VI

“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, stood at a sink in a kitchen as brilliantly clean as a varnished boot. Even the corners shone like glass, Patience often observed with a sigh. The two tables were scrubbed daily. The stove was black, the windows white. Not a pan nor a dish save those in the sink was in sight.

Patience made a sudden dash, a leap, and alighted on Lola’s back, encircling the yielding waist with her supple legs. The woman emitted a hoarse shriek, then laughed and pinched the legs. Patience plunged her cold hands into the creases of Lola’s neck, gathering a quantity into the palms. She was unrebuked. There were a few persons that loved Patience, and Lola was of them.

“Pobrecita!” she exclaimed. “You are cold, no?”

“Mucho frizo,” murmured Patience, sliding the back of her hands down the mountainous surface of Lola’s. “And hungry,madre de dios.”

“Hungry? You no have the dinner? When you coming?”

“Hours ago, Lola. How cruel of you not to call me to dinner! How mean and piggish to eat it all yourself!”

“Ay, no call me the names. How I can know you are heresiyou no tell? Why you no coming here straight before going to thelibrario?”

“I forgot, Lolamia; and then I became—interested. But do give me something to eat.”

“Si.” And with Patience still on her back Lola waddled to the cupboard and lifted down the remains of a corn cake rolled about olives and cheese and peppers.

“Anenchilada!” said Patience. “Good.”

Lola warmed the compound, and spread a napkin on a corner of one of the tables; then, suddenly unloosening Patience’s arms and legs, tumbled her headlong into a chair, laughing sluggishly as she ambled off. Patience ate the steamingenchiladaas heartily as had Byron never been. In a moment she begged for a cup of chocolate.

“Si,” said Lola, “I have some scrape already;” and she brewed chocolate in a little earthen pot, then beat it to froth with hermolinillo. Patience kicked her heels together with delight, and sipped it daintily while Lola stood by with fat hands on fat hips in reflex enjoyment.

“Like it,niña?”

“You bet.” Then after a moment she asked dreamily: “Lola, were you ever in love?”

“Que!Sure. Was I not marry? Poor my Pedro! How he lika theenchiladaand the chocolaty; and the lard cakes and the little pig cooking with onions. And now the worms eating him. Ay, yi!” and Lola sat herself upon a chair and wept.

As Patience walked home through the woods subsequently to a long afternoon with Byron, she was hazily sensible that she had stepped from one phase of girlhood into another. She had an odd consciousness of gazing through a veil of gauze upon an exquisite but unfamiliar landscape over which was a dazzle of sunlight. She by no means understood the mystery of her nature as yet; she was technically too ignorant; but instinct was awake, and she felt somewhat as when she had drained the poppy cup for long. She was in that transition state when for the first and last time passion is poetry.

She arrived home in time to get supper. Mrs. Sparhawk was unexpectedly sober, and very cross.

“My land, Patience Sparhawk!” she exclaimed, as her daughter opened the door and untied her sunbonnet, “seems to me you might help cook dinner in vacation instead of being off all day reading books or playing with that Spanish girl.”

“Seems to me,” said Patience, restored to her practical self, “that as you’re twice as big as I am and twice as strong, you’re pretty well able to get it yourself. And as it’s your fault there ain’t any servant in this house, I don’t see why I should make one of myself for you. Seems to me you’re fixed up.”

Mrs. Sparhawk blushed, and smoothed her hair consciously. The hair had been washed, and was decorated with a red bow. She wore a garment of turkey red calico with a bit of cheap lace at the throat and wrists. Her face was plastered with a whitewash much in vogue. She looked handsome, but evil, and Patience stared at her with an uneasiness she was not able to analyse. She turned away after a moment.

“I’d put on an apron,” she remarked drily. “You might get spots on that gorgeous window curtain dress of yours.”

At that moment the man Oscar entered the room. He uttered a note of admiration which made Patience turn about sharply. He was gazing upon Mrs. Sparhawk’s enhanced charms with an expression which Patience did not understand, but which filled her with sudden fury.

“Here!” she exclaimed roughly, “go into the dining room until supper’s ready. This kitchen ain’t big enough for three.”

The man moved his eyes and regarded her angrily.

“Who’s boss here?” he demanded.

“It’s not your place to ask questions. You’re hired to work outside, and when you come into this house there’s only one place for you. Now go into the other room.” Her eyes were flashing, and she had drawn up her shoulders. The man backed away from her much as dogs do when cats give warning.

“That girl gives me a chill. I hate her,” he muttered to his mistress.

Mrs. Sparhawk gave a loud laugh which covered her embarrassment, and slapped him heartily on the shoulder. “Go in, go in,” she said. “What’s the use of family quarrels?”

The man slunk away, and Patience went about her work with vicious energy. She fried liver and baked biscuits while her mother stirred the steaming cherries and brewed tea. When supper was ready she filled Oscar’s plate first and served him last, not hating herself in the least for her spite and spleen. After Mrs. Sparhawk had taken her place at the head of the table even her exuberant beauty could not dispel the frown on the hired man’s brow, until, to Patience’s disgust, she divined the cause of his surliness, and deftly exchanged her plate for his.

That night Patience did not go to her tower, but wandered over the dark fields, a drooping forlorn little figure in the crawling shadows. She felt dull and tired and disheartened. By nine o’clock she was asleep. She awoke as fresh as the morning. When Mr. Foord returned from San Francisco in the afternoon he found her curled in the easy-chair by his fire. She started guiltily as he entered, then tossed her head defiantly, let Byron slide to the floor, and went forward to kiss him.

As he was about to take the chair she had occupied he espied the fallen volume. He lifted it hastily.

“What is this?” he demanded.

Patience blushed furiously, but set her lips with an expression he understood.

“It’s Byron, and I’m going to read it all. I’ve read a lot.”

