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Title: Tomorrow's tangle

Author: Geraldine Bonner

Illustrator: Arthur Ignatius Keller

Release date: February 28, 2022 [eBook #67521]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOMORROW'S TANGLE ***





  TOMORROW’S
  TANGLE


[Illustration: “THAT’S MY LIFE,--TO WORK IN WILD PLACES WITH MEN”]




  TOMORROW’S
  TANGLE

  BY
  GERALDINE BONNER

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  ARTHUR I. KELLER

  [Illustration]

  INDIANAPOLIS
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS




  COPYRIGHT 1903
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  OCTOBER


  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
  BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
  BROOKLYN, N. Y.




  TOMORROW’S
  TANGLE




CONTENTS


                   PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER                             PAGE

      I  THE DESERT                      1

     II  STRIKING A BARGAIN              7

    III  HE RIDES AWAY                  28

     IV  THE ENCHANTED WINTER           50


                 MARIPOSA LILY

      I  HIS SPLENDID DAUGHTER          71

     II  THE MILLIONAIRE                86

    III  RETROSPECT                    100

     IV  A GALA NIGHT                  119

      V  TRIAL FLIGHTS                 130

     VI  THE VISION AND THE DREAM      147

    VII  THE REVELATION                157

   VIII  ITS EFFECT                    172

     IX  HOW COULD HE                  181

      X  THE PALE HORSE                194

     XI  BREAKS IN THE RAIN            214

    XII  DRIFT AND CROSSCUT            229

   XIII  THE SEED OF BANQUO            245

    XIV  VAIN PLEADINGS                260

     XV  THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY        276

    XVI  REBELLIOUS HEARTS             294

   XVII  FRIEND AND BROTHER            311

  XVIII  WITH ME TO HELP               331

    XIX  NOT MADE IN HEAVEN            350

     XX  THE WOMAN TALKS               366

    XXI  THE MEETING IN THE RAIN       382

   XXII  A NIGHT’S WORK                398

  XXIII  THE LOST VOICE                410

   XXIV  A BROKEN TOOL                 426

    XXV  HAVE YOU COME AT LAST         435


                   EPILOGUE

      I  THE PRIMA DONNA               451




PROLOGUE




TOMORROW’S TANGLE




CHAPTER I

THE DESERT

  “To every man a damsel or two.”

                                  --JUDGES.


The vast, gray expanse of the desert lay still as a picture in the heat
of the early afternoon. The silence of waste places held it. It was
gaunt and sterile, clad with a drab growth of sage, flat as a table,
and with the white scurf of the alkali breaking through its parched
skin. It was the earth, lean, sapless, and marked with disease. A chain
of purple hills looked down on its dead level, over which a wagon road
passed like a scar across a haggard face. From the brazen arch of the
sky heat poured down and was thrown back from the scorched surface of
the land. It was August in the Utah Desert in the early fifties.

In the silence and deadness of the scene there was one point of life.
The canvas top of an emigrant wagon made a white spot on the monotone
of gray. At noon there had been but one shadow in the desert and this
was that beneath the wagon which was stationary in the road. Now the
sun was declining from the zenith and the shadow was broadening; first
a mere edge, then a substantial margin of shade.

In it two women were crouched watching a child that lay gasping. Some
distance away beside his two horses, a man sat on the ground, his hat
over his eyes.

One of the thousand tragedies the desert had seen was being enacted.
Crushed between that dead indifference of earth and sky, its
participators seemed to feel the hopelessness of movement or plaint and
sat dumb, all but the child, who was dying with that solemn aloofness
to surroundings, of which only those who are passing know the secret.
His loud breathing sounded like a defiance in the silence of that
savagely unsympathizing nature. The man, the women, the horses, were
like part of the picture in their mute immobility, only the dying child
dared defy it.

He was a pretty boy of three, and had succumbed to one of the slight,
juvenile ailments that during the rigors of the overland march
developed tragic powers of death. His mother sat beside him staring
at him. She was nineteen years of age and had been married four years
before to the man who sat in the shadow of the horses. She looked
forty, tanned, haggard, half clad. Dazed by hardship and the blow
that had just fallen, she had the air of a stupefied animal. She
said nothing and made no attempt to alleviate the sufferings of her
first-born.

The other woman was some ten years older, and was a buxom, handsome
creature, large-framed, capable, stalwart--a woman built for struggles
and endurance--the mate of the pioneer. She, too, was the wife of the
man who sat by the horses. He was of the Mormon faith, which he had
joined a year before for the purpose of marrying her.

The sun sloped its burning course across the pale sky. The edges of the
desert shimmered through veils of heat. Far on the horizon the mirage
of a blue lake, with little waves creeping up a crescent of sand,
painted itself on the quivering air. The shadow of the wagon stealthily
advanced. Suddenly the child moved, drew a fluttering breath or two,
and died. The two women leaned forward, the mother helplessly; the
other, with a certain prompt decision that marked all her movements,
felt of the pulse and heart.

“It’s all over, Lucy,” she said bruskly, but not unkindly; “I guess
you’d better get into the wagon; Jake and I’ll do everything.”

The girl rose slowly like a person accustomed to obey, moved to the
back of the wagon, and climbed in.

The man, who had seen this sudden flutter of activity, pushed back his
hat and looked at his wives, but did not move or speak. The second wife
covered the dead child with her apron, and approached him.

“He’s dead,” she said.

“Oh!” he answered.

“We must bury him,” was her next remark.

“Well, all right,” he assented.

He went to the wagon and detached from beneath it a spade. Then he
walked a few rods away and, clearing a space in the sage, began to dig.
The woman prepared the child for burial. The silence that had been
disturbed resettled, broken at intervals by the thud of the spade.
The heat began to lessen and a still serenity to possess the barren
landscape. The desert had received its tribute and was appeased.

The rites of the burial were nearly completed, when a sound from the
wagon attracted the attention of the man and the woman. They stopped,
listened and exchanged a glance of alarmed intelligence. The woman
walked to the wagon rapidly, and exchanged a few remarks with the
other wife. Her voice came to the man low and broken. He did not hear
what she said, but he thought he knew the purport of her words. As he
shoveled the earth into the grave his brow was contracted. He looked
angrily harassed. The second wife came toward him, her sunburnt face
set in an expression of frowning anxiety.

“Yes,” she said, in answer to his look, “she feels very bad. We got to
stop here. We can’t go on now.”

He made no answer, but went on building up the mound over the grave.
He was younger by a year or two than the woman with whom he spoke, but
it was easy to be seen that of her, as of all pertaining to him, he
was absolute master. She watched him for a moment as if waiting for an
order, then, receiving none, said:

“I’d better go back to her. I wish a train’d come by with a doctor. She
ain’t got much strength.”

He vouchsafed no answer, and she returned to the wagon, and this time
climbed in.

He continued to build up and shape the mound with sedulous and
evidently absent-minded care. The sweat poured off his forehead and his
bare, brown throat and breast. He was a lean but powerful man, worn
away by the journey to bone and muscle, but of an iron fiber. He had
no patience with those who hampered his forward march by sickness or
feebleness.

When he had finished the mound the sun was declining toward the tops
of the distant mountains. The first color of its setting was inflaming
the sky and painting the desert in tones of strange, hot brilliancy.
The vast, grim expanse took on a tropical aspect. Against the lurid
background the chain of hills turned a transparent amethyst, and the
livid earth, with its leprous eruption, was transformed into a pale
lilac-blue. Presently the thin, clear red of the sunset was pricked by
a white star-point. And in the midst of this vivid blending of limpid
primary colors, the fire the man had kindled sent a fine line of smoke
straight up into the air.

The second wife came out of the wagon to help him get the supper and to
eat hers. They talked a little in low voices as they ate, drawn away
from the heat of the fire. The man showed symptoms of fatigue; but the
powerful woman was unconquered in her stubborn, splendid vigor. When
she had left him, he lay down on the sand with his face on his arm and
was soon asleep. The sounds of dole that came from the wagon did not
wake him, nor disturb the deep dreamlessness of his exhausted rest.
The night was half spent, when he was wakened by the woman shaking his
shoulder. He looked up at her stupidly for a minute, seeing her head
against the deep blue sky with its large white stars.

“It’s over. It’s a little girl. But Lucy’s pretty bad.”

He sat up, fully awake now, and in the stillness of the night heard the
cat-like mew of the new-born. The canvas arch of the wagon glowed with
a fiery effect from the lighted lanterns within.

“Is she dying?” he said hurriedly.

“No--not’s bad as that. But she’s terribly low. We’ll have to stay here
with her till she pulls up some. We can’t move on with her this way.”

He rose and, going to the wagon, looked in through the opened flap.
His wife was lying with her eyes closed, waxen pale in the smoky
lantern-light. The sight of her shocked him into a sudden spasm of
feeling. She had been a fresh and pretty girl of fifteen when he had
married her, four years before at St. Louis. He wondered if her father,
who had given her to him then, would have known her now. In an excess
of careless pity he laid his hand on her and said:

“Well, Lucy, how d’ye feel?”

She shrank from his touch and tried to draw a corner of the blanket, on
which her head rested, over her face.

He turned away and walked back to the fire, saying to the second wife:

“I guess she’ll be able to go on to-morrow. She can stay in the wagon
all the time. I don’t want to run no risks ’er gittin’ caught in the
snows on the Sierra. I guess she’ll pull herself together all right in
a few days. I’ve seen her worse ’n that.”




CHAPTER II

STRIKING A BARGAIN

  “How the world is made for each of us!
  How all we perceive and know in it
  Tends to some moments’ product thus,
  When a soul declares itself--to wit:
  By its fruit, the thing it does!”

                                  --BROWNING.


Where the foothills fold back upon one another in cool, blue shadows,
and the tops of the Sierra, brushed with snow, look down on a
rugged rampart of mountains falling away to a smiling plain, Dan
Moreau and his partner had been working a stream bed since June.
Placerville--still Hangtown--though already past the feverish days
of its first youth, was some twenty-five miles to the southwest. A
few miles to the south the emigrant trail from Carson crawled over
the shoulder of the Sierra. Small trails broke from the parent one
and trickled down from the summit, by “the line of least resistance,”
to the outposts of civilization that were planted here and there on
foothill and valley.

The cañon where Moreau and his “pard” were at work was California,
virgin and unconquered. The forty-niners had passed it by in their
eager rush for fortune. Yet the narrow gulch, that steamed at midday
with heated airs and was steeped in the pungent fragrance which
California exhales beneath the ardors of the sun, was yielding the two
miners a good supply of gold. Their pits had honeycombed the stream’s
banks far up and down. Now, in September, the water had dwindled to a
silver thread, and they had dammed it near the rocker into a miniature
lake, into which Fletcher--Moreau’s partner--plunged his dipper with
untiring regularity, at the same time moving the rocker which filled
the hot silence of the cañon with its lazy monotonous rattle.

They had been working with little cessation since early June. The
richness of their claim and the prospect that the first snows would put
an end to labors and profits had spurred them to unremitting exertion.
In a box under Moreau’s bunk there were six small buckskin sacks of
dust, joint profits of the summer’s toil.

Moreau, a muscular, fair-haired giant of a man, was that familiar
figure of the early days--the gentleman miner. He was a New Englander
of birth and education, who had come to California in the first rush,
with a little fortune wherewith to make a great one. Luck had not been
with him. This was his first taste of success. Five months before he
had picked up a “pard” in Sacramento, and after the careless fashion
of the time, when no one sought to inquire too closely into another’s
antecedents, joined forces with him and spent a wandering spring,
prospecting from bar to bar and camp to camp. The casual words of an
Indian had directed them to the cañon where now the creak of their
rocker filled the hot, drowsy days.

Of Harney Fletcher, Moreau knew nothing. He had met him in a
lodging-house in Sacramento, and the partnership proved to be a
successful one. What the New Englander furnished in money, the other
made up in practical experience and general handiness. It was Fletcher
who had constructed the rocker on an improved model of his own. His had
been the directing brain as well as the assisting hand which had built
the cabin of logs that surveyed the stream bed from a knoll above. The
last remnants of Moreau’s fortune had stocked it well, and there were
two good horses in the brush shed behind it.

It was now September, and the leaves of the aspens that grew along
the stream bed were yellowing. But the air was warm and golden with
sunshine. Above, in the high places of the Sierra, where the emigrant
trail crept along the edges of ravines and crawled up the mighty flank
of the wall that shuts the garden of California from the desert beyond,
the snow was already deep. Fletcher, who had gone into Hangtown the
week before for provisions, had come back full of stories of the swarms
of emigrants pouring down the main road and its branching trails,
higgledy-piggledy, pell-mell, hungry, gaunt, half clad, in their wild
rush to enter the land of promise.

There was no suggestion of winter here. The hot air was steeped in the
aromatic scents that the sun draws from the mighty pines which clothe
the foothills. At midday the little gulley where the men worked was
heavy with them. All about them was strangely silent. The pines rising
rank on rank stirred to no passing breezes. There was no bird note,
and the stream had shrunk so that its spring-time song had become a
whisper. Heat and silence held the long days, when the red dust lay
motionless on the trail above, and the noise made by the rocker sounded
strangely intrusive and loud in the enchanted stillness that held the
landscape.

On an afternoon like this the men were working in the stream
bed--Moreau in the pit, Fletcher at his place by the rocker. There
was no conversation between them. The picture-like dumbness of their
surroundings seemed to have communicated itself to them. Far above,
glittering against the blue, the white peaks of the Sierra looked down
on them from remote, aërial heights. The tiny thread of water gleamed
in its wide, unoccupied bed. Save the men, the only moving thing in
sight was a hawk that hung poised in the sky above, its winged shadow
floating forward and pausing on the slopes of the gulch.

Into this spellbound silence a sound suddenly broke--a sound unexpected
and unwished for--that of a human voice. It was a man’s, harsh and
loud, evidently addressing cattle. With it came the creak of wheels.
The two partners listened, amazed and irresolute. The trail that passed
their cabin was an almost unknown offshoot from the main highway. Then,
the sounds growing clearer, they scrambled up the bank. Coming down
the road they saw the curved top of a prairie schooner that formed a
background for the forms of two skeleton horses, beside which walked
a man who urged them on with shouts and blows. Wagon and horses were
enveloped in a cloud of red dust.

At the moment that the miners saw this unwelcome sight, one of the
wretched beasts stumbled, and pitching forward, fell with what sounded
like a human groan. The man, with an oath, went to it and gave it a
kick. But it was too far spent to rally, and settling on its side, lay
gasping. A woman, stout and sunburned, ran round from the back of the
cart, with a face of angry consternation. As Moreau approached, he
heard her say to the man who, with oaths and blows, was attempting to
drag the horse to its feet:

“Oh, it ain’t no use doing that. Don’t you see it’s dying?”

Moreau saw that she was right. The animal was in its death throes. As
he came up he said, without preliminaries:

“Take off its harness, the poor brute’s done for,” and began to
unbuckle the rags of harness which held it to the wagon.

The man and woman turned, startled, and saw him. Looking back they saw
Fletcher, who was coming slowly, and evidently not very willingly,
forward. The sight of the exhausted pioneers was a too familiar one to
interest him. The dying horse claimed a lazy cast of his indifferent
eye. Moreau and the man loosed the harness, lifted the pole, and let
the creature lie free from encumbrance. The other horse, freed, too,
stood drooping, too spent to move from where it had stopped. If other
testimony were needed of the terrible journey they were ending, one saw
it in the gaunt face of the man, scorched by sun, seamed with lines,
with a fringe of ragged beard, and long locks of unkempt hair hanging
from beneath his miserable hat.

This stoppage of his journey with the promised land in sight seemed to
exasperate him to a point where he evidently feared to speak. With eyes
full of savage despair he stood looking at the horse. Both he and the
woman seemed so overpowered by the calamity that they had no attention
to give to the two strangers, but stood side by side, staring morosely
at the animal.

“What’ll we do?” she said hopelessly. “Spotty,” indicating the other
horse, “ain’t no use alone.”

Moreau spoke up encouragingly.

“Why don’t you leave the wagon and the other horse here? You can walk
into Hangtown by easy stages. The Porter ranch is only twelve miles
from here and you can stay there all night. The poor beast can’t do
much more, and we’ll feed it and take care of your other things while
you’re gone.”

“Oh, damn it, we can’t!” said the man furiously.

As if in explanation of this remark, a woman suddenly appeared at the
open front of the wagon. She had evidently been lying within it, and
had not risen until now.

When Moreau looked at her he experienced a violent thrill of pity, that
the evident sufferings of the others had not evoked. He was a man of a
deeply tender and sympathetic nature toward all that was helpless and
weak. As his glance met the face of this woman, he thought she was the
most piteous object he had ever seen.

“You’d better come into the cabin,” he said, “and see what you can do.
You can’t go on now, and you look pretty well used up.”

The man gave a grunt of assent, and taking the other horse by the head
began to lead it toward the cabin, being noticeably careful to steer
it out of the way of all stumbling-blocks. The woman in the sunbonnet
called to her companion in the wagon:

“Come, Lucy, get a move on! We’re going to stop and rest.”

Thus addressed, the woman moved to the back of the cart, drew the flap
aside and slipped out. She came behind the others, and Moreau, looking
back, saw that she walked slowly, as if feeble, or in pain.

Advancing to the sunbonneted figure in front of him he said, with a
backward jerk of his head: “What’s the matter with her? Is she sick?”

The woman gave an indifferent glance backward. Like the man, she seemed
completely preoccupied by their disaster.

“Not now,” she answered, “but she has been. But good Lord!”--with a
sudden burst of angry bitterness--“women like her ain’t meant to take
them sort of journeys. If it weren’t for her, Jake and I could go on
all right.”

She relapsed into silence as the cabin revealed itself through the
trees. It appeared to interest her, and she went to the door and looked
in.

It was the typical miner’s cabin of the period, consisting of a single
room with two bunks. Opposite the doorway was the wide-mouthed chimney,
a slab of rock before it doing duty as hearthstone. There was an
armchair formed of a barrel, cushioned with red flannel and mounted
on rockers. Moreau’s bunk was covered with a miner’s blanket, and the
ineradicable habits of the gentleman spoke in the very simple but
sufficient toilet accessories that stood on a shelf under a tiny square
of looking-glass. Over the roof a great pine spread its boughs, and in
passing through these the slightest breaths of air made soft eolian
murmurings. To the pioneers, the wild, rough place looked the ideal of
comfort and luxury.

A small spring bubbled up near the roots of the pine and trickled
across the space in front of the cabin. To this, by common consent, the
party made its way. The exhausted horse plunged its nose in the cool
current and drank and snorted and drank again. The elder woman knelt
down and laved her face and neck and even the top of her head in the
water. The man stood looking with a moody eye at his broken animal, and
joined by Fletcher, they talked over its condition. The miner, versed
in this as in all practical matters, deemed the beast incapacitated for
journeys of any length for some time to come. Both animals had been
driven to the limit of their strength.

The pioneer asserted:

“I had to get acrost before the snows blocked us, and they’re heavy up
there now,” with a nod of his head toward the mountains above; “then I
wanted to get down into the settlements as soon’s I could. I knew there
weren’t two more days work in ’em, but I calk’lated they’d get me in.
After that it didn’t matter.”

“The only thing for you to do is to walk into Hangtown, buy a mule
there, and come back.”

The man made a despairing gesture.

“How the hell can I, with her?” he said, indicating the younger woman.

Fletcher turned round and surveyed her with a cold, exploring eye where
she had sunk down on the roots of the pine, with her back against its
trunk.

“She looks pretty well tuckered out,” he said. “Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“And the other one’s your sister?” he continued with glib curiosity.

“She’s my wife, too.”

The inquirer, who was used to such plurality on the part of the Utah
emigrants, gave a whistle and said:

“Mormons, eh?”

The man nodded.

Meantime Moreau had entered the cabin to get some food and drink
to offer the sick woman. In a few moments he reappeared carrying a
tin cup containing whisky diluted with water from the spring, and
approached the woman sitting by the tree trunk. Her eyes were closed
and she presented a deathlike appearance. The shawl she had worn round
her shoulders had fallen back and disclosed a small bundle that she
held with a loose carefulness. The man noticed the way her arms were
disposed about it and wondered. Coming to a standstill before her, he
said:

“I’ve brought you something that’ll brace you up. Would you like to try
it?”

She raised her lids and looked at him, and then at the cup. As he met
her glance he noticed that her eyes were a clear brown like a dog’s,
and for the first time he realized that she might be young. She
stretched out her hand obediently and taking the cup drank a little,
then silently gave it back.

“You’ve had a pretty rough time I guess,” he said, holding the cup
which he intended to give her again in a minute.

She nodded. Then suddenly the tears began to well out of her eyes,
quantities of tears that ran in a flood over her cheeks. She did not
sob or attempt to hide her face, but leaning her head against the tree,
let the tears flow as though lost to everything but her sense of misery.

“Oh, poor thing! poor thing!” he exclaimed in a burst of sympathy,
“you’re half dead. Here take some more of this,” and he pressed the cup
into her hand, not knowing what else to do for her.

She took it, and then, through the tears, he saw her cast a look of
furtive alarm toward her husband. She was within his line of vision and
tried to shift herself behind Moreau.

With a sensation of angry disgust he understood that she feared this
unkempt and haggard creature to whom she belonged. He moved so that he
sheltered her and watched her try to drink again. But her tears blinded
her and she handed the cup back with a shaking hand.

“It’s been too much,” she gasped. “If I could only have died! My boy
did. Out there on them awful plains where there ain’t a tree and it’s
hot like a furnace. And they buried him there--Bessie and he.”

“Bessie and he?” he repeated vaguely, his pity entirely preoccupying
his mind for the moment.

“Yes, Bessie,--the second wife. I’m the first.”

“Oh,” he said, comprehending, “you’re from Utah?”

“Not me,” she answered quickly, “I’m from Indiana. I’m no Mormon. He
wasn’t neither till he married Bessie. He wanted her and he did it.”

Here she was suddenly interrupted by a weak whining cry from the bundle
that one arm still curved about. She bent her head and drew back the
covering, and Moreau saw a strange wizened face and a tiny, claw-like
hand feeling feebly about. He had never seen a very young infant before
and it seemed to him a weirdly hideous thing.

“Is it yours?” he said, amazed.

“Yes,” she answered, “it was born in the desert three weeks ago.”

Her tears were dry, and she bent over the feeble thing that squirmed
weakly and made small, cat-like noises, with something in her attitude
that changed her and made her still a woman who had a life above her
miseries.

“Wouldn’t you like to go into the cabin?” said the man, feeling
suddenly abashed by his ignorance of all pertaining to this
infinitesimal bit of life. “You might want to wash it or put it
to sleep or give it something to eat. There’s a basin and soap
and--er--some flour and bacon in there.”

The woman responded to the invitation with a slight show of alacrity.
She stumbled as she rose, and he took her arm and guided her. At the
cabin door he left her and as he passed to the back where the rest
of the party had gone, the baby’s feeble cry, weak, but insistent,
followed him.

The emigrant, Bessie and Fletcher, had repaired to the brush shed where
Moreau’s horses were stabled and had put the half-dead Spotty under
its shelter. Here the exhausted beast had lain down. The trio had then
betaken themselves to a bare spot on the shaded slope of the knoll
and were eating ship’s biscuits and drinking whisky and water from a
tin cup, that circulated from hand to hand. As Moreau approached he
could hear his partner volubly expatiating on the barrenness of the
stream-beds in the vicinity. The stranger was listening to him with a
cogitating eye, his seamed, weather-worn face set in an expression of
frowning attention. Her hunger appeased, Bessie had curled up on her
side, and with her sunbonnet still on, had fallen into a deep, healthy
sleep.

Moreau joined them, and listened with mingled surprise and amusement to
Fletcher’s glib lies. Then, when his partner’s fluency was exhausted,
he questioned the emigrant on his trip. The man’s answers were short
and non-committal. He seemed in a morose, savage state at his ill luck,
his mind still engrossed by the question of moving on.

“If I’d money,” he said, “I’d give you anything you’d ask for them two
horses ’er your’n in the shed. But I ain’t a thing to give--not a red.”

“Your wife, your other wife,” said Moreau, “doesn’t seem to me fit to
go on. She’s dead beat.”

The man gave an angry snort.

“She’s been like that pretty near the whole way,” he said.
“Everything’s been put back because of her.”

He relapsed into moody silence and then said suddenly: “We’re goin’ if
she’s got to walk.”

Moreau went back to the cabin. They had half killed the woman already;
now if they insisted on her walking the wretched creature might
collapse altogether. Would they leave her on the mountain roads, he
wondered?

He reached the cabin door, knocked and heard her answering “come in.”
She was sitting on an upturned box beside the bunk on which the baby
slept. Her sunbonnet was off, and he noticed that she had bright
hair, rippled and thick, and of the same reddish-brown color as her
eyes. She had washed away the traces of her tears, but her clothes,
hardly sufficient covering for her lean, toil-worn body, were dirty
and ragged. No beggar he had ever seen in the distant New England
town where he had spent his boyhood, had presented a more miserable
appearance. She looked timidly at him and rose from the box, pushing it
toward him.

“I put the baby on the bunk,” she said apologetically, “but I can hold
her.”

“Oh, don’t disturb her,” he said quickly. “It’s the only place you
could have put her.” Then, seeing her standing, he said, “Why don’t you
sit down?”

She sat charily and evidently ill at ease.

“They’ve been eating out there,” he said, “and I thought you might like
something, too. There’s some stuff over there in the corner if you’ll
wait a moment.”

He went to the corner where the supplies were stored and rifled them
for more ship’s biscuit and a wedge of cheese, a delicacy which
Fletcher had brought from Hangtown on his last visit, and which he
carefully refrained from offering to the hungry emigrants. Coming back
with these he drew out another box and spread them on it before her.
She looked on in heavy, silent surprise. When he had finished he said:

“Now--fall to. You want food as much as anything.”

She made no effort to eat, and he said, disappointed: “Don’t you want
it? Oh, make a try.”

She “made a try,” and bit off a piece of cracker, while he again
retired to the supply corner for the tin cup and the whisky. He tried
to step softly so as not to wake the child, and there was something
ludicrous in the sight of this vast, bearded man, with his mighty,
half-bared arms and muscular throat, trying to be noiseless, with as
much success as one might expect of a bear.

Suddenly, in the midst of her repast, the woman broke down completely;
and, with bowed head, she was shaken by a tempest of some violent
emotion. It was not like her tears of an hour before, which seemed
merely an indication of physical exhaustion. This was an expression
of spiritual tumult. Sobs rent her and she rocked back and forth
struggling with some fierce paroxysm.

Moreau, cup in hand, gazed at her in distracted helplessness.

“Come now, eat a little,” he said coaxingly, not knowing what else to
suggest, and then getting no response: “Suppose you lie down on the
bunk? Rest is what you want.”

“Oh, I can’t go on,” she groaned. “I can’t. How can I? Oh, it’s too
much! I can’t go on.”

He was silent before this ill for which he had no remedy, and she
wailed again in the agony of her spirit:

“I can’t, I can’t. If I could only die! But now there’s the baby, and I
can’t even die.”

He got up feeling sick at heart at sight of this hopeless despair. What
could he suggest to the unfortunate creature? He felt that anything he
could say would be an insult in the face of such a position.

“Oh God, why can’t we die?” she groaned--“why can’t we die?”

As she said the words the sound of approaching voices came through the
open door. Her husband’s struck through her agony and froze it. She
stiffened and lifted her face full of an animal look of listening.
Moreau noticed her blunt and knotted hands, pitiful in their record
of toil, as she held them up in the transfixed attitude of strained
attention.

“What now?” she said to herself.

The pioneer, Fletcher and Bessie came slowly round the corner of the
cabin. Bessie looked sleepily anxious, Fletcher lazily amused. As
Moreau stepped out of the doorway toward them he realized that they had
come to some decision.

“Well,” said the man, “we got to travel.”

“You’re going on?” said Moreau. “How about the wagon?”

“We’re goin’ to leave the wagon, and I’ll come back for it from
Hangtown. It’s the only thing to do.”

“And the horse?”

“He calk’lates,” said Fletcher, “to mount his wife--the peaked one--on
the horse and take her along till one or other of ’em drops.”

“Take your wife on that horse?” exclaimed Moreau. “Why, it can’t go two
miles.”

“Well, maybe it can’t,” returned the man with an immovable face.

There was a pause. Moreau was conscious that the woman was standing
behind him in the doorway. He could hear her breathing.

“Come on, Lucy,” said the husband. “We got to move on sometime.”

Here the second wife spoke up:

“I don’t see how the horse is goin’ to get Lucy twelve miles, and this
man says the first place we can stop is twelve miles farther along.”

“Don’t you begin with your everlasting objections,” said the husband,
furiously. “Get the horse.”

The woman evidently knew the time had passed for trifling and turned
away toward the brush shed. Fletcher followed her with a grin. The
situation appealed to his sense of humor, and he was curious as to the
outcome.

Moreau and the emigrant were left facing each other, with the first
wife in the doorway.

“Your wife’s not able to go on,” said the miner--his manner becoming
suddenly authoritative; “no more than your horse is.”

“Maybe not,” said the other, “but they’re both goin’ to try.”

“But can’t you see the horse can’t carry her? She certainly can’t walk
into Hangtown, or even to Porter’s Ranch.”

“No, I can’t see. And how’s it come to be your business--what they can
do or what they can’t?”

[Illustration: “YOUR WIFE’S NOT ABLE TO GO ON, NO MORE THAN YOUR HORSE
IS”]

“It’s any one’s business to prevent a woman from being half killed.”

“Since you seem to think so much about her, why don’t you keep her here
yourself?”

The man spoke with a savage sneer, his eyes full of steely defiance.

Before he had realized the full import of his words, burning with rage
against the brutal tyrant to whom the wife was of no more moment than
the horse, Moreau answered:

“I will--let her stay!”

There was a moment’s pause. The emigrant’s face, dark with rage, was
suddenly lightened by a curiously alert expression of intelligence. He
looked at the woman in the background and then at the miner.

“I’m not giving anything away just now,” he answered. “When she’s well
she’s of use. But I’ll swap her for your two horses.”

In the heat of his indignation and disgust Moreau turned and looked at
the woman. She was leaning against the door frame, chalk-white, and
staring at him. She made no sound, but her dog-like eyes seemed to
speak for his mercy more eloquently than her tongue ever could.

“All right,” he said quietly. “It’s a bargain.”

“Done,” said the emigrant. “You’ll find her a good worker when she
pulls herself together. You stay on here, Lucy. Bessie,” he sang out,
“bring around them horses.”

Under the phlegm of his manner there was a sudden expanding heat of
shame that he strove to hide. The woman neither stirred nor spoke, and
Moreau stood with his back to her, struggling with his passion against
the man who had been her owner. The impulse under which he had spoken
had full possession of him, and his main feeling was his desire to rid
himself of the emigrant and his other wife.

“Here,” he said, “go on and tell them that you’ll take the horses.
Hurry up!”

The man needed no second bidding and made off rapidly round the corner
of the cabin.

Moreau and the woman were silent. For the moment he had forgotten her
presence, engrossed by the rage that filled his warmly generous nature.
Instinctively he followed the man to the angle of the cabin whence he
could command the brush shed. The trio were standing there, Fletcher
and the woman listening amazed to the emigrant’s explanation. Moreau
turned back to the cabin and his eye fell on the woman in the doorway.

“Well,” he said--trying to speak easily--“you don’t mind staying on
here for a while, do you? I guess we can make you comfortable.”

She made no answer, and after waiting a moment he said:

“When you get stronger I’ll be able to find you something to do in
Hangtown. You know you couldn’t go on, feeling so bad. And this air
round here”--with a wave of his hand to the surrounding pines--“will
brace you up finely.”

She gave a murmured sound of assent, but more than this made no reply.
Only her dog-like eyes again seemed to speak. Their miserable look of
gratitude made Moreau uncomfortable and he could think of nothing more
to say.

The sound of the trio advancing from the shed came as a welcome
interruption. They appeared round the corner of the cabin, leading the
miner’s two powerful and well-fed horses. Evidently the situation had
been explained. Fletcher’s face was enigmatical. The humorousness of
the novel exchange had come a little too close to his own comfort to
be quite as full of zest as it had been earlier in the afternoon. He
had insisted that the emigrant leave his horse, which the man had no
objection to doing. Bessie looked flushed and excited. Moreau thought
he detected shame and disapproval under her agitated demeanor. But
to her work was a matter of second nature. She put the horses to the
tongue of the wagon and buckled the rags of harness together before she
turned for a last word to her companion. This was characteristically
brief:

“So long, Lucy,” she said, “let’s see the baby again.”

It was shown her and she kissed it on the forehead with some
tenderness. Then she climbed on the wheel of the wagon and took from
the interior a bundle tied up in printed calico and laid it on the
ground. It contained all the personal belongings and wardrobe of the
first wife. There were a few murmured sentences between them and then
she turned to ascend to her seat. But before she had fairly mounted a
sudden impulse seized her and whirled her back to give Lucy a good-by
kiss.

There was more feeling in this action than in anything that had passed
between the trio during the afternoon. The two wives had been women who
had mutually suffered. There were tears in Bessie’s eyes as she climbed
to her place. The husband never turned his head in the direction of his
first wife. But as he took the reins and prepared to start the team, he
called:

“Good by, Lucy.”

He clucked at the horses, and the wagon moved forward amid a stir of
red dust. The woman on the front seat drew her sunbonnet over her face.
The man beside her looked neither to the right nor the left, but stared
out over his newly-acquired team with an impassively set visage. His
long whip curled out with a hiss, the spirited animals gave a forward
bound, and the wagon went clattering and jolting down the trail.

Moreau stood watching its canvas arch go swinging downward under the
dark boughs of the pines and the flickering foliage of the aspens. He
watched until a bend in the road hid it. Then he turned toward the
cabin. Fletcher was standing behind him, surveying him with a cold and
sardonic eye:

“Well, you’ve done it!”

“I guess I have.”

“What the devil are you going to do with her?”

“Don’t know.”

“And the horses gone; nothin’ but that busted cayuse left!”

They stood looking at each other, Fletcher angrily incredulous, Moreau
smilingly deprecating and apologetic.

As they stood thus, neither knowing what to say, the emigrant’s wife
appeared at the doorway of the cabin.

“I’ll get your supper now if it’s the right time,” she said timidly.




CHAPTER III

HE RIDES AWAY

  “Alas, my Lord, my life is not a thing
  Worthy your noble thoughts! ’Tis not a life,
  ’Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.”

                                --BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.


That night the two miners rolled themselves in their blankets and lay
down on the expanse of slippery grass under the pine. Moreau did not
sleep soon. The day’s incidents were the first interruption to the
monotony of their uneventful summer.

Now, the strong man, lying on his back, looking at the large white
stars between the pine boughs, thought of what he had done with
perplexity, but without regret. In the still peacefulness of the night
he turned over in his mind what he should do when the woman grew
stronger. Women were rare in the mining districts, and he knew that the
emigrant wife could earn high wages as a servant either in Hangtown or
the growing metropolis of Sacramento. The child might hamper her, but
he could help her to take care of the child until she got fairly on her
feet. He had nothing much to do with his “dust.” Strong and young and
in California, that always meant money enough.

So he thought, pushing uneasiness from his mind. Turning on his hard
bed he could see the dark bulk of the cabin with a glint of starlight
on its window. Above, the black boughs of the pine made a network
against the sky sown with stars of an extraordinary size and luster. He
could hear the river sleepily murmuring to itself. Once, far off, in
the higher mountains, the shrill, weird cry of a California lion tore
the silence. He rose on his elbow, looking toward the cabin. The sound
was a terrifying one, and he was prepared to see the woman come out,
frightened, and had the words of reassurance ready to call to her. But
there was no movement from the little hut. She was evidently wrapped in
the sleep of utter fatigue.

In the morning he was down at a basin scooped in the stream bed making
a hasty toilet, when Fletcher, sleepy-eyed and yawning, came slipping
over the bank.

“What are we goin’ to do for breakfast?” he said. “Is that purchase o’
your’n goin’ to git it? She’d oughter do something to show she’s worth
the two best horses this side er Hangtown.”

Moreau, with his hair and beard bedewed with his ducking, was about to
answer when a sound from above attracted them.

Lucy was standing on the bank. In the clear morning light she looked
white and pinched. Her wretched clothes of yesterday, a calico sack and
skirt, were augmented by a clean apron of blue check. Her skirt was
short and showed her feet in a pair of rusty shoes that were so large
they might have been her husband’s.

“Are you comin’ to breakfast?” she said; “it’s ready.” Then she
disappeared. The men looked at each other and Moreau shook the drops
from his beard and began to try to pat his hair into order. The
civilizing influence of woman--even such an unlovely woman as the
emigrant’s wife--was beginning its work.

Lucy had evidently been busy. The litter that had disfigured the ground
in front of the cabin was cleared away. Through the open door and
window a current of resinous mountain air passed which counteracted
the effect of the fire. Nevertheless she had evidently feared its heat
would be oppressive, and had brought two of the boxes to the rude bench
outside the doorway, and on these the breakfast was laid. It was of the
simplest--fried bacon, coffee and hot biscuits--but the scent of these,
hot and appetizing, was sweet in the nostrils of the hungry men.

Sitting on the bench, they fell to and were not disappointed. The
emigrant’s wife had evidently great skill in the preparation of the
simple food of the pioneer. With the scanty means at her hand she had
concocted a meal that to the men, used to their own primitive cooking,
seemed the most toothsome they had eaten since they left San Francisco.

As she retired into the cabin, Fletcher--his mouth full of
biscuit--said:

“Well, she can cook anyway. I wonder how she gets her biscuits so
all-fired light? They ain’t all saleratus, neither.”

Here she reappeared, carrying the coffee-pot, and, leaning over
Fletcher’s shoulder, prepared to refill his tin cup.

“Put it down on the table. He can do it himself,” commanded Moreau
suddenly.

She set it down instantly, with her invariable frightened obedience.

“We’re not used to being waited on,” he continued. “Now you sit down
here,”--he rose from his end of the bench and pointed to it,--“and next
thing we want I’ll go in and get it. You’ve had your own breakfast, of
course?”

“No--I ain’t had mine yet,” she answered meekly.

“Well, why ain’t you?” he almost shouted. “What d’ye mean by giving us
ours first?”

She looked terrified and shrank a little on the bench. Moreau had a
dreadful idea that for a moment she was afraid of being struck.

“Here, take this cup,” he said, giving her his,--“and this bacon,”
picking from the pan, which stood in the middle of the table, the
choicest pieces, and a biscuit. “There--now eat. I’m done.”

She tried to eat, but it was evidently difficult. Her hands, bent
and disfigured with work, shook. At intervals she cast a furtive,
questioning look at him where he sat on an overturned box, eying her
with good-humored interest. As he met the frightened dog-eyes he smiled
encouragingly, but she was grave and returned to her breakfast with
nervous haste.

As the men descended the bank to the stream bed, Fletcher said:

“Well, she’s some use in the world. That’s the first decent meal we’ve
had since we left Sacramento.”

“She didn’t eat much of it herself,” returned his pard as he began the
morning’s work.

“She is the gol-darnedest lookin’ woman I ever seen. Looks as if she’d
been fed on shavings. I’ll lay ten to one that emigrant cuss she
b’longs to has ’most beat the life out er her.”

Ascending to the cabin an hour later, Moreau came upon the woman,
washing the breakfast dishes in the stream that trickled from the
spring. She did not hear him approach, and, watching her, he saw that
she was slow and feeble in her movements. The sun spattered down
through the pine boughs on her thick, brilliant-colored hair, and on
the nape of her neck, where the skin was tanned to a coarse, russet
brown.

“What are you doing that for?” he said, coming to a standstill in front
of her. “You needn’t bother about the pans.”

“They’d oughter be cleaned,” she answered.

“You don’t want to feel,” he said, “that you’ve got to work all the
time. I wanted you to rest up a bit. It’s a good place to rest here.”

She made no answer, drying the tin cups on a piece of flour sack.

“I ain’t so awful tired,” she said presently in a low voice.

“Well, don’t you worry about having everything so clean; they’ll do
anyway. And the cabin’s pretty clean,--isn’t it?” he asked, somewhat
anxiously.

“Yes--awful clean,” she said. Then, after a moment, she continued:
“I hadn’t oughter have stayed in the cabin. It’s your’n. Me and the
baby’ll be all right in the brush shed with Spotty.”

“What nonsense!” retorted Moreau. “Do you suppose I’d let you and that
baby stay in the brush shed, the place where the horses have been kept
all summer? You’re going to keep the cabin, and if there’s anything you
want--anything that’s short, or that you might need for the baby--why,
Fletcher’ll go to Hangtown and get it. Just say what you want. Not
having women around, we’re probably short of all sorts of little
fixings.”

“I don’t want nothing,” she said with her head down--“I ain’t never
been so comfortable sence I was married.”

“Have you been married long?” he asked, less from curiosity than from
the desire to make her talk.

“Four years,” she replied; “I was married in St. Louis, just before
dad and I was startin’ to cross the plains. Dad was taken sick. He was
consumpted, and some one tol’ him to go to California, so we was goin’
to start along with a heap of other folks. We was all waitin’ ’round
St. Louis for the weather to settle and that’s how I met Jake.”

“Jake?” said Moreau, interrogatively; “who was Jake?”

“My husband--Jake Shackleton. He was one o’ the drivers of the train.
He drove McGinnes’ teams. He was there in camp with us, and up and
asked me, and dad was glad to get any one to take care of me, bein’ as
he was so consumpted. We was married a week afore the train started. I
didn’t favor it much, but dad thought it was a good thing. My father
was a Methodist preacher, and knowin’ as how he couldn’t last long, he
was powerful glad to get some one to look after me. I was pretty young
to be left--just fifteen.”

“Fifteen!” echoed Moreau--then piecing together her scant bits of
biography--“Then you’re only _nineteen_ now?”

“That’s my age,” she said with her laconic dryness.

He looked at her in incredulous amaze. Nineteen! A girl, almost a
child! A gush of pity and horror welled up in him, and for the moment
he could find no words. She went on, evidently desirous of telling him
of herself as in duty bound to her new master.

“Dad died before we got to Salt Lake. Then Jake and I settled there and
Willie was born, and for two years it wern’t so bad. Jake liked me and
was good to me. But he got to know the Mormons and kep’ sayin’ all the
time it weren’t no good doin’ anything not bein’ a Mormon. He said they
had no use for him, bein’ a Gentile. And then he seen Bessie,--she was
a waitress in the Sunset Hotel,--and got powerful set on her. She was a
big, strong woman, and could work. Not like me. I couldn’t never work
except in the house. I was no good for outdoor work. I was always a
sort er drag, he said. So he turned Mormon and married Bessie, and she
came to live with us.” She stopped and began rubbing a pan with a piece
of flour sack.

“Don’t tell any more if you don’t want to,” said the man, hearing his
voice slightly husky.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she answered with her colorless, unemotional
intonation; “I couldn’t ever come to feel she was his wife, too. I
hadn’t them notions. My father was a preacher. I hated it all, but I
couldn’t seem to think of anything else to do. I had to stay. There was
no one to go to. Dad was dead and he didn’t have no relations. Then we
started to come here, and on the way my little boy died. That was all I
had, and I didn’t care then what happened. And only for the other baby
I’d er crep’ out er the wagon some night and run away and got lost on
them plains. But--”

She stopped and made a gesture of extending her hands outward and
then letting them fall at her sides. It was tragic in its complete
hopelessness. Of gratitude to Moreau she seemed to have little. She
had been so beaten down by misfortune that nothing was left in her but
acquiescence. Her very service to him seemed an instinctive thing, the
result of rigorous training.

“Well,” he said after a pause, “you’ve had a hard time. But it’s over
now. Don’t you think about it any more. You’re going to rest up here,
and when you’re strong and well again we’ll think about something for
you to do. Time enough for that then. But you can always get work and
high pay in Hangtown or Sacramento. Or if you don’t fancy it at any of
those places I’ll see to it that you go down to San Francisco. Don’t
bother any more anyhow. You’d about got to the bottom of things and now
you’re coming up.”

She gathered up her pans and said dully: “Thank you, sir.”

The cry of the baby struck on her ear and she scrambled to her feet,
and without more words turned and walked to the cabin.

At dinner she again made her appearance on the bank and called the two
men. Again they were greeted by a meal that was singularly appetizing,
considering the limited resources. Obeying Moreau’s order, she sat
down with them, but ate nothing, at intervals starting to her feet to
return to the cabin, then restraining the impulse and sitting rigid and
uncomfortable on the upturned box. To wait on the men seemed the only
thing she knew how to do, or that gave her ease in the doing.

The child cried once or twice during dinner, and, in the afternoon,
working in the pit which was in the stream bed just below the cabin
window, Moreau heard it crying again. It seemed a louder and more
imperious cry than it had given previously. The miner, whose knowledge
of infancy and its ills was of the most limited, wondered if it could
be sick.

At sunset, the day’s work over, both men mounted the bank, their
takings of dust in two tin cups, from which it was transferred to the
buckskin sacks in the box under the bunk. Moreau entered the cabin to
get the sacks and found Lucy there curled on the end of the bunk where
the baby slept. As his great bulk darkened the door she started up,
with her invariable frightened look of apology.

“Don’t move--don’t move,” he said, kneeling by her; “I want to get the
box under the bunk.”

She started up, and being nearer the box than he, thrust her hand under
and tried to pull it out. It was heavy with the sacks of dust and
required a wrench. She rose from the effort, gave a gasp, and, reeling,
fell against him. He caught her in his arms, and as her head fell back
against his shoulder saw that she was death-white and unconscious.

With terrified care he laid her on Fletcher’s bunk, and, seizing a pan
of water, sprinkled her face and hands, then tore one of the tin cups
off its nail, and, pouring whisky into it, tried to force it between
her lips. A little entered her mouth, though most of it ran down her
chin. As he stood staring at her, Fletcher appeared in the doorway.

“Hullo!” he said; “what’s the matter with her? By gum, but she looks
bad!” And then, with a quick and practised hand, he pulled her up to a
sitting posture, and, prying her mouth open with a fork, poured some
of the whisky down. It revived her quickly. She sat up, felt for her
sunbonnet, and then said:

“I hadn’t oughter have done that, but it came so quick.”

She tried to get up, but Moreau pushed her back.

“Oh, I ain’t sick,” she said, trying to speak bravely; “I’ve been took
like that before. It’s just tiredness. I’m all right now.”

She again tried to rise, stood on her feet for a moment, then reeled
back on the bunk, with white lips.

“It’s such a weakness,” she whispered; “such a weakness!”

At this moment the baby woke up, and, lifting up its voice, began a
loud, violent wail. The woman looked in terror from one man to the
other.

“Oh, my poor baby!” she cried; “what’ll I do? Is that one goin’ to go,
too?”

“The baby’s all right,” said Moreau. “Don’t begin to worry about that.
All babies cry, don’t they?”

“Oh, my poor baby!” she wailed, unheeding, and suddenly beginning to
wring her hands. “It’ll die like Willie. It’ll die, too.”

“Why should it die? What’s the matter with it? It was all right this
morning, wasn’t it?” he answered, feeling that there were mysteries
here he did not grasp.

“It’ll die because it don’t get nothing to eat,” she cried desperately.
“I’ve nothing for it. I’m too sick! I’m too sick! And it’ll starve. Oh,
my poor baby!”

She burst into the wild, weak tears of exhaustion, her sobs mingling
with the now strident yells of the hungry baby.

The two men looked at each other, sheepishly, beginning to understand
the situation. The enfeebled condition of the mother made it impossible
for her to nourish the child. It was a predicament for which even the
resourceful mind of Fletcher had no remedy. He pushed back his cap,
and, scratching slowly at the front of his head, looked at his mate
with solemn perplexity, while the cabin echoed to sounds of misery
unlike any that had ever before resounded within its peaceful walls.

“Can--can--we get anything?” said Moreau at length--“any--any--sort of
food, meat, eggs--er--er any sort of stuff for it to eat?”

“Eat?” exclaimed Fletcher scornfully; “how can it eat? It hasn’t a
tooth.”

“How would it do if Fletcher went into Hangtown and brought the
doctor?” suggested Moreau, soothingly. “It’ll take twenty-four hours,
but he’s a good doctor.”

The woman shook her head.

“A goat,” she sobbed, the menace to her offspring having given her a
fictitious courage. “If you could get a goat.”

“A goat!”

The two men looked at each other, horror-stricken at the magnitude of
the suggestion.

“She might as well ask us to get an elephant,” muttered Fletcher
morosely. “There’s not a goat nearer than San Francisco.”

“And it would take us two weeks anyway to get one up from there and
across the mountains from Sacramento,” said Moreau.

“By the time you got it here it’d be the most expensive goat you ever
bucked up against,” said his partner disdainfully.

“A cow!” exclaimed Moreau. “Say, Lucy, would a cow do?”

“A cow!” came the muffled answer; “oh, it don’t need a whole cow.”

“But a cow would do? If I could get a cow the baby could be fed on the
milk, couldn’t it?”

“Oh, yes; it ’ud do first-rate.”

“Very well, I’ll get a cow. Don’t you bother any more; I’ll have a cow
here by to-morrow noon. The baby’ll have to hold out till then, for,
not having a decent horse, I can’t get it here any sooner.”

“And where do you calk’late to get a cow?” demanded Fletcher; “cows
ain’t much more common than goats round these parts.”

“On the Porter ranch. It’s twelve miles off. I can go in to-night, rest
there a bit, and by noon be here with the cow.”

“And is that baby goin’ to yell like this from now till to-morrow noon?
You might’s well have a mountain lion tied up in the bunk.”

The difficulty was indeed only half solved. The infant’s lusty cries
were unabated. The miserable mother, with tear-drenched face and
quivering chin, sat up in the bunk and tried to rise and go to it, but
was restrained by Moreau’s hand on her shoulder.

“You stay here and I’ll get it,” he said, then crossed to the other
bunk, and gingerly lifted with his huge, hairy hands the shrieking
bundle, from which protruded two tiny, red fists, jerking and clawing
about, and carried it to its mother. Her practised hand hushed it for a
moment, but its pangs were beyond temporary alleviation, and its cries
soon broke forth.

“If I could git up and mix it some flour and water,” she said, feebly
attempting to rise.

“What’s the matter with us doing that?” queried Moreau. “How do you do
it? Just give us the proportions and we’ll dish it up as if we were
born to it.”

Under her direction he put flour in one of the dippers, and handed
Fletcher a tin cup with the order to fill it with water at the spring.
Both men were deeply interested, and Fletcher rushed back from the
spring with a dripping cup, as if fearful that the infant would die
unless the work of feeding was promptly begun.

“Now go on,” said Moreau, armed with the dipper and a tin teaspoon;
“what’s next?”

“Sugar,” she said; “if you put a touch of sugar in it tastes better to
them.”

“Here, sugar. Hand it over quick. Now, there we are. How do you mix
’em, Lucy?”

She gave the directions, which the men carefully followed, compounding
a white, milky-looking liquid. The crucial moment came when they had to
feed this to the crimson and convulsively screaming baby.

To forward matters better they moved two boxes to the doorway, where
the glow of sunset streamed in, and seated themselves, Fletcher with
the dipper and spoon, Moreau with the baby. Both heads were lowered,
both faces eagerly earnest when the first spoonful was administered.
It was a tense moment till the tip of the spoon was inserted between
the infant’s lips. Her puckered face took on a look of rather annoyed
surprise; she caught at it, and then, with an audible smack, slowly
drew in the counterfeit. The men looked at each other with heated
triumph.

“Takes it like a little man, doesn’t she?” said Moreau proudly.

“She wasn’t hungry,” said Fletcher. “Oh-h, no! Listen to her smack.”

“Here, hold up the dipper. Don’t keep her waiting when she’s so blamed
hungry.”

“You’re spilling half of it. You’re getting it on her clothes.”

“Well, she don’t want to eat any faster. That’s the way she likes to
eat--just slowly suck it out of the spoon. Take your time, old girl,
even if you don’t swallow it all.”

“My! don’t she take it down nice! Look alive there, it’s running outer
the corner of her mouth.”

“Give us that bit of flour sack behind you. We ought to have put
something round her neck.”

The baby, its round eyes intent, one small red fist still fanning the
air, sucked noisily at the tip of the spoon. The mother, sitting up on
the bunk in the background, watched it with craned neck and jealous eye.

Finally, when the meal was over, it was triumphantly handed back to
her, sticky from end to end, but sleepy and satisfied.

A few hours later, in the star-sown darkness of the early night, Moreau
started on his twelve-mile walk to the Porter ranch. The next morning,
some time before midday, he reappeared, red and perspiring, but proudly
leading by a rope a lean and dejected-looking cow.

The problem of the baby’s nutriment was now satisfactorily solved. The
cow proved eminently fitted for the purpose of its purchase, and though
the two miners had several unsuccessful bouts in learning to milk it,
the handy Fletcher soon overcame this difficulty, and the stock of the
cabin was augmented by fresh milk.

The baby throve upon this nourishment. Its cries no longer disturbed
the serenity of the cañon. It slept and ate most of the time, but
kindly consented to keep awake in the late afternoon and be gentle
and patient when the men charily passed it from hand to hand during
the rest before supper. Fletcher regarded it tolerantly as an object
of amusement. But Moreau, especially since the feeding episode, had
developed a deep, delighted affection for it. Its helplessness appealed
to all that was tender in him, and the first faint indications of a
tiny formed character were miraculous to his fascinated and wondering
observation. He was secretly ashamed of letting the sneeringly
indifferent Fletcher guess his sudden attachment, and made foolish
excuses to account for the trips to the cabin which frequently
interrupted his morning’s work in the stream bed.

Lucy’s recovery was slow. The collapse from which she suffered was as
much mental as physical. The anguish of the last two years had preyed
on the bruised spirit as the hardships of the journey had broken the
feeble body. No particular form of ailment developed in her, but she
lay for days silent and almost motionless on the bunk, too feeble to
move or to speak beyond short sentences. The men watched and tended
her, Moreau with clumsy solicitude, Fletcher dutifully, but more
through fear of his powerful mate than especial interest in Lucy as a
woman or a human being.

In his heart he still violently resented Moreau’s action in acquiring
her and parting with the valuable horses. Had she possessed any of the
attractions of the human female, he could have understood and probably
condoned. But as she now was, plain, helpless, sick, unable even to
cook for them, demanding care which took from their work and lessened
their profits, his resentment grew instead of diminishing. Moreau saw
nothing of this, for Fletcher had long ago read the simple secrets of
that generous but impractical nature, and knew too much to bring down
on himself wrath which, once aroused, he felt would be implacable.

At the end of two weeks Lucy began to show signs of improvement. The
fragrant air that blew through the cabin, the soothing silence of the
foothills, broken only by the drowsy prattle of the river or the sad
murmuring of the great pine, began its work of healing. The autumn
was late that year. The days were still warm and dreamily brilliant,
especially in the little cañon, where the sun drew the aromatic odors
from the pines till at midday they exhaled a heavy, pungent fragrance
like incense rising to the worship of some sylvan god.

Sometimes now, on warm afternoons, Lucy crept out and sat at the root
of the pine where she had found her first place of refuge. There her
dulled eyes began to note the beauties that surrounded her, the pines
mounting in dark rows on the slopes, the blue distances where the cañon
folded on itself, the glimpses of chaste, white summits far above
against the blue. Her lungs breathed deep of the revivifying air, clean
and untainted as the water in the little spring at her feet. The peace
of it all entered her soul. Something in her forbade her to look back
on the terrible past. A new life was here, and her youth rose up and
whispered that it was not yet dead.

During the period of her illness Moreau had begun to see both himself
and the cabin through feminine eyes. Discrepancies revealed themselves.
He wanted many things heretofore regarded as luxuries. From the tin
cups of the table service to the towels made of ripped flour sacks,
his domestic arrangements seemed mean and inadequate. They were all
right for two prospectors, but not fitting for a woman and child.
Lucy’s illness also revealed wants in her equipment that struck him as
piteous. Her only boots were the ones he had seen her in on the morning
after her arrival. She had no shawl or covering for cold weather. The
baby’s clothes were a few torn pieces of calico and flannel. Moreau had
washed these many times himself, doing them up in an old flour sack,
which was attached to an aspen on the stream’s bank, and then placed in
one of the deepest parts of the current. Here it remained for two days,
the percolating water cleansing its contents as no washboard could.

One evening, smoking under the pine, he acquainted Fletcher with a
design he had been some days formulating. This was that Fletcher
should ride into Hangtown the next day and not only replenish the
commissariat, but buy all things needful for Lucy and the baby. Spotty
was now also recovered, and, though hardly a mettlesome steed, was at
least a useful pack horse. But the numerous list of articles suggested
by Moreau would have weighted Spotty to the ground. So Fletcher was
commissioned to buy a pack burro, and upon it to bring all needful food
stuffs for the cabin and the habiliments for Lucy and the baby.

“She’s got no shoes. You want to buy her some shoes, one useful pair
and one fancy pair with heels.”

“What size do I git? I ain’t never bought shoes for a woman before.”

This was a poser, and both men cogitated till Moreau suggested leaving
it to the shoe dealer, who should be told that Lucy was a woman of
average size.

“But her feet ain’t,” said Fletcher spitefully, never having been able
to forgive Lucy her lack of beauty.

“Never mind; you’ll have to make a bluff at it. Get the best you can.
Then I want a shawl for her. It’ll be cold soon, and she’s got nothing
to keep her warm.”

“What kind of a shawl? I don’t know no more about shawls than I do
about shoes.”

“A pink crochet shawl,” said Moreau slowly, and with evident sheepish
reluctance at having to make this exhibition of unexpected knowledge.

“And what’s that? I dunno what crochet is.”

“I don’t, either”--and then, with desperate courage--“well, anyway,
that’s what she said she’d like. I asked her yesterday and she said
that. You go into the store and ask for it. That’ll be enough.”

Fletcher grunted.

“And then I want some toys for the kid. Anything you can get that seems
the right kind. She’s a girl, so you don’t want a drum, or soldiers, or
guns, or things of that kind. Get a doll if you can, and a musical box,
or anything tasty and that’s likely to catch a baby’s eye.”

“Why, she can’t hardly see yet. She’s like a blind kitten. Lucy told me
herself yesterday she were only six weeks old.”

“Never you mind. She’s a smart kid; knows more now than most babies at
six months. You might get a rattle--a nice one with bells; she might
fancy that.”

“Silver or gold?” sneered Fletcher, whom this conversation was making
meditative.

“The best you can get. Don’t stint yourself for money; everything of
the best. Then clothes for her; she is going to be as well dressed as
any baby in California. I take it you’d better go to Mrs. Wingate, at
the Eldorado Hotel, and get her to make you out a list; then go to the
store and buy the list right down.”

“Seems to me you’ll want a pack train, not a burro, to carry it all.”

“Well, if you can’t get everything on Spotty and one burro, buy two.
I’ll give you a sack of dust and you can spend it all.”

Fletcher was silent after this, and as he lay rolled in his blanket
that night he looked at the stars for many hours, thinking.

Early in the morning he departed on the now brisk and rejuvenated
Spotty. Besides his instructions he carried one of Moreau’s buckskin
sacks, roughly estimated to contain twelve hundred dollars’ worth of
dust, and, he told Moreau, one of his own. He was due to return the
next morning. With a short word of farewell, he touched Spotty with
the single Mexican spur he wore, and darted away down the rough trail.
Moreau watched him out of sight.

The day passed as quietly as its predecessors. The main events that
marked their course had been the men’s clean-up, Lucy’s gain in
strength and the evidences of increasing intelligence in the child.

To-day Lucy had walked to a point a little distance up the cañon,
rested there, and in the afternoon came creeping back with the flush of
returning health on her face. It was still there when Moreau ascended
from the stream bed with his cup. He had had a good day’s work and was
joyful, showing the fine yellow grains in the bottom of the rusty tin.
Then he noticed her improved appearance and cried:

“Why, you look blooming. A fellow’d think you’d panned a good day’s
work, too.”

To himself he said with a sudden inward wonder:

“She looks almost pretty. And she _is_ only nineteen, I believe.”

The next morning he awaited the coming of Fletcher with impatience. He
had wanted to surprise Lucy, having only told her Fletcher had gone to
buy a burro and some supplies. But the morning passed away and he had
not returned. Then the afternoon slipped by, and Lucy and Moreau took
their supper without him, the latter rather taciturn. The delay wore on
his patience. His knowledge of Fletcher was limited. He had seen him
drunk once in Sacramento, and he wondered if he had gone on a spree and
was now lying senseless somewhere, the contents of the sacks squandered.

When the next morning had passed and Fletcher had still not come, his
suspicions strengthened and he began to think uneasily of his dust. One
sack full was a good deal to lose, now that he had a woman and child
on his hands. Lucy, he could see, was also uneasy. Twice he surprised
her standing by the trail, evidently listening. When evening drew in
and there were still no signs of him, both were frankly anxious and
oppressed. Suddenly, as they sat by the box that answered as dinner
table, she said:

“Did he have much dust?”

“Yes--one sack of mine and one of his own. They’re equal to about
twelve hundred dollars each.”

She gave a startled look at him and sat with her mouth a little open,
fear and amaze on her face.

“Where’s the rest?” she asked.

Moreau indicated the box under the bunk. At the same moment her
suspicion seized him and he pulled it out and threw up the lid. It was
empty of all save a few clothes. Every sack was gone.

Moreau shut down the lid quietly, a little pale. He was not a man of
quick mind, and he hardly could realize what had happened. It was
Lucy’s voice that explained it as she said:

“He did it while I was out in the morning. I went up the stream to that
pool to wash some things at sun-up. He took it then.”




CHAPTER IV

THE ENCHANTED WINTER

      “I choose to be yours for my proper part,
  Yours, leave me or take, or mar or make;
  If I acquiesce, why should you be teased
  With the conscience prick and the memory smart?”

                                                --BROWNING.


Fletcher had gone silently and without leaving a trace, and with him
the money. It was a startling situation for Moreau. From comparative
affluence he suddenly found himself without a cent or an ounce of dust.
This, had he had only himself to look after, would not have affected
his free and jovial spirit, but now the woman and the child he had so
carelessly come into possession of loomed before him in their true
light of a heavy responsibility. Lucy, as far as supporting herself
went, was still a long way off from the state of health where that
would be possible. And at the thought of sending her forth, even though
she were cured of her infirmities, Moreau experienced a sensation of
depression. He felt that the cabin would be unbearably lonely when she
and the baby were gone.

That night under the pine he turned over the situation in his mind. The
conclusion he arrived at was that there was nothing better to be done
than stay by the stream bed and work it for all it was worth. Lucy
would continue to improve in the fine air and the child was thriving.
If the snows would hold off till late, as they had done in the open
winter of ’50, he could amass a fair share of dust before it would be
necessary to move Lucy and the baby to the superior accommodations
of Hangtown or Sacramento. It was now October. In November one might
expect the first snows.

He must do a good deal in the next six weeks. This he started to do.
The next day he spent in raising a brush shed against the back of the
cabin where the chimney would offer warmth on cold nights. Into this
he moved such few belongings as he had retained after Lucy and the
baby had taken possession of the cabin. Then the working of the stream
bed went on with renewed vigor. The water was low, hardly more than a
thread, rendering the washing of the dirt harder labor than during the
earlier summer when the watercourses were still full. But he toiled
mightily, rejoicing in the splendor of his man’s work, not with the
same knightly freedom that he felt when he had been that king of men,
the miner with his pick on his shoulder and all the world before him,
but with the soberer joy of the man into whose life others have entered
to lay hold upon it with light, clinging hands.

Against the complete and perfect loneliness of his life the woman
and child, who had started up from nowhere, stood out as figures of
vital significance. They had grown closer to him in that one month’s
isolation than they would have done in a year of city life. The child
became the object of his secret but deep devotion. He had been ashamed
to let Fletcher see it. Now that Fletcher was gone, Moreau often stole
up from his work in the creek to look at it as it slept in a box by the
open door. It was as fresh as a rosebud, its skin clean and satiny, its
tiny hands, crumpled, white and pink, like the petals of flowers. The
big man leaned on his shovel to watch it adoringly. The miracle of its
growth in beauty never lost its wonder for him.

Lucy, too, grew and bloomed in these quiet autumn days. Never
talkative, she became less laconic after the departure of Fletcher.
She seemed relieved by his absence. Moreau began to understand, as he
saw her daily increase in freshness and youthful charm, that she was
as young in nature as she was in years. Points of character that were
touchingly childish appeared in her. Her casting of all responsibility
on him was as absolute as if she had been ten years of age. She obeyed
him with trustful obedience and waited on him silently, her eyes always
on him to try to read his unexpressed wish. Sometimes he caught these
watching eyes and read in them something that vaguely disturbed him.

One day, coming up from the creek for one of his surreptitious views
of the baby, he found its cradle empty, and was about to return to his
work, when he heard a laugh rising from a small knoll among the aspens.
It was a laugh of the most infectious, fresh sweetness, and made
Moreau’s own lips part. He stole in its direction, and as he advanced
it sounded again, rippling deliciously on the crystal air. He brushed
through the aspens and came on Lucy and her baby. She was holding it in
her lap, one hand on the back of its head. Something had touched its
unknown sense of the ludicrous, and its lips were parting in a slow but
intensely amused smile over its toothless gums. Each smile was answered
by its mother with a run of the laughter Moreau had heard.

He looked at them for a moment, and then, advancing, his foot cracked a
dry branch, and Lucy turned. Her face was flushed, her eyes still full
of their past merriment, her smiling lips looked a coral red against
the whiteness of her small, even teeth. Her sunbonnet was off and her
rich hair glowed like copper in the sun. He had never seen her look
like this, and stopped, regarding her with a curious, sudden gravity.
The thought was in his heart:

“She’s only a girl, and--and--almost beautiful.”

Lucy looked confused.

“Oh, I was just laughing at the baby,” she said apologetically; “she
looked so sorter cute smiling that way.”

“I never heard you laugh like that before. Why don’t you do it oftener?”

She seemed embarrassed and murmured:

“I didn’t think you’d like to hear me.”

“I think you’re sometimes afraid of me,” he said; “is that true?”

She bent her face over the baby and said very low:

“I’m afraid as how you might get mad at me. I don’t know much and--I’m
different, and you’ve been more good to me than--”

She stopped, her face hidden over the child. Moreau felt a sudden sense
of embarrassed discomfort.

“Oh, don’t talk that way,” he said, hastily, “or I may get mad. That’s
the sort of talk that annoys me. Laugh and be happy--that’s the way I
want you to be. Enjoy yourself; that’s the way to please me.”

He swung himself down from the knoll into the creek bed and went back
to his rocker. He found it hard to collect his thoughts. The music of
Lucy’s laugh haunted him.

A week, and then two, passed away. The golden days slipped by, still
warm, still scented with the healing pine balsam. The nights were white
with great stars, which Moreau could see between the pine boughs, for
it was still warm enough to sleep on the knoll. His nights’ rests were
now often disturbed. A change had come over the situation in the cabin.
The peace and serenity of the first days after Fletcher’s departure
had gone, leaving a sense of constraint and uneasiness in their stead.
Moreau now looked up at the stars not with the calm content of the days
when Lucy had first come, but with the trouble of a man who begins to
realize menace in what he thought were harmless things.

Nearly a month had passed since Fletcher’s departure when one day,
walking down the stream with an idea of trying diggings farther down,
he came upon Lucy washing in a pool of water enlarged by a rough dam
she herself had constructed. She was kneeling on a flat stone on the
bank, her sunbonnet off, her sleeves rolled up, laving in the water the
few articles of dress that made up the baby’s wardrobe. Her arms above
the sunburned wrists shone snow-white, her roughened hair lay low on
her forehead in damp, curly strands. The sight of her engaged in this
menial toil irritated Moreau and he called:

“What are you doing there, Lucy? Get up.”

She started with one of her old nervous movements and sat back on the
stone. Then, seeing who it was, smiled confidently, and brushed the
hair back from her forehead with one wet hand.

“I was washing the baby’s things. That’s the dam I made.”

