“I forgive him,” Everett said, patting Tano on the back.
“Not go to his house!” Tano exclaimed. “That is exactly what the old pirate wants. It would be nuts for the old Turk if I stayed away. Not much—I won't stay away. I'll go when he is at the colony with his sweetly-scented pets.”
“Where is the colony?” Mercedes asked.
“That is the new name for the large room next to the dining-room, which Clarence said he built for a ‘growlery.’ Alice called it the ‘squattery,’ because father always receives the settlers there; but mother changed the name to ‘colony’ to make it less offensive, and because the talk there is always about locating, or surveying, or fencing land—always land—as it would be in a new colony,” Everett explained.
“Whether he be at the colony or not, you should not go if he does not wish you to visit his house,” Doña Josefa said to Tano.
“But we all wish it—my mother and every one of her children. Father doesn't say anything about Tano's coming or not, but he is cross to all of us, and don't have the politeness to be more amiable in Tano's presence—which, of course, is very disagreeable,” Everett replied.
“I think Mrs. Darrell ought to put her foot down, and have it out with the old filibuster,” Tano asserted.
“We will see what he will do when Clarence comes,” Everett said.
Everett thought as all the family did—that Clarence, being the favorite child of the old man, and having naturally a winning manner and great amiability, combined with persuasiveness, would influence his father, and dispel his bad humor. But if the family had known what was boiling and seething in the cauldron of their father's mind, they would have perceived that, for once, neither Clarence's influence, nor yet the more powerful one wielded by Mrs. Darrell, would at present be as effective as they heretofore had been.
Time alone must be the agent to operate on that hard skull. Time and circumstances which, fortunately, no one as yet was misanthrophic enough to foresee. The fact was, that no one of his family had understood William Darrell. It can hardly be said that he understood himself, for he sincerely believed that he had forever renounced his “squatting” propensities, and honestly promised his wife that he would not take up land claimed by any one else. But no sooner was he surrounded by men who, though his inferiors, talked loudly in assertion of their “rights under the law;” and no sooner had he thousands of broad acres before his eyes—acres which, by obeying the laws of Congress, he could make his own—than he again felt within him the old squatter of Sonoma and Napa valleys. That mischievous squatter had not lain dead therein; he had been slumbering only, and unconsciously dreaming of the advantages that the law really gave to settlers. Alongside the sleeping squatter had also slumbered Darrell's vanity, and this was, as it is generally in every man, the strongest quality of his mind, the chief commanding trait, before which everything must give way.