He shifted the book from one hand to the other for a moment, his face much perturbed. Finally he laid it on the table, merely remarking: “Sooner or later, sooner or later.”

Patience offered him a piece of the candy he had brought her; but he preferred his pipe, and she perched herself on the arm of his chair and ate half the contents of her box without pause. She had not yet learned the subtle delights of the epicure, and to enjoy until capacity was exhausted was typical of her enthusiastic temperament. When she could no longer look upon the candy without a shudder she climbed to the old gentleman’s shoulder and scratched his bald pate with her ragged nails. It was her emphatic way of expressing gratitude, and beloved by Mr. Foord above pipe andenchilada.

Patience took Byron home with her that evening, Mr. Foord merely shrugging his shoulders. After supper she read until dark, then hid the book under the bed and went over to the tower. She ran up the twisted stair, and astonished the owl by clasping him in her arms and kissing him passionately. He manifested his disapproval by biting at her shoulder fiercely. She shrieked and boxed his ears smartly. He flapped his large wings wildly. A battle royal was imminent in that sacred tower where once the silver bells had called the holy men to prayer. But Patience suddenly broke into a laugh and sank on her knees by the window, while Solomon retreated to the wall, and regarded her with a round unwinking stare, brooding over problems which he did not in the least understand.

Patience brooded also, but her lids drooped, and she barely saw the beauty of ocean and rock and spray. The moon was not yet up, and the half revealed intoning sea was full of mystery.

She was conscious that her mood was not quite what it had been during her last visit. All of that was there—but more. She felt higher above the earth than ever before, but more conscious of its magnetism. Something hummed along her nerves and stirred in her veins. Her musings shaped to definite form, inasmuch as they assumed the semblance of man. Inevitably Byron was exhumed for duty; and if his restless soul were prowling space and Carmel Valley, his famous humour, desuetous in Eternity, must have echoed in the dull ears of roaming shapes.

Beside the white face of the child was the solemn and hebraic visage of the owl. Some outworn chord of Solomon’s youth may have been stirred by his friend’s tumultuous greeting, for he had stepped, with the dignity of his years, to her side, and stood regarding, with introspective stare, the reflection of the rising moon.

Patience did not see him. She was gazing upon Byron, whose moody passionate face was distinctly visible among the stars. Alas! her vision was suddenly obscured by a hideous black object. A bat flew straight at Carmel tower. Patience sprang to her feet, tossed her skirt over her head, and fled down the stair. The owl stepped to the stair’s head and gazed into the winding darkness, his eyes full of unutterable nothing.

On Monday school re-opened, and Patience was late as usual. She loitered through the woods, conning her lessons, having been too much occupied with her poet to give them attention before. As she ascended the steps of the schoolhouse the drone of the Lord’s Prayer came through the open window, and she paused for a moment on the landing, swinging her bag in one hand and her tin lunch-pail in the other.

She was not a picturesque figure. Her sunbonnet was of faded blue calico dotted with white. The meagre braid projecting beneath the cape was tied with a shoe string. The calico frock was faded and mended and much too short, although the hem and tucks had been let out. The copper-toed boots were of a greyish-green hue, and the coarse stockings wrinkled above them. The nails of her pretty brown hands looked as if they had been sawed off. But the eyes under the old sunbonnet were dreamy and happy. The brain behind was full of new sensations. In the sparkling atmosphere was an electric thrill. The day was as still as only the days of Monterey can be. The pines, and the breakers had never intoned more sweetly.

A voluminous A—men! startled Patience from her reverie. She went hastily within, hung her bonnet and pail on a peg, and entered the schoolroom, smiling half deprecatingly half confidently, at Miss Galpin. The young teacher’s stern nod did not discompose her. As she passed Rosita she received a friendly pinch, and Manuela looked up and smiled; but while traversing the width of the room to her desk she became aware of something unfriendly in the atmosphere. As she took her seat she glanced about and met the malevolent eyes of a dozen turned heads. One girl’s lip was curled; another’s brows were raised significantly, as would their owner query: “What could you expect?”

Patience blushed until her face glowed like one of the Castilian roses on the garden wall opposite the window. “They’ve found out about Byron,” she thought. “Horrors, how they’ll tease me!”

School girls have a traditional habit of “willing” each other to “miss” when in aggressive mood. To-day some twenty of the girls appeared to have concerted to will that Patience should forget what little lore she had gathered on her way to school. Patience, always sensitive to impressions, was as taut as the strings of an Æolian harp from her experience of the past week. Such natures are responsive to the core to the psychological power of the environment, and once or twice this morning Patience felt as if she must jump to her feet and scream. But even at that early age she divined that the sweetest revenge is success, and she strove as she had never striven before to acquit herself with credit.

All morning the silent battle went on. Miss Galpin, who was beloved of her pupils because she was pretty and dressed well, was a graduate of the San Francisco High School, and an excellent teacher. Frankly as she liked Patience she had never shown her any partiality in the schoolroom; but to-day, noting the antagonism that was brought to bear on the girl, she exerted all her cleverness to assist her in such subtle fashion that Patience alone should appreciate her effort. In consequence, when the morning session closed, Patience wore the doubtful laurels and the bad blood was black.

As the girls trooped down into the yard Rosita laid her arm about Patience and endeavoured to lead her away. Manuela conferred in a low tone with the foe, voice and gestures remonstrant. But there was blood in the air, and Patience squared her shoulders and awaited the onslaught. Incidentally she inspected her nails and copper toes.

Several of the girls walked rapidly up to her. They were smiling disagreeably.

“Can’t you keep her at home?” asked one of them.

“Think she’ll marry him?” demanded another.

Patience, completely taken aback, glanced helplessly from one to the other.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Come, Patita,” murmured Rosita, on the verge of tears.

Manuela exclaimed: “You are fiends,fiends!” and walked away.

“Mean? Do you mean to say she got off without you knowing it?”

