Part 29 (1/2)

”No power on earth can make me marry him.”

Her father searched her countenance. He knew her character. Did it not have that iron of New England in it for which he would have sold his birthright? He might turn her into the street, and it would avail him nothing. Again his features relaxed, this time not with surprise and consternation, but with abject fear. He shuddered from head to foot; then his hands shot up to receive his face. He groaned and rocked from side to side.

Magdalena was aghast. What feeling was alive in her united in filial tenderness. She went to him and put her hands uncertainly about his head, then stroked his hair awkwardly: she was little used to endearments.

”I never thought--” she stammered. ”I never thought--”

”Thirty years I work like the slave, and now all going! Eeram, he have the death-tick in him: I hear! And now I no go to have the son, and I go to die in the streets like the others; with no one cents! _Ay! yi! ay!

yi!_”

Magdalena was p.r.i.c.ked with a new fear: Was her father insane? She had heard of the ”fixed idea.” This weevil had been burrowing in his brain for more than a quarter of a century. She went back to her chair and said a.s.sertively,--

”You are one of the ablest financiers in California: everybody says so.

Nothing can change that, whether uncle dies or not. This is all a fancy of yours. You don't half appreciate yourself. And you are tired out to-night, and have not been well lately--”

”All going! All going! _Ay de mi! Ay de mi!_ Why I no dying with the wife and the little boy? Make myself over, and now the screws go to drop out my character, and I am like before.”

Magdalena had an inspiration. ”Take me into the bank,” she said eagerly.

”Teach me everything. I am sure I can learn. Then I will look after everything when uncle dies. I want to work--”

Don Roberto dropped his hands and gave a low roar. ”The women all fools, and you the more big fool I never see. You throw way the clever man like he is old hat, and think you can manage the bank! _Madre de Dios!_ Si I no feel like old clothes, no more, I beating you. To-morrow I do it.”

His eyes kindled at the prospect. ”To-morrow si you no say you marry Trennahan, I beating you till you are black like my hat.”

What remained of Magdalena's apathy left her then. She stood up and faced him, drawing her heavy brows together after his own fas.h.i.+on. ”You will never beat me again,” she said. ”Let us have an understanding on that subject before we go to bed to-night. I am your daughter, and I shall always obey you except where the question of my marrying is concerned. But if you ill-treat me I shall leave your house and not return. I am of age, and I have my aunt to go to. Now, unless _you_ promise _me_ that you will never raise your hand to me again, I will leave for Santa Barbara to-night.”

Again Don Roberto stared at her. But his surprise pa.s.sed quickly. He was too shrewd a judge of human nature to doubt her. If she had inherited the iron of her mother's ancestors, she had also inherited the pride of the Yorbas: she would not permit her womanhood to be outraged. But he could have his revenge in other ways; and he would take it. He gave the promise and ordered her sullenly to send the butler to help him up to bed.

XVI

During the following week Don Roberto was very ill. The doctor came three times a day. Mrs. Yorba and Magdalena sat up on alternate nights.

Mr. Polk was constantly at the bedside. When he retired to s.n.a.t.c.h an hour's sleep, Don Roberto's temperature became alarming; of the presence of his wife and daughter he took no notice whatever.

As the ego must enter into all things, Magdalena, despite her alarm and pity, was grateful for the diversion. The interview with her father had roused her abruptly and finally; and during that night her misery had raged in every part of her. It is true that in the long watches thought fairly stamped in her brain, but it was rudely brushed aside every little while by the imperious wants of the sick man, or the whispered remarks of the professional nurse. At other times she slept heavily or received the numerous friends who came to inquire for the eminent citizen who had dined out too often during the gayest season in many years.

Don Roberto recovered, and his convalescence was as memorable as his previous social activity. No nurse would remain more than thirty-six hours at any price; and even his wife, whose ideas of marital duty were as rigid as her social code, lost her patience upon one occasion and rated him soundly. Mr. Polk was the only person he treated with common decency. As for Magdalena, he might have been a sultan and she his meanest slave. But Magdalena was rather pleased than otherwise. Her conscience 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 special car, to Fair Oaks, to absorb the sun on his s.p.a.cious verandahs.

Magdalena had asked the doctor to order Southern California, but the order had been received with such a roar of fury that the subject was not resumed. Magdalena was forced to return to Menlo Park.

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

The next day she visited every spot a.s.sociated with Trennahan,--not once, but many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinct that the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third day she had ordered the earlier a.s.sociations on duty, and managed to confuse them 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 of another woman, and suffering was something so much more terrible than anything her imagination had ever hinted that she was frantic to get rid of the load as quickly as possible. By and by she would go back to her writing; and that, and her duties, should be every bit of her life henceforth.

At the end of a week she discovered that she was still receptive to the aesthetic delights. It was early spring. The soft air caressed the senses, perfumed with violet and lilac, Castilian roses, new clover, and the breath of mountain forests, brought on the long sighs of the wind.