Patience Sparhawk and Her Times: A Novel. 1897

BOOK I

I

“Oh, git up! Git up! Did you ever see such an old slug? Billy! Will you git up?”

“What’s the use of talking to him?” drawled a soft, inactive voice. “You know he never goes one bit faster. What’s the difference anyhow?”

“Difference is my mother wants these groceries for supper. We’re all out of sugar ’n flour ’n beans, and the men’s got to eat.”

“Well, as long as he won’t go, just be comfortable and don’t bother.”

“I wish I could be as easy-going as you are, Rosita, but I can’t: I suppose it’s because I’m not Spanish. Guess I’ve got some Yankee in me, if I am a Californian.” The little girl leaned over the dash-board of the rickety buggy, thumping with her whip-stump the back of the aged nag. Billy was blind, uncertain in the knees, and as languid as any caballero that once had sighed at doña’s feet in these dim pine woods. As far back as Patience could remember he had never broken his record, and his record was two miles an hour. In a few moments she set the whip in the socket with an irritable thump, wound the reins about it, and sat down on the floor beside her companion. For some reason best known to themselves, the girls preferred this method of disposition when Billy led the way,—perhaps because he had an errant fondness for the roughest spots of the rough road, making the high seat as uneasy and precarious as thrones are still; perhaps because Patience rebelled at habit, and in all her divagations was blindly followed by her Spanish friend.

Billy ambled up and down the steep roads of the fragrant pine woods on the hills behind Monterey, and the girls gave him no further heed. Patience’s long plait having been shaken loose in her wild lurches over the dash-board, she swung about, dangled her legs out of the buggy, and commanded Rosita to braid her hair. The legs she kicked recklessly against the wheel were not pretty. They were long and thin, clothed with woollen stockings darned and wrinkled, and angled off with copper-toed boots. She wore a frock of faded gingham, and chewed the strings of a sunbonnet.

“Don’t pull so, and do hurry,” she exclaimed as the Spanish girl’s deft slow fingers moved in and out of the scanty wisps.

“I’m not pulling, Patita, dear, and you know I can’t hurry. And I’m just thinking that your hair is the colour of ashes.”

“I know it,” said Patience, gloomily, “but maybe it’ll be yellow when I grow up. Do you remember Polly Collins? When she graduated she had hair the colour of a wharf rat, and when she came back from San Francisco the next year it was as yellow as the hills in summer.”

“I don’t care for yellow hair,” and Rosita moved her dark head with the slow rotary motion which was hers by divine right.

“Oh, you’re pretty,” said Patience, sarcastically. “You want to be told so, I suppose—There! you pulled my hair on purpose, you know you did, Rosita Thrailkill.”

“I didn’t, Patita. Don’t fire up so.” And Rosita, who was the most amiable of children, tied the end of the braid with a piece of tape, rubbed her blooming cheek against the pale one, and was forgiven.

Patience drew herself into the buggy and braced her back against the seat. Her face had little more beauty than her legs. It was colourless and freckled. The mouth was firm, almost dogged, as if the contest with life had already begun. Her brows and lashes were several shades darker than her hair, but her eyes, wide apart and very bright, were a light, rather cold grey. The nose alone was a beautiful feature, straight and fine; and the hands, although rough and sunburned, were tapering and slender, and very flexible.

In her red frock, the highly-coloured little Spanish girl glowed like a cactus blossom beside a neglected weed. Her plump face was full of blood; her large dark eyes were indolent and soft. Patience’s eyes comprehended everything within their radius in one flashing glance; Rosita’s, even at the tender age of fifteen, looked unswerving disapproval of all exertion, mental or physical.

“I wonder if your mother is drunk?” she asked in her slow delicious voice.

“Likely,” said Patience, with frowning resignation. “But let’s talk of something more agreeable. Isn’t this perfume heavenly?”

The dark solemn woods were ravishing with the perfumes of spring, the perfume of wild violet and lilac and lily, and the faint sweet odour the damp earth gives up as the sun goes down. From above came the strong bracing scent of the pines. Now and again the wind brought a salt whiff from the ocean. No birds carolled, but the pines sang their eternal dirge.

