Читать книгу Patience Sparhawk and Her Times - Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - Страница 14

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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.