Randolph was a dark handsome boy—“exactly like his father, who was the picture of his grandfather, who was a perfect cavalier, my dear!”—and so polite that he made Lee feel like a Red Indian. When she rose to leave the room he opened the door. He never sat until she had placed herself, and he rose when she rose, ignoring the gulf between sixteen and childhood. He was always on hand to adjust her cape, and his attentions at table were really beautiful. He treated his mother with a deference which was surely Southern, and when Lee lamented that she was “so gawky,” and that Lord Barnstaple had told her so, he assured her that the traditionally irreproachable Tiny had been quite gauche by comparison at the age of eleven. After that compliment Lee almost wavered in her allegiance to Cecil, who doubtless would have told her the truth and asked her why she bothered about “such things.” But she felt that she certainly was improving, with her well-brushed hair in a tight plait, her dainty white frocks, her thin boots, and hands no longer discoloured by liniments, but washed in bran water and manicured once a week. She gave strict attention to her poses, and forbade her legs to fly up and herself to bounce down on the edge of her backbone. The mere fact that her skirts were the same length all round made her feel less awkward.
She renewed her baby acquaintance with Coralie Brannan, a fair delicate child who promised a few years of ethereal beauty before withering like a hot-house plant in the rude winds of life. She was sweet and bright and adaptable, and adored Lee at once, succumbing to the stronger nature, but companionable through the liveliness of her mind. Of course she was permitted to read Cecil’s letters; and she was volubly sympathetic over every phase of that extraordinary friendship.
The summer months were passed in Menlo Park, which, although it boasted a village and a very smart railway station of the English pattern, was practically a collection of large plain substantial country houses with deep verandahs, and surrounded by grounds more or less extensive. These were scattered over an area of some six miles in the great San Mateo Valley, along whose western rim towered a mountain range covered with redwood forests. The Montgomery, Yorba, Geary, Belmont, Brannan, Randolph, Folsom, and Washington estates dated, in their present sub-division, from the early Fifties: and these families (not all of whom appear in this chronicle) may be said, for want of a better term, to have represented the landed aristocracy of California’s second era—counting the arcadian episode of the Spaniards as the first.
Cecil wrote with a praiseworthy attempt at regularity. He had returned at once to Eton and to cricket. His parents were living in comparative harmony, and his stepmother had promised him a new horse and a boat. His letters were very brief, and there was the creak of protesting machinery in every line, but he rarely failed to assure Lee that her letters were “jolly,” and to beg her to be faithful, as he did so love to get mail.
When Lee returned to town in the autumn, plump and strong and pink, she settled down at once with Coralie to hard study under private tutors. She was not only to be “thoroughly educated,” but “highly accomplished.” Her studies were conducted entirely in French. She pounded the piano daily until her back ached, covered countless pads with birds and flowers and trees, tinkled the guitar with her head on one side, attacked the German language, and took three dancing lessons a week. These studies were pursued in the old schoolroom at the back of the house, where there was always a big fire roaring, and a polished floor. Randolph and Tom Brannan attended the dancing-class when at home, and bestowed their favours impartially. Tom was fourteen, a round-faced youth with a large mouth, an amiable temper, and an inflammable heart. He sent Lee an immense package of peanuts the day after he met her, and announced himself violently in love. Both he and Randolph danced to perfection, and between the two Lee rapidly developed the inherent grace of her creole blood.
CHAPTER XV
HER life from eleven to eighteen was very monotonous and very happy. Mrs. Montgomery petted and indulged her, the boys were her slaves, and assured her, every time they came home from school, and later from their whirl at College, that she was growing up the prettiest girl in San Francisco. After Tiny’s return from Paris, which was shortly after Lee entered her thirteenth year, the child caught little glimpses of the world from her secluded tower. Tiny entered society at once, and was as much of a belle as any girl so constitutionally bored and indifferent could be. But her beauty made an immediate impression; she was much entertained, and during her first winter the young men came in shoals to the house on Rincon Hill. She was very small and marvellously dignified. With a long train and a high coiffure, her fine head held well back, emphasising her fine aquiline profile, she actually had a presence. Her hair was soft and brown; her brown eyes, under their level brows, very sweet and thoughtful, her skin had the pure cold whiteness of the camellia; and her admirers swore that her feet and hands necessitated a magnifying glass. She was thin and delicate, but she had great force of character and a sweet inflexible will. Lee conceived for her one of those girlish adorations peculiar to the impulsive and imaginative of her sex, and quite bitterly resented the rival claims to belledom of the overwhelming Helena, the sinuous tropical Ila, the clever Miss Geary, and the wealthy Miss Yorba. When Mrs. Montgomery gave a party she was permitted to contemplate these radiant beings in the dressing-room, and preferred Miss Yorba, with her tragically plain face, because she was the only one who ever condescended to notice her. Later, when she was supposed to be in bed, she lay prone at the top of the stairs watching the dancing and flirting. In summer, she saw even more of the mysterious life of grown people; who appeared to live on the verandahs, and had many picnics. When she was sixteen, men began to notice her, despite Mrs. Montgomery’s efforts to keep her in the background and “a child as long as possible.” But creole blood is quick and magnetic, and long before it was time to take her place in society it was prophesied that Lee was to succeed that famous trio of belles, Helena Belmont, Ila Brannan, and Tiny Montgomery. Her own imaginings on the subject were very satisfactory, but she studied hard and read so many books that Tiny begged her to be careful lest she be thought clever.
CHAPTER XVI
CECIL, some five months after his eighteenth birthday, went up to Oxford and entered Balliol. Here he gave the cold shoulder to cricket, and took to the water with the enthusiasm of a man who has the honour of his college to uphold and his blue to get. He also took more kindly to correspondence, and wrote Lee long letters on the tendencies of modern civilisation. His letters struck his friend, used to the lighter mood of Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Brannan, as decidedly priggish, and she worried over the development not a little,—being unaware that the University youth of Great Britain must take priggishness in the regular course of measles, mumps, whooping-cough, Public School wickedness, the overwhelming discovery of his own importance as an atom of the British Empire, and cynicism.
During the second term he became profoundly and theologically religious, and Lee wept at the prospect of being a parson’s wife. His excursions into the vast echoing region of spiritual mysteries nearly addled her brains, and she felt quite miserable at times to think that there was so little of the old Cecil left. But during the spring of his second year there seemed to be a healthy reaction. A letter dated from Maundrell Abbey informed Lee that he had been sent down for breaking windows and attempting to feed a bonfire in the quadrangle with an objectionable don. He further confided that upon the last hilarious night before his exile he had been discovered by a good Samaritan at the foot of his stairs calling imperiously upon the Almighty to carry him up to his room and put him to bed.