XXII
It was an intensely hot September night. Magdalena, knowing that sleepwas impossible, had not gone to bed. She wandered restlessly about herlarge room, striving to force a current of air. Not a vibration camethrough the open windows, nor a sound. The very trees seemed to leanforward with limp hanging arms. Across the stars was a dark veil, rivenat long intervals with the copper of sheet lightning. Her room, too, wasdark. A light would bring a pest of mosquitoes. The high remote falsettoof several, as it was, proclaimed an impatient waiting for their ally,sleep.
Last night, Tiny had given a party, and wrung from Magdalena a promisethat she would go to it. Rose had called for her. At the last momentMagdalena's courage had shrunk to a final shuddering heap, and as sheheard the wheels of the Geary waggonette, she had run upstairs, andflung herself between the bedclothes, sending down word that she had araging toothache. It was her first lie in many years, but it was betterthan to dance with despair and agony written on her relaxed face behindthe windows of the garden in which Trennahan had asked her to marry him.
To-night she was seriously considering the proposition of going to heraunt in Santa Barbara, with or without her father's consent. Her senseof duty had not tumbled into the ruins of her will, but she argued thatin this most crucial period of her life, her duty was to herself. Helenahad not even asked her to be bridesmaid; she took her acquiescence forgranted. Magdalena laughed aloud at the thought; but she could not leaveHelena in the lurch at the last moment. When she got to Santa Barbara,she could plead her aunt's ill health as excuse for not returning intime for the ceremony. She was in a mood to tell twenty lies ifnecessary, but she would not stand at the altar with Trennahan andHelena. Her passionate desire for change of associations was risingrapidly to the dignity of a fixed idea. To-morrow there must be a changeof some sort, or her brain would be babbling its secrets. Already hermemory would not connect at times. She felt sure that the prolongedstrain had produced a certain congestion in her brain. And she wasbeginning to wonder if she hated Helena. The fires in Magdalena burnedslowly, but they burned exceeding hot.
She paused and thrust her head forward. For some seconds past hersub-consciousness had grasped the sound of galloping hoofs. They were onthe estate, by the deer park; a horse was galloping furiously toward thehouse.
She ran to the window and looked out. She could see nothing. Could it bea runaway horse? Was somebody ill? The flying feet turned abruptly andmade for the rear of the house, then paused suddenly. There was afurious knocking.
Magdalena's knees shook with a swift presentiment. Something hadhappened--was going to happen--to her. She stood holding her breath.Someone ran softly but swiftly up the stair, and down the hall, to herroom. She knew then who it was, and ran forward and opened the door.
"Helena!" she exclaimed. "What is the matter? Something has--Mr.Trennahan--"
Helena flung herself upon Magdalena and burst into a passion of weeping.Magdalena stood rigid, ice in her veins. "Is he dead?" she managed toask.
"No! He isn't. I wish he were--No, I don't mean that--I'll tell you in aminute--Let me get through first!"
Magdalena dragged her shaking limbs across the room and felt for achair. Helena began pacing rapidly up and down, pushing the chairs outof her way.
"Would you like a light?" asked Magdalena.
"No, thanks; I don't want to be eaten alive with mosquitoes. Oh, howshall I begin? I suppose you think we've had a commonplace quarrel. Iwish we had. I swear to you, 'Lena, that up to to-night I lovedhim--yes, I know that I did! I was rather sorry I'd promised to marry sosoon, for I like being a girl, not really belonging to anyone butmyself, and I love being a great belle, and I think that I should havebegged for another year--but I loved him better than anyone, and Ireally intended to marry him--"
"Aren't you going to marry him?"
"Don't be so stern, 'Lena! You don't know all yet. Lately I've beenalone with him a great deal, and you know how you talk about yourselvesin those circumstances. I had told him everything I had ever done andthought--most; had turned myself inside out. Then I made him talk. Up toa certain point he was fluent enough; then he shut up like a clam. Inever was very curious about men; but because he was all mine, orperhaps because I didn't have anything else to think about, I made up mymind he should come to confession. He fought me off, but you know I havea way of getting what I want--if I don't there's trouble; and to-night Ipulled his past life out of him bit by bit. 'Lena! he's had _liaisons_with married women; he's kept house with women; he's seen the worst lifeof every city! For a few years--he confessed it in so many words--he wasone of the maddest men in Europe. The actual things he told me only inpart; but you know I have the instincts of the devil. 'Lena, _he's ahuman slum_, and I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!"
