Mrs. Randolph, cursing, returned to the table and consoled herself with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s. Outside, the man's imagination played him an ugly trick. A picture flashed upon it, vivid as one s.n.a.t.c.hed from the dark by the blaze of lightning. A struggling distorted foaming thing was on the floor, held down by the strong arms of two men, and the face of the thing was not the face of Mrs. Randolph. She stood apart, looking down upon her perfected work with a low continuous ripple of contented laughter. The vision pa.s.sed. Thorpe leaped from the verandah and wandered aimlessly about the grounds. He cursed audibly and repeatedly, not caring whether he might be overheard or not. He felt as if every nerve in his body were a separate devil. He hated the thought of the next day's sunlight, and wondered if it would shine on a murderer or a suicide; he felt capable of crime of the blackest variety.

Fascinated, he returned to the verandah. Mrs. Randolph had fallen forward on the table. The man Cochrane entered and took her by the shoulders. She flung out her arm and struck him.

"Give oop! Give oop!" she muttered. But he jerked her backward, and half dragged, half carried her from the room. Mrs. Reinhardt staggered after, slamming the door behind her. Then Nina rose and came forward, and leaned her finger-tips heavily on the table.

"Come in," she said; and Thorpe entered.

They faced each other in silence. For a moment Thorpe was conscious only of the change in her. Her cheeks were sunken and without colour; her eyes patched about with black. The features were so controlled that they were almost expressionless.

"Sit down," she said. "I will tell you the story."

He took the chair Mrs. Reinhardt had occupied, Nina her mother's. She pressed her knuckles against her cheeks, and began speaking rapidly, but without excitement.

"My father's home in Yorkshire was near the town of Keighley, which is a few miles from Haworth, the village where the Brontes lived. He and Branwell Bronte were great friends, and used to meet at the Lord Rodney Inn in Keighley, as Haworth is an almost inaccessible place. They were both very brilliant young men; and many other young men used to drop in on Sat.u.r.day evenings to hear them talk politics. Of course the night ended in a bout, which usually lasted over Sunday. My mother was bar-maid at that inn. She made up her mind to marry my father. It is said that at that time she was handsome. She had an insatiable thirst for liquor, but was clever enough to keep my father from suspecting it.

Once my father--who cared little for drink, beyond the conviviality of it--and Bronte went on a prolonged spree, the result of a bet. When he came to himself, he found that he had married her before the registrar.

He belonged to one of the oldest families in the county. He had married a woman who could neither read nor write, and who talked at all times as she does now when she is drunk. Nevertheless, he determined to stand by her, because he thought he deserved his fate, and because he thought she loved him. But he left the country. To introduce her to his people and friends was more than he was equal to. To bury himself with her on his estate, denying himself all society but hers, was equally unthinkable, to say nothing of the fact that he was ashamed to introduce her to the servants. He wished to go away and be forgotten, begin life over in a new land where social conditions were as the builders made them. He came to California. She was furious. She had married him for the position she had fancied such a marriage would give her: she wanted to be a lady. Her mind was somewhat diverted by travel, and she kept her peace until she reached San Francisco--Yerba Buena, it was called then. It was a tiny place: a few adobe houses about the plaza, and a warehouse or two at the docks. Then there was a frightful scene between the two. My father learned why she had married him, and that she had instigated the wager which led to the spree which enabled her to accomplish her purpose. She ordered him to take her back to England at once, threatening to punish him if he did not. He refused, and she went on a prolonged drinking bout. This was shortly before my birth. They were the guests of Mr.

Leese, a German who had married a native Californian and settled in the country. These people were very kind; but it was horribly mortifying for my father. He built her a house as quickly as possible, in order to hide her in it. I forgot to say that he had brought over Cochrane, who took charge of his household affairs. At the end of a year there was another scene, in which my father made her understand that he would never return to England; and that, were it not for me, he would turn her out of the house and let her go to the devil as fast as she liked. It was the mistake of his life that he did not, both for himself and for me. He should have taken or sent me back to England, and left her with a subsistence in the new country. But he is a very proud man. He feared that she would follow him home, and publish the story. There is no getting away from a woman like that.

