriousness of her nature, and she smiled upon him and found herself talking with some ease.
She danced with all the young men, but they bored her as much as she felt that she bored them. All the girls danced with her father, and he seemed amiable and pleased, especially when Tiny was smiling upon him.
Ila, despite her elegance and refinement, suggested the ladies of his leisure, Rose had too sharp a tongue, and Caro had an exaggerated innocence of manner and eye which experience had led him to distrust.
But Tiny, beautiful, cool, and remote, reminded him of the women of his youth, when he was a man of enthusiasms, ideals, and dreams.
Mr. Polk spent the evening wandering about alone or staring from the hearth-rug. One or two of the girls asked him to dance, but he refused brusquely. It was the first dance he had attended since the one given by Thomas Larkin to celebrate the Occupation of California by the United States.
The party broke up a little after twelve, and all a.s.sured Magdalena that the party had been a success with such emphasis that she was convinced that it had been; but when she was in bed and the light out, she cried bitterly.
XXVII
There were no engagements for the following morning, and Magdalena was sitting idly on the verandah when she saw Trennahan sauntering up the drive. The blood flew through her veins, lifting the weight from her brain. But she repressed the quick smile, and sat still and erect until he reached the carriage block, when she went to the head of the steps to meet him.
”Put on your hat,” he said, ”and let us hide in the woods before somebody comes to take us for a drive or to invite us to luncheon. I haven't forgotten our private plans, if you have.”
”I had not forgotten, but Tiny and Ila manage everything. I don't like to refuse when they are so kind.”
”You must develop a faculty--or no, leave it to me. I shall gradually but firmly insist upon having a day or two a week to myself; and Miss Geary informs me that such unprecedented energy can never last in this Vale of Sleep; that before a month is over we shall all have settled down to a chronic state of somnolence from which we shall awaken from Sat.u.r.day till Monday only. Then, indeed, will Menlo be the ideal spot of which I dreamed while you left me to myself on that long day of my visit.”
Her hat was in the hall. She put it on hastily back foremost, and they walked toward the woods. Suddenly she turned into a side path.
”Let us walk through the orchard,” she said. ”Then we shall not meet anyone.”
The cherries were gone; but the yellow apricots, the golden pears, the red peaches and nectarines, the purple plums, hung heavy among the abundant green, or rotted on the ground. Several poor children were stealing frankly, filling sacks almost as large as themselves. Don Roberto had never so far unbent as to give the village people permission to remove the superfluity of his orchard, but he winked at their depredations, as they saved him the expense of having it carted away; his economical graft had never been able to overcome his haughty aversion to selling the produce of his private estate. Magdalena often came to the orchard to talk to these children: the poor fascinated her, and she liked to feel that she was helping them with words and dimes; but they were not as the poor of whom she had read, nor yet of the fire.
They were tow-headed and soiled of face, but they wore stout boots and well-made calico frocks, and they were not without dimes of their own.
”Does California seem a little unreal to you?” she asked. ”I mean, there are no great contrasts. The poverty of London must be frightful.”
”You ungrateful person, for Heaven's sake reap the advantage of your birthright and forget the countries that are not California.”
They pa.s.sed out of the back gate and entered the middle woods. Magdalena without hesitation led the way to the retreat hitherto sacred to Art.
Trennahan need not have apprehended that she would inflict him with her ma.n.u.script, nor with hopes and fears: she was much too shy to mention the subject unless he drew her deliberately; but she liked the idea of a.s.sociating him with this leafy and sacred temple.
He threw himself on his back at once, clasping his hands under his head and gazing up into the rustling storeys above. About his head was a low persistent hum, a vibration of a sound of many parts. Above were only the intense silences of a hot California morning.