“What’s your ideal?” demanded Patience.

“Ideal? What ideal?”

“Why, of man, of course.”

“Oh, man!” contemptuously. “I haven’t thought much about men. I don’t read novels like you do. I wish somebody would die and leave me a thousand dollars so I could live in San Francisco and have a new dress every day and go to the theatre every night. Miss Galpin says we mustn’t think about boys, and I don’t—perhaps because the boys in Monterey are so horrid.”

“Boys? Who said anything about boys?” The chrysalis elevated her patrician nose. “I mean men.”

“Well, you’re mean to turn up your nose at boys. They like you a good deal better than they do me, and a good many of the other girls.”

“That’s funny, isn’t it? and I not pretty. But I suppose it’s because I talk. You just sit still and look pretty, and that’s not very entertaining. I read in a novel that men like that; but boys have got to be entertained. Goodness gracious! Don’t I know it? When I was at Manuela’s party the other night in my old washed muslin frock and plaid sash, didn’t I talk my throat sore to make them forget that I was the worst dressed girl in the room and had the most freckles? Of course the girls didn’t forget—nor some other things—” with a bitter lowering of the lids—“but the boys did. Somehow I feel as if men would always be my friends, if I’m not pretty.”

“What do you know about men, anyhow? You’re only fifteen, and you’ve never met any but old Mr. Foord, and the farm hands and store keepers, who,” aristocratically, “don’t count.”

“Haven’t I read novels? Haven’t I read Thackeray and Dickens and Scott and ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Shakespeare and Plutarch’s Lives, and the life of Napoleon and Macaulay’s ‘History of England’ and Essays—those all ain’t novels, but they write about men, real men, too. I’ve made my ideal out of a lot of them put together, and I’ll never marry till I find him.”

“Well, I’d like to know where you’ll find him in Monterey,” said the practical Rosita. “Miss Galpin says you’re too romantic, and that it’s a pity, because you’re the brightest girl in the school.”

“Did Miss Galpin say that?” Patience took a brass pin out of her frock and extracted a splinter from her thumb with a fine air of indifference; but the pink flooded her cheek. “She’s always reading Howells and James, and says they’d keep anybody from being romantic. But that’s about all I’ve got, so I think I’ll hold on to it.”

The sun dropped below the horizon as they jolted out of the woods and down the steep road toward Carmel Valley. They reached a ledge, and Patience, forgetful of hungry men and an irascible parent, called: “Whoa!” to which Billy responded with an alacrity reserved for such occasions only.

“I never get tired of this,” she said. “Do you?”

“It’s pretty,” said Rosita, indifferently. “Why are you so fond of scenery—nature, as Miss Galpin calls it—I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” said Patience, and at that age she did not. She was responsive but dumb. She gazed down and out and upward with a pleasure that never grew old. A great bleak mountain loomed on the other side of the valley. It was as steep as if the ocean had gnawed it flat, but only the peaceful valley lay under; out in the ocean it tapered to an immense irregular mass of rock over which the breakers leapt and fought. Carmel River sparkled peacefully beneath its moving willows. The blue bay murmured to the white sands with the peace of evening. Close to the little beach the old Mission hung its dilapidated head. Through its yawning arches dark objects flitted; mould was on the yellow walls; from yawning crevice the rank grass grew. Only the tower still defied elements and vandals, although the wind whistled through its gaping windows and the silver bells were no more. The huts about the church had collapsed like old muscles, but in their ruin still whispered the story of the past.

“Isn’t it splendid to think that we have a ruin!” exclaimed Patience.

“It’s a ruin sure enough; but there’s uncle Jim. He must think we’re dead.”

A prolonged “Halloa!” came from the valley, and Patience, with a sigh, bade Billy “Git up,” which he did in the course of a moment.

“Halloa, you youngsters, why don’t you hurry?” cried a nasal voice. “I’ve been waiting here an hour.”

“Coming,” said Patience. “It’s too bad he had to wait.”

“Oh, he smoked and swore, so 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…………………