"But that all belongs to his past. He loves you, and you can make himbetter--make him forget--"
"I don't want to make any man better. I love everything to be clean andnew and bright,--not mildewed with a thousand vices that I would nevereven discuss. Oh, he's a brute to ask me to marry him. I hate myselfthat I've been engaged to him! I feel as if I'd tumbled off a pedestal!"
"Are you so much better and purer than I? I knew much of this; but itdid not horrify me. I knew too, what you may not know, that he came herein a critical time in his--his--inner life, and I was glad to thinkthat--California had helped him to become quite another man." Her voicewas hoarse, almost inarticulate.
Helena flung herself at Magdalena's feet. She was trembling withexcitement; but her feverish appeal for sympathy met with no response.
"That is another thing that nearly drove me wild,--that I had taken himaway from you for nothing. I know you don't care now; but youdid--perhaps you do now--sometimes I've suspected, only I wouldn't faceit--and to think that in my wretched selfishness I've separated you forever! For your pride wouldn't let you take him back now, and he's aswild about me as ever: I never thought he could lose control overhimself as he did when I told him what I thought of him and beat him onthe shoulders with both my fists. He turned as white as a corpse andshook like a leaf. Then he braced up and told me I was a little wildcat, and that he should leave me and come back when I had come to mysenses, that he had no intention of giving me up. But he need not comeback. I'll never lay eyes on him again. While he was letting me get atthose things, I felt as if my love for him burst into a thousand pieces,and that when they flew together again they made hate. He told me he wasused to girls of the world, who understood things; and that the girls ofCalifornia were so crude they either knew all there was to know byexperience, or else they were prudes--"
Helena paused abruptly and caught her breath. She had felt Magdalenaextend her arm and stealthily open a drawer in the bureau beside herchair. There was nothing remarkable in the fact, for in that drawerMagdalena kept her handkerchiefs. Nevertheless, Helena shook with thepalsy of terror; the cold sweat burst from her body. In the intensedarkness she could see nothing, only a vague patch where the face ofMagdalena was. The silence was so strained that surely a shriek mustcome tearing across it. The shriek came from her own throat. She leapedto her feet like a panther, reached the door in a bound, fled down thehall and the stair, her eyes glancing wildly over her shoulder, and soout to her horse. It is many years since that night, but there aresilent moments when that ride through the woods flashes down her memoryand chills her skin,--that mad flight from an unimaginable horror,through the black woods on a terrified horse, the shadow of her fearracing just behind with outstretched arms and clutching fingers.
Helena's sudden flight left Magdalena staring through the dark at theSpanish dagger in her hand. Her arm was raised, her wrist curved; thedagger pointed toward the space which Helena had filled a moment ago.
"I intended to kill her," she said aloud. "I intended to kill her."
The mental admission of the design and its frustration were almostsimultaneous. Her brain was still in a hideous tumult. Weakened bysuffering, the shock of Helena's fickleness and injustice, the su
ddenperception that her sacrifice had been useless, if not absurd, haddisturbed her mental balance for a few seconds, and left her at themercy of passions hitherto in-existent to her consciousness. Her lovefor her old friend, long trembling in the balance, had flashed intohate. Upon hate had followed the murderous impulse for vengeance; notfor her own sake, but for that of the man whose weakness had ruined herlife and his own. In the very height of her sudden madness she was stillcapable of a curious misdirected feminine unselfishness.
When she came to herself, chagrin that she had failed to accomplish herpurpose possessed her mind for the moment, although she had made noattempt to follow Helena, beyond springing to her feet. Then herconscience asserted itself, and reminded her that she should beappalled, overcome with horror, at the awful possibilities of hernature. The picture of Helena in the death struggle, bleeding andgasping, rose before her. Her knees gave way with horror and fright, andshe fell upon her chair, dropping the dagger from her wet fingers,staring at the grim spectre of her friend. Then once more the sound ofgalloping hoofs came to her ears. Both Helena and herself were safe.
In a few moments her thoughts grouped themselves into a regret deeperand bitterer still. She was capable of the highest passion, andCircumstance had diverted it from its natural climax and impelled ittoward murder. She sat there and thought until morning on the part towhich she had been born; the ego dully attempting to understand, torealise that its imperious demands receive little consideration from thegreat Law of Circumstance, and are usually ignored.