Moreau stood looking, not at the dam, but at the woman, flushed,
breathless and smiling, a blooming girl.

“No one would ever think you were the same woman who came here two
months ago,” he said, more to himself than to her.

“I don’t feel like the same,” she answered, beginning to wring her
clothes. “I don’t feel now as if that was me.”

“I thought you were quite an old woman then. Do you know that? I’d no
idea you were young.”

“I felt old. Oh, God--!” she said, suddenly dropping her hands and
looking across the pool with darkly reminiscent eyes--“how awful I
felt!”

“But you’re quite well now? You’re really well, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, returning to her tone of gaiety. “I
ain’t never been like this before. Not sence I was married, anyway.”

The allusion to her marriage made Moreau wince. Of late the subject had
become hateful to him. Standing, leaning on his shovel, he said:

“You know it’ll be winter here soon, so it’s a good thing we’ve got you
well and nicely rested up.”

“Yes, I guess ’twill be winter soon,” she said, looking vaguely round;
“does it snow?”

“Sometimes tons of it, if it’s a hard winter. But we’ve got to get out
before that. Or you have, anyhow. Can’t run any risks with the baby.
Got to get her out and into some decent shelter before the snow falls.”

For a moment Lucy made no answer. She had stopped wringing the clothes
and was kneeling on the stone, her eyes on the water, a faint line
drawn between her brows.

“Where to--? What sort o’ place?” she said slowly.

Moreau shifted his eyes from her face to the earth in which the point
of his shovel had imbedded itself.

“I told you as soon as you got well I’d take you to Hangtown or
Sacramento, or even ’Frisco if they didn’t suit. Now I haven’t got dust
enough to do that. Fletcher put that spoke in my wheel. But I’ll take
you and the baby into Hangtown.”

“Hangtown?” she repeated faintly.

“Yes; it’s quite a ways off. I’ll have to go in myself and get a horse
first, and then I’ll take you both in on that. I thought I’d go to Mrs.
Wingate. Her husband runs the Eldorado Hotel, and she isn’t strong,
and told me last time I was there she’d give a fancy salary if she
could get a housekeeper. How’d you like to try that? It would be a
first-class home for you and the baby.”

Lucy had bent her face over the wet clothes.

“Ain’t it all right here?” she said in a scarcely audible voice.

“No,” said Moreau irritably; “I just told you there was danger of being
snowed in after the first of November. You don’t want to be snowed in
here with the baby, do you?”

“I don’t care,” said Lucy.

“If you don’t feel strong enough to do work like that,” he continued,
“you can stay on in the hotel. I can make the dust for that easily.
Then in the spring, when the streams are full, I’ll have enough to send
you to Sacramento or San Francisco, and you can look about you and see
how you’d like it there.”

“Why can’t I stay here?” she said suddenly, her voice quavering, but
full of protest.

Its note thrilled Moreau.

“I’ve just told you why,” he said quietly.

“Well, I’m not afraid. I don’t mind snow. You can get things to eat
from Hangtown. Oh, let me stay.”

She turned toward him, still kneeling on the stone. Her face was
quivering with the most violent emotions he had ever seen on it. The
dead apathy was gone forever, at least as far as he was concerned.

“Oh, let me stay,” she implored; “don’t send me away from you.”

“Oh, Lucy,” he almost groaned, “don’t you see that won’t do?”

“Let me stay,” she reiterated, and stretched out her hands toward
him. The tears began to pour down her cheeks, and suddenly with the
outstretched hands she seized him, and burst forth into a stream of
impassioned words:

“Let me stay. Let me be with you. Don’t send me away. There ain’t no
use in anything if I’m not with you. Let me work for you. Let me be
where I can see you--that’s all I want. I don’t want no money nor
clothes. If you’ll just let me be near by! And I kin always work and
cook, and you know you like things clean, and I kin keep ’em clean. Oh,
you can’t mean to send me off. I ain’t never been happy before. I ain’t
never had no one treat me so kind before. I ain’t never known what it
was like to be treated decent. I can’t leave you--I can’t--I can’t--”

She sank down at his feet in a quivering heap.

Moreau raised her and held her in his arms, pressed against his breast,
his cheek against her hair. He had no thought for the moment but an
ecstasy of pity and joy. Clinging close to him, she reiterated between
broken breaths:

“I kin stay? Oh! I kin stay?”

“Lucy,” he said, “how can you? Do you know what you’re asking?”

“But I kin stay?” she repeated.

She slid one arm round his neck, and he felt her wet cheek against his.

“Let me just stay and work,” she whispered, “just where I can see you.”

“Do you forget that you’re married?” he said huskily.

“I’ll not be in your way. I’ll not ask for anything or be any trouble,”
was her whispered answer, “so long’s you let me be near you.”

They walked back to the cabin silently. Lucy knew that she had gained
her point and would stay. Her childish nature invaded and possessed
by a great passion built on gratitude and reverence, asked no more
than to be allowed to work for and worship the man who was to her a
god. She did not look into the future, nor demand its secrets. The
perfect joy of the present filled her. In the days that followed she
grew in beauty, and in some subtile way acquired a new girlishness.
Her past seemed wiped out. The blighting effects of the four previous
years fell away from her and she seemed to revert to the sweet and
simple youthfulness that had been hers when Jake Shackleton had married
her at St. Louis. Silent and gentle as ever, it was plain to be seen
that whatever Moreau asked for--service, friendship, love--she would
unquestioningly give.

Early in November a cold evening came with a red sunset and a
sharpening of every outline. For the first time they were driven into
the cabin for supper. A fire of boughs and dried cones burned in the
chimney and before this, supper being over, they sat, Lucy in the
rocker made of a barrel, Moreau on the end of an upturned box, staring
at the flames.

Finally the man broke the silence by telling her that he was going to
take his dust and walk into Hangtown the next day, remaining there over
night and returning in the morning with fresh supplies and a burro.

“Lucy,” he said, drawing his box nearer to her, “I want to talk to you
of something.”

She looked up, saw that the moment both had been dreading had come, and
paled.

“Lucy, the winter’s coming. The snow may be here now at any moment.
Have you thought of what we’re to do?”

She shook her head and began to tremble. His words called up the
specter of separation--what she feared most in the world.

“You know we can’t live on this way. Will you, if I go into Hangtown
and bring back a mule, ride there with me the day after to-morrow and
marry me? There are two or three preachers there who will do it.”

She looked at him with surprised eyes.

“I’m married already to Jake,” she said. “How kin I get married again?”

“I know it, and it’s no good trying to break that marriage. But in your
eyes and mine that was none. You and your baby are mine to take care
of and support and love for the rest of our lives. Though you can’t be
my lawful wife, I can protect you from scandal and insult by making
you what all the world will think is my lawful wife. Only you, and I
and Jake and his second wife will know that there has been a previous
marriage and not one of that four will ever tell.”

She put her rough hand out and felt his great fist close over it, like
a symbol of the protection he was offering her.

“We can be married in Hangtown by your maiden name. If any one asks I
can say I am marrying a young widow whose husband died on the Sierra.
Your husband _did_ die there when he sold you to me for a pair of
horses.”

She nodded, not quite understanding his meaning.

“Kin Jake ever come and claim me?” she asked in a frightened voice.

“How could he? How could he dare tell the world how he left you and
his child sick, almost dying, in the hut of an unknown miner in the
foothills? This is California, where men don’t forgive that sort of
thing.”

She was silent, and then said: “Yes, let’s go to Hangtown and be
married.”

“Was your first marriage perfectly legal? Have you got the marriage
certificate?”

She rose, dragged out the bundle she had brought with her, and from it
drew a long dirty envelope which she handed to him.

He opened it and found the certificate. It was accurate in every
detail. His eye ran over the ages and names of the contracting
parties--Lucy Fraser, fifteen, to Jacob Shackleton, twenty-four, at St.
Louis.

Twisting the paper in his hands he sat moodily eying the fire. The
second marriage was the only way he could think of by which he could
lend a semblance of right to the impossible position in which his
generous action had placed him. Divorce, in that remote locality and at
that early day of laws, half administered and chaotic, was impossible,
and even had it been easily obtained he shrank from dragging into
publicity the piteous story of how the woman he loved had been sold to
him.

That a marriage with Jake Shackleton’s wife was a legal offense he
knew, but with one of those strange whimsies of character which mark
mankind, he felt that the reading of the marriage service over Lucy
and himself would in some way sanctify what could never be a lawful tie.

In a spasm of rage and disgust he held out the paper to the flames,
when Lucy, with a smothered cry sprang forward and seized it. It was
the first violent action into which he had ever seen her betrayed. He
looked in surprise into her flushed and alarmed face.

“Why not? Why not destroy everything that could connect you with such a
past?” he said, almost angrily.

She hesitated, smoothing out the paper with trembling hands. Then she
said falteringly:

“I don’t know--but--but--he was her father,” indicating the sleeping
baby. “I was married to him all right.”

He understood the instinct that made her wish to keep the paper as a
record of her child’s legitimacy, and made no further comment.

The next morning at dawn he started for his long walk into Hangtown,
taking with him all the dust he had accumulated since Fletcher’s
departure. He was absent till the afternoon of the following day, when
he reappeared leading a small pack-mule, laden with supplies, among
which were several articles of dress for Lucy and the baby, so that
they might make a fitting appearance when they rode into camp for the
wedding. Lucy was overjoyed at her finery, and arrayed in it looked so
pretty and so girlish that Moreau, for the first time since the scene
by the creek, took her in his arms and kissed her. It was the kiss of
the bridegroom and the master.

The next morning when she woke the cabin was curiously dark. Going to
the door to open it, she found it resisted, and went to the window. The
world was wrapped in a blinding fall of snow. When Moreau came in for
breakfast, he reported a blizzard outside. The cold was intense, the
wind high, and the snow so fine and so torn by the gale that it was
like a mist of whiteness enveloping the cabin. Already it was piled
high about the walls and had to be shoveled from the door to permit of
its opening. Fortunately they had collected a large amount of fire wood
which was piled in the brush shed in which the man lived. During the
morning Moreau took the animals from their shelter and stabled them in
his. There was fodder for them and a bed of leaves, and the heat of the
chimney warmed the fragile hut.

All day the storm raged, and in the evening, as he and Lucy sat before
the fire, they could hear the turmoil of the tempest outside, moaning
through the ranks of the sentinel pines. They were silent, listening to
this shouting of the unloosed elements, and feeling an indescribably
sweet sense of home and shelter in their rugged cabin and each other’s
society.

The storm was one of those unexpected blizzards which sometimes visit
the Sierras in the early winter. With brief intervals of sunshine,
the snow fell off and on for nearly a month. Moreau had to exercise
almost superhuman effort to keep the cabin from being buried, and, as
it was, the drifts nearly covered the window. It was impossible to
travel any distance, as the snow was of a fine, feathery texture which
did not pack tight, and into which the wanderer sank to the arm-pits.
Fortunately the last trip into Hangtown had stocked the cabin well
with provisions. No cares menaced its inmates, who, warm and happy
in the vast snow-buried solitudes of the mountains, led an enchanted
existence, forgetting and forgotten by the world.

When the storm ended the miner attempted to get into the settlements
with the mule. But the beast, exhausted by the insufficient food, as
the best part of the fodder had to be given to the cow, fell by the
way, dying in one of the drifts. This seemed to sever their last link
with the world. Nature had drawn an unbroken circle of loneliness
around them. Under its spell they were drawn closer together till their
lives merged--the primitive man and woman living for and by love in the
primitive wilderness.

So the enchanted winter passed. The man, at intervals, making his way
into the settlements for food and the few articles of clothing that
they needed. It was a terrible winter, nearly as fierce as that of ’46,
but between the storms Moreau fitfully worked the stream, obtaining
enough dust to pay for their provisions. The outside world seemed to
fade from their lives, which were bounded by the walls of the cabin.
Here, in the long fire-lit evenings, Moreau read to Lucy, taught her
from his few books, strove to develop the mind that misfortune had
almost crushed. She responded to his teachings with the quickness of
love. Without much mental ability she improved because she lived only
for what he desired. She smoothed the roughness of her speech and
studied to correct her grammatical errors. She made him set her little
tasks such as a child studies, and in the evenings he watched her with
surreptitious amusement, as she conned over her spelling, or traced
letters in her copy-book. She was passionately desirous of being worthy
of him, and of leaving her old chrysalis behind her when she issued
from the cabin.

This was not to be until the early spring. It was nearly six months
from the time the emigrant wagon had stopped at his door, that Moreau,
having accumulated enough dust to buy another mule and another
outfit--took Lucy and the child into Hangtown for the marriage. This
ceremony, about which in the beginning she had been somewhat apathetic,
she now earnestly desired. It was accomplished without publicity or
difficulty, Lucy assuming her maiden name of Fraser, and passing as a
young widow. In the afternoon they started back for the cabin, Moreau
on foot, with his wife and baby on the mule. They had decided to stay
by their claim during the spring and early summer when the streams were
high.

Thus the spring passed and the summer came. During this season Lucy,
for the first time, saw that most lovely of Californian wild-flowers,
the mariposa lily, and called her baby after it. As time went on and
no other child was born, Moreau came to regard the little Mariposa as
more and more his own. His affection for her became a paternal passion.
It was decided between himself and Lucy that she should never know the
secret of her parentage, but be called by his name and be brought up
as his child. As the happiness of the union grew in depth and strength
both the man and woman desired more ardently to forget beyond all
recall the terrible past from which she had entered his life. It grew
to be a subject to which Moreau could bear no allusion, and their life
was purposely quiet and secluded, for fear of a chance encounter with
some disturbing reminder.

So the time passed. In the course of the next few years Moreau moved
from the smaller camps into Sacramento. Though a man of little
commercial ability, he was always able, in those halcyon days, to
make a good living for the woman and child to whom he had given his
life. Years of prosperity made it possible to give to Mariposa every
educational advantage the period and town offered. The child showed
musical talent, and for the development of this he was keenly ambitious.

Across their tranquil life, now and then, came a lurid gleam from the
career of the man who was Lucy Moreau’s lawful husband. Jake Shackleton
was soon a marked figure in the new state. But his rise to sensational
fortune began with the booming days of the Comstock. Then his star rose
blazing above the horizon. He was one of the original exploiters of the
great lode and was one of those who owned that solid cone of silver
which has gone down to history as the Reydel Monte. Ten years from his
entrance into the state he was a rich man. In twenty, he was one of
that group of millionaires, whose names were sounded from end to end of
an astonished country.

A quarter of a century from the time when he had crossed the desert
in an emigrant wagon, with his two wives, he read in the paper he had
recently bought as an occupation and investment, a notice of the death
of Daniel Moreau in Santa Barbara. It was brief, as befitted a pioneer
who had sunk so completely out of sight and memory, leaving neither
vast wealth nor picturesque record. The paragraph stated that “the
pioneer’s devoted wife and daughter attended his last hours, which were
tranquil and free from pain. It is understood that the deceased leaves
but little fortune, having during the last two or three years been
incapacitated for work by enfeebled health.”




MARIPOSA LILY




CHAPTER I

HIS SPLENDID DAUGHTER

  “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?”

                                       --KINGS.


Four months after the death of Dan Moreau his adopted daughter,
Mariposa, sat at the piano, in a small cottage on Pine Street, in San
Francisco, singing. Her performance was less melodious than remarkable,
for she was engaged in “trying her voice.” This was Mariposa’s greatest
claim to distinction, and, she hoped, to fortune. With it she dreamed
of conquering fame and bringing riches to her mother and herself.

She was so far from either of these goals that she permitted herself to
speculate on them as one does on impossible glories. The merits of her
voice were as unknown in San Francisco as she was. Its cultivation had
been a short and exciting episode, relinquished for lack of means. Now
it was not only given up, but Mariposa was teaching piano herself, and
was feverishly exalted when, the week before, her three pupils had been
augmented by a fourth. Four pupils, at fifty cents a lesson, brought in
four dollars a week--sixteen a month.

“If I make sixteen dollars a week after four months’ work,” Mariposa
had said to her mother, on the acquisition of this fourth pupil, “then
in one year I ought to make thirty-two dollars a month. Don’t you
think that’s a reasonable way of reckoning?”

From which it will be seen that Mariposa was not only young in years,
but a novice at the work of wage-earning.

She was in reality twenty-five years of age, but passed as, and
believed herself to be, twenty-four. She had developed into one of
those lordly women, stately of carriage, wide of shoulder and deep of
breast, that California grows so triumphantly. She had her mother’s
thick, red-brown hair, with its flat loose ripple and the dog’s brown
eyes to match, a skin as white as a blanched almond with a slight
powdering of freckles over her nose, and lips that were freshly red
and delicately defined against the warm pallor surrounding them. She
was, in fact, a beautified likeness of the Lucy that Moreau saw come
gropingly back to youth and desirableness in the cabin on the flank
of the Sierra. Only happiness and refinement and a youth passed in an
atmosphere of love, had given her all that richness of girlhood, that
effervescent confidence and joy of youth that poor Lucy had never known.

Despite her air of a young princess, her proudly-held head, her almost
Spanish dignity, where only her brown eyes looked full of alertness
and laughter, she was in character and knowledge of life foolishly
young--in reality, a little girl masquerading in the guise of a
triumphantly maturing womanhood. Her life had been one of quietude
and seclusion. Her parents had been agreed in their desire for this;
the father in the fear of a reëncounter with some phantom from the
past. Lucy’s ostensible reason was her own delicate health; but
her dread was that Shackleton might see his child and claim her. It
seemed impossible to the adoring mother that any father could see this
splendid daughter and not rise up and call her his before all men.

The afternoon was cold and Mariposa wore a jacket as she sang. The
cottage in Pine Street was all that a cottage ought not to be,--on
the wrong side of the street, “too far out,” cold, badly built, and
with only one window to catch the western sun. It had one advantage
which went a long way with the widow and her daughter--the rent was
twenty dollars a month. Mariposa had paid ten dollars of this with
her earnings, and kept the other six for pocket-money. But the happy
day was dawning, so she thought, when she could pay the whole twenty.
She cogitated on this and the affluence it would indicate, as her
real father might have cogitated when he and the inner ring of his
associates began to realize that the Reydel Monte was not a pocket, but
a solid mound of mineral.

On this gray afternoon the cold little parlor, with its bulge of bay
window looking out on the dreariness of the street, seemed impregnated
with an air of dejection. In common with many poor dwellings in that
city of extravagant reverses, it was full of the costly relics of
better days. San Francisco has more of such parlors than any city in
the country. The pieces of buhl and marquetry hiding their shame in
twenty-dollar cottages and eighteen-dollar flats furnish pathetic
commentary on many a story of fallen fortunes. The furniture looks
abashed and humbled. Sometimes its rich designs have found a grateful
seclusion under the dust of a quarter century, which finally will be
removed by the restoring processes of the second-hand dealer, who will
eventually become its owner.

There was a beautiful marquetry sideboard in the gray front parlor and
a fine scarlet lacquer Chinese cabinet facing it. Moreau had had the
tall, gilt-framed mirror and console brought round The Horn from New
York when he had been in the flush of good times in Sacramento. The
piano Mariposa was playing dated from a second period of prosperity,
and had cost what would have now kept them for a year. It had been
considered cheap at the time, and had been bought when the little
Mariposa began to show musical tastes. She had played her first
“pieces” on it, and in that halcyon period when she had had the singing
lessons, had heard the big voice in her chest slowly shaking itself
loose to the accompaniment of its encouraging notes.

Now she was singing in single tones, from note to note, higher and
higher, then lower and lower. Her voice was a mezzo, with a “break” in
the middle, below which it had a haunting, bell-like depth. As it went
down it gained a peculiar emotional quality which seemed to thrill with
passion and tears. As it began to ascend it was noticeable that her
upper tones, though full, were harsh. There was astounding volume in
them. It was evidently a big voice, a thing of noble promise, but now
crude and unmanageable.

She emitted a loud vibrant note that rolled restlessly between the four
walls, as if in an effort to find more space wherein to expand, and her
hands fell upon the keys. In the room opening off the parlor there was
an uncertain play of light from an unseen fire, and a muffled shape
lying on the sofa. To this she now addressed a query in a voice in
which dejection was veiled by uneasy inquiry:

“Well, does it seem to improve? Or is it still like a cow when she’s
lost her calf?”

“It’s wonderfully improved,” came the answer from the room beyond; “I
don’t think any one sings like you. Anyway, no one has such a powerful
voice.”

“No one howls so, you mean! Oh, mother, do you suppose I _ever_ shall
be able to take any more lessons?”

“Oh, yes, of course. We are in a large city now. Even if you don’t make
enough money yourself, there are often people who become interested
in fine voices and educate them. Perhaps you’ll meet one of them some
day. And anyway--” with cheerfulness caught on the upward breath of a
sigh--“you’ll make money enough soon yourself.”

Mariposa’s head bent over the keys. When she came to view it this way,
her sixteen dollars a month did not seem so big with promise as it did
when ten dollars for rent was all it had to yield up.

“I’ve heard about those rich people who are looking for prima donnas
to develop, but I don’t know where to find them, and I don’t see how
they’re to find me. The only way I can ever attract their notice is to
sing on the street corner with a guitar, like Rachel. And then I’d have
to have a license, and I’ve got no money for that.”

She rose, and swept with the gait of a queen into the next room. Her
mother was lying on a sofa drawn closely to a tiny grate, in which a
handful of fire flickered.

Lucy was still a pretty woman, with a thin, faded delicacy of aspect.
Her skin was singularly white, especially on her hands, which were
waxen. Though love and happiness had given her back her youth, her
health had never recovered her child’s rude birth in the desert and the
subsequent journey across the Sierra. She had twined round and clung
to the man whom she had called her husband, and with his loss she was
slowly sinking out of the world his presence had made sweet for her.
Her daughter--next in adoration to the hero who had succored her in her
hour of extremity--had no power to hold her. Lucy was slowly fading
out of life. The girl had no knowledge of this. Her mother had been a
semi-invalid for several years, and her own youth was so rich in its
superb vigor, that she did not notice the elder woman’s gradual decline
of vitality. But the mother knew, and her nights were wakeful and
agonized with the thought of her child, left alone, poor and unfriended.

Mariposa sat down on the end of the sofa at the invalid’s feet and took
one of her hands. She had loved both parents deeply, but the fragile
mother, so simple and unworldly, so dependent on affection for her
being, was the object of her special devotion. They were silent, the
girl with an abstracted glance fixed on the fire, meditating on the
future of her voice; the mother regarding her with pensive admiration.

As they sat thus, a footfall on the steps outside broke upon their
thoughts. The cottage was so built that one of its conveniences was,
that one could always hear the caller or the man with the bill mounting
the steps before he rang. The former were rarer than the latter, and
Mariposa, in whose eventless life a visit from any one was a thing of
value, pricked up her ears expectantly.

The bell pealed stridently and the servant could be heard rattling
pans in the kitchen, evidently preparatory to emerging. Presently she
came creaking down the hall, the door opened and a female voice was
heard asking for the ladies. It _was_ a visitor. Mariposa was glad she
had stayed in that afternoon, and with her hand still clasping her
mother’s, craned her neck toward the door.

The visitor was a tall, thin woman of forty years, her cheaply
fashionable dress telling of many a wrestle between love of personal
adornment and a lean purse. She was one of those slightly known and
unquestioningly accepted people that women, in the friendless and
unknown condition of the Moreaus, constantly meet in the free and easy
social life of western cities.

She was a Mrs. Willers, long divorced from a worthless husband, and
supporting, with a desperate and gallant courage, herself and her
child, who was one of Mariposa’s piano pupils. Her appearance gave
no clue to the real force and indomitable bravery of the woman, who,
against blows and rebuffs, had fought her way with a smile on her
lips. Her appearance and manner, especially in this, her society pose,
were against her. The former was flashy and over-dressed, the latter
loud-voiced and effusive. A large hat, flaunting with funeral plumes,
was set jauntily on one side of her head, and a spotted veil was drawn
over a complexion that was carelessly made up. Her corsets were so long
and so tight that she could hardly bend, and when she did they emitted
protesting creaks. No one would have thought from her flamboyantly
stylish get-up that she was a reporter and “special” writer on Jake
Shackleton’s newly-acquired paper, _The Morning Trumpet_! But in
reality she was an energetic and able journalist. It was only when
adorned with her best clothes and her “society” manners that she
affected a sort of gushing silliness.

“Well,” she said, rustling in, “here’s the lady! How’s everybody? Just
as cozy and cute as a doll’s house.”

She pressed Mrs. Moreau’s hand and then sent an eagle glance--the
glance of the reporter that is trained to take in every salient object
in one sweep--about the room. She could have written a good description
of it from that moment’s survey.

“Better? Of course you’re better,” she interrupted Lucy, who had been
speaking of improved health. “Don’t San Francisco cure everybody?
And daughter there?” her bright tired eye rested on Mariposa for one
inspecting moment. “She looks nice enough to eat.”

“Mariposa’s always well,” said Lucy, pressing the hand she still held.
“She was always a prize child ever since she was a baby.”

Mrs. Willers leaned back and folded her white-gloved hands over her
creaking waist.

“You know she’s the handsomest thing I’ve seen in a coon’s age,” she
said, nodding her head at Mariposa. “There ain’t a girl in society that
compares to her.”

Lucy smiled indulgently at her daughter. Mariposa, though embarrassed,
was not displeased by these sledge-hammer compliments. They were
a novelty to her, and she regarded Mrs. Willers--despite a few
peculiarities of style--as a woman of vast knowledge and experience in
that wonderful world of gaiety and fashion, of which she herself knew
so little.

“I go to most of the big balls here,” continued the visitor. “It’s
always the same thing on _The Trumpet_--‘Send up Mrs. Willers to the
Cotillion Club to-night; we don’t want any other reporter but her.
If you send up any of those other jay women we’ll turn ’em down.’ So
up I have to hop. The other night at the Lorley’s big blow-out, when
Genevieve Lorley had her début, it was the same old war-cry--‘We want
Mrs. Willers to-night to do the Society, and don’t try and work off any
incompetents on us. Send her up early so’s Mrs. Lorley can give her the
dresses herself.’ So up I went, and was in the dressing-room for an
hour and saw ’em all, black and white and brown, heiresses and beggars,
and not one of ’em, Mrs. Moreau, to touch daughter here--not one.”

“But there are so many beautiful girls in San Francisco. Mariposa has
seen them on the cars and down town. She often tells me of them.”

“Beauties--yes, lots of ’em; dead loads of ’em. But there’s a lot that
get their beauty out of boxes and bottles. There’s a lot--I don’t say
who, I’m not one to mention names--but there’s a lot that when they go
to bed the beauty all comes off and lies in layers on the floor. Not
that I blame them--make yourself as good-looking as you can, that’s my
motto. It’s every woman’s duty. But you don’t want to begin so young.
I rouge myself,” said Mrs. Willers, with the careless truthfulness of
one whose reputation is beyond attack, “but I don’t like it in a young
girl.”

“Who was the prettiest girl at the ball?” said Mariposa,
deeply interested. She had the curiosity of seventeen on such
subjects--subjects of which her girlhood had been unusually barren.

“My dear, I’ll tell you all that later--talk for an hour if you can
stand it. But that’s not what I came to say to-day. It’s business
to-day--real business, and I don’t know but what all your future hangs
on it.”

She gave a triumphant look at the startled mother and daughter. With
the introduction of serious matter her worn face took on a certain
sharp intelligence and her language grew more masculine and less
slovenly.

“It’s this,” she said, leaning forward impressively: “I’m not sure that
I haven’t found Mariposa’s backer.”

“Backer,” said Lucy, faintly, finding the word objectionable. “What’s
that?”

“The person who’s to hear her sing and offer to educate the finest
voice he’s likely to hear in the next ten years.”

Mariposa gave a suppressed exclamation and looked at her mother. Lucy
had paled. She was trembling at what she felt she was to hear.

“It’s Jake Shackleton,” said Mrs. Willers, proudly launching her
bombshell.

“Jake Shackleton,” breathed Mariposa, to whom the name meant only
vaguely fabulous wealth. “The Bonanza Man?”

Lucy was sitting up, deadly pale, but she said nothing.

“The Bonanza Man,” said Mrs. Willers. “My chief.”

“But what does he know of me?” said Mariposa. “He’s never even heard of
me.”

“That’s where you’re off, my dear. Jake Shackleton’s heard of
everybody. He has every one ticketed and put away in some little cell
in his brain. He never forgets a face. Some people say that’s one of
the secrets of his success; that, and the way he knows the man or
woman who’s going to get on and the one who’s going to fall out of the
procession and quit at the first obstacle. He’s got no use for those
people. Get up and hustle, or get out--that’s his motto.”

“But about me?” Mariposa entreated. “Go on.”

“Well, it’s a queer story, anyhow. The other morning I was sent for to
the sanctum. There was a little talk about work and then he says to
me, ‘Didn’t you tell me your daughter was taking piano lessons, Mrs.
Willers?’ Never forgets a word you say. I told him yes; and he says:
‘Isn’t her teacher that Miss Moreau, whose father died a few months ago
in Santa Barbara?’ I told him yes again, and then he wheels round on
the swivel chair, looks at me so, from under his eyebrows, and says: ‘I
knew her father once; a fine man!’”

“Oh, how odd,” breathed Mariposa, quivering with interest. “I never
heard father speak of him.”

“It was a long time ago. He knew your father up in the mines some time
in the fifties, and he said he admired him considerably. Then he went
on and asked me a lot of questions about you, your circumstances,
where you lived and if you were as good-looking as your father. He
said he’d heard you were an accomplished young lady. Then I saw my cue
and I said, as carelessly as you please, that Miss Moreau had a fine
voice and plenty of musical ability, but unfortunately was not able to
cultivate either, because her means were small, and it was a great pity
some one with money didn’t help her. I says--just as casual as could
be--it’s a great shame to see a voice like that lying idle for want of
tuition.”

“What did he say then?” said Mariposa.

“Well, that’s the point I’m working up to. He thought a while, asked a
few more questions, and then said: ‘I’d like to meet the young lady and
hear her sing. It goes against me to have Dan Moreau’s daughter lack
for anything. Her father’d have left a fortune if he hadn’t been a man
that thought of every one else before himself.’”

“That was father exactly. He must have known him well. Mother, isn’t it
odd he never spoke of him? What did you say then?”

“I? Why, of course, I saw my opening and jumped in. I said, ‘Well, I
guess I can arrange for you to meet Miss Moreau at my rooms. I see her
twice a week when she comes to give Edna her piano lesson. I’ll ask her
when she can come, and let you know and then she’ll sing for you.’ He
was pleased, he was real pleased, and said he’d come whenever I said.
And now, young woman,” laying a large white-gloved hand on Mariposa’s
knee, “that ought to be the beginning of a career for you!”

“Good gracious!” said Mariposa, whose cheeks were crimson, “I never
heard anything so exciting in my life, and we were just talking about
it. I’ll probably sing like a dog baying the moon.”

“Don’t you talk that way. You’ll sing your best. And he’s not a man
that you wouldn’t like Mariposa to meet”--turning to the pale and
silent Lucy. “Whatever other faults he’s had he’s always been a
straight man with women. There’s never been that sort of scandal about
Jake Shackleton. There’s a story you’ve probably heard, that he was
originally a Mormon. I don’t believe much in that myself. He had,
anyway, only one wife when he entered California, and she’s been his
wife ever since, and she ain’t the kind to have stood any nonsense of
the Mormon sort.”

Lucy gave a sudden gasping breath and sat up. The light of the gray
afternoon was dying outside, and by the glow of the fire her unusual
pallor was not noticeable.

“It was very good of you,” she said. “Mariposa will be glad to go.”

“And you’ll come, too?” said Mrs. Willers. “He asked about you.”

“Did he say he’d ever known me?” said Lucy, quietly.

“No--not exactly that. No, I don’t believe he said that. But he was
interested in you as the wife of the man he’d known so long ago.”

“Of course it would be only in that way,” murmured Lucy, sinking back.
“No, I can’t come. It wouldn’t be possible. I’m not well enough.”

“Oh, mother, do. You know you go out on the cars sometimes, and the
Sutter Street line is only two blocks from here. I know you’d enjoy it
when you got there.”

“No, dearest. No, Mrs. Willers. Don’t, please, urge me. I am not able
to meet new people. No-- Oh, please don’t talk any more about my going.”

Something of pain and protest in her voice made them desist. She was
silent again, while Mariposa and Mrs. Willers arranged the details of
the party. This was to be small and choice. Only one other person,
a man referred to as Essex, was to come. At the name of Essex, Mrs.
Willers shot a side look of inspection at Mariposa, who did what was
expected of her in displaying a fine blush.

It was decided that Mrs. Willers’ hospitality should take the form of
wine and cake. There was a consultation about other and lesser viands,
and finally an animated discussion as to the proper garb in which
Mariposa should present herself to the first truly distinguished person
she had ever met. During the conversation over these varied questions
Lucy lay back among her cushions, sunk in the same pale silence.

Darkness had fallen when the guest, having threshed out the subject
to the last grain, took herself off. Mariposa looked from the opened
doorway into a black street, dotted with the yellow blurs of lighted
lamps. The air was cold with that penetrating, marrow-searching
coldness of a foggy evening in San Francisco. As the night swallowed
Mrs. Willers, Mariposa shut the door and came rushing back.

“Mother!” she cried, before she got into her room, “isn’t that the most
thrilling thing? Oh, did you ever know of anything so unexpected and
wonderful and exciting. _Do_ you think he’ll like my voice? _Do_ you
think he really could be interested in me because he knew father? And
he can’t have known him so very well, or father would have said more of
him. Did _you_ ever hear father speak about him?”

The mother gave no answer, and the girl bent over her. Lucy, motionless
and white, was lying among her cushions, unconscious.




CHAPTER II

THE MILLIONAIRE

  “And one man in his time plays many parts.”

                                         --SHAKESPEARE.


At two o’clock on the afternoon of her party Mrs. Willers was giving
the finishing touches to her rooms. These were a sitting and bedroom
in one of the large boarding-houses that already had begun to make
their appearance along Sutter Street. “To reside” on Sutter Street, as
she would have expressed it, was a step in fashion for Mrs. Willers,
who previously had lived in such ignominious localities as North
Beach and upper Market Street, renting the surplus rooms in dingy
“private families.” Her rise to fairer fortunes was signalized by the
move to Sutter Street. Her parlor announced it in its over-furnished
brilliancy. All the best furniture of the poor lady’s many migrations
had been squeezed into the little room. The Japanese fans and
umbrellas, flattened against the walls with pins, were accumulated at
some cost, for they represented one of those strange and unaccountable
vagaries of popular taste that from time to time seize a community with
blighting force. Silk scarfs were twisted about everything whereon they
could twist.

The “lunch,” as the hostess called it, had already been prepared and
stood on a side table. Edna, Mrs. Willers’ daughter, had made many
trips up and down the street that morning collecting its component
parts and bringing them home in paper bags. The ladies in the lower
windows of the house had been aware of these goings and comings, and so
were partly prepared when, at luncheon, Mrs. Willers casually told them
of the distinguished guest she expected. The newspaper woman had not
lived her life with her eyes shut and her ears closed, and she knew the
value to the fraction of a hair of this information, and just how much
it would add to her prestige.

She was now fluttering about in a wrapper, and with a piece of black
net tied tight over her forehead. Through this the forms of dark
circular curls outlined themselves like silhouettes. Mrs. Willers had
no war-paint on, and though she looked a trifle worn, was much more
attractive in appearance than when decorated with her pink and white
complexion and her spotted veil. Edna, who was already dressed, was
a beautiful, fair-haired child of twelve. The struggles she had seen
her mother pass through, with her eyes bright and her head high, had
developed in her a precocity of mind that had not spoiled the sweet
childishness of a charming nature. It would be many years yet before
Edna would understand that she had been the sheet-anchor of the mother
who was to her so clever and so brave; the mother, who, in her moments
of weakness and temptation, had found her child the one rock to cling
to in the welter of life.

Mrs. Willers retired to the bedroom to dress, occasionally coming to
the doorway in various stages of déshabille to give instructions to the
child. Her toilet was accomplished with mutilated rites, and by the
time the sacrificial moment came of laying on the rouge her cheeks were
too flushed with excitement to need it. When she did appear it would
have been difficult to recognize her as the woman of an hour earlier.
Even the black silhouettes had passed through a metamorphosis and
appeared as a fluff of careless curls.

The first guest to arrive was the man she had spoken of as Essex. The
ladies at the windows below had been struck into whispering surprise
by his appearance. San Francisco was still enjoying its original
reputation as a land of picturesque millionaires, who lived lives of
lawlessness and splendor. Men of position still wore soft felt hats and
buttoned themselves tight into prince-albert coats when they went down
to business in the morning. Perhaps in the traveled circles, where the
Bonanza kings and their associates lived after European models, there
were men who bore the stamp of metropolitan finish, as Barry Essex did.
But they did not visit Sutter Street boarding-houses nor wear silk
hats when they paid afternoon calls. San Francisco was still in that
stage when this form of headgear was principally associated in its mind
with the men who drew teeth and sold patent medicines on the sand lots
behind the city hall.

Barry Essex, anywhere, would have been a striking figure. He was a
handsome man of some thirty years, tall and spare, and with a dark,
smooth-shaven face where the nose was high and the eyes veiled and
cold. He looked like a person of high birth, and there were stories
that he was, though by the left hand. He spoke with an English accent,
and, when asked his nationality, shrugged his shoulders and said it was
hard to say what it was--his father had been a Spaniard, his mother an
Englishwoman, and he had been born and reared in France.

That he was a man of ability and education, superior to the work he
was doing as special writer on Jake Shackleton’s paper, _The Trumpet_,
was obvious. But San Francisco had become so used to mysteriously
interesting strangers, that come from no one knows where, and suggest
an attractively unconventional history, that the particular curiosity
excited by Essex soon died, and he was merely of moment as the author
of some excellent articles on art, literature and music in _The Sunday
Trumpet_.

He greeted Mrs. Willers with a friendly fellowship, then let a quick,
surreptitious glance sweep the room. She saw it, knew what he was
looking for, but affected unconsciousness. His manner was touched by
the slightest suggestion of something elaborate and theatrical, which,
in Mrs. Willers’ mind, seemed to have some esoteric connection with the
silk hat. This he now--after slowly looking about for a safe place of
deposit--handed to Edna with the careless remark: “Will you put this
down somewhere, Edna?”

The child took it, flushing slightly. She was accustomed to being made
much of by her mother’s guests, and Essex’s manner stung her little
girl’s pride. But she put the hat on the piano and retired to her
corner, behind the refreshment table.

A few moments later she opened the door to Jake Shackleton. Mrs.
Willers, red-cheeked and triumphant, felt that this was indeed a proud
moment for her. She said as much, drawing an amused laugh from her
second guest. He, too, had swept the room with a quick, investigating
glance. This time Mrs. Willers did not affect unconsciousness, and said
briskly:

“No, our young lady hasn’t come yet. You’ll have to try and put up with
me for a while.”

It would have been difficult for the eye of the deepest affection to
see in the Comstock millionaire the emigrant of twenty-five years
before. A mother might have been deceived. The lean figure had grown
chunky and heavy. The drawn face was now not full--it was the type of
face that would never be full--but was lacking in the seams that had
then furrowed it. The hair was gray, worn thin on the temples, and the
beard, trimmed and well-tended, was gray, too. Perhaps the strongest
tie with the past was that the man suggested the same hard, fine-drawn,
wiry energy. It still shone in his narrow, light-colored eyes, and
still was to be seen in his lean, muscular hand, that was frequently
used in gesticulation.

In manner the change was equally apparent. Though colloquial, his
speech showed none of the coarse illiterateness of the past. His manner
was quiet, abruptly natural, and not lacking in a sort of easy dignity,
the dignity of the man who has won his place among men. He was dressed
with the utmost simplicity. His soft felt wide-awake was not new,
his black prince-albert coat did not fit him with anything like the
elegance with which Barry Essex’s outlined his fine shape. A little
purple cravat tied in a bow appeared from beneath his turned-down
collar. It was somewhat shiny from the brushing of his beard.

“You must suppose I’m anxious to see this young lady,” he said, “after
what you’ve told me about her.”

“Well, ask Mr. Essex if I’ve exaggerated,” said Mrs. Willers. “He knows
her, too.”

“I don’t know what you’ve said,” he returned, “but I don’t think
anything could be too complimentary that was said of Miss Moreau.”

“Eh!--better and better,” said the elder man. “I didn’t know you knew
her, Essex?”

He turned his gray eyes, absolutely cold and non-committal on Essex,
who answered them with an equally expressionless gaze.

“I’ve known Miss Moreau for three months,” he replied. “I met her here.”

Shackleton turned back to Mrs. Willers.

“I understand from you, Mrs. Willers, that these ladies are left
extremely badly off. Are they absolutely without means?”

“No-o,” she answered, “not exactly that. Mr. Moreau left a life
insurance policy of five thousand dollars. Mariposa tells me that three
thousand of that went to pay his doctors’ bills and funeral expenses.
He was sick a long time. They are now living on their capital, and
they’ve been here four months, and Mrs. Moreau has constant medical
attendance.”

The millionaire gave a little click of his tongue significant of
annoyance.

“Moreau had a dozen chances of making his pile, as every man did in
those days,” he said. “He was the sort of man who is predestined to
leave his family poor.”

“Yet they worship his memory,” said Mrs. Willers. “He must have been
very good to them.”

Shackleton made no answer. She was used to reading his expression,
and the odd thought crossed her mind that this remark of hers was
unpleasant to him.

Before she had time to reply a knock at the door announced the arrival
of Mariposa. As she entered the two men stood up, both looking at her
with veiled eagerness. To Essex his feeling for her was making her
every appearance an event. To Shackleton it was a moment of quivering
interest in a career full of tumultuous moments.

A slight flush mounted to his face as he met her eyes. She
instinctively looked at him first, with a charming look, girlish, shy,
and deprecating. Her likeness to her mother struck him like a blow,
but she was an Amazonian Lucy, with all that Lucy had lacked. He saw
himself in the stronger jaw and the firm lips. Physically she was
molded of them both. His heart swelled with a passionate pride. This,
indeed, was his own child, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.

The introductions over, they resettled themselves, and Mariposa found
herself beside this quiet, gray-haired man, talking quite volubly. She
was not shy nor nervous, as she had expected to be, but felt peculiarly
at her ease. Looking at her with intent eyes, he spoke to her of the
early days in California, when he and her parents had come across.

“You know, I knew your father in the Sierra, long ago,” he said.

[Illustration: “TO SHACKLETON IT WAS A MOMENT OF QUIVERING INTEREST”]

“Yes,” she answered rather hurriedly, fearful lest he should ask her if
her father had not spoken of him, “so Mrs. Willers said. It must have
been a long time ago. Was I there?” she added with a little smile.

He was taken aback by the question and said, stammeringly:

“Well, really now, I--I--don’t quite remember.”

“I guess I wasn’t,” she said laughing. “You must have known father
before that. _He_ came over in forty-nine, you know. I was born
twenty-four years ago up in the mountains, in Eldorado County, in a
little cabin miles above Placerville. Mother’s often described the
place to me. They left soon after.”

He lowered his eyes. He was a man of no sentiment or tenderness, yet
something in this false statement, uttered so innocently by these
fresh young lips, and taught with all the solicitude of love to this
simple nature, pierced like an arrow to the live spot in his deadened
conscience.

“It was more than twenty-five years ago that I was there,” he said.
“You evidently were not born then.”

“But my mother was there then. Do you think I look like her? My father
thought I was wonderfully like her.”

He looked into the candid face. Memories of Lucy before his own harsh
treatment and the hardships of her life had broken her, stirred in him.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “you’re very like her. But you’re like your
father, too.”

“Am I?” she cried, evidently delighted. “Do you really think so? I do
want to look like my father.”

“Why?” he could not help asking.

She stared at him surprised.

“Wouldn’t you like to look like both your parents, if they were the two
finest people in the world?”

Here Mrs. Willers cut short the conversation by asking Mariposa to
sing. The girl rose and went directly to the piano. For days this
moment had been looming before her in nightmare proportions. She
was feverishly anxious to do her best and sickeningly fearful of
failure. Now her confidence was unshaken. Something--impossible to
say just what--had reassured her. Her hands were trembling a little
as she struck the keys, and her first notes showed the oscillation of
nervousness, but soon the powerful voice began to come more under her
control, and she poured it out exultantly. She never sang better. Her
voice, much too large for the small space, was almost painful in its
resonant force.

Of the two men the elder was without musical knowledge of any kind.
He was amazed and delighted at what seemed to him an astonishing
performance. But Essex knew that with the proper training and guidance
there were possibilities of a brilliant future for this handsome and
penniless young woman. He had lived much among professional singers,
and he knew that Mariposa Moreau possessed an unusual voice. For
reasons of his own he did not desire her to know her own power, and he
was secretly irritated that she had sung so well.

She continued, Shackleton requesting another, and yet another song.
Only the clock chiming four roused him to the fact that he must go.
He was living at his country place at Menlo Park and had to catch a
train. He left them with assurances of his delight in the performance.
To Mariposa, as he pressed her hand in farewell, he said:

“I’ll see you again. You’ve a wonderful voice, there’s no mistake about
that. It’s a gift, a great gift, and it must have its chance.”

The girl, carried away with the triumph of the afternoon, said gaily:

“I’ll sing for you whenever you like. Could you never come up to our
cottage on Pine Street and meet my mother? I know she would like to see
you.”

The slightest possible look of surprise passed over his face, gone
almost as soon as it had come. Mariposa saw it, however, and felt
embarrassed. She evidently had been too forward, and looked down,
blushing and uncomfortable. He recovered himself immediately, and said:

“Not now, much as I should like to, Miss Moreau. I am living at Menlo
Park, and all my spare time when business is over is spent in catching
trains. But give your mother my compliments on the possession of such a
daughter.”

Mariposa and Essex stayed chatting with Mrs. Willers for some time
after Shackleton’s departure. The clock had chimed more than once, when
finally they left, and their hostess, exhausted, but exultant, threw
herself back in a chair and watched Edna gather up the remains of the
lunch.

“Put the cakes in the tin, dearie. They’ll do for to-morrow, and be
sure and cork the bottle tight. There’s enough for another time.”

“Several other times,” said Edna, holding the bottle of port wine up
to the light and squinting at it with her head on one side. “It was a
cheap party--they hardly drank anything.”

Mariposa and her companion walked up Sutter Street with the lagging
step of people who find each other excellent company.

It was the end of a warm afternoon in September, one of those still,
deeply flushed evenings when the air is tepid and smells of distant
fires, and the winged ants come out of the rotting sidewalks by the
thousand. The west was a clear, thin red smudged with brown smoke. The
houses grew dark and ever darker, and seemed to loom more solidly black
every moment. They looked dreamlike and mysterious against the fiery
background.

“How did you like it?” said Mariposa, as they loitered on, “my singing,
I mean?”

“It was excellent, of course. You’ve got a voice. But the room was too
small--and such a room to sing in, all crowded with ridiculous things.”

Mariposa felt hurt. She thought Essex was the finest, the most elegant
and finished person she had ever met. He seemed to her to breathe the
atmosphere of those great sophisticated cities she had never seen. In
his talks with her he now and then chilled her by his suggestion of
belonging to another and a wiser world, to which she was a provincial
outsider.

This quality was in his manner now, and she began to feel how raw her
poor performance must have seemed to the man who had heard the great
prima donnas of London and Paris.

“It was a small room, of course,” she assented, “but I had to sing
somewhere, and I couldn’t hire a place.”

“Shackleton wanted to hear you, as I understand it. Mrs. Willers said
something about his knowing your father.”

There was no question about the coldness of his voice now. Had Mariposa
known more about men she would have seen he was irritated.

She repeated the fable of her father’s early acquaintance with Jake
Shackleton, and of the latter’s desire expressed to Mrs. Willers, of
hearing her sing.

“Mrs. Willers is such an ass!” he said suddenly and vindictively.

Mariposa was this time hurt for her friend and spoke up:

“I don’t see why you say that. I don’t think a woman’s an ass who can
support herself and a child as she does,”--she thought of her sixteen
dollars and added: “It’s very hard for a woman to make money.”

“Oh, she’s not an ass that way,” he answered. “She’s an ass to try and
work Shackleton up to the point of becoming a patron of the arts--as
represented by you.”

He turned on her with a slight smile, that brought no suggestion of
amusement to his somewhat saturnine face.

“Isn’t that her idea?” he asked.

Mariposa felt her hopes as to the training of her voice becoming mean
and vulgar.

“He said he wanted to hear me,” she said stumblingly, “and she said it
would be a good thing. And I have no money to educate my voice, and
it’s all I have. Why do you seem to disapprove of it?”

“I?--disapprove? That would hardly do. Why even if I wanted to, I have
not the right to, have I?”

Mariposa’s face flushed. She felt now, that she had presupposed an
intimacy between them which he wanted politely to suggest did not
exist. This was not by any means the first time Essex had baffled and
embarrassed her. It amused him to do it, but to-day he was in a bad
temper and did it from spleen.

“Somehow Jake Shackleton doesn’t suggest himself to me as a patron of
the arts,” he said. “I don’t think he knows Yankee Doodle from God Save
the Queen.”

Mariposa thought of the brilliant article on the Italian opera, from
Bellini to Verdi, that the man beside her had contributed to last
Sunday’s _Trumpet_, and Jake Shackleton’s enthusiastic admiration of
her singing immediately seemed the worthless praise of sodden ignorance.

“Then,” she said desperately, “you wouldn’t attach any importance, if
you were I, to his liking my singing? It was just the way some people
like a street organ simply because it plays tunes.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think that. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t know a
good voice when he hears it.”

“Do _you_ think I’ve got a good voice?” said Mariposa, stopping in the
street and staring morosely at him.

“Of course I do, dear lady.”

“Do you, really?”

“Yes, really.”

She smiled, and tried to hide it by looking down.

It was hardly in man to continue bad-humored before this naïve display
of pleasure at his commending word.

“You really think I might some day become a singer, a professional
singer?”

“I really do.”

The smile broadened and lit her face.

“You always make me feel so stupid--and--and--as if I didn’t amount to
anything,” she murmured.

It was so sweet, so childishly candid, that it melted the last remnant
of his bad temper.

“You little goose,” he said softly, “don’t you know I think more of you
than I do of any one in San Francisco? It’s getting dark; take my arm
till we get to the car.”

She did so and they moved forward.

“Or anywhere else,” he murmured.




CHAPTER III

RETROSPECT

  “Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream
  dreams.”--THE ACTS.


After he had put Mariposa on her car, Essex went down town to the
paper with some copy. He was making a fair living on _The Trumpet_,
and the work he was doing suited him. He thought it might last the
winter and he had no objections to passing the winter in San Francisco.
Like many of his kind, he felt the lazy Bohemian charm of the diverse,
many-colored, cosmopolitan city sprawled on its sand dunes. The
restaurants alone made life more worth while than anywhere else in the
country except New York.

To-night he went to one, for dinner, that stood in Clay Street, a short
distance below Kearney. He had a word to say to the white-clothed
chef, who cooked the dinner in plain sight, on a small oven and grill,
beneath which the charcoal gleamed redly. He stopped for a moment’s
badinage with the buxom, fresh-faced French woman who sat at the desk.
She was the chef’s wife, Madame Bertrand, and liked “Monsieur Esseex,”
who spoke her natal tongue as well as she did. There was evidently
truth in one piece of Essex’s autobiography. Only a childhood spent in
France could teach the kind of French he spoke with Madame Bertrand.

He sat long over his dinner, smoking and reading the evening papers. It
was so late when he left that Bertrand himself came out of his cooking
corner and talked with him about Paris. “Monsieur Esseex” knew Paris as
well as Bertrand, some parts of it better. He had been educated there
at one of the large _lycées_, and had gone back many times, living now
on one side of the river, now on the other. Bertrand, in his white cap
and apron, conversing with his guest, retained a curious manner of
deference unusual in California.

“Monsieur is a gentleman of some kind or other,” he told madame.

“There are many different kinds of gentlemen in California,” returned
that lady, oracularly.

It was nearly nine when Essex left the restaurant, and passing down
Kearney Street for a few blocks, turned to his right and began to mount
the ascending sidewalk that led to his lodgings. These were in an
humble and unfashionable neighborhood in Bush Street. The house was of
a kind whence gentility has departed. It stood back on the top of two
small terraces, up which mounted two wooden flights of stairs, one with
a list to starboard so pronounced that Essex had, once or twice, while
ascending, thought the city in the throes of an earthquake.

The darkness of night wrapped it now. As it was early a light within
shone out dimly through two narrow panes of glass flanking the hall
door. He let himself in and mounted a dirtily carpeted stairway. The
place smelled evilly of old cooking and the smoke of many and various
cigarettes, cigars and pipes. It was a man’s rooming-house, and the men
evidently smoked where and what they listed. Essex had no idea who they
were and had seen only one of them: a man on the same floor with him
who, he surmised, by the occasional boisterousness of his entrances,
frequently came home drunk.

His room was one of the best in the house, on the front, and with a
large bay window commanding the street. It was fairly comfortable and
well furnished, and the draft of soft, chill air that crossed it from
the opened window kept it fresh. Essex, after lighting the gases in the
pendent chandelier, bent and kindled the fire laid in the grate. Like
many foreigners he found San Francisco cold, and after the manner of
his bringing up would no more have denied himself a fire when he was
chilly, than a glass of wine when he was thirsty. Different nations
have their different extravagances, and Essex’s French boyhood had
stamped him with respect for the little comforts of that intelligent
race.

He pulled up an easy-chair and sat down in front of the small blaze,
with his hands out. Its warmth was pleasant, and he stayed thus,
thinking. Presently he smiled slightly, his ear having caught the
sounds of his fellow lodger’s stumbling ascent of the stairs. The man
was evidently drunk again, and he wondered vaguely how he ever managed
to mount the terrace steps with the list to starboard.

The lodger’s door opened, shut, and there was silence. Essex--an
earnest reader--was soon deep in his book. From this he was interrupted
by a step in the passage and a light knock on the door. In response
to his “Come in,” the door opened hesitantly, and the man from across
the hall thrust in his head. It was a head of wild gray hair, with an
old yellow face, seamed and shriveled beneath it. The eyes, which were
beadily dark and set close to the nose, were bloodshot, the lips slack
and uncertain. A very dirty hand was curled round the edge of the door.

“Well, what is it?” said Essex.

“I’ve lost my matches agin,” said the man, in a whiningly apologetic
tone.

“There are some,” said Essex, designating his box on the mantelpiece.
“Take what you want.”

The stranger shambled in, and after scratching about the box with a
tremulous hand, secured a bunch. Essex looked at him with cynical
interest. He was miserably dressed, dirty and ragged. He walked with an
apologetic slouch, as if continually expecting a kick in the rear. He
was evidently very drunk, and the odor of the liquids he had imbibed
compassed him in an ambulating reek.

“Thanks to you, Doc,” he said, as he went out. “So long.”

A few minutes later Essex heard a crash from his neighbor’s room, and
then exclamations of anger and dole. These continuing with an increased
volume, Essex rose and went to the source of sound. The room was pitch
dark, and from it, as from the entrance to the cave of the damned,
imprecations and lamentations were issuing in a strenuous flood. With
the match he had brought he lit the gas, and turning, saw his late
visitor holding by the foot-board of the bed, having overturned a
small stand, which had evidently been surmounted by a nickel clock.

“What the devil do you mean by making such a noise?” he said angrily.

“Pardon, pardon!” said the other humbly, “but I couldn’t find the gas
this time, Doc. This is a small room, but things do get away somehow.”

He looked stupidly about with his bleared eyes. The room was small and
miserably dirty and uninviting.

“There’s a room,” he said suddenly in a loud, dramatic tone and with a
sweep of his arm, “for a man who might er been a bonanza king!”

Essex turned to go.

“If you make any more of this row to-night I’ll see that you’re turned
out to-morrow,” he said haughtily.

He wheeled about on the drunkard as he spoke. The man’s sodden face
was lit with a flash of malevolent intelligence, to be superseded
immediately by a wheedling smile.

“I seen you before to-day,” he said.

“Well, you’ll see me again to-night if you don’t keep quiet, and this
time you won’t like it.”

“You was with a lady, a fine-looking lady.”

“Here--no more of that talk,” said Essex threateningly.

The man stopped, looking furtively at him as if half expecting to be
struck. Essex turned toward the door and passed out. As he did so he
heard him mutter: “And I’d seen her before, too.”

Back in his room the young man took up his book again, but the thread
of his interest was broken. His mind refused to return to the
prescribed channels before it, but began to drift here and there on the
wayward currents of memory.

The house was now perfectly quiet. The little fire had fallen together
into a pleasant core of warmth that genially diffused its heat through
the room. Essex, sprawling in his chair, his long arms following its
arms, his finely-formed, loose-jointed hands depending over the rounded
ends, let his dreaming gaze rest on this red heart of living coal,
while his pipe smoke lay between it and his face in delicate layers.

His thoughts slipped back over childish memories to his first ones,
when he had lived a French boy’s life with his mother in Paris.

He remembered her far back in the days when he sat on her knee and was
read to out of fairy books. She had been very pretty then and very
happy, and had always talked English with him while every one else
spoke French. She had been an Englishwoman, an actress of beauty and
promise, who in the zenith of her popularity had made what the world
called a fine marriage with a rich Venezuelan, who lived in Paris. The
stories of Essex’s doubtful paternity were false. Rose Barry--Rose
Essex, on the stage--had been the lawful wife of Antonio Perez, and for
ten years was the happy wife as well.

They were very prosperous in those days. Barry had gone to the _lycée_
all week and come back every Friday to the beautiful apartment in the
Rue de Ponthieu. There were lovely spring Sundays when they drove in
the Bois and sometimes got out of the carriage and walked down the
sun-flecked _allées_ under the budding trees. And there were even
lovelier winter Sundays when they loitered along the boulevards in the
crisp, clear cold, with the sky showing leaden gray through the barring
of black boughs, and when they came home to a parlor lit with fire and
lamplight and had oranges and hard green grapes after dinner.

He had loved his pretty mother devotedly in those happy days, but for
his saturnine, dark-visaged father he had only a sentiment of uneasy
fear. He was twelve, when at his mother’s request he was sent to
England to school. He could remember, looking back afterward, that his
mother had not been so pretty or so happy then.

When he came home from school for vacations she was living at
Versailles in a little house that presented a secret, non-committal
front to the stony street, but that in the back had a delightful garden
full of miniature fountains and summer-houses and grottoes. From the
wall he could see the mossy trees and stretches of sun-bathed sward of
the Trianon. His father was not always there when he came. One Easter
vacation he was not there at all, and when he had asked his mother why,
she had burst into sudden, terrible tears that frightened him.

During the long summer holidays after that Antonio Perez was only there
once over a Sunday. Then he did not come again, and Barry was glad, for
he had never cared for his father. He passed delightful days in the
Trianon Park with his mother, who was very silent and had gray hair on
her temples. She walked beside him with a slow step, dragging her rich
lace skirts and with her parasol hanging indolently over her shoulder.
It pleased him to see that many people looked at her, but she took no
notice of them.

When Barry went back to England to school that year he began to feel
that he knew what was coming. It came the next vacation. His mother
had not dared to tell him by letter. Her husband had deserted her and
disappeared, leaving her with a few thousand francs in the bank, and
not a friend.

After that there were three miserable years when they lived in a little
apartment on the Rue de Sèvres, up four flights of stairs with a _bonne
à tout faire_. His mother had had to conquer the extravagant habits
of a lifetime, and she did it ill. During the last year of her life
the sale of her jewels kept them. Barry was eighteen when she died,
and those long last days when she lay on the sofa in the remnants of
the rich and splendid clothes she found it so hard to do without were
burned into his memory forever.

Their furniture--some of which was rare and handsome--brought them in
a few hundred francs, and on this he lived for another year, eking out
his substance with his first tentative attempts at journalism. When
he was twenty-one he received a legal notice that his father had died
in Venezuela, leaving him all he possessed, which, debts paid and the
estate settled, amounted to about ten thousand dollars.

This might have been a fortune to the youth, but the bitter bread he
had eaten had soured the best in him. He took his legacy and resolved
to taste of the joy of life. For several years he lived on the crest
of the wave, now and then diverting himself with journalism, the only
profession that attracted him and one in which his talents were
readily recognized. He saw much of the world and its ways, living in
many cities and among many peoples. He tried to cut himself off from
the past, adopting, after his mother’s death, her old stage name of
Essex.

Then, his money spent, there had been a dark interval of bad luck and
despondency, when Barry Essex, the brilliant amateur journalist, had
fallen out of the ranks of people that are seen and talked about.
Without means, he sank to the level of a battered and out-at-elbows
Bohemian. There was a year or two when he swung between London and
Paris, making money as he could and not always frequenting creditable
company. Then the tide of change struck him and he went to New York,
worked there successfully till once again the _Wanderlust_ carried him
farther afield.

He had now arrived at the crucial point of his career. In his vagabond
past there were many episodes best left in darkness, but nothing that
stamped him as an outcast by individual selection. Shady things were
behind him in that dark, morose year when he found disreputable company
to his taste. But he had never stepped quite outside the pale. There
had always been a margin.

Now he stood on that margin. He was thirty years old with shame and
bitterness behind him, and before him the dead monotony of a lifetime
of work. He hated it all. No memory sustained him. The past was as sore
to dwell on as the future was sterile. It was the parting of the ways.
And where they parted he saw Mariposa standing drawing him by the hand
one way, while he gently but persistently drew her the other.

In his softly lit library in his great house at Menlo Park another man
was at that time also thinking of Mariposa. He had been thinking of her
off and on ever since he had bidden her good by that afternoon at Mrs.
Willers’.

As the train had whirled him over the parched, thirsty country, burnt
to a leathern dryness by the summer’s drouth, he had no thought for
anything but his newly discovered daughter. His glance dwelt unseeing
on the tanned fields with their belts of olive eucalyptus woods, and
the turquoise blue of the bay beyond the painted marsh. Men descending
at way stations raised their hats to him as they mounted into the
handsome carriages drawn up by the platform. His return to their
salutes was a preoccupied nod. His mind was full of his child--his
splendid daughter.

Jake Shackleton had not forgotten his first wife and child, as Dan
Moreau and Lucy had always hoped. He was a man of many and secret
interests, pulling many wires, following many trails. He knew their
movements and fortunes from the period of their marriage in Hangtown.
At first this secret espionage was due to fear of their betraying him.
He had begun to prosper shortly after his entrance into the state, and
with prosperity and the slackening of the strain of the trip across the
desert came a realization of what he had done. He saw quickly how the
selling of his wife would appeal to the California mind in those days
fantastically chivalrous to women. He would be undone.

With stealthy persistence he followed the steps of the peaceful couple
who had it in their power to ruin him. Serenity began to come to him as
he heard that the union was singularly happy; that Moreau, confident
no one would molest them, had gone through a ceremony of marriage with
Lucy, and that the child was being brought up as their own.

As wealth came to Shackleton he thought of them with a sort of jealous
triumph. With his remarkable insight into men he knew that Dan Moreau
would never make money; that he was one of the world’s predestined poor
men. Then as riches grew and grew, and the emigrant of the fifties
became the bonanza king of the seventies, he wondered if the time might
not come when they would turn to him.

He would have liked it, for under the cold indifference of his manner
the transaction at the cabin in the Sierra forever haunted him with its
savage shamelessness. It was the one debasing blot on a career which,
hard, selfish, often unprincipled, had yet never, before or after, sunk
to the level of that base action.

When Moreau died at Santa Barbara Shackleton heard it with a sense of
relief. He was secretly becoming very anxious to see his child. Bessie
had borne him two children, a boy and a girl, and it was partly the
disappointment in these that made him desirous of seeing Mariposa. He
knew and Bessie knew that she was his only legitimate child. Though he
had virtually entered California with but one wife, and the blot of
Mormonism had been wiped from his record before he had been two days in
the state, the rumor that he had once been a Mormon still carelessly
passed from mouth to mouth. Should it ever become known that there had
been a former wife, Bessie and her children would have no lawful claim
on him, though the children, as acknowledged and brought up by him,
would inherit part of his estate.

With his great wealth the pride that was one of the dominant
characteristics of his hard and driving nature grew apace. He had
money by millions, but no one to do it credit. It would have been the
crowning delight of his tumultuous career to have a beautiful daughter
or talented son to grace the luxury that surrounded him. But Bessie’s
children were neither of these things. They were dull and commonplace.
Maud was fat and heavy both in mind and body, while Winslow was, to
his father, a slow-witted, characterless youth, without the will,
energy or initiative of either of his parents. Affection not grounded
on admiration was impossible to Shackleton, who sometimes in his
exasperation,--for the successful man bore disappointment ill,--would
say to himself:

“But they are not my real children; I have only one child--Dan Moreau’s
daughter.”

After the death of Moreau he learned that Lucy and Mariposa were in
San Francisco. There he lost trace of them and was forced to consult
a private detective who had done work for him before. It was an easy
matter to find them, and only a few letters passed between him and the
detective. In these the man gave the address and financial condition
of the ladies and added that the daughter was said to be “a beautiful,
estimable and accomplished young woman.” This fired still further
the father’s desire to see her. He learned, too, of their crippled
means and it pleased him to think that now they might be dependent on
him. But he shrank with an unspeakable repugnance from the thought of
seeing Lucy again, and he was for weeks trying to find some way of
meeting Mariposa and not meeting her mother. It was at this stage that,
purely by accident, he learned that Mrs. Willers’ daughter was one of
Mariposa’s pupils. A day or two after he summoned Mrs. Willers to the
interview that finally brought about the meeting.

Satisfied pride was still seething in him when he alighted from the
train and entered the waiting carriage. This magnificent girl was
worthy of him, worthy of the millions that were really hers. She had
everything the others lacked--beauty, charm, talents. Her whole air,
that regalness of aspect which sometimes curiously distinguishes the
simple women of the West, appealed passionately to his ambition and
love of success. She was born to conquer, to be a queen of men. The
image of Maud rose beside her, and seemed clumsier and commoner than
ever. The father felt a slight movement of distaste and irritation
against his second daughter, who had supplanted in his home and in the
world’s regard his elder and fairer child.

The carriage turned in through a lofty gate and rolled at a slackened
pace up a long winding drive. Jacob Shackleton’s Menlo Park estate was
one of the showy ones of that gathering place of rich men’s mansions.

The road wound for some half mile through a stretch of uncultivated
land, dotted with the forms of huge live-oaks. The grass beneath them
was burnt gray and was brittle and slippery. The massive trees, some
round and compact and so densely leaved that they were as impervious
to rain as an umbrella, others throwing out long, gnarled arms as if
spellbound in some giant throe of pain, cast vast slanting shadows
upon the parched ground. Some seemed, like trees in Doré’s drawings,
to be endowed with a grotesque, weird humanness of aspect, as though
an imprisoned dryad or gnome were struggling to escape, causing the
mighty trunk to bow and writhe, and sending tremors of life along each
convulsed limb. A mellow hoariness marked them all, due to their own
richly subdued coloring and the long garlands of silvery moss that hung
from their boughs like an eldrich growth of hair.

A sudden greenness in the sward and brilliant glimpses of flower-beds
pieced in between dark tree-trunks, told of the proximity of the house.
It was a massive structure, architecturally ugly, but gaining a sort of
majesty from its own ponderous bulk and from the splendor of lawns and
trees about it. The last level rays of the sun were now flooding grass
and garden, piercing bosky thickets where greens melted into greens,
and sleeping on stretches of close-cropped emerald turf. From among the
smaller trees the lordly blue pines--that with the oaks were once the
only denizens of the long rich valley--soared up, lonely and somber.
Their crests, stirred by passing airs, emitted eolian murmurings,
infinitely mournful, as if repining for the days when they had ruled
alone.

At the bend in the drive where the road turned off to the stables
Shackleton alighted and walked over the grass toward the house. The
curious silence that is so marked a characteristic of the California
landscape wrapped the place and made it seem like an enchanted palace
held in a spell of sleep. Not a leaf nor pendent flower-bell stirred.
In this hour of warmth and stillness evanescent breaths of fragrance
rose from the carpets of violets that were beginning to bloom about the
roots of the live-oaks.

