Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
did not look up. She could not. Finally she moved her face from him and stared at the mantel.
“I’ve left home,” she said. “I’d like to stay here for a while.”
“Why, of course you can stay here. I’ll tell Lola to put a cot in her room. But what is the matter? Has your mother been drinking again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has she struck you again?”
“No.”
“Well, what is it, my dear child? You know that you are always more than welcome here; but you must have some excuse for leaving home.”
“I have an excuse. I can’t tell it. Please don’t say anything more about it. I don’t think she’ll send for me.”
“Well, well, perhaps you’ll tell me after a time. Meanwhile make yourself at home.”
He was much puzzled, but reflected that Patience was not like other children; and he knew Mrs. Sparhawk’s commanding talent for making herself disagreeable. Still, he was shocked at her appearance; and as the day wore on and she would not meet his eye, but sat staring at the floor, his uneasy mind glimpsed ugly possibilities. At dinner she ate little and did not raise her eyes from her plate, although she made a few commonplace remarks.
At four o’clock Billy, the buggy, and a farm hand stopped before the Custom House. The man handed a note to Lola, asking her to give it to Patience.
The note read:
You come home—hear? If you don’t, I’ll see that you do.
M. Sparhawk.
Patience went out to the man, who still sat in the buggy. “Tell her,” she said, looking at Billy, “that I’m not going home—not now nor at any other time. Just make her understand that I mean it.”
The man stared, but nodded and drove off.
XV
At midnight Patience was awakened by a frantic clamour in the street. “Those dreadful Bohemians,” she thought sleepily, then sat up with thumping heart.
“They say your name, niña, no?” said Lola, whose sonorous slumbers had also been disturbed.
Patience slipped to the floor and looked through the window. The moon flooded the old town. The ruined fort on the hill had never looked more picturesque, the pines above more calm. In the hollow near the blue waters the white arms of Junipero Serra’s cross seemed extended in benediction. The old adobes were young for the hour. One might fancy Isabel Herrara walking down from the long house on the hill, her reboso fluttering in the night wind, old Pio Pico, glittering with jewels, beside her.
And in the wide street before the Custom House, surrounded by a hooting mob, the refuse of the saloons, was a cursing gesticulating woman. Her black hair was unbound, her garment torn. She flung her fists in the face of those that sought to hold her.
“Patience Sparhawk!” she shrieked. “Patience Sparhawk! Come down here to your mother. Come down here this minute. Come, I say,” and a volley of oaths followed, greeted with a loud cackling laugh by the rabble.
Patience saw Mr. Foord, clad in his dressing-gown, go forth. She flung on her clothes hastily and ran down the stair. Her mother and Mr. Foord were in the kitchen.
“Oh, she’ll come back,” Mrs. Sparhawk was saying. “I’ll see to that. How do you like a row under your windows? Well, I’ll come here every night unless she comes home. You’ll put me in the Home of the Inebriates, will you? Think she’ll like to have that said of her mother when she’s grown up? Not Patience Sparhawk. I know her weak point. She’s as proud as hell, and I’m not afraid of going to any Home of the Inebriates.”
Patience pushed open the door. “I’m going with you,” she said. “Now get out of this house as fast as you can.”
“Oh, Patience,” exclaimed Mr. Foord. His old cheeks were splashed with tears.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” said Patience, her hands clenching and quivering. “I didn’t think she’d do this, or I wouldn’t have stayed. What a return for all your kindness!”
“Patience,” said the old gentleman, “promise me that you will come to see me to-morrow. Promise, or I shall not let you go. She can do her worst.”
“Well, I’ll come.”
She ordered her mother to follow her out of the back door that they might avoid the expectant mob. Mrs. Sparhawk walked unsteadily, but received no assistance from her daughter. If she had fallen, Patience could not have forced herself to touch her. Had the woman been a reeling mass of physical corruption, a leper, a small-pox scab, the girl could not have shrunken farther from her.
They did not speak until they ascended the hill behind the town and entered the woods. Patience never recalled that night without inhaling the balsamic odour of the pines, the heavy perfume of forest lilies, without seeing the great yellow stars through the uplifted arms of the trees. It was a night for love, and its guest was hate.
No more terrible conversation ever took place between mother and daughter. After that night they never spoke again.
XVI
The next morning Patience, after breakfast, carried a pair of tongs and a newspaper up to her room. She spread the newspaper on the table, then with the tongs extracted Byron from beneath the bed and laid it on the paper. She wrapped it up and tied it securely without letting her hands come in contact with the cover. That same afternoon she carried the book to the Custom House and threw it behind a row of tall volumes in one of the cases. Long after, Mr. Foord found it there and wondered. He was not at home when she arrived. When he returned she was deep in his arm-chair, reading Gibbon’s “Rome.” He was not without tact, and determined at once to ignore the events of the previous day and night.
“What!” he exclaimed, “are you really giving poor old Gibbon a trial at last? And after all your abuse? But perhaps you won’t find him so dry, after all.”
“I wish to read what is dry,” said Patience. “I’m going to take a course in ancient history.”
“No more poetry and novels?”
“Not a line.” She spoke harshly, and compelled herself to meet Mr. Foord’s eyes. Her own were as hard and as cold as steel. All the soft dreaming light of the past two months had gone out of them. They were the eyes neither of a girl nor of a woman. They looked the eyes of a sexless intellect.
Patience had done the one thing which a girl of fifteen can do when crushed with problems; she had twitched her shoulders and flung them off. She comprehended that her intellect was her best friend, and plunged her racked head into the hard facts which required utmost concentration of mind. The sweet vague dreams of the past were turned from in loathing. If she thought of them at all it was with fierce resentment that she had become conscious of her womanhood. The stranger was thrust out of memory. She went no more to the tower. The owl hooted in his loneliness, and she drew the bed-clothes over her ears. When she walked through the woods, to and from the town, she recited Gibbon in synopsis. She spent the day in Mr. Foord’s library, returning home in time to get supper. She did her household duties mechanically, and the eyes of mother and daughter never met. The man Oscar kept out of her way.
Miss Galpin had gone to San Francisco and would return no more: she was to marry. Rosita was visiting in Santa Barbara. Manuela, now a young lady, was devoting the greater part of her time to the Hotel