The Californians Part 28

She shook her head. "There would be three people miserable instead of one. If I had not gone there yesterday, perhaps I should never have known: I simply made up my mind after that night at Monterey that I would think no more about it. By and by you might have got over it and we might have been happy in a way--I don't know. It is not your fault that I found out. And I went to the Library by the merest chance yesterday. It seems like fate, and I shall recognise it. If Helena did not love you, it would be different; but I had a terrible scene with her last night. I never thought even she could feel so. For the time I felt much sorrier for her than for myself--I felt rather dull, for that matter. After she went I thought all night. It was a terrible night."

She stopped and s.h.i.+vered.

He took her hand, but she withdrew it. "I thought of everything. You know I once told you that my only religion was to do what I believed to be right. If love means anything, it means that one should make the other person happy, not oneself. I thought and thought. You two were more to me than any people living. I have not ever really loved anyone else, except my aunt, and her not half so much as Helena. Therefore my love would not be worth much if I did not consider you two before myself. If Helena did not love you, it would be different. I would try to forget that she had fascinated you, and I should see no reason why I should not marry you if you still wished me to. But she loves you. I never expected to see such tragedy. But even if I did not believe she would make you happy, I would not give you to her, for I vowed to live for that--long before the night at Tiny's--in the garden. But Helena could make any man happy. She has everything."

She paused again. He made no reply for a moment. He was staring at the carpet, at a hideous green-and-yellow dragon. The comedy which cuts every black cloud in thin staccato blades was suggesting that he had something to be grateful for, inasmuch as the scene with Helena had been spared himself.

"You are far more suited to me than she is," he said finally. "I am too old for her. I am not for you. If we have souls, yours and mine were made for each other. Years have nothing to do with us. They would mean everything between Helena and myself."

She leaned forward and fixed her eyes on his, compelling his gaze.

"If you had never met me, would you not be engaged to Helena by this time?"

"Doubtless, but that proves nothing."

"Will you give me your word of honour that you do not wish you were free, that you would not gladly marry her now?"

He drew a long breath. He felt like a prisoner on the witness stand driven to save himself by incrimination of another. But he was in that state of mind when only the truth is possible.

"I will put it in another way. Do you want anything in the world as much as Helena?"

"No," he said; "I do not."

She got up and walked to the window, and drew aside the curtains. The sky was brilliant with moon and stars; the bay and hills lovely with the mystery of night. California had never been more unsympathetically beautiful. She jerked the curtains together and went back to him. As she did not sit down, he rose.

"That is all," she said, "except that you must let me explain to my father."

"And let you bear the whole brunt of it. Not if I know myself."

"You must. I understand him, and you do not. Besides, if he knew that you and Helena had anything to do with the breaking of the engagement he would never let me speak to either of you again, and I have no other friends. I shall tell him that I no longer wish to marry you, and he cannot compel me to give reasons. If he speaks to you about it, you must tell him that you will marry no woman against her will, and let him see that you mean it."

"Magdalena, you are a grand woman."

"I am a very dull and stupid person who has made up her mind that the only chance of making life bearable is to do what is right. I am terribly commonplace. I wonder you stood me as long as you did."

"You are the reverse of stupid and commonplace; and I am by no means sure that you are doing right. I, too, have thought over this matter, for nearly as many days as you have hours. I have tried to get outside myself, to view the case quite dispa.s.sionately; and I honestly believe that--as you insist upon putting me before yourself--it would be better for me to marry you than Helena."

"I do not believe it. Nor could I marry you after what you just acknowledged. I have never had much pride with you, but I have that much. Marry you when you said that you wanted nothing so much in the world as to marry Helena Belmont? That was the end of everything."

He left the room and the house. Magdalena went up the stair slowly, a.s.sisting herself with the banister. Her limbs felt as if their muscles had fallen to dust. Her heart seemed to have taken it outside of herself altogether; there was no sensation where sensation was supposed to sit, unless it were that of vacancy. Her brain was not confused; she did not feel in the least as if she were going to be ill. She knew what she had done, what she had to do in the future; and she wished that her heavy limbs were as dead as that something within her for which she had no name.

XV

The next morning she received a note from Trennahan.

I am sailing for Honolulu. Do nothing until my return. I shall be gone six weeks. Until your final decision I shall consider myself bound to you. And, I repeat, I think it best that we should marry.

