"My dearest girl, you"ve got something far harder than that to do for me, and that"s wait."

His face darkened again, and he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead.

"Sometimes I feel as if I ought not to hold you at all!" he burst out, bitterly. "You ought to be free to marry a better man."

"There aren"t any!" said Diantha, shaking her head slowly from side to side. "And if there were--millions--I wouldn"t marry any of "em. I love _you,"_ she firmly concluded.

"Then we"ll just _wait,"_ said he, setting his teeth on the word, as if he would crush it. "It won"t be hard with you to help. You"re better worth it than Rachael and Leah together." They walked a few steps silently.

"But how about science?" she asked him.

"I don"t let myself think of it. I"ll take that up later. We"re young enough, both of us, to wait for our happiness."

"And have you any idea--we might as well face the worst--how many years do you think that will be, dearest?"

He was a little annoyed at her persistence. Also, though he would not admit the thought, it did not seem quite the thing for her to ask. A woman should not seek too definite a period of waiting. She ought to trust--to just wait on general principles.

"I can face a thing better if I know just what I"m facing," said the girl, quietly, "and I"d wait for you, if I had to, all my life. Will it be twenty years, do you think?"

He looked relieved. "Why, no, indeed, darling. It oughtn"t to be at the outside more than five. Or six," he added, honest though reluctant.

"You see, father had no time to settle anything; there were outstanding accounts, and the funeral expenses, and the mortgages. But the business is good; and I can carry it; I can build it up." He shook his broad shoulders determinedly. "I should think it might be within five, perhaps even less. Good things happen sometimes--such as you, my heart"s delight."

They were at her gate now, and she stood a little while to say good-night. A step inside there was a seat, walled in by evergreen, roofed over by the wide acacia boughs. Many a long good-night had they exchanged there, under the large, brilliant California moon. They sat there, silent, now.

Diantha"s heart was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom.

His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women--for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework--should require servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply. Moreover, she felt well a.s.sured that with a different family to "support," Mr. Warden would never have broken down so suddenly and irrecoverably. Even that funeral--her face hardened as she thought of the conspicuous "lot," the continual flowers, the monument (not wholly paid for yet, that monument, though this she did not know)--all that expenditure to do honor to the man they had worked to death (thus brutally Diantha put it) was probably enough to put off their happiness for a whole year.

She rose at last, her hand still held in his. "I"m sorry, but I"ve got to get supper, dear," she said, "and you must go. Good-night for the present; you"ll be round by and by?"

"Yes, for a little while, after we close up," said he, and took himself off, not too suddenly, walking straight and proud while her eyes were on him, throwing her a kiss from the corner; but his step lagging and his headache settling down upon him again as he neared the large house with the cupola.

Diantha watched him out of sight, turned and marched up the path to her own door, her lips set tight, her well-shaped head as straightly held as his. "It"s a shame, a cruel, burning shame!" she told herself rebelliously. "A man of his ability. Why, he could do anything, in his own work! And he loved it so!

"To keep a grocery store!!!!!

"And nothing to show for all that splendid effort!"

"They don"t do a thing? They just _live_--and "keep house!" All those women!

"Six years? Likely to be sixty! But I"m not going to wait!"

CHAPTER II. AN UNNATURAL DAUGHTER

The brooding bird fulfills her task, Or she-bear lean and brown; All parent beasts see duty true, All parent beasts their duty do, We are the only kind that asks For duty upside down.

The stiff-rayed windmill stood like a tall mechanical flower, turning slowly in the light afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak p.r.i.c.ked the dry silence wearingly. Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled, heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums.

Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ineffectual shade to the house.

It was one of those small frame houses common to the northeastern states, which must be dear to the hearts of their dwellers. For no other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape.

There was an attempt at a "lawn," the pet ambition of the transplanted easterner; and a further attempt at "flower-beds," which merely served as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.

