The Californians Part 4

"But it's such fun to run to fires!" replied Helena, who now feared nothing under heaven. "We _did_ have a time!"

"Well, if you're set on running to fires, go in your own good clothes, with money enough in your pocket to grease the palm of people like our friend Tim. Here we are."

He called a hack and handed the girls in.

"Please tell him to stop a few doors from the house," said Helena; "and," with her most engaging smile, "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to pay him. If you'll give me your address, I'll send you the amount first thing to-morrow."

"Oh, don't mention it. Just ask your father to vote for Tom Shannon when he runs for sheriff. It's no use asking anything of old Yorba," he added, with some viciousness. "And I'd advise you, young lady, to keep this night's lark pretty dark."

The remark was addressed to Magdalena, but she only lifted her head haughtily and turned it away. Helena replied hastily,--

"My father shall vote for you and make all his friends vote, too. I won't tell him about this until next Wednesday, the day before I leave for New York; then he'll be feeling so badly he won't say a word, and he'll be so grateful to you that he'll do anything. Good-night."

"Good-night, miss, and I guess you'll get along in this world."

As the carriage drove off, Helena threw her arms about Magdalena, who was sitting stiffly in the corner. "Oh, darling, dearest!" she exclaimed. "_What_ have I made you go through? And you're so generous, you'll never tell me what a villain I am. But you will forgive me, won't you?"

"I am just as much to blame as you are. I was not obliged to go."

"But it was dreadful, wasn't it? That horrid low policeman! The idea of his daring to put his hand on my shoulder. But we'll just forget it, and next week, to-morrow, it will be as if it never had happened."

Magdalena made no reply.

"'Lena!" exclaimed Helena, sharply. "You're never going to own up?"

"I must," said Magdalena, firmly. "I've done a wicked thing. I've disobeyed my father, who thinks it's horrible for girls to be on the street even in the daytime alone, and I've nearly disgraced him. I've no right not to tell him. I must!"

"That's your crazy old New England conscience! If you were all Spanish, you'd look as innocent as a madonna for a week, and if you were my kind of Californian you'd cheek it and make your elders feel that they were impertinent for taking you to task."

"You are half New England."

"So I am, but I'm half Southerner, too, and all Californian. I'm just beautifully mixed. You're not mixed at all; you're just hooked together.

Come now, say you won't tell him. He's a terror when he gets angry."

"I must tell him. I'd never respect myself again if I didn't. I've done lots of other things and didn't tell, but they didn't matter,--that is, not so much. He's got a _right_ to know."

"It's a pity you're not more like him, then you wouldn't tell."

"What do you mean, Helena? I am sure my father never told a lie."

Helena was too generous to tell what she knew. She asked instead, "I wonder would your conscience hurt you so hard if everything had turned out all right, and we were coming home in our own hack?"

Magdalena thought a moment. "It might not to-night, but it would to-morrow. I am sure of that," she said.

Helena groaned. "You are hopeless. Thank Heaven, I was born without a conscience,--that kind, anyhow. I intend to be a law all to myself. I'm Californian clear through into my backbone."

The hack stopped. The girls alighted and walked slowly forward. Mr.

Belmont's house was the first of the three.

"Well," said Helena, "here we are. I'm going to climb up the pillar and walk along the ledge. How are you going in?"

"Through the front door."

"Well, if you will, you will, I suppose. Kiss me good-night."

Magdalena kissed her and walked on. A half-moment later Helena called after her in a loud whisper,--

"Take off that shawl!"

Magdalena lifted her hand to her chin, then dropped it. When she reached her own home, she rang the bell firmly. The Chinaman who opened the door stared at her, the dawn of an expression on his face.

"Where is Don Roberto?" she asked.

"In loffice, missee."

Magdalena crossed the hall and tapped at the door of the small room her father called his office. Don Roberto grunted, and she opened the door and went in. He was writing, and wheeled about sharply.

"What?" he exclaimed. "What the devil! Take that shawl off the head."

Magdalena removed the shawl and sat down.

"I went to a fire," she said. "I got taken up by a policeman and went to the station. A man named Tom Shannon said he wouldn't lock me up, and sent me home. He paid for the carriage." She paused, looking at her father with white lips.

His face had turned livid, then purple. "_Dios!_" he gasped. "_Dios!_"

And then she knew how furious her father was. When his life was in even tenor he never used his native tongue. "_Dios!_" he repeated. "Tell that again. You go with that little devil, Helena Belmont, I suppose. _Madre de Dios!_ Again! Again!"

"I went to a fire--south of Market Street. A policeman arrested me for a vagrant. He called me a greaser--"

Her father sprang to his feet with a yell of rage. He caught his riding-whip from the mantel.

She stumbled to her feet. "Papa!" she said. "Papa! You will not do that!"

A few moments later she was in her own room. The stars shone full on her pretty altar. She turned her back on it and sat down on the floor. She had not uttered a word as her father beat her. Even now she barely felt the welts on her back. But her self-respect had been cut through at every blow, and it quivered and writhed within her. She hated her father and she hated life with an intensity which added to her misery, and she decided that she had made her last confession to any one but the priest, who always forgave her. If she did wrong in the future and her father found it out, well and good; but she would not be the one to tell him.

VII

It was a part of her punishment that she was to be locked in her room until Helena left for New York; but Helena visited her every night in her time-honoured fas.h.i.+on. Magdalena never told of the blows, but confinement was a sufficient excuse to her restless friend for any amount of depression; and Helena coaxed twenty dollars out of her father and bought books and bonbons for the prisoner, which she carefully disposed about her person before making the ascent. Magdalena hid her presents in a bureau drawer; and it is idle to deny that they comforted her. One of the books was "Jane Eyre," and another Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. They fired her with enthusiasm, and although she cried all night after the equally tearful Helena had said good-bye to her, she returned to them next day with undiminished enthusiasm.

The Sunday after Helena's departure she was permitted to go to church.

She was attended by her mother's maid, a French girl and a fervid Catholic. St. Mary's Cathedral, in which Don Roberto owned a pew that he never occupied, was at that time on the corner of California and Dupont streets.

Magdalena prayed devoutly, but only for the reestablishment of her self-respect, and the grace of oblivion for the degradation to which her father had subjected her. Later, she intended to pray that he might be forgiven, both by herself and G.o.d, and that his heart should be softened to the poor; but not yet. She must be herself again first.

Her head had been aching for two days, the result of long confinement and too many bonbons. It throbbed so during service that she slipped out, whispering to the maid that she only wanted a breath of fresh air and would be back shortly.