You have acted on impulse, and your mind and judgment were constructed to work slowly. And G.o.d knows this is not a matter to be decided in haste. I shall have sailed before even a telegram from you could reach me. Don Roberto knows that I have thought more than once of a trip to the Islands. Tell him when he returns that I suddenly decided to go. J. T.

But Magdalena wanted no respite. It was her temper to die once rather than a thousand times. Her father was in Sacramento on business. He would return the following day. She was too dull and listless to feel fear of him, but she wanted it over.

She wrote at once to Helena, enclosing Trennahan's letter: "I have made up my mind, and that is the end of it. As far as I am concerned, he now belongs to you. I shall speak to papa to-morrow night. Immediately after I shall write to Mr. Trennahan, and that will put an end to my part in the matter."

Helena ordered her devoted parent to take her to Southern California at once. To pick up the old routine, to show herself daily and nightly in the studied simulacrum of her former self, was no part of her code. She felt she should tell every man that came near her that she hated him, and the reason why. Nor was hers the temperament for suspense without diversion. She could live through the next six weeks with change of scene, but not otherwise. She made a full confession to her father and received the severest reprimand of her life; but Colonel Belmont took her to Southern California.

Magdalena went to a lunch-party on the day following Trennahan's departure and paid calls during the afternoon. The small details diverted her, and she found herself able to make conversation, despite the sluggish current of misery beneath. She had told her mother of her determination not to marry Trennahan; and although Mrs. Yorba had paced the room in apprehension of her husband's wrath, she was secretly pleased. A daughter, particularly one that gave no trouble, was companionable and useful, and she saw no reason why she should be asked to give her to any man for years to come. Although meagre, she was not heartless, and was much relieved that Magdalena appeared indifferent to the sudden break. She was dimly conscious that she did not understand her daughter, but she had no desire to plumb the depths; she had a substantial distaste for the Spanish nature when roused.

Her husband was expected to return in time for dinner. She went to bed with an attack of neuralgia a little after six.

Magdalena did not see her father until he entered the dining-room with her uncle. He inquired immediately for Trennahan, who usually dined with him when there were no engagements elsewhere.

"He decided suddenly to go to the Sandwich Islands and sailed yesterday."

"Very sorry he no wait until I come back. I think I gone with him.

Always I want to see the Islands. I work long enough now: go to travel some and see the world. So queer to think is so much world outside California. When you go to Europe, I go too. And you, too, Eeram. You no can go with us, for both cannot leave the bank, but when we coming back you take the vacation, too."

"I never expect to see the outside of California again," said Mr. Polk, shortly.

Magdalena's nerves shook for the first time in seventy-two hours. She appreciated the ordeal she had to face within the next. The dull ache in every nerve of her gave place to a certain keenness of apprehension.

What would that terrible little man do? She had absorbed something of her father's personality as a child. During the last year she had talked much with him and had discovered the strange weaknesses and fears which lurked in that manufactured character. She fully realised what a son-in-law like Trennahan meant to him. He was quite capable of killing her. And during the last three or four weeks he had flown into more than one violent pa.s.sion, prompted by a liver disordered by too much dining out.

While the two men were drinking their coffee, she left the room and went to the office. The riding-whip was in its old place; on a shelf in the cupboard was a brace of pistols. Magdalena threw the whip into the cupboard, locked the door, and slipped the key behind a book on the mantel. Her father came in a moment later. She handed him a cigar and a match. He drew his heavy brows together and puckered his eyelids.

"What the matter?" he demanded drily. "So white you are, and the hand tremble."

Magdalena sat down and took control of herself.

"I am not going to marry Mr. Trennahan," she said.

She held her breath for the expected outburst; but Don Roberto only stared at her, his eyes slowly expanding. The cigar dropped from his fingers.

"He no want marry you?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed finally.

"I told him that I did not wish to marry him,--I never wish to marry any man,--and he is too proud to insist upon marrying a woman who does not want him. We had a long conversation. We quite understand each other. He will never ask me again."

"_Dios!_" gasped Don Roberto. "_Dios!_" But there was no anger in his voice. His eyes rolled from Magdalena to the window and back again.

Finally he said,--

"He no come back, then?"

"He is coming back in six weeks."

Don Roberto drew a long breath and seemed to recover himself.

"Then si he no break the engagement, he feel glad si it is make again.

You marry him the day after he come back. I fixit that."