As he reached the house Maud and a young man came round the corner and
approached him. The girl was dressed in a delicate and elaborate gown
of pale pink frilled with much lace, and with the glint of falling
ribbons gleaming here and there. She carried a pink parasol over her
shoulder, and against the background of variegated greens her figure
looked modish as a fashion-plate. It was a very becoming and elegant
costume, and one in which most young girls would have looked their best.

Maud, who was not pretty, was the type of woman who looks least well in
handsome habiliments. Her irremediable commonness seemed thrown into
higher prominence by adornment. The softly-tinted dress robbed her pale
skin of all glow and made her lifeless brown hair look duller. She had
a round, expressionless face, prominent pale-blue eyes, and a chin that
receded slightly. She was not so plain as she was without vivacity,
interest, or sparkle of youth. With her matter-of-fact manner, heavy
figure, and large, unanimated face she might have been forty instead of
twenty-one.

She was somewhat laboriously coquetting with her companion, a tall,
handsome young Southerner, some six or seven years her senior, whom
her father recognized as one of his superior clerks and shrewdly
suspected of matrimonial designs. At sight of her parent a slight
change passed over her face. She smiled, but not so spontaneously; her
speech faltered, and she said, coming awkwardly forward:

“Oh, Popper! you’re late to-day; were you delayed?”

“Evidently, considering I’m an hour later than usual. Howdy, Latimer;
glad to see you down.”

He stopped and looked at them with the slightest inquiring smile.
Though he said nothing to indicate it, both, knowing him in different
aspects, felt he was not pleased. His whole personality seemed to
radiate a cold antagonism.

“It’s good you got down anyhow,” said Maud constrainedly; “this is much
nicer than town, isn’t it, Mr. Latimer?”

All the joy had been taken out of Latimer by his chief’s obvious and
somewhat terrifying displeasure. Had he been alone with Maud, he would
have known well how to respond to her remark with Southern fervency of
phrase. But now he only said with stiff politeness:

“Oh, this is quite ideal!” and lapsed into uncomfortable silence.

“Was it some one interesting that made you late?” queried Maud, as her
father made no attempt to continue the conversation.

“Very,” he responded; “handsome and interesting.”

“Won’t you tell us about them?” the girl asked, feeling that the word
“handsome” contained a covert allusion to her own lack of beauty of
which she was extremely sensitive.

“Not now, and I don’t think it would interest you much, anyway. Is your
mother indoors?”

The girl nodded and he turned away and disappeared round the corner of
the house. She and Latimer sauntered on.

“The handsome and interesting person doesn’t seem to have made your
paternal any fuller than usual of the milk of human kindness,” said the
young man, whose suit had progressed further than people guessed.

“Popper’s often like that,” said Maud slowly,--and in a prettier and
more attractive girl the tone and manner of the remark would have been
charmingly plaintive,--“I don’t know what makes him so.”

“He can be more like a patent congealing ice-box when he wants to be
than anybody I ever saw. But I don’t see why he should be so to you.”

“I don’t, either, but he is often. He never says anything exactly
disagreeable, but he makes me feel sort of--of--mean. Sometimes I think
he doesn’t like me at all.”

“Oh, bosh!” said Latimer gallantly; “if that’s the case he’s ripe for a
commission of lunacy.”

Shackleton meantime had entered the house and ascended to his
dressing-room. He was in there making the small change which marked his
dinner from his business toilet when his wife entered.

The years had turned Bessie into a buxom, fine-looking matron,
fashionably dressed, but inclined to be very stout. Her eye and
its glance were sharp and keen-edged, still alight with vigor and
alertness. It was easy to see why Jake Shackleton, the reader of
character, had set aside his feeble first wife for this dominating and
forceful partner. He had been faithful to her; after a fashion had
loved her, and certainly admired her, for she had the characteristics
he most respected.

In his success she had been the same assistance that she had been in
his poverty. She had climbed the social heights and conquered the
impregnable position they now occupied. Her rich dress, her handsome
appearance, her agreeably modulated voice, all were in keeping with the
position and great wealth that were theirs. The house of which she was
the mistress was admirably ordered and sumptuously furnished. She had
only disappointed him in one way--her children.

“What made you late?” she, too, asked; “several people came down this
afternoon.”

“I was detained--a girl Mrs. Willers wanted me to see; who’s here?”

“Latimer, and Count de Lamolle, and George Herron and the Thurston
girls; and the Delanceys are coming over to dinner.”

He nodded at the names--Bessie knew well how to arrange her parties.
The Thurstons were two impoverished sisters of great beauty and that
proud Southern stock of which early California thought so highly
and rewarded in most cases with poverty. Count de Lamolle was a
distinguished foreigner that she was considering for Maud. The other
two young men filled in nicely. The Delanceys were a brother and
sister, claimants of the great Delancey Grant, which was now in
litigation. It had come into their possession by the marriage of their
grandmother, the Senorita Concepcion de Briones, in ’36, to the Yankee
skipper, Jeremiah Delancey.

“Who was the girl Mrs. Willers wanted you to see?” Bessie asked.

“Oh, I’ll tell you about her to-morrow. It’s a long story, and I don’t
want to be hurried over it.”

He had made up his mind that he would tell Bessie he had seen and
intended to assist his eldest child. He had always been frank with her
and he was not going to dissemble now. He knew that with all her faults
she was a generous woman.




CHAPTER IV

A GALA NIGHT

  “He looked at her as a lover can;
  She looked at him as one who awakes.”

                                    --BROWNING.


From his first meeting with her, Barry Essex had conceived a deep
interest in Mariposa. He had known women of many and divers sorts,
and loved a few after the manner of his kind, which was to foster
indolently a selfish caprice. Marriage was out of the question for
him unless with money, and some instinct, perhaps inherited from his
romantic and deeply-loving mother, made this singularly repugnant to
his nature, which was neither sensitive nor scrupulous. The mystery and
hazard of life appealed passionately to him, and to exchange this for
the dull monotony of a rich marriage was an unbearably irksome thought
to his unrestrained and adventurous spirit.

Mariposa’s charm had struck him deep. He had never before met that
combination of extreme simplicity of character with the unconscious
majesty of appearance which marked the child of the far West. He saw
her in that Europe, which was his home, as a conquering queen; and he
thought proudly of himself as the owner of such a woman. Moreover he
was certain that her voice, properly trained and directed, would be a
source of wealth. She seemed to him the real vocal artist, stupid in
all but one great gift; in that, preëminent.

Mariposa was trembling on the verge of a first love. She had never
seen any one like Essex and regarded him as the most distinguished and
brilliant of beings. His attentions flattered her as she had never been
flattered before, and she found herself constantly wondering what he
saw in a girl who must appear to him so raw.

Her experience of men was small. Once in Sacramento, when she was
eighteen, she had received an offer from a young lawyer, and two years
ago, in Santa Barbara, she had been the recipient of a second, from a
prosperous rancher. Both had been refused without hesitation, and had
left no mark on imagination or heart. Then, at a critical period of
her life--lonely, poor, a stranger in a strange city--she had fallen
in with Essex, and for the first time felt the thrill at the sound of
a footstep, the quickening pulse and flushing cheek at the touch of
a hand, that she had read of in novels. She thought that nobody had
seen this; but the eyes of the dangerous man under whose spell she had
fallen were watching her with wary yet ardent interest.

He had known her now for three months and had seen her frequently. His
visits at the Pine Street cottage were augmented by occasional meetings
at Mrs. Willers’, when that lady was at home and receiving company, and
by walks together. Of late, too, he had asked her to go to the theater
with him. Lucy was always included in these invitations, but was
unable to go. The theater was an untarnished delight to Mariposa, and
to refuse her the joy of an evening spent there was not in the mother’s
heart. Moreover, Lucy, in her agony at the thought of leaving the girl
alone in the world, watched Essex with a desperate anxiety trying
to fathom his feelings. It seemed to the unworldly woman, that this
attractive gentleman might have been sent by fate to be the husband who
was to love and guard the child when the mother was gone.

A few days after the party at Mrs. Willers’ rooms Essex had invited
Mariposa to go with him to a performance of “Il Trovatore,” to be given
at Wade’s opera-house. The company, managed by a Frenchman called
Lepine, was one of those small foreign ones that in those days toured
the West to their own profit and the pleasure of their audiences. The
star was advertised as a French diva of European renown. Essex had
heard her on the continent, and pronounced her well worth hearing, if
rather too fat to be satisfying to the esthetic demands of the part of
Leonora. Grand opera was still something of a rarity in San Francisco
and it promised to be an occasion. The papers printed the names of
those who had bought boxes. Mariposa had read that evening that Jacob
Shackleton would occupy the left-hand proscenium box with his wife and
family.

“His daughter,” said Mariposa, standing in front of the glass as she
put on finishing touches, “is ugly, Mrs. Willers says. I think that’s
the way it ought to be. It wouldn’t be fair to be an heiress and
handsome.”

“It wouldn’t be fair for you to be an heiress, certainly,” commented
the mother from her armchair.

“You don’t think I abuse the privilege a penniless girl has of being
good-looking?” said Mariposa, turning from the glass with a twinkling
eye.

She looked her best and knew it. Relics of better days lingered in
the bureau drawers and jewel boxes of these ladies as they did in the
small parlor. That night they had been mustered in their might for
Mariposa’s decking. She was proud in the consciousness that the dress
of fine black lace she wore, through the meshes of which her statuesque
arms and neck gleamed like ivory, was made from a shawl that in its day
had been a costly possession. Her throat was bare, the lace leaving it
free and closing below it. Where the black edges came together over the
white skin a small brooch of diamonds was fastened. Below the rim of
her hat, her hair glowed like copper, and the coloring of her lips and
cheeks was deepened by excitement into varying shades of coral.

As they entered the theater, Essex was aware that many heads were
turned in their direction. But Mariposa was too imbued with the joyous
unusualness of the moment to notice it. She had forgotten herself
entirely, and sitting a little forward, her lips parted, surveyed the
rustling and fast-filling house.

The glow of the days of Comstock glory was still in the air. San
Francisco was still the city of gold and silver. The bonanza kings had
not left it, but were trying to accommodate themselves to the palaces
they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its
cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were
figures in it that had made it famous--men who began life with a pick
and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of
early poverty dropped from them like a garment, and who, carried away
by their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of Roman empresses.

The sudden possession of vast wealth had intoxicated this people,
lifting them from the level of the commonplace into a saturnalia of
extravagance. Poverty, the only restraint many of them had ever felt,
was gone. Money had made them lawless, whimsical, bizarre. It had
developed all-conquering personalities, potent individualities. They
were still playing with it, wondering at it, throwing it about.

Essex let his glance roam over the audience, that filled the parquet,
and the three horseshoes above it. It struck him as being more Latin
than American. That foreignness which has always clung to California
was curiously pronounced in this gathering of varied classes. He
saw many faces with the ebon hair and olive skins of the Spanish
Californians, lovely women, languid and fawn-eyed, badly dressed--for
they were almost all poor now, who once were lords of the soil.

The great Southern element which, in its day, set the tone of the city
and contributed much to its traditions of birth and breeding, was
already falling into the background. Many of its women had only their
beauty left, and this they had adorned, as Mariposa had hers, with such
remnants of the days when Plancus was consul, as remained--bits of
jewelry, old and unmodish but cumbrously handsome, edgings of lace,
a pale-colored feather in an old hat, a crape shawl worn with an air,
a string of beads carried bravely, though beads were no longer in the
mode.

An arrogant air of triumph marked the Irish Californians. With the
opening up of the Comstock they had stuck their flag on the summit
of the heights. They had always found California kindly, but by the
discovery of that mountain of silver they had become kings where they
were once content to serve. The Irish face, sometimes in its primeval,
monkey-like ugliness, sometimes showing the fresh colored, blowsy
prettiness of the colleens by their native bogs, repeated itself
on every side. Now and then one of them shone out like a painting
by Titian--the Hibernian of the red-gold hair and milk-white skin,
refined by luxury and delicate surroundings into a sumptuous and
arresting beauty. Many showed the metal that had carried their fathers
on to victory. Others were only sleek, smooth-skinned animals, lazy,
sensuous, and sly. And these women, whose mothers had run barefoot,
were dressed with the careless splendor of those to whom a diamond is a
detail.

Essex raised his glass from the perusal of the sea of faces, to the
box which the Shackleton party had just entered. There was no question
about the Americanism of this group, the young man thought, as he
stared at Jake Shackleton. Square-set and unadorned, in the evening
dress which Bessie made him wear, he sat back from the velvet railing,
an uncompromising figure of dynamic force, unbeautiful, shrewd, the
most puissant presence in that brilliant assemblage.

The two ladies in the front of the box were Mrs. and Miss Shackleton.
The former was floridly handsome, almost aristocratic, the gazer
thought, looking at her firmly-modeled, composed face under its roll
of gray hair. The daughter was very like her father, but ugly. Even
in the costly French costume she wore, with the gleam of diamonds in
her hair, about her neck, in the lace on her bosom, she was ugly.
Essex, with that thought of marrying money in the background of his
mind, scrutinized her. To rectify his fortune in such a way became
more repugnant than ever. If Mariposa had only been Jake Shackleton’s
daughter instead!

He turned and looked at her. She met his glance with eyes darkened by
excitement.

“There’s Mr. Shackleton in the box,” she said eagerly, in a
half-whisper. “Did you see?”

“Yes, I’ve been looking, and that’s his daughter, Maud Shackleton, in
the white with diamonds.”

“Is it? Oh, what a beautiful dress! and quantities of diamonds. Almost
too many; they twinkle like water, as if some one had squeezed a sponge
over her.”

“What can you do when you’re a bonanza king’s daughter and as ugly
as that? You’ve got to keep up your end of the line some way. She
evidently thinks diamonds are the best way.”

Essex took the glass and looked at the bedecked heiress again. After
some moments he put it down and turned to Mariposa with a quizzical
smile.

“Do you know I’m going to say something very funny, but look at her
well. Does she look like anybody you know?”

The girl looked and shook her head:

“Like her father a little,” she said, “but no one else I can think of.”

“No, not her father. Some one you know intimately and see often--very
often, if you’re as vain as you ought to be.”

“Who?” she demanded, frowning and looking puzzled; “I can’t think whom
you mean.”

“Yourself; she looks like you.”

Mariposa gave a quick look at the girl and then at Essex. For the
moment she thought he was mocking her, but with her second look at the
box, the likeness suddenly struck her.

“She is,” she said slowly, reaching for the glass; “yes,” putting it
down, “I see it--she is. How funny! and fancy your telling me on top of
the statement that she was so ugly! I don’t see how I can smile again
this evening.”

She smiled with the words on her lips, the charming smile of a woman
who knows her silliest phrases are delightful to one man at least.

“I’m not entirely like her?” she asked, with a somewhat anxious air; “I
haven’t got those pale-gray, prominent eyes, have I?”

“No, you’ve got mysterious dark eyes, as deep as wells, and when I look
into them, down, down, I sometimes wonder if I can see your heart at
the bottom. Can I? Let me see.”

He leaned forward as if to look straight into her eyes. Mariposa
suddenly flushing and feeling uncomfortable, dropped them. The
sensation she so often experienced with Essex, of being awkward and
raw, was intensified now by the annoyed embarrassment provoked by the
florid gallantry of his words. But she was too inexperienced a little
fly to deal with this cunning spider, and tangled herself worse in the
web by saying nervously:

“And my nose! I haven’t got that kind of nose? Oh, surely not,” putting
up a gloved hand to feel of its unsatisfactoriness.

“You have the dearest little nose in the world, straight as a Greek
statue’s. It’s a little bit haughty, but I like it that way. And your
mouth,” he dropped his voice slightly, “your mouth--”

Mariposa made a sudden movement of annoyance. She threw up her head and
looked at the curtain with frowning brows.

“Don’t,” she said sharply, “I don’t like you to talk about me like
that.”

Essex was silent, regarding her profile with a deliberating eye and
a slight, amused smile. How crude she was and how handsome! After a
moment’s silence, he leaned toward her and said in a voice full of
good-humored banter:

“Butterfly! Butterfly! Why did they call you Butterfly?”

The change in his tone and manner put her back at once on the old
footing of gay bonhomie.

“In English, that way, it sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? Fancy me being
called Butterfly! I was called after the flower. My whole name is
Mariposa Lily.”

“Mariposa Lily!” he repeated in amused amazement; “what an absurd name!”

“Absurd!” said Mariposa indignantly. “I don’t see anything absurd
about it. I think it very pretty. My mother called me after the flower,
the first time she saw it. They couldn’t find a suitable name for me
for a long time, and then when she saw the flower she decided at once
to call me after it. It’s the most beautiful wild flower in California.”

“It’s fortunate you were not called Eschscholtzia,” said Essex, who
thought the name extremely ridiculous, and who found a somewhat mean
amusement in teasing the girl; “you might just as well have been called
Eschscholtzia Poppy.”

The spirited reply which was on Mariposa’s lips was stopped by the
rising of the curtain. The crowded, rustling house settled itself into
silence, the orchestra’s subdued notes rolled out with the voices
swelling above them into the listening auditorium.

The rest of the evening was an enchanted dream to her. She had never
seen an opera, and for the first time realized what it might mean to
possess a voice. She heard the house thunder its applause to Leonora,
and thought of herself as singing thus, standing alone on that dim
stage, looking out over the sea of faces, all listening, all staring,
all spellbound, hanging on the notes that fell, sweet and rich,
thrilling and passionate, from her lips. Could there ever be such a
life for her? Did they tell the truth when they spoke so admiringly
of her voice? Could she ever sing like this? A surge of exultant
conviction rose in her, and sent its whisper of hope and ambition to
her throbbing brain.

As the opera progressed she grew pale and motionless. The wild thought
was gaining possession of her, that she, Mariposa Moreau, with her
four pupils and her sixteen dollars a month, could sing as well as this
woman of European renown, for whom Essex, the critical, the vastly
experienced, had words of praise. Once or twice it seemed to her as
if the notes were swelling in her own throat, were pressing to burst
out and soar up, higher, fuller, richer than the woman’s on the stage.
Oh, the rapture of being able to pour out one’s voice, to give wild,
melodious expression to love or despair, while a thousand people hung
this way on one’s lips!

As the curtain fell for the third time she turned to Essex, pale and
large-eyed, and said breathlessly:

“I could sing as well as that woman if I had more lessons; I know I
could! I know it!”




CHAPTER V

TRIAL FLIGHTS

            “The music of the moon
  Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale.”

                                             --TENNYSON.


A week had not passed since the night at the opera when Mariposa
received a hasty letter from Mrs. Willers. It was only a few lines
scrawled on a piece of the yellow paper affected by the staff of _The
Trumpet_, and advising the recipient of the fact that Mr. Shackleton
requested her presence at his office at three the following afternoon,
yet a suggestion of triumph breathed from its every word. Mrs. Willers
was clearly elated at the moment of its production. She hinted, in
a closing sentence, that Mariposa’s star was rising rapidly. She,
herself, would conduct the girl to the presence of the great man, and
suggested that Mariposa meet her in her rooms a half-hour before the
time set for the interview.

Mariposa was glad to do this, and in the few moments’ walk across town
toward Third Street, to hear what Mrs. Willers thought was the object
of the interview. The girl’s cheeks were dyed with excited color as
they drew near _The Trumpet_ office. Mrs. Willers was certain it was
to do with her singing. Shackleton had almost told her as much. He had
been immensely impressed by her voice, and now, with the Lepine Opera
Company in the city, Mrs. Willers fancied he was going to have Lepine,
who was a well-known impresario in a small but respectable way, pass
judgment on it. Mariposa’s foot lagged when she heard this. It was such
a portentous step from the seclusion of a rose-draped cottage in Santa
Barbara, even to this talk of singing before a real impresario. She
looked down the vista of Third Street where the façade of _The Trumpet_
office loomed large from humbler neighbors, and Mrs. Willers saw
hesitation and fright in her eyes. Like a sensible guardian she slipped
her hand through the young girl’s arm and walked her briskly forward,
talking of the rare chances life offers to a handicapped humanity.

_The Trumpet_ office, as all old San Franciscans know, stood on
Third Street, and was, in its day, considered a fine building. Jake
Shackleton had not been its owner six months yet, and all his reforms
were not inaugurated. From the yawning arch of its doorway flights of
stairs led up and upward, from stories where the presses rattled all
night, to the editorial story where the sentiments of _The Trumpet_
staff were confided to paper. This latter and most important department
was four flights up the dark stairway, which was lit at its turnings
with large kerosene lamps, backed by tin reflectors. There was little
of the luxury of the modern newspaper office about the barren,
business-like building, echoing like an empty shell to the shouts of
men and the pounding of machinery.

At the top of the fourth flight the ladies paused. The landing
broadened out into a sort of anteroom, bare and windowless, two
dejected-looking gas-jets dispensing a tarnished yellow light into the
surrounding gloom. A boy, with a sleek, oiled head, sat at a table
reading that morning’s issue of _The Trumpet_. He put it down as Mrs.
Willers rose before his vision and nodded familiarly to her. She gave
him a quick word of greeting and swept Mariposa forward through a
doorway, down a long passage, from which doors opened into tiny rooms
with desks and droplights. The girl now and then had glimpses of men
seated at the desks, the radiance of the droplights hard on their faces
that had been lifted expectantly as their ears caught the interesting
rustle of skirts in the corridor.

Suddenly, at the end of the passage, Mrs. Willers struck with her
knuckles on a closed portal. The next moment Mariposa, with the light
of a large window shining full on her face, was shaking hands with
Shackleton. Then, in response to his motioning hand, she took the chair
beside the desk, where she sat, facing the white glare of the window,
conscious of his keen eyes critically regarding her. Mrs. Willers
took a chair in the background. For a moment she had fears that the
nervousness she had noticed in her protégée’s countenance on the way
down would make her commit some _bêtise_ that would antagonize the
interest Shackleton so evidently took in her. Mrs. Willers had seen
her chief’s brusk impatience roused by follies more excusable than
those that rise from a young girl’s nervous shyness and that would be
incomprehensible to his hardy, self-confident nature.

But Mariposa seemed encouragingly composed. She again felt the
curious sense of ease, of being at home with him, that this unknown
man had given her before. She had that inspiring sensation that
she was approved; that this old-time friend of her father’s had a
singular unspoken sympathy with her. “As if he might have been an old
friend,” she told her mother after the first meeting, “or some kind of
relation--one of those uncles that come back from India in the English
novels.”

Now only her fluctuating color told of the inward tumult that possessed
her as he told her concisely, but kindly, that he had arranged for her
to sing before Lepine, the manager of the opera, at two o’clock on the
following day. Several people of experience had told him Lepine was an
excellent judge. They would then hear an expert’s opinion on her voice.

“I think it’s the finest kind of voice,” he said, smiling, “but you
know my opinion’s worth more on ores than on voices. So we won’t soar
too high till we hear what the fellow whose business it is, has to say.
Then, if he’s satisfied”--he gave a little shrug--“we’ll see.”

The interview was brought to an end in a few moments. It seemed to
Mariposa that the scenes which Mrs. Willers assured her were so big
with promise were incredibly short for moments so fraught with destiny.
She seemed hardly to have caught her breath yet from the ascent of the
four flights of stairs, when they were once again walking down the
corridor, with the writing men looking up with pricked ears at the
returning rustle of skirts. It was Mrs. Willers who had wafted her away
so quickly.

“Never beat about the bush where you deal with Jake Shackleton,” she
said, slipping her hand in Mariposa’s arm as they passed down the
corridor. “He’s got no use for people who gambol round the subject. Say
your say and then go. That’s the way to get on with him.”

In the anteroom the boy was still sitting, his chair tilted back on
its hind legs, _The Trumpet_ in his hands. Nevertheless, he had made
an incursion into the inner regions to find out whom Mrs. Willers was
piloting into the sanctum, for he had the curiosity of those who hang
on the fringes of the newspaper world.

As the ladies passed him, going toward the stair-head, a young man
rose above it, almost colliding with them. Then in the gloom of the
dejected gas-jets he stood aside, against the wall, letting them pass
out. He wore a long ulster with a turned-up collar. Between the edge
of this and the brim of his derby hat, there was the gleam of a pair
of eye-glasses and a suggestion of a fair mustache. He raised his
hat, holding it above his head during the interval of their transit,
disclosing a small pate clothed with smooth blond hair.

“Who was that lady with Mrs. Willers?” he said to the boy, as he walked
toward the door into the corridor.

“She’s some singing lady,” answered that youth drawlingly, tilting his
chair still farther back, “what’s come to see Mr. Shackleton about
singing at the opera-house. Her name’s Moreau.”

The young man, without further comment, passed into the inner hall,
leaving the boy smiling with pride that his carelessly-acquired
information should have been so soon of use. For the questioner was
Winslow Shackleton, the millionaire’s only son.

The next morning was one of feverish excitement in the cottage on Pine
Street. Mariposa could not settle herself to anything, at one moment
trying her voice at the piano, at the next standing in front of her
glass and putting on all her own and her mother’s hats in an effort to
see in which she presented the most attractive appearance. She thrilled
with hope for a space, then sank into a dead apathy of dejection.
Lucy was quietly encouraging, but the day was one of hidden anguish
to her. The daughter, ignorant of the knowledge and the memories that
were wringing the mother’s heart, wondered why Lucy was so confident
of her winning Shackleton’s approval. As the hour came for her to go
she wondered, too, at the marble pallor of her mother’s face, at the
coldness of the hand that clung to hers in a lingering farewell. Lucy
was giving back her child to the father who had deserted it and her.

The excitement of the morning reached its climax when a carriage
appeared at the curb with Mrs. Willers’ face at the window. The hour of
fate had struck, and Mariposa, with a last kiss to her mother, ran down
the steps feeling like one about to embark on a journey upon perilous
seas in which lie enchanted islands.

During the drive Mrs. Willers talked on outside matters. She was
business-like and quiet to-day. Even her clothes seemed to partake of
her practical mood and were inconspicuous and subdued. As the carriage
turned down Mission Street she herself began to experience qualms.
What if they had all been mistaken and the girl’s voice was nothing
out of the ordinary? What a cruel disappointment, and with that sick,
helpless mother! What she said was:

“Now, here we are! Remember that you’ve got the finest voice Lepine’s
ever likely to hear, and you’re going to sing your best.”

They alighted, and as they turned into the flagged entrance that led
to the foyer, Shackleton came forward to meet them. He looked older
in the crude afternoon light, his face showing the lines that his
fiercely-lived life had plowed in it. But he smiled reassuringly at
Mariposa and pressed her hand.

“Everything’s all ready,” he said; “Lepine’s put back a rehearsal for
us, so we mustn’t keep him waiting. And are you all ready to surprise
us?” he asked, as they walked together toward where the three steps led
to the foyer.

“I’m ready to do my best,” she answered; “a person can’t do more than
that.”

The answer pleased him, as everything she said did. He saw she was
nervous, but that she was going to conquer herself.

“Lots of grit,” he said to himself as he gave ear to a remark of Mrs.
Willers’. “She won’t quit at the first obstacle.”

They passed through the opening in the brass rail that led to the
foyer. This space, the gathering place of the radiant beings of
Mariposa’s first night at the opera, was now a dimly-lit and deserted
hall, its flagged flooring looking dirty in the raw light. From
somewhere, in what seemed a far, dreamy distance, the sound of a piano
came, as if muffled by numerous doors. As they crossed the foyer toward
the entrance into the auditorium, the door swung open and two men
appeared.

One was a short and stout Frenchman, with a turned-over collar, upon
which a double chin rested. He had a bald forehead and eyes that
gleamed sharply from behind a _pince-nez_. At sight of the trio, he
gave an exclamation and came forward.

“Our young lady?” he said to Mariposa, giving her a quick look of
scrutiny that seemed to take her in from foot to forehead. Then he
greeted Shackleton with slightly exaggerated foreign effusion. He spoke
English perfectly, but with the inevitable accent. This was Lepine, the
impresario, and the other man, an Italian who spoke little English, was
presented as Signor Tojetti, the conductor.

They moved forward talking, and then, pushing the door open, Lepine
motioned Mariposa to enter. She did so and for a moment stood amazed,
staring into a vast, shadowy space, where, in what seemed a vague,
undefined distance, a tiny spot or two of light cut into the darkness.
The air was chill and smelt of a stable. From somewhere she heard
the sound of voices rising and falling, and then again the notes of
a piano, now near and unobscured, carelessly touched and resembling,
in the echoing hollow spaciousness of the great building, the thin,
tinkling sounds emitted by smitten glass.

Lepine brushed past her and led the way down the aisle. As she followed
him her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, and she began to make
out the arch of the stage with blackness beyond, into which cut the
circles of light of a few gas-jets. The lines of seats stretched
before her spectral in linen covers. Now and then a figure crossed
the stage, and as they drew nearer, she saw on one side of it a man
sitting on a high stool reading a paper book by the light of a shaded
lamp. The notes of the piano sounded sharper and closer, and by their
proximity more than by her sight, she located it in a dark corner of the
orchestra. As they approached, the sound of two voices came from this
corner, then suddenly a man’s smothered laugh.

“Mr. Martinez,” said Lepine, directing his voice toward the darkness
whence the laugh had risen, “the lady is here to sing, if you are
ready.”

Instantly a faintly luminous spark, Mariposa had noticed, bloomed
into the full-blown radiance of a gas-jet turned full cock under a
sheltering shade. It projected, what seemed in the dimness, a torrent
of light on the keyboard of the piano, illuminating a pair of long
masculine hands that had been moving over the keys in the darkness.
Behind them the girl saw a shadowy shape, and then a spectacled face
under a mane of drooping black hair was advanced into the light.

“Has the lady her music?” said the face, in English, but with another
variety of accent.

She handed him the two songs she had brought, “Knowest thou the
Land,” from Mignon, and “Farewell, Lochaber.” In the short period of
her tuition her teacher had told her that she had sung “Lochaber”
admirably. The man opened them, glanced at the names, and placing the
“Mignon” aria on the rack, ran his hands lightly and carelessly over
the keys in the opening bars of the accompaniment.

“Whenever the lady is ready,” he said, with an air of patience, as
though he had endured this form of persecution until all spirit of
revolt was crushed.

Mariposa drew back from him, wondering if she were to sing there and
then. Lepine was behind her, and behind him she saw, with a sense of
nostalgic loneliness, that the Italian conductor was shepherding Mrs.
Willers and Shackleton into two seats on the aisle. They looked small
and far away.

“We will mount to the stage this way, Mademoiselle,” said Lepine, and
he indicated a small flight of steps that rose from the corner of the
orchestra to the lip of the stage above.

He ascended first, she close at his heels, and in a moment found
herself on the dark, deserted stage. It seemed enormous to her,
stretching back into unseen regions where the half-defined shapes of
trees and castles, walls and benches were huddled in dim confusion.
Down the aisles between side-scenes she caught glimpses of vistas lit
by wavering gleams of light. People moved here and there, across these
vistas, their footsteps sounding singularly distinct. As she stood
uneasily, looking to the right and left, a sudden sound of hammering
arose from somewhere behind, loud and vibrant. Lepine, who was about to
descend the stairs, turned and shouted a furious sentence in Italian
down the opening. The hammering instantly ceased, and a man in white
overalls came and stared at the stage. The impresario, charily--being
short and fat--descended the stairs.

“Now, Mademoiselle,” he said, speaking from the orchestra, “if you are
ready, come forward a little, nearer the footlights there.”

Mariposa moved forward. Her heart was beating in her throat, and she
felt a sick terror at the thought of what her voice would be like
in that huge void space. She was aware that the man who had been
reading the paper book had closed it and was leaning his elbow on the
lamp-stand, watching her. She was also aware that a woman and a man had
suddenly appeared in the lower proscenium box close beside her. She
saw the woman dimly, a fat, short figure in a light-colored ulster.
Whispering to the man, she drew one of the linen-covered chairs close
to the railing and seated herself.

“Is the lady ready?” said the pianist, from his dark corner.

“Quite ready,” replied Mariposa, hearing her voice like a tremulous
thread of sound in the stillness.

The first bars of the accompaniment sounded thinly. Mariposa stepped
forward. She could see in the shadowy emptiness of the auditorium
Lepine’s bald head where he sat alone, half-way up the house, and the
two pale faces of Shackleton and Mrs. Willers. The Italian conductor
had left them and was sitting by himself at one side of the parquet.
In the stillness, the notes of the piano were curiously tinkling and
feeble.

Mariposa raised her chest with a deep inspiration. A sudden excited
expectation seized her at the thought of letting her voice swell out
into the hushed void before her. The listening people seemed so small
and insignificant in it, they suddenly lost their terror. She began to
sing.

It seemed to her that her first notes were hardly audible. They seemed
as ineffectual as the piano. Then her confidence grew, and delight
with it. She never before had felt as if she had enough room. Her
voice rolled itself out like a breaking wave, lapping the walls of the
building.

The first verse came to an end. The accompaniment ceased. Lepine moved
in his distant seat.

“Continue, Mademoiselle,” he said sharply; “the second verse, if you
please. Again, Mr. Martinez.”

Mariposa saw the woman in the box look at the man beside her, raise her
eyebrows, and nod.

She began the second verse and sang it through. As its last notes
died out there was silence for a moment. In the silence the Italian
conductor rose and came forward to where Lepine sat. Mariposa, standing
on the stage, saw them conferring for a space. The Italian talked in a
low voice, with much gesticulation. Shackleton and Mrs. Willers were
motionless and dumb. The woman in the box began to whisper with the man.

“And now the second piece, if Mademoiselle has no objection,” came the
voice of the impresario across the parquet. “One can not judge well
from one song.”

The second song, “Lochaber,” had been chosen by Mariposa’s teacher to
show off her lower register--those curious, disturbing notes that were
so deep and full of vague melancholy. She had gained such control as
she had over her voice and sang with an almost joyous exultation. She
had never realized what it was to sing before people who knew and who
listened in this way in a place that was large enough.

When the last notes died away, the tinkling of the piano sounding like
the frail specters of music gafte the tones of the rich, vibrant voice,
there was a sudden noise of clapping hands. It came from the box on
the right, where the woman in the ulster was leaning over the rail,
clapping with her bare hands held far out.

“_Brava!_” she cried in a loud, full voice. “_Brava! La belle voix! Et
quel volume! Brava!_”

She bounced round on her chair to look at the man beside her, and,
leaning forward, clapped again, crying her gay “brava.”

Mariposa walked toward the box, feeling suddenly shy. As she drew
nearer she saw the woman’s face more distinctly. It was a dark French
face, with a brunette skin warming to brick-dust red on the cheeks, set
in a frame of wiry black hair, and with a big mouth that, laughing,
showed strong white teeth, well separated. As Mariposa saw it fairly in
the light of an adjacent lamp she recognized it as that of the Leonora
of “Il Trovatore.” It was the prima donna.

She started forward with flushing cheek and held out a hesitating hand.
The fat, ungloved palms of the singer closed on it with Gælic effusion.
Mariposa was aware of something delightfully wholesome and kind in the
broad, ruddy visage, with its big, smiling mouth and the firm teeth
like the halves of cleanly-broken hazelnuts. The singer, leaning over
the rail, poured a rumbling volume of French into the girl’s blushing,
upturned face. Mariposa understood it and was trying to answer in her
halting schoolgirl phrases, when the voice of Mrs. Willers, at the
bottom of the steps, summoned her.

“Come down, quick! They think it’s fine. Oh, dearie,” stretching up
a helping hand as Mariposa swept her skirts over the line of the
footlights, “you did fine. It was great. You’ve just outdone yourself.
And you looked stunning, too. I only wished the place had been full.
Heavens! but I thought I’d die at first. While you were standing there
waiting to begin I felt seasick. It was an awful moment. And you looked
just as cool! Mr. Shackleton don’t say much, but I know he’s tickled to
death.”

They walked up the aisle as she talked to where Shackleton and the two
men were standing in earnest conversation. As they approached Lepine
turned toward her and gave a slight smile.

“We were saying, Mademoiselle,” he said, “that you have unquestionably
a voice. The lower register is remarkably fine. Of course, it is very
untrained; absolutely in the rough. But Signor Tojetti, here, finds
that a strong point in your favor.”

“Signor Tojetti,” said Shackleton, “seems to think that two years of
study would be ample to fit you for the operatic stage.”

Mariposa looked from one to the other with beaming eyes, hardly able to
believe it all.

“You really did like it, then?” she said to Lepine with her most
ingenuous air.

He shrugged his shoulders, with a queer French expression of quizzical
amusement.

“It was a truly interesting performance, and after a period of study
with a good master it should be a truly delightful one.”

The Italian, to whom these sentences were only half intelligible, now
broke in with a quick series of sonorous phrases, directed to Lepine,
but now and then turned upon Shackleton. Mariposa’s eyes went from one
to the other in an effort to understand. The impresario, listening
with frowning intentness, responded with a nod and a word of brusk
acquiescence. Turning to Shackleton, he said:

“Tojetti also thinks that the appearance of Mademoiselle is much in her
favor. She has an admirable stage presence”--he looked at Mariposa as
if she were a piece of furniture he was appraising. “Her height alone
is of inestimable value. She would have at least five feet eight or
nine inches.”

At this moment the lady in the box, who had risen to her feet, and was
leaning against the railing, called suddenly:

“_Lepine, vraiment une belle voix, et aussi une belle fille! Vous avez
fait une trouvaille._”

Lepine wheeled round to his star, who in the shadowy light stood, a
pale-colored, burly figure, buttoning her ulster over her redundant
chest.

“A moment,” he said, apologetically to the others, and, running to the
box, stood with his head back, talking to her, while the prima donna
leaned over and a rapid interchange of French sentences passed between
them.

Signor Tojetti turned to Mariposa, and, with solemn effort, produced an
English phrase:

“Eet ees time to went.” Then he waved his hand toward the stage. The
sound of feet echoed therefrom, and as Mariposa looked, an irruption
of vague, spectral shapes rose from some unseen cavernous entrance and
peopled the orchestra.

“It’s the rehearsal,” she said. “We must be going.”

They moved forward toward the entrance, the auditorium behind them
beginning to resound with the noise of the incoming performers. A
scraping of strings came from the darkened orchestra, and mingled with
the tentative chords struck from the piano. At the door Lepine joined
them, falling into step beside Shackleton and conversing with him in
low tones. Signor Tojetti escorted them to the brass rail and there
withdrew with low bows. The ladies made out that the rehearsal demanded
his presence.

Once again in the gray light of the afternoon they stood for a moment
at the curb waiting for the carriage.

Lepine offered his farewells to Mariposa and his wishes to see her
again.

“In Paris,” he said, giving his little quizzical smile--“that is the
place in which I should like to see Mademoiselle.”

“We’ll talk about that again,” said Shackleton; “I’m going to see Mr.
Lepine before he goes and have another talk about you. You see, you’re
becoming a very important young lady.”

The carriage rolled up and Mariposa was assisted in, several street
boys watching her with wide-eyed interest as evidently a personage of
distinction.

Her face at the window smiled a radiant farewell at the group on the
sidewalk; then she sank back breathless. What an afternoon! Would the
carriage ever get her home, that she might pour it all out to her
mother! What a thrilling, wonderful, unheard-of afternoon!




CHAPTER VI

THE VISION AND THE DREAM

  “For a dream cometh through the multitude of business.”

                                                --ECCLESIASTES.


As the carriage turned the corner into Third Street, Shackleton and
Mrs. Willers, bidding their adieux to Lepine, started toward _The
Trumpet_ office. The building was not ten minutes’ walk away, and both
the proprietor and the woman reporter had work there that called them.

In their different ways each was exceedingly elated. The man, with
his hard, bearded face, the upper half shaded by the brim of his soft
felt hat, gave no evidence in appearance or manner of the exultation
that possessed him. But the woman, with her more febrile and less
self-contained nature, showed her excited gratification in her reddened
cheeks and the sparkling animation of her tired eyes. Her state of
joyous triumph was witnessed even in her walk, in the way she swished
her skirts over the pavements, in the something youthful and buoyant
that had crept into the tones of her voice.

“Well,” she said, “that _was_ an experience worth having! I never heard
her sing so before. She just outdid herself.”

“She certainly seemed to me to sing well. I was doubtful at the
beginning, not knowing any more about singing than I do about Sanskrit,
as to whether she really had as fine a voice as we thought. But there
don’t seem to me to be any doubt about it now.”

“Lepine is quite certain, is he?” queried Mrs. Willers, who had tried
to listen to the conversation between her chief and the impresario on
the way out, but had been foiled by Mariposa’s excited chatter.

“He says that she has an unusually fine voice, which, with proper
training, would, as far as they can say now, be perfectly suitable
for grand opera. It’s what they call a dramatic mezzo-soprano, with
something particularly good about the lower notes. Lepine is to see me
again before he goes.”

“Did he suggest what she ought to do?”

“Yes; he spoke of Paris as the best place to send her. He knows some
famous teacher there that he says is the proper person for her to study
with. He seemed to think that two years of study would be sufficient
for her. She’d be ready to make her appearance in grand opera after
that time.”

“Good heavens!” breathed Mrs. Willers in a transport of pious triumph,
“just think of it! And now up in that cottage on Pine Street getting
fifty cents a lesson, and with only four pupils.”

“In two years,” said Shackleton, who was speaking more to himself than
to her, “she’ll be twenty-seven years old--just in her prime.”

“She’ll be twenty-six,” corrected Mrs. Willers; “she’s only twenty-four
now.”

He raised his brows with a little air of amused apology.

“Twenty-four, is it?” he said. “Well, that’s all the better. Twenty-six
is one year better than twenty-seven.”

“It’ll be like the ‘Innocents Abroad’ to see her and her mother
in Paris,” said Mrs. Willers. “They’re just two of the most
unsophisticated females that ever strayed out of the golden age.”

The man vouchsafed no answer to this remark for a moment; then he said:

“The mother’s health is very delicate? She’s quite an invalid, you say?”

“Quite. But she’s one of the sweetest, most uncomplaining women you
ever laid eyes on. You’d understand the daughter better if you knew the
mother. She’s so gentle and girlish. And then they’ve lived round in
such a sort of quiet, secluded way. It’s funny to me because they had
plenty of money when Mr. Moreau was alive. But they never seemed to go
into society, or know many people; they just seemed enough for each
other, especially when the father was with them. They simply adored
him, and he must have been a fine man. They--”

“Is Mrs. Moreau’s state of health too bad to allow her to travel?” said
Shackleton, interrupting suddenly and rudely.

Mrs. Willers colored slightly. She knew her chief well enough to
realize that his tone indicated annoyance. Why did he so dislike to
hear anything about the late Dan Moreau?

“As to that I don’t know,” she said. “She’s so much of an invalid that
she rarely goes out. But with good care she might be able to take a
journey and benefit by it. A sea trip sometimes cures people.”

“Miss Moreau couldn’t, and, I have no doubt, wouldn’t leave her. It’ll
therefore be necessary for the mother to go to Paris with the girl, and
if she is so complete and helpless an invalid she’ll certainly be of no
assistance to her daughter--only a care.”

“She’d undoubtedly be a care. But a person couldn’t separate those
two. They’re wrapped up in each other. It’s a pity you don’t know Mrs.
Moreau, Mr. Shackleton.”

For the second time that afternoon Mrs. Willers was conscious that
words she had intended to be gently ingratiating had given mysterious
offense to her employer. Now he said, with more than an edge of
sharpness to his words:

“I’ve no doubt it’s a pity, Mrs. Willers. But there are so many things
and people it’s a pity I don’t know, that if I came to think it over
I’d probably fall into a state of melancholia. Also, let me assure you,
that I haven’t the least intention of trying to separate Mrs. Moreau
and her daughter. What I’m just now bothered about is the fact that
this lady is hardly of sufficient worldly experience, and certainly has
not sufficient strength to take care of the girl in a strange country.”

“Well, no,” said Mrs. Willers with slow reluctance, “it would be the
other way round, the girl would be taking care of her.”

“That’s exactly what I thought. The only way out of it will be to send
some one with them. A woman who could take care of them both, chaperone
the daughter and look after the mother.”

There was a silence. Mrs. Willers began to understand why Mr.
Shackleton had walked down to _The Trumpet_ office with her. The walk
was over, for they were at the office door, and the conversation had
reached the point to which he had evidently intended to bring it before
they parted.

As they turned into the arched doorway and began the ascent of the
stairs, Mrs. Willers replied:

“I think that would be a very good idea, Mr. Shackleton. That is, if
you can find the right woman.”

“Oh, I’ve got her now,” he answered, giving her a quick, side-long
glance. “I think it would be a good arrangement for all parties. _The
Trumpet_ wants a Paris correspondent.”

The door leading into the press-rooms opened off the landing they had
reached, and he turned into this with a word of farewell, and a hand
lifted to his hat brim. Mrs. Willers continued the ascent alone. As she
mounted upward she said to herself:

“The best thing for me to do is to get a French phrase book on the way
home this evening, and begin studying: ‘Have you the green pantaloons
of the miller’s mother?’”

The elation of his mood was still with Shackleton when, two hours
later, he alighted from the carriage at the steps of his country
house. He went upstairs to his own rooms with a buoyant tread. In his
library, with the windows thrown open to the soft, scented air, he sat
smoking and thinking. The October dusk was closing in, when he heard
the wheels of a carriage on the drive and the sound of voices. His
women-folk with the second of the Thurston girls--the one guest the
house now contained--were returning from the afternoon round of visits
that was the main diversion of their life during the summer months, and
swept the country houses from Redwood City to Menlo Park.

It was a small dinner table that evening. Winslow had stayed in town
over night, and Shackleton sat at the head of a shrunken board, with
Bessie opposite him, his daughter to the left, and Pussy Thurston on
his right. Pussy was Maud’s best friend and was one of the beauties of
San Francisco. To-night she looked especially pretty in a pale green
crape dress, with green leaves in her fair hair. Her skin was of a
shell-like purity of pink and white, her face was small, with regular
features and a sweet, childish smile.

She and her sister were the only children of the famous Judge
Beauregard Thurston, in his day one of those brilliant lawyers who
brought glory to the California bar. He had made a fortune, lived
on it recklessly and magnificently, and died leaving his daughters
almost penniless. He had been in the heyday of his splendor when Jake
Shackleton, just struggling into the public eye, had come to San
Francisco, and the proud Southerner had not scrupled to treat the raw
mining man with careless scorn. Shackleton evened the score before
Thurston’s death, and he still soothed his wounded pride with the
thought that the two daughters of the man who had once despised him
were largely dependent on his wife’s charity. Bessie took them to balls
and parties, dressed them, almost fed them. The very green crape gown
in which Pussy looked so pretty to-night had been included in Maud’s
bill at a fashionable dressmaker’s.

Personally he liked Pussy, whose beauty and winning manners lent a
luster to his house. Once or twice to-night she caught him looking
at her with a cold, debating glance in which there was little of the
admiration she was accustomed to receiving since the days of her first
long dress.

He was in truth regarding her critically for the first time, for the
Bonanza King was a man on whom the beauty of women cast no spell.
He was comparing her with another and a more regally handsome girl.
Pussy Thurston would look insipid and insignificant before the stately
splendor of his own daughter.

He smiled as he realized Mariposa’s superiority. The young girl saw the
smile, and said with the privileged coquetry of a maid who all her life
has known herself favored above her fellows:

“Why are you smiling all to yourself, Mr. Shackleton? Can’t we know if
it is something pleasant?”

“I was looking at something pretty,” he answered, his eyes full of
amusement as they rested on her charming face. “That generally makes
people smile.”

She was so used to such remarks that her rose-leaf color did not vary
the fraction of a shade. Maud, to whom no one ever paid compliments,
looked at her with wistful admiration.

“Is that all?” she said with an air of disappointment. “I hoped it was
something that would make us all smile.”

“Well, I have an idea that may make you all smile”--he turned to his
wife--“how would you like to go to Europe next spring, Bessie?”

Mrs. Shackleton looked surprised and not greatly elated. On their last
trip to Europe, two years before, her husband had been so bored by the
joys of foreign travel that she had made up her mind she would never
ask him to go again. Now she said:

“But you don’t want to go to Europe. You said last time you hated it.”

“Did I? Yes, I guess I did. Well, I’m prepared to like it this time.
We could take a spin over in the spring to London and Paris. We’d make
quite a stay in Paris, and you women could buy clothes. You’d come,
too, Pussy, wouldn’t you?” he said, turning to the girl.

Her color rose now and her eyes sparkled. She had never been even to
New York.

“Wouldn’t I?” she said. “That _does_ make me smile.”

“I thought so,” he answered good-humoredly--“and Maud, you’d like it,
of course?”

Maud did not like the thought of going at all. In this little party of
four, two were moved in their actions by secret predilections of which
the others were ignorant. Maud thought of leaving her love affair at
the critical point it had reached, and, with anguish at her heart,
looked heavily indifferent.

“I don’t know,” she said, crumbling her bread, “I don’t think it’s such
fun in Europe. You just travel round in little stuffy trains, and have
to live in hotels without baths.”

“Well, you and I, Pussy,” said Shackleton, “seem to be the only two
who’ve got any enthusiasm. You’ll have to try and put some into Maud,
and if the worst comes to the worst we can kidnap the old lady.”

He was in an unusually good temper, and the dinner was animated and
merry. Only Maud, after the European suggestion, grew more stolidly
quiet than ever. But she cheered herself by the thought that the spring
was six months off yet, and who could tell what might happen in six
months?

After dinner the ladies repaired to the music room, and Shackleton,
following a custom of his, passed through one of the long windows into
the garden, there to pace up and down while he smoked his cigar.

The night was warm and odorous with the scent of hidden blossoms. Now
and then his foot crunched the gravel of a path, as his walk took him
back and forth over the long stretch of lawn broken by flower-beds and
narrow walks. The great bulk of the house, its black mass illumined by
congeries of lit windows, showed an inky, irregular outline against the
star-strewn sky.

Presently the sound of a piano floated out from the music room. The
man stopped his pacing, listened for an instant, and then passed round
to the side of the house. The French windows of the music room were
opened, throwing elongated squares of light over the balcony and the
grass beyond. He paused in the darkness and looked through one of them.
There, like a painting framed by the window casing, was Pussy Thurston
seated at the piano singing, while Maud sat near by listening. One of
Miss Thurston’s most admired social graces was the gift of song. She
had a small agreeable voice, and had been well taught; but the light,
frail tones sounded thin in the wide silence of the night. It was the
feebly pretty performance of the “accomplished young lady.”

Shackleton listened with a slight smile that increased as the song drew
to a close. As it ceased he moved away, the red light of his cigar
coming and going in the darkness.

“Singing!” he said to himself, “they call that singing! Wait till they
hear my daughter!”




CHAPTER VII

THE REVELATION

        “Praised be the fathomless universe
      For life and for joy and for objects and knowledge curious,
    And for love, sweet love--but praise, praise, praise,
  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death,
      The night in silence under many a star,
    The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I hear,
  And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled Death,
      And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.”

                                                              --WHITMAN.


From the day when Mrs. Willers had appeared with the news of
Shackleton’s interest in her daughter, Lucy’s health had steadily
waned. The process of decay was so quiet, albeit so sure and swift,
that Mariposa, accustomed to the ups and downs of her mother’s invalid
condition, was unaware that the elder woman’s sands were almost run.
The pale intensity, the coldness of the hand gripped round hers, that
had greeted her account of the recital at the Opera-House, seemed to
the girl only the reflection of her own eager exultation. She was
blind, not only from ignorance, but from the egotistic preoccupations
of her youth. It seemed impossible to think of her mother’s failing in
her loving response, now that the sun was rising on their dark horizon.

But Lucy knew that she was dying. Her feeble body had received its
_coup de grâce_ on the day that Mrs. Willers brought the news of
Shackleton’s wish to see his child. Since then she had spent long hours
in thought. When her mind was clear enough she had pondered on the
situation trying to see what was best to do for Mariposa’s welfare. The
problem that faced her terrified her. The dying woman was having the
last struggle with herself.

One week after the recital at the Opera-House she had grown so
much worse that Mariposa had called in the doctor they had had in
attendance, off and on, since their arrival. He was grave and there was
a consultation. When she saw their faces the cold dread that had been
slowly growing in the girl’s heart seemed suddenly to expand and chill
her whole being. Mrs. Moreau was undoubtedly very ill, though there was
still hope. Yet their looks were sober and pitying as they listened to
the daughter’s reiterated asseverations that her mother had often been
worse and made a successful rally.

An atmosphere of illness settled down like a fog on the little
cottage. A nurse appeared; the doctors seemed to be in the house many
times a day. Mrs. Willers, as soon as she heard, came up, no longer
over-dressed and foolish, but grave and helpful. After a half-hour
spent at Lucy’s bedside, wherein the sick woman had spoken little,
and then only about her daughter, Mrs. Willers had gone to the office
of _The Trumpet_, frowning in her sympathetic pain. It was Saturday,
and Shackleton had already left for Menlo Park when she reached the
office. But she determined to see him early on Monday and tell him of
the straits of his old friend’s widow and child. Mrs. Willers knew the
signs of the scarcity of money, and knew also the overwhelming expenses
of sickness. What she did not know was that on Friday morning Mariposa
had wept over her check-book, and then gone out and sold the diamond
brooch.

The long Sunday--the interminable day of strained anxiety--passed,
shrouded in rain. When her mother fell into the light sleep that now
marked her condition, Mariposa mechanically went to the window of the
bedroom and looked out. It was one of those blinding rains that usher
in the San Francisco winter, the water falling in straight lances
that show against the light like thin tubes of glass, and strike the
pavement with a vicious impact, which splinters them into spray. It
drummed on the tin roof above the bedroom with an incessant hollow
sound, and ran in a torn ribbon of water from the gutter on the eaves.

The prospect that the window commanded seemed in dreariness to match
the girl’s thoughts. That part of Pine Street was still in the
unfinished condition described by the words “far out.” Vacant lots
yawned between the houses; the badly paved roadbed was an expanse of
deeply rutted mud, with yellow ponds of rain at the sewer mouths. The
broken wooden sidewalk gleamed with moisture and was evenly striped
with lines of vivid green where the grass sprouted between the boards.
Now and then a wayfarer hurried by, crouched under the dome of an
umbrella spouting water from every rib.

The gray twilight settled early, and Mariposa, dropping the curtain,
turned to the room behind her. The light of a small fire and a shaded
lamp sent a softened glow over the apartment, which, despite its
poverty, bespoke the taste of gentlewomen in the simple prettiness of
its furnishings. The nurse, a middle-aged woman of a kindly and capable
aspect, sat by the fire in a wicker rocking-chair, reading a paper.
Beside her, on a table, stood the sick-room paraphernalia of glasses
and bottles. The regular creak of the rocking-chair, and an occasional
snap from the fire, were the only sounds that punctuated the steady
drumming of the rain on the tin roof.

A Japanese screen was half-way about the bed, shutting it from the
drafts of the door, and in its shelter Lucy lay sleeping her light,
breathless sleep. In this shaded light, in the relaxed attitude of
unconsciousness, she presented the appearance of a young girl hardly
older than her daughter. Yet the hand of death was plainly on her, as
even Mariposa could now see.

Without sound the girl passed from the room to her own beyond. Her
grief had seized her, and the truth, fought against with the desperate
inexperience of youth, forced itself on her. She threw herself on her
bed and lay there battling with the sickness of despair that such
knowledge brings. Twilight faded and darkness came. In answer to the
servant’s tap on the door, and announcement of dinner, she called
back that she desired none. The room was as dark about her as her own
thoughts. From the door that led into the sick chamber, only partly
closed, a shaft of light cut the blackness, and on this light she
fastened her eyes, swollen with tears, feeling herself stupefied with
sorrow.

As she lay thus on the bed, she heard the creaking of the wicker-chair
as the nurse arose, then came the clink of the spoon and the glass, and
the woman’s low voice, and then her mother’s, stronger and clearer than
it had been for some days. There was an interchange of remarks between
nurse and patient, the sound of careful steps, and the crack of light
suddenly expanded as the door was opened. Against this background,
clear and smoothly yellow as gold leaf, the nurse’s figure was revealed
in sharp silhouette.

“Are you there, Miss Moreau?” she said in a low voice. Mariposa started
with a hurried reply.

“Well, your mother wants to see you and you’d better come. Her mind
seems much clearer and it may not be so again.”

The girl rose from the bed trying to compose her face. In the light of
the open door the woman saw its distress and looked at her pityingly.

“Don’t tire her,” she said, “but I advise you to say all you have to
say. She may not be this way again.”

Mariposa crossed the room to the bed. Her mother was lying on her side,
pinched, pale and with darkly circled eyes.

“Have you just waked up, darling?” said the girl, tenderly.

“No,” she answered, with a curious lack of response in manner and tone;
“I have been awake some time. I was thinking.”

“Why didn’t you send Mrs. Brown for me? I was in my room passing the
time till you woke up.”

“I was thinking and I wanted to finish. I have been thinking a long
time, days and weeks.”

Mariposa thought her mind was wandering, and sitting down on a chair
by the bedside, took her hand and pressed it gently without speaking.
Her mother lay in the same attitude, her profile toward her, her eyes
looking vacantly at the screen. Suddenly she said:

“You know my old desk, the little rose-wood one Dan gave me? Take my
keys and open it, and in the bottom you’ll see two envelopes, with no
writing. One looks dirty and old. Bring them to me here.”

Mariposa rose wondering, and looking anxiously at her mother. The elder
woman saw the look, and said weakly and almost peevishly:

“Go; be quick. I am not strong enough to talk long. The keys are in the
work-box.”

The girl obeyed as quickly as possible. The desk was a small one
resting on the center-table. It had been a present of her father’s to
her mother, and she remembered it from her earliest childhood in a
prominent position in her mother’s room. She opened it, and in a few
moments, under old letters, memoranda and souvenirs, found the two
envelopes. Carrying them to the bed she gave them to her mother.

Lucy took them with an unsteady hand, and for a moment lay staring at
her daughter and not moving. Then she said:

“Put the pillows under my head. It’s easier to breathe when I’m
higher,” and as Mariposa arranged them, she added, in a lower voice:
“And tell Mrs. Brown to go; I want to be alone with you.”

Mariposa looked out beyond the screen, and seeing the nurse still
reading the paper, told her to go to the kitchen and get her dinner.
The woman rose with alacrity, and asking Mariposa to call her if the
invalid showed signs of fatigue, or any change, left the room.

The girl turned back to the bedside and took the chair. Lucy had taken
from the dirty envelope a worn and faded paper, which she slowly
unfolded. As she did so, she looked at her daughter with sunken eyes
and said:

“These are my marriage certificates.”

Mariposa, again thinking that her mind was wandering, tried to smile,
and answered gently:

“Your marriage certificate, dear. You were only married once.”

“I was married twice,” said Lucy, and handed the girl the two papers.

Still supposing her mother slightly delirious, the daughter took the
papers and looked at them. The one her eye first fell on was that of
the original marriage. She read the names without at first realizing
whose they were. Then the significance of the “Lucy Fraser” came upon
her. Her glance leaped to the second paper, and at the first sweep
of her eyes over it she saw it was the marriage certificate of her
father and mother, Daniel Moreau and Lucy Fraser, dated at Placerville
twenty-five years before. She turned back to the other paper, now more
than bewildered. She held it near her face, as though it were difficult
to read, and in the dead silence of the room it began to rustle with
the trembling of her hand. A fear of something hideous and overwhelming
seized her. With pale lips she read the names, and the date, antedating
by five years the other certificate.

“Mother!” she cried, in a wild voice of inquiry, dropping the paper on
the bed.

Lucy, raised on her pillows, was looking at her with a haggard
intentness. All the vitality left in her expiring body seemed
concentrated in her eyes.

“I was married twice,” she said slowly.

“But how? When? What does it mean? Mother, what does it mean?”

“I was married twice,” she repeated. “In St. Louis to Jake Shackleton,
and in Placerville, five years after, to Dan Moreau. And I was never
divorced from Jake. It was not according to the law. I was never Dan’s
lawful wife.”

The girl sat staring, the meaning of the words slowly penetrating her
brain. She was too stunned to speak. Her face was as white as her
mother’s. For a tragic moment these two white faces looked at each
other. The mother’s, with death waiting to claim her, was void of all
stress or emotion. The daughter’s, waking to life, was rigid with
horrified amaze.

Propped by her pillows, Lucy spoke again; her sentences were short and
with pauses between:

“Jake Shackleton married me in St. Louis when I was fifteen. He was
soon tired of me. We went to Salt Lake City. He became a Mormon there,
and took a second wife. She was a waitress in a hotel. She’s his wife
now. He brought us both to California twenty-five years ago. On the
way across, on the plains of Utah, you were born. He is your father,
Mariposa.”

She made an effort and sat up. Her breathing was becoming difficult,
but her purpose gave her strength. This was the information that for
weeks she had been nerving herself to impart.

“He is your father,” she repeated. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

Mariposa made no answer, and again she repeated:

“He is your father. Do you understand? Answer me.”

“Yes--I don’t know. Oh, mother, it’s so strange and horrible. And
you sitting there and looking at me like that, and telling it to me!
Oh,--mother!”

She put her hands over her face for an instant, and then dropping them,
leaned over on the bed and grasped her mother’s wrists.

“You’re wandering in your mind. It’s just some hideous dream you’ve had
in your fever. Dearest, tell me it’s not true. It can’t be true. Why,
think of you and me and father always together and with no dreadful
secret behind us like that. Oh--it can’t be true!”

Lucy looked at the papers lying brown and torn on the white quilt.
Mariposa’s eyes followed the same direction, and with a groan her head
sank on her arms extended along the bed. Her mother’s hand, cold and
light, was laid on one of hers, but the dying woman’s face was held in
its quiet, unstirred apathy, as she spoke again:

“Jake was hard to me on the trip. He was a hard man and he never loved
me. After Bessie came he got to dislike me. I was always a drag, he
said. I couldn’t seem to get well after you were born. Coming over the
Sierras we stopped at a cabin. Dan was there with another man, a miner,
called Fletcher. That was the first time I ever saw Dan.”

Mariposa lifted her head and her eyes fastened on her mother’s face.
The indifference that had held it seemed breaking. A faint smile was on
her lips, a light of reminiscence lit its gray pallor.

“He was always good to anything that was sick or weak. He was sorry for
me. He tried to make Jake stop longer, so I could get rested. But Jake
wouldn’t. He said I had to go on. I couldn’t, but knew I must, if he
said it. We were going to start when Jake said he’d exchange me for the
pair of horses the two miners had in the shed. So he left me and took
the horses.”

“Exchanged you for the horses? Left you there sick and alone?”

“Yes, Jake and Bessie went on with the horses. I stayed. I was too sick
to care.”

She made a slight pause, either from weakness, or in an effort to
arrange the next part of her story.

“I lived there with them for a month. I was sick and they took care of
me. Then one day Fletcher stole all the money and the only horse and
never came back. We were alone there then, Dan and I. I got better. I
came to love him more each day. We were snowed in all winter, and we
lived as man and wife. In the spring we rode into Hangtown and were
married.”

She stopped, a look of ineffable sweetness passed over her face, and
she said in a low voice, as if speaking to herself:

“Oh, that beautiful winter! There is a God, to be so good to women who
have suffered as I had.”

Mariposa sat dumbly regarding her. It was like a frightful nightmare.
Everything was strange, the sick-room, the bed with the screen around
it, her mother’s face with its hollow eyes and pinched nose. Only the
two old dirty papers on the white counterpane seemed to say that this
was real.

Lucy’s eyes, which had been looking back into that glorified past of
love and youth, returned to her daughter’s face.

“But Jake is your father,” she said. “That’s what I had to tell you.
He’ll be good to you. That was why he wanted to find you and help you.”

“Yes,” said Mariposa, dully, “I understand that now; that was why he
wanted to help me.”

“He’ll be good to you,” went on the low, weak voice, interrupted by
quick breaths. “I know Jake. He’ll be proud of you. You’re handsome
and talented, not weak and poor spirited, as I was. You’re his only
legitimate child; the others are not; they were born in California.
They’re Bessie’s children, and I was his only real wife. You’ll let him
take care of you? Oh, Mariposa, my darling, I’ve told you all this that
you might understand and let him take care of you.”

She made a last call on her strength and leaned forward. Her dying body
was re-vivified; all her mother’s agony of love appeared on her face.
In determining to destroy the illusions of her child to secure her
future, she had made the one heroic effort of her life. It was done,
and for a last moment of relief and triumph she was thrillingly alive.

Mariposa, in a spasm of despair, threw herself forward on the bed.

“Oh, why did you tell me? Why did you tell me?” she cried. “Why didn’t
you let me think it was the way it used to be? Why did you tell me?”

Lucy laid her hand on the bowed head.

“Because I wanted you to understand and let him be your father.”

“My father! That man! Oh, no, no!”

“You must promise me. Oh, my beloved child, I couldn’t leave you alone.
It seemed as if God had said to me, ‘Die in peace. Her father will care
for her.’ I couldn’t go and leave you this way, without a friend. Now I
can rest in peace. Promise to let him take care of you. Promise.”

“Oh, mother, don’t ask me. What have you just told me? That he sold you
to a stranger for a pair of horses, left you to die in a cabin in the
mountains! That’s not my father. My father was Dan Moreau. I can do
nothing but hate that other man now.”

“Don’t blame him, dear, the past is over. Forgive him. Forgive me. If I
sinned there were excuses for me. I had suffered too much. I loved too
well.”

Her voice suddenly hesitated and broke. A gray pallor ran over her face
and a look of terror transfixed her eyes. She straightened her arms out
toward her daughter.

“Promise,” she gasped, “promise.”

With a spring Mariposa snatched the drooping body in her arms and cried
into the face, settling into cold rigidity:

“Yes--yes--I promise! All--anything. Oh, mother, darling, look at me. I
promise.”

She gently shook the limp form, but it was nerveless, only the head
oscillated slightly from side to side.

“Mother, look at me,” she cried frantically. “Look at me, not past me.
Come back to me. Speak to me, I promise everything.”

But there was no response. Lucy lay, limp and white-lipped, her head
lolling back from the support of her daughter’s arm. Her strength was
exhausted to the last drop. She was unconscious.

The wild figure of Mariposa at the kitchen door summoned Mrs. Brown.
Lucy was not dead, but dying. A few moments later Mariposa found
herself rushing hatless through the rain for the doctor, and then
again, in what seemed a few more minutes, standing, soaked and
breathless, by her mother’s side. She sat there throughout the night,
holding the limp hand and watching for a glimmer of consciousness in
the half-shut eyes.

It never came. There was no rally from the collapse which followed the
mother’s confession. She had lived till this was done. Then, having
accomplished the great action of her life, she had loosed her hold and
let go. Once, Mrs. Brown being absent, Mariposa had leaned down on the
pillow and passionately reiterated the assurance that she would give
the promise Lucy had asked. There was a slight quiver of animation in
the dying woman’s face and she opened her eyes as if startled, but made
no other sign of having heard or understood. But Mariposa knew that she
had promised.

On the evening of the day after her confession Lucy died, slipping
away quietly as if in sleep. The death of the simple and unknown lady
made no ripple on the surface of the city’s life. Mrs. Willers and a
neighbor or two were Mariposa’s sole visitors, and the only flowers
contributed to Lucy’s coffin were those sent by the newspaper woman
and Barry Essex. The afternoon of the day on which her mother’s death
was announced, Mariposa received a package from Jake Shackleton. With
it came a short note of condolence, and the offer, kindly and simply
worded, of the small sum of money contained in the package, which, it
was hoped, Miss Moreau, for the sake of the writer’s early acquaintance
with her parents and interest in herself, would accept. The packet
contained five hundred dollars in coin.

Mariposa’s face flamed. The money fell through her fingers and rolled
about on the floor. She would have liked to take it, piece by piece,
and throw it through the window, into the mud of the street. She felt
that her horror of Shackleton augmented with every passing moment,
gripped her deeper with every memory of her mother’s words, and every
moment’s perusal of the calm, dead face in its surrounding flowers.