“Knowing what?” A horrible presentiment assailed Patience. Her fingers jerked and her breath came fast.

“Why,” said Panchita McPherson, brutally, “your mother was in here Saturday night with her young man and regularly turned the town upside down. They were thrown out of three saloons. Can’t you keep her at home?”

Patience stared dully at the girls, her dry lips parted. She knew that they had spoken the truth. She had gone to bed early on Saturday night. Shortly afterward she had heard the sound of buggy wheels and Billy’s uncertain gait. Many hours later she had been awakened by the sound of her mother stumbling upstairs; but she had thought nothing of either incident at the time.

Panchita continued relentlessly, memories of many class defeats rushing forward to lash her spleen: “You’ll please understand after this that we don’t care to have you talk to us, for we don’t think you’re respectable.” Whereupon the other girls, nodding sarcastically at Patience, entwined their arms and walked away, led by the haughty Miss McPherson.

For a few moments Patience hardly realised how she felt. She stood impassive; but a cyclone raged within. All the blood in her body seemed to have rushed to her head, to scorch her face and pound in her ears. She wondered why her hands and feet were cold.

“Come, Patita, don’t mind them,” said Rosita, putting her arm round her comrade. “The mean hateful nasty—pigs!” Never before had the indolent little Californian been so vehement; but Patience slipped from her hold, and running through a gate at the back of the yard crouched down on a box. Rosita’s words had broken the spell. She was filled with a volcano of hate. She hated the girls, she hated Monterey, she hated life; but above all she hated her mother.

After a time all the hate in her concentrated on the woman who had made her young life so bitter. She had never liked her, but not until the dreadful moments just past had she realised the full measure of her inheritance. The innuendoes she had not understood, but it was enough to know that her mother had disgraced her publicly and insulted her father’s memory. Her schoolmates she dismissed from her mind with a scornful jerk of the shoulders. She had beaten them too easily and often in the schoolroom not to despise them consummately. They could prick but not stab her.

The bell rang; but she had an account to settle, and bonnetless she started for home.

Mrs. Sparhawk was sitting on the porch reading a novel when Patience walked up to her, snatched the book from her hand, and flung it into a rose-tree. The woman was sober, and quailed as she met her daughter’s eyes. Patience had walked rapidly under a hot sun. Her face was scarlet, and she was trembling.

“I hate you!” she sobbed. “I hate you! It doesn’t do any good to tell you so, but it does me good to say it.”

The girl looked the incarnation of evil passions. She was elemental Hate, a young Cain.

“I wish you were dead,” she continued. “You’ve ruined every bit of my life.”

“Why—what—what—” mumbled the woman. But the colour was coming to her face, and her eyes were beginning to glitter unpleasantly.

“You know well enough what. You were in town drunk on Saturday night, and were in saloonswith a farm hand. To make a brute of yourself was bad enough—but to go about with a common man! Are you going to marry him?”

Mrs. Sparhawk laughed. “Well, I guess not.”

Patience drew a quick breath of relief. “Well, that’s what they’re saying—that you’re going to marry him—a man that can’t read nor write. Now look here, I want one thing understood—unless you swear to me you’ll not set foot in that town again I’ll have you put in the Home of the Inebriates—There! I’ll not be disgraced again; I’ll do it.”

Mrs. Sparhawk sprang to her feet, her face blazing with rage. “You will, will you?” she cried. She caught the girl by the shoulders, and shaking her violently, boxed first one ear, then the other, with her strong rough hands. For an instant Patience was stunned, then the blood boiled back to her brain. She screamed harshly, and springing at her mother clutched her about the throat. The lust to kill possessed her. A red curtain blotted even the hated face from sight. Instinctively she tripped her mother and went down on top of her. The crash of the body brought two men to the rescue, and Patience was dragged off and flung aside.

“My land!” exclaimed one of the men, his face white with horror. “Was you going to kill your ma?”

“Yes, that she was,” spluttered Mrs. Sparhawk, sitting up and pulling vaguely at the loose flesh of her throat. “She’d have murdered me in another minute.”

Patience by this time was white and limp. She crawled upstairs to her room and locked the door. She sank on the floor and thought on herself with horror.

“I never knew,” she reiterated, “that I was so bad. Why, I’m fifteen, and I never wanted to kill even a bird before. I wouldn’t learn to shoot. I’d never drown a kitten. When the Chinaman stuck a red-hot poker through the bars of the trap and burnt ridges in the live rat I screamed and screamed. And now I’ve nearly killed my mother, and wanted to. Who, who would have thought it?”

When she was wearied with the futile effort to solve the new problem, she became suddenly conscious that she felt no repentance, no remorse. She was horrified at the sight of the black veins in her soul; but she felt a certain satisfaction at having unbottled the wrath that consumed her, at having given her mother the physical equivalent of her own mental agony. Over this last cognisance of her capacity for sin she sighed and shook her head.

“I may as well give myself up,” she thought with young philosophy. “I am what I am, and I suppose I’ll do what I’m going to do.”

She went downstairs and out of the house. She passed a group of men; they stared at her in horror. Then another little seed from the vast garden of human nature shot up to flower in Patience’s puzzled brain. She lifted her head with an odd feeling of elation: she was the sensation of the hour.

She went out on Point Lobos and listened to the hungry roar of the waves, watched the tossing spray. Nature took her to her heart as ever, and when the day was done she was normal once more. She returned to the house and helped to get supper, although she refused to speak to her equally sullen parent.

It was several days before the story reached Monterey. When it did, the girls treated Patience to invective and contumely, but delivered their remarks at long range. The mother of Manuela said peremptorily that Patience Sparhawk should never darken the doors of the Peralta mansion again, and even Mrs. Thrailkill told the weeping Rosita that the intimacy must end.

