The Trembling Hills Read online

  The Trembling Hills

  Phyllis A. Whitney

  1

  Only Mary Jerome minded the closing of the house. She knelt beside an open trunk in the one bedroom where a fire burned. A welter of women’s garments surrounded her as she busied herself with packing. She was a slight, small-boned woman, neat to her finger tips, with hair that had grayed becomingly and a gentle strength in her face.

  From across the room her daughter Sara glanced at her now and then in sympathy. In every detail Sara contrasted with her mother. At twenty she was a big girl, well-built and handsome, though she lacked the picture-book prettiness of the currently admired Gibson girl. Her thick hair was blue-black and glossy with health and her dark eyes had a way of looking at the scene about her with eager curiosity. There was always a touch of the dramatic in Sara. The lift of her chin, the set of full lips that were not always soft, betrayed a determination that had not yet learned to be wise.

  “I wish you didn’t mind our leaving so much,” Sara said. “I wish you could be as glad as I am to get away from this house.”

  The house was waiting for them to go. It stood dark and ready, its shutters closed to the January sunshine; curtains and draperies long since removed. Two days ago drays had taken away most of the furniture to be sold at auction, as Ritchie Temple had instructed. Ritchie no longer lived in Chicago, but he had come home briefly the month before to attend his mother’s funeral. When he had returned to California he had left final details in the hands of his mother’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Jerome.

  Sara mused on, thinking aloud. “It’s nothing but a shell of a house now. It will be better to leave it.” She did not add that it had been no more than a shell for her ever since Ritchie had first gone away six months before.

  Mrs. Jerome sighed. “A furnished room won’t be as comfortable, you know. And so far, in spite of notices I’ve put in the paper, I’ve found no position.”

  “There’s no need to worry.” Sara was confident. “After all, Ritchie paid you for a month in advance, which was the least he could do. And I have the legacy Mr. Temple left me when he died. I’ll get work in an office as soon as I can. Then you can rest for a while.”

  But she knew that to her mother this house was home. Mrs. Jerome had lived here far longer than the few years of her marriage. Sara had been only four when Mrs. Jerome had brought her to Chicago and sought work in the Temple household. All these years Mary had been happy here. It didn’t seem fair that she must now begin all over again in some alien place. If only she were willing to let her daughter make life easier for her . . .

  Mrs. Jerome shook out a ruffled shirtwaist that belonged to Sara and refolded it into a tray. “You’ve no notion of money, my dear. That legacy won’t go far. As for office work, I’d rather not have you struggling in a man’s world.”

  “But this is a new century!” Sara reminded her eagerly. “I’ve learned to type and it’s perfectly proper for young ladies to work in offices these days.”

  She turned to add more coal to the fire, searching for a casual way in which to ask the question that was uppermost in her mind. It was a question her mother had always met with silence, but perhaps now, in their need—

  “Didn’t Father have any sort of family? Isn’t there anyone to whom we could turn?”

  Sara spoke the words more abruptly than she intended and she knew the answer from the sad, closed look that came over her mother’s face.

  “There’s no one on your father’s side to whom I would ever turn,” Mrs. Jerome said gently.

  It was no use, Sara knew, beating against this blank wall. Her mother never treated her questions unkindly, or reproved her for asking, but always there was this retreat into a silent sorrow which Sara could not fully understand. When it came to her father’s life, his family, where they had lived when Sara was a baby, even the city of her birth—all these things her mother had shut a door against. Sara knew only that her father had gone away one day and never been heard from again. Always her mother’s love for the husband she had lost was evident, though Sara had gathered from words spoken now and then that he had been something of a spendthrift, with grandiose schemes for making money which had distressed and frightened his young wife. She knew too that her mother believed with an unshakable conviction that her husband was dead.

  Sometimes Sara wondered. She liked to weave make-believe dreams about his unexpected return. She couldn’t help building a fantasy in her mind, with an exciting figure that was her father at its center. Somehow he always seemed like an older version of Ritchie, and she liked him that way. It would have been so wonderful as a little girl to have a father, as other children did. A gay, handsome father who teased and spoiled and loved her. At times faint memories of someone like that seemed to stir in her, though she could never be sure.

  Jerome, of course, was her mother’s maiden name. Sara knew that her married name was Bishop. But her mother’s unwillingness to continue as Mrs. Leland Bishop was part of the forbidden past her mother would never talk about. Sara had grown up with the name of Jerome and no one knew that she had any other.

  Rubbing her weary knees, Mary pulled herself up from the floor by the edge of the trunk. “It must be time for the postman by now. Perhaps we’ll find an answer to my notice today.”

  “I’ll go,” Sara said quickly. She was glad to escape from the stuffy room and her mother’s discouragement that she was helpless to relieve.

  She went into the cold upper hallway and moved toward the gloom of the stairs. As she put one hand on the rail she heard the whisper of a letter dropping through the front-door slot. The envelope made a white splotch against the dark, bare floor, and Sara ran downstairs to pick it up.

  Daylight filtered through the side panes of beveled glass in the front door and she held the creamy envelope up to examine it. The postmark read San Francisco, January, 1906, and suddenly excitement quickened in her. The handwriting, with its black letters slanting faintly to the left, was Ritchie’s. She’d have known it anywhere. But the envelope was addressed to her mother.

