Patience stared dully at the girls, her dry lips parted. She knew that they had spoken the truth. She had gone to bed early on Saturday night. Shortly afterward she had heard the sound of buggy wheels and Billy’s uncertain gait. Many hours later she had been awakened by the sound of her mother stumbling upstairs; but she had thought nothing of either incident at the time.
Panchita continued relentlessly, memories of many class defeats rushing forward to lash her spleen: “You’ll please understand after this that we don’t care to have you talk to us, for we don’t think you’re respectable.” Whereupon the other girls, nodding sarcastically at Patience, entwined their arms and walked away, led by the haughty Miss McPherson.
For a few moments Patience hardly realised how she felt. She stood impassive; but a cyclone raged within. All the blood in her body seemed to have rushed to her head, to scorch her face and pound in her ears. She wondered why her hands and feet were cold.
“Come, Patita, don’t mind them,” said Rosita, putting her arm round her comrade. “The mean hateful nasty—pigs!” Never before had the indolent little Californian been so vehement; but Patience slipped from her hold, and running through a gate at the back of the yard crouched down on a box. Rosita’s words had broken the spell. She was filled with a volcano of hate. She hated the girls, she hated Monterey, she hated life; but above all she hated her mother.
After a time all the hate in her concentrated on the woman who had made her young life so bitter. She had never liked her, but not until the dreadful moments just past had she realised the full measure of her inheritance. The innuendoes she had not understood, but it was enough to know that her mother had disgraced her publicly and insulted her father’s memory. Her schoolmates she dismissed from her mind with a scornful jerk of the shoulders. She had beaten them too easily and often in the schoolroom not to despise them consummately. They could prick but not stab her.
The bell rang; but she had an account to settle, and bonnetless she started for home.
Mrs. Sparhawk was sitting on the porch reading a novel when Patience walked up to her, snatched the book from her hand, and flung it into a rose-tree. The woman was sober, and quailed as she met her daughter’s eyes. Patience had walked rapidly under a hot sun. Her face was scarlet, and she was trembling.
“I hate you!” she sobbed. “I hate you! It doesn’t do any good to tell you so, but it does me good to say it.”
The girl looked the incarnation of evil passions. She was elemental Hate, a young Cain.
“I wish you were dead,” she continued. “You’ve ruined every bit of my life.”