Miss Galpin was horrified. When school was over she took Patience firmly by the hand and led her up the hill to her boarding-place, the widow Thrailkill’s ancestral home. The long low adobe house was traversed from end to end by a pillared corridor. It was whitewashed every year, and its red tiles were renewed at intervals, but otherwise the march of civilisation had passed it by. Mrs. Thrailkill, large and brown, with a wart between her kind black eyes, and a handsome beard, was rocking herself on the corridor. When she recognised the teacher’s companion she arose with great dignity and swung herself into the house.

Miss Galpin led Patience down the corridor to a room at the end, and motioned her to a chair. Several magazines lay on a table, and Patience reached her hand to them involuntarily; but Miss Galpin took the hand and drew the girl toward her. The young teacher’s brown eyes wore a very puzzled expression. Even her carefully regulated bang had been pushed upward with a sudden dash of the hand. She was only twenty-two, and her experience of human nature was limited. Her ideas of life were accumulated largely from the novels of Mr. Howells and Mr. James, whom she revered; and neither of these gentlemen photographed such characters as Patience. It had probably never occurred to them that Patiences existed. She experienced a sudden thrill of superiority, then craved pardon of her idols.

“Patience, dear,” she said gently, “is this terrible story true?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Patience, standing passively at Miss Galpin’s knee.

“You actually tried to kill your mother?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Galpin gasped. She waited a moment for a torrent of excuse and explanation; but Patience was mute.

“And you are not sorry?” she faltered.

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh, Patience!”

“I’m sorry you feel so badly, ma’am. Please don’t cry,” for the estimable young woman was in tears, and mentally reviling her preceptors.

“How can I help feeling terribly, Patience? You break my heart.”

“I’m sorry, dear Miss Galpin.”

“Patience, don’t you love God?”

“No, ma’am, not particularly. Leastways, I’ve never thought much about it.”

“You little heathen!”

“No, ma’am, I’m not. My father was very religious. But please don’t talk religion to me.”

“Patience, I don’t know what to make of you. I am in despair. You’re not a bad girl. You give me little trouble, and I’ve always said that you had finer impulses than any girl I’ve ever known, and the best brain. You ought to realise better than any girl of your age the difference between right and wrong. And yet you have done what not another girl in the school would do, inferior as they are—”

“How do you know, ma’am? I never thought I would. Neither did you think I would. You can’t tell what you’ll do till you do it.”

Miss Galpin was distracted. She resumed hurriedly:

“I want you to be a good woman, Patience,—a good as well as a clever woman. And how can you be good if you don’t love God?”

“Are all people good the same way?”

“Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end.” Miss Galpin blessed the evolution of verbiage.

“Are all religious people good?”

“Certainly.”

“These girls are religious, especially the Spanish ones, and they’ve behaved to me like devils. So have their mothers, and some of them go to five o’clock mass.”

“Girls are undisciplined, and mothers often have a mistaken sense of duty.”

“You are good, and Mr. Foord is good,” pursued the terrible child. “But you’d be just as good if you weren’t religious. It’s born in you, and you’re refined and kind-hearted. Those people are just naturally vulgar, and religion won’t make them any better.”

Miss Galpin drew the girl suddenly to her lap and kissed her. “I’m terribly sorry for you, dear,” she said. “I wish I understood you better, and could help you, but I don’t. I never knew any one in the least like you. I worry so about your future. People that are not like other people don’t get along nicely in this world. And you have such impulses! But I love you, Patience, and I’ll always be your friend. Will you remember this?”

Patience was undemonstrative, but she kissed Miss Galpin warmly and arranged her bang.

“Now, let’s talk about something else,” she said. “Are you going to get up those private theatricals for the night that school closes?”

Miss Galpin sighed and gave up the engagement. “Yes,” she said. Then, hesitatingly: “Do you wish to take part?”

“No, of course I don’t. I’ll have nothing more to do with those girls than I can help. You can bet your life on that. But I can help drill Rosita. What’s the play?”

“I’ll read it to you.” Miss Galpin took a pamphlet from a drawer and read aloud the average amateur concoction. Rosita was to take the part of an indolent girl with the habit of arousing herself unexpectedly. In one act she would have to dash to the front of the stage and dance a parlour breakdown.

“I am afraid Rosita cannot act,” said Miss Galpin, in conclusion, “but she is so pretty I couldn’t leave her out.”

“Rosita can act,” said Patience, emphatically. “I’ve seen her imitate every actress that has been here, and take off pretty nearly every crank in Monterey. And Mrs. Thrailkill can teach her one of the old Californian dances—and a song. Rosita has a lovely voice, almost as pretty as a lark’s.”

“Really? Well, I’ll talk to Mrs. Thrailkill and persuade her to forgive you, and then you can come here every afternoon and drill Rosita. And now will you promise me to be a good little girl?”

“Yes, ma’am—leastways I’ll try. Good-bye,” and Patience gave her a little peck, seized her sunbonnet, and went hurriedly out.

“I suppose,” she thought as she sauntered down the hill, “I’d better go and have it out with Mr. Foord. It’s got to come, and the sooner it’s over the better. Poor man, I’ll make it as easy for him as I can. It’ll be harder on him than on me, for I’m used to it now.”

The old gentleman was walking up and down the corridor as she turned the corner of the custom house. He looked very yellow and feeble, and supported himself with a stick.

“Oh, Patience!” he exclaimed.

For the first time Patience felt inclined to cry, but her aversion to display feeling controlled her. She merely approached and stood before him, swinging her sunbonnet.

“Don’t let us talk about it,” he said hastily. “I have something else to say to you. Sit down.”

They sat down side by side on a bench.