"She was forced to accept the position; but she hated him mortally, and no less than he hated her. She had threatened again to make him rue his refusal to return to England, but refused to explain her meaning. This is what she did. He idolised me. She put whisky in my baby food until I would not drink or eat anything that was not flavoured with it. She was very cunning: she habituated my system to it gradually, so that it never upset me. She also gave it to me for every ailment. My father suspected nothing. There were depths of depravity that neither his imagination nor his observation plumbed. When I was about thirteen, he left us in charge of Cochrane--who had more influence over my mother than any one--and went off to the Crimean war, rejoining his old regiment. The necessity to get away from her for a time overrode his paternal instinct--everything. Moreover, he wanted to fight somebody. He distinguished himself. Just after his return, he discovered what my mother had made of me. His rage was awful; he beat her like a navvy. For once she was cowed. I went off my head altogether. When I came to, he was crouching in a corner as if some one had flung him there, sobbing and gasping. It was awful--awful! Then he sent me to the Hathaways to study with the girls. They knew, and promised to keep me away from her, and to see that I had nothing to drink. My mother sent me a bottle of whisky every week in my clean clothes. I did not tell him, for I wanted it. He found that out, too, and then debated whether he had not better send me away from the country. But he knew that the cry was in my blood, and that if I went to his people in England the chances were I would disgrace him. Then he made his second mistake: he did not throw her out. He ordered her to go, and she laughed in his face and asked him how he would like to read every morning in the _Golden Era_ that James Randolph's wife had spent the night in the calaboose. Now, only two or three people besides the Hathaways and Shropshires even suspected it, so carefully had Cochrane watched her.

"He sent me to boarding-school. She kept me in money, and I got what I wanted, although my father's pride was in me, and I never took enough to betray my secret. It was not until I had finished school that I really gave way to the appet.i.te. My father, closely as he watched me, did not suspect for a long time. He was very busy,--he threw himself heart and soul into the development of the city,--and when the appet.i.te mastered me, I either feigned illness or went to the country. At last he found it out. There have been many bitter hours in my life, but that was incomparably the bitterest. I had always loved him devotedly. When he went down on his knees and begged me to stop, of course I swore that I would. I kept my promise for six months, she doing all she could to entice me the while. Then I yielded. After that, after another interview with my father, I restrained the intolerable craving for another six months. Then it went on irregularly. I don't know that I began to think much, to look into the future, until about a year ago--it was when I first saw her as you saw her that night. Then I aged suddenly. My moral sense awakened, my sense of personal responsibility. I loathed myself.

I looked upon what I had become with horror. I struggled fiercely,--but with indifferent success,--although, I must add, there were weeks at a time when I never thought of it; for I have the _joie de vivre_, and there are many distractions in society. Then you came. For a time I was happy and excited, and the thing was in abeyance. I touched nothing: that was my only chance. I fought it under,--after that first night,--and the desire did not come again until I drank the mescal at Don Tiburcio's _merienda_. But I had known that it would come back sooner or later, and was determined not to marry you, nor to let myself fall seriously in love with you. But after that first night out on the strawberry patches I knew that I loved you, and, as I am not a light-minded person, irrevocably. But I made up my mind to enjoy that week, and look no farther. You know the rest. What I have suffered since perhaps you can divine, if you love me. If you don't, it doesn't matter." Her monotonous calm left her suddenly. She brought her fist down on the table. "This room is full of the smell of it!" she cried.

"And I want it! I want it!"

She pushed back her chair. "Come," she said, "let us go outside."

She ran out to the verandah. He followed, and she grasped his arm. "Let us go for a ride," she said. "I shall go off my head, if I keep still another moment. I want motion. Are you tired?"

"No, I am not tired."

She led the way to the stables. The men in charge had gone to bed. She and Thorpe saddled two strong mustangs, rode rapidly down the avenue and out into the high road. For some time they followed the stage-route, then struck into a side road leading to the mountains. Nina did not speak, nor did Thorpe. He was thankful for the respite. Once he touched his cheek mechanically, wondering if it had fallen into wrinkles.

They rode at a break-neck pace. The night had become very dark: a great ocean of fog had swept in from the Pacific, blotting out mountains and stars. The mustangs moderated their pace as they began to ascend the foot-hills. The long rush through the valley had quickened Thorpe's blood without calming his brain. He did not speak. There seemed to be a thousand words struggling in his brain, but they would not combine properly. He could have cursed them free, but although he was too bitter and excited to have tenderness or pity for the woman beside him, he considered her in a half blind way; she was the one woman on earth who had ever sent him utterly beside himself. They ascended, two black spots of shifting outline in the fog, for an hour or more. Neither below nor above could an object be seen, not a sound came to them. It was unreal, and ghostly, and portentous. Then, almost abruptly, they emerged, the mustangs trotting on to the flat summit of a hill. Nina sprang to the ground.

"Tie the horses," she said; and Thorpe led them to a tree some yards away.

Nina stood with her back to him, her hands hanging listlessly at her sides, looking downward. Thorpe, after he had tethered the horses, paused also.