  For just a moment old hurt rushed through her. How could he have gone away? How could he have followed Judith Renwick to San Francisco?

  Just a month ago, when he’d returned early in December, he had stood at the foot of this stairway, his fair hair thick and shining in the morning light. And he had caught Sara’s hand in his teasingly. For all that she had tried to steel herself against his touch, the old longing had run through her again, the longing to be kissed by Ritchie Temple. And by Ritchie only, always and forever.

  He had not kissed her, but he’d read the look in her eyes and she knew it had pleased him. He had read that look for the first time when he had been seventeen and she twelve. Twelve and big for her age. Now, all her growing up years later, it was still, for her, like the first time he’d ever looked at her.

  In those years how often he had told her he loved her, that she was his very best girl. He had looked at other girls of course. How could he help it when they always looked at him? But it was to her that he’d told his dreams. Wonderful fantasies of the fine buildings he would someday create as a great American architect. “The best architects of our time are developing right here in Chicago,” he’d said. And Ritchie Temple had to be one of them. Sara’s eyes would shine with her belief in him and he’d laugh and kiss her. He was going to marry her, he’d say—when she grew up.

  With five years between them, growing up had been difficult to manage. When she was eighteen and surely grown, he had said that first he must be established. Always she had believed him and waited, her love never faltering.

  Then, some
eight months before, Judith Renwick and her mother had come to visit in this house. Hilda Renwick was an old friend of Mrs. Temple’s and had lost her husband the previous year. She had brought her elder daughter with her on the trip. Ritchie had been plainly attracted to Judith and when she had gone home to San Francisco a restlessness had grown in him. There were opportunities for a budding young architect in San Francisco, he said, and since he had been invited to stay at the Renwick house until he decided what to do, there was all the more incentive to go. His mother had encouraged the trip before she fell ill.

  When Ritchie left, Sara’s grief had been a shattering thing which she could not hide from her mother. If only he had remained within her reach, Judith Renwick could never have exerted such a spell over him. But what could Sara do when he was half a continent away and she was trapped here in Chicago?

  When he had returned for the funeral a month ago he had not talked about Judith. Sometimes he had even looked at Sara Jerome in the old way and she could see in his eyes that he was still fond of her.

  Nevertheless, when his mother’s funeral was over, he had put the house and furniture up for sale and dismissed the servants. San Francisco, he had decided, was to be his permanent home, and he’d dusted his hands for the final time of Chicago. Hope died in Sara then. But love could be a hardy thing, struggling on when there was nothing left for which to struggle.

  She told herself that he was gone for good and her heart must stop trembling foolishly at the mere sight of his handwriting on an envelope.

  She stirred from her dreaming and carried the letter upstairs. Nothing Ritchie might write could matter now. Probably this was no more than a graceful thank-you note, removing him from any further burden of obligation. She gave it to her mother with an air of indifference which she hoped was convincing.

  “From Ritchie,” she said. “There was nothing else.” And she went to warm her hands needlessly before the fire. Though not before she saw the sympathy in her mother’s eyes.

  “How nice of Ritchie to write,” her mother said, studiedly casual. Her eyeglasses were attached to a metal button near the collar of her dress, and she pulled them out on their chain, pinching them to her nose with a precise gesture Sara had loved to watch as a child.

  When her mother was absorbed in the letter, Sara stole a look at her face and saw in it unaccountable alarm.

  “What is it, Mama?” she cried. “Has something happened to Ritchie?”

  Her mother crumpled the letter in her hands. “Why, no. Nothing.”

  She leaned past the trunk and Sara, seeing her intent, caught the wadded paper from her before she could toss it into the fire. Mrs. Jerome’s lips trembled, but she did not reach to recover the letter.

  “Read it then,” she said. “Of course what he suggests is impossible.”

  Sara spread out the crinkled paper and knelt on the hearthrug to read by the flickering light. What Ritchie suggested was indeed astounding.

  “San Francisco!” Sara cried. “He wants you there. And I am to go too!”

  So his look had meant something, and the way he had held her hand. Of course a young man must go where opportunity offered. Judith was not important after all and this was Ritchie’s way of getting Sara Jerome to San Francisco.

  Her mother’s silence, her grave look, brought Sara back to the shuttered room in Chicago.

  “But of course you’ll accept, Mama,” Sara said eagerly. “If Mrs. Renwick isn’t well enough to manage the house, and Judith is too inexperienced—they need you. It must be quite a household.” Sara had learned from Ritchie about the others—Judith’s little sister Allison, and her brother Nicholas, a year older than Judith. Now of course there was Ritchie too, apparently making his home with them. “Mrs. Renwick has asked Ritchie to write to you,” Sara went on, “so this is official. And it’s the answer to everything!”

  Mrs. Jerome’s face had paled and her fine-boned hands gripped the edge of the trunk with an intensity she seldom betrayed.

  “We can’t go to San Francisco. Ritchie is only trying to be generous.”

