Jubilee Trail (66 page)

Florinda went back to sewing the ruffle on her dress. She sighed dreamily. “Oh Garnet, what you can do with ten thousand acres! You know, the Californios are sweet and charming, but they’re dreadfully lazy. Holy Christmas, with ten thousand acres and some Yankee ambition—”

Garnet began to laugh. Her laughter was harsh and tinny; as she heard it, it seemed to come out of her throat in clinking lumps of sound. Florinda stopped and turned her head with concern.

“Garnet, darling! What’s the matter?”

Garnet managed to answer. “I was just thinking, I wish I didn’t love him. I wish I’d never found out what it means to love a man. If I didn’t love him I could ask him to pay me for marrying him. It would be so simple—I hope I can live with him agreeably, but if I can’t, I can certainly live with ten thousand acres of good land. But I love him, Florinda!”

“But why should that stop you?”

“I don’t want John’s rancho. I want John.”

“Oh, hell on toast,” Florinda said with resignation.

“I know you don’t understand. But I won’t take a halfway marriage. I want what I want.”

Florinda put her arm around Garnet’s waist. “Garnet,” she said gently, “by the time you’ve scuffled around as much as I have, you’ll find that there are mighty few times when you get what you want. So take what you can get, and make it do.”

Garnet shook her head. “I’ll put up with anything else. I’ll take what I can get, and make it do. But I won’t take John if he doesn’t love me.”

Florinda sighed. “Well dear, you’re beyond me. I think I’ll quit.”

For several seconds Garnet watched her, stitching away as though she had nothing on her mind but getting the new ruffle sewed on in time to wear the dress to supper. Garnet asked, “You’d take the land on those terms, wouldn’t you?”

“My sweet, if I could get that much property, I’d take it on damn near any terms at all.”

“Instead of love?”

“Love?” said Florinda. “Love? My grandma’s left hind leg!”

The storm lasted only six hours, but it meant that John had to stay another week at Kerridge’s. The rain turned the creeks into roaring torrents, and since there were no bridges it was impossible to cross. Garnet wished fervently that he would go away. Whenever she caught sight of him she thought how absurd she must have seemed when she lost her temper and fell down, and she was so embarrassed that she would have felt uncomfortable even if he had not noticed her. But John did notice her, and to her chagrin he did not seem embarrassed at all. At mealtimes when she saw him at the other end of the dining-hall, his eyes flickered over her as though she were a bit of overpriced merchandise and he thought it was time the price came down. She nearly choked with rage and could only hope Doña Manuela was too busy to notice how little she was eating.

Even Florinda was no help right now, for Florinda had a new crop of admirers. Three Californios and two Yankees, none of whom had ever seen her before, had taken refuge at Kerridge’s during the storm, and like John they had to wait till the creeks went down. The Californios were enchanted by her coloring and the Yankees by her conversation, and Florinda was enchanted by having five brand-new men all at once. She did not have much time to consider Garnet’s affairs. Anyway, she thought Garnet was being a goose to take this episode so seriously. Florinda’s idea was that if one man vexed you there were always plenty of others.

Garnet was rather glad to have Florinda’s mind occupied. They were not alone much except for the time they spent dressing and undressing. In these intervals Florinda was usually busy telling her Mr. Perkins had said this and Mr. Middleton had said that; and the Handsome Brute had approached her privately to say that the three new Californios were panting to see her with her hair down but were too polite to suggest it, so why didn’t she offer to show it to them?—which of course she did, choosing a breezy spot in the courtyard so that her hair blew about her like a great big halo. And they were bewitched. She couldn’t understand all they said but it was plain that they were utterly bewitched.

Garnet listened with a puzzled envy. I wish I could be like that, she said to herself. I wish I could get excited about a lot of men I never saw until three days ago and don’t expect ever to see again. Is it because I was born different or because I was brought up to be different or merely because I am not a great beauty? She went to the glass and looked at her face. It did not have the exquisite structure of Florinda’s nor such delicacy of line, but she was certainly not ugly. Men had always found her attractive. She was glad they did, but it had never occurred to her to try to fascinate every Tom, Dick, and Harry she met. She turned to look at Florinda, who was combing her front hair into little curls that would blow like floss-silk over her cheeks and temples. I simply was not meant to be a heartbreaker, thought Garnet. Love means too much to me.