But her promise had been given. She picked up the money and put it
away. Her promise had been given. Already she was beginning dimly to
realize that it would bind and cramp her for the rest of her life. She
was too benumbed now fully to grasp its meaning, but she felt feebly
that she would be its slave as long as he or she lived. But she had
given it.

The money lay untouched throughout the next few days, Lucy’s simple
funeral ceremonies being paid for with the proceeds of the sale of the
diamond brooch, which Moreau had given her in the early days of their
happiness.




CHAPTER VIII

ITS EFFECT

              “Flower o’ the peach,
  Death for us all, and his own life for each.”

                                           --BROWNING.


Jake Shackleton did not come up from San Mateo on Monday, as Mrs.
Willers expected, and the first intimation he had of Lucy’s death was
the short notice in the paper.

He had come down the stairs early on Tuesday morning into the wide
hall, with its doors thrown open to the fragrant air. With the paper
in his hand, he stood on the balcony looking about and inhaling the
freshness of the morning. The rain had washed the country clean of
every fleck of dust, burnished every leaf, and had called into being
blossoms that had been awaiting its summons.

From beneath the shade made by the long, gnarled limbs of the
live-oaks, the perfume of the violets rose delicately, their crowding
clusters of leaves a clear green against the base of the hoary trunks.
The air that drifted in from the idle, yellow fields beyond was
impregnated with the breath of the tar-weed--one of the most pungent
and impassioned odors Nature has manufactured in her vast laboratory,
characteristic scent to rise from the dry, yet fecund grass-lands
of California. In the perfect, crystalline stillness these mingled
perfumes rose like incense to the new day.

Shackleton looked about him, the paper in his hand. He had little love
for Nature, but the tranquil-scented freshness of the hour wrung its
tribute of admiration from him. What an irony that the one child he
had, worth having gained all this for, should be denied it. Mariposa,
thus framed, would have added the last touch to the triumphs of his
life.

With an exclamation of impatience he sat down on the top step, and
opening the paper, ran his glance down its columns. He had been looking
over it for several minutes before the death notice of Lucy struck his
eye. It took away his breath. He read it again, at first not crediting
it. He was entirely unprepared, having merely thought of Lucy as
“delicate.” Now she was dead.

He dropped the paper on his knee and sat staring out into the garden.
The news was more of a shock than he could have imagined it would be.
Was it the lately roused pride in his child that had reawakened some
old tenderness for the mother? Or was it that the thought of Lucy,
dead, called back memories of that shameful past?

He sat, staring, till a step on the balcony roused him, and turning, he
saw his son. Win, though only twenty-three, was of the order of beings
who do not look well in the morning. He was slightly built and thin and
had a rasped, pink appearance, as though he felt cold. Stories were
abroad that Win was dissipated, stories, by the way, that were largely
manufactured by himself. He was at that age when a reputation for
deviltry has its attractions. In fact, he was amiable, gentle and far
too lacking in spirit to be the desperate rake he liked to represent
himself. He had a wholesome fear of his father, whose impatience
against him was not concealed by surface politeness as in Maud’s case.

Standing with his hands in his trousers’ pockets, his chest hollowed,
his red-rimmed eyes half shut behind the _pince-nez_ he always wore,
and his slight mustache not sufficient to hide a smile, the foolishness
of which rose from embarrassment, he was not a son to fill a father’s
heart with pride.

“Howdy, Governor,” he said, trying to be easy; then, seeing the paper
in his father’s hand, folded back at the death notices, “anybody new
born, dead, or married this morning?”

His voice rasped unbearably on his father’s mood. The older man gave
him a look over his shoulder, with a face that made the boy quail.

“Get away,” he said, savagely; “get in the house and leave me alone.”

Win turned and entered the house. The foolish smile was still on his
lips. Pride kept it there, but at heart he was bitterly wounded.

At the foot of the stairway he met his mother.

“You’d better not go out there,” he said, with a movement of his head
in the direction of his father; “it’s as much as your life’s worth. The
old man’ll bite your nose off if you do.”

“Is your father cross?” asked Bessie.

“Cross? He oughtn’t to be let loose when he’s like that.”

“Something in the paper must have upset him,” said Bessie. “He was all
right this morning before he came down. Something on the stock market’s
bothered him.”

“Maybe so,” said his son, with a certain feeling. “But that’s no reason
why he should speak to me like a dog. He goes too far when he speaks to
me that way. There isn’t a servant in the house would stand it.”

He balanced back and forth on his toes and heels, looking down,
his face flushed. It would have been hard to say--such was the
characterless insignificance of his appearance--whether he was really
hurt, as a man would be in his heart and his pride, or only momentarily
stung by a scornful word.

Bessie passed him and went out on the balcony. Her husband was still
sitting on the steps, the paper in his hand.

“What is it, Jake?” she said. “Win says you’re cross. Something gone
wrong?”

“Lucy’s dead,” he answered, rising to his feet and handing her the
paper.

She paled a little as she read the notice. Then, raising her eyes, they
met his. In this look was their knowledge of the secret that both had
struggled to keep, and that now, at last, was theirs.

For the second time in a half-year, Death had stepped in and claimed
one of the four whose lives had touched so briefly and so momentously
twenty-five years before.

“Poor Lucy!” said Bessie, in a low voice. “But they say she was very
happy with Moreau. You can do something for your--for the girl now.”

“Yes,” he said; “I’ll think it over. I won’t be down to breakfast. Send
up some coffee.”

He went upstairs and locked himself in his library. He could not
understand why the news had affected him so deeply. It seemed to make
him feel sick. He did not tell Bessie that he had gone upstairs because
he felt too ill and shaken to see any one.

All morning he sat in the library, with frowning brows, thinking.
At noon he took the train for the city and, soon after its arrival,
despatched to Mariposa the five hundred dollars. He had no doubt of
her accepting it, as it never crossed his mind that Lucy, at the last
moment, might have told.

       *       *       *       *       *

The days that followed her mother’s funeral passed to Mariposa like
a series of gray dreams, dreadful, with an unfamiliar sense of
wretchedness. The preoccupation of her mother’s illness was gone. There
were idle hours, when she sat in her rooms and tried to realize the
full meaning of Lucy’s last words. She would sit motionless, staring
before her, her heart feeling shriveled in her breast. Her life seemed
broken to pieces. She shrank from the future, with the impossibilities
she had pledged herself to. And the strength and inspiration of the
beautiful past were gone. All the memories of that happy childhood
and young maidenhood were blasted. It was natural that the shock
and the subsequent brooding should make her view of the subject
morbid. The father that she had grown up to regard with reverential
tenderness, had not been hers. The mother, who had been a cherished
idol, had hidden a dark secret. And she, herself, was an outsider from
the home she had so deeply loved--child of a brutal and tyrannical
father--originally adopted and cared for out of pity.

It was a crucial period in her life. Old ideals were gone, and new ones
not yet formed. There seemed only ruins about her, and amid these she
sought for something to cling to, and believe in. With secret passion
she nursed the thought of Essex--all she had left that had not been
swept away in the deluge of this past week.

Fortunately for her, the business calls of the life of a woman left
penniless shook her from her state of brooding idleness. The cottage
was hers for a month longer, and despite the impoverished condition of
the widow, there was a fair amount of furniture still left in it that
was sufficiently valuable to be a bait to the larger dealers. Mariposa
found her days varied by contentions with men, who came to stare at the
great red lacquer cabinet and investigate the interior condition of the
marquetry sideboard. When the month was up she was to move to a small
boarding-house, kept by Spaniards called Garcia, that Mrs. Willers, in
her varying course, included among her habitats. The Garcias would not
object to her piano and practising, and it was amazingly cheap. Mrs.
Willers herself had lived there in one of her periods of eclipse, and
knew them to be respectable denizens of a somewhat battered Bohemia.

“But you’re going to be a Bohemian yourself, being a musical genius,”
she said cheerfully. “So you won’t mind that.”

Mariposa did not think she would mind. In the chaotic dimness of the
dismantled front parlor she looked like a listless goddess who would
not mind anything.

Mrs. Willers thought her state of dreary apathy curious and spoke of
it to Shackleton, whom she now recognized as the girl’s acknowledged
guardian. He had listened to her account of Mariposa’s broken condition
with expressionless attention.

“Isn’t it natural, all things considered, that a girl should be
broken-hearted over the death of a devoted mother? And, as I understand
it, Miss Moreau is absolutely alone. She has no relatives anywhere.
It’s a pretty bleak outlook.”

“That’s true. I never saw a girl left so without connections. But she
worries me. She’s so silent, and dull, and unlike herself. Of course,
it’s been a terrible blow. I’d have thought she’d been more prepared.”

He shrugged his shoulders, stroking his short beard with his lean,
heavily-veined hand. It amused him to see the way Mrs. Willers was
quietly pushing him into the position of the girl’s sponsor. And at
the same time it heightened his opinion of her as a woman of capacity
and heart. She would be an ideal chaperone and companion for his
unprotected daughter.

“When she feels better,” he said, “I wish you’d bring her down here
again. Don’t bother her until she feels equal to it. But I want to talk
to her about Lepine’s ideas for her. I saw him again and he gave me a
lot of information about Paris and teachers and all the rest of it.
Before we make any definite arrangements I’ll have to see her and talk
it all over.”

Mrs. Willers went back triumphant to Mariposa to report this
conversation. It really seemed to clinch matters. The Bonanza King
had instituted himself her guardian and backer. It meant fortune for
Mariposa Moreau, the penniless orphan.

To her intense surprise, Mariposa listened to her with a flushed and
frowning face of indignation.

“I won’t go,” she said, with sudden violence.

“But, my dear!” expostulated Mrs. Willers, “your whole future depends
on it. With such an influence to back you as that, your fortune’s made.
And listen to me, honey, for I know,--it’s not an easy job for a woman
to get on who’s alone and as good-looking as you are.”

“I won’t go,” repeated Mariposa, angry and obstinate.

“But why not, for goodness’ sake?”--in blank amaze. “What’s come over
you? Is it your mourning? You know your mother’s the last person who’d
want you to sit indoors, moping like a snail in a shell, when your
future was waiting for you outside the door.”

Her promise rose up before Mariposa’s mental vision and checked the
angry reiteration that was on her lips. She turned away, suddenly,
tremulous and pale.

“Don’t talk about it any more,” she answered, “but I _can’t_ go now.
Perhaps later on, but not now--I can’t go now.”

Mrs. Willers shrugged her shoulders, and was wisely silent. Mariposa’s
grief was making her unreasonable, that was all. To Shackleton she
merely said that the girl was too ill and overwrought to see any one
just yet. As soon as she was herself again Mrs. Willers would bring her
to _The Trumpet_ office for the interview that was to be the opening of
the new era.




CHAPTER IX

HOW COULD HE

    “Man is the hunter; woman is his game,
  The sleek and shining creatures of the chase.
  We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
    They love us for it, and we ride them down.”

                                          --TENNYSON.


The month of Mariposa’s tenantry of the cottage was up. It was the last
evening there, and she sat crouched over a handful of fire that burned
in the front parlor grate. The room was half empty, all the superfluous
furniture having been taken that morning by a Jewish second-hand
dealer. In one corner stood huddled such relics as she had chosen to
keep, and which would be borne away on the morrow to the Garcias’
boarding-house. The marquetry sideboard was gone. It had been sold to a
Sutter Street dealer for twenty-five dollars. The red lacquer cabinet,
though no longer hers, still remained. It, too, would be carried away
to-morrow morning by its new owners. She looked at it with melancholy
glances as the firelight found and lost its golden traceries and sent
sudden quivering gleams along its scarlet doors. The fire was less a
luxury than an economy, to burn the last pieces of coal in the bin.

Bending over the dancing flames, Mariposa held her hands open to the
blaze, absently looking at their backs. They were fine, capable hands,
large and white, with strong wrists and a forearm so round that its
swell began half-way between elbow and wrist-bone. Pleased by the
warmth that soothed the chill always induced by a sojourn in the front
parlor, she pulled up her sleeves and watched the gleam of the fire
turn the white skin red. She was sitting thus, when a ring at the bell
made her start and hurriedly push her sleeves down. Her visitors were
so few that she was almost certain of the identity of this one. For all
the griefs of the last month she was yet a woman. She sprang to her
feet, and as the steps of the servant sounded in the hall, ran to the
large mirror in the corner and patted and pulled her hair to the style
she thought most becoming.

She had turned from this and was standing by the fire when Essex
entered. He had seen her once since her mother’s death, but she had
then been so preoccupied with grief that, with a selfish man’s hatred
of all unpleasant things, he had left her as soon as possible. To-night
he saw that she was recovering, that, physically at least, she was
herself again. But he was struck, almost as soon as his eye fell on
her, by a change in her. Some influence had been at work to effect a
subtile and curious development in her. The simplicity, the something
childish and winning that had always seemed so inconsistent with her
stately appearance, was gone. Mariposa was coming to herself. His heart
quickened its beats as he realized she was handsomer, richer by some
inward growth, more a woman than she had been a month ago.

He took a seat at the other side of the fire, and the tentative
conversation of commonplaces occupied them for a few moments. The
silence that had held her in a spell of dead dejection on his former
visit was broken. She seemed more than usually talkative. In fact,
Mariposa was beginning to feel the reaction from the life of grief and
seclusion of the last month. She was violently ashamed of the sense of
elation that had surged up in her at the sound of Essex’s voice. She
struggled to hide it, but it lit a light in her eyes, called a color
to her cheeks that she could not conceal. The presence of her lover
affected her with a sort of embarrassed exultation that she had never
experienced before. To hide it she talked rapidly, looking into the
fire, to which she still held out her hands.

Essex, from the other side of the hearth, watched her. He saw his
arrival had made her nervous, and it only augmented the sentiment that
had been growing in him for months.

She began to tell him of her move.

“I’m going to-morrow, in the afternoon. It’s a queer place, an old
house on Hyde Street, with a big pepper-tree, the biggest in the city,
they say, growing in the front garden. It was once quite a fine house,
long ago in the early days, and was built by these people, the Garcias,
when they still had money. Then they lost it all, and now the old lady
and her son’s wife take a few people, as the house is too big for them
and they are so poor. Young Mrs. Garcia is a widow. Her husband was
killed in the mines by a blast.”

“It sounds picturesque. Do they speak English?”

“The señora, that’s the old lady, doesn’t. She has lived here since
before the Gringo came, but she can’t speak any English at all. The
daughter-in-law is an American, a Southerner. She looked very untidy
the day I went there. I’m afraid I’ll be homesick. You’ll come to see
me sometimes, won’t you?”

There was no coquetry in the remark. Her dread of loneliness was all
that spoke.

Essex met her eyes, dark and wistful, and nodded without speaking.

She looked back at the fire and again spread her hands to it, palms out.

“It’s--it’s--rather a dilapidated sort of place,” she continued after a
moment’s pause, “but perhaps I’ll get used to it.”

There was distinct pleading for confirmation in this. Her voice was
slightly husky. Essex, however, with that perversity which marked all
his treatment of her, said:

“Do you think you will? It’s difficult for a woman to accommodate
herself to such changed conditions--I mean a woman of refinement, like
you.”

She continued feebly to make her stand.

“But my conditions have changed so much in the last two or three
years. I ought to be used to it; it’s not as if it was the first time.
Before my father got sick we were so comfortable. We were rich and had
quantities of beautiful things like that cabinet. And as they have
gone, one by one, so we have come down bit by bit, till I am left like
this.”

She made a gesture to include the empty room and turned back to the
fire.

“But you won’t stay like this,” he said, throwing a glance over the
bare walls.

“Don’t you think so?” she said, looking into the fire with dejected
eyes. “You’re kind to try to cheer me up.”

“You can be happy, protected and cared for, with your life full of
sunshine and joy--”

He stopped. Every step he took was of moment, and he was not the type
of man to forgive himself a mistake. Mariposa was looking at him,
frowning slightly.

“How do you mean?” she said. “With my voice?”

“No,” he answered, in a tone that suddenly thrilled with meaning, “with
me.”

That quivering pause which falls between a man and woman when the words
that will link or sever them for life are to be spoken, held the room.
Mariposa felt the terrified desire to arrest the coming words that is
the maiden’s last instinctive stand for her liberty. But her brain was
confused, and her heart beat like a hammer.

“With me,” Essex repeated, as the pause grew unbearable. “Is there no
happiness for you in that thought?”

She made no answer, and suddenly he moved his chair close to her side.
She felt his eyes fastened on her and kept hers on the fire. Her other
offers of marriage had not been accomplished with this stifling sense
of discomfort.

“I’ve thought,” his deep voice went on, “that you cared for me--a
little. I’ve watched, I’ve desponded. But lately--lately--” he leaned
toward her and lowered his voice--“I’ve hoped.”

She still made no answer. It seemed to her none was necessary or
possible.

“Do you care?” he said softly.

She breathed a “yes” that only the ear of love could have heard.

“Mariposa, dearest, do you mean it?” He leaned over her and laid his
hand on hers. His voice was husky and his hand trembling. To the extent
that was in him he loved this woman.

“Do you love me?” he whispered.

The “yes” was even fainter this time. He raised the hand he held to his
breast and tried to draw her into his arms.

She resisted, and turned on him a pale face, where emotions, never
stirred before, were quivering. She was moved to the bottom of her
soul. Something in her face made him shrink a little. With her hand
against his breast she gave him the beautiful look of a woman’s first
sense of her surrender. He stifled the sudden twinge of his conscience
and again tried to draw her close to him. But she held him off with the
hand on his breast and said--as thousands of girls say every year:

“Do you really love me?”

“More than the whole world,” he answered glibly, but with the roughened
voice of real feeling.

“Why?” she said with a tremulous smile, “why should you?”

“Because you are you.”

“But I’m just a small insignificant person here, without any relations,
and poor, so poor.”

“Those things don’t matter when a man loves a woman. It’s you I want,
not anything you might have or might be.”

“But you’re so clever and have lived everywhere and seen everything,
and I’m so--so countrified and stupid.”

“You’re Mariposa. That’s enough for me.”

“All I can bring you for my portion is my heart.”

“And that’s all I want.”

“You love me enough to marry me?”

His eyes that had been looking ardently into her face, shifted.

“I love you enough to be a fool about you. Does that please you?”

Her murmured answer was lost in the first kiss of love that had ever
been pressed on her lips. She drew back from it, pale and thrilled, not
abashed, but looking at her lover with eyes before which his drooped.
It was a sacred moment to her.

“How wonderful,” she whispered, “that you should care for me.”

“It would have been more wonderful if I hadn’t.”

“And that you came now, when everything was so dark and lonely. You
don’t know how horribly lonely I felt this evening, thinking of leaving
here to-morrow and going among strangers.”

“But that’s all over now. You need never be lonely again. I’ll always
be there to take care of you. We’ll always be together.”

“Don’t you think things often change when they get to their very worst?
It seemed to me to-night that I was just about to open a door that led
into the world, where nobody cared for me, or knew me, or wanted me.”

“One person wanted you, desperately.”

“And then, all in a moment, my whole life is changed. It’s not an
hour ago that I was sitting here looking into the fire thinking how
miserable I was, and now--”

“You are in my arms!” he interrupted, and drew her against him for his
kiss. She turned her face away and pressed it into his shoulder, as he
held her close, and said:

“We’ll go to Europe, to Italy--that’s the country for you, not this raw
Western town where you’re like some exotic blossom growing in the sand.
You’ve never seen anything like it, with the gray olive trees like
smoke on the hillsides, and the white walls of the villas shining among
the cypresses. We’ll have a villa, and we can walk on the terrace in
the evening and look down on the valley of the Arno. It’s the place for
lovers, and we’re going to be lovers, Mariposa.”

Still she did not understand, and said happily:

“Yes, true lovers for always.”

“And then we’ll go to France, and we’ll see Paris--all the great
squares with the lights twinkling, and the Rue de Rivoli with gas lamps
strung along it like diamonds on a thread. And the river--it’s black
at night with the bridges arching over it, and the lamps stabbing down
into the water with long golden zigzags. We’ll go to the theaters and
to the opera, and you’ll be the handsomest woman there. And we’ll
drive home in an open carriage under the starlight, not saying much,
because we’ll be so happy.”

“And shall I study singing?”

“Of course, with the best masters. You’ll be a great prima donna some
day.”

“And I shan’t have to be sent by Mr. Shackleton? Oh, I shall be so glad
to tell him I’m going with you.”

Essex started--looked at her frowning.

“But you mustn’t do that,” he said with a sudden, authoritative change
of key.

“Why not?” she answered. “You know he was to send me. I promised my
mother I would let him take care of me. But now that I’m going to be
married, my--my--husband will take care of me.”

She looked at him with a girl’s charming embarrassment at the first
fitting of this word to any breathing man, and blushed deeply and
beautifully. Essex felt he must disillusion her. He looked into the
fire.

“Married,” he said slowly. “Well, of course, if we were married--”

He stopped, gave her a lightning side glance. She was smiling.

“Well, of course we’ll be married,” she said. “How could we go to
Europe unless we were?”

Still avoiding her eyes, which he knew were fixed on him in smiling
inquiry, he said in a lowered voice:

“Oh, yes, we could.”

“How--I don’t understand?”

For the first time there was a faint note of uneasiness in her voice.
Though his glance was still bent on the fire, he knew that she was no
longer smiling.

“We could go easily, without making any talk or fuss. Of course we
could not leave here together. I’d meet you in Chicago or New York.”

He heard her dress rustle as she instinctively drew away from him.

“Meet me in New York or Chicago?” she repeated. “But why meet me there?
I don’t understand. Why not be married here?”

He turned toward her and threw up his head as a person does who is
going to speak emphatically and at length. Only in raising his head his
eyes remained on the ground.

“My dear girl,” he said in a suave tone, “you’ve lived all your life
in these small, half-civilized California towns, and there are many
things about life in larger and more advanced communities you don’t
understand. I’ve just told you I loved you, and you know that your
welfare is of more moment to me than anything in the world. I would
give my heart’s blood to make you happy. But I am just now hardly in a
position to marry. You must understand that.”

It was said. Mariposa gave a low exclamation and rose to her feet. He
rose, too, feeling angry with her that she had forced him to this banal
explanation. There were times when her stupidity could be exasperating.

She was very pale, her eyes dark, her nostrils expanded. On her face
was an expression of pitiful bewilderment and distress.

“Then--then--you didn’t want to _marry_ me?” she stammered with
trembling lips.

“Oh, I want to,” he said with a propitiatory shrug. “Of course
I _want_ to. But one can’t always do what one wants. Under the
circumstances, as I tell you, marriage is impossible.”

She could say nothing for a moment, the first stunned moment of
comprehension. Then she said in a low voice, still with her senses
scattered, “And I thought you meant it all.”

“Meant what? that I love you? Don’t you trust me? Don’t you believe me?
You must acknowledge I understand life better than you do.”

She looked at him straight in the eyes. The pain and bewilderment had
left her face, leaving it white and tense. He realized that she was not
going to weep and make moan--the wound had gone deeper. He had stabbed
her to the heart.

“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t understand about life as you do. I
didn’t understand that a man could talk to a woman as you have done
to me and then strike her such a blow. It’s too new to me to learn
quickly. I--I--can’t--understand yet. I can’t say anything to you, only
that I don’t ever want to see you, or hear you, or think of you again.”

“My dearest girl,” he said, going a step toward her, “don’t be so
severe. You’re like a tragedy queen. Now, what have I done?”

“I didn’t think that a man could have the heart to wound any woman
so--any living creature, and one who cared as I did--” she stopped,
unable to continue.

“But I wouldn’t wound you for the world. Haven’t I just told you I
loved you?”

“Oh, go,” she said, backing away from him. “Go! go away. Never come
near me again. You’ve debased and humiliated me forever, and I’ve
kissed you and told you I loved you. Why can’t I creep into some corner
and die?”

“Mariposa, my darling,” he said, raising his eyebrows with a theatrical
air of incomprehension, “what is it? I’m quite at sea. You speak to
me as if I’d done you a wrong, and all I’ve done is to offer you my
deepest devotion. Does that offend you?”

“Yes, horribly--horribly!” she cried furiously. “Go--go out of my
sight. If you’ve got any manliness or decency left, go--I can’t bear
any more.”

She pressed her hands on her face and turned from him.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he said tenderly, approaching her. “Does my love
make you unhappy? A half-hour ago it was not like this.”

He suddenly, but gently, attempted to take her in his arms. Though she
did not see she felt his touch, and with a cry of horror tore herself
away, rushed past him into the adjoining room, and from that into her
bedroom beyond. The bang of the closing door fell coldly upon Essex’s
ear.

He stood for a moment listening and considering. He had a fancy that
she might come back. The house was absolutely silent. Then, no sound
breaking its stillness, no creak of an opening door echoing through
its bare emptiness, he walked out into the hall, put on his hat and
overcoat and let himself out. He was angry and disgusted. In his
thoughts he inveighed against Mariposa’s stupidity. The unfortunately
downright explanation had aroused her wrath, and he did not know how
deep that might be. Only as he recalled her ordering him from the room
he realized that it was not the fictitious rage he had seen before and
understood.

Mariposa stood on the inside of her room door, holding the knob and
trying to suppress her breathing that she might hear clearly. She heard
his steps, echoing on the bare floor with curious distinctness. They
were slow at first; then there was decision in them; then the hall
door banged. She leaned against the panel, her teeth pressed on her
underlip, her head bowed on her breast.

“Oh, how could he? how could he?” she whispered.

A tempest of anguish shook her. She crept to the bed and lay there, her
face buried in the pillow, motionless and dry-eyed, till dawn.




CHAPTER X

THE PALE HORSE

  “Nicanor lay dead in his harness.”

                                     --MACCABEES.


The day broke overcast and damp, one of those depressing days of still,
soft grayness that usher in the early rains, when the air has a heavy
closeness and the skies seem to sag with the weight of moisture that is
slow to fall.

There was much to do yet in the rifled cottage. Mariposa rose to it
wan and heavy-eyed. The whirl of her own thoughts during the long,
sleepless night had not soothed her shame and distress. She found
herself working doggedly, with her heart like lead in her breast,
and her mouth feeling dry as the scene of the evening before pressed
forward to her attention. She tried to keep it in the background, but
it would not down. Words, looks, sentences kept welling up to the
surface of her mind, coloring her cheeks with a miserable crimson,
filling her being with a sickness of despair. The memory of the kisses
followed her from room to room, and task to task. She felt them on her
lips as she moved about, the lips that had never known the kiss of a
lover, and now seemed soiled and smirched forever.

After luncheon the red lacquer cabinet went away. She watched it off
as the last remnant of the old life. She felt strangely indifferent
to what yesterday she thought would be so many unbearable wrenches.
Finally nothing was left but her own few possessions, gathered together
in a corner of the front room--two trunks, a screen, a table, a long,
old-fashioned mirror and some pictures. Yesterday morning she had
bargained with a cheap carter, picked up on the street corner, to take
them for a dollar, and now she sat waiting for him, while the day grew
duller outside, and the fog began to sift itself into fine rain.

The servant, who was to close and lock the cottage, begged her to go,
promising to see to the shipping of the last load. Mariposa needed no
special urging. She felt that an afternoon spent in that dim little
parlor, looking out through the bay window at the fine slant of the
rain would drive her mad. There was no promise of cheer at the Garcia
boarding-house, but it was, at least, not haunted with memories.

A half-hour later, with the precious desk, containing the marriage
certificates and Shackleton’s gift of money, under her arm, she was
climbing the hills from Sutter Street to that part of Hyde Street in
which the Garcia house stood. She eyed it with deepening gloom as
it revealed itself through the thin rain. It was a house which even
then was getting old, standing back from the street on top of a bank,
which was held in place by a wooden bulk-head, surmounted by a low
balustrade. A gate gave access through this, and a flight of rotting
wooden steps led by zigzags to the house. The lower story was skirted
in front by a balcony, which, after the fashion of early San Francisco
architecture, was encased in glass. Its roof above slanted up to the
two long windows of the front bedroom. The pepper-tree, of which
Mariposa had spoken to Essex, was sufficient to tell of the age of
the property and to give beauty and picturesqueness to the ramshackle
old place. It had reached an unusual growth and threw a fountain of
drooping foliage over the balustrade and one long limb upon the balcony
roof.

To-day it dripped with the rest of the world. As Mariposa let the gate
bang the impact shook a shower from the tree, which fell on her as she
passed beneath. It seemed to her a bad omen and added to the almost
terrifying sensation of gloom that was invading her.

Her ring at the bell brought the whole Garcia family to the door
and the hall. A child of ten--the elder of the young Mrs. Garcia’s
boys--opened it. He was in the condition of moisture and mud consequent
on a game of baseball on the way home from school. Behind him crowded
a smaller boy--of a cherubic beauty--arrayed in a very dirty sailor
blouse, with a still dirtier wide white collar, upon which hung locks
of wispy yellow hair. Mrs. Garcia, the younger, came drearily forward.
She was a thin, pretty, slatternly, young woman, very baggy about the
waist, and with the same wispy yellow hair as her son, which she wore
in the popular bang. It had been smartly curled in the morning, but the
damp had shown it no respect, and it hung down limply nearly into her
eyes. Back of her, in the dim reaches of the hall, Mariposa saw the
grandmother, the strange old Spanish woman, who spoke no English. She
looked very old, and small, and was wrinkled like a walnut. But as she
encountered the girl’s miserable gaze she gave her a gentle reassuring
smile, full of that curious, patient sweetness which comes in the faces
of the old who have lived kindly.

The younger members of the family escorted the new arrival upstairs.
She had seen her room before, had already placed therein her piano and
many of her smaller ornaments, but its bleakness struck her anew. She
stopped on the threshold, looking at its chill, half-furnished extent
with a sudden throttling sense of homesickness. It was a large room,
evidently once the state bedroom of the house, signs of its past glory
lingering in the elaborate gilt chandelier, the white wall-paper,
strewed with golden wheat-ears, and the marble mantelpiece, with
carvings of fruit at the sides. Now she saw with renewed clearness of
vision the threadbare carpet, with a large ink-stain by the table, the
rocking-chair with one arm gone, the place on the wall behind the sofa
where the heads of previous boarders had left their mark.

“Your clock don’t go,” said the cherubic boy in a loud voice. “I’ve
tried to make it, but it only ticks a minute and then stops.”

“There!” said Mrs. Garcia, with a gesture of collapsed hopelessness,
“he’s been at your clock! I knew he would. Have you broken her clock?”
fiercely to the boy.

“No, I ain’t,” he returned, not in the least overawed by the maternal
onslaught. “It were broke when it came.”

“He did break it,” said the other boy suddenly. “He opened the back
door of it and stuck a hairpin in.”

Mrs. Garcia made a rush at her son with the evident intention of
administering corporal punishment on the spot. But with a loud,
derisive shout, he eluded her and dashed through the doorway. Safe on
the stairs, he cried defiantly:

“I ain’t done it, and no one can prove it.”

“That’s the way they always act,” said Mrs. Garcia despondently,
pushing up her bang so that she could the better see her new guest.
“It’s no picnic having no husband and having to slave for everybody.”

“Grandma slaves, too,” said the rebel on the stairway; “she slaves
more’n you do, and Uncle Gam slaves the most.”

Further revelations were stopped by another ring at the bell. Visitors
were evidently rare, for everybody but Mariposa flew to the hall and
precipitated themselves down the stairs. In the general interest the
recent battle was forgotten, the rebel earning his pardon by getting to
the door before any one else. The new-comer was Mariposa’s expressman.
She had already seen through her window the uncovered cart with her few
belongings glistening with rain.

The driver, a grimy youth in a steaming blouse, was standing in the
doorway with the wet receipt flapping in his hand.

“It’s your things,” yelled the boys.

“Tell him to bring them up,” said Mariposa, who was now at the
stair-head herself.

The man stepped into the hall and looked up at her. He had a singularly
red and impudent face.

“Not till I get my two dollars and a half,” he said.

“Two dollars and a half!” echoed Mariposa in alarm, for a dollar was
beginning to look larger to her than it ever had done before. “It was
only a dollar.”

“A dollar!” he shouted. “A dollar for that load!”--pointing to the
street--“say, you’ve got a gall!”

Mariposa flushed. She had never been spoken to this way before in her
life. She leaned over the balustrade and said haughtily:

“Bring in my things, and when they’re up here I will give you the
dollar you agreed upon.”

The man gave a loud, derisive laugh.

“That beats anything!” he said, and then roared through the door to his
pard: “Say, she wants to give us a dollar for that load. Ain’t that
rich?”

There was a moment’s silence in the hall. A vulgar wrangle was almost
impossible to the girl at the juncture to which the depressing and
hideous events of the last few weeks had brought her. Yet she had still
a glimmer of spirit left, and her gorge rose at the impudent swindle.

“I won’t pay you two dollars and a half, and I will have my things,”
she said. “Bring them up at once.”

The man laughed again, this time with an uglier note.

“I guess not, young woman,” he said, lounging against the balustrade.
“I guess you’ll have to fork out the two fifty or whistle for your
things.”

Mariposa made no answer. Her hand shaking with rage, she began to
fumble in her pocket for her purse. The whole Garcia family, assembled
in the hallway beneath, breathed audibly in the tense excitement of
the moment, and kept moving their eyes from her to the expressman and
back again. The Chinaman from the kitchen had joined them, listening
with the charmed smile which the menials of that race always wear on
occasions of domestic strife.

“Say,” said the man, coming a step up the stairs and assuming a
suddenly threatening air, “I can’t stay fooling round here all day. I
want my money, and I want it quick. D’ye hear?”

Mariposa’s hand closed on the purse. She would have now paid anything
to escape from this hateful scene. At the same moment she heard a door
open behind her, a quick step in the hall, and a man suddenly stood
beside her at the stair-head. He was in his shirt-sleeves and he had a
pen in his hand.

The expressman, who had mounted two or three steps, saw him and
recoiled, looking startled.

“What’s the matter with you?” said the new-comer shortly.

“I want my money,” said the man doggedly, but retreating.

“Who owes you money? And what do you mean by making a row like this in
this house?”

“I owe him money,” said Mariposa. “I agreed to pay him a dollar for
carrying my things here, and now he wants two and a half and won’t give
me my things unless I pay it. But I’ll pay what he wants rather than
fight this way.”

She was conscious of a slight, amused smile in the very keen and clear
gray eyes the man beside her fastened for one listening moment on her
face.

“Get your dollar,” he said, “and don’t bother any more.” Then in a loud
voice down the stairway: “Here, step out and get the trunks and don’t
let’s have any more talk about it. Ching,” to the Chinaman, “go out and
help that man with this lady’s things.”

The Chinaman came forward, still grinning. The expressman for a moment
hesitated.

“Look here,” said the man in the shirt-sleeves, “I don’t want to have
to come downstairs, I’m busy.”

The expressman, with Ching behind him, hurried out.

Mariposa’s deliverer stood at the stair-head watching them and slightly
smiling. Then he turned to her. She was again conscious of how gray and
clear his eyes looked in his sunburned face.

“I was writing a letter in my room, and I heard the sound of strife
long before I realized what was happening. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t know there was any one there,” she answered.

“Well, the boys ought to have known. Why didn’t one of you little
beggars come for me?” he said to the two boys, who were clambering
slowly up the outside of the balustrade staring from the deliverer to
the expressman, now advancing up the steps with Mariposa’s belongings.

“I liked to see ’em fight,” said the smaller. “I liked it.”

“You little scamp,” said the man, and, leaning over the stair-rail,
caught the ascending cherub by the slack of his knickerbockers and drew
him upward, shrieking delightedly. On the landing he gave him a slight
shake, and said:

“I don’t want to hear any more of that kind of talk. Next time there’s
a fight, call me.”

The expressman and Ching had now entered laden with the luggage. They
came staggering up the stairs, scraping the walls with the corners of
the trunks and softly swearing. Mariposa started for her room, followed
by the strange man and the two boys.

Her deliverer was evidently a person to whom the usages of society
were matters of indifference. He entered the room without permission
or apology and stood looking inquiringly about him, his glance passing
from the bed to the wide, old-fashioned bureau, the rocking-chair with
its arm off and the ink-stain on the carpet. As the men entered with
their burdens, he said:

“You look as if you’d be short of chairs here. I’ll see that you get
another rocker to-morrow.”

Mariposa wondered if Mrs. Garcia was about to end her widowhood and
this was the happy man.

He stood about as the men set down the luggage, and watched the
transfer of the dollar from Mariposa’s white hand to the dingy one of
her late enemy. The boys also eyed this transaction with speechless
attention, evidently anticipating a second outbreak of hostilities.
But peace had been restored and would evidently rule as long as the
sunburned man in the shirt-sleeves remained.

This he appeared to intend doing. He suggested a change in the places
of one or two of Mariposa’s pieces of furniture, and showed her how she
could use her screen to hide the bed. He looked annoyed over a torn
strip of loose wall-paper that hung dejected, revealing a long seam of
plaster like a seared scar. Then he went to the window and pushed back
the curtains of faded rep.

“There’s a nice view from here on sunny days down into the garden.”

Mariposa felt she must show interest, and went to the window, too.
The pane was not clean, and the view commanded nothing but the
splendid fountain-like foliage of the pepper-tree and below a sodden
strip of garden in which limp chrysanthemums hung their heads, while
a ragged nasturtium vine tried to protest its vigor by flaunting a
few blossoms from the top of the fence. It seemed to her the acme of
forlornness. The crescendo of the afternoon’s unutterable despondency
had reached its climax. Her sense of desolation welled suddenly up into
overwhelming life. It caught her by the throat. She made a supreme
effort, and said in a shaken voice:

“It looks rather damp now.”

Her companion turned from the window.

“Here, boys, scoot,” he said to the two boys who were attempting to
open the trunks with the clock key. “You’ve got no business hanging
round here. Go down and study your lessons.”

They obediently left the room. Mariposa heard their jubilantly
clamorous descent of the stairs. She made no attempt to leave the
window, or to speak to the man, who still remained moving about as if
looking for something. The light was growing dim in the dark wintry
day, but the girl still stood with her face to the pane. She knew
that if the tears against which she fought should come there would be
a deluge of them. Biting her lips and clenching her hands, she stood
peering out, speechless, overwhelmed by her wretchedness.

Presently the man said, as if speaking to himself:

“Where the devil are the matches? Elsie’s too careless for anything.”

She heard him feeling about on shelves and tables, and after a moment
he said:

“Did you see where the matches were? I want to light the gas.”

“There aren’t any,” she answered without turning.

He gave a suppressed exclamation, and, opening the door, left the room.

With the withdrawal of his restraining presence the tension snapped.
Mariposa sank down in the chair near the window and the tears poured
from her eyes, tears in torrential volume, such as her mother had shed
twenty-five years before in front of Dan Moreau’s cabin.

Her grief seized her and swept her away. She shook with it. Why could
she not die and escape from this hideous world? It bowed her like a
reed before a wind, and she bent her face on the chair arm and trembled
and throbbed.

She did not hear the door open, nor know that her solitude was again
invaded, till she heard the man’s step beside her. Then she started up,
strangled with sobs and indignation.

“Is it you again?” she cried. “Can’t you see how miserable I am?”

“I saw it the moment I came out of my room this afternoon,” he answered
quietly. “I’m sorry I disturb you. I only wanted to light the gas and
get the place a little more cheerful and warm. It’s too cold in here.
You go on crying. Don’t bother about me; I’m going to light the fire.”

She obeyed him, too abject in her misery to care. He lit all the
gases in the gilt chandelier, and then knelt before the fireplace.
Soon the snapping of the wood contested the silence with the small,
pathetic noises of the woman’s weeping. She felt--at first without
consciousness--the grateful warmth of the blaze. Presently she removed
the wad of saturated handkerchief from her face. The room was inundated
by a flood of light, the leaping gleam of the flames licking the
glaze of the few old-fashioned ornaments and evoking uncertain gleams
from the long mirror standing on the floor in the corner. The man was
sitting before the fire. He had his coat on now, and Mariposa could
see that he was tall and powerful, a bronzed and muscular man of
about thirty-five years of age, with a face tanned to mahogany color,
thick-brown hair and a brown mustache. His hand, as it rested on his
knee, caught her eye; it was well formed, but worn as a laborer’s.

“Don’t you want to come and sit near the fire?” he said, without moving
his head.

She murmured a negative.

“I see that your clock is all off,” he continued. “There’s something
the matter with it. I’ll fix it for you this evening.”

He rose and lifted the clock from the mantelpiece. It was a small
timepiece of French gilt, one of the many presents her father had given
her mother in their days of affluence.

As he lifted it Mariposa suddenly experienced a return of misery at the
thought that he was going. At the idea of being again left to herself
her wretchedness rushed back upon her with redoubled force. She felt
that the flood of tears would begin again.

“Oh, don’t go,” she said, with the imploring urgency of old friendship.
“I’m so terribly depressed. Don’t go.”

Her lips trembled, her swollen eyes were without light or beauty.
She was as distinctly unlovely as a handsome woman can be. The man,
however, did not look at her. He had opened the door of the clock and
was studying its internal machinery. He answered quietly:

“I’ll have to go now for a while. I must finish my letter. It’s got to
go out to-night, but I was going to ask you if you wouldn’t like to
have your supper up here? It’s now a little after five; at six o’clock
I’ll bring it, and if you don’t mind, I’ll bring mine up, too. I just
take tea and some bread and butter and jam or stuff--whatever Elsie
happens to have round. If you’d like it, you fix up the table and get
things into some sort of shape.”

He walked toward the door. With the handle in his hand he said:

“You don’t mind my taking mine up here, too, do you? If you do, just
say so.”

“No, I don’t mind,” said Mariposa, in the stifled voice of the weeper.

When he had gone she listlessly tried to create some kind of order in
the chaotic room. She felt exhausted and indifferent. Once she found
herself looking at her watch with a sort of heavy desire to have the
time pass quickly. She dreaded her loneliness. She caught a glimpse of
herself in the chimney-piece glass and felt neither shame nor disgust
at her unsightly appearance.

At six o’clock she heard the quick, decisive step in the hall that
earlier in the afternoon had broken in on her wrangle with the
expressman. A knock came on the door that sounded exceedingly like a
kick bestowed under difficulties. She opened it, and her new friend
entered bearing a large tray set forth with the paraphernalia of a cold
supper and with the evening paper laid on top. He put it on the cleared
table, and together they lifted off its contents and set them forth.
There was cold meat, jam, bread and butter, a brown pottery teapot with
the sprout broken and two very beautiful cups, delicate and richly
decorated. Then they sat down, one at each side of the table, and the
meal began.

Mariposa did not care to eat. Sitting under the blaze of the gilt
chandelier, with the firelight gilding one side of her flushed
and disfigured face, she poured out the tea, while her companion
attacked the cold meat with good appetite. The broken spout leaked,
and she found herself guiltily regarding the man opposite, as she
surreptitiously tried to sop up with a napkin the streams of tea it
sent over the table-cloth.

He appeared to have the capacity for seeing anything that occurred in
his vicinity.

“Never mind the teapot,” he said, with his mouth full; “it always does
that. It’s no good getting a new one. I think the boys break them.
Elsie says they play boats with them in the bath-tub.”

Mariposa made no reply, and the meal progressed in silence. Presently
her _vis-à-vis_ held out his cup for a second filling.

“What beautiful cups,” she said. “It would be a pity to break them.”

“They’re grandma’s. They’re the only two left. Grandma had some
stunning things, brought round The Horn by her husband in the early
days, before the Gringo came. He was a great man in his day, Don Manuel
Garcia.”

“Is she your grandmother, too?” Mariposa asked. It seemed natural to
put pointblank questions to this man, who so completely swept aside the
smaller conventions.

“Mine? Oh, Lord, no. My poor old granny died crossing the plains in
’49. I was there, but I don’t remember it. I call old lady Garcia
grandma, because I’m here so much, and because I look upon them as my
family.”

“Do you live here always?” asked Mariposa, looking with extinguished
eyes over the piece of bread she was nibbling.

“No, I live at the mines. I’m a miner. My stamping-ground’s the whole
Sierra from Siskiyou to Tuolumne.”

He looked at her with a queer, whimsical smile. His strong white teeth
gleamed for a moment from between his bearded lips.

“I’m up at the Sierra a lot of the time,” he continued, “and then I’m
down here a lot more of the time. I come here to find my victims. I
locate a good prospect in the Sierra, and I come down here to sell it.
That’s my business.”

“What’s your name?” asked Mariposa suddenly, hearing herself ask
this last and most pertinent question with the dry glibness of an
interviewer.

“My name? Great Scott, you don’t know it!” he threw back his head and a
jolly, sonorous laugh filled the room. “That’s great, you and I sitting
here together over supper as if we’d grown up together in the same
nursery, and you don’t know what my name is. It’s Gamaliel Barron. Do
you like it?”

“Yes,” said Mariposa, gravely, “it’s a very nice name.”

“I’m glad you think so. I can’t say I’m much attached to the front end
of it. It’s a Bible name. I haven’t the least idea who the gentleman
was, or what he did, but he’s in the Bible somewhere.”

“Saul sat at his feet,” said Mariposa; “he was a great teacher.”

“Well, I’m afraid his namesake isn’t much like him. I never taught
anybody anything, and certainly no one ever sat at my feet, and I’d
hate it if they did.”

There was another pause, while Barron continued his supper with
unabated gusto. He had finished the cold meat and was now spreading jam
on bread and butter and eating it, with alternate mouthfuls of tea.
Though he ate rapidly, as one accustomed to take his meals alone, he
ate like a gentleman. She found herself regarding him with a listless
curiosity, faintly wondering what manner of man he was.

Looking up he met her eyes and said:

“You’ll be very comfortable here. Don’t let the first glimpse
discourage you. Elsie’s careless, and the boys are pretty wild, but
they’re all right when you come to know them better, and grandma’s
fine. There’s not many women in San Francisco to match old Señora
Garcia. She’s the true kind.”

“What a pity her son died!” said Mariposa.

He raised his head instantly and an expression of pain passed over his
face.

“You’re right, there,” he said in a low voice. “That was one of the
hardest things that ever happened. If there’s a God I’d like to know
why he let it happen. Juan Garcia was the salt of the earth--a great
man. He was the best son, the best husband and the best friend I ever
knew. And he was killed offhand, for no reason, by an unnecessary
accident, leaving these poor, helpless creatures this way.”

He made a gesture with his head toward the door.

“You knew him well?” said Mariposa.

The gray eyes looked into hers very gravely.

“He was my best friend,” he answered; “the best friend any man ever had
in the world.”

The girl saw he was moved.

“The people we love, and depend on, and live for always die,” she said
gloomily.

“But others come up. They don’t quite take their places, but they
fill up the holes in the ranks. We’re not expected always to love
comfortably and be happy. We’re expected to work; that’s what we’re
here for, and there’s plenty of it to do. Haven’t I got my work cut
out for me,” suddenly laughing, “in those two boys?”

Mariposa’s pale lips showed the ripple of an assenting smile.

“They’re certainly a serious proposition,” he continued, “and poor
Elsie can’t any more manage ’em than she could ride a bucking bronco.
But they’ll pull out all right. Don’t you worry. Those boys are all
right.”

He was about to return to the remnants of the supper when his eyes fell
on the folded paper, which had been pushed to one side of the table.

“Oh, look!” he said; “we forgot the paper. You’ve finished; wouldn’t
you like to see it?”

She shook her head. The paper had not much interest for her at the best
of times.

“Well, then, if you don’t mind, I’ll run my eye over it, while you make
me another cup of tea. Three cups are my limit--one lump and milk.”

He handed her the cup, already shaking the paper out of its folds. She
was struggling with the leakage of the broken spout, when he gave a
loud ejaculation:

“Great Scott! here’s news!”

“What is it?” she queried, the broken teapot suspended over the cup.

“Jake Shackleton’s dead!”

The teapot fell with a crash on the table. Her mouth opened, her face
turned an amazing pallor, and she sat staring at the astonished man
with horror-stricken eyes.

“Dead!” she gasped; “why everybody’s dead!”

Barron dropped the paper on the floor.

“I’m so awfully sorry; I didn’t know you knew him well. I didn’t know
he was a friend.”

“Friend!” she echoed, almost with a shriek. “Friend! Why, he was my
father.”

The voice ended in a wild peal of laughter, horrible, almost maniacal.

The man, paying no attention to her words, realized that the strain
of the day and her overwhelming depression of spirits had completely
unbalanced her. Her wild laughter suddenly gave way to wilder tears.
In a moment he ran to the door to summon the señora, but in the next,
remembered that Elsie and the boys would undoubtedly accompany her,
and that the woman before him was in no state to be exposed to their
uncomprehending stares.

Hysterics were new to him, but he had a vague idea that water
administered suddenly from a pitcher was the only authorized cure. He
seized the pitcher from the wash-stand, began to sprinkle her somewhat
timidly with his fingers, and finally ended by pouring a fair amount on
her head.

It had the desired effect. Gasping, saturated, but dragged back to
some sort of control, by the chill current running from her head in
rillets over her body, Mariposa sat up. The man was standing before
her, anxiously regarding her, the pitcher held ready for another
application. She pushed it away with an icy hand.

“I’m all right now,” she gasped. “You’d better go. And--and--if I said
anything silly, you understand, I didn’t know what I was saying. I
meant--that Mr. Shackleton was a _friend_ of my father’s. He’s been
very good to me. It gave me an awful shock. Please go.”

Barron set down the pitcher and went. He was overcome with pity for
the broken creature, and furious with himself for the shock he had
given her. The words she had uttered had made little impression on him
at first. It was afterward, while he was in the silence of his own
room, that they recurred to him with more significance. For a space he
thought of the remark and her explanation of it with some wonder. But
before he settled to sleep, he had pushed the matter from his mind,
setting it down as the meaningless utterance of an hysterical woman.




CHAPTER XI

BREAKS IN THE RAIN

  “I had no time to hate because
  The grave would hinder me,
  And life was not so simple I
    Could finish enmity.”

                              --DICKINSON.


For two days after her hysterical outburst Mariposa kept her room, sick
in body and mind. The quick succession of nerve-shattering events,
ending with the death of Shackleton, seemed to stun her. She lay on the
sofa, white and motionless, irresponsive even to the summons of the
boys, who drummed cheerfully on her door as soon as they came home from
school.

Fortunately for her, solitude was as difficult to find in that slipshod
_ménage_ as method or order. When the boys were at school, young
Mrs. Garcia, in the disarray that attended the accomplishment of her
household tasks, mounted to her first-floor boarder and regaled her
with mingled accounts of past splendors and present miseries. Mrs.
Garcia spoke freely of her husband and the affluence with which he had
surrounded her. The listener, looking at the faded, blond prettiness of
her foolish face, wondered how the Juan Garcia that Gamaliel Barron had
described could have loved her. Mariposa had yet to learn that Nature
mates the strong men of the world to the feeble women, in an effort to
maintain an equilibrium.

Once or twice the old señora came upstairs, carrying some dainty
in a covered dish. She had been born at Monterey and had come to
San Francisco as a bride in the late fifties, but had never learned
English, speaking the sonorous Spanish of her girlhood to every one she
met, whether it was understood or not. Even in the complete wreck of
fortune and position, in which Mariposa saw her, she was a fine example
of the highest class of Spanish Californian, that once brilliant and
picturesque race, careless, simple, lazy, happy, lords of a kingdom
whose value they never guessed, possessors of limitless acres on which
their cattle grazed.

The day after Shackleton’s death Mrs. Willers appeared, still aghast
at the suddenness of the catastrophe. Mariposa did not know that a few
days previously, Shackleton had acquainted the newspaper woman with
his intention of sending her to Paris with Miss Moreau, the post of
correspondent to _The Trumpet_ being assigned to her. It had been the
culminating point of Mrs. Willers’ life of struggle. Now all that lay
shattered. Be it said to her credit her disappointment was more for the
girl than for herself. She knew that Shackleton had made no definite
arrangements for the starting of Mariposa on her way. All had been _in
statu quo_, attending on the daughter’s recovery from her mother’s
loss. Now death had stepped in and forever closed the door upon these
hopes.

Mrs. Willers found Mariposa strangely apathetic. She had tried to cheer
her and then had seen, to her amazement, that the girl showed little
disappointment. That the sudden blow had upset her was obvious. She
undoubtedly looked ill. But the wrenching from her hand of liberty,
independence, possibilities of fame, seemed to affect her little. She
listened in silence to Mrs. Willers’ account of the Bonanza King’s
death. As an “inside writer” on _The Trumpet_ the newspaper woman had
heard every detail of the tragic event discussed threadbare in the
perturbed office. Shackleton had been found, as the paper stated,
sitting at his desk in the library at Menlo Park. He had been writing
letters when death called him. His wife had come in late at night and
found him thus, leaning on the desk as if tired. It was an aneurism,
the doctors said. The heart had been diseased for years. No one,
however, had had any idea of it. Poor Mrs. Shackleton was completely
prostrated. It was not newspaper talk that she was in a state of
collapse.

“And it was enough to collapse any woman,” said Mrs. Willers, with a
sympathetic wag of the head, “to come in and find your husband sitting
up at his desk stone dead. And a good husband, too. It would have
given me a shock to have found Willers that way, and even an obituary
notice in the paper of which he was proprietor could hardly have called
Willers a good husband.”

Two days’ rest restored Mariposa to some sort of balance. She still
felt weak and stunned in heart and brain. The lack of interest she
had shown to Mrs. Willers had been the outward sign of this internal
benumbed condition. But as she slowly dressed on the morning of the
third day, she felt a slight ripple of returning life, a thawing of
these congealed faculties. She heard the quick, decisive step of
Barron in the hallway outside, and then its stoppage at her door, and
his call through the crack, “How are you this morning? Better?”

“Much,” she answered; “I’m getting up.”

“First-rate. Couldn’t do better. Get a move on and go out. It’s a day
that would put life into a mummy. I’d take you out myself, but I’ve got
to go down town and lasso one of my victims.”

Then he clattered down the stairs. Mariposa had not seen him since
their supper together. Every morning he had stopped and called a
greeting of some sort through the door. She shrank from meeting him
again. The extraordinary remark she had made to him haunted her. The
only thing that appeased her was the memory of his face, in which there
was no consciousness of the meaning of her words, only consternation
and amaze at the effect his news had produced.

It was, indeed, a wonderful day. Through her parted curtains she saw
details of the splendor in the bits of turquoise sky between the
houses, and the vivid greens of the rain-washed gardens. When the sun
was well up, and the opened window let in delicious earth scents, she
put on her hat and jacket and went out, turning her steps to that high
spine of the city along the crest of which California Street runs.

Has any place been found where there are finer days than those
San Francisco can show in winter? “The breaks in the rain,” old
Californians call them. It is the rain that gives them their glory,
for the whole world has been washed clean and gleams like an agate
beneath a wave. The skies reflect this clearness of tint. There are no
clouds. The whole arch is a rich blue, fading at the horizon to a thin,
pale transparency. The landscape is painted with a few washes of fresh
primary colors, each one deep, but limpid, like the tints in the heart
of a gem. And in this crystalline purity of atmosphere every line is
cut with unfaltering distinctness. There is no faintness, no breath
of haze, or forgotten film of fog. Nature seems even jealous of the
smoke wreaths that rise from the city to blur the beauty of the mighty
picture, and the gray spirals are hurriedly dispersed.

Mariposa walked slowly, ascending by a zigzag course from street to
street, idly looking at the houses and gardens as she passed. People
of consideration had for some time been on the move from South Park to
this side of town. The streets through which the young girl’s course
led her were now the gathering place of the city’s successful citizens.
On the heights above them, the new millionaires were raising palaces,
which they were emulating on the ascending slopes. Great houses reared
themselves on every sunny corner. The architecture of the bay-windowed
mansion with the two lions sleeping on the front steps had supplanted
that of the dignified, plastered-brick fronts, with the long lines of
windows opening on wrought-iron balconies.

These huge wooden edifices housed the wealth and fashion of the
city. Mariposa paused and stood with knit brows, looking down from a
vantage-point on the glittering curve of greenhouse and the velvet
lawns of Jake Shackleton’s town house; there was no sign of life or
occupation about it. Curtains of lace veiled its innumerable windows.
Only in the angle of lawn and garden that abutted on the intersection
of two streets, a man, in his shirt-sleeves, was cutting calla lilies
from the hedge that topped the high stone wall which rose from the
sidewalk.

Finally, on the crest of the hill, where California Street runs between
its palaces, the girl paused and looked about her. The great buildings
were new, and stood, vast, awe-compelling monuments to California’s
material glory. Their owners were still trying to make themselves
comfortable in them. There were sons and daughters to be married from
them. Perched high above the city, in these many-windowed aeries, they
could look down on the town they had seen grow from a village in the
days when they, too, had been young, poor and struggling. What memories
must have crowded their minds as they thought of the San Francisco they
had first seen, and the San Francisco they saw now; of themselves as
they had been then, and as they were now!

Mariposa leaned against a convenient wall top and looked down. The city
lay clear-edged and gray in the cup made by its encircling hills. It
had not yet thrown out feelers toward the Mission hills, and they rose
above the varied sweep of roof and chimney, in undulating greenness,
flecked here and there by the white dot of a cottage. The girdle of the
bay shone sapphire-blue on this day of still sunshine. From its farther
side other hills were revealed, each peak and shoulder clear cut
against its neighbor and defining themselves in a crumpled, cobalt line
against the faint sky. Over all Mount Diavolo rose, a purple point,
pricking up above the green of newly grassed hills, about whose feet
hung a white fringe of little towns.

Turning her eyes again on the descending walls and roofs, the watcher
saw a long cortège passing soberly between the gray house-fronts on a
street a few blocks below her. As she looked the boom of solemn music
rose to her. It was a funeral, and one of unusual length, she thought,
as her eyes caught the slow line of carriages far back through breaks
in the houses. Presently, in the opening where two streets crossed,
the hearse came into view, black and gloomy, with its nodding tufts of
feathers and somberly caparisoned horses. Men walked behind it, and the
measured music swelled louder, melancholy and yet inspiring.

Suddenly she realized whose it was. The rich man was going splendidly
to his rest.

“My father!” she whispered to herself. “My father! How strange! how
strange!”

The cortège passed on, the music swelling grandiosely and then dying
down into fitful snatches of sweetness. The long line of carriages
moved slowly forward, at a crawling foot-pace.

The daughter leaned on the coping of the wall, watching this last
passage through the city of the father she had known so slightly and
toward whom she felt a bitter and silent resentment.

She watched the nodding plumes till they were out of sight. How
strangely death had drawn together the three that life had separated!
In six months the woman and two men, tied together by a twist of the
hand of Fate, had been summoned, one after the other, into the darkness
beyond. Would they meet there? Mariposa shuddered and turned away. The
black plumes had disappeared, but the music still boomed fitfully in
measured majesty.

The whistles were blowing for midday when she retraced her steps to the
Garcia house. As she mounted the stairs to the front door she became
aware that there were several people grouped on the balcony, their
forms dimly visible through the grimy glass and behind the rampart
of long-stemmed geraniums that grew there in straggling neglect. The
opening of the outer door let her in on them. She started and slightly
changed color when she saw that one of the figures was that of Gamaliel
Barron. He was sitting on the arm of a dilapidated rocker, frowningly
staring at Benito, the younger Garcia boy, against whom, it appeared, a
charge of some moment had just been brought. The case was being placed
before Barron, who evidently acted as judge, by a person Mariposa had
not seen before--a tall, thin young man of some thirty years, with a
stoop in the shoulders, a shock of fine black hair, and a pair of very
soft and beautiful blue eyes.

They were so preoccupied in the matter before them that no effort was
made to introduce the stranger to Mariposa, though Barron offered her
his armchair, retiring to a seat on the balcony railing, whence he
loomed darkly severe, from among the straggling geraniums. Benito,
in his sailor collar and wispy curls, maintained an air of smiling
innocence, but Miguel, the elder boy, who was an interested witness,
bore evidence of uneasiness of mind in the strained attention of the
face turned toward Barron.

Mariposa paused, her hand on the back of the rocking-chair. Benito
had already inserted himself into her affections. She looked from one
to the other to ascertain his offense. Both men were regarding the
culprit, Barron with frowning disapproval, the other with eyes full
of amusement. It was he who proceeded to state the case against the
accused:

“She leaned over the railing and said to me, ‘Them little boys will
be sick if they eat that crab.’ ‘What crab and what little boys?’ I
asked, quite innocently, and she answered, ‘Them little boys in the
vacant lot!’ Then I turned and saw Benito and Miguel squatting in the
grass among the tomato cans and fragments of the daily press, with a
crab that they were breaking up between them, a crab about as big as a
cart-wheel.”

“We found it there,” said Benito. “It were just lying there.”

“‘If they eat that crab,’ the lady continued, ‘they’ll be sick. It
ain’t no good. I threw it out myself. And I’ve been hollerin’ to them
to stop, and that little one with the curls, just turned round on me
and says, “Oh, you go to the devil!”’”

The complainant paused, looked at Mariposa with an eye in which she saw
laughter dancing, and said:

“That’s rather a startling way for a gentleman to speak to a lady,
isn’t it?”

Though the language used by the accused was hard to associate with his
cherubic appearance, and had somewhat shocked Mariposa’s affection,
she could hardly repress a smile. Benito grinning, as if with pride
at the prowess he had shown in the encounter with the strange female,
looked at his brother and emitted an explosive laugh. Miguel, however,
had more clearly guessed the seriousness of the offense, and looked
uneasy. Barron was regarding the younger boy with unmoved and angry
gravity. Mariposa saw that the man was not in the least inclined to
treat the matter humorously.

“Did you really say that, Benito?” he said.

“Well,” said Benito, swaying his body from side to side, and fastening
his eyes on a knife he had carelessly extracted from his pocket, “I
didn’t see what she had to do with that crab. It was all alone in the
vacant lot. How was we to know it was her crab?”

“But,” to Miguel, “she told you before not to touch it, that it was
bad, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” returned the elder boy, exceedingly uncomfortable. “She come and
leaned over the railing and hollered at us not to touch it, that it was
bad and it ’ud make us sick. Then I stopped ’cause I didn’t want to get
sick. But Ben wouldn’t, and she hollered again, and then he told her to
go to the devil, and Mr. Pierpont came along just then, and she told
him, and Ben got skairt and stopped.”

There was a moment’s silence. The younger boy continued to smile and
finger his knife, but it was evident he was not so easy in his mind.
The stranger, now with difficulty restraining his laughter, turned
again to Mariposa and said:

“If the lady had been in any way aggressing on the young gentleman’s
comfort or convenience, it would not have been exactly justifiable, but
comprehensible. But when you consider that her sole desire was to save
him from eating something that would make him sick, then you begin to
realize the seriousness of the offense. Oh, Benito, you’re in a bad
way, I’m afraid!”

“I ain’t nothing of the kind,” said Benito, smiling and showing his
dimples. “I ain’t done nothing more than Miguel.”

“I didn’t tell her to go to the devil,” exclaimed Miguel, in a loud,
combative voice.

“’Cause I said it first,” replied his brother, calmly. “You didn’t have
time.”

“Well, Benito,” said Barron, “I’ve got no use for you when you behave
that way. There’s no excuse for it. You’ve used the worst kind of
language to a lady who was trying to do a decent thing. I won’t take
you this afternoon.”

The change on Benito’s face was sudden and piteous. The smile was
frozen on his lips, he turned crimson, and said stammeringly, evidently
hardly believing his ears:

“To see the balloon? Oh, Uncle Gam, you promised it for a week. Oh, I’d
rather see the balloon than anything. Oh, Uncle Gam!”

“There’s no use talking; I won’t take a boy who behaves that way. I’m
angry with you.”

The man was absolutely grave and, Mariposa saw, spoke the truth when
he said he was angry. The boy was about to plead, when probably a
knowledge of the hopelessness of such a course silenced him. With a
flushed face, he stood before the tribunal fighting with his tears,
proud and silent. When he could no longer control them he turned and
rushed into the house, his bursting sobs issuing from the hallway.
Miguel charged after him.

“Oh, poor little fellow!” cried Mariposa; “how could you? Take him to
see the balloon; do, please.”

Barron made no reply, sitting on the railing, frowning and abstracted.
She turned her eyes on the other man. He was still smiling.

“Barron’s bringing up the boys,” he said, “and he takes it hard.”

“If I didn’t,” said the man from the railing, “who would? Heaven knows
I don’t want to disappoint the poor little cuss, but somebody’s got to
try and keep him in order.”

“Can’t you punish him some other way? He’s been talking about seeing
the balloon for days.”

“I wish to goodness I’d somebody to help me,” said the judge moodily;
“I’m not up to this sort of work. It makes me feel the meanest thing
that walks to get up and punish a boy for things that are just what I
did when I was the same age. But what’s a man to do? I can’t see those
children go to the devil.”

The howls of Benito had been rising loudly from the house for some
minutes. They now suffered a sudden check; there was a quick step in
the hall and Mrs. Garcia appeared in the doorway, red and angry. Benito
was at her side, eating a large slice of cake.

“What d’ye mean, Gam Barron,” she said in a high key, “by making my
son cry that way? Ain’t you got no better use for your time than to
tease and torment a poor, little, helpless boy, who’s got no father to
protect him?”

“I wasn’t teasing him, Elsie,” he answered quietly; “I only said I
wouldn’t take him out this afternoon because he behaved badly.”

“Well, ain’t that teasing, when you promised it for a week and more?
That’s what I call a snide trick. It’s just because you want to go
somewhere else, I know. And so you put it off on that woman and the
crab. Much good she is, anyway; I know her, too. Never mind, my baby,”
fondly to Benito, stroking his hair with her hand, “mother’ll take you
to see the balloon herself.”

Benito jerked himself away from the maternal hand and said, with his
mouth full of cake:

“I don’t want to go with you; I want to go with Uncle Gam. He lets me
ride in the goat-cart and buy peanuts.”

“You’ll go with me,” said Mrs. Garcia with asperity, “or you’ll not go
at all.”

“I don’t want to go with you,” said Benito, beginning to grow
clamorous; “I don’t have fun when I go with you.”

“You’ll go with me, or stay home shut up in the cupboard all afternoon.”

“I won’t; no, I won’t.”

Benito was both tearful and enraged. His mother caught his hand and,
holding it in a tense grip, bent her face down to his and said with set
emphasis:

“Do you want to stay all afternoon in the kitchen cupboard?”

He struggled to be free, reiterating:

“No, I don’t, and I ain’t goin’ to. I think you’re real mean to me; I
ain’t goin’ to go nowhere with you.”

“You mean, ungrateful little boy,” said his parent, furiously, shaking
the hand she held. “Don’t talk back to me. You’ll go with me this
afternoon and see that balloon if I have to drag you all the way. Yes,
you will.”

“I won’t,” roared Benito, now enraged past all control; and in
his frenzy to escape he kicked at his mother’s ankles through her
intervening skirts.

This was too much for Mrs. Garcia’s feelings as a mother. She took her
free hand and boxed Benito smartly on the ear. Then for a moment there
was war. Benito kicked, roaring lustily, while his mother cuffed. The
din of combat was loud on the balcony, and several of the geranium pots
were knocked over.

It remained for Barron to descend from the railing and drag the boy
away from his wrathful parent.

“Here, stop kicking your mother,” he said peremptorily; “that won’t do
at all.”

“Then make her stop slapping me,” howled Benito. “Ain’t I got a right
to kick back? I guess you’d kick all right if you was slapped that way.”

“All right,” said his mother from the doorway, “next time you come to
me, Benito Garcia, to be taken to the circus or the fair, you’ll find
out that you’ve barked up the wrong tree.”

“I don’t care,” responded Benito defiantly; “grandma or Uncle Gam will.”

Five minutes after her irate withdrawal she reappeared, calm and
smiling, the memory of her recent combat showing only in her heightened
color, and announced that lunch was ready.

At lunch the stranger was introduced to Mariposa, and she learned that
he was Isaac Pierpont, a singing teacher living in the house.




CHAPTER XII

DRIFT AND CROSSCUT

  “A living dog is better than a dead lion.”

