Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“ Before spring had come, her back was straight and a faint colour was in her rounding cheeks. If there had been time to think about it, or any one to tell her, she would have discovered that she was growing pretty. But at this time, despite the distant advances of the High School boys, Patience found no leisure for vanity. Sometimes she paused long enough to wonder if she had any individuality left; if environment was not stronger than heredity after all; if immediate impressions could not ever efface those of the past, no matter how deeply the latter may have been etched into the plastic mind. ”

“ Patience’s resolution to go through life as a cynical humourist, deaf and blind to the great wants of her nature, died hard, but it died at last. Monotony accentuated fact, and the time came when pretence failed her, and she visibly shrank from his lightest caress. The tide of horror and loathing had risen slowly, but definitely. He threatened to kill her, to commit suicide, to get a divorce; but his threats did not disturb her. He was too weak to kill himself, too proud to make himself ridiculous in the divorce courts, and too much in love to put her beyond his reach. ”

“ I had to learn patience at an age when other children are clamouring for their little desires. I had to learn humility when other children—while I watched my cousins take all the goods and joys of childhood as their divine right. While their little world was at their feet I was learning to cringe and watch and wait and smile upon people I hated, and listen to people that bored me to death, and suffer vicariously for all the shortcomings of the Peele family when my aunt was in one of her cold rages. ”

“ Rosita coloured angrily.
“You are shocked, I suppose,” she said with a sneer. “I should think—” She paused abruptly. She was still an amiable little soul.
Patience understood perfectly, and turned a shade paler. “I told you that I did not understand how I felt. In fact, I hardly ever know just how I feel about anything. I suppose it is because I have the sort of mind that is made to analyse, and I haven’t had experience enough to know how. And I never judge any one. Why should I? Why should we judge anybody? We are not all made alike. ”

“ Patience disposed the photographs on the mantel, then, leaning on her elbows, gazed upon Beverly Peele. The Composite, Byron, the Stranger, rattled their bones unheard. She concluded that no knight of olden time could ever have been so wholly satisfactory as this young man. Romance, who had been boxed about the ears, and sent to sleep, crept to her old throne with a sly and meaning smile. Patience began at once to imagine her meeting with Beverly Peele. She would be in a runaway carriage, and he would rescue her. She would be skating and fall in a hole, and he would pull her out. ”

“ She listened to it without a thrill, with no longing, with no loneliness of soul, and no vague tremor of passion.
Nothing in her unhappy experience had so forcibly brought home to her the changes which her inner self had undergone in the last few years. Life was a hard clear-cut fact; she could no longer dream. Imagination had taken itself out of her and gone elsewhere, into some brain whose dear privilege it was to have a long future and a brief past.
The tears scalded her eyes. She cursed Beverly Peele. She wished she had remained in Monterey. ”

“ As Patience gazed out upon the beautiful scene, her young mind shifted its impressions. She forgot her life, and began to dream in a vague sweet way. Not of a lover. Despite the fact that she had manufactured a composite which occupied a pedestal in her imagination, she thought little about love. Her reveries were a wandering of her ego through the books she had read, environed by the nature whom she knew only in lovely profile. ”

“ Patience fondled the sleek head, but she was not in a mood to feel in sympathy with love. The only thing that to her seemed of paramount importance was to fix a clear eye on the future.
“You see,” she said, “the present is ever with us, and the past recedes farther and farther. If the rich man can give you what you most want, time will make you forget the very sensation of love. If you marry Wynne and the love goes, you will have equal difficulty to recall it, and nothing to compensate in the present.” ”

“ That is what has made May’s success. Of course you wouldn’t be another May, if you could; but you want to begin at the beginning—don’t you know? You must let society feel that it gives you everything, tells you everything. Then it will love you. But if it suspects that you are alien—the least little bit—then there will be the devil to pay. Of course a few of the best sort would like you, but I’m set on your making a hit.”
“I’m afraid I’ll never take,” said Patience, with a sigh, “but I am wild to see Vanity Fair, all the same. It must be great fun—all that brilliancy and life. ”

