"Of course! And with fresh and fascinating material begging for its turn. I arrived in the nick of time. When you have transcribed those stories into correct and distinguished English, you will have taken your place among the immortals. But style alone will give you a place in letters worth having. Always remember that. The theme determines popular success, the manner rank. Don't misunderstand me; there is no greater fraud or bore than the writer who has acquired the art of saying nothing brilliantly. You must have both. And you are too ambitious, too intellectual, as distinguished from clever, too serious and logical, to be contented with anything short of perfection. I shall be your severest critic; but you yourself will work for years before you produce a line with which you are wholly satisfied. Is not this true?"
"Yes; I should always be my severest critic."
He drew a long breath of relief. He had no desire for a literary wife; nor to be known as the husband of one. Magdaléna should be as happy as he could make her, but the sooner she realised that genius was not her portion, the better.
IX
"Never I think I come to Monterey again," said Don Roberto, as the 'bus which contained his party only drove from the little toy station to the big toy hotel. "Once I hate all the Spanish towns, because so extravagant I am before that I feel 'fraid, si I return, I am all the same like then; but now I am old and the habits fixit; and now I know my moneys go to be safe with Trennahan, I feel more easy in the mind and can enjoy. But I no go to the town, for all is change, I suppose: all the womens grown old and poor, and all the mens dead—by the drink, generalmente. Very fortunate I am I no stay there; meeting Eeram in time. Ay, yi! What kind de house is this? Look like paper, and the grounds so artifeecial. No like much."
Magdaléna hardly knew her father these last months. From the day that he found a reminiscent pleasure in the mild diversions of Menlo he had visibly softened. From the day he was assured of Trennahan he had become almost expansive, and at times was moved to generosity. Upon one occasion he had doubled Magdaléna's allowance, and at Christmas he had given her a hundred dollars; and he had paid the bills of the season without a murmur. The fear which had haunted him during the last thirty years,—that he should suddenly relapse into his native extravagance and squander his patrimony and his accumulated millions, dying as the companions of his youth had died,—he dismissed after he met Trennahan. Polk had been the iron mine to the voracious magnet in his character. In the natural course of things Polk would outlive him; but the possibility of Polk's extermination by railroad accident or small-pox had been a second devil of torment, and during the past year he had visibly failed. Now, however, there was Trennahan to take his place. Don Roberto would enjoy life once more, a second youth. He was almost happy. If he felt his will rotting, he would transfer all his vast interests to Trennahan in trust for his wife and daughter, retaining a large income. He did not believe, at this optimistic period, that there was any real danger, after an inflexible resistance of thirty years; but he also realised for the first time what the strain of those thirty years had been.
Helena, dazzlingly fair in a frock of forest green, and surrounded by five new admirers, three Eastern and two English tourists, awaited Magdaléna on the verandah. The strangers gave Magdaléna a faint shock: being the only well-dressed men she had ever seen except Trennahan, they assumed a family likeness to him, and seemed to steal something of his preeminence among men. She commented distantly on this fact as she went up the stair with Helena.
"Oh, your little tin god on wheels is not the only one," replied Helena, the astute. "There are five here with possibilities besides dress, and more coming to-morrow. They are such a relief! If I feel real wicked to-morrow night—well, never mind!"
"Helena! You will not make those four young men any more miserable than they are now?"