by Gwen Bristow
But he loved her, and so he was begging her to think well of him, because now his opinion of himself was an echo of her opinion of him. Unless she respected him, or pretended to, he could not respect himself. Garnet felt a stab of fright.
Why did they let me do this? she thought. I wasn’t of age. They could have said no!
But at once a hard little voice in her mind answered her. That’s right, Garnet. Blame your mother and father. Blame the Czar of Russia and the King of Spain. Blame everybody on the face of the earth but yourself. You wanted to have your own way, didn’t you? So you married a man who will let you have it as long as you live. Oliver loves you, and what he means by this is that he’ll be anything you want him to be. All right, this is what you’ve got, and you’d better start right now to put up with it.
She looked down at him, running her hands over his light brown curls. “I love you very much, Oliver,” she said. “I’m terribly shocked. But I love you, and I’ll never go back on you as long as I live.”
Oliver’s arms tightened around her and he dropped his head into her lap. “God bless you, Garnet,” he whispered. She stroked his hair, and felt the strength in the arms around her, and thought how strange it was that a man of such bodily power should be so much like a child.
“Now tell me about this,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
“All right,” said Oliver. “I’ll tell you everything.”
He sat on the floor, one arm across her lap, and held her hand in his as he talked.
He told her Don Rafael Velasco was a man of noble name and great riches. He was now in his seventies. Carmelita was his only child. Don Rafael’s first wife had been crippled by a fall soon after their marriage, and though she had lived twenty years after that, she had had no children. His second wife had died young, leaving him this one daughter.
Don Rafael was so delighted to have a child at last that he petted Carmelita into a spoiled little brat. Carmelita had a duenna, an elderly aunt who idled about after her for the sake of appearances. But the old lady was a stupid soul, dozing half the time. Pampered and pretty, Carmelita was bored to distraction in the big house where she had absolutely nothing to do.
Oliver had arranged to buy some mules from Don Rafael for his trip eastward last year. Just before the caravan was to meet in Los Angeles, Oliver went up to the rancho to get the mules.
“I can’t tell you just how it came about,” said Oliver, “except that I was a Yankee and the California girls find the Yankees very exciting. We’re so different from the native men. I suppose Carmelita thought she was having a thrilling adventure, outwitting that old fool of a duenna and slipping out into the courtyard to meet me under the crescent moon, all that sort of thing. But I never once thought of her after I drove off with the mules. I was a simpleton, of course. I should have known that a rich ranchero’s daughter couldn’t be forgotten so lightly. But I did forget her. And by the time Don Rafael came over here in a shaking rage and told Charles that Carmelita was going to have a baby, I was a thousand miles away.”
“And that’s all?” said Garnet.
“That, my dearest, is absolutely all. Except that Charles thought it was a piece of heaven falling on the Hale family. With no brothers or sisters, Carmelita is one of the greatest heiresses in California. Charles told Don Rafael I had been planning to marry her, I had talked of nothing else—of course it had been rash of me to anticipate the wedding day, but that could be taken care of. With Don Rafael’s influence, he could easily persuade a priest to marry us privately and say nothing about the ceremony’s being late. Don Rafael took Carmelita up north to her aunt. I knew nothing about all this, until John handed me that letter in Santa Fe.”
“How did John know about it?”
“Charles told him. Charles wanted John to tell the other traders I was married to Carmelita, so they would be used to the idea before they saw me in Santa Fe. John declined, as Charles should have known he would. John said he had no objection to bringing me a letter, but he would not discuss my affairs behind my back.”
“What did he say when he gave you the letter?” asked Garnet.
“Nothing. Except ‘Charles sent you this.’ When I read it I was nearly dumb with astonishment. The first thing I thought of—the only thing, in fact—was you. I told John to keep his mouth shut. He said, ‘I always do,’ or words to that effect, and he never referred to the subject again.” Oliver looked up at her. “Garnet, if you’ll forgive me, and forget about it, I swear before God Almighty that you’ll never, never have another minute’s concern because of me.”