The world below was gone. In its place was a vast ocean of frothy milk-white fog. On each side, melting into the horizon in front, until it washed the slopes of the Contra Costa range, lay this illimitable ocean pillowed lightly on sleeping millions. Now calm and peaceful, now distorted in frozen wrath, it was so shadowy, so unreal, that a puff of wind might have blown it to the stars. Out of it rose the hill-tops, bare weather-beaten islands. Against them the sea had hurled itself, then clung, powerless to retreat. Upon some it had cast its spray half way to the crest, over others it rushed in mighty motionless torrents; here and there it but half concealed the jagged points of ugly rocks.

Beating against solitary reefs were huge, still, angry breakers, sounding no roar. A terrible death-arrested storm was there in mid-ocean,--a storm which appalled by its very silent wrath. On one of the highest and barest of the crags an old building looked, in that sunless light, like a castle in ruin. Above, the cold blue sky was thickly set with shivering stars. The grinning moon hung low.

There was not a sound; not a living creature was awake but themselves.

They might have been in the shadowy hereafter, with all s.p.a.ce about them; in the twilight of eternity. Where they rested, the air was clear as a polar noon; not a stray wreath of that idle froth floated about them.

"I came here," said Nina, turning to Thorpe, "because I knew it would be like this. It will be easier to hear what you think of me, than it would have been down there."

He brought his hands down on her shoulders, gripping them as if possessed of the instinct to hurt.

"Once or twice I could have killed you as you spoke," he said. "I shall marry you and cure you, or go to h.e.l.l with you. As I feel now, it does not matter much which."

And then he caught her in his arms and kissed her, with the desire which was consuming him.

"But even you cannot conquer me," she said to him an hour later. "I shall not marry you until I have conquered myself. I believe now that I can. I got your letter. I very nearly knew that you would say what you have done, after I told you the truth. I won't marry you, knowing that, in spite of your love, which I do not doubt, at the bottom of your intelligence, you despise me. I have always felt that if I could make a year's successful fight, I should never fall again. There may be no reason for this belief; but we are more or less controlled by imagination. There is no doubt in my mind on this point. If I win alone, you will respect me again, and love me better."

"I do not despise you. I hardly know what I felt for you five weeks ago.

But I have only sympathy for you now--and love! You must let me do the fighting. It will knit us the more closely--"

"It would wear me out, kill me, knowing that you were watching my struggles, no matter how lovingly. Besides, I know myself; my moods are unbearable at such times. I cannot control my temper. Before the year was over, we should have bickered our love into ruins. We could not begin over again. If you will do as I wish, I believe we can be happy.

It is not long to wait--we are both young. Cannot you see that I am right?"

"I don't want to leave you, not for a day again!"

"And I don't want you to go! But I know that it is our only chance. If you marry me now, you will hate me before the year is over; and, what is worse, I shall hate you. The steamer sails to-morrow. Will you go?"

He hesitated, and argued, a long while; but finally he said: "I will go."

"Don't go all the way back to England. I should like to think you were in America; that would help me."

"I will stay in New Orleans, and write by every steamer."

"Oh, do, do! And if I do not write as regularly, you will understand.

There will be times when I simply cannot write. But promise that, no matter what you hear, you will not lose faith in me."

"I promise." Involuntarily his mouth curled into a grin. The ghosts of a respectable company of extorted promises capered across his brain, as small irreverent ghosts have a habit of doing in great moments. But his mouth was close upon hers, and she did not see it.

An hour later she pointed outward. Far away, above the Eastern mountains, was a line of flame. The sun rose slowly. It smiled down upon the phantom ocean and flung bubbles of a thousand hues to the very feet of the mortals on the heights.

Then slowly, softly, the ocean moved. It quivered as if a mighty hand struck it from its foundations, swayed, rose, fled back to the sea that had given it birth.

A moment more and the world was visible again, awake, and awaiting them.

BOOK II

I

Mr. Randolph owned a large ranch in Lake County which was managed by an agent. A mile distant from the farm-house in which the agent lived with the "hands" was a cottage, built several years since at Nina's request.

As Lake County was then difficult of access, Mr. Randolph seldom visited his ranch, his wife never; but once a year Nina took a party of girl friends to the cottage, usually in mid-summer. This year she went alone.

Immediately after Thorpe's departure she told her father of the conditional engagement into which she had entered.

"And I wish to spend this year alone," she added. "Not only because I want to get away from my mother, but because I believe that nothing will help me more than entire change of a.s.sociations. And solitude has no terrors for me. I simply cannot go on in the old routine. I am bored to death with the meaninglessness of it. That has come suddenly: probably because I have come to want so much more."

"But wouldn't you rather travel, Nina?" Mr. Randolph was deeply anxious; he hardly knew whether to approve her plan or not. A year's solitude would drive him to madness.