The Californians | Page 7

was not a drop of cleverness with which to oil the wheels.

She had read extensively even before she was sixteen,--letters, essays,
biographies, histories, and a number of novels by classic authors; and
although she was obliged to read each book three times in order to
write it on her memory, she slowly assimilated it and developed her
brain cells. Up to this age she was seldom actively unhappy, for she
had the hopes of youth and religion, her aunt, Helena, and, above all,
her sweet inner life, which was an almost constant dwelling upon the
poetical past, linked to a future of exalted ideals: not only should she be
more beautiful than Helena or Tiny Montgomery or Ila Brannan, but
she should hold rooms spell-bound with her eloquence, or the music in
her finger-tips; and when in solitude her soul would rise to such heights
as her fettered mind hinted at vaguely but insistently. Wild imaginings
for a plain tongue-tied little hybrid, but what man's inner life is like
unto the husk to whose making he gave no hand?

IV
Helena remained an hour longer, then ran home to don a white frock
and Roman sash. Her father, with all his vagaries, seldom failed to dine
at home; and he expected to find his little daughter, smartly dressed,
presiding at his table. His sister, Mrs. Cartright, who had managed his
house since his wife's death, made no attempt to manage Helena, and
never thought of taking the head of the table.
Magdaléna stood for some time looking out over the darkening bay, at
the white mist riding in to hang before the mountains beyond. She had
seen California wet under blinding rain-storms, but never ugly. Even
the fogs were beautiful, the great waves of sand whirling through the
streets of San Francisco picturesque. California was associated in her
mind, however, with perpetual blue skies and floods of yellow light.
She had wondered occasionally if all people were not happy in such a
country,--where the sun shone for eight months in the year, where
flowers grew more thickly than weeds, and fruit was abundant and
luscious. She had read of the portion to which man was born, and had
decided that if Thackeray and Dickens had lived in California they
would have been more cheerful; but to-day, assailed by a presentiment

general rather than specific, she accepted, for the first time, life in
something like its true proportions.
"There are no more caballeros," she thought, putting into form such
sense of the change as she could grasp. "And Helena is going away, for
years; and papa will not let me go, I know, although I mean to ask him;
and aunt is way down in Santa Barbara, and writes that she may not
return for months. And I don't know my music lesson for to-morrow,
and papa will be so angry, because he pays five dollars a lesson; and
Mrs. Price is so cross." She paused and shivered as the white fog crept
up to the verandah. It was very quiet. She could hear the ocean roaring
through the Golden Gate. Again the presentiment assailed her. "None
of those things was it," she thought in terror. "Uncle Jack Belmont says,
according to Balzac, our presentiments always mean something." She
noticed anew how beautiful the night was: the white wreaths floating
on the water, the dark blue sky that was bursting into stars, the
mysterious outline of the hills, the ravishing perfumes rising from the
garden below. "It is like a poem," she thought. "Why does no one write
about it? Oh!" with a hard gasp, "if I could--if I could only write!" A
meteor shot down the heavens. For the moment it seemed that the
fallen star flashed through her brow and lodged, effulgent, in her brain.
"I--I--think I could," she thought. "I--I--am sure that I could." And so,
the cruel desires of art, and the tree of her crucifix were born.
She went inside hastily, afraid of her thoughts. She changed her frock
for a white one, smoothed her sleek hair, and walked downstairs. She
never ran, like Helena--unless, to be sure, Helena dragged her; she had
all the dignity of her father's race, all its iron sense of convention.
She went into the big parlours to await her parents' return; they had
been spending a day or two at their country house in Menlo Park, and
would return in time for dinner. The gas had been lighted and turned
low; Magdaléna had never seen any rooms but her own in this house
sufficiently lighted by day or by night, except when guests were present.
Mrs. Yorba would waste neither gas nor carpets; in consequence, the
house had a somewhat sepulchral air; even its silence was never broken,
save when