Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
he walked majestically forward, and taking no notice whatever of Patience, began at once upon the meal she spread at his feet.
Patience had decided in favour of the library, and started leisurely for Monterey. The ocean rested heavily after its labour of the night, swinging forward at long intervals with deep murmur, or throwing an occasional iridescent cloud of spray about Point Lobos. The keen air sparkled under a flood of golden light. The earth was green with the deep rich green of spring. Great bunches of it sprang from even the ragged mountain side, and long blades struggled to life between the broken tiles of the old Mission. Patience crossed the valley through beds of golden poppies and pale blue baby-eyes struggling with infantile pertinacity to raise themselves above the waving grass. She plucked a poppy and held her nose in the great cup that covered half her face. She liked the slight languor its heavy perfume induced.
She climbed the hill, and the woods shut out the world. Patience forgot her destination and wandered happily and aimlessly in the dim fragrance. She plucked some pine needles, and rubbing their juices free pressed her hands about her face. On the whole she preferred their pungent freshness to the poppy.
After a time she began to skip over the carpet of yellow violets and to sing in a high childish treble. She was only a happy little girl with her lungs full of oxygen, her veins warmed by the sun, her heart exhilarated with the surpassing beauty of the morning. She threw pebbles at the squirrels and laughed loudly when they scampered up the stately trees. Spiritual problems did not trouble her, and social trials were forgotten.
She dawdled away the earlier hours of the morning in the woods, then descending the hill on the town side, regained her severe and elderly demeanour. The ocean was not visible here, but a bay bluer than sapphire curved into sands whiter than marble dust. The sun shone down on the red-tiled white adobes, on the high garden walls pink with Castilian roses, as gaily as in the old Arcadian time. But alas! it shone also on cheap wooden cottages and shops which had invaded even the hill on the right, where once a few stately mansions stood alone.
The town was very quiet. It was always quiet. Some holy unheard voice seemed ever saying “Hush!” As Patience walked down Alvarado Street to the Custom House, she saw a slender brown woman watering the roses behind her garden wall. She had been the belle of Monterey in her time, “La Tulita,” and tradition had it that she still watered a rose-bush which General Sherman had planted.
On the next block several dark lads sat on a fence in the approved Montereño style, smoking cigaritos. As Patience passed they lifted their caps as gallantly as ever caballero had done, although they did not fling them at her feet.
She saw no one else until she reached the Custom House. Mr. Foord stood on the corridor that overhung the rocks. He was a large round-shouldered man, with a benign face the colour of aging marble and a brow of the old time intellectual type. The eyes behind his spectacles were dim and kind. The lower part of his face was humorous and stern. He wore a silk hat, a well-brushed suit of broadcloth, and carried a gold-headed cane.
“You’re going to town!” cried Patience.
“I am,” he said smiling, “and I suppose you are going to read your eyes out in the library. Well, I’ll not be back until to-morrow, so you’ll have things all your own way. Tell Lola to cook you some dinner. I must be off.”
“Bring me a box of candy,” she commanded, as she stood on tiptoe to give him the little peck she called a kiss. It was her mark of supreme consideration.
He promised, and she went into the library, a large room opening on the corridor, where many a great ball had been given in the days before and after the Americans came. A half dozen old-fashioned bookcases, crowded with books, stood against the walls of the low room. The books were bound in spotted calf or faded cloth, black cloth with peeling gilt letters. One large case contained John Sparhawk’s library, and Patience knew that it was practically hers. The floor was covered with a thick red carpet. A large easy-chair was drawn before the deep fire-place, in which a huge log crackled: it was still winter within adobe walls.
“Altogether,” thought the philosopher of fifteen, as she flung her sunbonnet on the floor, “I guess that so long as I’ve got my tower and the woods and this room, I’m not so badly off as some.”
She roamed about the room, opening the doors of the bookcases in turn. One case had been filled with books selected for her especial use, but Mr. Foord had not forbidden her the freedom of the others, being wiser than many guardians. Nevertheless, certain books were placed on top shelves, their titles concealed beneath the moulding of the case, and Patience had looked speculatively at them more than once. To-day they exerted a peculiar fascination. And it was rarely that she was alone in the library.
She possessed an investigating and tentative mind, and this forbidden territory appealed eloquently to her unruly will. But to get them out was not an easy task. They were tightly packed, and the moulding was like unto a prison bar. But Patience was a person of resource. She gave one of the books a smart thump, and it slanted inward. She inserted her thumb under its lifted edge and worried it out. It was a small volume bound in black, its lettering worn away. She opened it and glanced curiously at the titlepage. “Boccaccio’s Decameron” winked invitingly. The pages were spotted with yellow. The drawings looked as if the stories might be reasonably interesting.
Patience curled herself in the deep window-seat, quite sure that she had found a treasure. The book had a furtive and apologetic air. “I have grown old, at least,” it seemed to say. “I am but an elderly rake, and can only mumble of the past.”
She read a few stories, then put the book back in its place with a resentful shove. Being wholly without the knowledge for which Eve pined, the stories were stupid and meaningless to her. She took down a thick volume bound in ragged calf. On the back was one large word, “Byron.” The leaves of this book were spotted too, but on the leaves were poems, and she loved poetry. Even when it was uninteresting she enjoyed the rhythm. She returned to the window-seat, and child-like, looked at the pictures first. The portrait of Byron she fell in love with immediately, and knocking her composite off its pedestal, lifted that proud passionate face to the station of honour.
There was an immense-eyed picture of the Bride of Abydos which she thought looked like Rosita, and one of the Corsair dashing in upon his segregated love:—
“My own Medora, sure thy song is sad!”
Francesca and Paola gazed at each other across a table:—
“That day no further leaf we did uncover.”
A castle which looked older than the book loomed massively from the page:—
“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls.”
Never having heard of Byron, she was unable to enlarge her knowledge at once with his most celebrated creations; but she liked the looks of Conrad and Medora, and plunged into their fortunes. She read every line of the poem, and when she had finished she read it over again. Then she stared at the breakers booming to the rocks on the opposite horn of the crescent, her eyes expanded and filled with a wholly new light. She might be unlettered in woman’s wisdom, but the transcendent passion, the pounding vitality of the poet, carried straight to intuition. The insidious elixir drifted into the crystal stream. That incomparable objectivity sang the song of songs as distinctly into her brain as had it gathered the sounds of life for twenty years. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright. She felt as if she were a musical instrument upon which some divine unknown music were vibrating; and as she was wont to feel in the tower—but with a substratum of something quite different. She was filled with a soft tumult which she did not in the least comprehend, and happy. She looked almost beautiful.
After a time she read “The Bride of Abydos,” and dreamed over that until she discovered that she was hungry. She had forgotten to order dinner, and went to the kitchen to beg a crust.
Lola, large, unwhaleboned, vibrating porcinely with every motion, her brown coarsely moulded face beaming with good nature, her little black eyes full of temper and kindness, her black hair in a neat small knot, an unspotted brown and yellow calico garment secluding her person,