“You know,” the old gentleman continued, “I have a half-sister in the east—Harriet Tremont, her name is—in Mariaville-on-Hudson, New York. She is the best woman in the world, the most sinless creature I ever knew, yet full of human nature and never dull. She is very religious, has given up her life to doing good, and has some eccentric notions of her own. She writes me dutifully twice a year, although we have not met for thirty, and in her last letter she told me she intended to adopt a child, rescue a soul as she called it, and furthermore that she should adopt the child of the most worthless parents she could discover in her work among the worthless. Since—lately—I have been thinking strongly of sending you to her. You must get away from here. You must have a chance in life. If you remain here you will grow up bitter and hard, and the result with your brain and temperament may be terrible. You are capable of becoming a very bad or a very good woman. You are still young—but there is no time to lose. Should you care to go?”

“Of course I should,” cried Patience, enchanted with the idea of an excursion into unknown worlds. Then her face fell. “But I shouldn’t like to be adopted. That is too much like charity.”

“Is the ranch entirely mortgaged?”

Patience nodded.

“Well, let us look at it as a business proposition. You will be little expense to her—she is fairly well off; and one more in the household makes no appreciable difference. You will attend the public schools with the view to become a teacher, and when you are earning a salary you can repay her for what little outlay she may have made. Do you see?”

“Yes. I don’t mind if you look at it that way.”

“I’ll see your mother in a day or two. You don’t think she’ll object, do you?”

“Object? What has she got to say about it?”

“A great deal, unfortunately. She is your legal guardian. But she doesn’t love you, and I think can be persuaded. I shall miss you, my dear. What shall I do without my bright little girl?”

Patience nestled up to him, and the two strangely assorted companions remained silent for a time watching the seagulls sweep over the blue bay. Then Mr. Foord drifted naturally into the past, and Patience grew romantic once more.

That night Patience felt no inclination for either bed or tower. She wandered over the field, entered the pine forest, and walked to the coast. The tall straight trees grew close together; their aisles were very gloomy. From the ground arose the ominous voices of the night, and the wind in the treetops moaned heavily. But Patience was not afraid. She revelled in the vast dark silence, and felt that the world was all her own.

As she left the forest she saw great clouds of spray tossed high into the starry dark, heard the ocean rush at the outlying rocks, breaking into mist or leaping to the shore. The sea lions were talking loudly; the seagulls, huddled on the high points of the coast, scolded hoarsely.

On the edge of the forest was a cabin. Patience walked toward it. She knew the old man that lived there. He was evidently awake, for the open window was yellow with light. As she passed it on her way to the door she glanced within. Her skin turned cold; her hair stiffened. A sheeted corpse lay on the bed. Candles burned at head and foot. Patience, brave as she was, abjectly feared the corpse. She believed that she could survive a ghost, but she knew that if shut up with a dead body for ten minutes she should go mad. To-night she would have fled shrieking were it not that the room had a living occupant.

In a chair beside the bed sat a man gazing at the floor, his chin dropped to his chest. He wore rough clothes, but they were the affectations of the gentleman, not the garb of the dead man and his friends. Nor had Patience ever seen so noble a head. The profile was beautiful, the expression mild and intellectual, and most melancholy.

Patience forgot her terror as she wondered who the stranger could be; but in a moment it was renewed tenfold. Down the ocean road from Monterey came a wild hideous yell. The man by the corpse raised his head apprehensively, rose as if to flee, then sank wearily to his chair again. The clatter of hoofs on the hard road mounted above the thunder of the waves. Patience staring into the dark suddenly saw the leaping fire of torches, and a moment later tall figures riding recklessly. The yelling was incessant and demoniac.

“The man murdered Jim and they’re lynchers,” thought Patience. She glanced about wildly. A small tree stood near. She scampered up the trunk like a squirrel, and hid in the branches. None too soon. In another moment those terrible figures were screaming and gesticulating before the hut.

The smoky flames revealed an extraordinary sight to Patience’s distended eyes. These men were bearded like the men of modern civilisation, even their hair was properly cut; but they wore the garments of Greece and Japan, flowing robes of white and red; one dark sinister-looking being upheld a glittering helmet.

Patience rubbed her eyes. Did she dream over her Byron? But no mortal, none but the sheeted dead, could have slept and dreamed in that infernal clamour. Only the man by the bed sat immobile. He did not raise his head. Out of the pandemonium of sound Patience at last distinguished one word: “Charley! Charley!” If “Charley” were the man within the hut he gave no sign; nor when they threw back their heads and as from one throat gave forth a rattling volume of ribald laughter.

Suddenly Patience, who, seeing no rope, began to recover her courage, noticed that one of the men had ridden beneath her tree, taking no part in this singular drama. Once he turned his head, and an aquiline profile, fine and strong, with black hair falling above it, was sharply revealed against the red glare. Impulsively Patience leaned down and touched his shoulder. He looked up with a start, and saw a small white face among the leaves.

“What on earth is this?” he asked. “Is it a child?” His voice was rich and deep, with a gentle hint of brogue.

“What are they?” asked Patience. “Are they real devils, or only men? And are they going to kill him?”

The man laughed. “I certainly should ask the same question if I had not happened to come with them. Oh, they won’t do any murder, unless they happen to frighten some one to death. They’re members of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco—newspaper men and artists—who are down here on a lark.”

“Who’s the man in there by him, and why do they yell at him so?”

“Oh, he is a solitary spirit, a man of genius. He got tired of them and gave them the slip to-night. This is revenge.”

“They have the Estrada house on Alvarado Street,” said Patience. “I heard they were here.” Then she noticed that her companion wore the common garb of American civilisation. “Why aren’t you rigged up, too?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m hardly one of them. I’m only an Eastern man—a New Yorker—and am staying at Del Monte for a day or two. I rode over to see them this afternoon, and they insisted upon my staying for dinner. What on earth are you doing here by yourself at this time of night?”

Patience explained. Then she added wistfully, “I shall be frightened to death going home through those woods alone. I’ll imagine that that corpse and those dreadful-looking men are behind me at every step.”