Garnet drew a long tired breath. Her head was still pounding so hard that it had taken all her strength to listen to what he was saying. Oliver wanted her to forget about it. Well, even if she could forget it, Carmelita never could, nor Carmelita’s heartbroken father. She did not know where the blame ought to lie. From what she was learning about Oliver, she felt pretty sure Carmelita had pitched herself at his head. Maybe Carmelita had wanted what she had so nearly obtained, marriage with an exciting young Yankee. But anyway, the damage was done, and she herself could not undo it, and she was so tired that she ached in every corner of her body. Reaching desperately for the only refuge she knew, she said,
“We are going home.”
“Yes,” Oliver answered. He gave a wry little smile, adding, “Charles has been begging me to stay.”
“What!” she cried in alarm. “Stay here? For how long?”
“For good. Charles is very fond of me, you know. I’m all he’s got.”
“I won’t stay here,” said Garnet. “We never meant to stay any longer than this winter.”
“Yes, dear, I know it. I told him so.”
After a moment Garnet said slowly, “So that’s what you and Charles have been talking about all this time. He wants you to stay here, I want you to take me home. You’ve been sort of pulled apart by the two of us.”
“It has felt like that,” he admitted.
“No wonder Charles hates me,” she said. “But I should think, after all this muddle, he’d be glad to get rid of me. I should think he’d be glad to get rid of us both.”
Oliver stood up. He walked over to the window and raised the sash. Garnet shivered at the rush of cold air, and Oliver closed the window, answering as he did so.
“Charles says there’s no proof that I had anything to do with Carmelita’s child. She said I did, but that was when I was a long way off and couldn’t answer. It would be easy for me to say it wasn’t so. And Charles says it’s foolish for me to be a middle-class businessman in New York when I could be pretty nearly a king in California. He says the Yankees are going to take over the whole place before long.”
“How does he know?” Garnet asked shortly.
Oliver laughed a little, as though glad to be talking about something besides himself. “The Republic of Texas wants to be a state of the Union. That will almost certainly mean war between Mexico and the United States. And if there is war, we’ll probably wind up owning California.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Garnet. She stood up too, and walked over to him. “I don’t care who owns California and you don’t either. Charles is just one of the people who’d rather die than find out they can’t manage everything and everybody around them. You’re going to take me home.”
“Yes, Garnet, I’ll take you home,” said Oliver. But he sighed faintly as he said it, as though he were already tired of being pulled apart between her and Charles, and she realized how thin his promise was. Thin enough to break any time Charles could think of a really strong argument against it. Every day, until she and Oliver were safely on the trail, she would have to do battle with Charles. Garnet said,
“Remember, Oliver. You’ve promised.”
“Yes, dear, I’ve promised. I’ll go to Los Angeles with Charles and deed my share of the rancho to him, and you and I will go back to New York. Don’t you trust me?”
Garnet rested her head on his shoulder. She was so tired, and she
felt so ill, that it was good to lean on him. The pains in her head were like explosions, breaking afresh with every beat of her heart. “Oliver,” she murmured, “I’ve got to lie down. I’m sick. Too much has happened tonight. I can’t talk about it any more.”
He was all sympathy. “Of course. You’ve had a lot to stand and it’s all my fault. I’ll help you get to bed.”
He was very tender with her. He helped her undress, and drew the covers about her warmly. When he lay down by her he took her in his arms, telling her again how much he loved her, and promising over and over that he would never let her be troubled about anything again.
Oliver went to sleep, but Garnet lay awake for a long time. The pain in her head got easier with the quiet, but her emotions were all in a hodgepodge. She felt angry and disappointed and guilty and scared. She was tired of new places and new people and new experiences. She yearned for something warm and familiar. Remembering the boisterous vitality of the trail, she ached to go back to it. Those bare dark mountains east of her were like a prison wall, holding her here till next spring. Next spring. It seemed a thousand years away. At last she fell asleep.