                                        --ECCLESIASTES.


On the evening of the day when Jake Shackleton went to his account
Essex had walked slowly to Bertrand’s _rôtisserie_, his head drooped,
the evening paper in his hand.

Two hours before the cries of the newsboys announcing the sudden demise
of his chief had struck on his ear, for the first moment freezing him
into motionless amazement. Standing under a lamp, he had read the short
report, then hurried down to the office of _The Trumpet_. There in the
turmoil and hubbub which marks the first portentous movement of the
great daily making ready to go to press, he had heard fuller details.
The office was in an uproar, shaken to its foundation by the startling
news, every man and woman ready with a speculation or a rumor as to the
ultimate fate of _The Trumpet_, on which their own little fates hung.

At his table in the far corner of Bertrand’s he mused over the various
reports he had heard. The death of Shackleton would undoubtedly throw
the present makeup of _The Trumpet_ out of gear. Its sale would be
inevitable. From what he had heard of him, Win Shackleton would be
quite incapable of taking his father’s place as proprietor and manager
of the paper that Jake Shackleton, the man of brain and initiative,
was transforming into a powerful organ of public opinion. And in the
general weeding out of men which would unquestionably occur, why should
not Barry Essex mount to a top place?

_The Trumpet_ had always paid its capable men large salaries. It
was worth while considering. Essex had now decided to remain in San
Francisco, at least throughout the winter. The climate pleased him; the
cosmopolitan atmosphere of the remote, picturesque city continued to
exert its charm. The very duck he was now eating, far beyond his purse
in any other American city, was an inducement to remain. But the real
one was the woman, all the more desperately desired because denied him.
Her indignation had not repelled him, but he saw it would mean a long
wooing.

Once in his own room, he kindled the fire and drew toward him a pile of
reference books he had to consult for an article on the great actresses
of the French stage from Clairon to Rachel. These light and brilliant
essays had been an experiment of Shackleton’s, who maintained that the
Sunday edition should furnish food for all types of minds. Essex had
produced exactly the class of matter wanted, and received for it the
generous pay that the proprietor of _The Trumpet_ was always ready to
give for good work.

The reader was fluttering the leaves of the first book of the pile when
a knock at the door stopped him. He knew it was his neighbor across the
hall, who had been in bed for over a week, sick with bronchitis. Essex
had seen the man several times during his seclusion and had conceived a
carelessly cynical interest in him.

When sober, he had developed remarkable anecdotal capacity, which had
immensely amused his new acquaintance. Tales of ’49 and the early
Comstock days, scandals of those now in high places, discreditable
accounts of the making of fortunes, flowed from his lips in a
high-colored and diverting stream. If they were lies they were
exceedingly ingenious ones. Essex saw material for a dozen novels in
the man’s revealing and lurid recitals. Of his own personal history he
was reticent, merely saying that his name was George Harney, and his
trade that of job-printer. Drink had almost destroyed him. Physically
he was a mere bunch of nerves covered by flabby, sallow flesh.

In answer to Essex’s “come in,” the door opened and Harney shambled
into the room. He was fully dressed, but showed the evidences of
illness in his hollowed cheeks and eyes, and the yellow skin hanging
flaccid round jaw and throat. His hand shook and his gait was
uncertain, but he was perfectly sober.

“I came to have a squint at the paper, Doc,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“I can’t go out with this blasted wheezing on me. Don’t want to die in
my prime.”

Essex threw the paper across the table at him.

“There’s news to-night,” he said, taking up his book; “Shackleton’s
dead.”

The man stopped as if electrified.

“Shackleton? Jake Shackleton?” he said in a loud voice.

“Jake Shackleton,” answered Essex, surprised at the startled
astonishment of his face. “Did you know him?”

Harney snatched the paper and opened it with an unsteady hand. He ran
his eyes over the lines under the black-lettered heading of the first
page.

“By gosh!” he said to himself, “so he is; so he is!”

He sat down in the chair at the opposite side of the table, smoothed
out the sheet and read the account slowly and carefully.

“By gosh!” he said again when he had finished, “who’d a thought Jake’d
go off like that!”

“Did you know him?” repeated Essex.

“Once up in the Sierra, when we was all mining up there.”

He spoke absently and sat looking into the fire for a moment, then said:

“It’s pretty tough luck to be whisked off that way when you just got
everything in the palm of your hand.”

Essex made no reply, and after a pause he added:

“Between fifteen and twenty millions it says there,” indicating the
paper, “and when I saw Jake Shackleton first you wouldn’t er hired
him to sweep down the steps of _The Trumpet_ office. But that was
twenty-five years ago at least.”

“Oh, Shackleton was an able man. There’s no question about that.
They were saying in the office to-night that twenty million is a
conservative figure to put his money at.”

“Who does it go to? Do you know that?” queried the man by the fire.

“Widow and children, I suppose. There are two children. Don’t amount to
anything, I believe.”

“No; there are three.”

Harney turned from the fire and looked over his shoulder. He was
sitting in a hunched position, his back rounded, his chin depressed.
His black eyes, that drew close to the nose, were instinct with eager
cunning. The skin across the bridge of the nose was drawn in wrinkles.
As he looked the wheezing of his disturbed breathing was distinctly
audible. Essex was struck by the sly and malevolent intelligence of his
face.

“Three children!” he said. “Well, I’ve always heard the death of a
bonanza king was the signal for a large crop of widows and orphans to
take the field.”

“There won’t be any widow this time. She’s dead. But the girl’s alive,
and I’ve seen her.”

He accompanied this remark with a second look, significant with the
same malicious intensity of meaning. Then he rose to his feet and
walked toward the door.

“Good night, Doc,” he said as he reached it; “ain’t well enough to talk
to-night.”

Essex gave him a return good night and the door closed on him. The
younger man cogitated over his books for a space. It did not strike
him as interesting or remarkable that Shackleton should have had an
unacknowledged child, of whose existence George Harney, the drunken
job-printer, knew. He was becoming accustomed to the extraordinary
intermingling of classes and conditions that marked the pioneer period
of California life. But should the unacknowledged child attempt to
establish its claim to part of the great estate left by the bonanza
king, what a complication that might lead to! These Californians were
certainly a picturesque people, with their dramatic ups and downs of
fortune, their disdain of accepted standards, their indifference to
tradition, and their magnificently disreputable pasts.

As one of the special writers of _The Trumpet_, Essex attended the
funeral of his chief. He and Mrs. Willers and Edna, in company with the
young woman who did the “Fashions and Foibles” column, were in one of
the carriages that Mariposa had seen from the hilltop. Mrs. Willers was
silent on the long, slow drive. She had honored her chief, who had been
just to her. Miss Peebles, the “Fashions and Foibles” young woman, was
so engrossed by her fears that a change of ownership in _The Trumpet_
would rob her of her employment that she could talk of nothing else. To
Edna, the sensation of being in a carriage was so novel it occupied her
to the exclusion of all other matters, and she looked out of the window
with a face of sparkling interest.

That evening, after the funeral, Essex was preparing to work late.
He had “gutted” the pile of books, and with their contents well
assimilated was ready to write his three columns. There was no car line
on the street, and traffic at that hour on that quiet thoroughfare was
over for the day. For an hour he wrote easily and fluently. The sheets,
glistening with damp ink, were pushed in front of him in a careless
pile. Now and then he paused to consult his books, which were arranged
round him on the table, open at the places he needed for reference.
The smoke wreaths were thick round his head and the room was hot. It
was nearly ten o’clock when he heard the noisy entrance of his fellow
lodger. Harney was evidently sufficiently well to go to work again and
to come home drunk. Essex listened with suspended pen and a half-smile
on his dark face, which turned to a frown as he realized that the
stumbling feet had turned his way. The knock on the door came next, and
simultaneously it opened and Harney’s head was thrust in.

“What the devil do you want?” said the scribe, sitting erect, his pipe
in his hand, the other waving the smoke strata that hung before his
face.

“Let me come and get warm a minute. I’m wheezing again, and my room’s
cold as a tomb. Don’t mind me--all I want is to set before the fire for
a spell.”

He sidled in before the permission was granted and sank down in the
armchair, hitching it nearer to the grate. He was a man to whom
intoxication lent a curiously amiable and humorous quality. The
ugliness and evil that were so evidently part of his nature were not so
apparent, and he became cheerful, almost genial.

Sitting close to the fire, he held out his hands to the blaze, then,
stealing a look at Essex over his shoulder, saw that he was refilling
his pipe.

“Be’n to the funeral?” he said.

Essex grunted an assent.

“The family there?”

“None of the ladies; only Win Shackleton.”

Harney was silent; then, with the greatest care, he took up a piece
of coal and set it on the fire. The action required all the ingenuity
of which he was master. His body responded to his intoxication, while,
save for an unusual fluency of speech, his mind appeared to remain
unaffected. After he had set the coal in place he looked again at
Essex, who was staring vacantly at him, thinking of the second part of
his article.

“Did you notice a tall, fine-looking young lady there with dark red
hair?” said Harney, without removing his glassy gaze from the man at
the table.

Essex did not move his eyes, but their absent fixity suddenly seemed to
snap into a change of focus betokening attention. Gazing at Harney, he
answered coldly:

“No; I saw no one like that. To whom are you referring?”

“Oh, I dunno, I dunno,” responded the other with a clumsy shrug of his
shoulders, and turning back to the fire over which he cowered.

“But you know her anyhow,” he added, half to himself.

“Whom do I know? Turn around.”

The man turned, looking a little defiant.

“Now, what are you trying to say?”

“I ain’t tryin’ to say nuthin’. All I done is to ask yer if yer saw a
lady--tall, with red hair--at the funeral. You know her, ’cause I’ve
seen you with her.”

“Who is she?”

“Well,” slowly and uneasily, “she’s called Moreau.”

“You mean Miss Mariposa Moreau, the daughter of a mining man, who died
last spring in Santa Barbara?”

“Yes; that’s her all right. She’s called Moreau, but it ain’t her name.”

“Moreau isn’t her name? What is her name, then?”

“I dunno,” he spoke stubbornly and turned back to the fire.

“Turn back here,” said Essex in a suddenly authoritative tone; “explain
to me what you mean by that.”

“I don’t mean nuthin’,” said the other, looking sullenly defiant, “and
I don’t know nuthin’ only that that ain’t her true name.”

“What is her name? Answer me at once, and no fooling.”

“I dunno.”

Essex rose. Harney, looking frightened, staggered to his feet,
clutching the mantelpiece. He half-raised his arm as if expecting to be
struck and said loudly:

“If you want to know ask Shackleton’s widow. _She_ knows.”

Essex stood a few paces from him, suddenly stilled by the phrase. The
drunkard, alarmed and yet defiant, could only dimly understand what the
expression on the face of the man before him meant.

“Sit down,” said Essex quietly; “I’m not going to touch you. I’m going
to get some whisky. That’ll tone you up a bit. The bronchitis has taken
it out of you more than you think.”

He went to a cupboard and brought out a bottle and glasses. Pouring
some whisky into one, he pushed it toward Harney.

“There, that’ll brace you up. You’ll feel more yourself in a minute.”

He diluted his own with water and only touched the glass’s rim to
his lips. His eyes, glistening and intent, were on the drunkard’s now
darkly flushing face. The glass rattled against the table as Harney set
it down.

“That puts mettle into me again. Makes me feel like the old times
before the malaria got into my bones. Malaria was my ruin. Got it in
the Sierra mining. People think it’s drink that done it, but it’s
malaria.”

“That was when you knew Moreau? What sort of man was he?”

“Poor sort; not any grit. Had a good claim up there beyond Placerville,
he and I. Took out’s much as eight thousand in that first summer.
Moreau stayed by it, but I quit. Both had our reasons.”

“And Miss Moreau, you say, is not Dan Moreau’s daughter. Is she a
step-daughter?”

“Well--in a sort of a way you might say so. Anyway, she ain’t got no
legal right to that name.”

“I didn’t know the mother was a widow when she married Moreau?”

“She weren’t. She married twict, and she weren’t divorced. There ain’t
but two people in the world that knows it. One’s Jake Shackleton’s
widow,”--he rose, and, putting an unsteady hand on the table, leaned
forward and almost whispered into his interlocutor’s face,--“and the
other’s me.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” said Essex quietly, “that Miss Moreau is
Jake Shackleton’s daughter?”

“That’s what she is.” The man turned round like a character on the
stage and swept the room with an investigating look--“And she’s more’n
that. She’s his lawful daughter, born in wedlock.”

The two faces stared at each other. The drunken man was not too far
beyond himself to realize the importance of what he was saying. In a
second’s retrospect Essex’s mind flew back over the hitherto puzzling
interest Shackleton had taken in Mariposa Moreau. Could it be possible
the man before him was telling the truth?

“How does she come to be known as Moreau’s daughter? Why didn’t
Shackleton acknowledge her if she was his legitimate child? That’s a
fairy tale.”

“There was complications. Have you ever heard that Shackleton was once
a Mormon?”

Essex had heard the gossip which had persistently followed Shackleton’s
ascending course. He nodded his head, gazing at Harney, a presentiment
of coming revelations holding him silent.

“Well, that’s true. He was. I seen him when he was. Jake Shackleton
crossed the Sierra with two wives. One--the first one--was the lady
who died here a month ago, and passed as Mrs. Moreau. The other’s the
widow. But she was the second wife. She didn’t have no children then.
But the first wife had one, a girl baby, born on the plains in Utah. It
weren’t three weeks old when I seen it.”

“Where did you see it?”

“In the Sierra back of Hangtown. Me and Dan Moreau was workin’ a
stream bed there. And one day two emigrants, a man and a woman, with a
sick woman inside the wagon, came down from the summit. They was Jake
Shackleton and his two wives, and they was the worst looking outfit
you’ve ever clapped your eyes on. They was pretty near dead. One er
their horses did die, in front of our cabin, and the sick woman--she
that afterwards was called Mrs. Moreau--was too beat out to move on.
Shackleton, who didn’t care who died, so long’s they got into the
settlements, calkalated to make her ride a spell, and when the other
horse dropped make her walk. She was the orneriest lookin’ scarecrow
you ever seen, and she hadn’t no more life’n a mummy. But she was
ready to do just what they said. She was just so beat out. And then
Moreau--he was just that kind of a fool--”

He paused and looked at Essex, with his beady, dark eyes glistening
with a sense of the importance of his communication. His hand sought
the glass and he drained it. Then he leaned forward to deliver the
climax of his story:--

“Bought her from Shackleton for a pair of horses.”

“Bought her for a pair of horses! How could he?”

“I’m not sayin’ how he could; I’m sayin’ what he did.”

“What did he do it for?”

“The Lord knows. He was that kind of a fool. We had her in the cabin
sick for days, with me and him waitin’ on her hand and foot, and the
cussed baby yellin’ like a coyote. She wasn’t good for anything. Just
ust ter lie round sick and peaked and sorter pine. But Moreau got a
crazy liking for her, and he was sot on the baby same’s if it was his
own. I caught on pretty soon to the way the cat was goin’ to jump. I
lit out and left ’em.”

“Why did you leave if the claim was good?”

“It weren’t no good when no one worked it, and there weren’t more’n
enough in it for Moreau alone, with a woman and a baby on his hands. He
said first off he was only goin’ to get her cured up and send her to
the Eldorado Hotel to be a waitress, but I seen fast enough what was
goin’ to happen. And it did happen. They was snowed in up there all
winter. In the spring he took her into Hangtown and married her--said
he was marryin’ a widow woman whose husband died on the plains. I heard
that afterwards from some er the boys, but it weren’t my business to
give ’em away. So I shut my mouth and ain’t opened it till now. But
Moreau’s dead, and the woman’s dead, and now Shackleton’s dead. There
ain’t no one what knows but me and Shackleton’s widow.”

“And what makes you think this is the same child? The baby you saw may
have died and this may be a child born a year or two later.”

“It ain’t. It’s the same. There weren’t never any other children.
I kep’ my eye on ’em. Moreau was mining round among the camps and
afterward was in Sacramento for a spell, and I was round in them places
off and on myself. I saw him, but I dodged him ’cause I knew he didn’t
want to run up against me, knowin’ as how I was onter what he’d done.
He was safe for me. But I seen the girl often; seen her grow up. And
I knew her in a minute the day I saw you walkin’ with her on Sutter
Street, and I thinks to myself, ‘You’re with the biggest heiress in
San Francisco if you and she only knew it.’ And that’s what she is, if
there was somethin’ else but my word to prove it.”

Essex sat pushed back from the table, his hands in his pockets, his
pipe nipped between his teeth, his face partly obscured by the floating
clouds of smoke that hung about his head.

“A first-rate story,” he said slowly; “have some more whisky.”

And he pushed the bottle toward Harney, who seized it and fumblingly
poured the fiery liquor into the glass.

“And it’s true,” he said hoarsely--“every blamed word.”

He drank what he had poured out, set down the glass and stared at Essex
with his face puckered into its expression of evil cunning.

“And _she_ don’t know anything about it, does she?” he asked.

“If you mean Miss Moreau, she certainly appears to think she is the
child of the man who brought her up.”

“That’s what I heard. But Shackleton, when Moreau died, was goin’ to do
the square thing by her. At least, I heard talk of his sendin’ her to
Europe to be a singer. Ain’t it so?”

“I heard something about it myself. But I’m no authority.”

There was a pause. Harney settled back in his chair. The room was
exceedingly hot, and impregnated with the odor of whisky and the smoke
from Essex’s pipe.

“He couldn’t acknowledge her. It would er given the other children too
big a black eye. But it seemed like he wanted to square things up when
he was taken off suddent like that.”

He paused. The other, smoking, with frowning brows and wide eyes, made
no response, his own thoughts holding him in tense immobility.

“And the other wife wouldn’t er stood it, anyway. She’s a pretty
competent woman, I guess. Oh, he couldn’t have acknowledged her,
nohow. But she’s his legitimate daughter, all right. She’s the lawful
heir to--most er them--millions. She’s--”

His voice broke and trailed off into silence, which was suddenly
interrupted by a guttural snort and then heavy, regular breathing.
Essex rose, and, going to the window, opened it. A keen-edged breeze of
air entered, seeming all the fresher from the dense atmosphere of the
room. Its hurried entrance sent the smoke wreaths scurrying about in
fantastic whorls and curls. The dying fire threw out a frightened flame.

Essex moved toward it, saying as he approached:

“Yes; it’s a good story. You ought to be a novelist, Harney.”

There was no answer, and, looking into the chair, he saw that Harney
had fallen into a sodden sleep, curled against the chair-back, his chin
sunk on his breast, the hollows in his face looking black in the hard
light of the gas. The younger man gazed at him for a moment with an
expression of slight, cold disgust, then turned back to the table and
sat down.

He wrote no more, but sat motionless, his eyes fixed on vacancy, the
thick, curling smoke oozing from the bowl of his pipe and issuing from
between his lips. His thoughts reviewed every part of the story he had
heard. He felt certain of its truth. The drunken job-printer had never
imagined it.

It explained many things that before had puzzled him. Why the Moreaus,
even in the days of their affluence, had lived in such uneventful
quietude, bringing up their beautiful and talented daughter in a
jealous and unusual seclusion. It explained Shackleton’s interest in
the girl. He even saw now, recalling the two faces, the likeness that
the father himself had seen in Mariposa’s firmly-modeled jaw and chin,
which did not belong to the soft, feminine prettiness of Lucy.

It must be true.

And, being true, what possibilities might it not develop? Mrs.
Shackleton knew it, too--that this penniless girl was the bonanza
king’s eldest and only legitimate child, with power, if not entirely
to dispossess her own children, at least to claim the lion’s share of
the vast fortune. If Mariposa had proof of her mother’s marriage to
Shackleton and of her own identity as the child of that marriage, she
could rise and claim her heritage--her part of the twenty millions!

The thought, and what it opened before him, dizzied him. He drank some
of the diluted whisky in the glass beside him and sat on motionless. It
was evident Mariposa did not know. She had been brought up in ignorance
of the whole extraordinary story. The man and woman she had been taught
to regard as her parents had committed an offense against the law,
which they had hidden from her, secure in the thought that the other
participants in the strange proceeding would never dare to confess.

The minutes and hours ticked by and Essex still sat thinking, while
the drunkard breathed stertorously in his heavy sleep, and the coals
dropped softly in the grate as the fire sank into clinkers and ashes.




CHAPTER XIII

THE SEED OF BANQUO

  “What says the married woman?”

                            --SHAKESPEARE.


As soon as Mrs. Shackleton was sufficiently recovered, the family had
moved from Menlo Park to their town house.

The long work of settling up the great estate which had been left to
the widow and her children, required their presence in the city, and
the shock which Bessie had suffered in finding her husband dead, had
rendered the country place unbearable to her.

The day after the funeral the women had moved to town. Win, however,
remained at Menlo Park, to go over such documents of his father’s as
had been left there. Shackleton had lived so much at his country place
for the last two or three years that many of his papers and letters
were kept in the library, which had been his especial sanctum.

Among these, the son had come upon a small package of letters, which,
fastened together with an elastic, and bearing a note of their contents
on one end, had roused his interest. They were the letters exchanged
between his father and the chief of the detective bureau when the
latter had been commissioned to locate the widow and daughter of Daniel
Moreau.

Shackleton, a man of exceedingly methodical habits, had kept copies of
his letters. There were only seven of them altogether--three from him;
four in reply. The first ones were short, only a few lines, containing
the request to find the ladies who, the writer understood, were in San
Francisco, and ascertain their circumstances and position. Then came
the acknowledgment of that, and then in a few days, the answer stating
the whereabouts of Mrs. Moreau and her daughter, their means, and such
small facts about them as that the mother was in delicate health and
the daughter “a handsome, accomplished, and estimable young lady.”

Win looked over this correspondence, puzzled and wondering. He
remembered the girl he had seen in _The Trumpet_ office that dark
afternoon, and how the office boy had told him it was a Miss Moreau,
a friend of Mrs. Willers, and a singer. What motive could his father
have had in seeking out this girl and her mother in this secret and
effectual way? He read over the letters again. Moreau had died in Santa
Barbara in the spring, the widow and her daughter had then come to San
Francisco, and by the wording of the second letter he inferred that his
father had been ignorant of their means, and of the girl’s appearance,
style and character. It was evidently not the result of an interest
in people he had once known and then lost sight of. It seemed to be
an interest, for some outside reason, in two women of whom he knew
absolutely nothing.

Win had heard that his father contemplated offering a musical education
to some singing girl, of whom the young man knew nothing, and had
seen only for a moment that day in _The Trumpet_ office. This was
undoubtedly the girl. But Shackleton evidently had not heard of her
through Mrs. Willers, who was known to be an energetic boomer of
obscure genius. He had hunted her out himself; had undoubtedly had
some ulterior interest in, or knowledge of her some time before the
day Win had seen her. It was odd, the boy thought, meditating over the
correspondence. What could have led his father to search for, and then
attempt to assist, a woman who seemed to be a complete stranger to him?
It looked like the secret paying of an old debt.

Win put the letters in his pocket and went up to town. There was more
work for him to do now than there had ever been before, and he rose to
it with a spirit and energy that surprised himself. Neither he nor any
one else had ever realized how paralyzing to him had been his father’s
cold scorn. From boyhood, Win had felt himself to be an aggravating
failure. The elder man had not scrupled to make him understand his
inferiority. The mere presence of his father seemed to numb his brain
and make his tongue stammer over the simplest phrases. Now, he felt
himself free and full of energy, as though bands that had cramped his
mind and confined his body were broken. His old attitude of posing as
a fast young man of fashion lost its charm. Life grew suddenly to mean
something, to be full of use and purpose.

He was left very much to himself, his mother being still too much
broken to attend to business, and Maud being absorbed in her affair
with Latimer, which had recently culminated in a secret engagement.
This she had been afraid to tell to her domineering father and
ambitious mother, and her opportunities of seeing her fiancé had been
of the briefest until now. Latimer haunted the house of evenings, when
Bessie was lying on the sofa in an upstairs boudoir and Win was locked
in his father’s study going over the interminable documents.

The first darkness of her grief and horror past, Bessie, in her
seclusion, thought of many things. One of these was the fate of
Mariposa Moreau. The bonanza king’s widow, with all her faults, had
that lavish and reckless generosity, where money was concerned, that
marked the early Californians. This forceful woman, who had made the
blighting journey across the plains without complaint, faced the fierce
hardships of her early married life with a smile, borne her children
amid the rude discomforts of remote mining camps, was an adept in the
art of luxurious living. She knew by instinct how to be magnificent,
and one of her magnificences was the careless munificence of her
generosity.

Now, she felt for Mariposa. She knew Shackleton’s plans for her, and
realized the girl’s disappointment. In her heart she had been bitterly
jealous of the other wife’s child, who had the beauty and gifts her
own lacked. It would be to everybody’s advantage to remove the girl to
another country and sphere. And because her husband had died there was
no reason why his plans should remain unfulfilled. Though Shackleton
had assured her that the girl knew nothing, though every one connected
with the shameful bargain but herself was dead, it was best to be
prudent, especially when prudence was the course most agreeable to all
concerned. She would rest easier; her children would seem more secure
in their positions and possessions, if Mariposa Moreau, well provided
for, were safe in Paris studying singing.

When she was fully decided as to the wisdom of her course, she wrote
Mariposa a short but friendly letter, speaking of her knowledge of Mr.
Shackleton’s plans for her advancement, of her desire to carry out her
late husband’s wishes, and naming a day and hour at which she begged
the young girl to call on her. It was a simple matter to ascertain Miss
Moreau’s address from Mrs. Willers, and the letter was duly sent.

It roused wrath in its recipient. Mariposa was learning worldly wisdom
at a rate of which her tardy development had not given promise. Great
changes were taking place in her simple nature. She had been wakened
to life with savage abruptness. Dormant characteristics, passions
unsuspected, had risen to the surface. The powerful feelings of a rich,
but undeveloped womanhood had suddenly been shaken from their sleep
by a grip of the hand of destiny. The unfamiliarity of a bitter anger
against the Shackletons struggled with the creeping disgust of Essex,
that grew daily.

Morning after morning she woke when the first gray light was faintly
defining the squares of the windows. The leaden sense of wretchedness
that seemed to draw her out of sleep, gave place to the living hatred
and shame that the upheaval of her life had left behind. She watched
the golden wheat-ears dimly glimmering on the pale walls, while she
lay and thought of all she had learned of life, her faith and happy
ignorance destroyed forever.

Six weeks ago Mrs. Shackleton’s letter would have represented no more
to her than what its words expressed. Now, she saw Bessie’s anxiety
to be rid of her, to push her out of sight as a menace. How much more
readily would the widow have gone to work, with what zest of alarm and
energy, would she have contrived for her expulsion, had she guessed
what Mariposa knew. The girl vacillated for a day, hating the thought
of an interview with any member of the family whose wrongs to her
beloved mother were seared scars in her brain; but finally concluding
that it would be better to end her connection with them by an interview
with Mrs. Shackleton, she answered the letter, stating that she would
come at the appointed hour.

Two days later, at the time set in the afternoon, she stood in the
small reception-room, to the left of the wide marble hall, waiting.
The hushed splendor of the house would have impressed and awed her
at any other time. But to-day her heart beat loud and her brain was
preoccupied with its effort to keep her purpose clear, and yet not to
be angered into revealing too much. The vast lower floor was loftier
and more spacious than anything she had ever seen before. There were
glimpses through many doors, and artificial elongations of perspective
by means of mirrors. The long receding vista was touched with gleams of
light on parquet flooring, reflections on the gray surfaces of mirrors,
the curves of porcelain vases, the bosses of gilded frames. Over all
hung the scent of flowers, that were massed here and there in Chinese
bowls.

Bessie’s step, and the accompanying rustle of brushing silks, brought
the girl to her feet, rigid and cold. The widow swept into the room
with extended hand. She was richly and correctly garbed in lusterless
black, that sent out the nervous whisperings of crushed silks and
exhaled a faint perfume. It was impossible to ignore the hand, and
Mariposa touched it with her own for a minute. She had seen Bessie
only once before, on the evening of the opera. The change wrought in
her by grief and illness was noticeable. Her fine, healthy color had
faded; her eyes were darkened, and there were many deep lines on her
forehead and about her mouth. Nevertheless, a casual eye would have
still noticed her as a woman of vigor, mental and physical. It was easy
to understand how she had stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband
in his fight for fortune.

She motioned Mariposa to a chair facing the window, and studied her
as she glibly accomplished the commonplaces of greeting. Her heart
drew together with a renewed spasm of jealousy as she noted the girl’s
superiority to her own daughter. What subtly finer qualities had
Lucy had, that her child should be thus distinguished from the other
children of Jake Shackleton? The indignation working against this woman
gave a last touch of stateliness to poor Mariposa’s natural dignity of
demeanor. She seemed to belong, by nature and birth, to these princely
surroundings, which completely dwarfed Maud, and even made the adaptive
Bessie look common.

“My husband,” said the elder woman, when the beginnings of the
conversation were disposed of, “was very much interested in you. He
knew your father, Dan Moreau, very well.”

Mariposa was becoming used to this phrase and could listen to it
without the stare of surprise, or the blush of consciousness.

“So Mr. Shackleton told me,” she answered.

“Your father”--Bessie looked down at the deeply-bordered handkerchief
in her hand--“was a man of great kindliness and generosity. Mr.
Shackleton knew him in the Sierras, mining, a long time ago, when
he”--she paused, not from embarrassment, but in order to choose her
words carefully--“was very kind to my husband and others of our party.
It was an obligation Mr. Shackleton never forgot.”

Mariposa could make no answer. Shackleton had never spoken to her
with this daring. Bessie looked at her for a response, and saw her
with her eyes on the ground, pale and slightly frowning. She wanted
to sweep away any possible suspicion from the girl’s mind by making
her understand that the attitude of the family toward her rose from
gratitude for a past benefit.

“Mr. Shackleton,” she went on, “often talked to me about his plans for
you. He wanted to have you study in Paris, under some teacher Lepine
spoke to him about. I understand you’ve got a remarkable voice. I
wanted, several times, to hear you, but it couldn’t seem to be managed,
living in the country, and always so busy. In his sudden--passing away,
all these plans came to an end. He hadn’t regularly arranged anything.
There were such a lot of delays.”

Mariposa nodded, then feeling that she must say something, she murmured:

“My mother died. I was not well, and I couldn’t see him.”

“Exactly, I understand just how it was. And it wasn’t a bit fair, that
simply because you didn’t happen to be able to go to the office at that
time, you should lose your chance of a musical education and all that
might have come out of it. Now, Miss Moreau, it’s my intention to carry
out my husband’s wishes.”

She looked at Mariposa, not smiling, nor condescending, but with a hard
earnestness. The girl raised her eyes and the two glances met.

“His wishes with regard to me?” said Mariposa, with a questioning
inflection.

“That’s it. I want you to go to Paris, as he wanted you to go. I want
you to study to be a singer. I’ll pay it all--education, masters, and a
monthly sum for living besides. I don’t think, from what I hear, that
it would be necessary for you to study more than two or three years.
Then you would make your appearance as a grand opera prima donna, or
concert singer, as your teachers thought fit. I don’t know much about
it, but I believe they can’t always tell about a voice right off at the
start. Anyway, I’d see to it that yours got every chance for the best
development.”

She paused.

“I--I’m--afraid it will be impossible,” said Mariposa, in a low voice.

“Impossible!” exclaimed the elder woman, sitting upright in her
surprise. “Why?”

Mariposa had come to the house of Mrs. Shackleton burning with a sense
of the wrongs her mother had suffered at the hands of this woman and
her dead husband. She had thought little of what the interview would
be like, and now, with the keen, hard, and astonished eyes of Bessie
upon her, she felt that something more than pride and indignation must
help her through. The world’s diplomacy of tongue and brain was an
unsuspected art to her.

“I--I--” she stammered irresolutely, “have changed my mind since I
talked with Mr. Shackleton.”

“Changed your mind! But why? What’s made you change your mind in so
short a time?”

“Many things,” said the girl, with her face flushing
deeply under Bessie’s unflinching stare. “There have been
changes--in--in--circumstances--and in me. My mother was anxious for my
advancement. Now she is dead and--it doesn’t matter.”

It was certainly not a brilliant way out of the difficulty. A faint
smile wrinkled the loose skin round Mrs. Shackleton’s eyes.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, with a slight touch of impatience in her
voice. “If that’s all, I guess we needn’t worry about it. People die,
and we lose our energies and ambition, so we just want to lie round and
mourn. But at your age that don’t last long. You’ve got to make your
future yourself, and now’s your chance. It just comes once or twice in
a lifetime, and the people who get there are the people who know enough
to snatch it as it comes by.”

Mariposa’s irresolution had passed. She realized that she had not
merely to state her intentions, but to fight a will unused to defeat.

“I can’t go,” she said quietly; “I understand that all you say is
perfectly true. You probably think I am silly and ungrateful. I don’t
think I am either, but that’s because I know what I feel. I thank you
very much, but I can’t accept it.”

She rose to her feet. Bessie saw that she was pale--evidently agitated.

“Sit down,” she said, indicating the chair again. “Now let me hear your
reasons, my dear girl. People don’t throw up the chance of a lifetime
for nothing. What’s behind all this?”

There was a pause. Mariposa said slowly:

“I don’t want to accept it. I don’t want to take the money or be under
any obligation.”

“You were willing to be under the obligation, as you call it, a few
weeks ago?”

Bessie’s voice was as cold as steel. From the moment she had entered
the room she had felt an instinctive antagonism between herself and
her husband’s eldest child. It would become a hatred in time. The
girl’s slow and reluctant way of speaking seemed to indicate that she
expressed herself with difficulty, like one who, under pressure, tells
the truth.

“My mother wanted me to accept anything that was for my own benefit.
Now she is dead. I am my own mistress. I grieve or hurt no one but
myself if I refuse your offer. And, as things are now, it is better for
me to refuse it.”

“What do you mean by ‘as things are now’? Has anything happened to
change your ideas since my husband first made the suggestion to you?”

Mariposa told her lie as a woman does, with reservations. It was
creditably done, for it was the first lie she had ever told in her life.

“Nothing has actually happened, but--I--I--have changed.”

“And are you going to let a girl’s whims stand in the way of your
future success in life? I can’t believe that. My dear, you’re handsome
and you’ve a fine voice, but do you think those two things, without a
cent behind them, are going to put you on top of the heap? You’re not
the woman to get there without a lot of boosting.”

“Why should I want to get on top of the heap?”

“Oh, if you _want_ to stay at the bottom--”

Mrs. Shackleton gave a shrug and rose to her feet. The girl was
incomprehensible. She was either very subtile and deep, or she was
extraordinarily dull and shallow. Shackleton had said to her once that
she seemed to him childish and undeveloped, for her age. The woman’s
keen eye saw deeper. If Mariposa was not disingenuous, she would
always, on the side of shrewdness and worldly wisdom, be undeveloped.

“Well, my dear,” she said coldly, “it all rests with yourself. But I
can’t, conscientiously, let you throw your best chances away. We won’t
speak of this any more to-day. But go home and think about it, and in
a week or two let me know what conclusion you’ve come to. Don’t ever
throw a chance away, even if you don’t happen to like the person who
offers it.”

She gave Mariposa a shrewd and good-natured smile. The girl, her face
crimsoning, was about to answer, when the hall door opened, and, with a
sound of laughter and a whiff of violets, Maud and the Count de Lamolle
entered the room.

In her heavy mourning, Maud looked more nearly pretty than she had
ever done before. It was not the dress that beautified her, but the
happiness of her engagement to Latimer, with whom she was deeply in
love, which had lent her the fleeting grace and charm that only love,
well bestowed, can give. She carried a large bunch of violets in her
hand, and her face was slightly flushed.

The count, who had attentively read the will of Jake Shackleton in
the papers, was staying on in San Francisco. His attentions to Maud
were not more assiduous, but they were more “serious,” to use the
technical phrase, than heretofore. She would make him an ideal wife,
he thought. Even her lack of beauty was an advantage. When an American
girl was both rich and pretty, she was more than even the most tactful
and sophisticated Frenchman could manage. Maud, ugly, gentle, and not
clever, would be a delightful wife, ready to love humbly, unexacting,
easy to make happy.

The count, a handsome, polished Parisian, speaking excellent English,
bowed over Mrs. Shackleton’s hand, and then, in answer to her words of
introduction, shot an exploring look, warmed by a glimmer of discreet
admiration, at Mariposa. He wondered who she was, for his practised eye
took in at a glance that she was shabbily dressed and evidently not of
the world of bonanza millions. He wished that he knew her, now that
he had made up his mind to spend some months in San Francisco, paying
court to the heiress who would make him such an admirable wife, and in
whose society time hung so heavily on his hands.

Mariposa excused herself and hurried away. She was angry and confused.
It seemed to her she had done nothing but be rude and obstinately
stupid, while the cold and composed older woman had eyed her with
wary attentiveness. What did Mrs. Shackleton think she had meant? She
felt that the widow had not, for a moment, abandoned the scheme of
sending her away. Descending the wide steps in the early dark, the girl
realized that the woman she had just left was not going to be beaten
from her purpose by what appeared a girl’s unreasonable caprice.

A man coming up the steps brushed by her, paused for a moment, and then
mechanically raised his hat. In the gleam of the lamps, held aloft at
the top of the flight, she recognized the thin face and eye-glasses of
Win Shackleton. She did not return the salute, as it was completely
unexpected, and from the foot of the stairs she heard the hall door
bang behind him.

“Who was that girl I met on the steps just now, going out?” Win asked
his mother, as they went upstairs together.

“That Miss Moreau your father was interested in. He was going to send
her to Paris to learn singing.”

“What was she doing here?”

“I sent for her. I wanted to talk over things with her. I intended
sending her.”

“And did you fix it?”

“No,” with a little laugh, “she’s a very changeable young woman. She
says she doesn’t want to go now; that she’s come to the conclusion she
doesn’t want to be under the obligation.”

“That’s funny,” said Win. “She must be sort of original. Mommer, why
did the governor want to send her to Paris? What was it made him so
interested in her?”

“He knew her father long ago, mining, in the Sierra, and Moreau did
him a good turn up there. Your father had never forgotten it and was
anxious to repay it by helping the daughter. She don’t seem to be easy
to help.”

Win, as he dressed for dinner, meditated on his mother’s explanation.
It sounded reasonable enough, only a thirst to repay past obligations
was not--according to his experience and memories--a peculiarity
that had troubled his father. Both he and Maud knew that all the
generosities and charities of the household had been inspired by their
mother. His childish memory was stocked by recollections of her urging
the advantage of the bestowal of pecuniary aid to this and that person,
association and charity. It was she who had saved Jake Shackleton from
the accusation of meanness, which California society invariably makes
against its rich men.




CHAPTER XIV

VAIN PLEADINGS

          “Are there not, * * *
    Two points in the adventure of the diver:
  One--when a beggar he prepares to plunge;
  One--when a prince he rises with his pearl?”

                                            --BROWNING.


To the astonishment of his world, Win Shackleton announced his
intention of retaining _The Trumpet_, and conducting it, himself,
on the lines laid down by his father. There was a slight shifting
of positions, in which some were advanced and one or two heads were
unexpectedly lopped off and thrown in the basket. The new ruler took
control with a decision that startled those who had regarded him as a
typical millionaire’s son. The men on the paper, who had seen the time
of their lives coming in the managership of a feeble and inexperienced
boy, were awakened from their dreams by feeling a hand on the reins, as
tight as that of Jake Shackleton himself. Win had ideas. Mrs. Willers
was advanced to the managership of the Woman’s Page, into which she
swept triumphant, with Miss Peebles, the young woman of the “Foibles
and Fancies” column, in her wake. Barry Essex was lifted to a staff
position, at a high salary, and had to himself one of the little cells
that branch off the main passage.

Here he worked hard, for Win permitted no drones in his hive. The luck
was with Essex, as it had been often before in his varied career.
Things had fallen together exactly as they should for the furthering of
his designs. It would take a long wooing to win over Mariposa. Now, he
could save money against the day when he and she would leave together
for the Europe where they were to conquer fame and fortune.

He had had other talks with Harney since the evening of his revelation.
He was convinced that the man was telling the truth. He had known men
before of Harney’s type and wondered why the drunkard had not made use
of his knowledge for his own advancement. He had evidently kept his eye
on both Shackleton and Moreau, and it was strange, that, as the two men
rose to affluence, he had not used the ugly secret he held. The only
explanation of it was that they held an even greater power over him. He
had undoubtedly had reason to fear both men. Shackleton, once arrived
at the pinnacle of his success, would have crushed like a beetle in his
path this drunken threatener of his peace. Moreau, whose every movement
he seemed to have followed, had evidently had a hold over him. Hold
or no hold, Shackleton would have swept him aside by the power of his
money and his position, into the oblivion that awaits the enemies of
rich and unscrupulous men.

Now both were dead. But the day of Harney’s power was over. Enfeebled
in mind and body by drink and disease, he had neither the force nor
the brain to be dangerous. His uses were merely those of an instrument
in daring hands. And those hands had found him. There were long talks
in Essex’s room in the evenings, during which the story was threshed
out. George Harney, drunk or sober, neither contradicted himself nor
varied in his details. His mind, confused and addled on other matters,
retained this memory with unblurred clearness.

So Essex deliberated, carefully and without haste, for there was plenty
of time.

The bright days continued. On a radiant Saturday afternoon, Mariposa,
tired with a morning’s teaching, started forth to spend an hour or
two in the park. She had done this several times before, finding
the green peace and solitude of that beautiful spot soothing to her
harassed spirit. It was a long ride in those days, and this had its
charm, the little steam dummy cresting the tops of sandy hills, clothed
with lupins and tiny frightened oaks, crouching before the sea winds.
On this occasion she had invited the escort of Benito, who had been
hanging drearily about the house, thinking with mingled triumph and
envy of Miguel, who had gone with his mother to have a tooth pulled out.

“Pulling the tooth’s bad, of course,” Benito had said to Mariposa, as
he trotted by her side to the car, “but then afterward there’s candy. I
dunno but what it’s worth while. And then you have the tooth.”

“Have the tooth!” said Mariposa. “What do you want the tooth for?”

“You can show it to the boys in school, and you can generally trade it.
I traded mine for a knife with two blades, but both of ’em was broke.”

Benito was becoming very friendly with Mariposa. He was a cheerful and
expansive soul. Could they have heard him, Uncle Gam and his mother
might have suffered some embarrassment on the score of his revelations
as to their quarrels concerning his upbringing. Benito had thoroughly
gaged the capacity of each of them in resisting his charms and urging
him to higher and better things. He was already at the stage when his
mother appealed slightly to his commiseration and largely to his sense
of humor. Mariposa saw that while he had grasped the great fact that
his Uncle Gam had an unfortunately soft heart, he also knew there was a
stage when it was resolutely hardened and his most practised wiles fell
baffled from its surface.

They alighted from the car at what was then the main entrance, and,
side by side, Benito fluently talking, made toward the gate. Here a
peanut vender had artfully placed his stall, and the fumes from the
roasted nuts rose gratefully to the nostrils of the small boy. He
said nothing, but sniffed with an ostentatious noise, and then looked
sidewise at Mariposa. One of the sources of his respect for her was
that she was so quick in reading the language of the eye. One did not
vulgarly have to demand things of her. He felt the nickel in his hand
and galloped off to the stand, to return slowly, his head on one side,
an eye investigating the contents of the opened paper bag he carried.

Being a gentleman of gallant forbears, he offered this to Mariposa,
listening with some uneasiness to the scraping of her fingers among
its contents. He had an awful thought that she might be like Miguel,
who could never be trusted to withdraw his hand until it was full to
bursting. But Mariposa’s eventually emerged with one small nut between
thumb and finger. This she nibbled gingerly as they passed under the
odorous, dark shade of the cypresses. Benito spread a trail of shells
behind him, dragging his feet in silent happiness, his eyes fixed on
the brilliant prospect of sunlit green that filled in the end of the
vista like a drop-curtain.

As they emerged from the cypress shadows the lawns and shrubberies of
the park lay before them radiantly vivid in their variegated greens.
The scene suggested a picture in its motionless beauty, the sunlight
sleeping on stretches of shaven turf where the peacocks strutted, the
red dust of the drive unstirred by wind or wheel. Rich earth scents
mingled with the perfume of the winter blossoms, delicate breaths of
violets from beneath the trees, spices exhaled by belated roses still
bravely blossoming in November, and now and then a whiff of the acrid,
animal odor of the eucalyptus.

Following pathways, now damp beneath the shade of melancholy spruce and
pine, now hard and dry between velvety lawns, they came out on a large
circular opening. Here Mariposa sat down on a bench, with her back to
a sheltering mass of fir and hemlock, the splendid sunshine pouring on
her. Benito, with his bag in his hand, trotted off to the grassy slope
opposite where custom has ordained that little boys may roll about and
play. He had hardly settled himself there to the further enjoyment of
his nuts when another little boy appeared and made friendly overtures,
with his eyes on the bag. Mariposa could not hear them, but she
could see the first advance and Benito’s somewhat wary eyings of the
stranger. In a few moments the formalities of introduction were over,
and they were both lying on their stomachs on the grass, kicking gently
with their toes, while the bag stood between them.

Mariposa had intended to read, but her book lay unopened in her lap.
The sun in California is something more than warming and cheerful. It
is medicinal. There is some unnamed balm in its light that soothes the
tormented spirit and rests and revivifies the wearied body. It is at
once a stimulant and a sedative. It seems to have sucked up healing
breaths from the resinous forests inland and to be exhaling them again
upon those who can not seek their aid.

As the soothing rays enveloped her, Mariposa felt the strain of mind
and body relax and a sense of rest suffuse her. She stretched herself
into a more reposeful attitude, one arm thrown along the back of the
bench. Her book lay beside her on the seat. To keep the blinding light
from her eyes she tilted her hat forward till the shade of its brim cut
cleanly across the middle of her face.

Her mouth, which was plainly in view, had the expression of suffering
that is acquired by the mouths of those who have been forced to endure
suddenly and silently. Her thoughts reverted to Essex and the scene
in the cottage. She wondered if the smart and shame of it would ever
lessen--if she would ever see him again, and what he would say. She
could not imagine him as anything but master of himself. But he was
no longer master of her. The subtile spell he had once exercised was
forever broken.

She heard a foot on the gravel, but did not look up; several people had
passed close to her crossing to the main drive. The new-comer advanced
toward her idly, noting the grace of her attitude, the rich and yet
elegant proportions of her figure. Her face was turned from him, but
he saw the roll of rust-colored hair beneath her hat, started, and
quickened his pace. He had come to a halt beside her before she looked
up startled. A quick red rushed into her face. He, for his part, stood
suave and smiling, holding his hat in one hand, no expression on his
face but one of frank pleasure. Even in his eyes there was not a shade
of consciousness.

“What a piece of luck!” he said. “Who’d have thought of meeting you
here?”

Mariposa had nothing to respond. In a desperate desire for flight and
protection she looked for Benito, but he was at the top of the slope,
well out of earshot of anything but a scream.

Essex surveyed her face with fond attention.

“You’re looking better than you did before you moved,” he said; “you
were just a little too pale then. You know, I didn’t know it was you
at all. I was looking at you as I came across the drive, and I hadn’t
the least idea it was you till I saw your hair”--his eye lighted on it
caressingly--“I knew there was only one woman in San Francisco with
hair like that.”

His voice seemed to mesmerize her at first. Now her volition came back
and she rose.

“Benito!” she cried; “come at once.”

The two little boys had their heads close together and neither turned.

“What are you going to go for?” said Essex in surprise.

“What a question!” she said, picking up her book with a trembling
hand, and thinking in her ignorance that he spoke honestly; “what an
insulting question!”

“Insulting! What on earth do you mean by that?” coaxingly. “Please tell
me why you are going?”

“Because I don’t want ever to see you or speak to you again,” she said
in a voice shaken with anger. “I couldn’t have believed any man could
be so lacking in decency as--as--to do this.”

“Do what?” he asked with an air of blank surprise. “What am I doing?”

“Thrusting yourself on me this way when--when--you know that the sight
of you is humiliating and hateful to me.”

“Oh, Mariposa!” he said softly. He looked into her face with eyes
brimming with teasing tenderness. “How can you say that to me when my
greatest fault has been to love you?”

“Love me!” she ejaculated with breathless scorn; “love me! Oh,
Benito,”--calling with all her force--“come; do come. I want you!”

Benito, who undoubtedly must have heard, was too pleasantly engaged
with the companionship of his new friend to make any response. Early in
life he had learned the value of an occasional attack of deafness.

Mariposa made a motion to go to him, but Essex gently moved in front
of her. She drew away from him, knitting her brows in helpless, heated
rage.

“You know you’re treating me very badly,” he said.

“Treating you very badly,” she now fairly gasped, once more a
bewildered fly in the net of this subtile spider, “how else should I
treat you?”

“Kindly,” he said, softly bending his compelling glance on her, “as a
woman treats a man who loves her.”

“Mr. Essex,” she said, turning on him with all the dignity she had at
her command, “we don’t seem to understand each other. The last time I
saw you, you insulted and humiliated me. I don’t know how it can be,
but you seem to have forgotten all about it. I haven’t. I never can,
and I don’t want to see you or speak to you or think of you ever again
in this world.”

“What makes you think I’ve forgotten?” he said, suddenly dropping his
voice to a key that thrilled with meaning.

He saw the remark shake her into startled half-comprehension. That
she still took his words at their face value proved to him again how
strangely simple she was.

“What makes you think I’ve forgotten?” he repeated.

She raised her eyes in arrested astonishment and met his, now seeming
suddenly to have become charged with memories of the scene in the
cottage.

“How could I forget?” he murmured. “Do you really think I could ever
forget that evening?”

She turned away speechless with embarrassment and anger, recollections
of the kisses of that ill-omened interview burning in her face.

“When a man wounds the one woman in the world he cares for, can he ever
forget, do you think?”

He again had the gratification of seeing her flash a look of artless
surprise at him.

“Then--then--” she stammered, completely bewildered, “if you know that
you wounded me so, why do you come back? Why do you speak to me now?
There is nothing more to be said between us.”

“Yes, there is; much more.”

She drew back, frowning, on the alert to go. For a second he thought he
was to lose this precious and unlooked-for chance of righting himself
with her.

“Sit down,” he said entreatingly; “sit down; I must speak to you.”

She turned from him and sent a quick glance toward Benito. She was
going.

“Mariposa,” he said, desperately catching at her arm, “please--a
moment. Give me one moment. You _must_ listen to me.”

She tried to draw her arm away, but he held it, and pleaded, genuine
feeling flushing his face and roughening his voice.

“I beg--I implore--of you to listen to me. I only ask a moment. Don’t
condemn me without hearing what I have to say. I behaved like a
blackguard. I know it. It’s haunted me ever since. Sit down and listen
to me while I try to explain and make you forgive me.”

He was really stirred; the sincerity of his appeal touched the heart,
once so warm, now grown so cold toward him. She sat down on the
bench, at the end farthest from him, her whole bearing suggesting
self-contained aloofness.

“I know I shocked and hurt you. I know it’s just and natural for you to
treat me this way. I was mad. I didn’t know what I was saying. If you
knew how I have suffered since you would at least have some pity for
me. Can you guess what it means to give a blow to the being who is more
to you than all the rest of the world? I was mad for that one evening.”

He paused, looking at her. Her profile was toward him, pale and
immovable. She neither turned nor spoke. He continued with a slight
diminution of confidence:

“I’ve been a wild sort of fellow, consorting with all sorts of riffraff
and thinking lightly of women. I’ve met lots of all kinds. It was all
right to talk to them that way. You were different. I knew it from
the first. But that night in the cottage I lost my head. You looked
so pale and sad; my love broke the bonds I had put upon it. Can’t you
understand and forgive me?”

He leaned toward her, his face tense and pale. As he became agitated
and fell into the position of pleader, she grew calm and regained her
hold on herself. There was a chill poise about her that frightened him.
He felt that if he attempted to touch her she would draw away with
quick, instinctive repugnance.

She turned and looked into his face with cold eyes.

“No, I don’t think I understand. I should think those very things you
mention would appeal to the chivalry of a man even if he didn’t care
for a woman.”

“Do you doubt that I love you?”

“Yes,” she said, turning away; “I don’t think that you ever could love
me or any other woman.”

“Why do you say that?”

She looked out over the grassy slope in front of them.

“Because you don’t understand the first principles of it. When you’re
fond of people you don’t want to hurt and humiliate them. You don’t
want to drag them down to shame and misery. You’d die to save them from
those things. You want to protect them, help them, take care of them,
be proud of them and say to all the world: ‘Here, look; this is the
person I love!’”

Her simplicity, that once would have amused him, now had something
in it that at once touched and alarmed him. There was a downright
conviction in it, that argument, eloquence, passion even, would not be
able to shake.

“And that, Mariposa,” he said, ardently, “is the way I love you.”

“That the way!” she echoed scornfully. “No--your way is to ask me to
destroy myself, body and soul. You ask me to give you everything, while
you give nothing. You say you love me, and yet you’re so ashamed of me
and your love, that it would have to be a hateful secret thing, that
you told lies about, and would expect me to tell lies about, too. I
can’t understand how you can dare to call it love. I can’t understand.
Oh, don’t talk about it any more. It’s all too horrible and cruel and
false!”

Her words still further alarmed the man. He knew they were not those
of a woman swayed by sentiment, far less by passion.

“That’s all true,” he said hastily, “that’s all true of what I said
to you that night in the cottage. Now it’s different. Aren’t you
large-hearted enough to forgive a man whose greatest weakness has been
his infatuation for you? I was a ruffian and you an unsuspecting angel.
Now I want to offer you the only kind of love that ever should be
offered you. Will you be my wife?”

Mariposa started perceptibly. She turned and looked with amazed eyes
into his face. He seemed another man from the one who had so bitterly
humiliated her at their last interview. He was pale and in earnest.

“Will you?” he repeated.

“No,” she said with slow decisiveness, “I will not.”

“No?” he exclaimed, in loud-voiced incredulity and bending his head to
look into her face. “No?”

“No,” she reiterated; “I said no.”

She felt with every moment that their positions were changing more and
more. She was gradually ascending to the command, while he was slowly
coming under her will.

“Why do you say no?” he demanded.

“Because I want to say no.”

“But--but--why? Are you still angry?”

“I want to say no,” she repeated. “I couldn’t say anything else.”

“But you love me?” with angry persistence.

“No, I don’t love you.”

“You do,” he said in a low voice. “You’re not telling the truth. You do
love me. You know you do.”

She looked at him with cold defiance, and said steadily:

“I do not.”

He drew nearer her along the bench and said with his eyes hard upon her:

“I didn’t think you were the kind of woman to kiss a man you didn’t
care for.”

He knew when he spoke the words they were foolish and jeopardized his
cause, but his fury at her disdainful attitude forced them from him.

She turned pale and her nostrils quivered. He had given her a body
blow. For a moment they sat side by side looking at each other like two
enraged animals animated by equally violent if different passions.

“Thank you for saying that,” she said, when she could command her
voice; “now I understand what your love for me means.”

She rose from the bench. He seized her hand and attempted to draw her
back, saying:

“Mariposa, listen to me. You drive me distracted. You force me to say
things like that to you, when you know that I’m mad with love for you.
Listen--”

She tore her hand out of his grasp and ran across the space to the
slope, calling wildly to Benito. The boy at last could feign deafness
no longer and sat up on his heels in well-simulated surprise.

“Come, come,” she cried angrily. “Come at once. I want you.”

He rose, dusting his nether parts and shouting:

“Why? why? we’re havin’ an awful nice time up here.”

“Come,” she reiterated; “it’s late and we must go.”

He trotted down the slope, extremely reluctant, and inclined to be
rebellious.

Mariposa caught him by the hand and swept him back toward the path
between the spruces. Essex was still standing near the bench, an
elegant figure with a darkly sinister face. As they passed him he
raised his hat. Mariposa, whose face was bent down, did not return
the salute; so Benito did, as he was hauled by. She continued to drag
the unwilling little boy along, while he hung loosely from her hand,
staring backward for a last look at his playmate.

“What’s your name?” he roared as he was dragged toward the shadowy path
that plunged into the trees. “I forget what your name is.”

The answer was lost in the intervening space, and the next moment he
and Mariposa disappeared behind the screen of thick-growing evergreens.

“Say,” said Benito, “leggo my hand. What’s the sense ’er hauling me
this way?”

Mariposa did not heed, and they went on at a feverish pace.

“What makes your hand shake that way?” was his next observation. “It’s
like grandma’s when she came home from Los Angeles with the chills.”

There was something in this harmless comment that caused Mariposa
suddenly to loosen her hold.

“My hand often does that way,” she said with an air of embarrassment.

“What makes it?” asked Benito, suddenly interested.

“I don’t know; perhaps playing the piano,” she said, feeling the
necessity of having to dissemble.

“I’d like to be able to make my hand shake that way,” Benito observed
enviously. “When grandma had the chills I used to watch her. But she
shook all over. Sometimes her teeth used to click. Do your teeth ever
click?”

The subject interested him and furnished food for conversation till
they reached their car and were swept homeward over the low hills,
breaking here and there into sand, and with the little oaks crouching
in grotesque fear before the winds.




CHAPTER XV

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

  “Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. Thou hast
  showed thy people hard things.”--PSALMS.


The third boarder at the Garcias’ was Isaac Pierpont, the teacher of
singing. The Garcia house offered, at least, the one recommendation
of being a place wherein musically inclined lodgers might make the
welkin ring with the sounds of their industry and no voice be raised
in protest. Between the pounding of her own pupils Mariposa could hear
the voices of Pierpont’s as they performed vocal prodigies under their
teacher’s goadings.

The young man was unusual and interesting. He had a “method” which he
expounded to Mariposa during the process of meals. It was founded on a
large experience of voices in general and a close anatomical study of
the vocal chords. All he wanted, he said, to demonstrate its excellence
to the world was a voice. Mrs. Garcia, who used to drop in on Mariposa
with her head tied up in white swathings and a broom in her hand, had
early in their acquaintance given her a life history of the two other
boarders, with a running accompaniment of her own comments. Pierpont
had not her highest approval, as he was exasperatingly indifferent
to money, being bound, to the exclusion of all lesser interests, on
the search for his voice. Half his pupils were taught for nothing and
the other half forgot to pay, or Pierpont forgot to send in his bills,
which was the same thing in the end, Mrs. Garcia thought.

“I can’t see what’s the good of working,” she said, daintily brushing
the surface of the carpet with her broom, “if you don’t make anything
by your work. What’s the sense of it, I’d like to know?”

As soon as the singing teacher heard that Mariposa had a voice he had
espied in her the object of his search and begged her to sing for him.
But she had refused. She had not sung a note since her mother’s death.
The series of unforeseen and disastrous developments that had followed
the opening scene of the drama in which she found herself the central
figure had robbed her of all desire to use the gift which was her one
source of fortune. Sometimes, alone in her room, her fingers running
over the keys of the piano, she wondered dreamily what it would be
like once again to hear the full, vibrating sounds booming out from
her chest. Now and then she had tried a note or two or an old familiar
strain, then had stopped, repelled and disenchanted. Her voice sounded
coarse and strange. And while it quivered on the air there came a rush
of exquisitely painful memories.

But one afternoon, a few days after her encounter with Essex, she had
come in early to find the lower hall full of the sound of a high,
crystal clear soprano, which was pouring from the teacher’s room. She
listened interested, held in a spell of envious attention. It was
evidently a girl of whom Pierpont had spoken to her, who possessed the
one voice of promise he had yet found, and who was studying for the
stage. Leaning over the stair-rail, Mariposa felt, with a tingling
at her heart, that this singing had a finish and poise hers entirely
lacked, and yet the voice was thin, colorless and fragile compared with
her own. With all its flawless ease and fluency it had not the same
splendor of tone, the same passionate thrill.

She went slowly upstairs, pursued by the beautiful sounds, bending over
the railing to catch them more fully, with, for the first time since
her mother’s death, the desire to emulate, to be up and doing, to hear
once more the rich notes swelling from her throat.

“Some day _I’ll_ sing for him,” she said to herself, with her head up
and her eyes bright, “and he’ll see that none of them has a voice like
mine.”

The stir of enthusiasm was still on her when she shut the door of her
own room. It was hard to settle to anything with this sudden welling
up of old ambitions disturbing the apathy following on grief. She was
standing, looking down on the garden--a prospect which had long lost
its forlornness to her accustomed eyes--when a knock at the door fell
gratefully on her ears. Even the society of Mrs. Garcia, with her head
tied up in the white duster, had its advantages now and then.

But it was not Mrs. Garcia, but Mrs. Willers whom the opening door
revealed. Mariposa’s welcome was warmed not only by the desire for
companionship but by genuine affection. She had come to regard Mrs.
Willers as her best friend.

They did not see each other as often as formerly, for the newspaper
woman found all her time occupied by her new work. To-day being Monday,
she had managed to get off for the afternoon, as it was in the Sunday
edition that the Woman’s Page attained its most imposing proportions.
Monday was a day off. But Mrs. Willers did not always avail herself of
it. She was having the first real chance of her life and was working
harder than she had ever done before. Her bank account was mounting
weekly. On the occasions when she had time to consult the little book
she saw through the line of figures Edna going to a fine school in
New York, and then, perhaps, a still finer one abroad, and back of
that again--dimly, as became a blissful vision--Edna grown a woman,
accomplished, graceful, beautiful, a glorified figure in a haze of
wealth and success.

She had no war-paint on to-day, but was in her working clothes, dark
and serviceable, showing lapses between skirt and waist-band, and tag
ends of tape appearing in unexpected places. She had dressed in such a
hurry that morning that only three buttons of each boot were fastened,
though the evening before Edna had seen to it that they were all on.
She had come up the hill on what she would have called “a dead run,”
and was still fetching her breath with gasps.

Sitting opposite Mariposa, in the bright light of the window, she let
her eyes dwell fondly on the girl’s face.

“Well, young woman, do you know I’ve come up here on the full jump to
lecture you?”

“Lecture me?” said Mariposa, laughing and bending forward to give Mrs.
Willers’ hand a friendly squeeze. “What have I been doing now?”

“That’s just what I’ve come to find out. Left a desk full of work, and
Miss Peebles hopping round like a chicken with its head off, to find
out what you’ve been doing. I’d have come up before only I couldn’t get
away. Mariposa, my dear, I’ve had a letter from Mrs. Shackleton.”

Mariposa’s color deepened. A line appeared between her eyebrows, and
she looked out of the window.

“Well,” she said; “and did she say anything about me?”

“That’s what she did--a lot. A lot that sorter stumped me. And I’ve
come up here to-day to find out what’s the matter with you. What is it
that’s making you act like several different kinds of fool all at once?”

“What do you mean?” said Mariposa weakly, trying to gain time. “What
did she tell you?”

“My dear, you know as well as I do what she told me. And I can’t make
head or tail of it. What’s come over you?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl in a low voice. “I suppose I’ve changed.”

“Stuff!” observed Mrs. Willers briskly. “Don’t try to tell lies;
you don’t know how. One’s got to have some natural capacity for it.
You’ve had an offer that makes it possible for you to go to Europe,
educate your voice, study French and German, and become a prima donna.
Everything’s to be paid--no limit set on time or money. Now, what in
heaven’s name made you refuse that?”

Facing her in the bright light, the questioner’s eyes were like gimlets
on her face. Mrs. Willers saw its distressed uneasiness, but could
read no further. Three days before she had received Mrs. Shackleton’s
letter, and had been amazed by its contents. She could neither assign
to herself nor to Mrs. Shackleton a reason for the girl’s unexplainable
conduct.

“I can’t explain it to you,” said Mariposa. “I--I--didn’t want to go.
That was all.”

“But you wanted to go only a month or two before, when Shackleton
himself made you the offer?”

Mariposa nodded without answering.

“But why? That’s the part that’s so extraordinary. You’d take it from
him, but not from his wife.”

“A person might change her mind, mightn’t she?”

“A fool might, but a reasonable woman, without a cent, with hardly a
friend, how could she?”

“Well, she has.”

“Mariposa, look me in the eye.”

Mrs. Willers met the amber-clear eyes and saw, with an uneasy thrill,
that there was knowledge in them there had not been before. It was not
the limpid glance of the candid, unspoiled youth it had once been. She
felt a contraction of pain at her heart, as though she had read the
same change in Edna’s eyes.

“What made you change your mind?--that’s what I want to know.”

Mariposa lowered her lids.

“I can’t tell. What makes anybody change his mind? You think
differently. Things happen that make you think differently.”

“Well, what’s happened to make _you_ think differently?”

The lines appeared again on the smooth forehead. She shifted her glance
to the window and then back to the hands on her lap.

“Suppose I don’t want to tell? I’m not a little girl like Edna, to have
to tell every thought I have. Mayn’t I have a secret, Mrs. Willers?”

She looked at her interlocutor with an attempt at a coaxing smile. Mrs.
Willers saw that it was an effort, and remained grave.

“I don’t want you to have secrets from me, dear, no more than I would
Edna. Mariposa,” she said in a lowered voice, leaning forward and
putting her hand on the girl’s knee, “is it because of some man?”

Mariposa looked up quickly. The elder woman saw that, for a moment, she
was startled.

“Some man!” she exclaimed. “What man?”

“You haven’t changed your mind because of Essex?”

“Essex!” She slowly crimsoned, and Mrs. Willers kept her pitiless eyes
on the rising flood of color.

“Oh, my dear girl,” she said almost in an agony, “don’t say you’ve got
fond of him.”

“I don’t like Mr. Essex. I--I--can’t bear him.”

Mrs. Willers knew enough of human nature not to be at all convinced by
this remark.

“He’s not the man for any woman to give her heart to. He’s not the man
to take seriously. He’s never loved anything in his life but himself.
Don’t let yourself be fooled by him. He’s handsome, and he’s about the
smoothest talker I ever ran up against. But don’t you be crazy enough
to fall in love with him.”

“I tell you, I don’t like him.”

“My goodness, I wish there was somebody in this world to take care of
you. You’ve got no sense, and you’re so unfortunately good-looking.
Some day you’ll be fooled just as I was with Willers. Are you telling
the truth? It isn’t Essex that’s made you change your mind?”

These repeated accusations exasperated Mariposa.

“No, it is not,” she said angrily; and then, in the heat of her
annoyance, “if anything would make me accept Mrs. Shackleton’s offer it
would be the hope of getting away from that man.”

There was no doubt she was speaking the truth now. Mrs. Willers’ point
of view of the situation underwent a kaleidoscopic upsetting.

“Oh,” she said, in a subdued voice, “then it’s _he_ that’s in love?”

The girl made no answer. She felt hot and sore, pricked by this
insistent probing of spots that were still raw.

“Does he--does he--bother you?” the elder woman said in an incredulous
voice. Somehow she could not reconcile the picture of Essex as a
repulsed and suppliant wooer with her knowledge of him as such a very
self-assured and debonair person.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘bother me,’” said Mariposa, still
heated. “He makes love to me, and I don’t like it. I don’t like him.”

“Makes love to you? What do you mean by ‘makes love to you?’”

“He has asked me to be his wife,” said the victim, goaded to
desperation by this tormenting catechism.

She could not have confessed that Essex had entertained other designs
with regard to her, any more than she could have told her real reason
for refusing Mrs. Shackleton’s offer. But she felt ashamed and
miserable at these half-truths, which her friend was giving ear to with
the wide eyes of wonder.

“Humph!” said Mrs. Willers, “I never thought that man would want to
marry a poor girl. But that’s not as surprising as that you had sense
enough to refuse him.”

“I don’t like him. I know I’m stupid, but I know when I like a person
and when I don’t. And I’d rather stand on the corner of Kearney and
Sutter Streets with a tin cup begging for nickels than marry Mr. Essex,
or be sent to Europe by Mrs. Shackleton.”

“Well, you’re a combination of smartness and folly I never expect to
see beaten. You’ve got sense enough to refuse to marry a man who’s
bound to make you miserable. That’s astonishing in any girl. And then,
on the other hand, you throw up the chance of a lifetime for nothing.
That would be astonishing in a candidate for entrance into an asylum
for the feeble-minded.”