It was afternoon and they were just up from their siesta. Florinda finished combing her hair, put on a dress decorated with the silver buttons Mr. Bartlett had given her in Santa Fe, and went out to rejoin her adorers. Garnet got dressed more slowly. She wanted to go outside too, but she wanted to be alone.

As she came out of the house she met a serving-girl carrying around wafers and a steaming pot of cha on a tray. Taking a cup of cha, Garnet walked a long way from the house, to a bench in a secluded corner where trees and bushes gave her a pleasant green privacy. As she sipped the cha she tried to think.

She wished to high heaven the creeks would go down so John could get away. Damn those mocking eyes of his and his hard jaw and his hard spirit, why did she want him to love her? There were plenty of other men.

Plenty of other men—that was what Florinda said, and it was true. Yes, yes, yes, she told herself vigorously as she watched a dot of sunlight that came through the tree and lay like a golden bead on the grass. Face it, Garnet. You can’t make John love you. But if you’ve got the courage to do it, you can pull him up from your heart as you’d pull up a weed in a garden. And somehow, before always, you can go back to New York. You can bring up your little boy in a civilized place, and maybe after you get over the pain of this you can love a man who loves you. That’s what you were born and bred for, that’s what you want.

She felt lighter, and more at ease. Taking a sip of cha she got a whiff of its orange-blossom fragrance and thought how delicious it was. Then as she lowered the cup, she turned her head with a sensation of being looked at. About twenty feet away from her was a leafless fig tree, looking as gaunt and naked as all bare trees did here where so few trees lost their leaves in winter; and standing by it, leaning his back against a branch, was John.

He had come toward the tree with the silence he had learned in years of Indian-stalking. In one hand he was holding a small tattered book, the volume of verse he had lent the Brute to practice reading the English language. In his other hand he held a pencil with which he was marking some lines on the page. Evidently he knew the poem well, for he glanced at it only a second now and then, the rest of the time looking at her.

She did not want to see him or talk to him, and she was about to spring up and hurry away. But she had to get rid of the cup in her hand, and in the instant it took her to set it down John had reached her with his long swift strides. He was smiling a little. It was the same indulgent smile he had given her when he told her they could be honest about those impossible vows of love. Garnet felt all her disappointment rolling back over her and she was afraid she was going to have tears on her cheeks any minute, and she thought if he saw her shed tears now she would want to kill him for seeing them. But John paused by her only a second. Speaking hardly above a whisper he said, “My dear girl,” and he bent over her and kissed the parting of her hair, so lightly that she barely felt it before he was gone, moving among the trees with his silent Indian-hunter steps. As he disappeared she saw that he had dropped a piece of paper into her lap, a page he had torn out of the tattered little book of verse. Garnet picked up the page. A ray of sun pointed a bright finger to the lines John had marked for her to read, lines that a man named Andrew Marvell had written two hundred years before to a lady who would not say yes to him.

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime…

It was the first time anybody had ever accused her of being coy. In spite of all she had said to him, was it possible that John thought she was teasing him, like a schoolmiss who thought it was fun to keep a man dangling while she made up her mind? Garnet trembled with anger as her eyes followed the other lines he had checked for her.

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near…

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Garnet crushed the page and threw it at the fig tree. If she could have no peace in the courtyard she would go back to her room and stay there. But in heaven’s name, Garnet, she warned herself as she picked up her skirts to go through the grass, don’t run! Maybe he’s behind you, watching for you to fall down again.

Walking as sedately as her leaping nerves would let her, she came out into an open part of the courtyard, where a path of flagstones went through the wild oats. Without meaning to at all, she stopped and looked back. There stood John, beside a tree behind her, the last tree before the path began. Garnet felt her face get hot, and knew she was turning red. John’s lips trembled with humor as he spoke to her.