“Just drop onto my horse and I’ll take you home. I’m pretty tired of all this.” He raised his arms and lifted her down, placing her in front of him. “Lucky I had an English saddle,” he said, and as he bent his head Patience could see that he was smiling. “Oh!” he added abruptly, “I have seen you before. Now—tell me where to go.”

Patience directed him, and they cantered away unobserved.

“Where did you see me?” she asked, “and how odd that you should rememberme!”

“You have wonderful eyes. Although I’m an Irishman I won’t go so far as to say they are pretty, but they look as if they had been born to see so much. It would be difficult to forget them. Upon me soul you are actually trembling. Did you never have a compliment before?”

“Never! And I guess I’ll remember it longer than you remember my eyes. Where did you see me?”

“I was standing at the window of the house in Alvarado Street when you came along from school with a dozen or more of the girls. You all stopped to gaze at a passing circus troupe, and—I noticed you first because you stood a little apart from the others.”

“I usually do,” said Patience, drily.

He did not add that, attracted by the eagerness of her gaze and her rapid changes of expression, he had asked who she was, and that a Montereño present had related the family history and her own notable performances in no measured terms. “She’s got bad blood in her and the temper of Old Nick himself. She’ll come to no good, homely as she is,” the man had concluded. “Curious enough, the boys all like her and would spark her if they got a show; but she’s hell-set on gettin’ an education at present and doesn’t notice them much.”

Patience made him talk on for the pleasure of hearing his voice. “Are you a real Irishman?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been an American for twenty years, but there’s a good deal of Irish left in me yet, especially in me tongue.”

“I’d keep it, if I were you. It’s nicer even than the Spanish. Do you think our voices are horrid?”

“I think that if you’d pitch yours a little lower it would be an improvement,” he said, smiling. And Patience registered a vow which she kept. In after years when great changes had come upon her, her voice was envied and emulated.

As they left the forest and entered Carmel Valley Patience pointed to her home, then suddenly took the reins from his hand and directed the horse toward the Mission. The waning moon hung over the ocean, and the Mission stood out boldly.

“Come up to my tower,” said Patience; “the view issomething! That will be your reward. I never took any one there before.”

“All right,” he said, “I may as well make a night of it.” He tethered his horse and followed her up the spiral stair.

“Solomon is not here,” she said regretfully. “He’s out foraging. Now!”

The young man walked to the window and inspected the view. Patience regarded him with rapt admiration. He was tall and strong and well dressed. She had never dreamed that anything romantic could really happen to her; and as she was sure that it would be her last experience as well as her first, she suddenly felt depressed and miserable, her imagination leaping to the finish.

He turned and met her eyes. “What are you thinking of?” he asked.

But Patience was too shy to tell him, and asked him if he liked the view.

“It’s a jolly view and no mistake. You’re not a happy child, are you?” he added, abruptly. With the enthusiasm and spontaneous kindness of his Irish blood he had conceived the idea of dropping a seed in this plastic soil, and was feeling his way toward the right spot.

“I don’t know that I am,” said Patience, haughtily. “I suppose some of those people told you things.”

“Well, they did, that’s a fact. But you mustn’t get angry with me, please, for upon me word I like you better than any one I’ve met in California.”

“Don’t you live here?”

“My home is in New York, and I return to-morrow.”

“Oh! Well, I don’t see how I should interest you.”

“You do, though, and that’s all there is to it. I’m neither as cautious as an Englishman nor as practical as an American—though God rest the two of them; I mean nothing to their detriment. But there’s a force in you, and force doesn’t go to waste, although it’s more often than not misdirected. I can feel yours myself; and I’m told that you’re the cleverest girl in the town as well as the proudest and most ambitious. Now, what do you intend to do with yourself?”

“I suppose I’ll be a teacher; and if Mrs. Sparhawk has no objections I may go East soon and live with a religious old lady.”

“Well, that’s not so bad; only I doubt if that life will suit you any better than this.” He put his finger under her chin and turned her face to the light. “I am a lawyer, you know,” he added, “and features and lines and curves mean a good deal to me. You’ve got a good will, begad, and like all first-class American women, you’ll keep your head up until you drop. And you have all her faculty of beginning life over again several times, if necessary. You’ll never rust nor mould, nor write polemical novels if things don’t go your way. You’ve got a good strong brain behind those eyes, and although you’ll make mistakes of various sorts, you’ll kick them behind you when you’re done with them, begin over and be none the worse. Remember that no mistake is irrevocable; that there are as many to-morrows as yesterdays; that only the incapable has a past. It is all a matter of will as far as the world is concerned, and ideals as far as your own soul goes. No matter how often circumstances and your own weakness compel you to let go your own private ideals, deliberately put them back on their pedestal the moment you have recovered balance, and make for their attainment as if nothing had happened. Then you’ll never acquire an aged soul and never lose your grip. Can you remember all that?”

“You bet I can.”

He laughed. “I believe you. I might add: Don’t love the wrong man, but I’ll not throw away good advice. You’ll not be wholly guided by reason in those matters. I will merely say, Rub the first experience in hard and let a long while elapse before your second, or it will be the greater mistake of the two. Your reactions will be very violent, I should say. Well, I’ll be going now.”

“I’d rather you’d stay and talk.”

“Would you? Well, being a lawyer, I know where to stop. Besides, I’ll have all those fellows after me if I stay too long. We’ll doubtless meet again. The world is small these days.”

Patience followed him reluctantly down the stair, and he walked beside her across the valley, leading his horse. When they reached the farmhouse he shook hands with her warmly, wished her good luck, and rode away. She ran up to her room, and, lighting a candle, transcribed his words into an old copybook.