“ One would have supposed that she was constantly imploring favours, and yet her air suggested natural hauteur, unexterminated by cultivated humility.
“I should think it was a good idea,” said Patience, with perfect sincerity.
“Oh, there’s dear Sister Watt,” cried Miss Tremont, and she rose precipitately, and crossing the aisle sat down beside a careworn anxious-eyed woman who also wore the white ribbon.
“Come over by me until Miss Tremont comes back,” said Miss Beale, with her brilliant smile. “Tell me, don’t you love her already? Oh, you have no idea how good she is. ”

“ Oh, Patience, what shall I do?” And Hal, the most undemonstrative of women, laid her head on Patience’s knee and sobbed bitterly.
“I had to come to see you, Patience,” she continued after a moment. “I have no one else; I could never have said a word of this to mamma or May. And I like you better than any one in the world except Reginald Wynne. And you seem to understand things. Do tell me what to do.”
“Do this: Be true to your ideals. If love means, and has always meant more to you than anything else in the world, marry Reginald Wynne. ”

“ The smell of smoke grew stronger. She left the woods. A moment later she stood, white and trembling, looking down upon Carmel Valley. The Sparhawk farmhouse was a blazing mass of timbers. A volume of smoke, as straight and full as a waterspout, stood directly above it. Men were running about. Their shouts came faintly to her.
Patience pressed her hands convulsively to her eyes. She clutched her head as if to tear out the terrible hope clattering in her brain, then ran down the hill and across the valley, feeling all the while as if possessed by ten thousand devils. ”

“ Patience exchanged the satin for the grenadine gown. This met with more tolerance at first, as the throat was finished with soft folds, and the white ribbon was less demonstrative.
“It floats so,” said Patience, ecstatically. “Oh, auntie, you are a beauty.”
“I a beauty with my ugly scowling old face? But this thing is like a ball dress, Patience—this thin stuff! I prefer the satin.”
“You will wear this on the hot evenings. All thin things are not made for the ball-room. You needn’t look at yourself like that. I only wish I’d ever be half as pretty. Auntie, why didn’t you ever marry?” ”

“ There, at least, she would never have married any one, for there was no one to marry.
“Even if my life had been a success,” she thought, “if Beverly Peele had been less objectionable, or had died, and I had had the world at my feet, it would be too high a price to pay. Not even to care that one is alone when the rain is sweeping about with that hollow song! To think and dream of nothing beyond the moment! To have accepted life with cynical philosophy, and feel no desire to shake the Universe with a great passion! ”

“ But when it had beaten upon the roof of her little room in Miss Tremont’s house it had sung the loneliness of youth into her soul, murmured of the great joy to which every woman looks forward as her birthright. Hard worked and absorbed as she may have been during the day, if the rain awoke her in the night, it was to dreams of love and of nothing else, and of the time when she should no longer be alone. ”

“ If I had known as much then as I do now I’d have done all I could to keep you apart, for Beverly Peele certainly has not the attenuated ghost of a soul.
But Patience, dear, do stand it out. Don’t, don’t get a divorce. Remember that all over the world women are as miserable as you are, and as I might be if I would let myself go. Now, at least, you have compensations; and when I am married I’ll do everything I can to make life gay and pleasant for you; but don’t make a horrid vulgar newspaper scandal and leave yourself without resources. ”

“ Thrailkill had prepared a luncheon of old time Spanish dishes, and hovered, large and brown and placid, about a table loaded with chickens under mounds of yellow rice, tamales, and dulces. Patience, between Manuela and a young cousin of Rosita’s, was not unhappy. Her prizes lay on the window seat, she liked good things, and was infected with the gaiety of the hour. True, she wore her old muslin frock and a plaid sash made from an ancient gown of her mother’s, and the rest of the girls looked like a bed of newly blossomed flowers; but at fifteen the spirits rise high above trifles. ”