“I’m leaving early tomorrow. The trails should be dry enough now.”

“Goodby,” said Garnet, because she had to say something.

“Nikolai will stay here,” he went on, “to take you and Florinda to Los Angeles whenever you are ready to go. Horses and supplies and serving-men have been arranged for.”

She had not thought of how she was going to get back to Los Angeles. But evidently he had, and had taken care of it. Something else to be grateful to him for—and she began to know what he meant when he spoke of gratitude, for she felt a blast of resentment at having to take a favor from him, and it was not a pretty emotion. John was saying,

“I’m leaving tomorrow, but this is not goodby.” He was speaking gravely now. Again with smooth quick steps he came to her. His hands on her shoulders, he asked, “Garnet, why won’t you take me as I am? What’s so wrong with me?”

Before her mind had consciously formed an answer she heard herself answering. “The other night when you kissed me in the dark, I thought, ‘Now John is looking at me the way he looks at the flowers.’ But you were not. You never have looked at me with such awe and discovery. And I’m not going to spend my life being jealous of a poppy-field!”

John was still holding her. “You needn’t cringe from me like that,” he said. “I’m not going to kiss you again till you ask me to.”

If she gave a start he seemed not to notice it. He released her, and in another moment he was gone again among the trees. Garnet stood still, looking after him, and then without any will of her own she sat down on the cold flagstone path and covered her face with her hands and cried silently, the tears trickling between her fingers.

The Handsome Brute saw her there. The Brute had been flirting with the girl who was serving the cha, but when he started to walk across the courtyard with her he caught sight of Garnet. Breaking off in the middle of a compliment he hurried down the path, and knelt by Garnet and put his big arm around her and lifted her up and gave her a handkerchief to dry her eyes. It was a soft fine handkerchief, embroidered by one of the Brute’s lady-friends. “Now you will come with me,” said the Brute, and he led her back among the trees so nobody else would see her tears. Standing under a little scrub-oak, he put his arm around her and drew her head down to rest against him and patted her cheek with his great hand. How sweet he was, Garnet thought. He was like a dear little brother. It struck her as an odd comparison, for he was seven years older than she was and more than a foot taller, and he weighed at least a hundred pounds more than she did. But he was so good of heart and he had no shame about him. There were not many grown people like that. He was speaking to her in a low voice.

“Now you can cry all you please. And do not be ashamed. Everybody should cry sometimes.”

Tears still trembling on her eyelashes, she looked up and smiled at him. “Brute, you are such a dear. Thank you.” He smiled down at her, with such tender sympathy that she asked, “Brute, am I being a fool?”

“I don’t know,” said the Brute. “I am not wise and I cannot tell you what to do. But I love you very much, and I love John very much, and I am sorry you are not happy.”

“What has John told you about us, Brute?”

“Why Garnet, I don’t know anything but what I have seen. John has never talked to me about you. He has never talked to anybody about you. John does not like to talk about anything that is important to him.”

“Am I important to him, Brute?”

“Oh yes. That is why he resents you.”

“Resents me?”

“He resents anybody who is important to him. He wants to be enough for himself. There are a lot of people like that. People are great fools, Garnet. All of us.”

Tears came into her eyes again. From another pocket the Brute drew another handkerchief, embroidered in a different design by a different lady. He patted her eyelids gently. For a while they did not say anything more. He stood with his arm around her and she leaned against him, and slowly her tense nerves relaxed. At length she looked up into his beautiful violet eyes. “I feel better,” she said. “Thank you, Brute.”

“Now,” said the Brute, “I will walk to the house with you, and you will go to your room and I will tell one of the girls to bring you some good light wine. You will sit down and drink it slowly, and by the time the gong rings you will be ready for supper. You will do that?”

“Yes, Brute.”

He tucked her arm into the bend of his elbow, and they began to walk along the path as though they had nothing to do but enjoy the last sunshine of the day. When they reached the house the Brute bowed and kissed her hand, and Garnet went indoors.