Hers the Kingdom (17 page)

     Beauty and the beast, they had lived happily together for more than thirty years. As a wedding gift he bought her the Rancho Los Alamitos. In the following years he would buy a dozen more ranches—Rancho Los Coyotes, La Habra . . . the Señora knew all about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Finally, his lands stretched
for two hundred thousand acres and his cattle empire was the greatest in the south.

     And then, in all of the year 1863 and all of 1864 there was but one rain. It would be remembered, long years after, as the time of the great drought. It was a bad time; the land was rank, the air fetid with the smell of rotting animal flesh; death rose in the heat waves over dry lands. Even the great Abel Stearns faced ruin. He lost seven thousand sheep and two hundred lambs. He sold off one thousand of his cattle, but the drought killed thirty thousand more. But he had found a way to survive, and that way had touched off the land revolution that would change the life flow of the cow counties.

     Through the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Land Company, Abel Stearns sold off his land in small tracts that could be divided and divided again. The company advertised in Europe and through all of the United States. Come to the land of perpetual sunshine, they said, come to California where the warm breezes blow and happiness can be plucked off a tree.

     They came from Ohio and Wisconsin and County Cork, from North Dakota and Kentucky and Paris, France. They came west as destiny and the Santa Fe Railroad told them they must. Each acre of land they bought from the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Land Company reaped a profit for Abel Stearns, so that he paid off all of his debts, he established his beautiful bride, young still, in the big house in Santa Monica, and, finally, he died in honor. The great drought, the one which had defeated so many of the others, did not defeat Abel Stearns. The city of Los Angeles bears witness to it.

     Arcadia Bandini Stearns married Colonel Robert Baker and lived with him for twenty years. When he died, her fortune increased. Yet through all the long years of marriage, the child bride remained childless.

     She lived not far from the house on Seaside Avenue that Owen built. Two years ago, not long after the death of Colonel Baker, her
grandniece and namesake, Arcadia Scott, had come to visit. She was scarcely seventeen, and blonde with a shell-pink complexion. She had a comfortable laugh and was easily pleased. She brightened the Señora's house and reminded the old woman of something. So the young Arcadia had stayed on to keep the old one company, to travel with her, to spend time tending the fable, polishing the past.

     "I am so very happy to meet you," Arcadia had said somewhat breathlessly to Willa that first day, "I've so wanted to find someone to laugh with."

     It had been such an earnest appeal, so forthright, that Willa had known they would be friends, and they were. After that day, the two saw each other often. Owen was delighted and so was I. He because he was away more and more, and he could think of no better companion for Willa than Arcadia Stearns' grandniece. I because Arcadia could do all those things I couldn't. She could stay in the saddle for long hours without tiring. She was fearless in the same way as Willa. They became partners in adventures that led them often enough to the edge of danger.

     Had the Señora known some of the challenges they accepted, she would not have approved. "I am responsible for you," she would say to Arcadia when she did not want her to do something. "I must answer to your family, to my brother's son, your father. I cannot allow . . ." Arcadia had learned how to circumvent her denials. With Willa's help, and Owen's tacit compliance, the two women plotted new adventures.

     They were learning to sail the small boat docked at the pier in Santa Monica. Willa would appear at the Señora's with her notebooks, and Arcadia would make a great scene of collecting her sketchpads. "We are looking for the white-tailed kite," she would say, then casually add,
"Elanus leucurus,"
to add weight to the charade. It would be true, of course. But not all of the truth. She did not tell her grandaunt that they would be tracking the bird from a small boat, tacking with the winds, working the sails. And she did not mention that her canvas day bag held, along with a
lunch of bread and cheese and dried fruit, her bathing dress. Often enough, the two women managed to capsize their small boat.

     After the day's ride or sail they would return to the house on Seaside Avenue full of the smell of the out-of-doors, woodsy and clean and cheeks high with color. Arcadia would stay, then, until the exuberance was spent, until she could establish the sort of peaceful demeanor required in the Señora's house. Harsh Spanish light was not kind to old beauty. The Señora's house was a place of tranquil shadows. Arcadia Scott was learning to live in those shadows.

After a time I came to understand that the house on Seaside Avenue had two lives—with Owen and without. When he was away, which was perhaps half the time, the tempo was slow, measured. We were a household of women: Willa and I, very often joined by Arcadia and, more often of late, Sara. Willa's longtime interest in raptors—the birds of prey—had taken a scholarly turn. She spent days on end in the field making detailed observations of hawks and eagles. Her special fascination was, always, the peregrine falcon.

     On horseback and afoot she followed them as they circled wide above her, quartering, their sharp eyes watching for a movement that would signal the presence of a fieldmouse or a rabbit. With her field glasses she could see a hawk rip apart its prey. Later, she would ride to where the remains—bits of fur and blood and bone—were left, and make a notation.