“Perhaps I am feeble-minded,” said Mariposa humbly. “I certainly don’t
think I’m very clever, especially now with everybody telling me what a
fool I am.”

“You’re only a fool on that one point, honey. And that’s what makes
it so aggravating. It’s just a kink in your brain, for you’ve got no
reason to act the way you do.”

She spoke positively, but her pleading look at Mariposa showed that she
was not yet willing to give up the search for a reason. Mariposa leaned
forward and took her hand.

“Oh, dear Mrs. Willers,” she said, “don’t ask me any more. Don’t tease
me. I do love you, and you’ve been so kind to me I can never stop
loving you, no matter what you did. But let me be. Perhaps I have a
reason, and perhaps I am only a fool, but whichever way it is, be sure
I haven’t acted hastily; and I’ve suffered, too, trying to do what
seemed to me right.”

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she got up quickly to hide
them, and stood looking out of the window. Mrs. Willers rose, too, and,
putting an arm around her, kissed her cheek.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll try not to bother. But you want to tell
me whatever you think you can. You’re too good-looking, Mariposa, and
you’re such--a--”

She stopped.

“A fool,” came from Mariposa, in the stifled tones of imminent tears.
There was a moment’s pause, and then their simultaneous laughter filled
the room.

“You see you can’t help saying it,” said Mariposa, laughing foolishly,
with the tears hanging on her lashes. “It’s like any other bad
habit--its getting entire control of you.”

A few moments later Mrs. Willers was walking quickly down the hill
toward Sutter Street, her brows knit in thought. She had certainly
discovered nothing. In her pocket was Mrs. Shackleton’s letter telling
of Miss Moreau’s refusal of her offer and asking if Mrs. Willers
knew the reason of it. Mrs. Shackleton had wondered if Miss Moreau’s
affections had been engaged, which could perhaps account for her
otherwise unaccountable rejection of an opportunity upon which her
whole future might depend.

Mrs. Willers had been relieved to find there was certainly no man
influencing Miss Moreau’s decision. For unless it was Essex, it could
be no one. Mrs. Willers knew the paucity of Mariposa’s social circle.
That Essex had asked the girl to marry him and been refused was
astonishing. The rejection was only a little more surprising than the
offer. For a man like Essex to want to marry a penniless orphan was
only exceeded in singularity by a girl like Mariposa refusing a man of
Essex’s indisputable attractions. But there was always something to be
thankful for in the darkest situation, and Mariposa undoubtedly had no
intention of marrying him. Providence was guiding her, at least, in
that respect.

It was still early when Mrs. Willers approached _The Trumpet_ office.
The sky was leaden and hung with low clouds. As she drew near the
door the first few drops of rain fell, spotting the sidewalk here
and there as though they were slowly and reluctantly wrung from the
swollen heavens. It would be a storm, she thought, as she turned into
the doorway and began the ascent of the dark stairs with the lanterns
on the landings. In her own cubby-hole she answered Mrs. Shackleton’s
letter, and then passed along the passageway to the sanctum of the
proprietor, who was still in his office.

Win, in his father’s swivel chair, looked very small and insignificant.
The wide window behind him let a flood of pale light over his
bullet-shaped head with its thatch of limp, blond hair, and his thin
shoulders bowed over the desk. His eyes narrowed behind his glasses as
he looked up in answer to Mrs. Willers’ knock, and then, when he saw
who it was, he smiled, for Win liked Mrs. Willers.

She handed him the letter with the request that he give it to his
mother that evening, and sat down in the chair beside him, facing the
long white panes of the window, which the rain was beginning to lash.

“My mother and you seem to be having a lively correspondence,” said
Win, who had brought down Mrs. Shackleton’s letter some days before.

“Yes, we’ve got an untractable young lady on our hands, and it’s a
large order.”

“Miss Moreau?” said the proprietor of _The Trumpet_. “My mother told
me. She’s very independent, isn’t she?”

“She’s a strange girl. You can tell your mother, as I’ve told her in
this letter, that I don’t understand her at all. She’s got some idea in
her head, but I can’t make it out.”

“Mightn’t a girl just be independent?” said the young man, putting up a
long, thin hand to press his glasses against his nose with a first and
second finger. “Just independent, and nothing else?”

“There’s no knowing what a girl mightn’t be, Mr. Shackleton,” Mrs.
Willers responded gloomily. “I was one myself once, but it’s so long
ago I’ve forgotten what it’s like; and, thank heaven, it’s a stage
that’s soon passed.”

It so happened that this little conversation set Win’s mind once more
to thinking of the girl his father had been so determined to find and
benefit. As he left _The Trumpet_ office, shortly after the withdrawal
of Mrs. Willers, his mind was full of the queries the finding of
the letters had aroused in it. The handsome girl he had seen that
afternoon, three months ago, appeared before his mental vision, and
this time as her face flashed out on him from the dark places of memory
it had a sudden tantalizing suggestion of familiarity. The question
came that so often teases us with the sudden glimpse of a vaguely
recognized face: “Where have I seen it before?”

Win walked slowly up Third Street meditating under a spread umbrella.
It was raining hard now, a level downpour that beat pugnaciously on
the city, which gleamed and ran rillets of water under the onslaught.
People were scurrying away in every direction, women with umbrellas low
against their heads, one hand gripping up their skirts, from beneath
which came and went glimpses of muddy boots and wet petticoats. Loafers
were standing under eaves, looking out with yellow, apathetic faces.
The merchants of the quarter came to the doorways of the smaller shops
that Win passed, and stood looking out and then up into the sky with
musing smiles. It was a heavy rain, and no mistake.

Win had a commission to execute before he went home, and so passed
up Kearney Street to Post, where, a few doors from the corner, he
entered a photographer’s. He was having a copy made on ivory of an old
daguerreotype of his father, to be given as a present to his mother,
and to-day it was to be finished.

The photographer, a clever and capable man, had started the innovation
of having his studio roughly lined with burlaps, upon which photographs
of local belles and celebrities were fastened with brass-headed nails.
Win, waiting for his appearance, loitered round the room looking at
these, recognizing a friend here, and there a proud beauty who had
endured him as a partner at the cotillion because he was the only son
of Jake Shackleton. Farther on was one of Edna Willers, looking very
lovely and seraphic in her large-eyed innocence.

On a small slip of wall between two windows there was only one picture
fastened, and as his eye fell on this he started. It was Mariposa
Moreau, in the lace dress she had worn at the opera, the face looking
directly and gravely into his. At the moment that his glance, fresh
from other faces, fell on it, the haunting suggestion of familiarity,
of having some intimate connection with or memory of it, possessed him
with sudden, startling force. Of whom did she remind him?

He backed away from it, and, as he did so, was conscious that he knew
exactly the way her lips would open if she had been going to speak, of
the precise manner she had of lifting her chin. Yet he had seen her
only twice in his life that he knew of, and then in the half-dark.
It was not she that was known to him, but some one that she looked
like--some one he knew well, that had some vague, yet close connection
with his life. He felt in an eery way that his mind was gropingly
approaching the solution, had almost seized it, when the photographer’s
voice behind him broke the thread.

“It will be ready in a moment, Mr. Shackleton,” he said. “You’re
looking at that picture. It’s a Miss Moreau, a young lady who, I
believe, is a singer. I put it there by itself, as I was just a little
proud of it.”

“It’s a stunning picture and no mistake,” said Win, arranging his
glasses, “but it must be easy to make a picture of a girl like that.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s hard. Miss Moreau’s handsome, but it’s
a beauty that’s more suitable to a painter than a photographer. It’s
the coloring that’s so remarkable, so rich and yet so refined--that
white skin and dark red hair. That’s why I am proud of the picture. It
suggests the coloring, I think. It seems to me there’s something warm
about that hair.”

Win said vaguely, yes, he guessed there must be, wondering what the
fellow meant about there being something warm about the hair. Further
comment was ended by an attendant coming forward with the picture and
handing it to the photographer.

The man held it out to Win with a proud smile. It was an enlargement
of a small daguerreotype, taken some twenty years previously, and
representing Shackleton in full face and without his beard. The work
had been excellently done. It was a faithful and spirited likeness.

As his eye fell on it Win suffered a sudden and amazing revelation.
It was like a dazzling flash of light tearing away the shadows of a
dark place. Through the obscurity of his mind enlightenment rent like
a current of electricity. That was what the memory was, that dim sense
of previous knowledge, that groping after something well known and yet
elusive.

He stared at the picture, and then turned and looked at Mariposa’s
hanging on the wall. The photographer, looking commiseratingly at him,
evidently mistaking his obvious perturbation of mind for a rush of
filial affection, recalled him to himself. He did not know that he was
pale, but he saw that the plate of ivory in his hand trembled.

“It’s--it’s--first-rate,” he said in a low voice. “I’m tremendously
pleased. Send it to _The Trumpet_ office to-morrow, and the bill with
it, please. You’ve done an A number one job.”

He turned away and went slowly out, the photographer and his assistant
looking curiously after him. There were steps to go down before he
regained the street, and he descended them in a maze, the rain pouring
on his head, his closed umbrella in his hand. It was all as clear as
daylight now--the secret searching out of the mother and daughter, the
interest taken by his father in the beautiful and talented girl, his
desire to educate and provide for her. It was all as plain as A, B, C.

“She was so different from Maud and me,” Win thought humbly, as he
moved forward in the blinding rain. “No wonder he was fond of her.”

It was so astonishing, so simple, and yet so hard to realize in the
first moment of discovery this way, that he stopped and stood staring
at the pavement.

Two of his friends, umbrellaed and mackintoshed, bore down on him, not
recognizing the motionless figure with the water running off its hat
brim till they were close on him.

“Win, gone crazy!” cried one gaily. “When did it come on, Winnie boy?”

He looked up startled, and had presence of mind enough not to open his
umbrella.

“Win’s trying to grow,” said the other, knowing that his insignificant
size was a mortification to the young man. “So he’s standing out in the
rain like a plant.”

“Rain’s all right,” said Win. “I like it.”

“No doubt about that, sonny. Only thing to doubt’s your sanity.”

“Cute little day, ain’t it?” said his companion.

“Win likes it,” said the first. “Keep it up, old chap, and you’ll be
six feet high before the winter’s over.”

And they went off cackling to the club to tell the story of Win, with
the water pouring off his hat and his glasses damp, standing staring at
the pavement on Post Street.

Win opened his umbrella and went on. He walked home slowly and by a
circuitous route. His mind traversed the subject back and forth, and
at each moment he became more convinced, as all the muddle of puzzling
circumstances fell into place in logical sequence.

She was his half-sister, older than he was--his father’s first-born.
By this accident of birth she was an outcast, penniless and
unacknowledged, from the home and fortune he and Maud had inherited.
At the very moment when the father had found her free to accept his
bounty he had been snatched away. And she knew it. That was the
explanation of her changeable conduct. She had found it out in some way
between the deaths of her mother and Shackleton. Some one had told her
or she had discovered it herself.

In the dripping dark Win pondered it all, going up and down the
ascending streets in a tortuous route homeward, wondering at fate,
communing with himself.




CHAPTER XVI

REBELLIOUS HEARTS

            “Constant you are,
  But yet a woman; and for secrecy,
  No lady closer, for I will believe
  Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know.”

                                          --SHAKESPEARE.


Win found his mother in her boudoir and delivered Mrs. Willers’ letter
to her without comment. He saw her read it and then sit silent, her
brows drawn, looking into the fire beside which she sat. It was
impossible just then for him to allude to the subject of the letter,
and, after standing by the mantelpiece awkwardly warming his wet feet,
he went upstairs to his own rooms.

At dinner the family trio was unusually quiet. Under the blaze of light
that fell from the great crystal chandelier over the table with its
weight of glass and silver, the three participants looked preoccupied
and stupid. The two Chinese servants, soft-footed as cats, and spotless
in their crisp white, moved about the table noiselessly, offering dish
after dish to their impassive employers.

It was one of those irritating occasions when everything seems to
combine for the purpose of exasperating. Bessie, annoyed by the
contents of Mrs. Willers’ letter, found her annoyance augmented by the
fact that Maud looked particularly plain that evening, and the Count de
Lamolle was expected after dinner. Worry had robbed her face of such
sparkle as it possessed and had accentuated its ungirlish heaviness.
She felt that her engagement to Latimer must be announced, for the
Count de Lamolle was exhibiting those signs of a coming proposal that
she knew well, and what excuse could she give her mother for rejecting
him? She must tell the truth, and the thought alarmed her shrinking
and peaceable soul. She sat silent, crumbling her bread with a nervous
hand and wondering how she could possibly avert the offer if the count
showed symptoms of making it that evening.

After dinner her mother left her in the small reception-room, a rich
and ornate apartment, furnished in an oriental manner with divans,
cushions, and Moorish hangings. The zeal for chaperonage had not
yet penetrated to the West, and Bessie considered that to leave her
daughter thus alone was to discharge her duties as a parent with
delicate correctness. She retired to the adjoining library, where
the count, on entering, had a glimpse of her sitting in a low chair,
languidly turning the pages of a magazine. He, on his part, had lived
in the West long enough to know that the disposal of the family in
these segregated units was what custom and conventionality dictated.

The count was a clever man and had studied the United States from other
points of vantage than the window of a Pullman car.

With the murmur of his greetings to Maud in her ears, Bessie rose from
her chair. She found the library chill and cheerless after her cozy
boudoir on the floor above, and decided to go there. Glancing over her
shoulder, as she mounted the stairs, she could see the count standing
with his back to the fire, discoursing with a smile--a handsome,
personable man, with his dark face and pointed beard looking darker
than ever over his gleaming expanse of shirt bosom. It would be an
entirely desirable marriage for Maud. Bessie had found out all about
the count’s position and title in his native land, and both were all
that he said they were, which had satisfied and surprised her.

In her own room she sat down before the fire to think. Maud’s future
was in her own hands now, molding itself into shape downstairs in the
reception-room. Bessie could do no more toward directing it than she
had already done, and her active mind immediately seized on the other
subject that had been engrossing it. She drew out Mrs. Willers’ letter
and read it again. Then crumpling it in her hand, she looked into the
fire with eyes of somber perplexity.

What was the matter with the girl? Mrs. Willers stated positively that,
as far as she could ascertain, there was no man that had the slightest
influence over Mariposa Moreau’s affections. She was acting entirely on
her own volition. But what had made her change her mind, Mrs. Willers
did not know. Something had undoubtedly occurred, she thought, that had
influenced Mariposa to a total reversal of opinion. Mrs. Willers said
she could not imagine what this was, but it had changed the girl, not
only in ambition and point of view, but in character.

The letter frightened Bessie. It had made her silent all through
dinner, and now brooding over the fire, she thought of what it might
mean and felt a cold apprehension seize her. Could Mariposa know?
Her behavior and conduct since Shackleton’s death suggested such
a possibility. It was incredible to think of, but Lucy might have
told. And also, might not the girl, in arranging her mother’s effects
after her death, have come on something, letters or papers, which had
revealed the past?

A memory rose up in Bessie’s mind of the girl wife she had supplanted,
clinging to the marriage certificate, which was all that remained to
remind her of the days when she had been the one lawful wife. Bessie
knew that this paper had been carefully tied in the bundle which held
Lucy’s few possessions when they left Salt Lake. She knew it was still
in the bundle when she, herself, had handed it to the deserted girl in
front of Moreau’s cabin. Might not Mariposa have found it?

She rose and walked about the room, feeling sick at the thought. She
was no longer young, and her iron nerve had been permanently shaken
by the suddenness of her husband’s death. Mariposa, with her mother’s
marriage certificate, might be plotting some desperate _coup_. No
wonder she refused to go to Paris! If she could establish her claim as
Shackleton’s eldest and only legitimate child, she would not only sweep
from Win and Maud the lion’s share of their inheritance, but, equally
unbearable, she would drag to the light the ugly story--the terrible
story that Jake Shackleton and his second wife had so successfully
hidden.

Her thoughts were suddenly broken in on by the bang of the front door.
She looked at the clock and saw it was only nine. If it was the count
who was going he had stayed less than an hour. What had happened? She
moved to the door and listened.

She heard a light step, slowly and furtively mounting the stairs. It
was Maud, for, though she could attempt to deaden her footfall, she
could not hush the rustling of her silken skirts. As the sweeping sound
reached the stair-head, Bessie opened her door. Maud stopped short,
her black dress fading into the darkness about her, so that her white
face seemed to be floating unattached through the air like an optical
delusion.

“Why, mommer,” she said, falteringly, “I thought you were in bed.”

“Has the count gone?” queried her mother, with an unusual sternness of
tone.

“Yes,” said the girl, “he’s gone. He--he--went early to-night.”

“Why did he go so early?”

“He didn’t want to stay any longer.”

Maud was terrified. Her hand clutching the balustrade was trembling and
icy. In her father’s lifetime she had known that she would never dare
to tell of her engagement to Latimer. She would have ended by eloping.
Now, the fear of her mother, who had always been the gentler parent,
froze her timid soul, and even the joy of her love seemed swamped in
this dreadful moment of confession.

“Did the count ask you to marry him?” said Bessie.

“Yes! and--” with tremulous desperation, “I said no, I couldn’t.”

“You said no! that’s not possible. You couldn’t be such a fool.”

“Well, I was, and I said it.”

“Come in here, Maud,” said her mother, standing back from the doorway;
“we can’t talk sensibly this way.”

But Maud did not move.

“No, I don’t want to go in there,” she said, like a naughty child;
“there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t want to marry him and I told
him so and he’s gone, and that’s the end of it.”

“The end of it! That’s nonsense. I want you to marry Count de Lamolle.
I don’t want to hear silly talk like this. I’ll write to him to-morrow.”

“Well, it won’t do you or him any good,” said Maud, to whom fear was
giving courage, “for I won’t marry him, and neither you nor he can drag
me to the altar if I won’t go. It’s not the time of the Crusades.”

If Maud’s allusion was not precisely illuminating, her mother
understood it.

“It may not be the time of the Crusades,” she said, grimly, “but
neither is it a time when girls can be fools and no one hold out a
hand to check them. Do you realize what this marriage means for you?
Position, title, an entrance into society that you never in any other
way could put as much as the end of your nose into.”

“If I don’t want to put even the end of my nose into it, what good does
it do me? You know I hate society. I hate going to dinners and sitting
beside people who talk to me about things I don’t understand or care
for. I hate going to balls and dancing round and round like a teetotum
with men I don’t like. And if it’s bad here, what would it be over
there where I don’t speak their language or know their ways, and they’d
think I was just something queer and savage the count had caught over
here with a lasso.”

Fears and doubts she had never spoken of to any one but Latimer came
glibly to her lips in this moment of misery. Her mother was surprised
at her fluency.

“You’re piling up objections out of nothing,” she said. “When those
people over in France know what your fortune is, make no mistake,
they’ll be only too glad to know you and be your friend. They’ll not
think you queer and savage. You’ll be on the top of everything over
there, not just one of a bunch of bonanza heiresses, as you are here.
And the count? Do you know any one so handsome, so gentlemanly, so
elegant and polite in San Francisco?”

“I know a man I like better,” said Maud, in a muffled voice.

The white face, with its dimly suggested figure, looked whiter than
ever.

“What do you mean by that?” said her mother, stiffening.

“I mean Jack Latimer.”

“Jack Latimer? One of your father’s clerks! Maud, come in here at once.
I can’t stand talking in the hall of things like this.”

“No, I won’t come in,” cried Maud, backing away against the baluster,
and feeling as she used to do in her juvenile days, when she was hauled
by the hand to the scene of punishment. “There’s nothing more to talk
about. I’m engaged to Jack Latimer, and I’m going to marry him, and
that’s the beginning and the end of it all.”

She felt desperately defiant, standing there in the darkness looking at
her mother’s massive shape against the glow of the lit doorway.

“Jack Latimer!” reiterated Mrs. Shackleton, “who only gets a hundred
and fifty dollars a month and has to give some of it to his people.”

“Well, haven’t I got enough for two?”

“Maud, you’ve gone crazy. All I know is that I’ll not let you spoil
your future. I’ll write to Count de Lamolle to-morrow, and I’ll write
to Jack Latimer, too.”

“What good will that do anybody? Count de Lamolle can’t marry me if
I don’t want to. And why should Jack Latimer throw me over because
you ask him to? He,” she made a tremulous hesitation that would have
touched a softer heart, and then added, “he likes me.”

“Likes you!” repeated her mother, with furious scorn, “he likes the
five million dollars.”

“It’s me,” said Maud, passionately; “it isn’t the money. And he’s the
only person in the world except Win who has ever really liked me. I
don’t feel when I’m with him that I’m so ugly and stupid, the way I
feel with everybody else. He likes to hear me talk, and when he looks
at me I don’t feel as if he was saying to himself, ‘What an ugly girl
she is, anyway.’ But I feel that he doesn’t know whether I’m pretty or
ugly. He only knows he loves me the way I am.”

She burst into wild tears, and before her mother could answer or arrest
her, had brushed past her and fled up the next flight of stairs,
the sound of her sobs floating down from the upper darkness to the
listener’s ears. Bessie retreated into the boudoir and shut the door.

Maud ran on and burst into her own room, there to throw herself on the
bed and weep despairingly for hours. She thought of her lover, the
one human being besides her brother who had never made her feel her
inferiority, and lying limp and shaken among the pillows, thought, with
a wild thrill of longing of the time when she would be free to creep
into his arms and hide the ugly face he found so satisfactory upon his
heart.

In the morning, before she was up, Bessie visited her and renewed the
conversation of the night before. Poor Maud, with a throbbing head and
heavy eyes, lay helpless, answering questions that probed the tender
secrets of the clandestine courtship, which had been to her an oasis
of almost terrifying happiness in the lonely repression of her life.
Finally, unable longer to endure her mother’s sarcastic allusions to
Latimer’s disingenuousness, she sprang out of bed and ran into the
bath-room, which was part of the suite she occupied. Here she turned
on both taps, the sound of the rushing water completely drowning her
mother’s voice, and sitting on the side of the tub, looked drearily
down into the bath, while Bessie’s concluding and indignant sentences
rose from the outer side of the door.

Mrs. Shackleton lunched alone that day. Win generally went to his club
for his midday meal, and Maud had gone out early and found hospitality
at the house of Pussy Thurston. Bessie had done more thinking that
morning in the intervals of her domestic duties--she was a notable
housekeeper and personally superintended every department of her
establishment--and had decided to dedicate part of the afternoon to
the society of Mrs. Willers. One of the secrets of Mrs. Shackleton’s
success in life had been her power to control and retain interests in
divers matters at the same time. Maud’s unpleasant news had not pushed
the even more weighty subject of Mariposa into abeyance. It was as
prominent as ever in the widow’s mind.

She drove down to _The Trumpet_ office soon after lunch and slowly
mounted the long stairs. It would have been a hardship for any other
woman of her years and weight, but Bessie’s bodily energy was still
remarkable, and she had never indulged herself in the luxury of
laziness. At the top of the fourth flight she paused, panting, while
the astonished office boy stared at her, recognizing her as the chief’s
mother.

Mrs. Willers was in her cubby-hole, with a drop-light sending a little
circle of yellow radiance over the middle of the desk. A litter of
newspaper cuttings surrounded her, and Miss Peebles, at the moment of
Mrs. Shackleton’s entrance, was in the cane-bottomed chair, in which
aspirants for journalistic honors usually sat. The rustle of Mrs.
Shackleton’s silks and the faint advancing perfume that preceded her,
announced an arrival of unusual distinction, and Miss Peebles had
turned uneasily in the chair and Mrs. Willers was peering out from the
circle of the drop-light, when the lady entered the room.

Miss Peebles rose with a flurried haste and thrust forward the chair,
and Mrs. Willers extricated herself from the heaped up newspapers and
extended a welcoming hand. The greetings ended, the younger woman bowed
herself out, her opinion of Mrs. Willers, if possible, higher even than
it had been before.

Mrs. Willers was surprised, but discreetly refrained from showing it.
She had known Mrs. Shackleton for several years, and had once heard,
from her late chief, that his wife approved her matter and counseled
her advancement.

But to have her appear thus unannounced in the intimate heat and burden
of office hours was decidedly unexpected. Mrs. Shackleton knew this and
proceeded to explain.

“You must think it queer, my coming down on you this way, when you’re
up to your neck in work, but I won’t keep you ten minutes.” She looked
at the small nickel clock that ticked aggressively in the middle of the
desk. “And I know you are too busy a woman to ask you to come all the
way up to my house. So I’ve come down to you.”

“Pleased and flattered,” murmured Mrs. Willers, pushing back her chair,
and kicking a space in the newspapers, so that she could cross her
knees at ease. “But, don’t hurry, Mrs. Shackleton. Work’s well on and
I’m at your disposal for a good many ten minutes.”

“It’s just to talk over that letter you sent me by Win. What do you
understand by Miss Moreau’s behavior, Mrs. Willers?”

“I don’t understand anything by it. I don’t understand it at all.”

“That’s the way it seems to me. There’s only one explanation of it that
I can see, and you say that isn’t the right one.”

“What was that?”

“That there’s some man here she’s interested in. When a girl of that
age, without a cent, or a friend or a prospect, refuses an offer that
means a successful and maybe a famous future, what’s a person to think?
Something’s stopping her. And the only thing I know of that would stop
her is that she’s fallen in love. But you say she hasn’t.”

“She don’t strike me as being so. She don’t talk like a girl in love.”

“Is there any man who is interested in her and sees her continually?”

Mrs. Willers was naturally a truthful woman, but a hard experience
of life had taught her to prevaricate with skill and coolness when
she thought the occasion demanded it. She saw no menace now, however,
and was entirely in sympathy with Mrs. Shackleton in her annoyance at
Mariposa’s irritating behavior.

“Yes,” she said, nodding with grave eyes, “there _is_ a man.”

“Oh, there _is_,” said the other, bending forward with a sudden eager
interest that was not lost upon Mrs. Willers. “Who?”

“One of our men here, Barry Essex.”

“Essex!” exclaimed the widow, with a sudden light of relieved
comprehension suffusing her glance. “Of course. I know him. That dark,
foreign-looking man that nobody knows anything about. Mr. Shackleton
thought a great deal of him; said he was thrown away on _The Trumpet_.
He’s not a bit an ordinary sort of person.”

“That’s the one,” said Mrs. Willers, nodding her head in somber
acquiescence. “And you’re right about nobody knowing anything about
him. He’s a dark mystery, I think.”

“And you say he’s in love with her?”

“That’s what I’d infer from what she tells me.”

“What _does_ she tell you?”

“He’s asked her to marry him.”

“Then they’re engaged. That accounts for the whole thing.”

“No, they’re not engaged. She’s refused him.”

“Refused him? That girl who’s been living in an adobe at Santa Barbara,
refuse that fine-looking fellow? Why, she’ll never see a man like that
again in her life. _She’s_ not refused him? Of course, she’s engaged to
him.”

“No, you’re mistaken. She’s not. She doesn’t like him.”

“That’s what she tells you. Girls always say that sort of thing. That
explains the way she’s acted from the start. He hadn’t asked her when
Mr. Shackleton was alive. She’s engaged to him now and doesn’t want to
leave him. She struck me as just that soft, sentimental sort.”

“You’re wrong, Mrs. Shackleton; I know Mariposa Moreau. She tells the
truth; all of it. That’s why it’s so hard sometimes to understand what
she means. We’re not used to it. She doesn’t like that man, and she
wouldn’t marry him if he was hung all over with diamonds and was going
to give her the Con Virginia for a wedding present.”

“Bosh!” ejaculated her companion, with sudden, sharp irritation.
“That’s what she says. They have no money to marry on, I suppose, and
she’s trying to keep her engagement secret. It explains everything.
I must say I’m relieved. I had the girl on my mind, and it seemed to
me she was so senseless and fly-away that you didn’t know where she’d
fetch up.”

Mrs. Willers was annoyed. It was not pleasant to her to hear Mariposa
spoken of this way. But a long life of struggle and misfortune had
taught her, among other valuable things, the art of hiding unprofitable
anger under a bland smile.

“Well, all I can say,” she said, laughing quite naturally, “is that I
hope you’re wrong. I’m sure I don’t want to see her married to that
man.”

“Why not?” queried Mrs. Shackleton, with the sudden arrested glance of
surprised curiosity. “What is there to object to in such a marriage?”

“Hundreds of things,” answered Mrs. Willers, feeling that there are
many disadvantages in having to converse with your employer’s mother
on the subject of one of your best friends. “Who knows anything about
Barry Essex? No one knows where he comes from, or who he is, or even
if Essex is his name. I don’t believe it is, at all. I think he just
took it because it sounds like the aristocracy. And what’s his record?
I’ll lay ten to one there are things behind him he wouldn’t like to see
published on the front page of _The Trumpet_. He’s no man to make a
girl happy.”

“You seem to be taking a good deal for granted. Because you don’t know
anything about him, it’s no reason to suppose the worst. He certainly
looks and acts like a gentleman, and he’s finely educated. And isn’t it
better for a girl like Miss Moreau to have a husband to take care of
her than to go roaming around by herself, throwing away every chance
she gets, for some crazy notion? That young woman’s not able to take
care of herself. The best thing for her is to get Barry Essex to do it
for her.”

“I’ve known women,” said Mrs. Willers, judicially, “who thought that
a bad husband was better than no husband at all. But I’m not of that
opinion myself, having had one of the bad ones. Solomon said a corner
of a housetop and a dinner of herbs was better than a wide house with
a brawling woman. And I tell you that one room in Tar Flat and beef’s
liver for every meal is better than a palace on Nob Hill with a husband
that’s no account.”

“I’m afraid you’re inclined to look on the dark side of matrimony,”
said Mrs. Shackleton, laughing, as she rose from her chair.

“May be so,” said the other; “but after my experience I don’t think it
such a blissful state that I want to round up all my friends and drive
them into the corral, whether they want to go or not.”

Mrs. Shackleton looked down for a pondering moment. She was evidently
not listening. Raising her head she met Mrs. Willers’ half-sad,
half-twinkling eyes with a gaze of keen scrutiny, and said:

“Then if it isn’t a love affair, what is it that’s made Miss Moreau
change her mind?”

“Ah!” Mrs. Willers shrugged her shoulders. “That’s what I’d like to
know as well as you. I can only say what it’s not.”

“And that’s Barry Essex. Well, Mrs. Willers, you’re a smart woman, but
you know your business better than you do the vagaries of young girls.
I don’t know Miss Moreau well, but I’d like to bet that I understand
her this time better than you do.”

She smiled genially and held out her hand.

“My ten minutes are up,” nodding at the clock. “And I’m too much of
a business woman to outstay my time limit. No”--in answer to Mrs.
Willers’ polite demur--“I must go.”

She moved toward the door, then paused and said:

“Isn’t Essex a sort of Frenchman? Or wasn’t he, anyway, brought up in
Paris, or had a French mother, or something?”

“As to his mother,” said Mrs. Willers, sourly, “the Lord alone knows
who she was. I’ve heard she was everything from the daughter of a duke
to a snake-charmer in a dime museum. But he told me he was born and
partly educated in Paris, and Madame Bertrand, at the Rôtisserie, tells
me he must have been, as he talks real French French, not the kind you
learn out of a book.”

“He certainly looks like a Frenchman,” said the departing guest.
“Well, good by. It’s a sort of bond between us to try to settle to
her advantage this silly girl who doesn’t want to be settled. If you
hear any more of her affair with Essex, you might let me know. In spite
of my criticisms, I take the greatest interest in her. I wouldn’t
criticize if I didn’t.”

As Mrs. Shackleton was slowly descending the long stairs, Mrs. Willers
still stood beside her desk, thinking. The visit had surprised her in
the beginning. Now it left her feeling puzzled and vaguely disturbed.
Why did Mrs. Shackleton seem to be so desirous of thinking that
Mariposa was betrothed to Essex? The bonanza king’s widow was a woman
of large charities and carelessly magnificent generosities, but she
was also a woman of keen insight and unwavering common sense. Her
interest in Mariposa was as strong as her husband’s, and was entirely
explainable as his had been, in the light of their old acquaintance
with the girl’s father. What Mrs. Willers could not understand was how
any person, who had Mariposa Moreau’s welfare at heart, could derive
satisfaction from the thought of her marrying Barry Essex.




CHAPTER XVII

FRIEND AND BROTHER

  “Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and by it there is profit to
  them that see the sun.”--ECCLESIASTES.


Mariposa’s sixteen dollars a month had been augmented to twenty-eight
by the accession of three new pupils. These had been acquired through
Isaac Pierpont, who was glad to find a cheap teacher for his potential
prima donnas, who were frequently lacking in the simplest knowledge of
instrumental music.

Mariposa was impressed and flattered by her extended clientele, and at
first felt some embarrassment in finding that one of the pupils was
a woman ten years older than herself. The worry she had felt on the
score of her living was now at rest, for Pierpont had promised her his
continued aid, and her new scholars professed themselves much pleased
with her efforts.

Her monthly earnings were sufficient to cover her exceedingly modest
living expenses. The remnants of her fortune--the few dollars left
after her mother’s funeral and the money realized by the sale of
the jewelry and furniture that were the last relics of their _beaux
jours_--made up the amount of three hundred and twenty dollars. This
was in the bank. In the little desk that stood on a table in her room
was the five hundred dollars in gold Shackleton had sent her. She
had not touched it and never intended to, seeming to repudiate its
possession by keeping it thus secret and apart from her other store.

The time was wearing on toward mid-December. Christmas was beginning
to figure in the conversation of Miguel and Benito, and with an eye
to its approach they had both joined a Sunday-school, to which they
piously repaired every Sabbath morn. They had introduced the question
of presents in their conversations with Mariposa with such smiling
persistence that she had finally promised them that, on her first free
afternoon, she would go down town and price certain articles they
coveted. The afternoon came within a few days after her promise, one of
her pupils sending her word that she was invited out of town for the
holidays, and her lessons would cease till after New Year’s.

The pricing had evidently been satisfactory, for, late in the
afternoon, Mariposa turned her face homeward, her hands full of small
packages. It was one of the clear, hazeless days of thin atmosphere,
with an edge of cold, that are scattered through the San Francisco
winter. There is no frost in the air, but the chill has a searching
quality which suggests winter, as does the wild radiance of the sunset
spread over the west in a transparent wash of red. The invigorating
breath of cold made the young girl’s blood glow, and she walked rapidly
along Kearney Street, the exercise in the sharp air causing a faint,
unusual pink to tint her cheeks. Her intention was to walk to Clay
Street and then take the cable-car, which in those days slid slowly up
the long hills, past the Plaza and through Chinatown.

She was near the Plaza, when a hail behind her fell on her ear, and
turning, she saw Barron close on her heels, his hands also full of
small packages. He had been at the mines for two weeks, and she could
but notice the unaffected gladness of his greeting. She felt glad,
too, a circumstance of which, for some occult reason, she was ashamed,
and the shame and the gladness combined lent a reserved and yet
conscious quality to her smile and kindled a charming embarrassment
in her eye. They stood by the curb, he looking at her with glances of
naïve admiration, while she looked down at her parcels. Passers-by
noticed them, setting them down, she in her humble dress, he in his
unmetropolitan roughness of aspect, as a couple from the country, a
rancher or miner and his handsome sweetheart.

He took her parcels away from her, and they started forward toward the
Plaza.

“Do you hear me panting?” he said, laying his free hand on his chest.

“No, why should you pant?”

“Because I’ve been running all down Kearney Street for blocks after
you. I never knew any one to walk as fast in my life. I thought even if
I didn’t catch you you’d hear me panting behind you and think it was
some new kind of fire-engine and turn round and look. But you never
wavered--simply went on like a racer headed for the goal. Did you walk
so fast because you knew I was behind you?”

She looked at him quickly with a side glance of protest and met his
eyes full of quizzical humor and yet with a gleam of something eager
and earnest in them.

“I like to walk fast in this cold air. It makes me feel so alive. For
a long time I’ve felt as though I were half dead, and you don’t know
how exhilarating it is to feel life come creeping back. It’s like being
able to breathe freely after you’ve been almost suffocated. But where
did you see me on Kearney Street?”

“I was in a place buying things for the boys. I was looking at a drum
for Benito, and I just happened to glance up, and there you were
passing. I dropped the drum and ran.”

“A _drum_ for Benito! Oh, Mr. Barron, don’t get Benito a drum!”

He could not control his laughter at the sight of her expression of
horrified protest. He laughed so loudly that people looked at him. She
smiled herself, not quite knowing why, and insensibly, both feeling
curiously light-hearted, they drew closer together.

“What can I get?” he said. “I looked at knives and guns, and I knew
that they wouldn’t do. Benito would certainly kill Miguel and probably
grandma. I thought of a bat and ball, and then I knew he’d break all
the windows. The man in the store wanted me to buy a bow and arrow,
but I saw him taking his revenge on the crab lady. Benito’s a serious
problem any way you take him.”

They had come to the Plaza, once an open space of sand, round which the
wild, pioneer city swept in whirlpool currents, now already showing the
lichened brick and dropping plaster, the sober line of house-fronts,
of an aging locality. Where Chinatown backed on the square the houses
had grown oriental, their western ugliness, disguised by the touch of
gilding that, here and there, incrusted their fronts, the swaying of
crimson lanterns, the green zigzags of dwarf trees. Over the top of the
Clay Street hill the west shone red through smoke which filled the air
with a keen, acrid smell. It told of hearth-fires. And oozing out of
a thousand chimneys and streaming across the twilight city it told of
homes where the good wife made ready for her man.

“Let’s not take the cars,” said Barron. “Let’s walk home. Can you
manage those hills?”

She gave a laughing assent, and they turned upward, walking slowly as
befitted the climb. Chinatown opened before them like the mysterious,
medieval haunt of robbers in an old drawing. The murky night was
settling on it, shot through with red gleams at the end of streets,
where the sunset pried into its peopled darkness. The blackness of
yawning doorway and stealthy alley succeeded the brilliancy of a
gilded interior, or a lantern-lit balcony. Strange smells were in the
air, aromatic and noisome, as though the dwellers in this domain were
concocting their wizard brews. There was a sound of shifting feet, a
chatter of guttural voices, and a vision of faces passing from light to
shadow, marked by a weird similarity, and with eyes like bits of onyx
let into the tight-drawn skin.

It was an alien city, a bit of the oldest civilization in the world,
imbedded in the heart of the newest. Touches of bizarre, of sinister
picturesqueness filled it with arresting interest. On the window-sills
lilies, their stalks bound with strips of crimson paper, grew in blue
and white china bowls filled with pebbles round which their white roots
clung. Miniature pine-trees, in pots of brass, thrust their boughs
between the rusty ironwork of old balconies. Through an open doorway a
glimpse was given down a dark hallway, narrow, black, a gas-jet, like a
tiny golden tear, diffusing a frightened gleam of light. From some dim
angle the glow of a blood-red lantern mottled a space of leprous wall.
On a tottering balcony a woman’s face, rounded like a child’s, crimson
lipped, crowned with peach blossoms, looked down from shadows, the
light of a lantern catching and loosening the golden traceries of her
rich robe, the trail of peach blossoms against her cheek.

The ascent was long and steep, and they walked slowly, talking in a
desultory fashion. Mariposa recounted the trivial incidents that had
taken place in the Garcia house during her companion’s absence. As they
breasted the last hill the light grew brighter, for the sunset still
lingered in a reluctant glow.

“Take my arm,” said Barron. “You’re out of breath.”

She took it, and they began slowly to mount the last steep blocks. She
glanced up at him to smile her thanks for his support, and met his
eyes, looking intently at her. The red light strengthened on her face
as they ascended.

“You’ve the strangest eyes,” he said suddenly. “Do you know what
they’re the color of?”

“My father used to say they were like a dog’s,” she answered, feeling
unable to drop them and yet uneasy under his unflinching gaze.

“They’re the color of sherry--exactly the same.”

“I won’t let you see them any more if that’s the best you can say of
them,” she said, dropping them.

“I could say they were the color of beer,” he answered, “but I thought
sherry sounded better.”

“Beer!” she exclaimed, averting not only her eyes, but her face.
“That’s an insult.”

“Well, then, I’ll only say in the simplest way what I think. I’m not
the kind of man who makes fine speeches--they’re the most beautiful
eyes in the world.”

“That’s the worst of all,” she answered, extremely confused and not
made more comfortable by the thought that she had brought it on
herself. “Let’s leave my eyes out of the question.”

“All right, I’ll not speak of them again. But I’ll want to see them now
and then.”

He saw her color mounting, and in the joy of her close proximity,
loitering arm in arm up the sordid street, he laughed again in his
happiness and said:

“When a person owns something that’s rare and beautiful he oughtn’t to
be mean about it.”

“I suppose not,” said the owner of the rare and beautiful possessions,
keeping them sternly out of sight.

He continued to look ardently at her, not conscious of what he was
doing, his step growing slower and slower.

“It’s a long climb,” he said at length.

“Yes,” she assented. “Is that why you’re going so slowly?”

“Are we going so slowly?” he asked, and as if to demonstrate how slow
had been their progress, they both came to a stop like a piece of
run-down machinery.

They looked at each other for a questioning moment, then burst into
simultaneous peals of laughter.

One of the last and daintiest charms that nature can give a woman
is a lovely laugh. It suggests unexplored riches of tenderness and
sweetness, unrevealed capacity for joy and pain, as a harsh and
unmusical laugh tells of an arid nature, hard, without juice, devoid of
imagination, mystery and passion. Like her mother before her, Mariposa
possessed this charm in its highest form. The ripple of sound that
flowed from her lips was music, and it cast a spell over the man at
whose side she stood, as Lucy’s laugh, twenty-five years before, had
cast one over Dan Moreau.

“I never heard you laugh before,” he said in delight. “What can I say
to make you do it again?”

“You didn’t say anything that time,” said Mariposa. “So I suppose the
best way is for you to be silent.”

Barron took her advice and surveyed her mutely with dancing eyes. For
a moment her lips, puckered into a tremulous pout, twitched with the
premonitory symptoms of a second outburst. But she controlled them,
moved by some perverse instinct of coquetry, while the laughter welled
up in the eyes that were fixed on him.

“I see I’ll have to make a joke,” he said, “and I can’t think of any.”

“Mrs. Garcia’s got a book full. You might borrow it.”

“Couldn’t you tell me one that’s made you laugh before and loan it to
me?”

“But it mightn’t work a second time. I might take it quite solemnly. A
sense of humor’s a very capricious thing.”

“I think the lady who’s got it is even more so,” he said.

And then once again they laughed in concert, foolishly and gaily and
without knowing why.

They had gained the top of the hill, and the blaze of red that swept
across the west shone on their faces. They were within a few minutes’
walk of the house now and they continued, arm in arm, as was the custom
of the day, and at the same loitering gait.

“Didn’t you tell me your people came originally from Eldorado County,
somewhere up near Hangtown?” he asked. “I’ve just been up that way, and
if I’d known the place I might have stopped there.”

“Oh, you never could have found it,” said Mariposa hastily. “It was
only a cabin miles back in the foothills. My mother often told me
of it--just a cabin by a stream. It has probably disappeared now.
My father and mother met and were married there among the mines,
and--and--I was born there,” she ended, stammeringly, hating the lies
upon which her youthful traditions had been built.

“If I’d known you had been born there I’d have gone on a pilgrimage to
find that cabin if it had taken a month.”

“But I tell you it can’t be standing yet. I’m twenty-four years old--”
she suddenly realized that this, too, was part of the necessary web of
misstatement in which she was caught. The color deepened on her face
into a conscious blush. She dropped her eyes, then raising them to his
with a curious defiance, said:

“No--that’s a mistake. I’m--I’m--more than that, I’m twenty-five,
nearly twenty-six.”

Barron, who saw nothing in the equivocation but a girl’s foolish desire
to understate her age, burst into delighted laughter, and pressing the
hand on his arm against his side, said:

“Why, I always thought you were _years_ older than that--thirty to
thirty-five at least.”

And he looked with teasing eyes into her face. But this time Mariposa
did not laugh, nor even smile. The joy had suddenly gone out of her,
and she walked on in silence, her head drooped, seeming in some
mysterious way to have grown suddenly anxious and preoccupied.

“There’s the house,” she said at length. “I was getting tired.”

“There’s a light in the parlor,” said Barron, as he opened the gate.
“What can be the matter? Has Benito killed grandma, or is there a
party?”

Their doubts on this point were soon set at rest. Their approaching
footsteps evidently were heard by a listening ear within, for the hall
door opened and Benito appeared in the aperture.

“There’s a man to see you in the parlor,” he announced to Mariposa.

Inside the hallway the door on the left that led to Mrs. Garcia’s
apartments opened and the young woman thrust out her head, and said in
a hissing whisper:

“There’s a gentleman waiting for you in the parlor, Miss Moreau.”

At the same time Miguel imparted similar information from the top of
the stairs, and the Chinaman appeared at the kitchen door and cried
from thence, with the laconic dryness peculiar to his race:

“One man see you, parlor.”

Mariposa stood looking from one to the other with the raised eyebrows
of inquiring astonishment. The only person who had visitors in the
Garcia house was Pierpont, and they did not come at such a fashionably
late hour.

“He’s a thin, consumpted-looking young man with eye-glasses,” said
Mrs. Garcia, curling round the door the better to project the hissing
whisper she employed, “and he said he’d wait till you came in.”

Mariposa turned toward the parlor door, leaving the family, with
Barron, on the stairs, and the Chinaman, peering from the kitchen
regions, watching her with tense interest, as if they half expected
they would never see her again.

Two of the gases in the old chandelier were lit and cast a sickly light
over the large room, which had the close, musty smell of an unaired
apartment. The last relics of Señora Garcia’s grandeur were congregated
here--bronzes that once had cost large sums of money, a gilt console
that had been brought from a rifled French château round the Horn in
a sailing ship, a buhl cabinet with its delicate silvery inlaying
gleaming in the half-light, and two huge Japanese vases, with blue and
white dragons crawling round their necks, flanking the fireplace.

On the edge of a chair, just under the chandelier, sat a young man. He
had his hat in his hand, and his head drooped so that the light fell
smoothly on the crown of blond hair. He looked small and meager in the
surrounding folds of a very large and loose ulster. As the sound of
the approaching step caught his ear he started and looked up, with the
narrowed eyes of the near-sighted, and then jumped to his feet.

“Miss Moreau?” he said inquiringly, and extended a long, thin hand
which, closing on hers, felt to her warm, soft grasp like a bunch of
chilled sticks. She had not the slightest idea who he was, and looking
at him under the wan light, saw he was some one from that world of
wealth with which she had so few affiliations. Something about him--the
coldness of his hand, an indescribable trepidation of manner--suggested
to her that he was exceedingly ill at ease. She looked at him
wonderingly, and said:

“Won’t you sit down?”

He sat at her bidding on the chair he had risen from, subsiding into
the small, shrunken figure in the middle of enveloping folds of
overcoat. One hand hung down between his knees holding his hat. He
looked at Mariposa and then looked down at the hat.

“Cold afternoon, isn’t it?” he said.

“Very cold,” she responded, “but I like it. I hope you haven’t been
waiting long.”

“Not very,” he looked up at her, blinking near-sightedly through the
glasses; “I don’t know whether you know what my name is, Miss Moreau?
It’s Shackleton--Winslow Shackleton. I forgot my card.”

Mariposa felt a lightning-like change come over her face, in which
there was a sudden stiffening of her features into something hard and
repellent. To Win, at that moment, she looked very like his father.

“Oh!” she said, hearing her voice drop at the end of the interjection
with a note of vague disapproval and uneasiness.

“I’ve seen you,” continued Win, “once at _The Trumpet_ office, when you
were there with Mrs. Willers. I don’t think you saw me. I was back in
the corner, near the table where Jack--that’s the boy--sits.”

Mariposa murmured:

“No, I didn’t see you.”

She hardly knew what he said or what she responded. What did _this_
mean? What was going to happen now?

“You must excuse my coming this way, without an introduction or
anything, but as you knew my father and mother, I--I--thought you
wouldn’t mind.”

He glanced at her again, anxiously, she thought, and she said suddenly,
with her habitual directness:

“Did you come from your mother?”

“No, I came on--on--my own hook. I wanted”--he looked vaguely about and
then laid his hat on a table near him--“I wanted to see you on business
of my own.”

The nervousness from which he was evidently suffering began to
communicate itself to Mariposa. The Shackleton family had come to mean
everything that was painful and agitating to her, and here was a new
one wanting to talk to her about business that she knew, past a doubt,
was of some unusual character.

“If you’ve come to talk to me about going to Europe,” she said
desperately, “I may as well tell you, there’s no use. I won’t go to
Paris now, as I once said I would, and there’s no good trying to make
me change my mind. Your mother and Mrs. Willers have both tried to, and
it’s very kind of them, but I--can’t.”

She had an expression at once of fright and determination. The subject
was becoming a nightmare to her, and she saw herself attacked again
from a strange quarter, and with, she imagined, a new set of arguments.

“It’s nothing to do with going to Europe,” he said. “It’s--it’s”--he
put up one of the long, bony hands, and with the two first fingers
pressed his glasses back against his eyes, then dropped the hand and
stared at Mariposa, the eyes looking strangely pale and prominent
behind the powerful lenses.

“It’s something that’s just between you and me,” he said.

She surveyed him without answering, her brows drawn, her mind
concentrated on him and on what he could mean.

“Do you want me to teach somebody music?” she said, wondering if this
could be the pleasant solution of the enigma.

“No. The--er--the business I’ve come to talk to you about ought to do
away altogether with the necessity of your giving lessons.”

They looked at each other silently for a moment. Win was conscious that
his hands were trembling, and that his mouth was dry. He rose from his
chair and mechanically reached for his hat. When he had started on his
difficult errand he had been certain that she knew her relationship to
his father. Now the dreadful thought entered his mind that perhaps she
did not. And even if she did, it was evident that she was not going to
give him the least help.

“What _is_ the business you’ve come to see me about?” she asked.

“It’s a question of money,” he answered.

“Money!” ejaculated Mariposa, in baffled amaze. “What money? Why?”

He glanced desperately into his hat and then back at her. She saw the
hat trembling in his hand and suddenly realized that this man was
trying to say something that was agitating him to the marrow of his
being.

“Mr. Shackleton,” she said, rising to her feet, “tell me what you
mean. I don’t understand. I’m completely at sea. How can there be
any question of money between us when I’ve never seen you or met you
before? Explain it all.”

He dropped the hat to his side and said slowly, looking her straight in
the face:

“I want to give you a share of the estate left me by my father. I look
upon it as yours.”

There was a pause. He saw her paling under his gaze, and realized that,
whatever she might pretend, she knew. His heart bled for her.

“As mine!” she said in a low, uncertain voice. “Why?”

“Because you have a right to it.”

There was another pause. He moved close to her and said, in a voice
full of a man’s deep kindness:

“I can’t explain any more. Don’t ask it. Don’t let’s bother about
anything in the background. It’s just the present that’s our affair.”

He suddenly dropped his hat and took her hand. It was as cold now as
his had been. He pressed it, and Mariposa, looking dazedly at him, saw
a gleam like tears behind the glasses.

“It’s hateful to have you living here like this, while we--that is,
while other people--have everything. I can’t stand it. It’s too mean
and unfair. I want you to share with me.”

She shook her head, looking down, a hundred thoughts bursting in upon
her brain. What did he know? How had he found it out? In his grasp, her
hand trembled pitifully.

“Don’t shake your head,” he pleaded, “it’s so hard to say it. Don’t
turn it down before you’ve heard me out.”

“And it’s hard to hear it,” she murmured.

“No one knows anything of this but me,” he continued, “and I promise
you that no other ever shall. It’ll be just between us as between”--he
paused and then added with a voice that was husky--“as between brother
and sister.”

She shook her head again, feeling for the moment too upset to speak,
and tried to draw away from him. But he put his other hand on her
shoulder and held her.

“I’ll go halves with you. I can have it all arranged so that no one
will ever find out. I can’t make the regular partition of the property
until the end of the year. But, until then, I’ll send you what would
be your interest, monthly, and you can live where, or how, you like.
I--I--can’t go on, knowing things, and thinking of you living in this
sort of way and teaching music.”

“I can’t do it,” she said, in a strangled undertone, and pulling her
hand out of his grasp. “I can’t. It’s not possible. I can’t take money
that was your father’s.”

“But it’s not his--it’s mine now. Don’t let what’s dead and buried come
up and interfere.”

She backed away from him, still shaking her head. She made an effort
toward a cold composure, but her pain seemed to show more clearly
through it. He looked at her, vexed, irresolute, wrung with pity, that
he knew she would not permit him to express.

It was impossible for them to understand each other. She, with
her secret knowledge of her mother’s lawful claim and her own
legitimacy--he regarding her as the wronged child of his father’s
sin. In her dazed distress she only half-grasped what he thought. The
strongest feeling she had was once again to escape the toils that these
terrible people, who had so wronged her mother, were spreading for her.
They wanted to pay her to redeem the stain on their past.

“Money can’t set right what was wrong,” she said. “Money can’t square
things between your family and mine.”

“Money can’t square anything--I don’t want it to. I’m not trying to
square things; I’ve not thought about it that way at all. I just wanted
you to have it because it seemed all wrong for you not to. You had a
right, just as I had, and Maud had. I don’t think I’ve thought much
about it, anyway. It just came to me that you ought to have what was
yours. I wouldn’t make you feel bad for the world.”

“Then remember, once and forever, that I take nothing from you or your
people. I’d rather beg than take money that came from your father.”

“But he has nothing to do with it. It’s mine now. I’ve done you no
injury, and it’s I that want you to take it. Won’t you take it from me?”

He spoke simply, almost wistfully, like a little boy. Mariposa answered:

“No--oh, Mr. Shackleton, why don’t you and your people let me alone?
I won’t tell. I’ll keep it all a secret. But your mother torments me
to go to Europe--and now you come! If I were starving, I wouldn’t--I
couldn’t--take anything from any of you. I think _you’re_ kind. I think
you’ve just come to-day because you were sorry. But don’t talk about
it any more. Let me be. Let me go along teaching here where I belong.
Forget me. Forget that you ever saw me. Forget the miserable tie of
blood there is between us.”

“That’s the thing I can’t forget. That’s the thing that worries me.
It’s not the past. I’ve nothing to do with that. It’s the present
that’s my affair. I can’t have everything while you have nothing. It
don’t seem to me it’s like a man to act that way. It goes against me,
anyhow. I don’t offer you this because of anything in the past; that’s
my father’s affair. I don’t know anything about it. I offer it because
I--I--I”--he stammered over the unfamiliar words and finally jerked
out--“because I want to give back what belongs to you. That’s all there
is to it. Please take it.”

She looked directly into his eyes and said, gravely:

“No. I’m sorry if it’s a disappointment, but I can’t.”

Then she suddenly looked down, her face began to quiver, and she said
in a broken undertone:

“Don’t talk about it any more; it hurts me so.”

Win turned quickly away from her and picked up his hat. He was confused
and disappointed, and relieved, too, for he had done the most difficult
piece of work of his life. But, at the moment, his most engrossing
feeling was sympathy for this girl, so bravely drawing her pride
together over the bleeding of her heart.

She murmured a response in a steadier voice and he turned toward her.
Had any of his society friends been by they would hardly have known
him. The foolish manner behind which he sheltered his shy and sensitive
nature was gone. He was grave and looked very much of a man.

“Well, of course, it’s for you to say what you want. But there’s one
thing I’d like you to promise.”

“To promise?” she said uneasily.

“Yes, and to keep it, too. And that is, if you ever want anything--help
in any way; if you get blue in your spirits, or some one’s not doing
the straight thing by you, or gone back on you--to come to me. I’m not
much in some ways, but I guess I could be of use. And, anyway, it’s
good for a girl to have some friend that she can count on, who’s a man.
And”--he paused with the door-handle in his hand--“and now you know me,
anyway, and that’s something. Will you promise?”

“Yes, I’ll promise that,” said Mariposa, and moving toward him she gave
him her hand.

He pressed it, dropped it, and opened the door. A moment later Mariposa
heard the hall door bang behind him. She sat down in the chair from
which she had risen, her hands lying idle in her lap, her eyes on a
rose in the carpet, trying to think, to understand what it meant.

She did not hear the door open or notice Benito’s entrance, which was
accomplished with some disturbance, as he was astride a cane. His
spirited course round the room, the end of the cane coming in violent
contact with the pieces of furniture that impeded his route, was of so
boisterous a nature that it roused her. She looked absently at him, and
saw him wreathed in smiles. Having gained her attention, he brought his
steed toward her with some ornamental prancings. She noticed that he
held a pair of gloves in his hands.

“That man what came to see you,” he said, “left this cane. It was in
the hat-rack, and I came out first, so I swiped it. I took these for
Miguel”--he flourished the gloves--“but the cane’s mine all right. Come
in to supper.”

And he wheeled away with a bridling step, the end of his cane rasping
on the worn ribs of the carpet. Mariposa, mechanically following him,
heard his triumphant cries as he entered the dining-room and then his
sudden wails of wrath as Miguel expressed his disapprobation of the
division of the spoils in the vigorous manner of innocent childhood.




CHAPTER XVIII

WITH ME TO HELP

  “Look in my face, my name is--Might Have Been!
  I am also called, No More, Too Late, Farewell.”

                                             --ROSETTI.


Had Essex realized that Mrs. Willers was an adverse agent in his
pursuit of Mariposa, he would not have greeted her with the urbane
courteousness that marked their meetings. He was a man of many manners,
and he never would have wasted one of his best on the newspaper woman,
to him essentially uninteresting and unattractive, unless he had
intended thereby to further his own ends. Mrs. Willers he knew to be a
friend of Mariposa’s, and he thought it a wise policy to keep in her
good graces. He made that mistake, so often the undoing of those who
are unscrupulous and clever, of not crediting Mrs. Willers with her
full amount of brains. He had seen her foolish side, and he knew that
she was a good journalist of the hustling, energetic, unintellectual
type, but he saw no deeper.

Since their meeting in the park and her unequivocal rejection of him
his feeling for Mariposa had augmented in force and fire until it had
full possession of him. He was of the order of men whom easy conquests
cool. Now added to the girl’s own change of front was the overwhelming
inducement of the wealth she represented. His original idea of Mariposa
as a handsome mistress that he would take to France and there put on
the operatic stage, of whom he would be the proud owner, while they
toured Europe together, her voice and beauty charming kings, had been
abandoned since the night of his talk with Harney. He would marry her,
and, with her completely under his dominion, he would turn upon the
Shackleton estate and make her claim. He supposed her to be in entire
ignorance of her parentage, and his first idea had been to marry her
and not lighten this ignorance till she was safely in his power. He
had a fear of her shrinking before the hazards of the enterprise, but
he was confident that, once his, all scruples, timidity and will would
give way before him.

But her refusal of him had upset these calculations, and her coldness
and repugnance had been as oil to the flame of his passion. He was
enraged with himself and with her. He thought of the night in the
cottage and cursed himself for his precipitation, and his gods for the
ill luck that, too late, had revealed to him her relationship to the
dead millionaire. At first he had thought the offer of marriage would
obliterate all unpleasant memories. But her manner that day in the park
had frightened him. It was not the haughty manner, adopted to conceal
hidden fires, of the woman who still loves. There had been a chill
poise about her that suggested complete withdrawal from his influence.

Since then he had cogitated much. He foresaw that it was going to
be very difficult to see and have speech of her. An occasional walk
up Third Street to Sutter with Mrs. Willers kept him informed of her
movements and doings. Had he guessed that Mrs. Willers, with her rouge
higher up on one cheek than the other, the black curls of her bang
sprawlingly pressed against her brow by a spotted veil, was quite
conversant with his pretensions and their non-success, he would have
been more guarded in his exhibition of interest. As it was, Mrs.
Willers wrote to Mariposa after one of these walks in which Essex’s
questions had been carelessly numerous and frank, and told her that he
was still “camped on her trail, and for goodness’ sake not to weaken.”
Mariposa tore up the letter with an angry ejaculation.

“Not to weaken!” she said to herself. If she had only dared to tell
Mrs. Willers the whole instead of half the truth!

The difficulty of seeing Mariposa was further intensified by the
fullness of his own days. He had little time to spare. The new
proprietor worked his people for all there was in them and paid them
well. Several times on the regular weekly holiday the superior men on
_The Trumpet_ were given, he loitered along streets where she had been
wont to pass. But he never saw her. The chance that had favored him
that once in the park was not repeated. Mrs. Willers said she was very
busy. Essex began to wonder if she suspected him of lying in wait for
her and was taking her walks along unfrequented byways.

Finally, after Christmas had passed and he had still not caught a
glimpse of her, he determined to see her in the only way that seemed
possible. He had inherited certain traditions of good breeding from
his mother, and it offended this streak of delicacy and decency that
was still faintly discernible in his character to intrude upon a lady
who had so obviously shown a distaste for his society. But there was
nothing else for it. Interests that were vital were at stake. Moreover,
his desire, for love’s sake, to see her again was overmastering. Her
face came between him and his work. There were nights when he stood
opposite the Garcia house watching for her shadow on the blind.

He timed his visit at an hour when, according to the information
extracted from Mrs. Willers, Mariposa’s last pupil for the day should
have left. He loitered about at the corner of the street and saw
the pupil--one of the grown-up ones in a sealskin sack and a black
Gainsborough hat--open the gate and sweep majestically down the street.
Then he strode from his coign of vantage, stepped lightly up the
stairs, and rang the bell.

It was after school hours, and Benito opened the door. Essex, in his
silk hat and long, dark overcoat, tall and distinguished, was so much
more impressive a figure than Win that the little boy stared at him in
overawed surprise, and only found his breath when the stranger demanded
Miss Moreau.

“Yes, she’s in,” said Benito, backing away toward the stairs; “I’ll
call her. She has quite a lot of callers sometimes,” he hazarded
pleasantly.

The door near by opened a crack, and a female voice issued therefrom
in a suppressed tone of irritation.

“Benito, why don’t you show the gentleman into the parlor?”

“He’ll go in if he wants,” said Benito, who evidently had decided that
the stranger knew how to take care of himself; “that’s the door; just
open it and go in.”

Essex, who was conscious that the eye which pertained to the voice was
surveying him intently through the crack, did as he was bidden and
found himself in the close, musty parlor. It was late in the afternoon,
and the long lace curtains draped over the windows obscured the light.
He wanted to see Mariposa plainly and he looped the curtains back
against the brass hooks. His heart was beating hard with expectation.
As he turned round to look at the door he noticed that the key was in
the lock, and resolved, with a sense of grim determination, that if she
tried to go when she saw who it was, he could be before her and turn
the key.

Upstairs Benito had found Mariposa sitting in front of the fire. She
had been giving lessons most of the day and was tired. She stretched
herself like a sleepy cat as he came in, and put her hand up to her
hair, pushing in the loosened hairpins.

“It’s some one about lessons, I guess,” she said, rising and giving a
hasty look in the glass. “At this rate, Ben, I’ll soon be rich.”

“What’ll we do then?” said Benito, clattering to the stair-head beside
her.

“We’ll buy a steam yacht, just you and I, and travel round the world.
And we’ll stop in all sorts of strange countries and ride on elephants
and buy parrots, and shoot tigers and go up in balloons and do
everything that’s dangerous and interesting.”

She was in good spirits at the prospect of a new pupil, and, with her
hand on the door-knob, threw Benito a farewell smile, which was still
on her lips as she entered.

It remained there for a moment, for at the first glance she did not
recognize Essex, who was standing with his back to the panes of the
unveiled windows; then he moved toward her and she saw who it was.

She gave a smothered exclamation and drew back.

“Mr. Essex!” she said; “why do you come here?”

He had intended to meet her with his customary half impudent, half
cajoling suavity, but found that he could not. The sight of her filled
him with fiery agitation.

“I came because I couldn’t keep away,” he said, advancing with his hand
out.

“No,” she said, glancing at the hand and turning her head aside with an
impatient movement; “there can’t be any pretenses at friendship between
us. I don’t want to shake hands with you. I don’t want to see you. What
did you come for?”

“To see you. I had to see you.”

His eyes, fixed on her as she stood in the light of the window, seemed
to italicize the words of the sentence.

“There’s no use beginning that subject again,” she said hurriedly;
“there’s no use talking about those things.”

“What things? What are you referring to?”

For a moment she felt the old helpless feeling coming over her, but she
forced it aside and said, looking steadily at him:

“The things we talked about in the park the last time we met.”

She saw his dark face flush. He was too much in earnest now to be able
to assert his supremacy by teasing equivocations.

“Nevertheless, I’ve come to-day to repeat those things.”

“Don’t--don’t,” she said quickly; “there’s no use. I won’t listen to
them. It’s not polite to intrude into a lady’s house and try to talk
about subjects she detests.”

“The time has passed for us to be polite or impolite,” he answered
hotly; “we’re not the man and woman as society and the world has made
them. We’re the man and woman as they are and have always been from
the beginning. We’re not speaking to each other through the veils of
conventionality; we’re speaking face to face. We have hearts and souls
and passions. We’ve loved each other.”

“Never,” she said; “never for a moment.”

“You have a bad memory,” he answered slowly; “is it natural or
cultivated?”

He had the satisfaction of seeing her color rise. The sight sent a
thrill of hope through him. He moved nearer to her and said in a voice
that vibrated with feeling:

“You loved me once.”

“No, never, never. It was never that.”

“Then why,” he answered, his lips trying to twist themselves into
a sardonic smile, while rage possessed him, “why did you--let us
say--encourage me so that night in the cottage on Pine Street?”

Though her color burned deeper, her eyes did not drop. He had never
seen her dominating her own girlish impulses like this. It seemed to
remove her thousands of miles from the circle of his power.

“I’ll tell you,” she answered; “I was lonely and miserable, and you
seemed the only creature that I had to care for. I thought you were
fond of me, and I thought it was wonderful that any one as clever as
you could really care for me. That you regarded me as you did I could
no more have imagined than I could have suspected you of picking my
pocket or murdering me. And that night in the cottage, when in my
loneliness and distress I seemed to be holding out my arms to you,
asking you to protect and comfort me, you laughed at me and struck me
a blow in the face. It was the end of my dream. I wakened then and saw
the reality. But you--you as you are--as I know you now--I never loved,
I never could have loved.”

Her words inflamed his rage, not alone against her, but against
himself, who had had her in this pliant mood in his very arms and had
lost her.

“And was it only a desire for consolation and sympathy that made you
behave toward me in what was hardly--a--” he paused as if hesitating
for a word that would in a seemly manner express his thought,
in reality racking his brains for the one that would hurt her
most--“hardly a maidenly way considering your lack of interest in me?”

The word he had chosen told. Her color sank suddenly away, leaving her
very pale. Her face seemed to stiffen and lose its youthful curves.

“I don’t think,” she said slowly, “that it’s necessary to continue this
conversation. It doesn’t seem to me to be very profitable to anybody.”

She looked at him, but he made no movement.

“You will have to excuse me, Mr. Essex,” she said, moving toward the
door, “but if you won’t go I must.”

The expected had happened. He sprang before her and locked the door.
Leaning his back against it, he stared at her. Both were now very pale.

“No,” he said, hearing his own voice shaken by his rapid breathing,
“you’re not going. I’ve not said half I came to say. I’ve not come
to-day to plead and sue like a beggar for the love that you’re ready to
give one day and take back the next. I’ve other things to talk about.”

“Open the door,” she commanded; “open the door and let me out. I want
to hear nothing that you have to say.”

“Don’t you want to hear who you are?” he asked.

The words passed through Mariposa like a current of electricity. Every
nerve in her body seemed to tighten. She looked at him, staring and
repeating:

“Hear who I am?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning toward her while one hand still gripped the
door-handle; “hear what your real name is, and who you are? Hear who
your father was and where you were born?”

Her face blanched under his eyes. The sight pleased him, suggesting as
it did weakness and fear that would give him back his old ascendancy.
Horror invaded her. He, of all people on earth, to know! She could say
nothing; could hardly think; only seemed a thing of ears to hear.

