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Charles Bernard Nordhoff
Published by Good Press, 2021
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He had sent funds ahead to a bank in San Francisco, and found himself well received by the Southern families already established on the coast. Don Enrique he had met at a ball in one of the Spanish houses, but long before the meeting Langhorne had heard the name of De la Torre—usually mentioned with cordiality, always pronounced with respect. The Spaniard took to the young Confederate officer from the first, and the friendship resulted in Langhorne’s purchase of a partnership in the Guadalupe Grant. At that time Rita had been a shy, serious child with dreams of becoming a nun, but as the years went by the American began to realize that love for a woman was replacing affection for a child. And so the lonely man had made new ties, had taken root in a new and alien soil.
The years after Don Enrique’s death had passed happily and tranquilly for Langhorne—the affairs of the ranch prospered, and politics never troubled a man for whom politics had ceased to exist on the day of General Lee’s surrender. Only once, when a distant Du Quesne cousin had died destitute, leaving a request that Langhorne look after his orphaned daughter Margaret, had there been any echo from the past. Now she was a tall young girl, almost a woman—and the other Rita, his Rita, lay dying in the room from which the doctor had ordered him. Once again, as on that day so many years ago, he felt the light going from his life, felt that his days of happiness were at an end. Well, the years had taught him one thing: happiness must be paid for with pain, which came inexorably as darkness followed day. Religion was a comfort to women; its teachings were agreeable if one could believe in them, but at bottom the world was a bleak place, with peace neither in this life nor in a rather doubtful life to come. What was that sad French proverb that had stuck in his mind? Ah, yes: “Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe.” ... That was it—the lives of all the men who had lived since time began, summed up in six short words....
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