Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
to the dances in the evening; and informed Patience, one day as they met on the street, that she was having a perfectly gorgeous time, and had met a man who was too lovely for words.
The long hot days and the foggy nights wore slowly away. Patience grew thinner, her face harder. Mr. Foord did his best to divert her, but his resources were limited. She peremptorily forbade him to allude to the romance of Monterey, and he took her out in his old buggy and talked of Gibbon’s “Rome.”
Once they drove through the grounds of Del Monte—the trim artificial grounds that are such an anomaly in that valley of memories. On the long veranda of the great hotel of airy architecture people sat in the bright attire of summer. Matrons rocked and gossiped; girls talked eagerly to languid youths that sat on the railing. It was all as unreal to Patience as the fairy-land of her childhood, when she had hunted for fays and elves in the wood. She stared at the scene angrily, for the first time feeling the sting of the social bee.
“A vain frivolous life those people lead,” remarked Mr. Foord, who disapproved of The World. “A waste of time and God’s best gifts, which makes them selfish and heartless. Empty heads and hollow hearts.”
But Patience, gazing at those girls in their gay dainty attire, the like of which she had never seen before, experienced a sudden violent wish to be of them, empty head, hollow heart, and all. They looked happy and free of care. The very atmosphere of the veranda seemed full of colour and music. Above all, they were utterly different from Patience Sparhawk, blessed and enviable beings. Even the frivolity of the scene appealed to her, so sick unto death of serious things.
XVII
One day, late in September, Patience, as usual, left Monterey at half past four in order to reach home in time to cook the supper. Nature had smiled for so many successive days that she wondered if the lips so persistently set must not soon strain back and reveal the teeth. The sun, poised behind the pine woods, flooded them with yellow light. As Patience walked through the soft radiance she set her teeth and recalled the chapters of Thiers’ “French Revolution,” through which she had that day plodded. But her head felt dull. She realised with a quiver of terror that she was beginning to feel less like an intellect and more like a very helpless little girl. Once she discovered her curved arm creeping to her eyes. She flung it down and shook her head angrily. Was she like other people?
Mingling with the fragrance of the pines it seemed to her that she smelt smoke. She hoped that her woods were not on fire. She walked slowly, indisposed as ever to return home, the more so to-day as she felt herself breaking.
“I wish the sun would not grin so,” she thought. “I’ll be glad when winter comes.”
The smell of smoke grew stronger. She left the woods. A moment later she stood, white and trembling, looking down upon Carmel Valley. The Sparhawk farmhouse was a blazing mass of timbers. A volume of smoke, as straight and full as a waterspout, stood directly above it. Men were running about. Their shouts came faintly to her.
Patience pressed her hands convulsively to her eyes. She clutched her head as if to tear out the terrible hope clattering in her brain, then ran down the hill and across the valley, feeling all the while as if possessed by ten thousand devils.
“Oh, I’m bad, bad, bad!” she sobbed in terror. “I don’t, I don’t!”
As she reached the scene the roof fell in. She glanced hastily about. The men, withdrawn to a safe distance, were gathered round the man Oscar. One was binding his hands and face. As they saw Patience they turned as if to run, then stood doggedly.
“Where is she?” Patience asked.
There was an instant’s pause. The crackling of the flames grew louder, as if it would answer. Then one of the men blurted out: “Burnt up in her bed. She was drunk. We was all in the field when the fire broke out. When we got here Oscar tried to get at her room with a ladder, but it was no go. Poor old Madge.”
Patience without another word turned and ran back to the woods. She ran until she was exhausted, more horrified at herself than she had been at any of her unhappy experiences. After a time she fell among the dry pine needles, her good, as she expressed it, still trying to fight down her bad. She felt that the demon possessing her would have sung aloud had she not held it by the throat. She conjured up all the horrible details of her mother’s death and ordered her soul to pity; but her brain remarked coldly that her mother had probably felt nothing. She imagined the charred corpse, but it only offended her artistic sense.
Finally she fell asleep. The day was far gone when she awoke. She lay for a time staring at the dim arches above her, listening to the night voices she had once loved so passionately. At last she drew a deep sigh.
“I might just as well face the truth,” she said aloud. “I’m glad, and that’s the end of it. It’s wicked and I’m sorry; but what is, is, and I can’t help it. We’re not all made alike.”
XVIII
Patience was once more installed in Lola’s room. Mr. Foord applied for letters of guardianship, which were granted at once. But as he had feared, she was left without a penny. He wrote to his half-sister, asking her if she would take charge of his ward. Miss Tremont replied in enthusiastic affirmation. Miss Galpin invited Patience to spend two weeks with her in San Francisco, offering to replenish the girl’s wardrobe with several of her own old frocks made over.
Those two weeks seemed to Patience the mad whirl of excitement of which she had read in novels. She had never seen a city before, and the very cable cars fascinated her. To glide up and down the hills was to her the poetry of science. The straggling city on its hundred hills, the crowded streets and gay shop windows, the theatres, the restaurants, China Town, the beautiful bay with its bare colorous hills, surprised her into admitting that life appeared to be quite well worth living after all. When she returned to Monterey she talked so fast that Mr. Foord clapped his hands to his ears, and Rosita listened with expanded eyes.
“Ay, if I could live in San Francisco!” she said, plaintively. “I acted all summer, Patita, but I got tired of the same people, and I want to go to the big theatres and see the real ones do it. I’d like to hear a great big house applauding, only I’d be so jealous of the leading lady.”
Patience was to start, immediately after Christmas, by steamer for New York. Mr. Foord spent the last days giving her much good advice. He said little of his own sorrow to part from her. Once he had been tempted to keep her for the short time that remained to him, but had put the temptation aside with the sad resignation of old age. He knew Patience’s imperative need of new impressions in these her plastic years.
The day before she left she went over to Carmel to say good-bye to Solomon. He flapped his wings with delight, although he could not see her, and nestled close to her side in a manner quite unlike his haughty habit. Patience thought he looked older and greyer, and his wings had a dejected droop. She took him in her arms with an impulse of tenderness, and this time he did not repulse her.
“Poor old Solomon,” she said, “I suppose you are lonely and forlorn in your old age, but this old tower wouldn’t be what it is without you. It’s too bad I can’t write to you as I can to my two or three other friends, and you’ll never know I haven’t forgotten you, poor old Solomon. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I wonder if owls do suffer too. You look so wise and venerable, perhaps you are thinking that lonely old age is terrible—as I know Mr. Foord does.”
Solomon pecked at her mildly. Her gaze wandered out over the ocean. She wondered if a thousand years had passed since she had dreamed her dreams. Their very echoes came from the mountains of space.
When she went away Solomon followed her to the head of the stair. She looked upward