  No, Sara thought, and her heart did a small thump against her ribs. Ritchie wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to be generous. Surely there was a purpose in this invitation which concerned Sara more than it did her mother.

  “Mama,” she persisted urgently, “why don’t you want to go to San Francisco? I can get work in an office there, just as I could here. I don’t want Renwick charity. Tell me why you’re set against San Francisco!”

  Mrs. Jerome shook her head. “I will never return to San Francisco. It is a wicked, evil city, and there are wicked, evil people in it.”

  Turning Ritchie’s letter in her fingers, Sara had the feeling that she was on the verge of discovery; that if she moved carefully something might be revealed that she needed to know. She quieted the storm that ran through her blood, spoke softly.

  “Return? I didn’t know that you had ever been in San Francisco. Why should you hate it so?”

  Mary Jerome hesitated, then made up her mind. “You were born in San Francisco. I spent the five most miserable years of my life there. I don’t want to go back!”

  Coals clinked in the grate and the January wind blew icily against the windows. Mary Jerome’s eyes held her daughter’s and there was in them that ultimate in strength which she could bring to bear when the need arose. Sara knew and respected this quality in her mother. It was her own gaze that dropped first.

  She tossed Ritchie’s letter on a table and ran from the room. There was no hope to be found in her mother’s resolution. She must be off by herself where she might think this thing out. There must be a way—there had to be a way.

  She ran through the cold hallways to her own room, took a sweater and cloth coat from the wardrobe closet and slipped into them. Then she caught up a shawl and threw it over her glossy hair. When she left her room she did not go outside, but ran up the narrow stairs that led to the attic. It was wintry cold under the eaves, but she thrust her hands into warm pockets and hurried through the gloom toward the rear of the house.

  Here, a few steps up, steps she knew instinctively, was the old haven of her childhood. A pointed tower made an excrescent growth on the house and contained within its cylinder a small circular room. Sara felt for the china doorknob and opened the door. Here there were windows, smudged and clouded with cobwebs, but winter sunlight, blinding in its reflection from snowy roofs, filled the small room.

  Sara closed her eyes against the pain of brilliant light, blinking until she could accustom herself to its force. A window seat of dry, splitting leather ran all the way around. She chose her favorite place and knelt upon the seat. Her breath clouded the air and the windowpane, but she rubbed the glass clear with her handkerchief and looked down upon the rutted carriage tracks of the street, upon high-heaped snow banks, and on toward the gray-blue gleam of Lake Michigan.

  Ritchie had always laughed at her love for high places. He alone had known of this hideaway which had played many a role in her childhood, from crow’s nest on a ship, to lighthouse tower. Once he said, “I’m sure there must be hills in your blood. Else why must you always be on top of things?”

  Hills in her blood? San Francisco hills? The very name sent a prickling along the skin of her arms. An evil, wicked town, her mother said. Yet was it her father’s home? The city he had loved? Who were his people? And if they knew her would they help her in this need?

  She considered the little she knew of her father’s people. The family was a good one. Once when she had bewailed the fact that Ritchie was above her own social plane, her mother had denied her words.

  “You’ve good blood on both sides, Sara. Your father came of wealth and fine family. You have nothing to be ashamed of, if background is so important to you. It isn’t to me. I wish I could make you understand how little social position really means.”

  Mama had a good
many notions about individual worth that puzzled Sara. Obviously wealth and family counted more than anything else. For as long as she could remember she had yearned to be Ritchie’s equal. Surely they would have married long ago if she had been his social equal.

  The cotton stuffing was coming through a hole in the leather of the tower seat and her fingers plucked at it idly. As they plucked she remembered. Months ago she had pulled at this same hole, tearing at the padding with fingers that had to be busy, could not be still because of the hurt inside her. She had come here one day while Judith Renwick was in the house. How well she remembered the reason!

  She had started downstairs so casually that morning, the carpet concealing without intent on her part the sound of her descent. Ritchie and Judith were in the lower hall, and Judith had been in his arms. Sara stood frozen on the stairs, not believing that he could be kissing her, that Judith’s hands were clasped behind Ritchie’s head.

  Then Ritchie had released her and gone out the front door. Sara, not daring to move, had stayed where she was, while Judith raised lovely hands to tidy strands of pale hair, a little smile curving her lips.

  Judith was within a year of Ritchie’s age and she had the beauty of an exquisite crystal figurine. Her hair was ash-blond and her eyes were blue-green as Lake Michigan could be on a cloudy day. She looked as fragile as a figurine too, as if you would not dare to hold her roughly. A fine glass stick of a woman to make love to, thought Sara miserably.

  She must have moved on the stairs because Judith drew a quick breath and looked up at her. There was no time for Sara to pretend she had not seen. No time to hide the stricken look which must have betrayed her. There was nothing she could say. She had turned and run upstairs, away from the girl in the lower hall. She had fled to this tower room and flung herself on the leather seat in bitter unhappiness.

  Judith had surprised her. Up the narrow stairs she had come, and across the dusty attic floor, the silken frou-frou of her skirts and the delicacy of her Paris perfume strange to this musty place. She had stepped into this very room and sat right there, across from Sara. And the sunlight had touched her to dazzling beauty.