Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
he’s all right,” said Rosita, who had not taken the trouble to reply. None of the girls was allowed to visit Patience at her house; but Mrs. Thrailkill, who was fond of her daughter’s chosen friend, and pitiful in her indolent way, often allowed Patience to drive Rosita as far as the branching of the roads, where the Kentucky uncle met his niece and took her to his farm.
In the dusk below a wagon and two horses could be seen, and a big man under a wide straw hat, sitting on the upper rail of a fence, his heels hooked to the rail below. Patience inferred that he was chewing tobacco and expectorating upon the poppies.
“Well, I reckon!” he exclaimed as the buggy reached the foot of the hill. “You two do beat all. Do you s’pose I’ve got nothing better to do than moon round pikes waiting on kids like you? How’s your ma, Rosita? Well, Patience, I won’t keep you—much obliged for giving my lazy Spanish niece a lift. Come on now; supper’s ready ’n after.”
The two little girls kissed each other affectionately. Mr. Thrailkill lifted Rosita down, and Patience turned Billy in the direction of a fiery eye and a dim column of smoke under the mountain. The evening seemed very quiet after the rattle of Mr. Thrailkill’s team had become a part of the distance. Only the roar of the surf, the moaning of the pines, the harsh music of the frogs, the thousand vocal mysteries of night—not a sound of man. Patience, after her fashion, rehabilitated the Mission and peopled the valley with padres and Indians; but when Billy came to a sudden halt, she sprang prosaically to the ground and let down the bars of her mother’s ranch. After she had replaced them she took hold of Billy’s bridle, and endeavoured, by jerks and expostulation, to induce him to move more rapidly. The road now lay through a ploughed field stretching gloomily on the east to the horizon, where the stars seemed dropping into the dark. Cows roamed at will, or lay heavily in their first sleep. Here and there an oak thrust out its twisted arms, its trunk bent backward by ocean winds. The house soon became plainly outlined, a long unpainted wooden story-and-a-half structure, the type of ranch house of the second era. Castilian roses clambered up the unpainted front. Clumps of gladiolus, pinks, and fuschias struggled with weeds in the front garden. Beyond was a number of out-buildings.
When Patience reached the porch she dropped Billy’s bridle, lifted out the sugar, and stepping to the kitchen window, looked through it for a moment before opening the door. Her mother was very drunk.
II
The room into which Patience frowned was a large rough kitchen of the old familiar type. The rafters were festooned with cobwebs, through which tin cans and aged pails were visible, and an occasional bundle of rags. The board walls were unplastered and unpainted. Out of the uneven floor, knots had dropped to the cellar below. The door of a cupboard, built against the wall with primitive simplicity, stood open, revealing a motley collection of cans, bottles, and cracked dishes. Pots and pans were heaped on a shelf traversing two sides of the room. A table was loaded with odds and ends, in the midst of which place had been made for a lamp.
Over a large stove a woman was frying bacon and eggs. She wore a brown calico garment, torn and smudged. Her fine black hair, sprinkled with ashes, hung raggedly above magnificent dark eyes, blinking in a crimson face. The thin nostrils and full mouth were twitching. In her ruin she was still a beautiful woman, and she moved her tall bloated form with the pride of race, despite the alcohol in her veins.
On a broken chair by the stove sat a young man in the overalls and flannel shirt of a farm hand. His hair was clipped to his skull with colourless result; his large red under lip curved down into a yellow beard. In a long low room adjoining the kitchen a half dozen other men were seated on benches about a table covered with white oilcloth and chipped crockery. They also wore overalls and flannel shirts; and they were bearded and seamed and brown. The Californian sun soon burns the juices out of the flesh that defies it.
Patience flung open the kitchen door and threw the sugar on the table.
“Oscar,” she said peremptorily to the man by the stove, “take Billy round to the barn and put him up, and bring in the flour and the beans. They’re under the seat.” The man went out, muttering angrily, and she turned to her mother, who had begun a tirade of abuse. “Keep quiet,” she said. “So you’re drunk again? I thought you promised me that you wouldn’t drink again for a week. Where did you get it?”
“Couldn’t help it,” muttered the woman, cowed by the bitter contempt in her small daughter’s eyes, and thrusting a long fork into the sputtering fat.
“Where did you get it?”
“Couldn’t help it.”
Patience opened the package of sugar with a jerk, and filling two bowls with the coarse brown stuff carried them into the next room and set them at opposite ends of the table. The men ceased talking as she entered, and saluted her respectfully. They felt vaguely sorry for her; but they were afraid of her, and she was not a favourite with them. Her mother, “Madge,” as they called her to a man, they worshipped, despite or because of her peccability. They went down before her deathless magnetism, her coarse good nature, her spurious kind-heartedness. It was only when very drunk that she became violent and vituperative, and even then she fascinated them. Patience told herself proudly that she had no attraction for “common men”—that she repelled them. Not being a seer, she was saved the foreknowledge of a fatal gift in operation.
She took the large coffee-pot from the back of the stove and filled the men’s cups with its thick fluid. Her mother’s rolling eyes followed her with a malignant sparkle. She was afraid of her daughter, and resentment had eaten deep into her perverted nature. Patience filled a plate with bread and apple sauce, and went into the parlour to eat her supper in solitude. She took all her meals in this room, which with little difficulty she appropriated to her exclusive use: it was very small. She kept it in fairly good order: she was not the tidiest of children. But the old brussels carpet was clean, barring the corners, and the horsehair furniture had been mended here and there with shoe thread. As it still prickled, however, Patience had made a cushion for the clumsy rocker out of an elderly gown which she had found in a trunk in the garret with other relics of finery. She occupied the rocker impartially whether eating or reading. The marble-topped table also served for dining and study.
In a forlorn old bookcase were her only treasures, the few books, mostly classics, which John Sparhawk had reserved when a succession of failures had forced him to sell his library to Mr. Foord. In one corner was a large family Bible on a small table. It was old and worn. Its gilt edges shone dimly through a cobweb of infinite pains.
On the papered walls were two large coloured photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Sparhawk, taken apparently when each was close on thirty years. The woman’s face bore traces of dissipation even then, and the red mouth was very sensual. But the cheeks were still delicate and there were no bags under the large flaming eyes. The bare neck and arms and half revealed bust were superb; the poise of the head, the curve of the short upper lip, the fine arched nostril, were the delicate insignia of race; the pride stamped on every feature was that of birth, not of defiance. The man had a slender upright figure and a finely modelled head and face. The deeply set eyes were cold and piercing, but between the stern curves of the mouth there was much passion. Patience had studied these faces, but she was as innocent as if she had been bred in a cloister, and their mystery baffled while it allured her.
She ate her supper with a hearty appetite. Her mother’s lapses, being accepted as part of the routine of existence, rarely depressed her spirits. Nevertheless she frowned heavily as turbulent sounds pierced the thin partition, not so much at her mother’s iniquity, as at the prospect of being obliged to wash the supper dishes. The expected crash came, and she ran into the kitchen. Her mother lay prone. Two of the men lifted her immediately and carried her up the narrow stair. Patience sullenly attacked the dishes. She dumped them into a large pan of hot water, stirred them gingerly with a cloth fastened to a stick, drained the water off, poured in a fresh pailful, and dried them hastily. She filled the frying-pan with water and set it on the hottest part of the stove to cook itself clean.