“Hear who my father was!” she repeated, this time almost in a whisper.

“Yes; I can tell you all that, and more, too. I’ve got a wonderfully
interesting story for you. You’ll not want to go when I begin. Sit
down.”

“What do you know? Tell me quickly.”

“Don’t be impatient. It’s a long story. It begins on the Nevada desert.
That’s where you were born; not in the cabin in Eldorado County, as I
heard you telling Jake Shackleton that day at Mrs. Willers’.”

He was watching her like a tiger, still standing with his back against
the door. Her eyes were on him, wild and intent. Each word fell like a
drop of vitriol on her brain. She saw that he knew everything.

“Your mother was Lucy Fraser, but your father was not Dan Moreau. He
was a very different man, and you were his eldest child, his eldest and
only legitimate child. Do you know what his name was?”

“Yes,” said Mariposa in a low voice; “Jake Shackleton.”

It was Essex’s turn to be amazed. He stared at her, speechless,
completely staggered.

[Illustration: “DON’T YOU WANT TO HEAR WHO YOU ARE?”]

“You know it?” he cried, starting forward toward her; “you know it?”

“Yes,” she answered; “I know it.”

He stood glaring, trying to collect his senses and grasp in one
whirling moment what difference her knowledge would make to him.

“How--how--did you know it?” he stammered.

“That’s not of any consequence. I know that I am Jake Shackleton’s
eldest living child; that my mother was married twice; that I was born
in the desert instead of in Eldorado County. I know it all. And what
is there so odd about that?” She threw her head up and looked with
baffling coldness into his eyes. “Why shouldn’t I know my own parentage
and birthplace?”

“And--and--” he continued to speak with eager unsteadiness--“you’ve
done nothing yet?”

“Done nothing yet,” she repeated; “what should I do?”

“That’s all right,” he said hastily, evidently relieved; “you couldn’t
do anything alone. There must be some one to help you.”

“Help me do what?”

Both had forgotten the quarrel, the locked door, the fever pitch
of ten minutes earlier. All other thoughts had been crowded out of
Mariposa’s mind by the horrible discovery of Essex’s knowledge, and
by the apprehensions that were cold in her heart. She shrank from him
more than ever, but had no desire now to leave the room. Instead, she
persisted in her remark:

“Help me do what? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Help you in establishing your claim. And fate has put into my hands
the very person, the one person who can do that. You know there was a
man who was in the cabin with Moreau--a partner. Did you ever hear of
him?”

She nodded, swallowing dryly. Her sense of apprehension strengthened
with his every word.

“Well, I have that man under my hand. He and Mrs. Shackleton are the
only living witnesses of the transaction whereby your mother and you
passed into Moreau’s keeping. And I have him. I’ve got him here.” He
made a gesture with his thumb as though pressing the ball of it down
on something. Then he looked at Mariposa with eyes full of an eager
cupidity.

She did not respond with the show of interest he had expected, but
stood looking down, pale and motionless. Her brain was in an appalled
chaos from which stood out only a few facts. This terrible man knew her
secret--the secret of her mother’s life and honor--that she would have
died to hide in the sacredness of her love for the dead man and woman
who could no longer defend themselves.

“It seems as if fate had sent me to help you,” he went on; “you
couldn’t do it alone.”

“Do what?” she asked without moving.

“Establish your claim as the real heir. Of course you’re the chief
heir. I’ve been looking it up. The others will get a share as
acknowledged children. But you ought to get the bulk of the fortune as
the only legitimate child.”

“Establish my claim?” she repeated. “Do you mean, prove that I’m Jake
Shackleton’s daughter?”

“Yes. And there’s a tremendously important point. Did your mother have
papers or letters showing that she had been Shackleton’s wife?”

“She left her marriage certificate,” she said dully, hardly conscious
of her words. “I have it.”

“Here?--by you?” with quick curiosity.

“Yes; upstairs--in my little desk.”

“Ah,” he said, with almost a laugh of relief. “That settles it. You
with the certificate and I with Harney! Why, we’ve got them.”

“We?” she said, looking up as though waking. “We?”

“Yes; we,” he answered.

He had come close to her and, standing at her side, bent his head in
order to look more directly into her face.

“This ought to put an end, dear, to your objections,” he said gently;
“you can’t do it alone. No woman could, much less one like you--young,
inexperienced, ignorant of the world. You’ve got no idea what a big
contest like this means. There must be a man to help you, and I must be
that man, Mariposa. We can marry quietly as soon as you are ready. It
would be better not to make any move until after that, as it would be
much easier for me to conduct the campaign as your husband than as your
fiancé. I’d take the whole thing off your shoulders. You’d have almost
nothing to do, except be certain of your memories and dates, and I’d
see to it that you were letter perfect in that when the time came. I’d
stand between you and everything that was disagreeable.”

He took her hand, which for the moment was passive in his.

“When will it be?” he said, giving it a gentle squeeze; “when,
sweetheart?”

She tore her hand away.

“Why, you’re crazy,” she cried. “There’ll never be any of it. Never be
any claim made or contest, or anything that you talk of. You want me
to make money out of my mother’s story that was a tragedy--that I can
hardly think of myself! Oh!--” She turned around, speechless, and put
her hand to her mouth.

She thought of her dying mother, and grief for that smitten soul,
so deeply loved, so tenderly loving, rent her with a throe of pity,
poignant as bodily pain.

“Your mother is dead,” he said, understanding her and feeling some real
sympathy for her. “It can’t hurt her now.”

“Drag it all out into the light,” she went on. “Fight in a court with
those horrible Shackletons! Have it in the papers and all the mean, low
people in California, who couldn’t for one moment understand anything
that was pure and noble, jeering and talking over my father and mother!
That’s what you call establishing my claim, isn’t it?”

“That’s not all of it,” he stammered, taken aback by her violence.
“And, anyway, it’s all true.”

“Well, then, I’ll lie and say it was false. If it came to fighting I’d
say it was false. That I was not Jake Shackleton’s daughter, and that
my mother never knew him, or saw him, or heard of him. I’d burn that
certificate and say there never was such a thing, and that anybody who
suggested it was a liar or a madman. And when it comes to you, there’s
just one thing to say: I wouldn’t marry you if forty fortunes hung on
it. I’d rather beg or steal than be your wife if you owned all the
Comstock mines. That’s the future you think is going to tempt me--you
for a husband and a fortune for us both, made by proving that my mother
was never really married to the man I called my father!”

“But--but,” he said, not heeding her anger in his bewildered amazement,
“you intended it sooner or later yourself?”

“I?--I?--Betray my parents for money? _I_ do that?”

She stared at him, with eyes of wild indignation. He began to have a
cold comprehension of what she felt, and it shook him as violently as
his passion for her had ever done.

“But you don’t understand,” he cried. “This is not a matter of
thousands; it’s millions, and it’s yours by right. It’s a colossal
fortune here in your hand--yours almost for the asking.”

“It will never be mine. I wouldn’t have it. Oh, let me go! This is too
horrible.”

“Wait--just one moment. If it came to an actual suit it might be
painful and trying for you. But how if I can arrange a compromise with
Mrs. Shackleton? I think I can. When she knows that you have the proofs
of the marriage she’ll be glad enough to settle. She doesn’t want these
things to come out any more than you do. She’s a smart woman, and
she’ll know that your silence is the most valuable thing she can buy.
Do you understand?”

“I understand just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You.”

For the second time they looked at each other for a motionless,
deep-breathing moment. There was nothing in their faces or attitudes
that suggested lovers. They looked like a pair of antagonists at pause
in their struggle--on the alert for a continuance of battle.

“Yes, I understand you now,” she said in a low voice; “you’ve made me
understand you.”

“I only want to make you understand one thing--how much I love you.”

She drew back with a movement of violent repugnance. He suddenly
stretched out his arms and came toward her.

She ran toward the door, for the moment forgetting it was locked. Then,
as it resisted, memory awoke. He was beside her and tried to take her
in his arms, but she turned and struck him, with all her force, a blow
on the face. She saw the skin redden under it.

“Open the door!” she gasped; “open the door!”

For the moment the blow so stunned and enraged him that he drew back
from her, his hand instinctively rising to the smarting skin. An oath
burst from his compressed mouth.

“I’d like to kill you for that,” he said.

“Open the door,” she almost shrieked, rattling the handle.

“I’ll pay you for this. You seem to forget that I know all the
disreputable secrets of your beginnings. I can tell all the world how
your mother was sold to Dan Moreau, and how--”

Mariposa heard the click of the gate and a step on the outside stairs.
She drowned the sound of Essex’s voice in a sudden furious pounding on
the door, while she cried with the full force of her lungs:

“Benito! Miguel! Mrs. Garcia!--Come and open this door! Come and let me
out! I’m locked in! Come!”

Essex was at the door in an instant, the key in the lock. As he turned
it he gave her a murderous look.

“You fool!” he said under his breath.

As the portal swung open and he passed into the hall, the front door
was violently pushed inward, and Barron almost fell against him in the
hurry of his entrance.

The new-comer drew back from the departing stranger with an apologetic
start.

“Beg your pardon,” he said bruskly, “but I thought I heard some one
scream in here.”

“Scream?” said Essex, languidly selecting his hat from the disreputable
collection on the rack; “I didn’t notice it, and I’ve been sitting
in there for nearly an hour with Miss Moreau. I fancy you’ve made a
mistake.”

“I guess I must have. It’s odd.”

The hall door slammed behind Essex, and the other man turned into the
parlor, where the light was now very dim. In his exit from the room
Essex had flung the door open with violence, and Mariposa, who had
backed against the wall, was still standing behind it. As Barron pushed
it to he saw her, a vague black figure with white hands and face, in
the dark.

“What on earth are you doing there?” he said; “standing behind the door
like a child in the corner.”

She thanked heaven for the friendly dark and answered hurriedly:

“I--I--I--didn’t want you to catch me. I’m so--so--untidy.”

“Untidy? I never saw you untidy, and don’t believe you ever were. I met
a man in the hall, who said he’d been here for an hour. You must have
been playing puss in the corner with him.”

“Yes; his name’s Essex, and he’s a friend of Mrs. Willers’ that I know.
He was here, and I thought he’d come about music lessons, so I came
down looking rather untidy. That was how it happened.”

“And he stayed an hour talking about music lessons?”

“No--oh, no; other things.”

They turned into the hall, Barron, in his character of general guardian
of the Garcia fortunes, shutting the door of the state apartment. He
had the appearance of taking no notice of Mariposa, but as soon as he
got into the light of the hall gas he sent a lightning-like glance over
her face.

“It was funny,” he said, “but as I came up the steps I thought I heard
some one calling out. I dashed in and fell into the arms of your
music-lesson man, who said no cries of any kind had disturbed the joy
of his hour in your society.”

Mariposa had begun to ascend the stairs.

“Cries?” she said over her shoulder; “I don’t think there were any
cries. Why should any one cry out here?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to know,” he said, watching her ascending
back.

She turned and passed out of sight at the top of the stairs. Barron
stood below under the hall gas, his head drooped. He was puzzled, for,
say what they might, he was certain he had heard cries.




CHAPTER XIX

NOT MADE IN HEAVEN

  “Women are like tricks by sleight of hand
  Which to admire we should not understand.”

                                        --CONGREVE.


At _The Trumpet_ office the next morning Essex found a letter awaiting
him. It was from Mrs. Shackleton, asking him to dinner on a certain
evening that week--“very informally, Mr. Essex would understand, as the
family was in such deep mourning.”

Essex turned the letter over, smiling to himself. It was an admirable
testimony to Bessie’s capability. Her monogram, gilded richly, adorned
the top of the sheet of cream-laid paper, and beneath it, in a fine
running hand, were the few carefully-worded sentences, and then
the signature--Bessie A. Shackleton. It was a remarkable letter,
considering all things; wonderful testimony to that adaptive cleverness
which is the birth-right of Bessie’s countrywomen. In her case this
care of externals had not been a haphazard acquirement. She was not the
woman to be slipshod or trust to the tutoring of experience. When her
husband’s star had begun to rise with such dazzling effulgence she had
hired teachers for herself, as well as those for Maud, and there were
many books of etiquette on the shelves in her boudoir.

The letter contained more for Essex than a simple invitation to dinner.
It was the first move of the Shackleton faction in the direction he
desired to see them take. Bessie had evidently heard something that
had made her realize he, too, might be more than a pawn in the game.
He answered the note with a sentence of acceptance and a well-turned
phrase, expressing his pleasure at the thought of meeting her again.

He was not in an agreeable frame of mind. His interview with Mariposa
had roused the sleeping devil within him, which, of late, had only
been drowsy. His worst side--ugly traits inherited from his rascally
father--was developing with overmastering force. Lessons learned in
those obscure and unchronicled years when he had swung between London
and Paris were beginning to bear fruit. At the blow from Mariposa a
crop of red-veined passions had burst into life and grown with the
speed of Jack’s beanstalk. His face burned with the memory of that
blow. When he recalled its stinging impact, he did not know whether he
loved or hated Mariposa most. But his determination to force her to
marry him strengthened with her openly expressed abhorrence. The memory
of her face as she struck at him was constantly before his mental
vision, and his fury seethed to the point of a still, level-brimming
tensity, when he recalled the fear and hatred in it.

The dinner at Mrs. Shackleton’s was a small and informal one. The
company of six--for, besides himself, the only guests were the Count
de Lamolle and Pussy Thurston--looked an exceedingly meager array in
the vast drawing-room, whose stately proportions were rendered even
larger by mirrors which rose from the floor to the cornice, elongating
the room by many shadowy reflections. A small fire burned at each
end, under mantels of Mexican onyx, and these two little palpitating
hearts of heat were the brightest spots in the spacious apartment where
even Miss Thurston’s dress of pale-blue gauze seemed to melt into the
effacing shadows.

The Count de Lamolle gave Essex a quick glance, and, as they stood
together in front of one of the fires--the two girls and Win having
moved away to look at a painting of Bouguereau’s on an easel--addressed
a casual remark to him in French. The count had already met the
newspaper man, and set him down, without illusion or hesitation, as a
clever adventurer. He overcame his surprise at meeting him in the house
of the bonanza widow, by the reflection that this was the United States
where all men are equal, and women with money free to be wooed by any
of them.

The count was in an uncertain and almost uncomfortable state of mind.
The letter he had received from Mrs. Shackleton, bidding him to the
feast, was the second from her since Maud’s rejection of him. The first
had been of a consolatory and encouraging nature. Mrs. Shackleton told
him that Maud was young, and that many women said no, when they meant
yes. The count knew both these things as well as Mrs. Shackleton; the
latter, even better. But it seemed to him that Maud, young though she
was, had not meant yes, and the handsome Frenchman was not the man to
force his attentions on any woman. He watched her without appearing to
notice her. She had been greatly embarrassed at sight of him, and only
for the briefest moment let her cold fingers touch his palm. Under the
flood of light from the dining-room chandelier she looked plainer than
ever; her lack of color and stolid absence of animation being even more
noticeable than usual in contrast with the brilliant pink and white
prettiness of Pussy Thurston, who chattered gaily with everybody, and
attempted a little French with De Lamolle.

Maud sat beside Essex, and even that easily fluent gentleman found her
difficult to interest. She appeared dull and unresponsive. Looking at
her with slightly narrowed eyes, he wondered how the count, of whose
name and exploits he had often heard in Paris, could contemplate so
brave an act as marrying her.

The count, who, having more heart, could see deeper, asked himself
if the girl was really unhappy. As he listened to Miss Thurston’s
marvelous French he wondered, with a little expanding heat of
irritation, if the mother was trying to force the marriage against the
daughter’s wish. He had broken hearts in his day, but it was not a
pastime he found agreeable. He was too gallant a gentleman to woo where
his courtship was unwelcome.

When the gentlemen entered the drawing-room from their after-dinner
wine and cigars, they found the ladies seated by one of the fires below
the Mexican onyx mantels. Bessie rose as they approached and, turning
to Essex, asked him if he had seen the Bouguereau on the easel, and
steered him toward it.

“It was one of Mr. Shackleton’s last purchases,” she said; “he was very
anxious to have a fine collection. He had great taste.”

Her companion, looking at the plump, pearly-skinned nymph and her
attendant cupids, thought of Harney’s description of Shackleton in the
days when he had first entered California, and said, with conviction:

“What a remarkably versatile man your husband was! I had no idea he was
interested in art.”

“Oh, he loved it,” said Bessie, “and knew a great deal about it. We
were in Europe two years ago for six months, and Mr. Shackleton and I
visited a great many studios. That is a Meissonier over there, and that
one we bought from Rosa Bonheur. She’s an interesting woman, looked
just like a man. Then in the Moorish room there’s a Gérôme. Would you
like to see it? It’s considered a very fine example.”

He expressed his desire to see the Gérôme, and followed Bessie’s
rustling wake into the Moorish room. The little room was warm, with its
handful of fire, and softly lit with chased and perforated lanterns of
bronze and brass. The heat had drawn the perfume from the bowls full
of roses and violets that stood about and the air was impregnated with
their sweetness. The Gérôme, a scene in the interior of a harem, with a
woman dancing, stood on an easel in one corner.

“That’s it,” said Bessie, drawing to one side that he might see it
better. “One on the same sort of subject was in the studio when we
first went there, but Mr. Shackleton thought it was too small, and this
was painted to order.”

“Superb,” murmured Essex; “Gérôme at his best.”

“We hoped,” continued Bessie, sinking into a seat, “to have a fine
collection, and build a gallery for them out in the garden. There was
plenty of room, and they would have shown off better all together that
way, rather than scattered about like this. But I’ve no ambition to do
it now, and they’ll stay as they are.”

“Why don’t you go on with the collection?” said the young man, taking
a seat on a square stool of carved teak wood. “It would be a most
interesting thing to do, and you could go abroad every year or two, and
go to the studios and buy direct from the artists. It’s much the best
way.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, with a little shrug; “I don’t know
enough about it. I only know what I like, and I generally like the
wrong thing. I’m not versatile like my husband. When I first came to
California I didn’t know a chromo from an oil painting. In fact,” she
said, looking at him frankly and laughing a little, “I don’t think I’d
ever seen an oil painting.”

Essex returned the laugh and murmured a word or two of complimentary
disbelief. He was wondering when she would get to the real subject of
conversation which had led them to the Gérôme and the Moorish room. She
was nearer than he thought.

“It would be a temptation to go to Paris every year or two,” she said.
“That’s the most delightful place in the world. It’s your home, isn’t
it? So, of course, you agree with me.”

“Yes, I was born there, and have lived there off and on ever since. To
me, there is only one Paris.”

“And can you fancy any one having the chance to go there, and live and
study, with no trouble about money, refusing?”

Essex looked into the fire, and responded in a tone that suggested
polite indifference:

“No, that’s quite beyond my powers of imagination.”

“I have a sort of--I think you call it protégée--isn’t that the
word?--yes”--in answer to his nod--“whom I want to send to Paris. She’s
a young girl with a fine voice. Mr. Shackleton was very much interested
in her. He knew her father in the mining days of the early fifties and
wanted to pay off some old scores by helping the daughter. And now the
daughter seems to dislike being helped.”

“There are such people,” said Essex in the same tone. “Does she dislike
the idea of going to Paris, too?”

“That seems to be it. We both wanted to send her there, have her voice
trained, and put her in the way of becoming a singer. Lepine, when he
was here, heard her and thought she had the making of a prima donna.
But,” she suddenly looked at him with a half-puzzled expression of
inquiry, “I think you know her--Miss Moreau?”

Essex looked back at her for a moment with bafflingly expressionless
eyes.

“Yes, I know her. She’s a friend of Mrs. Willers’, one of the Sunday
edition people on _The Trumpet_. A very handsome and charming girl.”

“That’s the girl,” said Bessie, mentally admiring his perfect aplomb.
“She’s a very fine girl, and, as you say, handsome. But I don’t think
she’s got much common sense. Girls don’t, as a rule, have more than
enough to get along on. But when they’re poor, and so alone in the
world, they ought to pick up a little.

“Certainly, to refuse an offer such as you speak of, argues a lack of
something. Have you any idea of her reason for refusing?”

He looked at Bessie as he propounded the question, his eyelids lowered
slightly. She, in her turn, let her keen gray glance rest on him. The
thought flashed through her mind that it was only another evidence of
Mariposa’s peculiarity of disposition that she should have refused so
handsome and attractive a man.

“No--” she said with unruffled placidity, “I don’t understand it.
She’s a proud girl and objects to being under obligations. But then
this wouldn’t be an obligation. Apart from everything else, there’s no
question about obligations where singers and artists and people like
that are concerned. It’s all a matter of art.”

“Art levels all things,” said the young man glibly.

“That’s what I always thought. But Miss Moreau doesn’t seem to agree
with me. The most curious part of it all is that she was willing to go
in the beginning. That was before her mother died; then she suddenly
changed her mind, wouldn’t hear of it, and said she’d prefer staying
here in San Francisco, teaching music at fifty cents a lesson. I must
say I was annoyed. I had her here and talked to her quite severely,
but it didn’t seem to make any impression. I was puzzled to death to
understand it. But after thinking for a while, and wondering what
could make a girl prefer San Francisco and teaching music at fifty
cents a lesson, to Paris and being a prima donna, I came to the
conclusion there was only one thing could influence a woman to that
extent--there was a man in the case.”

She saw Essex, whose eyes were on the fire, raise his brows by way of a
polite commentary on her words.

“That sounds a very plausible solution of the problem,” he said.
“Love’s a deadly enemy to common sense.”

“That’s the way it seemed to me. She had fallen in love, and evidently
the man had not enough money to marry on, or was in a poor position, or
something. When I thought of that I was certain I’d found the clue. The
silly girl was going to give up everything for love. I suppose I ought
to have felt touched. But I really felt sort of mad with her at first.
Afterward, thinking it over, I decided it was not so foolish, and now
I’ve veered round so far that I’m inclined to encourage it.”

“On general principles you think domesticity is better for a woman than
the glare of the footlights?”

“No, not that way. I think a gift like Mariposa Moreau’s should be
cultivated and given to the public. I never had any sympathy with that
man in the Bible who buried his talent in the ground. I think talents
were made to be used. What I thought, was, why shouldn’t Mariposa marry
the man she cared for and go with him to Paris. It would be a much
better arrangement all round. She isn’t very smart or capable, and
she’s young and childish for her years. Don’t you think she is, Mr.
Essex?”

Essex again raised his eyebrows and looked into the fire.

“Yes,” he said in a dubious tone. “Yes, I suppose she is. She is
certainly not a sophisticated or worldly person.”

“That’s just it. She’s green--green about everything. Some way or other
I didn’t like the thought of sending her off there by herself, where
she didn’t know a soul. And then she’s so handsome. If she was ugly
it wouldn’t matter so much. But she’s very good-looking, and when you
add that to her being so inexperienced and green about everything you
begin to realize the responsibility of sending her alone to a strange
country, especially Paris.”

“Paris is not a city,” commented her companion, “where young,
beautiful and unprotected females are objects of public protection and
solicitude.”

“That’s the reason why I want, now, to encourage this marriage. With a
husband that she loves to take care of her, everything would be smooth
sailing. She’d be happy and not homesick or strange. He’d be there with
her, to watch over her and probably help her with her studies. Perhaps
he could get some position, just to occupy his time. Because, so far
as money went, I’d see to it that they were well provided for during
the time she was preparing. Lepine said that he thought two or three
years would be sufficient for her to study. Well, I’d give them fifteen
thousand dollars to start on. And if that wasn’t enough, or she was
not ready to appear at the expected time, there would be more. There’d
be no question about means of living, anyway. They could just put that
out of their heads.”

“I have always heard that Mrs. Shackleton was generous,” said Essex,
looking at her with a slight smile.

“Oh, generous!” she said, with a little movement of impatience, which
was genuine. “This is no question of generosity; I want the girl to go
and be a singer, and I don’t want her to go alone. Now, I’ve found out
a way for her to go that will be agreeable to her and to me, and, I
take for granted, to the man.”

She looked at Essex with a smile that almost said she knew him to be
that favored person.

“Of course,” she continued, “it would be better for him to get some
work. It’s bad for man or woman to be idle. If he knows how to write,
it would be an easy matter to make him Paris correspondent of _The
Trumpet_. It was my husband’s intention to have a correspondent, and he
had some idea of offering it to Mrs. Willers. But it’s not the work for
her, nor she the woman for it. It ought to be a man, and a man that’s
conversant with the country and the language. There’ll be a good salary
to go with it. Win was talking about it only the other evening.”

“What a showering of good fortune on one person,” said Essex--“a
position ready-made, a small fortune and a beautiful wife! He must be a
favorite of the gods.”

“You can call it what you like, Mr. Essex,” said Bessie. “It’s been my
experience that the gods take for their favorites men and women who’ve
got some hustle. Everybody has a chance some time or other. Miss Moreau
and her young man have theirs now.”

She rose to her feet, for at that moment, Pussy Thurston appeared in
the doorway to say good night.

The pretty creature had cast more than one covertly admiring look at
Essex, during the dinner, and now, as she held out her hand to him in
farewell, she said after the informal Western fashion:

“Won’t you come to see me, Mr. Essex? I’m always at home on Sunday
afternoon. If you’re bashful, Win will bring you. He comes sometimes
when he’s got nowhere else in the world to go to.”

Win, who was just behind her, expressed his willingness to act as
escort, and laughing and jesting, the party passed through the doorway
into the drawing-room. The little fires were burning low. By the light
of one, Maud and Count de Lamolle were looking at a book of photographs
of Swiss views. The count’s expression was enigmatic, and as Bessie
approached them she heard Maud say:

“Oh, that’s a mountain. What’s the name of it, now? I can’t remember.
It’s very high and pointed, and people are always climbing it and
falling into holes.”

“The Matterhorn, perhaps,” suggested the count, politely.

To which Maud gave a relieved assent. Her words were commonplace
enough, but there was a quality of light-heartedness, of suppressed
elation, in her voice, that her mother’s quick ear instantly caught. As
the girl looked up at their approaching figures her face showed the
same newly-acquired sparkle that was almost joyous.

It had, in fact, been a critical evening for Maud, and so miserable did
she feel her situation to be, that she had taken her courage in both
hands and struck one desperate blow for freedom.

When her mother and Essex had begun their pictorial migrations she had
felt the cold dread of a tête-à-tête with the count creeping over her
heart. For a space she had tried to remain attached to Win and Pussy
Thornton, but neither Win nor Pussy, who were old friends and had
many subjects of mutual interest to discuss, encouraged her society.
Maud was not the person to develop diplomatic genius under the most
favorable circumstances. Half an hour after the men had entered the
drawing-room, she found herself alone with the count, in front of the
fire, Win and Pussy having strayed away to the Bouguereau.

The count had tried various subjects of conversation, but they had
drooped and died after a few minutes of languishing existence. He stood
with his back to the mantelpiece, looking curiously at Maud, who sat
on the edge of an armchair just within reach of the fluctuating light.
Her hands were clasped on her knee and she was looking down so that he
could not see her face.

Suddenly she rose to her feet and faced him. She was pale and her eyes
looked miserable and terrified.

“Count de Lamolle,” she breathed in a tremulous voice.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, moving toward her, very much surprised by her
appearance.

“I’ve got to say something to you. It may sound queer, but I’ve got to
say it.”

“Dear Miss,” said the Frenchman, really concerned by her tragic
demeanor, “say whatever pleases you. I am only here to listen.”

“You don’t really care for me. Oh, if you’d only tell the truth!”

“That is a strange remark,” he said, completely taken by surprise, and
wondering what this extraordinary girl was going to say next.

“If I thought you really cared it would be different. Perhaps I
couldn’t say it. I hate making people miserable, and yet so many people
make me miserable.”

“Who makes you miserable, dear young lady?” he said, honestly touched.

“You,” she almost whispered. “You do. You don’t mean to, I know, for I
think you’re kinder than lots of other men. But--but-- Oh please, don’t
keep on asking me to marry you. Don’t do it any more; that makes me
miserable. Because I can’t do it. Truly, I can’t.”

Count de Lamolle became very grave. He drew himself up with an odd,
stiff air, like a soldier.

“If a lady speaks this way to a man,” he said, “the man can only obey.”

Maud hung on his words. When she grasped their import, she suddenly
moved toward him. There was something pathetic in her eagerness of
gratitude.

“Oh, thanks! thanks! I knew you’d do it. It’s not you I object to.
I like you better than any of the others. But”--she glanced over her
shoulder into the lantern-lit brilliance of the Moorish room and
dropped her voice--“there’s some one I like more.”

“Oh,” said the count, and his dark eyes turned from her face, which had
become very red.

“He’s going to marry me some day. He’s just Jack Latimer, the
stenographer in the office. But I like him, and that’s all there is
to it. But mommer’s terribly set on you. And she’s so determined. Oh,
Count de Lamolle, it’s very hard to make determined people see things
differently to what they want. So please, don’t want to marry me any
more, for if you don’t want to, that will have to end it.”

She stopped, her lips trembling. The count took her hand, cold and
clammy, and lifting it pressed his lips lightly on the back. Then,
dropping it, he said, quietly:

“All is understood. You have honored me highly, Mademoiselle, by giving
me your confidence.”

They stood silent for a moment. The kiss on her hand, the something
friendly and kind--so different from the cold looks of unadmiring
criticism she was accustomed to--in the man’s eyes brought her
uncomfortably close to tears. Few people had been kind to Maud
Shackleton in the midst of her riches and splendor.

The count saw her emotion and turned toward the fire. He felt more
drawn to her than he had ever been during his courtship. From the tail
of his eye he saw her little handkerchief whisk out and then into her
pocket. As it disappeared he said:

“I see, Miss Shackleton, that you have some albums of views on the
table. Might we not look at them together?”

Thus it was that Bessie and Essex found them. They had worked through
two volumes of Northern Italy, and were in Switzerland. And over the
stiffened pages with their photographs, not one-half of which Maud
could remember though she had been to all the places on her trip
abroad, they had come nearer being friends than ever before.




CHAPTER XX

THE WOMAN TALKS

  “My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned; then
  I spake with my tongue.”--PSALMS.


The morning after her interview with Essex Mariposa had appeared at
breakfast white-cheeked and apathetic. She had eaten nothing, and when
questioned as to her state of health had replied that she had passed
a sleepless night and had a headache. Mrs. Garcia, the younger, in a
dingy cotton wrapper belted by a white apron, shook her head over the
coffee-pot and began to tell how the late Juan Garcia had been the
victim of headaches due to green wall-paper.

“But,” said Mrs. Garcia, looking up from under the lambrequin of blond
curls that adorned her brow, “there’s nothing green in your wall-paper.
It’s white, with gold wheat-ears on it. So I don’t see what gives you
headaches.”

“Headaches _do_ come from other things besides green wall-paper,” said
Pierpont; “I’ve had them from overwork. I’d advise Miss Moreau to give
her pupils a week’s holiday. And then she can come down some afternoon
and sing for me.”

This was an old subject of discourse at the Garcia table, Mariposa
continually refusing the young man’s invitations to let him hear and
pass judgment upon her voice. Since he had met her he had heard further
details of the recital at the opera-house and the opinion of Lepine,
and was openly ambitious to have Mariposa for a pupil. Now she looked
up at him with a sudden spark of animation in her eyes.

“I will some day. I’ll come in some afternoon and sing for you--some
afternoon when I have no headache,” she added hastily, seeing the
prospect of urging in his eyes.

Barron, sitting opposite, had been watching her covertly through the
meal. He saw that she ate nothing, and guessed that the headache she
pleaded was the result of a wakeful night. The evening before, when he
had gone in to see the little boys in bed, he had casually asked them
if they had been playing games that afternoon in which shouting had
been a prominent feature.

“Indians?” Benito had suggested, sitting up in his cot and scratching
the back of his neck; “that’s a hollering game.”

“Any game with screams. When I came in I thought I heard shouts coming
from somewhere.”

“That wasn’t us,” said Miguel from his larger bed in the corner. “We
was playing burying soldiers in the back yard, and that’s a game where
you bury soldiers, cut out of the papers, in the sandy place. There’s
no sorter hollering in it. Sometimes we play we’re crying, but that’s
quiet.”

“P’raps,” said Benito sleepily, “it was Miss Moreau’s gentleman in the
parlor. I let him in. They might have been singing. Now tell us the
story about the Indians and the pony express.”

This was all the satisfaction he got from the boys. After the story
was told he did not go downstairs, but went into his own room and
sat by his littered table, thinking. The details of his entrance
into the house a few hours before were engraved on his mind’s eye.
By the uncertain gaslight he saw the dark face of the stranger, with
its slightly insolent droop of eyelid and non-committal line of
clean-shaven lip. It was to his idea a disagreeable face. The simple
man in him read through its shield of reserve to the complexities
beneath. The healthily frank American saw in it the intricate
sophistication of older civilizations, of vast communities where “God
hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”

On his ear again fell the cold politeness of the voice. Gamaliel
Barron was too lacking in any form of self-consciousness, was too
indifferently confident of himself as a Westerner, the equal of any and
all human creatures, to experience that sensation of _mauvaise honte_
that men of smaller fiber are apt to feel in the presence of beings of
superior polish. Polish was nothing to him. The man everything. And
it seemed to him he had seen the man, deep down, in that one startled
moment of encounter in the hall. Thoughtfully smoking and tilting back
in his chair, he mentally summed him up in the two words, “bad egg.” He
would keep his eye on him, and to do so would put off the trip to the
mines he was to take in the course of the next two weeks.

The next morning Mariposa’s appearance at the breakfast table roused
the uneasiness he felt to poignant anxiety. With the keenness of
growing love, he realized that it was the mind that was disturbed more
than the body. He came home to lunch--an unusual deviation, as he
almost invariably lunched down town at the Lick House--and found her
at the table as pale and distrait as ever. After the meal was over he
followed her into the hall. She was slowly ascending the stairs, one
hand on the balustrade, her long, black dress sliding upward from stair
to stair.

He followed her noiselessly, and at the top of the flight, turning to
go to her room, she saw him and paused, her hand still touching the
rail.

“Miss Moreau,” he said, “you’re tired out--too tired to teach. Let me
go and put off your pupils. I’ve a lot of spare time this afternoon.”

“How kind of you,” she said, looking faintly surprised; “I haven’t any
this afternoon, luckily. I don’t work every day; that’s the point I’m
trying to work up to; that’s my highest ambition.”

She looked down at his upturned face and gave a slight smile.

“_Is_ it overwork that kept you awake last night and makes you look so
pale to-day?” he queried in a lowered voice.

“Oh, I don’t know,”--she turned away her face rather impatiently,--“I’m
worried, I suppose. Everybody has to be worried, don’t they?”

“I can’t bear to have you worried. There isn’t one wild, crazy thing in
the world I wouldn’t do to prevent it.”

He was looking up at her with his soul in his eyes. Barron was not the
man to hide or juggle with his love. It possessed him now and shone
on his face. Mariposa’s eyes turned from it as from the scrutiny of
something at once painful and holy. He laid his hand on hers on the
rail.

“You know that,” he said, his deep voice shaken.

Her eyes dropped to the hands and she mechanically noticed how white
her fingers looked between his large, brown ones. She drew them softly
away, feeling his glance keen, impassioned and unwavering on her face.

“Something’s troubling you,” he continued in the same voice. “Why won’t
you let me help you? You needn’t tell me what it is, but you might let
me help you. What am I here for but to take care of you, and fight for
you, and protect you?”

The words were indescribably sweet to the lonely girl. All the previous
night she had tossed on her pillow haunted by terror of Essex and what
he intended to do. She had felt herself completely helpless, and her
uncertainty at what step he meant to take was torturing. For one moment
of weakness she thought of pouring it all out to the man beside her,
whose strong hand on her own had seemed symbolic of the grip, firm and
fearless, he could take on the situation that was threatening her. Then
she realized the impossibility of such a thing and drew back from the
railing.

“You can’t help me,” she said; “no one can.”

He mounted a step and stretched his hand over the railing to try to
detain her.

“But I can do one thing: I can always be here, here close to you, ready
to come when you call me, either in trouble or for advice. If ever you
want help, help of any kind, I’ll be here. And if you had need of me I
think I’d know it, and no matter where I was, I’d come. Remember that.”

She had half turned away toward her door as he spoke, and now stood in
profile, a tall figure, with her throat and wrists looking white as
milk against the hard black line of her dress. She seemed a picture
painted in few colors, her hair a coppery bronze, and her lips a clear,
pale red, being the brightest tones in the composition.

“Will you remember?” he said.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“And when you want help come to me, or call for me, and if I were at
the ends of the world I’d hear you and come.”

She turned completely away without answering and, opening her door,
vanished into her room.

For the next three or four days she looked much the same. Mrs. Garcia,
junior, talked about the green wall-paper, and Mrs. Garcia, senior,
cooked her Mexican dainties, which were so hot with chilli peppers that
only a seasoned throat could swallow them. Mariposa tried to eat and to
talk, but both efforts were failures. She was secretly distracted by
apprehensions of Essex’s next move. She thought of his face as he had
raised his hand to his smitten cheek, and shuddered at the memory. She
lived in daily dread of his reappearance. The interview had shattered
her nerves, never fully restored from the series of miserable events
that had preceded and followed her mother’s death. When she heard the
bell ring her heart sprang from her breast to her throat, and a desire
to fly and hide from her persecutor seized her and held her quivering
and alert.

Barron’s anxiety about her, though not again openly expressed,
continued. He was certain that some blow to her peace of mind had
been delivered by the man he had seen in the hall. He did not like
to question her, or attempt an intrusion into her confidence, but he
remembered the few words she had dropped that evening. The man’s name
was Essex, and he was a friend of Mrs. Willers’. Barron had known Mrs.
Willers for years. He had been a guest in the house during the period
of her tenancy, and though he did not see her frequently, had retained
an agreeable memory of her and her daughter.

It was therefore with great relief that, a few days after his meeting
with Essex, he encountered her in the heart of a gray afternoon
crossing Union Square Plaza.

Mrs. Willers was hastening down to _The Trumpet_ office after a
morning’s work in her own rooms. Her rouge had been applied with the
usual haste, and she was conscious that three buttons on one of her
boots were hardly sufficient to retain that necessary article in place.
But she felt brisk and light-hearted, confident that the article in her
hand was smart and spicy and would lend brightness to her column in
_The Trumpet_.

She greeted Barron with a friendly hail, and they paused for a moment’s
chat in the middle of the plaza.

“You’re looking fresh as a summer morning,” said the mining man, whose
life, spent searching for the mineral secrets of the Sierra, had not
made him conversant with those of complexions like Mrs. Willers’.

“Oh, get out!” said she, greatly pleased; “I’m too old for that sort of
taffy. It’s almost Edna’s turn now.”

“I’ll be afraid to see Edna soon. She’s going to be such a beauty that
the only safety’s in flight.”

The mother was even more pleased at this.

“You’re right,” she said, nodding at him with a grave eye; “Edna’s a
beauty. Where she gets it from is what stumps me. My glass tells me
it’s not from her mommer, and my memory tells me it’s not from her
popper.”

“There’s a man on your paper called Essex,” said Barron, who was not
one to beat about the bush; “what sort of a fellow is he, Mrs. Willers?”

“A bad sort, I’m inclined to think. Why do you ask?”

“He was at the house the other afternoon, calling on Miss Moreau. I met
him in the hall. I didn’t cotton to him at all. She told me he was a
friend of yours and a writer on _The Trumpet_.”

He looked at her inquiringly, hardly liking to go farther till she gave
him some encouragement. He noticed that her expression had changed and
that she was eying him with a hard, considering attention.

“Why didn’t you like his looks?” she said.

“Well, I’ve seen men like that before--at the mines. Good-looking
chaps, who are sort of imitation gentlemen, and try to make you take
the imitation for the real thing by putting on dog. I didn’t like his
style, anyhow, and I don’t think she does, either.”

“You’re right about that,” said Mrs. Willers; “do you know what he was
there for?”

“Something about music lessons, she said. I didn’t like to ask her.”

“Music lessons!” exclaimed Mrs. Willers, with a strong inflection of
surprise.

“Yes,” said Barron, uneasy at her tone and the strange look of almost
agitated astonishment on her face; “and I’m under the impression he
said something to her that frightened her. As I was coming up the
steps that afternoon I heard distinctly some one call out in the
drawing-room. I burst in on the full jump, for I was certain it was a
woman’s voice, and that man came out of the drawing-room as I opened
the door. He was smooth as a summer sea; said he hadn’t heard a sound,
and went out smirking. Then I went into the drawing-room to see who had
been in there and found Miss Moreau, leaning against the wall and white
as my cuffs.”

He looked frowningly at Mrs. Willers. She had listened without moving,
her face rigidly attentive.

“Mariposa didn’t tell you what they’d been talking about?” she asked.

“No; she told me nothing. And when I asked her about the screams she
said I’d been mistaken. But I hadn’t, Mrs. Willers. That man had scared
her some way, and she’d screamed. She called for Benito and Mrs.
Garcia. I heard her. And she’s looked pale and miserable ever since.
What does that blackguard come to see her for, anyway? What’s he after?”

“Her,” said Mrs. Willers, solemnly; “he wants to marry her.”

“Wants to marry her! That foreign spider! Well, he’s got a gall.
Humph!--”

Words of sufficient scorn seemed to fail him. That he should be
similarly aspiring did not at that moment strike him as reason for
moderation in his censure of a rival.

“And is he trying to scare her into marrying him? I wish I’d known
that. I’d have broken his neck in the hall.”

“Don’t you go round breaking people’s necks,” said Mrs. Willers, “but
I’m glad you’re in that house. If Barry Essex is going to try to make
her marry him by bullying and bulldozing her, I’m glad there’s a man
there to keep him in his place. That’s no way to win a woman, Mr.
Barron. I know, for that’s the way Willers courted me. Wouldn’t hear of
my saying no; said he’d shoot himself. I knew even then he wouldn’t,
but I didn’t know but what he’d try to wound himself somewhere where
it didn’t hurt, leaving a letter for me that would be published in the
morning paper. So I married him to get rid of him, and then I had to
get the law in to get rid of him a second time. A man that badgers a
woman into marrying him is no good. You can bank on that.”

“Well,” said Barron, “I’m glad you’ve told me this. I’ll keep my eye on
Mr. Essex. I was going to the mines next week, but guess I’ll put it
off.”

“Do. But don’t you let on to Mariposa what I’ve told you. She wouldn’t
like it. She’s a proud girl. But I’ll tell you, Mr. Barron, she’s a
good one, too; one of the best kind, and I love her nearly as much as
my own girl. But look!” glancing at an adjacent clock with a start, “I
must be traveling. This stuff’s got to go in at once.”

“Good by,” said Barron, holding out his hand; “it’s a good thing we had
this minute of talk.”

“Good by,” she answered, returning the pressure with a grip almost as
manly; “it’s been awfully good to see you again. I must get a move on.
So long.”

And they parted, Barron turning his face toward the Garcia house, where
he had an engagement to take the boys to the beach at the foot of Hyde
Street, and Mrs. Willers to _The Trumpet_ office.

Her walk did not occupy more than fifteen minutes, and during that time
the anger roused by the mining man’s words grew apace. From smothered
indignation it passed to a state of simmering passion. Her conscience
heated it still further, for it was she who had introduced Essex to
Mariposa, and in the first stages of their acquaintance had in a
careless way encouraged the friendship, thinking it would be cheerful
for the solitary girl to have the occasional companionship of this
clever and interesting man of the world. She had thoughtlessly kindled
a fire that might burn far past her power of control and lead to
irreparable disaster.

She inferred from Barron’s story that Essex was evidently attempting
to frighten Mariposa into smiling on his suit. The cowardice of the
action enraged her, for, though Mrs. Willers had known many men of many
faults, she had counted no cowards among her friends. Her point of view
was Western. A man might do many things that offend Eastern conventions
and retain her consideration. But, as she expressed it to herself in
the walk down Third Street, “He’s got to know that in this country they
don’t drag women shrieking to the altar.”

She ran up the stairs of _The Trumpet_ building with the lightness of
a girl of sixteen. Ire gave wings to her feet, and it was ire as much
as the speed of her ascent that made her catch her breath quickly at
the top of the fourth flight. Still, even then, she might have held
her indignation in check,--years of training in expedient self-control
being a powerful force in the energetic business woman,--had she not
caught a glimpse of Essex in his den as she passed the open door.

He was sitting at his desk, leaning languidly back in his chair,
evidently thinking. His face, turned toward her, looked worn and hard,
the lids drooping with their air of faintly bored insolence. Hearing
the rustle of her dress, he looked up and saw her making a momentary
pause by the doorway. He did not look pleased at the sight of her.

“Ah, Mrs. Willers,” he said, leaning forward to pick up his pen and
speaking with the crisp clearness of utterance certain people employ
when irritated, “what is it that you want to see me about?”

“Nothing,” said Mrs. Willers abruptly and with battle in her tone; “why
should I?”

“I have not the least idea,” he answered, looking at his pen, and then,
dipping it in the ink, “unless perhaps you want a few hints for your
forthcoming article, ‘The Kind of Shoestrings Worn by the Crowned Heads
of Europe.’”

Essex was out of temper himself. When Mrs. Willers interrupted him he
had been thinking over the situation with Mariposa, and it had seemed
to him very cheerless. His remark was well calculated to enrage the
leading spirit of the woman’s page, who was as proud of her weekly
contributions as though they had been inspired by the genius of George
Eliot.

“Well,” she said, and her rouge became quite unnecessary in the flood
of natural color that rose to her face, “if I was going to tackle
that subject I think you’d be about the best person to come to for
information. For if you ever have had anything to do with crowned heads
it’s been as their bootblack.”

Essex was startled by the stinging malice revealed in this remark. He
swung round on his swivel chair and sat facing his antagonist, making
no attempt to rise, although she entered the room. As he saw her face
in the light of the window he realized that, for the first time, he saw
the woman stirred out of her carefully acquired professional calm.

As she entered she pushed the door to behind her, and, taking the chair
beside the desk, sat down.

“Mr. Essex,” she said, “I want a word with you.”

“Any number,” he answered with ironical politeness. “Do you wish the
history of my connection with the crowned heads as court bootblack?”

“No,” she said. “I want to know what business you’ve got to go to Mrs.
Garcia’s boarding-house and frighten one of the ladies living there?”

An instantaneous change passed over Essex’s face. His eyes seemed
suddenly to grow veiled as they narrowed to a cold, non-committal slit.
His mouth hardened. Mrs. Willers saw the muscles of his cheeks tighten.

“Really,” he said, “this sudden interest in me is quite flattering. I
hardly know what to say.”

He spoke to gain time, for he was amazed and enraged. Mariposa had
evidently made a confidante of Mrs. Willers, and he knew that Mrs.
Willers was high in favor with Winslow Shackleton and his mother.

“In this country, Mr. Essex,” Mrs. Willers went on, clenching her hands
in her lap, for they trembled with her indignation, “men don’t scare
and browbeat young women who don’t happen to have the good taste to
favor them. When a man gets the mitten he knows enough to get out.”

“Very clever of him, no doubt,” he murmured with unshaken suavity.

“If you’re going to live here you’ve got to live by our laws. You’ve
got to do as the Romans do. And take my word for it, young man, the
Romans don’t approve of nagging and scaring a woman into marriage.”

“No?” he answered with a blandly questioning inflection, “these are
interesting facts in local manners and customs. I’m sure they’d be
of value to some one who was making a special study of the subject.
Personally I am not deeply interested in the California aborigines.
Even the original and charming specimen now before me would oblige me
greatly by withdrawing. It is now”--looking at the clock that stood on
the side of the desk--“half-past two, and my time is valuable, my dear
Mrs. Willers.”

Mrs. Willers rose to her feet, burning with rage.

“Put me off any way you like,” she said, “and be as fresh and smart as
you know how. But I tell you, young man, this has got to stop. That
girl’s got no one belonging to her here. But don’t imagine from that
you can have the field to yourself and go on persecuting her. No--this
is not France nor Spain, nor any other old monarchy, where a woman
didn’t have any more to say about herself than a mule, or a pet parrot.
No, sir. You’ve run up against the wrong proposition if you think you
can scare a woman into marrying you in California in the nineteenth
century.”

Essex rose from his chair. He was pale.

“Look here,” he said in a low voice, “I’ve had enough of this. By what
right, I’d like to know, do you dare to dictate to me or interfere in
my acquaintance with another lady?”

“I’d dare more than that, Barry Essex,” said Mrs. Willers, with her
rouge standing out red on her white face, “to save that girl from a man
like you. I don’t know what I wouldn’t dare. But I’m a good fighter
when my blood’s up, and I’ll fight you on this point till one or the
other of us drops.”

She saw Essex’s nostrils fan softly in and out. His cheek-bones looked
prominent.

“Will you kindly leave this room?” he said in a suppressed voice.

“Yes,” she answered, “I’m going now. But understand that I’m making
no idle threats. And if this persecution goes on I’ll tell Winslow
Shackleton of the way you’re acting to a friend of his and a protégée
of his mother’s.”

She was at the door and had the handle in her hand. Essex turned on her
a face of livid malignity.

“Really, Mrs. Willers,” he said, “I had no idea you were entitled to
speak for Winslow Shackleton. I congratulate you.”

For a moment of blind rage Mrs. Willers neither spoke nor moved. Then
she felt the door-handle turn under her hand and the door push inward.
She mechanically stepped to one side, as it opened, and the office boy
intruded his head.

“I knocked here twict, and y’aint answered,” he said apologetically.
“There’s a man to see you, Mr. Essex, what says he’s got something to
say about a new kind of balloon.”

“Show him in,” said Essex, “and--oh--ah--Jack, show Mrs. Willers out.”

Jack gaped at this curious order. Mrs. Willers brushed past him and
walked up the hall to her own cubby-hole. She was compassed in a lurid
mist of fury, and through this she felt dimly that she had done no good.

“Did getting into a rage ever do any good?” she thought desperately, as
she sank into her desk chair.

Her article lay unnoticed and forgotten by her side, while she sat
staring at her scattered papers, trying to decide through the storm
that still shook her whether she had not done well in throwing down her
gage in defense of her friend.




CHAPTER XXI

THE MEETING IN THE RAIN

  “A time to love and a time to hate.”

                                 --ECCLESIASTES.


It was the afternoon of Edna Willers’ music lesson. Over a week had
elapsed since Mariposa’s interview with Essex, yet to-day, as she
stood at her window looking out at the threatening sky, her fears of
him were as active as ever. Though he had made no further sign, her
woman’s intuitions warned her that this was but a temporary lull in his
campaign. She was living under an exhausting tension. She went out with
the fear of meeting him driving her into unfrequented side streets, and
returned, her eyes straining through the foliage of the pepper-tree to
watch for a light in the parlor windows.

This afternoon, standing at the window drumming on the pane with her
finger-tips, she looked at the dun, low-hanging clouds, and thought
with shrinking of her walk to Sutter Street, at any turn of which she
might meet him.

“Well, and if I do?” she said to herself, trying to whip up her
dwindling courage, “he can’t do any more than threaten me with telling
all he knows. He can’t make a scene on the street proposing to me.”

She felt somewhat cheered by these assurances and began putting on her
outdoor things. The day was darkening curiously early, she thought,
for, though it was not yet four, the long mirror, with its top-heavy
gold ornaments, gave back but a dim reflection of her. There had been
fine weather for two weeks, and now rain was coming. She put on her
long cloak, the enveloping “circular” of the mode which fastened at the
throat with a metal clasp, and took her umbrella, a black cotton one,
which seemed to her quite elegant enough for a humble teacher of music.
A small black bonnet, trimmed with loops of ribbon, crowned her head
and showed her rich hair, rippling loosely back from her forehead.

The air on the outside was warm and at the same time was softly and
stilly humid. There was not a breath of wind, and in this motionless,
tepid atmosphere the gardens exhaled moist earth-odors as if breathing
out their strength in panting expectation of the rain. From the high
places of the city one could see the bay, flat and oily, with its
surrounding hills and its circular sweep of houses, a picture in shaded
grays. The smoke, trailing lazily upward, was the palest tint in this
study in monochrome, while the pall of the sky, leaden and lowering,
was the darkest. A faint light diffused itself from the rim of sky,
visible round the edges of the pall, and cast an unearthly yellowish
gleam on people’s faces.

Mariposa walked rapidly downward from street to street. She kept a
furtive lookout for the well-known figure in its long overcoat and high
hat, but saw no one, and her troubled heart-beats began to moderate.
The damp air on her face refreshed her. She had been keeping in the
house too much of late, and did not realize that this was still further
irritating her already jangled nerves. The angle of the building in
which Mrs. Willers housed herself broke on her view just as the first
sullen drops of rain began to spot the pavement--slow, reluctant drops,
falling far apart.

The music lesson had hardly begun when the rain was lashing the window
and pouring down the panes in fury. Darkness fell with it. The night
seemed to drop on the city in an instant, coming with a whirling rush
of wind and falling waters. The housewifely little Edna drew the
curtains and lit the gas, saying as she settled back on her music-stool:

“You’d better stay to dinner with me, Mariposa. Mommer won’t be home
till late because it’s Wednesday and the back part of the woman’s page
goes to press.”

“Oh, I couldn’t stay to-night,” said Mariposa hurriedly, affrighted by
the thought of the walk home alone at ten o’clock, which she had often
before taken without a tremor; “I must go quite soon. I forgot it was
the day when the back sheet goes to press. Go on, Edna, it will be like
the middle of the night by the time we finish.”

This was indeed the case. When the lesson was over, the evening outside
was shrouded in a midnight darkness to an accompaniment of roaring
rain. It was a torrential downpour. The two girls, peering out into the
street, could see by the blurred rays of the lamps a swimming highway,
down which a car dashed at intervals, spattering the blackness with the
broken lights of its windows. Despite the child’s urgings to remain,
Mariposa insisted on going. She was well prepared for wet she said,
folding her circular about her and removing the elastic band that held
together her disreputable umbrella.

But she did not realize the force of the storm till she found herself
in the street. By keeping in the lee of the houses on the right-hand
side, she could escape the full fury of the wind, and she began slowly
making her way upward.

She had gone some distance when the roll of music she carried slipped
from under her arm and fell into water and darkness. She groped for it,
clutched its saturated cover, and brought it up dripping. The music
was of value to her, and she moved forward to where the light of an
uncurtained window cut the darkness, revealing the top of a wall. Here
she rested the roll and tried to wipe it dry with her handkerchief. Her
face, down-bent and earnest, was distinctly visible in the shaft of
light. A man, standing opposite, who had been patrolling these streets
for the past hour, saw it, gave a smothered exclamation, and crossed
the street. He was at her side before she saw him.

Several hours earlier Essex had been passing down a thoroughfare in
that neighborhood, when he had met Benito, slowly wending his way
homeward from school. The child recognized him and smiled, and with the
smile, Essex recollected the face and saw that fate was still on his
side.

Pressing a quarter into Benito’s readily extended palm, he had inquired
if the boy knew where Miss Moreau was.

“Mariposa?” said Benito, with easy familiarity; “she’s at Mrs. Willers’
giving Edna her lesson. This is Wednesday, ain’t it? Well, Edna gets
her lesson on Wednesday from half-past four till half-past five, and so
that’s where Mariposa is. But she’s generally late ’cause she stays and
talks to Mrs. Willers.”

At five o’clock, sheltered by the dripping dark, Essex began his
furtive watch of the streets along which she might pass. He knew
that every day was precious to him now, with Mrs. Willers among his
enemies and ready to enlist Winslow Shackleton against him. Here was an
opportunity to see the girl, better than the parlor of the Garcia house
offered, with its officious boarders. There was absolute seclusion in
these black and rain-swept streets.

He had been prowling about for an hour when he finally saw her. A dozen
times he had cursed under his breath fearing she had escaped him; now
his relief was such that he ran toward her, and with a rough hand swept
aside her umbrella. In the clear light of the uncurtained pane she saw
his face, and shrank back against the wall as if she had been struck.
Then a second impulse seized her and she tried to dash past him. He
seemed prepared for this and caught her by the arm through her cloak,
swinging her violently back to her place against the wall.

Keeping his grip on her he said, trying to smile:

“What are you afraid of? Don’t you know me?”

“Let me go,” she said, struggling, “you’re hurting me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he answered, “but I mean to keep you for a
moment. I want to talk to you. And I’m going to talk to you.”

“I won’t listen to you. Let me go at once. How cowardly to hold me in
this way against my will!”

She tried again to wrench her arm out of his grasp, but he held her
like a vise. Her resistance of him and the repugnance in face and voice
maddened him. He felt for a moment that he would like to batter her
against the wall.

“There’s no use trying to get away, and telling me how much you hate
me. I’ve got you here at last. I’ll not let you go till I’ve had my
say.”

He put his face down under the tent of her umbrella and gazed at her
with menacing eyes and tight lips. In the light of the window and
against the inky blackness around them the two faces were distinct as
cameos hung on a velvet background. He saw the whiteness of her chin on
the bow beneath it, and her mouth, with the lips that all the anger in
the world could not make hard or unlovely.

“You’ve got to listen to me,” he said, shaking her arm as if trying to
shake some passion into the set antagonism of her face; “you’ve got to
be my wife.”

She suddenly seized her umbrella and, turning it toward him, pressed it
down between them. The action was so quick and unexpected that the man
did not move back, and the ferrule striking him on the cheek, furrowed
a long scratch on the smooth skin. A drop of blood rose to the surface.

With an oath he seized the umbrella and, tearing it from her grasp,
sent it flying into the street. Here the wind snatched it, and its
inverted shape, like a large black mushroom, went sweeping forward,
tilted and already half full of water, before the angry gusts.

Essex tried to keep his own over her, still retaining his hold on her
arm.

“Come, be reasonable,” he said; “there’s no use angering me for
nothing. This is a wet place for lovers to have meetings. Give me my
answer, and I swear I’ll not detain you. When will you marry me?”

“What’s the good of talking that way? You know perfectly what I’ll say.
It will always be the same.”

“I’m not so sure of that. I’ve got something to say that may make you
change your mind.”

He pushed the umbrella back that the light might fall directly on her.
It fell on him also. She saw his face under the brim of his soaked hat,
shining with rain, pallidly sinister, the trickle of blood on one cheek.

“Nothing that you can say will ever make me change my mind. Mr. Essex,
I am wet and tired; won’t you, please, let me go?”

She tried to eliminate dislike and fear from her voice and spoke with a
gentleness that she hoped would soften him. He heard it with a thrill;
but it had an exactly contrary effect to what she had desired.

“I would like never to let you go. Just to hold you here and look at
you. Mariposa, you don’t know what this love is I have for you. It
grows with absence, and then when I see you it grows again with the
sight of you. It’s eating into me like a poison. I can’t get away from
it. You loved me once, why have you changed? What has come over you to
take all that out of you? Is it because I made a foolish mistake? I’m
ready to do anything you suggest--crawl in the dust, kneel now in the
rain, and ask you to forgive it. Don’t be hard and revengeful. It’s not
like you. Be kind, be merciful to a man who, if he said what hurt you,
has repented it with all his soul ever since. I am ready to give you my
whole life to make amends. Say you forgive me. Say you love me.”

He was speaking the truth. Passion had outrun cupidity. Mariposa, poor
or rich, had become the end and aim of his existence.

“It’s not a question of forgiveness,” she answered, seeing he still
persisted in the thought that she was hiding her love from wounded
pride; “it’s not a question of love. I--I--don’t like you. Can’t you
understand that? I don’t like you.”

“It’s not true--it’s not true,” he vociferated. “You love me--say you
do.”

He shook her by the arm as though to shake the words out of her
reluctant lips. The brutal roughness of the action spurred her from
fear to indignation.

“It’s not love. It’s not even hate. It’s just repulsion and dislike. I
can’t bear to look at you, or have you come near me, and to have you
hold me, as you’re doing now, is as if some horrible thing, like a
spider or a snake, was crawling on me.”

Amid the rustling and the splashing of the rain they again looked at
each other for a fierce, pallid moment. Another drop of blood on his
cheek detached itself and ran down. He had no free hand with which to
wipe it off.

“Yet you’re going to marry me,” he said softly.

“I’ve heard enough of this,” she cried. “I’m not going to stand here
talking to a madman. It’s early yet and these houses are full of
people. If I give one cry every window will go up. I don’t want to make
a scene here on the street, but if you detain me any longer talking in
this crazy way, that’s what I’ll have to do.”

“Just wait one moment before you take such desperate measures. I want
to ask a question before you call out the neighborhood to protect you.
How do you think the story of your mother’s and father’s early history
will look on the front page of _The Era_?”

In the light of the window that fell across them both he had the
satisfaction of seeing her face freeze into horrified amazement.

“It will be the greatest scoop _The Era’s_ had since _The Trumpet_
became Shackleton’s property. There’s not a soul here that even
suspects it. It will be a bombshell to the city, involving people of
the highest position, like the Shackletons, and people of the most
unquestioned respectability, like the Moreaus. Oh--it will be good
reading!”

Her eyes, fastened on him, were full of anguish, but it had not
bewildered her. In the stress of the moment her mind remained clear and
active.

“Is the world interested in stories of the dead?” she heard herself
saying in a cold voice.

“Everybody’s interested in scandals. And what a scandal it is! How
people will smack their lips over it! Shackleton a Mormon, and you
his only legitimate child. Your mother and father, that all the world
honored, common free-lovers. Your mother sold to your father for a pair
of horses, and living with him in a cabin in the Sierra for six months
before they even attempted to straighten things out by a bogus marriage
ceremony. Why, it’s a splendid story! _The Era’s_ had nothing with as
much ginger as that for months!”

“And who’d believe you? Who are you, to know about the early histories
of the pioneer families? Who’d believe the words of a man who comes
from nobody knows where, whose very name people doubt? If Mrs.
Shackleton and I deny the truth of your story, who’d believe you then?”

“You forget that I have under my hand the man who was witness of the
transaction whereby Moreau bought your mother from Shackleton for a
pair of horses.”

“A drunken thief! He stole all my father had and ran away. Can his word
carry the same weight as mine to whose interest it would be to prove
myself Shackleton’s daughter? No. The only real proof in existence is
the marriage certificate. And I have that. And so long as I have that
any story you choose to publish I can get up and deny.”

He knew she was right. Even with Harney his story would be
discredited, unbacked by the one piece of genuine evidence of the
first marriage--the certificate which she possessed. Her unexpected
recognition of the point staggered him. He had thought to break her
resistance by threats which even to him seemed shameful, and only
excusable because of the stress he found himself in. Now he saw her as
defiantly unconquered as ever. In his rage he pushed her back against
the wall, crying at her:

“Deny, deny all you like! Whether you deny or not, the thing will have
been said. Next Sunday the whole city, the whole state will be reading
it--how you’re Shackleton’s daughter and your mother was Dan Moreau’s
mistress. But say one word--one little word to me, and not a syllable
will be written, not a whisper spoken. On one side there’s happiness
and luxury and love, and on the other disgrace and poverty--not your
disgrace alone, but your father’s, your mother’s--”

With a cry of rage and despair Mariposa tried to tear herself from
him. Nature aided her, for at the same moment a savage gust of wind
seized the umbrella and wrenched it this way and that. Instinctively he
loosened his hold on her to grasp it, and in that one moment she tore
herself away from him. He gripped at the flapping wing of her cloak,
and caught it. But the strain was too much for the cheap metal clasp,
which broke, and Mariposa slipped out of it and flew into the fury of
the rain, leaving the cloak in his hand.

The roar of many waters and the shouting of the wind obliterated the
sound of her flying feet. The darkness, shot through with the blurred
faces of lamps or the long rays from an occasional uncurtained pane, in
a moment absorbed her black figure. Essex stood motionless, stunned at
the suddenness of her escape, the sodden cloak trailing from his hand.
Then shaken out of all reason by rage, not knowing what he intended
doing, he started in pursuit.

She feared this and her burst of bravery was exhausted. As she ran up
the steep street having only the darkness to hide her, her heart seemed
shriveled with the fear of him.

Suddenly she heard the thud of his feet behind her. An agony of fright
seized her. The Garcia house was at least two blocks farther on, and
she knew he would overtake her before then. A black doorway with a
huddle of little trees, formless and dark now, loomed close by, and
toward this she darted, crouching down among the small wet trunks of
the shrubs and parting their foliage with shaking hands.

There was a lamp not far off and in its rays she saw him running up,
still holding the cloak in a black bunch over his arm. He stopped, just
beyond where she cowered, and looked irresolutely up and down. The
lamplight fell on his face, and in certain angles she saw it plainly,
pale and glistening with moisture, all keen and alert with a look of
attentive cunning. He moved his head this way and that, evidently
trusting more to hearing than to sight. His eyes, no longer half veiled
in cold indifference, swept her hiding-place with the preoccupation of
one who listens intently. He looked to her like some thwarted animal
harkening for the steps of his prey. Her terror grew with the sight of
him. She thought if he had approached the bushes she would have swooned
before he reached them.

Presently he turned and went down the hill. In the pause his reason had
reasserted itself, and he felt that to hound her down with more threats
and reproaches was useless folly.

But, with her, reason and judgment were hopelessly submerged by terror.
She crept out from among the shrubs with white face and trembling
limbs, and fled up the hill in a wild, breathless race, hearing Essex
in every sound. The rain had dripped on her through the bushes, and
these last two blocks under its unrestrained fury soaked her to the
skin.

Her haunting terror did not leave her till she had rushed up the stairs
and opened the door of the glass porch. She was fumbling in her pocket
for the latch-key, when the inner door was opened and Barron stood in
the aperture, the lighted hall behind him.

“What on earth has delayed you?” he said sharply. “They’re all at
supper. I was just going down to Mrs. Willers’ to see what was keeping
you.”

She stumbled in at the door, and stood in the revealing light of the
hall, for the moment unable to answer, panting and drenched.

“What’s the matter?” he said suddenly in a different tone; and quickly
stepping back he shut the door into the dining-room. “Has anything
happened?”

“I’m--only--only--frightened,” she gasped between broken breaths.
“Something frightened me.”

She reeled and caught against the door-post.

“I’m all wet,” she whispered with white lips; “don’t let them know. I
don’t want any dinner.”

He put his arm round her and drew her toward the stairs. He could feel
her trembling like a person with an ague and her saturated clothes left
rillets along the stairs.

When they were half-way up he said:

“How did you get so wet? Have you been out in this storm without an
umbrella?”

“I lost it,” she whispered.

“Lost it?” he replied. “Where’s your cloak?”

“Somewhere,” she said vaguely; “somewhere in the street. I lost that,
too.”

They were at the top of the stairs. She suddenly turned toward him and
pressed her face into his shoulder, trembling like a terrified animal.

“I’m frightened,” she whispered. “Don’t tell them downstairs. I’ll tell
you to-morrow. Don’t ask me anything to-night.”

He took her into her room and placed her in an armchair by the
fireplace. He lit the gas and drew the curtains, and then knelt by the
hearth to kindle the fire, saying nothing and apparently taking little
notice of her. She sat dully watching him, her hands in her lap, the
water running off her skirts along the carpet.

When he had lit the fire he said:

“Now, I’ll go, and you take off your things. I’ll bring you up your
supper in half an hour. Be quick, you’re soaking. I’ll tell them
downstairs you’re too tired to come down.”

He went out, softly closing the door. She sat on in her wet clothes,
feeling the growing warmth of the flames on her face and hands. She
seemed to fall into a lethargy of exhaustion and sat thus motionless,
the water running unheeded on the carpet, _frissons_ of cold
occasionally shaking her, till a knock at the door roused her. Then she
suddenly remembered Barron and his command to take off her wet clothes.
She had them on still and he would be angry.

“Put it down on the chair outside,” she called through the door; “I’m
not ready.”

“Won’t you open the door and take this whisky and drink it at once?”
came his answer.

She opened the door a crack and, putting her hand through the aperture,
took the glass with the whisky.

“Are you warm and dry?” he said; all she could see of him was his big
hand clasped round the glass.

“Yes, quite,” she answered, though she felt her skin quivering with
cold against the damp garments that seemed glued to it.