The parlor, behind the closed blinds, was as New England parlors are; minus the hint of cosiness given by even a fireless stove; the little bedrooms baked under the roof; only the kitchen spoke of human living, and the living it portrayed was not, to say the least, joyous. It was clean, clean with a cleanness that spoke of conscientious labor and unremitting care. The zinc mat under the big cook-stove was scoured to a dull glimmer, while that swart altar itself shone darkly from its daily rubbing.

There was no dust nor smell of dust; no grease spots, no litter anywhere. But the place bore no atmosphere of contented pride, as does a Dutch, German or French kitchen, it spoke of Labor, Economy and Duty--under restriction.

In the dead quiet of the afternoon Diantha and her mother sat there sewing. The sun poured down through the dangling eucalyptus leaves. The dry air, rich with flower odors, flowed softly in, pushing the white sash curtains a steady inch or two. Ee-errr!--Ee-errr!--came the faint whine of the windmill.

To the older woman rocking in her small splint chair by the rose-draped window, her thoughts dwelling on long dark green gra.s.s, the shade of elms, and cows knee-deep in river-shallows; this was California--hot, arid, tedious in endless sunlight--a place of exile.

To the younger, the long seam of the turned sheet pinned tightly to her knee, her needle flying firmly and steadily, and her thoughts full of pouring moonlight through acacia boughs and Ross"s murmured words, it was California--rich, warm, full of sweet bloom and fruit, of boundless vitality, promise, and power--home!

Mrs. Bell drew a long weary sigh, and laid down her work for a moment.

"Why don"t you stop it Mother dear? There"s surely no hurry about these things."

"No--not particularly," her mother answered, "but there"s plenty else to do." And she went on with the long neat hemming. Diantha did the "over and over seam" up the middle.

"What _do_ you do it for anyway, Mother--I always hated this job--and you don"t seem to like it."

"They wear almost twice as long, child, you know. The middle gets worn and the edges don"t. Now they"re reversed. As to liking it--" She gave a little smile, a smile that was too tired to be sarcastic, but which certainly did not indicate pleasure.

"What kind of work do you like best--really?" her daughter inquired suddenly, after a silent moment or two.

"Why--I don"t know," said her mother. "I never thought of it. I never tried any but teaching. I didn"t like that. Neither did your Aunt Esther, but she"s still teaching."

"Didn"t you like any of it?" pursued Diantha.

"I liked arithmetic best. I always loved arithmetic, when I went to school--used to stand highest in that."

"And what part of housework do you like best?" the girl persisted.

Mrs. Bell smiled again, wanly. "Seems to me sometimes as if I couldn"t tell sometimes what part I like least!" she answered. Then with sudden heat--"O my Child! Don"t you marry till Ross can afford at least one girl for you!"

Diantha put her small, strong hands behind her head and leaned back in her chair. "We"ll have to wait some time for that I fancy," she said.

"But, Mother, there is one part you like--keeping accounts! I never saw anything like the way you manage the money, and I believe you"ve got every bill since you were married."

"Yes--I do love accounts," Mrs. Bell admitted. "And I can keep run of things. I"ve often thought your Father"d have done better if he"d let me run that end of his business."

Diantha gave a fierce little laugh. She admired her father in some ways, enjoyed him in some ways, loved him as a child does if not ill-treated; but she loved her mother with a sort of pa.s.sionate pity mixed with pride; feeling always n.o.bler power in her than had ever had a fair chance to grow. It seemed to her an interminable dull tragedy; this graceful, eager, black-eyed woman, spending what to the girl was literally a lifetime, in the conscientious performance of duties she did not love.

She knew her mother"s idea of duty, knew the clear head, the steady will, the active intelligence holding her relentlessly to the task; the chafe and fret of seeing her husband constantly attempting against her judgment, and failing for lack of the help he scorned. Young as she was, she realized that the nervous breakdown of these later years was wholly due to that common misery of "the square man in the round hole."

She folded her finished sheet in accurate lines and laid it away--taking her mother"s also. "Now you sit still for once, Mother dear, read or lie down. Don"t you stir till supper"s ready."