She woke suddenly, roused by a noise. Before she was fully awake she knew it was a noise she had heard before, but not for a long time, and it was startling to hear it again. She raised her head.
Oliver was still asleep. Garnet listened for an instant, then she sat up straight and gasped with delight.
It was raining. After those miles on the hard stony mountains, after those months of dust and sun, here in the scorched dingy land of California it was raining.
She could hear the rain, a great steady storm beating on the roof and the wall and the ground outside. Garnet sprang up and ran barefooted to the window and pushed up the sash. She could smell the rain. There were a hundred fresh odors of wet earth and trees. She could taste the dampness on her lips, and feel the suddenly changed texture of her nightgown. Somewhere in the house a lamp was still burning, for there was a faint glow from a window and she could even see the rain. It was like twisting curtains in the dark.
Shivering in the cold wet air, Garnet held out her hands to feel the drops falling on them, while she tried to realize the amazing fact that it really did rain in California. Just beyond the window she could see that the rain had torn up the earth to make creeks and runnels, and they were all bubbly as they ran along. Though the storm had not wakened Oliver, here and there among the outbuildings she heard the voices of serving-people who had been roused by it, and they all seemed to be laughing. You did want to laugh with sheer joy when you were feeling the wonder of the first rain.
Garnet tried to remember how long it had been since these people had seen any rain. Probably not since April or May; Oliver had told her it seldom rained after May. And now it was November—no, it must be December by this time. She had had so much to think about that she had not kept track of the days.
She took a step back from the window. For a moment she stood quite still, biting the joint of her left forefinger while she tried to think. All of a sudden it had flashed upon her that the calendar, in relation to herself, was all wrong.
She noticed that she felt very cold. The sleeves of her nightgown were wet, and the cold air was making her breasts hurt as though they had been struck. She said in a low voice, “I’m going to have a baby.”
The knowledge came to her as clearly and suddenly as the rain had come. She wondered why she had not known it before. She had always been so healthy. Headaches had never bothered her, or this strange nausea that she had felt several times of late. She had thought it was her conflict with Charles that had been making her feel so unwell.
Shivering, she crept back into bed and drew up the covers. In the darkness she could just make out Oliver’s head on the pillow. Shall I wake him now, and tell him, she thought, or shall I wait till morning? I wonder if he’ll be glad.
But she caught herself with a sudden fright.
I can’t tell him, she said.
It was quite plain. She must not tell Oliver. She must not tell anybody. If Charles found out she was going to have a baby, he would take instant advantage of Oliver’s tenderness for her. He would persuade Oliver that she could not stand the journey back across the desert. And next year, Charles would tell him a tiny baby could not stand the journey. And so on and on, and she would be stranded here the rest of her life. Garnet clenched her fists. She was going home. But she felt her clenched hands get damp when she thought of the journey, which had been hard enough when she was in her usual health. Oh my God, she thought with a sense of panic, why did this have to happen to me now?
She should not have let it happen, she thought frantically. There must be some way to keep it from happening. Florinda must know about such things. She should have asked Florinda. Oh, why hadn’t she had sense enough to ask Florinda while she had a chance?
She wondered if keeping silent would be enough. How soon did it begin to change your shape so much that you could not deny it?
She did not know. But she did know that she was going to deny it as long as she possibly could. Her baby would be born—she counted quickly—next August. The caravan would be somewhere on the prairie, not yet as far east as Independence. The baby would be born in a covered wagon. She did not care. The mountains and the desert and the buffalo wallows would be trivial annoyances compared to having to live here and spend her life fighting against Oliver’s dependence on Charles. Nobody, nobody, nobody was going to make her stay in California.
TWENTY-SIX
FLORINDA WAS WRITING A letter. She had been writing it for several days now and she was nearly finished.