Miss Galpin expostulated with Mrs. Thrailkill to such effect that Patience spent two hours each afternoon in the family garret rehearsing Rosita while the astonished rats took refuge in the chimney. Patience could not act, but she had dramatic appreciation and an intellectual conception of any part not beyond her years. Rosita was not intellectual, but, as Patience had discerned, the spirit of Thalia was in her. She quickly became enamoured of her unsuspected resources and at the prospect of exhibiting herself on a platform. Not only did she rouse herself to something like exertion, but she faithfully followed the instructions of her strenuous teacher and discovered a talent for posing and little tricks of manner all her own. Her mother taught her the song and dance, which were to be the sensation of the evening.

It was on the fourth day that Patience, returning home late in the afternoon, met Mr. Foord in the woods. The old gentleman looked sad and perplexed, and Patience sprang upon the step of his buggy and demanded to know what was the matter.

“It’s very odd,” he said, “but she won’t let you go.”

“Won’t let me go?” cried Patience, furiously. “Well, I’ll go anyhow.”

“You can’t, my dear. The law won’t let you.”

“Do you mean to say that the law won’t protect me from that woman?”

“I am afraid she has the best of it.” He recalled the woman’s angry cunning face, as he had pleaded with her, and shook his head. “You see she was never in the town in that condition before. The men out there are so devoted to her that—so she has informed me—they would swear to a man that they had never seen her drunk. And, you see, she’s never abused you—the only time she struck you she had provocation—you must admit that. You are under her control until you are eighteen, and I don’t see that we can do anything. I’m very sorry. I never felt so defeated in my life.”

“But for gracious goodness sake why won’t she let me go? I’m no good to speak of about the place, and she certainly isn’t keeping me for love.”

“Well—I think it’s revenge. She remarked that she had a chance to pay up and she’d do it.”

“I’ll just run away, that’s all.”

“The law would bring you back, and arrest me for abduction.”

“I hate the law,” said Patience, gloomily. “Seems to me I’m always finding something new to hate.”

“You must not hate, my child,” and he quoted the Bible dutifully, although in entire sympathy with her. “That is what I am so afraid of—that you will become hard and bitter. I want to save you from that. Well, perhaps she’ll relent. I shall see her again and again. I must go on, Patience.”

She kissed him and walked sullenly homeward. As she entered the kitchen her mother looked up and laughed. Her face was triumphant and malignant.

“You don’t go,” she said. “Not much. I’ve got the whip hand this time and I’ll keep it. Here you’ll stay until you’re eighteen—”

Patience turned abruptly and ran upstairs. As she locked her door she thought with some satisfaction: “Now that I know myself I can control myself. If I’d jumped on her then she’d have fallen in the stove.”

As her imagination had not dwelt at great length upon the proposed change the disappointment was not as keen as it might have been, much as she desired to leave Monterey. Moreover, she was occupied with Rosita and the coming examinations. And did she not have her Byron? She rose at dawn and read him. In the evening she went over to the tower and declaimed him to the grey ocean whose passions were eternal. The owl, who regarded Byron as a great bore, closed his eyes when she began and went to sleep. Sometimes—when the sun rode high—she sat upon the rubbish over Junipero Serra’s bones, and with one eye out for rats and snakes and tarantulas, conned a new poem. She liked the contrast between the desolation and death in the old ruin and the warm atmosphere of the poetry. As often Byron was unheeded, and she dreamed of the mysterious stranger who had so magnetised her that she had forgotten to ask his name. She had only to close her eyes to hear his voice, to recall the words which seemed forever moving in one or other chamber of her mind, to see the profile which she admired quite as much as Byron’s. As for the voice, it had a possessing quality which made her understand the wherefore of the thrilling notes of the male bird in spring-time. She invested her ambitious young lawyer with all the dark sardonic melancholic fascinations of Lara, Conrad, Manfred, and Don Juan. The wild sweet sting of spring was in her veins. Her mind was full of vague illusions, very lovely and very strange, shifting of outline and wholly inexplicable.

On the afternoon of the last day of school several of the girls decorated the hall with garlands and flags. Carpenters erected a stage, and Patience arranged the “properties.” When the great night arrived and Monterey in its best attire crowded the room, no curtain in the sleepy town had ever been regarded with more complacent expectation. The Montereñas were thoroughly satisfied with their offspring, and performances of any sort were few.

The programme was opened by Manuela, who wore an old pink satin frock of her mother’s cut short and trimmed with a flounce of Spanish lace. Her brown shining face looked good will upon all the world as she recited “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Then came a dialogue in which all the little participants wore white frocks and crimped hair.

Meanwhile, in the dressing-room, Rosita was limp in Patience’s arms.

“Oh, Patita!” she gasped, “I can’t! I can’t! I’m frightened to death! What shall I do?”

“Do?” cried Patience, angrily, who was so excited herself that she pumped Rosita’s arms up and down as if the unfledged Thespian had just been rescued from the bay. “Do? You must brace up. When you get there you’ll be all right. And youmust notget stage fright. Rosita, youmustmake a success. Remember you’ve got the star part. Don’t,don’tmake a fool of yourself.”

“Oh, if you could only hold my hand,” wailed Rosita.

“Well, I can’t, and that’s the end of it. Now! brace up quick.” The prompter was calling in a loud whisper,—

“Miss Thrailkill, be ready when I say, ‘Life.’”

“Ay, dios de mi alma,” almost sobbed Rosita.

Patience dragged her to the wings and held her there. When the cue was spoken she gave her a hard pinch, then a shove. Rosita gasped and disappeared.

Patience slipped round into the audience, her heart in her throat, her eyes black with excitement. If Rosita broke down she felt that she should have hysterics.

At first Rosita had nothing to say. Upon entering she had merely to fling herself upon a divan in an indolent attitude whilst the others carried on a spirited dialogue. Patience saw that she had managed to get to the sofa without falling prone, but also observed that her bosom was heaving. Nevertheless, when her time came she managed to drawl her lines, although with as little expression as she told her rosary. Patience stamped her foot audibly.

