Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
novels if things don’t go your way. You’ve got a good strong brain behind those eyes, and although you’ll make mistakes of various sorts, you’ll kick them behind you when you’re done with them, begin over and be none the worse. Remember that no mistake is irrevocable; that there are as many to-morrows as yesterdays; that only the incapable has a past. It is all a matter of will as far as the world is concerned, and ideals as far as your own soul goes. No matter how often circumstances and your own weakness compel you to let go your own private ideals, deliberately put them back on their pedestal the moment you have recovered balance, and make for their attainment as if nothing had happened. Then you’ll never acquire an aged soul and never lose your grip. Can you remember all that?”
“You bet I can.”
He laughed. “I believe you. I might add: Don’t love the wrong man, but I’ll not throw away good advice. You’ll not be wholly guided by reason in those matters. I will merely say, Rub the first experience in hard and let a long while elapse before your second, or it will be the greater mistake of the two. Your reactions will be very violent, I should say. Well, I’ll be going now.”
“I’d rather you’d stay and talk.”
“Would you? Well, being a lawyer, I know where to stop. Besides, I’ll have all those fellows after me if I stay too long. We’ll doubtless meet again. The world is small these days.”
Patience followed him reluctantly down the stair, and he walked beside her across the valley, leading his horse. When they reached the farmhouse he shook hands with her warmly, wished her good luck, and rode away. She ran up to her room, and, lighting a candle, transcribed his words into an old copybook.
XI
Miss Galpin expostulated with Mrs. Thrailkill to such effect that Patience spent two hours each afternoon in the family garret rehearsing Rosita while the astonished rats took refuge in the chimney. Patience could not act, but she had dramatic appreciation and an intellectual conception of any part not beyond her years. Rosita was not intellectual, but, as Patience had discerned, the spirit of Thalia was in her. She quickly became enamoured of her unsuspected resources and at the prospect of exhibiting herself on a platform. Not only did she rouse herself to something like exertion, but she faithfully followed the instructions of her strenuous teacher and discovered a talent for posing and little tricks of manner all her own. Her mother taught her the song and dance, which were to be the sensation of the evening.
It was on the fourth day that Patience, returning home late in the afternoon, met Mr. Foord in the woods. The old gentleman looked sad and perplexed, and Patience sprang upon the step of his buggy and demanded to know what was the matter.
“It’s very odd,” he said, “but she won’t let you go.”
“Won’t let me go?” cried Patience, furiously. “Well, I’ll go anyhow.”
“You can’t, my dear. The law won’t let you.”
“Do you mean to say that the law won’t protect me from that woman?”
“I am afraid she has the best of it.” He recalled the woman’s angry cunning face, as he had pleaded with her, and shook his head. “You see she was never in the town in that condition before. The men out there are so devoted to her that—so she has informed me—they would swear to a man that they had never seen her drunk. And, you see, she’s never abused you—the only time she struck you she had provocation—you must admit that. You are under her control until you are eighteen, and I don’t see that we can do anything. I’m very sorry. I never felt so defeated in my life.”
“But for gracious goodness sake why won’t she let me go? I’m no good to speak of about the place, and she certainly isn’t keeping me for love.”
“Well—I think it’s revenge. She remarked that she had a chance to pay up and she’d do it.”
“I’ll just run away, that’s all.”
“The law would bring you back, and arrest me for abduction.”
“I hate the law,” said Patience, gloomily. “Seems to me I’m always finding something new to hate.”
“You must not hate, my child,” and he quoted the Bible dutifully, although in entire sympathy with her. “That is what I am so afraid of—that you will become hard and bitter. I want to save you from that. Well, perhaps she’ll relent. I shall see her again and again. I must go on, Patience.”
She kissed him and walked sullenly homeward. As she entered the kitchen her mother looked up and laughed. Her face was triumphant and malignant.
“You don’t go,” she said. “Not much. I’ve got the whip hand this time and I’ll keep it. Here you’ll stay until you’re eighteen—”
Patience turned abruptly and ran upstairs. As she locked her door she thought with some satisfaction: “Now that I know myself I can control myself. If I’d jumped on her then she’d have fallen in the stove.”
As her imagination had not dwelt at great length upon the proposed change the disappointment was not as keen as it might have been, much as she desired to leave Monterey. Moreover, she was occupied with Rosita and the coming examinations. And did she not have her Byron? She rose at dawn and read him. In the evening she went over to the tower and declaimed him to the grey ocean whose passions were eternal. The owl, who regarded Byron as a great bore, closed his eyes when she began and went to sleep. Sometimes—when the sun rode high—she sat upon the rubbish over Junipero Serra’s bones, and with one eye out for rats and snakes and tarantulas, conned a new poem. She liked the contrast between the desolation and death in the old ruin and the warm atmosphere of the poetry. As often Byron was unheeded, and she dreamed of the mysterious stranger who had so magnetised her that she had forgotten to ask his name. She had only to close her eyes to hear his voice, to recall the words which seemed forever moving in one or other chamber of her mind, to see the profile which she admired quite as much as Byron’s. As for the voice, it had a possessing quality which made her understand the wherefore of the thrilling notes of the male bird in spring-time. She invested her ambitious young lawyer with all the dark sardonic melancholic fascinations of Lara, Conrad, Manfred, and Don Juan. The wild sweet sting of spring was in her veins. Her mind was full of vague illusions, very lovely and very strange, shifting of outline and wholly inexplicable.
XII
On the afternoon of the last day of school several of the girls decorated the hall with garlands and flags. Carpenters erected a stage, and Patience arranged the “properties.” When the great night arrived and Monterey in its best attire crowded the room, no curtain in the sleepy town had ever been regarded with more complacent expectation. The Montereñas were thoroughly satisfied with their offspring, and performances of any sort were few.
The programme was opened by Manuela, who wore an old pink satin frock of her mother’s cut short and trimmed with a flounce of Spanish lace. Her brown shining face looked good will upon all the world as she recited “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Then came a dialogue in which all the little participants wore white frocks and crimped hair.
Meanwhile, in the dressing-room, Rosita was limp in Patience’s arms.
“Oh, Patita!” she gasped, “I can’t! I can’t! I’m frightened to death! What shall I do?”
“Do?” cried Patience, angrily, who was so excited herself that she pumped Rosita’s arms up and down as if the unfledged Thespian had just been rescued from the bay. “Do? You must brace up. When you get there you’ll be all right. And you must not get stage fright. Rosita, you must make a success. Remember you’ve got the