The month was February, and the air had a cool crystal sheen. Outside, the hills were glittering with the green and gold of wild mustard that had sprung up during the winter rains. The only flowers Florinda had ever noticed were those that came in florists’ boxes, but she was aware that California had turned out to be a much pleasanter place than she had thought it was when she got here. She glanced at herself in the mirror on the wall.
The mirror hung where she could see it whenever she raised her eyes. She could not write very long at a time, writing was too much trouble, and between sentences it was agreeable to look up and see herself. She smiled with pleasure at her reflection. The fatigue of the trail was gone now, and her skin was glossy with health. Florinda gave a mischievous wink at the glass. “Not bad,” she told herself. “Not bad at all. You’re all right, my girl. Good as new.”
When she had signed her name, she picked up her letter and read it over.
Dear Garnet, I take my pen in hand to tell you that I am doing fine. I will write some every day and as soon as I meet a Yankee who is going by Hales Rancho I will ask him to take you my letter. Well now let me see. I had better start from the last time you saw me at Don Antonios.
Well the day you left I was feeling pretty bad. Texas had been very sweet to me but Texas had gone to sleep on the floor smelling like the rag in a bartenders belt. Then John came in. He looked as glum as usuall. He said you had asked him to take me to a place where I would be comfortable. I said, I am sorry to be such a newsance. He said, Well we wont argue about it now. He picked up Texas by the sholders and pitched him outside. Then he brot in a nice Mexican girl. He said he had to go to Los Angielies but the girl would look after me till he could come back.
The girl was very kind and cheerfull. She brot me things to eat and I tryed to eat them. Sometimes I would even get up and walk around a little bit. After some days John came back. He said, short and crisp, Do you feel able to get up and ride. I said, I guess so. He said, well if you are ready lets go.
So I got up and put on some clothes and packed my things, and we started. John was riding a horse and he had another horse for me and some more horses to carry the packs and three boys to wait on us. You know how John is, for all he said to me I might have been a blanket strapped to the horse, but that was alright with me. I did not feel like talking anyway. We kept goin
g for severall days. At night we slept on the ground rolled up in blankets like on the trail. But there was plenty of water and the boys cooked beef and beans.
Well at last we came to Los Angielies. And my dear, tired and dredful as I felt I could not help laughing at it.
Los Angielies is the funniest little village I ever saw. There is a creek about a yard wide and by the creek are some houses. They look like square boxes made out of mud. There are not any streets. I mean the houses do not sit in rows, they are just sprinkled around like if you took a pepper shaker and shook out the grains and they stayed where they happened to fall. There are hundreds and hundreds of dogs. The dogs do not belong to anybody, they just run wild. They came rushing and barking and leaping up around the horses and they scared me half to death.
The people were all outdoors. Some of the women looked busy, cooking at those outdoor ovens or washing clothes in the creek. But the men were just sitting in the sun with their backs against the houses and their hats over their eyes. There were a lot of children playing about and some tame Diggers. The Diggers did not have on any clothes except a rag around the middle, and they had wooden yokes across their backs with a jar of water at each end. It seems they dip up the water from the creek and go about selling it.
There were some ox-carts and a lot of horses and they were all mixed up with the people and the dogs. It made hard riding becaus there are not any sidewalks and everrything is out among the houses together. And pretty soon we were all scratching becaus the dogs have fleas and as you know dear fleas are very acrobatick.
Well finaly we came to a bilding which John said was the store of Mr. Abbott. It is made of adoby like the rest of them but it has two stories and a wooden porch all around it. There was a pile of hides in a corner of the porch and oh my Lord did they stink. We went inside and there was a big counter and shelves full of things and people in there buying them. Behind the counter sat Mr. Abbott. He is a great big fat man with a shiny bald head and a little fringe of white hair around the back of it, and he has blue eyes and a jolly pink face. I stood leaning against the wall. I was too tired and miserable even to stand up strait and the fleas were hopping all over me.