     I, in turn, transcribed her notes on the typewriter Owen had purchased. I had become adept at typewriting, which pleased Owen and Willa, both of whom admired efficiency—and both of whom carried on a wide correspondence.

     Willa began what was to become a long and detailed correspondence with falconers in Britain and in the United States. Now and then she would submit an article to a scientific journal.

     "I am enclosing a treatise on the eyrie of the peregrine falcon in the coastal region of southern California," she would write, "it is the result of five months' observation of four separate eyries which produced, in all, ten nestlings. I hope you will find it of some merit, however small . . ." She did not explain that, to reach one bluffside nest, she had descended a thirty-foot wall of dirt and rock that dropped steeply to the sea below.

     To her surprise—and delight—the research she presented was received with excitement in the society of people interested in hawks. She had signed all of her letters and articles "W. K. Reade." Invariably, the return letters were addressed either to Mr. Reade or to W. K. Reade, Esquire. Willa did nothing to correct the impression. When I asked why, she said only, "I find I enjoy being taken seriously in the company of men."

     When Owen came home, life in the house quickened. It was as if a lever had been thrown, as if we breathed faster, moved faster, even words seemed to come more quickly. Everyone wanted to hear all about Owen's travels, and everyone wanted to tell him all that had happened in his absence. At first, everything was chaotic. Wen would throw himself into Owen's arms and Owen, unable to hold the child for long, would find a chair to sink into. Willa would pull a small stool up to sit at his feet, and often enough there would be a visitor to join the group. I remember once Wen took his father's face in his small hands to be sure he was looking at him. Before long, then, Willa would say, "It's time for Wen's nap, isn't it?" Or: "Isn't it time Wennie was in bed?"

     Sometimes, it seemed, a signal must have gone out, because within two or three days of Owen's return, people—strangers, for the most part—would begin to arrive. Some came with letters of introduction. Even when Owen could not quite remember the writer of the letter—he met so many good people on his travels—he was never less than welcoming.

     It was not unusual to find a stranger in the library, deposited there by a grim-faced Trinidad, who knew it meant another plate
to set at the dinner table. Even Wen learned to deal with them.

     "Are you waiting for my papa?" he would ask in his round, child's voice. "I'll fetch him for you." When Owen was at home, Wen always knew where to find him.

     They came with all manner of schemes. One man had imported six thousand pineapple plants from Africa, being sure that southern California had the perfect climate for a pineapple plantation. He had the pineapples, all he needed was the plantation. Another was excited beyond all reason about the prospect of raising ostriches, convinced a fortune was to be made in ostrich feathers, a favorite ornament of ladies' clothing.

     Owen listened with such genuine interest that they left with high hopes, these men, certain they had convinced him that, together, they could make a fortune.

     None could know that while Owen's enthusiasm was boundless, it was in no way connected to his pursestrings. Though they had not underestimated his fortune—he had more than tripled the sizeable inheritance left him—he had not done it with small get-rich-quick schemes.

     I had become a kind of office manager for Owen, handling some of his business matters in his absence, so that I knew he had, in the main, three great interests: water, oil, and insurance. These three, he liked to say, would prove to be "the gold mines of the twentieth century."

"I want to go with you to Nevada City," Willa said to him. "Remember the last time we went there together? We could ask for the same suite of rooms at the National Exchange—it could be a kind of anniversary trip."

     Owen's silence meant that he was not in favor of her going north with him. Finally he said, "I will be busy with meetings, Willa. I wouldn't have any time to spend with you."

     "But we'd have the traveling time together . . . I want to go, Owen." This last was a plea. It was as close as she could come to begging. Owen was shaking his head.

     "That was before we had Wen," he said.

     "But Lena can take care of Wen," she argued. "He spends most of his time with her—I don't think he would miss me very much."

     Owen looked at her steadily. "You are Wen's mother, and your place is here, with him. I think you should remember that."

     Willa hugged her arms against her and looked out the window. After a time she said, in a voice empty with defeat, "Wen was conceived in Nevada City, in the National . . ."

     Owen answered: "Are you saying that if I let you come with me, you will consider having another child?"

     Willa's eyes flashed. "No, Owen," she said angrily. "I was saying only that before we had Wen, I was free to travel with you, to share your life away from home, too."

     The air between them was taut, in danger of snapping, breaking.

     Owen moved toward her. "My dear," he said, pulling her to him, "you are always part of me, even when I am away. Don't you understand that I want you with me? It is just that we have so much to do, together. This house must be full of life, open to the world. I don't want it to be shut up, waiting. When I come home I want children and friends and laughter to come spilling out the doors. I depend on you to make that happen. I need to know you are here—you and the children, in this house. But you have to remember that you are the mother. Lena is not physically strong—you know how easy it is for her to fall. You must be in charge."

     She put her head on his shoulder then and told him that she was sorry.

     "For what?" he said.

     "Loving you too much, wanting to be with you too much," she answered into his chest.

     
You and the children
, he had said.
But there was only one child.