But as the play progressed it was evident that Rosita was recovering her poise. When she finally had to come forward she moved with all the indolent grace of her blood, and delivered her little speech with such piquant fire that the audience applauded loudly. And with that clatter of feet and hands a new light sprang into the Spanish girl’s eyes, an expression half of surprise, half of transport. From that time on she acted in a manner which astonished even her instructor.

She looked exquisitely pretty. Her white rounded neck and arms were bare. Her black soft hair hung to her knees, unbound, caught back above one little ear with a pink rose. Her dress was of black Spanish lace covered with natural roses. On her tiny feet she wore a pair of black satin slippers which had belonged to her grandmother and twinkled many a time to the music of El Son.

When, upon being twitted with her indolence, she suddenly sprang to the front of the stage, and after singing an old Spanish love-song to the music of her own guitar, danced El Son with all the rhythmic grace of the beautiful women of the old gay time, she was no longer an actress but an impersonator. The more the delighted audience applauded the more poetically she danced, the more significantly her long eyes flamed. Once when the applause deafened she swayed as if intoxicated. As the dance finished, her red lips were parted. She was panting slightly.

When the curtain fell Patience rushed into the dressing-room and embraced her rapturously. “Rosita!” she cried, “you were simply, mag-nif-icent.”

Rosita, who was trembling violently, hung about Patience’s neck.

“Oh, Patita!” she gasped. “I was in heaven. I never was so happy. You don’t know what it is to have a hundred people thinking of nothing but you and applauding as if they were mad. Oh, I’m going to act, act, act forever! I never want to do anything else. And isn’t my skin white? I wish I had two necks and four arms.”

The next morning prizes were distributed. Patience took most of them, but Rosita was still the sensation of the hour, although she had not passed an examination. At noon she had a luncheon party. She sat at the head of her table in a white dotted Swiss frock and Roman sash, and talked faster than she had ever talked in her life before. Altogether she was by no means the Rosita of twenty-four hours ago.

Mrs. Thrailkill had prepared a luncheon of old time Spanish dishes, and hovered, large and brown and placid, about a table loaded with chickens under mounds of yellow rice,tamales, anddulces. Patience, between Manuela and a young cousin of Rosita’s, was not unhappy. Her prizes lay on the window seat, she liked good things, and was infected with the gaiety of the hour. True, she wore her old muslin frock and a plaid sash made from an ancient gown of her mother’s, and the rest of the girls looked like a bed of newly blossomed flowers; but at fifteen the spirits rise high above trifles.

When she started for home she was as light of heart as her more favoured mates; but in the wood a dire affliction smote her. One of her teeth began to ache. She had seen her mother many times with head tied up and distorted face, and had wondered scornfully how any one could make a fuss about a mere tooth. Now, however, when her own suddenly felt as if impaled on a needle, she uttered a loud wail, and ran toward home as fast as her legs could carry her. She found her mother similarly afflicted, and a bottle of drops on the kitchen table. Mrs. Sparhawk condescended to apply the remedy, and the agony left as suddenly as it had come.

After supper Patience went over to her tower, and as ever floated between Carmel Valley and the stars, enveloped with warm ether, which swirled to towers and turrets inhabited by a projection of herself which she saw only as a lover. Unfortunately all this rapture was enacted in a strong draught. Even Solomon uttered a sound once or twice which resembled a sneeze. Again Patience’s tooth was punctured by a red-hot needle. Her castles vanished. She caught her cheek with her hand, stumbled down the winding stair, and flew across the valley, the needle developing into a screw.

The house was quiet, the kitchen dark. She lit a candle and searched frantically for the drops. They were not to be found. Then it occurred to her that her mother must have taken them to her room, and she ran up the stair.

At dawn next morning Patience found herself on the summit of the mountain behind the house. Her progress thither had skimmed the surface of memory and left no trace.

The sea was grey, the sky was grey. A grey mist moved in the valley. Beyond, the wood on the hill loomed in faint black outline. The birds in the trees, the seagulls on the rocks, the very ocean itself, were locked in the heavy sleep of early morning. Once, from the tower of the Mission, came the plaintive hooting of the owl.

After a time Patience plucked a number of stickers from her stockings, and wiped blood from her torn hands with a large leaf wet with dew. She clasped her hands inertly about her knees and stared down upon the ocean. Horror was in her sunken eyes. The skin of her face looked faded and old. Her nose and chin were as pinched as the features of the dead. She did not look like the same child. Nor was she.

Her eyes closed heavily, her head dropped. She roused herself. She felt that she had no right to do anything again so natural as to sleep. But suddenly she toppled over and lay motionless; until the sun sent its slanting rays under her eyelids. Then she stretched herself lazily, rubbing her eyes, and smiling as children do when waking. But the smile froze to a ghastly grin.

She raised herself stiffly and descended the mountain, clinging to the brush, the stones rolling from beneath her feet. She ran across the valley and plunged into the pine woods, but did not linger in those fragrant aisles.

When she reached the edge of the town she paused and half turned back; but there was one thing she dreaded more than to meet the people of Monterey, and she went on.

She skirted the town and made her way toward the Custom House by a roundabout path. She passed a group of boys, and averted her head with a gesture of loathing. One boy, a gallant admirer, ran after her.

“Patience!” he cried, “wait a minute.” But Patience took to her heels and never paused until she reached the Custom House. The perplexed knight stood still and whistled.

“Well,” he exclaimed to his jeering comrades, “I always knew Patience Sparhawk was a crank, but this letsmeout.”

Patience stood for a few moments on the rocks, then went slowly to the library and opened the door. Mr. Foord sat by the fire. He looked up with a smile.

“Ah, it’s you,” he said. “I’m very proud of you.—Why, what’s the matter?”

Patience, her eyes fixed on the floor, took a chair opposite him.

“What is it, Patience?”

She 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:

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