“Well, drink this now, right off. And listen--” as the door began to
close--“if you get nervous or anything just come to your door and call
me. I’ll leave mine open, and I’m a very light sleeper.”

Then before she could answer she felt the door-handle pulled from the
outside and the door was shut.

She hastily took off her things and put on dry ones, and then shrugged
herself into the thick wrapper of black and white that had been her
mother’s. Even her hair was wet, she found out as she undressed,
and she mechanically undid it and shook the damp locks loose on her
shoulders. She felt penetrated with cold, and still overmastered by
fear. Every gust that made the long limb of the pepper-tree grate
against the balcony roof caused her heart to leap. When she opened the
door to get her supper, the glow of light that fell from Barron’s room,
across the hallway, came to her with a hail of friendship and life. She
stood listening, and heard the creak of his rocking-chair, then smelt
the whiff of a cigar. He was close to her. She shut the door, feeling
her terrors allayed.

She picked at her supper, but soon set the tray on the center-table
and took the easy-chair before the fire. The sense of physical cold
was passing off, but the indescribable oppression and apprehension
remained. She did not know exactly what she dreaded, but she felt in
some vague way that she would be safer sitting thus clad and wakeful
before the fire than sleeping in her bed. Once or twice, as the hours
passed and her fears strengthened in the silence and mystery of the
night, she crept to her door, and opening it, looked up the hall. The
square of light was still there, the scent of the cigar pungent on the
air. She shut the door softly, each time feeling soothed as by the
pressure of a strong, loving hand.

Sometime toward the middle of the night the heaviness of sleep came
on her, and though she fought against it, feeling that the safety she
was struggling to maintain against mysterious menace was only to be
preserved by wakefulness, Nature overcame her. Curled in her chair
before the crumbling fire, she finally slept--the deep, motionless
sleep of physical and mental exhaustion.




CHAPTER XXII

A NIGHT’S WORK

  “Have is have, however men may catch.”

                                    --SHAKESPEARE.


Under cover of the darkness Essex hurried down the street toward where
the city passed from a place of homes to a business mart. He had at
first no fixed idea of a goal, but after a few moments’ rapid march,
realized that habit was taking him in the direction of Bertrand’s. An
illumined clock face shining on him over the roofs told him it was
some time past his dinner hour. He obeyed his instinct and bent his
steps toward the restaurant, throwing the cloak over the fence of a
vacant lot and wiping the trickle of blood from his cheek with his
handkerchief.

He was cool and master of himself once more. His brain was cleared, as
a sky by storm, and he knew that to-night’s interview must be one of
the last he would have with the woman who had come to stand to him for
love, wealth, success and happiness. He must win or lose all within the
next few days.

Bertrand’s looked invitingly bright after the tempestuous blackness
of the streets. Many of the white draped tables were unoccupied. His
accustomed eye noted that the lady in the blue silk dress and black
hat, and her companion with the bald head and cross-eye, who always
sat at the right-hand corner table, were absent. He had fallen into
the habit of bowing to them, and had more than once idly wondered what
their relations were.

“Monsieur Esseex” to-night ate little and drank much. Etienne, the
waiter, a black-haired, pink-cheeked garçon from Marseilles, noticed
this and afterward remarked upon it to Madame Bertrand. To the few
other habitués of the place, the thin-faced, handsome man with an ugly
furrow down his cheek, and his hair tumbled on his forehead by the
pressure of his hat, presented the same suavely imperturbable demeanor
as usual. But Madame Bertrand, as a woman whose business it was to
observe people and faces, noticed that monsieur was pale, and that when
she spoke to him on the way in he had given a distrait answer, not the
usual phrase of debonair, Gallic greeting she had grown to expect.

She looked at him from her cashier’s desk and reflected. As Etienne
afterward repeated, he ate little and drank much. And how pale he
looked, with the lamp on the wall above him throwing out the high
lights on his face and deepening the shadows!

“He is in love,” thought the sentimental Madame Bertrand, “and to-night
for the first time he knows that she does not respond.”

He sat longer than he had ever done before over his dinner, blowing
clouds of cigarette smoke about his head, and watching the thin blue
flame of the burning lump of sugar in the spoon balanced on his
coffee-cup.

Everybody had left, and he still sat smoking, leaning back against
the wall, his eyes fixed on space in immovable, concentrated thought.
Bertrand came out of his corner, and in his cap and apron stood cooling
himself in the open door watching the rain. Etienne and Henri, the
two waiters apportioned to that part of the room, hung about restless
and tired, eagerly watching for the first symptoms of his departure.
Even Madame Bertrand began to burrow under the cashier’s desk for her
rubbers, and to struggle into them with much creaking of corset bones
and subdued French ejaculations. It was after nine when the last guest
finally pushed back his chair. Etienne rushed to help him on with his
coat, and Madame Bertrand bobbed up from her rubbers to give him a
parting smile.

A half-hour later he was lighting the gas in his own room in Bush
Street. The damp air of the night entered through a crack of opened
window, introducing a breath of sweet, moist freshness into the
smoke-saturated chamber. He threw off his coat and lit the fire. As
soon as it had caught satisfactorily he left the room, crossed the
hall noiselessly, and with a slight preliminary knock, opened Harney’s
door. The man was sitting there in a broken rocking-chair, reading the
evening paper by the light of a flaming gas-jet. He had the air of one
who was waiting, and as Essex’s head was advanced round the edge of the
door, he looked up with alert, expectant eyes.

“Come into my room,” said the younger man; “there’s work for you
to-night.”

Harney threw down his paper and followed him across the hall. It was
evident that he was sober, and beyond this some new sense of importance
and power had taken from his manner its old deprecation. They were
equals now, pals and partners. The drunken typesetter and one-time
thief was still under Barry Essex’s thumb, but he was also deep in his
confidence.

He sat down in his old seat by the fire, his eyes on Essex.

“What’s up?” he said; “what work have you got for me such a night as
this?”

“Big work, and with big money behind it,” said the younger man; “and
when it’s done we each get our share and go our ways, George Harney.”

He drew his chair to the other side of the fire and began to talk--his
voice low and quiet at first, growing urgent and authoritative, as
Harney shrank before the dangers of the work expected of him. The
moments ticked by, the fire growing hotter and brighter, the roaring
of the storm sounding above the voices of the master and his tool. The
night was half spent before Harney was conquered and instructed.

Then the men, waiting for the hour of deepest sleep and darkness,
continued to sit, occasionally speaking, the light of the leaping
flames catching and losing their anxious faces as the firelight in
another room was touching the face of the sleeping girl of whom they
talked.

It was nearly three when a movement of life stirred the blackness of
the Garcia garden. The rushing of the rain beat down all sound; in the
moist soddenness of the earth no trace lingered. The pepper-tree bent
and cracked to the gusts as it did to the additional weight of the
creeping figure in its boughs.

This was merely a shapeless bulk of blackness amid the fine and broken
blackness of the swaying foliage. It stole forward with noiseless
caution, though it might have shouted and all sound been lost in the
angry turmoil of the night. Creeping upward along the great limb that
stretched to the balcony roof, a perpendicular knife-edge of light that
gleamed from between the curtains of a window, now and then crossed its
face, sometimes dividing it clearly in two, sometimes illuminating one
attentive eye, a small shining point of life in the dead murk around
it, one eye, aglow with purpose, gleaming startlingly from blackness.

The loud drumming of the rain on the balcony roof drowned the crackle
of the tin under a feeling foot. To slide there from the limb only
occupied a moment. The branch had grown well up over the roof, grating
now and then against it when the wind was high. The thin streak of
light from between the curtains made the man wary. Why was she burning
a light at this hour unless she was sleepless and up?

Pressed close to the pane he applied his eye to the crack which was the
widest near the sill. He saw a portion of the room, looking curiously
vivid and distinct in the narrow concentration of his view. It seemed
flooded with unsteady, warmly yellow light. Straight before him he saw
a table with a rifled tea-tray on it, and back of that another table.
The one eye pressed to the crack grew absorbed as it focused itself
on the second table. Among a litter of books, ornaments and feminine
trifles, stood a small desk of dark wood. It was as if it had been
placed there to catch his attention--the goal of his line of vision.

Shifting his position he pressed his cheek against the glass and
squinted in sidewise to where a deepening and quivering of the light
spoke of a fire. Then he saw the figure of the sleeping woman, lying
in an attitude of complete repose in the armchair. He gazed at her
striving to gage the depth of her sleep. One of her hands hung over the
arm of the chair, with the gleam of the fire flickering on the white
skin. The same light touched a strand of loosened hair. Her face was in
profile toward him, the chin pressed down on the shoulder. It looked
like a picture in its suggestion of profound unconsciousness.

He pushed fearfully on the cross-bar of the pane, and the window rose a
hair’s-breadth. Then again, and it was high enough up for him to insert
his hand. He did so, and drew forward the curtain of heavy rep so as to
hide from the sleeper the gradual stages of his entrance. By degrees he
raised it to a height sufficient to permit the passage of his body. The
curtain shielded the girl from the current of cold air that entered the
room. He crept in softly on his hands and knees, then rose to his feet.

For a moment he made no further movement, but stood, his gaze riveted
on the sleeper, watching for a symptom of roused consciousness. She
slept on peacefully, the light sound of her breathing faintly audible.

The silence of the hushed house seemed weirdly terrifying after the
tumult of the night outside. The thief stole forward to the desk, his
eye continually turned toward her. When he reached the table she was so
far behind him that he could only see the sweep of her wrapper on the
floor, her shoulder, and the top of her head over the chair-back.

He tried the desk with an unsteady hand. It was locked, but the
insertion of a steel file he carried broke the frail clasp. It gave
with a sharp click and he stood, his hair stirring, watching the top of
her head. It did not move, the silence resettled, he could again hear
her light, even breathing.

There were many papers in the desk, bundles of letters, souvenirs of
old days of affluence. He tossed them aside with tremulous quickness
until, underneath all, he came on a long, dirty envelope and a little
chamois leather bag. He lifted the latter. It was heavy and emitted a
faint chink. The old thief’s instincts rose in him. But he first opened
the envelope, and softly drew out the two certificates, took the one he
wanted, and put the other back. Then he opened the mouth of the bag.
The gleam of gold shone from the aperture. Stricken with temptation he
stood hesitating.

At that moment the fire, a heap of red ruins, fell together with a
small, clinking sound. It was no louder noise than he had made when
opening the desk, but it contained some penetrating quality the former
had lacked. Still hesitating, with the sack of money in his hand, he
turned again to the chair. A face, white and wide-eyed, was staring at
him round the side.

He gave a smothered oath and the sack dropped from his hand to the
table. The money fell from it in a clattering heap and rolled about,
in golden zigzags in every direction. The sound roused the still
unawakened intelligence of the girl. She saw the paper in his hand,
half-opened. Its familiarity broke through her dazed senses. She rose
and rushed at him gasping:

“The certificate! the certificate!”

Harney made a dash for the open window, but she caught him by the
shoulder and arm, and with the unimpaired strength of her healthy youth
struggled with him hand to hand, reaching out for the paper he tried to
keep out of her grasp. In the fury of the moment’s conflict, neither
made any sound, but fought like two enraged animals, rocking to and
fro, panting and clutching at each other.

He finally wrenched his arm free and struck her a savage blow, aimed
at her head but falling on her shoulder, which sent her down on her
knees and then back against the fire. He thought he had stunned her,
and raised his arm again when she sprang up, tore the paper out of his
grasp and pressed it with her hand down into the coals beside her. As
she did so, for the first time she raised her voice and shrieked:

“Mr. Barron! Mr. Barron! Come, come! Oh hurry!”

From the hall Harney heard a movement and an answering shout. With the
cries echoing through the room he beat her down against the grate, and
tore the paper, curling with fire on the edges, from her hand. With it,
he dashed through the open sash, a shiver of glass following him.

Almost simultaneously, Barron burst into the room. He had been reading
and had fallen asleep to be waked by the shrieks of the girl’s voice,
which were still in his ears. The falling of broken glass and a rush
of cold air from the opened window greeted him. Piled on the table and
scattered about the floor were gold pieces. Mariposa was kneeling on
the rug.

“He’s got it!” she cried wildly, and struggling to her feet rushed to
the window. “He’s got it! Oh go after him! Stop him!”

“Got what?” he said. “No, he hasn’t got the money. It’s all there.”

He seized her by the arm, for she seemed as if intending to go through
the broken window.

“Not the money--not the money,” she shrieked, wringing her hands; “the
paper--the certificate! He’s got it and gone, this way, through the
window.”

Barron grasped the fact that she had been robbed of something other
than the money, the loss of which seemed to render her half distracted.
With a hasty word of reassurance, he turned and ran from the room,
springing down the stairs and across the hall. In the instant’s pause
by the window he had heard the sound of feet on the steps below and
judged that he could get down more quickly by the stairs than by the
limb of the tree.

But the few minutes’ start and the darkness of the night were on the
side of the thief. The roar of the rain drowned his footsteps. Barron
ran this way and that, but neither sight nor sound of his quarry was
vouchsafed to him. The man had got away with his booty, whatever it was.

[Illustration: “WITH THE STRENGTH OF HER HEALTHY YOUTH SHE STRUGGLED
WITH HIM”]

In fifteen minutes Barron was back and found the Garcia ladies in
Mariposa’s room, ministering to the girl who lay in a heavy swoon,
stark and white on the hearth-rug.

The old lady, in some wondrous and intimate déshabille, greeted him
eagerly in Spanish, demanding what had happened. He told her all he
knew and knelt down beside the younger Mrs. Garcia, who was attempting
with a shaking hand to pour brandy between Mariposa’s set teeth.

“We heard the most awful shrieks, and we rushed up, and here she was
standing and screaming: ‘He’s got it! He’s got it!’ And then she fell
flat, quite suddenly, and has lain here this way ever since.”

“It was a robber,” said the old woman, looking at the scattered gold,
“but he didn’t get her money. What was it he took, I wonder?”

“Some papers, I think,” said Barron, “that were evidently of value to
her. I’ll lift her up and put her on the bed and then I’ll go. As soon
as she’s conscious ask her what the man took and come and tell me, and
I’ll go right to the police station.”

“Oh, don’t leave us,” implored Mrs. Garcia, junior--“if there are
burglars anywhere round. Oh, please don’t go. Pierpont’s away and we’d
have no man in the house. Don’t go till morning. I’m just as scared as
I can be!”

“There’s nothing to be scared about. The man’s got what he wanted, and
he’ll take precious good care not to come back.”

“Oh, but don’t go till it gets light. The window’s broken and any one
can come in who wants.”

“All right, I’ll wait till it gets light. I’ll lift her up now, if
you’ll get the bed ready.”

With the assistance of old Mrs. Garcia he lifted her and carried her
to the bed. One of her arms fell limp against his shoulder as he laid
her down, and the old lady uttered an exclamation. She lifted it up and
showed him a curious red welt on the white wrist.

“It’s a burn,” she said. “How did she get that?”

“She must have fallen against the grate,” he answered. His eyes grew
dark as they encountered the scar. “As soon as she’s conscious tell me.”

A few minutes later, the young widow found him sitting on a chair under
a lamp in the hall.

“Well,” he said eagerly, “how is she?”

“She’s come back to her senses all right. But she doesn’t seem to want
to tell what he took. She says it was a paper, and that’s all, and
that she never saw him before. Mother doesn’t think we ought to worry
her. She says she’s got a fever, and she’s going to give her medicine
to make her sleep, and not to disturb her till she wakes up. She’s all
broken up and sort of limp and trembly.”

“Well, I suppose the señora knows best. It’ll be light soon now, and
I’ll go to the police station. The señora and you will stay with her?”

“O yes,” said Mrs. Garcia, the younger. “My goodness, what a night
it’s been! It’s lucky the man didn’t get her money. There was quite a
lot; about five hundred dollars, I should think. Oh, my curl papers! I
forget them. Gracious, what a sight I must look!” and she shuffled down
the stairs.

Barron sat on till the dawn broke gray through the hall window. He
was beginning to wonder if this girl was the central figure of some
drama, secret, intricate and unsuspected, which was working out to its
conclusion.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE LOST VOICE

  “There may be heaven; there must be hell;
  Meantime there is our earth here--well!”

                                       --BROWNING.


The fears of Mrs. Garcia held Barron to the house till the morning
light was fully established. This was late, even for the winter season,
as the rain still fell heavily, retarding the coming of day with a
leaden veil.

He made his report at the police station, and then went down town to
his office where business detained him till noon. It was his habit to
lunch at the Lick House, but to-day he hurried back to the Garcias’,
striding up the series of hills at top speed, urged on by his desire to
hear news of Mariposa. He burst into the house to find it silent--the
hall empty. As he was hanging his hat on the rack, young Mrs. Garcia
appeared from the kitchen, her bang somewhat limp, though it was still
early in the day, her face looking small and peaked after her exciting
night’s vigil.

Mariposa was still asleep, she said in answer to his query. The señora
had given her a powerful sleeping draft and had said that the rest
would be the best restorative after such a shock. If, when she waked,
she showed symptoms of suffering or prostration, they would send for
the doctor.

“Have you found her paper?” she asked anxiously. “She seemed in such a
way about it last night.”

He muttered a preoccupied answer, mentioning his visit to the police
station.

“What was it, anyway? Do _you_ know?” inquired the young woman who was
not exempt from the weaknesses of her sex.

“Some legal document, I think, but I don’t know. The police can’t do
much till they know what it is.”

“Perhaps it was a will,” said the widow, whose sole literature was that
furnished by the daily press; “though I should think if it was a will
she’d have told about it by now and not kept it hid away up there.
Anyway, she thought a lot of it, for when she came to I told her her
money was all right, and she said she didn’t care about the money, she
wanted the paper.”

“I’ll see her when she wakes,” said Barron, “and find out what it was.
Our affair now is to see that she is not frightened again and gets
well.”

“Well, mother says to let her sleep. So that’s what we’re going to do.
No one’s going to disturb her, and Pierpont, who got back an hour ago,
has promised not to give any lessons all afternoon.”

The conversation was here interrupted by the appearance of the
Chinaman, who loungingly issued from the kitchen, shouted an
unintelligible phrase at his mistress, and disappeared into the
dining-room. His words seemed to have meaning to her, for she pulled
off her apron, saying briskly:

“There, dinner’s ready and we’re going to have enchilados. Don’t you
smell them? The boys will be crazy.”

A cautious inspection made after dinner by young Mrs. Garcia, resulted
in the information that Mariposa still slept. Barron, who was
feverishly desirous to know how she progressed and also anxious to
learn from her the nature of the lost document, was forced to leave
without seeing her. A business engagement of the utmost importance
claimed him at his office at two or he would have awaited her awakening.

It was nearly an hour later before this occurred. The drug the señora
had administered was a heroic remedy, relic of the days when doctors
were a rarity and the medicine chest of the hardy Spaniard contained
few but powerful potions. The girl rose, feeling weak and dizzy. For
some time she found it difficult to collect her thoughts and sat on
the edge of her bed, eying the disordered room with uncomprehending
glances. Bodily discomfort at first absorbed her mind. A fever burned
through her, her head ached, her limbs felt leaden and stiff.

The sight of the opened desk gave the fillip to her befogged memory,
and suddenly the events of the night rushed back on her with stunning
force. She felt, at first, that it must be a dream. But the rifled
desk, with the money which the Garcias had gathered up and laid in a
glittering heap on the table, told her of its truth. The man’s face,
yellow and flabby, with the dark line of the shaven beard clearly
marked on his jaws, and the frightened rat’s eyes, came back to her as
he had turned in the first paralyzed moment of fear. With hot, unsteady
hands she searched through the scattered papers and then about the
room, in the hope that he had dropped the paper in the struggle. But
all search was fruitless. She remembered his tearing it from her grasp
as Barron’s shout had sounded in the passage. He had escaped with it.
The irrefutable evidence of the marriage was in Essex’s hands. He had
her under his feet. It was the end.

She began to dress slowly and with constant pauses. Every movement
seemed an effort; every stage of her toilet loomed colossal before
her. The one horror of the situation kept revolving in her brain, and
she found it impossible to detach her thoughts from it and fix them on
anything else. At the same time she could think of no way to escape, or
to fight against it.

Next Sunday it would all be in _The Era_. Those words seemed written
in letters of fire on the walls, and repeated themselves in maddening
revolution in her mind. It would all be there, sensationally displayed
as other old scandals had been. She saw the tragic secret of the two
lives that had sheltered hers, the love that had been so sacred a thing
written of with all the defiling brutality of the common scribe and his
common reader, for all the world of the low and ignoble to jeer at and
spit upon.

She stopped in her dressing and pressed her hands to her face. How
could she live till next Sunday, and then, when Sunday came, live
through it? There were three days yet before Sunday. Might not
something be done in three days? But she could think of nothing.
Something had happened to her brain. If there was only some one to help
her!

And with that came the thought of Barron. A flash of relief went
through her. He would help her; he would do something. She had no idea
what, but something, and, uplifted by the idea, she opened the door and
looked up the hall. She felt a sudden drop of hope when she saw that
his door was closed. But she stole up the passage, watching it, not
knowing what she intended saying to him, only actuated by the desire to
throw her responsibilities on him and ask for his help.

The door was ajar and she listened outside it. There was no sound from
within and no scent of cigar-smoke. She tapped softly and receiving no
answer pushed it open and peered fearfully in. The room was empty. The
man’s clothes were thrown about carelessly, his table littered with
papers and books. From the crevice of the opened window came the smell
and the sound of the rain, with a chill, bleak suggestion.

A sudden throttling sense of lonely helplessness overwhelmed her. She
stood looking blankly about, at the ashes of cigars in a china saucer,
at an old valise gaping open in a corner. The room seemed to her to
have a vacated air, and she remembered hearing Barron, a few days
before, speak of going to the mines again soon. Her mind leaped to the
conclusion that he had gone. Her hopes suddenly fell around her in
ruins, and in his looking-glass she saw a blanched face that she hardly
recognized as her own.

Stealing back to her room she sat down on the bed again. The house was
curiously quiet and in this silence her thoughts began once more to
revolve round the one topic. Then suddenly they broke into a burst of
rebellion. She could not bear it. She must go, somewhere, anywhere to
escape. She would flee away like a hunted animal and hide, creeping
into some dark distant place and cowering there. But where would she
go, and what would she do? The world outside seemed one vast menace
waiting to spring on her. If her head would stop aching and the fever
that burned her body and clouded her brain would cease for a moment,
she could think and come to some conclusion. But now--

And suddenly, as she thought, a whisper seemed to come to her, clear
and distinct like a revelation--“You have your voice!”

It lifted her to her feet. For a moment the pain and confusion of
developing illness left her, and she felt a thrill of returning energy.
She had it still, the one great gift neither enemies nor misfortune
could take from her--her voice!

The hope shook her out of the lethargy of fever, and her mind sprang
into excited action like a loosened spring. She went to her desk and
placed the gold back in its bag. The five hundred dollars that had
seemed so meaningless had now a use. It would take her away to Europe.
With the three hundred she still had in the bank, it would be enough
to take her to Paris and leave her something to live on. Money went a
long way over there, she had heard. She could study and sing and become
famous.

It all seemed suddenly possible, almost easy. Only leaving would be
hard--fearfully. She thought of the door up the passage and the voice
that in those first days of her feebleness had called a greeting to
her every morning; the man’s deep voice with its strong, cheery note.
And then like a peevish child, sick and unreasonable, she found herself
saying:

“Why does he leave me now when I want him so?”

No--her voice was all she had. She would live for it and be famous, and
the year of terror and anguish she had spent in San Francisco would
become a dim memory upon which she could some day look back with calm.
But before she went she would sing for Pierpont and hear what he said.

The thought had hardly formed in her mind when she was out in the hall
and stealing noiselessly down the stairs of the silent house. It struck
her as odd that the house should be so quiet, as these were the hours
in which Pierpont’s pupils usually made the welkin resound with their
efforts. Perhaps he was out. But this was not so, for in the lower
hall she met the girl with the fair hair and prominent blue eyes who
possessed the fine soprano voice she had so often listened to, and who
in response to her query told her that Mr. Pierpont was in, but not
giving lessons this afternoon.

In answer to her knock she heard his “come in” and opened the door.
He was sitting on a divan idly turning over some loose sheets of
music. The large, sparsely furnished room--it was in reality the back
drawing-room of the house--looked curiously gray and cold in the drear
afternoon light. It was only slightly furnished--his bed and toilet
articles being in a curtained alcove. In the center of its unadorned,
occupied bareness, the grand piano, gleaming richly, stood open, the
stool in front of it.

“Miss Moreau,” he said, starting to his feet, “I thought you were
sick in bed. How are you? You’ve had a dreadful experience. I’ve been
sending away my pupils because I was told you were asleep.”

“Oh, I’m quite well now,” she said, “only my head aches a little. Yes,
I was frightened last night--a burglar came in, crept up the bough of
the pepper-tree. I was dreadfully frightened then, but I’m all right
now. I’ve come to sing for you.”

“To sing for me!” he exclaimed; “but you’re not well enough to
sing. You’ve had a bad fright and you look--excuse me”--he took her
hand--“you’re burning up with fever. Take my advice and go upstairs,
and as soon as Mrs. Garcia comes in we’ll get a doctor.”

“No--no!” she said almost violently; “I’m quite well now. My hand’s
hot and so is my head, but that’s natural after the fright I had last
night. I want to sing for you now and see what you say about my voice.”

“But, you know, you can’t do yourself justice and I can’t form a fair
opinion. Why do you want to sing this afternoon when you wouldn’t all
winter?”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t mind telling you. I’m going to Europe to
study. I’ve just made up my mind.”

“Going to Europe! Isn’t that very sudden? But it will be splendid! When
are you going?”

“Soon--in a day or two--as soon as I can get my things packed in my
trunks.”

He looked at her curiously. Her manner, which was usually calm and
deliberate, was marked by tremulous restlessness. She spoke rapidly
and like one laboring under suppressed excitement.

“Come,” she said, going to the piano stool and pushing it nearer the
keyboard, “I’ll be very busy now and I don’t want to waste any time.”

He moved reluctantly to the piano and seated himself.

“Have you your music?” he asked.

“No, but I can sing what some of your pupils do. I can sing ‘Knowest
thou the land?’ and Mrs. Burrell sings that. Where is it?”

Her feverish haste and nervousness impressed him more than ever as
her hands tossed aside the sheets of piled-up music, throwing them
about the piano and snatching at them as they slipped to the floor.
From there he picked up the ‘Mignon’ aria which she had overlooked and
spreading it on the rack struck the opening notes. She leaned over him
to see the first line and he felt that she was trembling violently. He
raised his hands and wheeled round on the stool.

“Miss Moreau,” he said, “I truly don’t think you’re well enough to
sing. Don’t you think we’d better put it off till to-morrow?”

“No, no--I’m going to now. I’m ready. I’m anxious to. I must. Begin
again, please.”

He turned obediently and began again to play the chords of
accompaniment. He had been for a long time intensely anxious to hear
her voice, of which he had heard so much. It irritated him now to have
her determined to sing when she was obviously ill and still suffering
from the effects of her fright.

The accompaniment reached the point where the voice joins it. He
played softly, alert for the first rich notes. Mariposa’s chest rose
with an inflation of air and she began to sing.

A sound, harsh, veiled and thin, filled the room. There was no volume,
nor resonance, nor beauty in it. It was the ghost of a voice.

The teacher was so shocked that for a moment he stumbled in the
familiar accompaniment. Then he went on, bending his head low over the
keys, fearful of her seeing his face. Sounds unmusical, rasping, and
discordant came from her lips. Everything that had once made it rich
and splendid was gone, the very volume of it had dwindled to a thin,
muffled thread, the color had flown from every tone.

For a bar or two she went on, then she stopped. Pierpont dared not turn
at first. But he heard her behind him say hoarsely:

“What--what--is it?”

Then he wheeled round and saw her with wild eyes and white lips.

For a moment he could say nothing. Her appearance struck him with
alarm, and he sat dumb on the stool staring at her.

“What is it?” she cried. “What has happened to it? Where is my voice?”

“It’s--it’s--certainly not in good condition,” he stammered.

“It’s gone,” she answered in a wail of agony; “it’s gone. My voice has
gone! What shall I do? It’s gone!”

“Your fright of last night has affected it,” he said, speaking as
kindly as he could, “and you’re not well. I told you you were feverish
and ought not to sing. Rest will probably restore it.”

“Let me try it again,” she said wildly. “It may be better. Play again.”

He played over the opening bars again, and once more she drew the
deep breath that in the past had always brought with it so much
of exultation and began to sing. The same feeble sounds, obscured
as though passing through a thick, muffling medium, hoarse, flat,
unlovely, came with labor from her parted lips.

They broke suddenly into a wild animal cry of despair. Pierpont rose
from the stool and went toward her where she stood with her arms
drooping by her sides, pallid and terrible.

“Don’t look like that,” he said, taking her hand; “there’s no doubt the
voice has been injured. But rest does a great deal, and after a shock
like last night--”

She tore herself away from him and ran to the door crying:

“Oh, my voice! My voice! It was all I had!”

He followed her into the hall, not knowing what to say in the face of
such a calamity, only anxious to offer her some consolation. But she
ran from him, up the stairs with a frantic speed. As he put his foot on
the lower step he heard her door.

He turned round and went back slowly to his room. He was shocked and
amazed, and a little relieved that he had failed to catch her for he
had no words ready for such a misfortune. Her voice was completely
gone. She was unquestionably ill and nervous--but-- He sat down on the
divan, shaking his head. He had never heard a voice more utterly lost
and wrecked.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barron’s business engagement detained him longer than he had expected.
The heavy rain was shortening the already short February day with a
premature dusk when he opened the gate of the Garcia house and mounted
the steps.

He had made a cursory investigation of the ground under the pepper-tree
when he went out in the early morning. Now, before the light died,
he again stepped under its branches for a more thorough survey. The
foliage was so thick that no grass grew where the tree’s shadow fell,
and the rain sifted through it in occasional dribbles or shaken
showers. The bare stretch of ground was now an expanse of mud,
interspersed with puddles. Here and there a footprint still remained,
full of water. He moved about the base of the tree studying these, then
looking up into the branch along which the burglar had crept to the
balcony. What paper could the girl have possessed of sufficient value
to lure a man to such risks?

With his mind full of this thought his glance dropped to the root of
the trunk. A piece of burnt paper, half covered with the trampled mud,
caught his eye, and he picked it up and absently glanced at it. He was
about to throw it over the fence into the road, when he saw the name of
Jacob Shackleton. The next moment his eyes were riveted on the printed
lines here and there filled in with writing. He moved so that the full
light fell on it through a break in the branches. It was a minute or
two before he grasped its real meaning. But he knew the name of Lucy
Fraser, too. Mariposa had once told him it had been her mother’s maiden
name.

For a space he stood motionless under the tree, staring at the paper,
focusing his mind on it, seizing on waifs and strays from the past
that surged to the surface of his memory. It dazed him at first. Then
he began to understand. The mysterious drama that environed the girl
upstairs began to grow clear to him. This was the document that had
been stolen from her last night, the loss of which had thrown her into
a frenzy of despair--the record of a marriage between her mother and
Jake Shackleton.

Without stopping to think further he thrust it into his pocket and ran
to the house. As he mounted the porch steps the scene of his first
meeting with Mariposa flashed suddenly like a magic-lantern picture
across his mind. He heard her hysterical cry of--“He was my father!”
Another veil of the mystery seemed lifted.

And now he shrank from penetrating further, for he began to see. If
Mariposa had some sore secret to hide let her keep it shut in her
own breast. All he had to do was to give the paper to her as soon as
he could. In the moment’s passage of the balcony and the pause while
he inserted his latch-key in the door he tried to think how he could
restore it to her without letting her think he had read it. The key
turned and as the door gave he decided that it must be given her at
once without wasting time or bothering about comforting lies.

He burst into the hall and then stood still, the door-handle in his
hand. In the dim light, the two Garcia ladies and the two boys met
his eyes, standing in a group at the foot of the stairs. There was
something in their faces and attitudes that bespoke uneasiness and
anxiety. Their four pairs of eyes were fastened on him with curious
alarmed gravity.

He kicked the door shut and said:

“How’s Miss Moreau?”

The question seemed to increase their disquietude.

“We don’t know where she is,” said young Mrs. Garcia.

“Isn’t she in her room?” he demanded.

“No--that’s what’s so funny. I thought she was sleeping an awful long
time and I just peeked in and she isn’t there. And Benito’s been all
over the house and can’t find her. It seems so crazy of her to go out
in all this rain, but her outside things are not in the closet or
anywhere.”

They stood silent for a moment, eying one another with faces of
disturbed query.

The opening of Pierpont’s door roused them. The young man appeared in
the aperture and then came slowly forward.

“Have you seen Miss Moreau?” he said to young Mrs. Garcia.

“No,” said Barron hurriedly; “but have you?”

“Yes, she was down in my room this afternoon singing.”

“Singing!” echoed the others in wide-eyed amazement.

“Yes, and I’m rather anxious about her. That’s why I came out when
I heard your voices. She’s had a pretty severe disappointment, I’m
afraid. She seems to have lost her voice.”

“Lost her voice!” ejaculated Mrs. Garcia in a low gasp of horror. “Good
heavens!”

The boys looked from one to the other with the round eyes of growing
fear and dread. The calamity, as announced by Pierpont, did not seem
adequate for the consternation it caused, but an oppressive sense of
apprehension was in the air.

“What made her want to sing?” said the widow; “she was too sick to
sing.”

“That’s what I told her, but she insisted. She was determined to. She
said she was going to Europe to study.”

“Going to Europe!” It was Barron’s deep voice that put the question
this time, Mrs. Garcia being too astonished by this last piece of
intelligence to have breath for speech. “When was she going to Europe?”

“In a day or two--as soon as she could pack her trunks, she said. I
don’t really think she was quite accountable for what she said. She was
burning with a fever and she seemed in a tremendously wrought-up state.
I think her fright of the night before had quite upset her. I tried to
cheer her up, but she ran away as if she was frantic. Have any of you
seen her?”

“No,” said Mrs. Garcia, her voice curiously flat. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” echoed Pierpont. “Gone where?”

“We don’t any of us know. But she’s not in the house anywhere. And now
it’s getting dark and--”

There was a pause, one of those pregnant pauses of mute anxiety while
each eyed the other with glances full of an alarmed surmise.

“Perhaps the robber came and took her away,” said Benito in a voice of
terror.

No one paid any attention. As if by common consent all present fastened
questioning eyes on Barron. He stood looking down, his brows knit. The
silence of dumb uneasiness was broken by the entrance of the Chinaman
from the kitchen. With the expressionless phlegm of his race he lit the
two hall gas-jets, gently but firmly moving the señora out of his way,
and paying no attention to the silent group at the stair foot.

“Ching,” said Barron suddenly, “have you seen Miss Moreau this
afternoon?”

“Yes,” returned the Celestial, carefully adjusting the tap of the
second gas, “she go out hap-past four. She heap hurry. She look welly
bad--heap sick I guess; no umblella; get awful wet.”

With his noiseless tread he retreated up the passage to the kitchen.

“Well, I’ll go,” said Barron suddenly. “She’s just possibly gone out to
see some one and will be back soon. But no umbrella in this rain! Have
her room warm and everything ready.”

He turned round and in an instant was gone. The little group at the
stairpost looked at one another with pale faces. It was possible that
Mariposa had gone out to see some one. But the dread of disaster was at
every heart.




CHAPTER XXIV

A BROKEN TOOL

  “A plague o’ both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me.”

                                                          --SHAKESPEARE.


It had been close upon half-past two when Harney had left the house in
Bush Street. Essex at the window had heard the sound of his retreating
feet soon lost in the rush of the rain, and had then returned to the
fire. He had made a close calculation of the time Harney should take.
To go and come ought not to occupy more than a half-hour. The theft,
itself, if no mischances occurred, should be accomplished in ten or
fifteen minutes.

As the hands of the clock on the table drew near three, the man rose
from his post by the fire and began to move restlessly about the room.
The house was wrapped in the dead stillness of sleep, round which the
turmoil of the storm circled and upon which it seemed to press. Pausing
to listen he could hear the creaks and groan of the old walls, as the
wind buffeted them. Once, thinking he heard a furtive step, he went
to the door, opened it and peered out into the blackness of the hall.
The stairs still creaked as if to a light ascending foot, but his eyes
encountered nothing but the impenetrable darkness, charged with the
familiar smell of stale smoke.

Back in his room he went to the window and throwing it wide, leaned
out listening. The rain fell with a continuous drumming rustle,
through which the chinks and gurgles of water caught in small channels
penetrated with a near-by clearness. Here and there the darkness broke
away in splinters from a sputtering lamp, and where its light touched,
everything gleamed and glistened. Gusts of wind rose and fell, tore the
wet bushes in the garden below, and banged a shutter on an adjacent
house.

Essex left the window, drawing the curtain to shut its light from the
street. It was a quarter past three. If at four Harney had not returned
he would go after him. The thief might easily have missed his footing
in the tree and have fallen, and be lying beneath it, stunned, dead
perhaps, the papers in his hand.

The clock hands moved on toward twenty--twenty-five minutes past. The
creaking came from the stairs again, exactly, to the listening ear,
like the soft sound of a cautiously-mounting step. From the cupboard
came a curious loud tick and then a series of rending cracks. It made
Essex start guiltily, and swearing under his breath, he again turned
toward the window and, as he did so, caught the sound of hurrying feet.
He drew the curtain and leaned out. Above the uproar of the night he
heard the quick, regular thud of the feet of a runner, rushing onward
through the storm, and then, across the gleam of a lamp, a dark figure
shot, with head down, flying.

He dropped the curtain and waited, immense relief at his heart. In a
moment he heard the footsteps stop at the gate, furtively ascend the
stairs of the two terraces, and then the stealthy grating of the door.
He silently pushed his own door open that the light might guide the
ascending man, and he heard Harney’s loud breathing as he crept up.

The thief rose up out of the gulf of darkness like an apparition of
terror. He dropped into a chair, his face gray, white and pinched, the
sound of his rasping breaths, drawn with pain from the bottom of his
lungs, filling the room. He was incapable of speech, and Essex, pouring
him out whisky, was forced to take the glass from his shaking hand and
hold it to his lips. From his soaked clothes and the cap that crowned
his head, like a saturated woolen rag, water streamed. But the rain had
not been able to efface from his coat a caking of mud that half-covered
one arm and shoulder, and there was blood on one of his hands. He had
evidently fallen.

“Have you got it?” said Essex, putting the glass down.

The other nodded and let his head sink on the chair-back.

“I’m dead,” he gasped, “but I done it.”

“Where is it? Give it to me.”

The man made a faint movement of assent, but evidently had not force
enough to produce the paper and lay limp in the chair, Essex watching
him impatiently. Presently he put his feeble hand out for the glass and
drank again. The rattling loudness of his breathing moderated. Without
moving his head he turned his eyes on Essex and said:

“I’m most killed--I’m all shook up. I fell coming down the tree, some
way--I don’t know how far--but I got it all right. She fought like a
wildcat, tried to burn it--but I got it. Then she hollered and a man
answered. I knew it was a man’s voice, and I made a dash for the winder
only jest in time. I’m cut somewheres--”

He raised the hand with the blood on it and fumbled at his coat-sleeve.
The other hand was smeared with blood from the contact.

“Like a pig,” he said in a low voice, and pulled out a rag of
handkerchief which he tried to push up his sleeve; “I’m cut somewheres
all right, but I don’t know where.”

“Give me the paper and take your things off. You’re dripping all over
everything,” said Essex, extending his hand.

Harney sat up.

“I dunno how I done it,” he said; “how I got down. The man was right on
my heels. When I fell I saw him, pullin’ her up on her feet--I saw that
through the winder. Then I riz up and I went--God, how I went!”

He had stuffed his handkerchief up his sleeve by this time, and now put
his bloody tremulous hand into the outer breast-pocket of his coat. As
the hand fumbled about the opening he said:

“I didn’t stop to look no more nor take no risks. I wanted to git away
from thar and I tell you I lit out, and--”

He stopped, his jaw dropped, his nerveless figure stiffened, a look of
animal terror came into his eyes.

“Where is it?” he almost yelled, staring at Essex.

“How the devil should I know! Where did you put it? Isn’t it there?”

Essex himself had suddenly paled. He stood erect before the crouched
and trembling figure of his partner, his eyes fiercely intense.

“It ain’t here,” cried Harney, his hand clawing about in the pocket.
“It ain’t there. Oh Lordy, Lordy! I’ve lost it! It’s gone. It fell out
when I came off the tree. I fell. I told you I fell. Didn’t I tell you
I fell?” he shouted, as if he had been contradicted.

He rose up, his face pasty white, wringing his hands like a woman.
There was something grotesque and almost overdone in his terror, but
his pallor and the fear in his eyes were real.

“Lost it!” cried Essex. “No more of those lies! Give me the paper, you
dog.”

“Don’t you hear me say I ain’t got it? Ain’t I told you I fell? When
I jumped for the tree I jest smashed it down into my pocket. I had to
have both hands to climb. And I suppose I ain’t pressed it in tight
enough. God, man, it was ten years in San Quentin for me if I’d lost
two minutes.”

Essex drew closer, his mouth tight, his eyes fixed with a fiercely
compelling gaze on the wretch before him.

“Don’t think you can make anything by stealing that paper. Give it up;
give it up now; I’ve got you here, and I’ll know what you’ve done with
it before you leave or you’ll never leave at all.”

“I lost it, and that’s what I done with it. If you want it, come on
with me now and look round under that tree. Ain’t you understood I fell
sideways from the branch to the ground? Look at my hand--” he held up
his arm, pulling the muddy sleeve back from the blood-stained wrist.

“Where is it?” said Essex, without moving. “You were gone nearly an
hour. Where have you hidden it?”

“Nowheres. It took time. I had to clim’ up careful, ’cause she had a
light burning, and I thought she was awake. Why can’t you believe me?
What can I do with it alone?”

“You can blackmail Mrs. Shackleton well enough alone. Give me that
paper, or tell me where you put it, or, by God, I’ll kill you!”

Fear of the man that owned him gave Harney the air of guilt. He backed
away in an access of pallid terror, shouting:

“I ain’t lying. Why can’t yer believe me? It took time--it took time!
Ain’t I told you I fell? Look at the mud; and feel, feel in every
pocket.” He seized on them and tore the insides outward. “I’m tellin’
you the whole truth. I ain’t got it.”

“Where is it, then? You’ll tell me where you’ve hidden it, or--”

Essex made a sudden leap forward and caught the man by his neck-cloth
and collar. In his blind alarm Harney was given fictitious strength,
and he tore himself loose and rushed for the door. Essex’s hat, coat
and stick lay on the table. Without thought or premeditation their
owner seized the cane--a heavy malacca--by the end, flew round the
table, and as Harney turned the door-handle, brought the knob of the
loaded cane down on the crown of his head.

It struck with a thud and sent the water squirting from the saturated
cap. The thief, without cry or word, spun round, waving his hands in
the air, and then fell heavily face downward. For a moment he quivered,
and once or twice made a convulsive movement, then lay still, the water
running from his clothes along the floor.

With the cane still in his hand, Essex came around the table and looked
at him. For a space he stood staring, his hand resting on the edge of
the table, his neck craned forward, his face set in a rigid intensity
of observation. The sudden silence that had succeeded to the loud tones
of Harney’s voice was singularly deep and solemn. The room seemed held
in a spell of stillness, almost awful in its suddenness and isolation.

“Get up,” he said in a low voice. “Harney, get up.”

There was no response, and he leaned forward and pushed at the
motionless figure with the cane.

“Damn!” he said under his breath, “he’s fainted.”

And throwing the cane away, he approached the man and bent over him.
There was no sound of breathing or pulse of life about the sodden
figure with its hidden face. Drops formed on Essex’s forehead as he
turned it over. Then, as it confronted him, livid with fallen jaw and a
gleam of white between the wrinkled eyelid, the drops ran down his face.

With a hand that shook as Harney’s had a few moments before he felt the
pulse and then tore the shirt open and tried the heart. His face was
white as the man’s on the floor as he poured whisky down the throat
that refused to swallow. Finally, tearing off his coat, he knelt beside
his victim and tried every means in his power to bring back life into
the miserable body in which he had only recognized a tool of his own.
But there was no response. The minutes ticked on, and there was no
glimmer of intelligence in the cold indifference of the eyes, no warmth
round the stilled heart, no flutter of breath at the slack, gray lips.

The night was still dark, the rain in his ears, when he rose to his
feet. A horror unlike anything he had even imagined was on him. All
the things in life he had struggled for seemed shriveled to nothing.
The whole worth of his existence was contained in the unlovely body on
the floor. To bring life back to it he would have given his dearest
ambition--sacrificed love, money, happiness--all for which he had held
life valuable, and thought himself blessed. What a few hours before
were ends to struggle and sin for seemed now of no moment to him.
Mariposa had faded to a dim, undesired shadow; the millions she stood
for to dross he would have passed without a thought. How readily would
he have given it all to bring back the breath to the creature he had
held as a worm beneath his foot!

He seized the table-cloth and threw it over the face whose solemn,
tragic calm filled him with a sick dread. Then with breathless haste he
flung some clothes into a valise and made the fire burn high with the
letters and papers he threw on it at intervals. The first carts of the
morning had begun their rattling course through the stirred darkness
when he crept out, a haggard, hunted man.

He had to hide himself in unfrequented corners, cower beneath the
shadow of trees on park benches till the light strengthened and
morning shook the city into life. Then, as its reawakening tides began
to surge round him, he made a furtive way--for the first time in his
life fearful of his fellow men--to the railway station, and there took
the earliest south-bound train for the Mexican border.

The fire had died down, the leaden light of coming day was filtering in
through the crack between the half-drawn curtains, when the shrouded
shape on the floor moved and a deep groan broke upon the stillness.
Another followed it, groans of physical anguish beating on awakening
consciousness. An early riser from the floor above heard them as he
stole downward, stopped, listened, knocked, then receiving no reply,
opened the door and peered fearfully in. In the dim room, cut with
a sword of faint light, he saw the covered shape, and, as he stood
terrified, heard the groan repeated and saw the drapery twitched.
Shouting his fears over the balustrade, he rushed in, flung the
curtains wide, tore off the table-cloth, and in the rush of pallid
light, saw Harney, leaden eyed, withered to a waxen pallor, smeared
with the blood of the cut wrist which he feebly moved, struggling back
to existence.




CHAPTER XXV

HAVE YOU COME AT LAST

  “Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare.”

                                        --OMAR KHAYYAM.


At ten o’clock Barron returned to the Garcia house. His search for
Mariposa in such accustomed haunts as the Mercantile Library, the shops
on Kearney Street, and Mrs. Willers’, had been fruitless. Mrs. Willers
was again at _The Trumpet_ office, where another and more important
portion of the Woman’s Page was going to press, but Edna was at home,
and told Barron that neither she nor her mother had seen Mariposa since
the lesson of the day before.

In returning to the house he had hopes of finding her there. From the
first his anxiety had been keen. Now, as he put his key in the lock, it
clutched his heart with a suffocating force. The house was silent as he
entered, and then the sound of his step in the hall called the head of
young Mrs. Garcia to the opened door of the kitchen. The first glimpse
of her face told him Mariposa had not returned.

“Have you got her?” cried the young woman eagerly.

“No,” he answered, his voice sounding colorless and flat. “I thought
she might be back here.”

Mrs. Garcia shook her head and withdrew it. He followed her into the
kitchen, where she and the señora were sitting by the stove. A large
fire was burning, the room was warm and bright--the trim, finically
neat kitchen of a clean Chinaman. To the señora’s quick phrase of
inquiry, the younger woman answered with a sentence in Spanish. For a
moment the silence of sick anxiety held the trio.

“Did you go to Mrs. Willers’?” said young Mrs. Garcia, trying to speak
with some lightness of tone.

“Yes; she’s not been there since yesterday. I’ve been everywhere I
could think of where it was likely she would be. I couldn’t find a
trace of her.”

“Then’s she’s gone to Europe, or is going to-morrow, as she told
Pierpont. She took her money. We looked after you’d gone, and it wasn’t
there.”

“It’ll be too late to find out to-night if she’s gone. The ticket
offices are closed. I can’t think she’s done that--without a word to
any one. It’s not like her.”

The señora here asked what they said. Barron, who spoke Spanish
indifferently, signaled to the young woman to answer for him. She did
so, the señora listening intently. At the end of her daughter-in-law’s
speech she shook her head.

“No, she has not gone,” she said slowly in Spanish. “She could not take
that journey. She was not able--she was sick.”

“Sick, and out on such a night with all that money!” moaned her
daughter-in-law.

Barron got up with a smothered ejaculation. He knew more than either of
the women. The attempt at robbery the night before had failed. To-night
the girl herself had disappeared. What might it all mean? He was
afraid to think.

“I’m going out again,” he said. “I’ll be in probably in four or five
hours to see if, by any chance, she’s come back. You have everything
ready--fires and warm clothes and things to eat in case I bring her
with me. The rain’s worse than ever. Ching says she had no umbrella.”

Without more conversation he left, the two women bestirring themselves
to make ready the supper he had ordered. At three o’clock he returned
again to find the señora sitting alone, by the ruddy stove, Mrs.
Garcia, the younger, being asleep on a sofa in the boys’ room. The old
lady persuaded him to drink a cup of coffee she had kept warm, and, as
she gave it him, looked with silent compassion into his haggard face.

When day broke he had not again appeared. By this time the household
was in a ferment of open alarm. The boys were retained from school,
as it was felt they might be needed for messages. Pierpont undertook
to visit all Mariposa’s pupils, in the dim hope of finding through
them some clue to her movements, though it was well known she was on
intimate terms with none of them. Soon after breakfast Mrs. Willers
appeared, uneasy, and by the time the now weeping Mrs. Garcia had told
her all, pale and deeply disturbed.

She repaired to _The Trumpet_ office without loss of time, and there
acquainted her chief with the story of Miss Moreau’s disappearance, not
neglecting to mention the burglary of the night before, which even to
the women, having no knowledge of its real import, seemed to indicate a
sinister connection with subsequent events. Winslow did not disappoint
Mrs. Willers by pooh-poohing the matter, as she had half imagined
he would; a young lady’s disappearance for twelve hours not being a
subject for such tragic consternation. He seemed extremely worried--in
fact, showed an anxiety that struck the head of the Woman’s Page as
almost odd. He assured her that if Miss Moreau was not heard from that
day by midday he would offer secretly to the police department the
largest reward ever given in San Francisco, for any trace or tidings of
her.

Meantime Barron, having assured himself by visits to all the ticket
offices that she had not left the city on any train, had finally taken
his case to the police. It had been in their hands only an hour or two,
when young Shackleton’s offer of what, in even those extravagant days
seemed an enormous reward, was communicated to the department. It put
life into the somewhat dormant energies of the officers detailed on the
case. Mariposa had not been missing twenty-four hours when the search
for her was spreading over the face of the city, where she had been so
insignificant a unit, in a thorough and secret network of investigation.

The day wore away with maddening slowness to the women in the house,
whose duty it was to sit and wait. To Barron, whose anxiety had been
intensified by the torture of his deeper knowledge of the girl’s
strange circumstances, existence seemed only bearable as it was
directed to finding her. He did not dare now to pause or think.
Without stopping to eat or rest he continued his search, now with
the detectives, now alone. Several times in the course of the day he
reappeared at the Garcia house, drawn thither by the hope that she
might have returned. The señora, with the curious tranquillity of the
very old which seems not to need the repairing processes of sleep or
food, was always to be found sitting by the kitchen stove, upon which
some dish or drink simmered for him. He rarely stopped to take either.
But returning in the early dusk, he was grateful to find that she had
a dry overcoat hanging before the fire for him. The rain still fell in
torrents, and the long day spent at its mercy had soaked him.

It was between ten and eleven at night that the old lady and her
daughter-in-law, sitting before the stove as they had done the evening
before, again heard his step and his key. This time there was no
pretense at expectation on either side. His first glance inside the
room showed him the heavy dejection of the two faces turned toward him.
They, on their part, saw him pale and drawn, as by a month’s illness.
They had heard nothing. No investigation of which they were aware had
brought in a crumb of comfort. He had heard worse than nothing. There
had been talk at the police station that evening of the finding of
George Harney, suffering from concussion of the brain, and the sudden
departure of Barry Essex, believed to be his assailant.

This information added the last straw to Barron’s agony of
apprehension. It seemed as if a plot had culminated in those two days,
a plot dark and inexplicable, in which the woman he loved was in some
mysterious way involved.

He was standing by the stove responding to the somber queries of the
women, when the sound of feet on the porch steps suddenly transfixed
them all. Young Mrs. Garcia screamed, while the old lady sat with head
bent sidewise listening. Before Barron could get to the door a soft
ring at the bell had drawn another scream from the younger woman, who,
nevertheless, followed him and stood peeping into the hall, clinging to
the door-post.

The opened door sent a flood of light over three figures huddled in
the glass porch--two men, a detective and policeman, Barron already
knew, and a third, a stranger to him, whose face against the shadowy
background looked fresh and boyish.

“Ah, Mr. Barron, we’re lucky to strike you this way at the first shot,”
said the detective. “We think we’ve found the lady.”

“Found her? Where? Have you got her there?”

“No; we’re not certain yet if it’s the right one.”

The man, as he spoke, entered the hall, the policeman and the stranger
following him. Under the flare of the two gas-jets they looked big,
ungainly figures in their smoking rubber capes that ran rillets of
water on the floor. The third, revealed in the full light, was a boy
of some fourteen or fifteen years, well dressed and with the air of a
gentleman.

“This gentleman came to the station a half-hour ago,” said the
policeman, indicating the stranger, “with a story of finding a lady on
his own grounds, and we thought from his description it was the one
you’re looking for.”

Barron directed on the youth a glance that would have pried open the
lips of the Sphinx.

“What does she look like? Where is she?”

“She’s in our garden,” said the boy, “under some trees. She looks tall
and has on black clothes, and has dark red hair and a very white face.”

Mrs. Garcia gave a loud cry from the background.

“It’s Mariposa sure,” she screamed. “Is she alive?”

“Alive!” echoed the youth. “Oh, yes, she’s quite alive, but I don’t
know whether she’s exactly in her right mind. She’s sort of queer.”

Barron had brushed past him into the streaming night.

“Come on,” he shouted back. “Good Lord, come quick!”

At the foot of the zigzag stairs he saw the two gleaming lights of a
hack. With the other men clattering at his heels, he dashed down the
steps, and was in it, chafing and swearing, while they were fumbling
for the latch of the gate.

As the boy, after giving the coachman an address, scrambled in beside
him, he said peremptorily:

“When did you find her? Tell me everything.”

“About two hours ago. My dog found her. I live, I and my mother, on
the slope of Russian Hill. It’s quite a big place with a lot of trees.
I went down to get Jack (that’s my dog) at the vet’s, where he’s been
for a week, and I was bringing him home. When we got to the top of the
steps he began sniffing round and barking, and then he ran to a place
where there’s a little sort of bunch of fir-trees and barked and
jumped round, and went in among the trees. I followed him to see what
was up, and all of a sudden I heard some one say from under the trees:
‘Oh, it’s only a dog.’ I was scared and ran into the house and got a
lamp, and when I came out with my mother, and we went in among the
trees, there was a woman in there, who was lying on the ground. When
she saw us she sort of sat up, as if she’d been asleep, and said: ‘Is
it Sunday yet?’ We saw her distinctly; she was staring right at us. She
didn’t look as if she was crazy, but we both thought she was. She was
terribly white. We knew she couldn’t be drunk, because she was like a
lady--she spoke that way.”

“And then--and then,” said Barron, “what did she do?”

“She said again, ‘It isn’t Sunday yet?’ and mother said, ‘No, not yet,’
and we went away. I ran to the police office, but we left one of the
Chinamen to watch so she wouldn’t get away, ’cause we didn’t know what
was the matter with her. We’ll be there in a minute now. It isn’t far.”

The hack, which had been rattling round corners at top speed, now began
to ascend. Barron could see the gaunt flank of Russian Hill looming
above them, with here and there a house hanging to a ridge or balanced
on a slope. The lights of the town dropped away on their right in a
series of sparkling terraces.

“Do you guess it’s the lady you’re hunting?” said the policeman
politely.

“I’m almost certain it is,” answered Barron. “Can’t you make this man
go faster?”

“The hill’s pretty steep here,” said the guardian of the city’s peace.
“I don’t seem to think he could do it.”

“We’re almost there,” said the boy; “it’s just that house where the
aloe is--there on the top of that high wall.”

Barron looked in the direction, and saw high above them, on the top of
a wall like the rampart of a fortress, the faint outline of a house and
the black masses of trees etched against the only slightly paler sky.

“I don’t see any aloe,” he growled; “is that the house you mean?”

“That’s it,” said the boy. “I guess it’s too dark for the aloe
to-night.”

With a scrambling and jolting the horses began what appeared an even
steeper climb than that of the block before. The beasts seemed to
dig their hoofs into the crevices between the cobbles and to clamber
perilously up. With an oath Barron kicked open the door and sprang out.

“Come on, boy,” he shouted. “I can’t stand this snail of a carriage any
longer.” And he set out running up the hill.

The boy, who was light of foot and young, kept up with him, but the two
heavier men, who had followed, were left behind, puffing and blowing in
the darkness.

Suddenly the great wall, at the base of which they ran, was crossed by
a flight of stairs that made two oblique stripes across its face.

“Up the stairs,” said the boy.

And Barron, without reply, turned and began the ascent at the same
breakneck speed.

“You may as well let me go first,” gasped his conductor from behind
him. “You don’t know the way, and you might scare the Chinaman. He said
he had a gun.”

Barron stood aside for him to pass and then followed the nimble figure
as it darted up the second flight. The boy was evidently nearing the
top, when he sang out:

“Ah, there, Lee! It’s me coming back.”

There was an unmistakable Chinese guttural from somewhere, and then
Barron himself rose above the stair-top. A black mass of garden lay
before him, with the bulk of a large house a short distance back. Many
windows were lit, and in one he saw a woman standing. Their light
fell out over the garden, barring it with long rectangular stripes
of brilliance. The wild bark of the dog rose from the house and on
the unseen walk the Chinaman’s footsteps could be heard crunching the
pebbles.

“Is she there yet, Lee?” said the boy in a hissing whisper.

The Chinaman’s affirmative grunt rose from the darkness of massed
trees, into which his footsteps continued to retreat.

“This way,” said his conductor to Barron. “But hang it all, it’s so
dark we can’t see.”

“Where is she?” said Barron. “Never mind the light. Show me where she
is. Mariposa!” he said suddenly, in a voice which, though low, had a
quality so thrilling it might have penetrated the ear of death.

The garden, rain-swept and rustling, grew quiet. The sound of the
Chinaman’s footsteps ceased, even the panting breath of the boy was
suddenly suspended.

In this moment of pause, when nature seemed to quell her riot to
listen, a woman’s voice, sweet and soft, rose out of impenetrable
darkness:

“Who called me?”

The sound broke the agony that had congealed Barron’s heart. With a
shout he answered:

“It’s I, dearest. Where are you? Come to me.”

The voice rose again, faint, but with joy in it.

“Oh, have you come--have you come, at last!”

He made a rush forward into the blackness before him. At the same
moment the two men rose, spent and breathless, from the stairs. The boy
was behind Barron, and they behind the boy.

“Where are you? Where are you?” they heard him cry, as he crashed
forward through shrubs and flower beds.

Then suddenly the policeman drew the small lantern he had carried from
beneath his cape and shot the slide. A cube of clear, steady light cut
through the inky wall in front of them. For a second they all stopped,
the man sending the cylinder of radiance over the shrubs and trees in
swift sweeps. In one of these it crossed a white face, quivered and
rested on it. Barron gave a wild cry and rushed forward.

She was, as the boy described, crouched under a clump of small
fir-trees, the lower limbs of which had been removed. The place was
sheltered from observation from the house and the intrusion of the
elements. As the light fell on her she was kneeling, evidently having
been drawn to that posture by Barron’s voice. The light revealed her as
hatless, with loosened hair, her face pinched, her eyes large and wild.

As she saw Barron she shrieked and tried to move forward, but was
unable to and held out her arms. He was at her side in a moment, his
arms about her, straining her to him, his lips, between frantic kisses,
saying words only for him and for her.

The policeman, with a soft ejaculation, turned the lantern, and its
cube of light fell into the heart of a bed of petunias; then the two
men and the boy stood looking at it silently for a space.

Presently they heard Barron say: “Come, we must go. I must take you
home at once. Turn the light this way, please.”

The light came back upon her. She was on her feet, holding to him.

“Is it Sunday yet?” she said, looking at them with an affrighted air.

“That’s what she keeps asking all the time,” said the boy in a whisper.

“No,” said Barron, “it’s Friday. What do you expect on Sunday?”

“Only Friday,” she said, hanging back. “I thought I’d hide here till
Sunday was over.”

Without answering, he put his arm about her and drew her forward. At
the steps she hesitated again, and he lifted her and carried her down,
the policeman preceding with the lantern. The men helped him into the
carriage, not saying much, while the boy stood with his now liberated
dog at the top of the steps and shouted, “Good night.” Barron hardly
spoke to any of them. A vague thought crossed his mind that he would go
to see the boy some day and thank him.

She lay with her head on his shoulder, and as the carriage passed the
first lamp of the route he leaned forward eagerly to scan her face. It
was haggard, white and thin, as by a long illness. He could not speak
for a moment, could only hold her in his arms as if thus to wind her
round with the symbol of his love.

Presently she groaned, and he said:

“Are you suffering?”

“Yes,” she murmured; “always now. I am sick. I don’t breathe well any
more. It hurts in my chest all the time.”

“Why did you hide under those trees?” he asked.

“I was too sick to go any farther. I wanted to hide somewhere, to get
away from it all, and anyway, till Sunday was over. It was all to be
published on Sunday, you know. Everything was ruined. My voice was
gone, too. I saw those steps in the dark and climbed up and crept under
the trees. I was terribly tired, and it was very quiet up there. I
don’t remember much more.”

As the light of another lamp flashed through the window he could not
bear to look at her, but tightened his arms about her and bowed his
face on her wet head.

“Oh God, dearest,” he whispered, “there can’t be any hell worse than
what I’ve been in for the last two days.”

She made no response, but lay passively against him. When the carriage
stopped at the Garcia gate, and he told her they were home, she made no
attempt to move, and he saw she was unconscious.

He lifted her out and carried her up the steps. The door opened as he
ascended and revealed the Garcia family in the aperture.

“Is she dead?” screamed young Mrs. Garcia, as she saw the limp figure
in his arms.

“No, but sick. You must get a doctor at once.”

“Oh, how awful she looks!” cried the young woman as she caught sight
of the white face against his shoulder. “What are you going to do with
her?”

“Take her upstairs now, and then get a doctor and get her cured, and
when she’s well, marry her.”




EPILOGUE




CHAPTER I

THE PRIMA DONNA

              “And thou
  Beside me singing in the wilderness.”

                                  --OMAR KHAYYAM.


The plant of the Silver Star Mine lay scattered along the edge of a
mountain river on the site of one of the camps of forty-nine. Where the
pioneers had scratched the surface with their picks, their successors
had torn wounds in the Sierra’s mighty flank. Where once the miners’
shouts had broken the quiet harmonies of stirred pine boughs, and
singing river, the throb of engines now beat on the air, thick with the
dust, noisy with the strife of toiling men.

It was a morning in the end of May. The mountain wall was dark against
the rising sun; tall fir and giant pine stood along its crest in inky
silhouette thrown out by a background of gold leaf. Here and there,
far and aërial in the clear, cool dawn, a white peak of the high
Sierra floated above the shadows, a rosy pinnacle. The air was chill
and faintly touched with woodland odors. The expectant hush of Nature
awaiting the miracle of sunrise, held this world of huge, primordial
forms, grouped in colossal indifference round the swarm of men who
delved in its rock-ribbed breast.

In the stillness the camp’s awakening movements rose upon the morning
air with curious distinctness. Through the blue shadows in which it
swam the tall chimneys soared aloft, sending their feathers of smoke up
to the new day. It lay in its hollow like a picture, all transparent
washes of amethyst and gray, overlaid by clear mountain shadows. The
world was in this waiting stage of flushed sky and shaded earth when
the superintendent’s wife pushed open the door of her house and with
the cautious tread of one who fears to wake a sleeper, stepped out on
the balcony.

With her hand on the rail she stood, deeply inhaling the freshness of
the hour. The superintendent’s house, a one-story cottage, painted
white, and skirted by a broad balcony, stood on an eminence above the
camp. From its front steps she looked down on the slant of many roofs,
the car tracks, and the red wagon roads that wound along the slopes.
Raising her eyes, they swept the ramparts of the everlasting hills, and
looking higher still, her face met the radiance of the dawn.

She stepped off the balcony with the same cautious tread, and along
the beaten footpath that led through the patch of garden in front of
the house. Beyond this the path wound through a growth of chaparral
to where the pines ascended the slopes in climbing files. As she
approached she saw the sky barred with their trunks, arrow-straight and
bare of branches to a great height. Farther on she could see the long
dim aisles, held in the cloistral silence of the California forest,
shot through with the golden glimmer of sunrise.

The joy of the morning was in her heart, and she walked forward with a
light step, humming to herself. Two months before she had come here,
a bride from San Francisco, weak from illness, pale, hollow-eyed, a
shadow of her former self. She had only crept about at first, swung for
hours on the balcony in her hammock, or sat under the trees looking
down on the hive of men, where her husband worked among his laborers.
As her mother had grown back to the fullness of life in the healing
breath of the mountains, so Mariposa slowly regained her old beauty,
with an added touch of subtlety, and found her old beliefs returned to
her with a new significance.

To-day she had awakened with the first glimmer of dawn, and stirred
by a sudden desire for the air of the morning on her face and in her
lungs, had stolen up and out. Breathing in the resinous atmosphere a
new influx of life seemed to run like sap along her limbs, and lend
her step the buoyancy of a wood-nymph’s. Her eye lingered with a look
that was a caress on flower and tree and shrub. The song she had been
humming passed from tune to words, and she sang softly as she brushed
through the chaparral, snipping off a leaf, bending to pluck a wild
flower, pausing to admire the glossy green of a manzanita bush. Under
the shadow of the pines she halted by a rugged trunk, a point of
vantage she had early discovered, and leaning her hand on the bark,
surveyed the wild prospect.

The sense of expectancy in the air seemed intensified. The quivering
radiance of pink and gold pulsed up the sky from a point of
concentration which every moment brightened. The blue shadows in the
camp grew thinner, the little wisps of mist that hung over the river
more threadlike and phantasmal. A throwback to unremembered days came
suddenly upon her with a mysterious sense of familiarity. She seemed to
be repeating a dear, long dead experience. The vision and the dream of
days of exquisite well-being, carefree, cherished, were with her again.
Faint recurring glimpses of such mornings, strong of balsam of pine and
fir, musical with the sleepy murmur of a river, serene and sweet with
an enfolding passion of love in which she rested secure, rose out of
the dim places of memory. The perfect content of her childhood spoke to
her across the gulf of years, finding itself repeated in her womanhood.
The old joy in living, the old thrill of wonder and mystery, the old
sense of safety in a surrounding, watchful love, were hers once more.

The song on her lips passed from its absent undertone to notes
gradually full and fuller. It was the aria from “Mignon,” and, as she
stood, her hand on the tree trunk, looking down into the swimming
shadows of the camp, it swelled outward in tones strong and rich,
vibrating with their lost force.

Pervaded by a sense of dreamy happiness, she at first failed to notice
the unexpected volume of sound. Then, as note rose upon note, welling
from her chest with the old-time, vibrant facility, as she felt once
again the uplifting sense of triumph possess her, she realized what it
meant. Dropping her hand from the tree trunk she stood upright, and
facing the dawn, with squared shoulders and raised chin, let her voice
roll out into the void before her.

The song swelled triumphant like a hymn of some pagan goddess to the
rising sun. In the stillness of the dawn-hush, with the columns of the
monumental pines behind her, the mountain wall and the glowing sky in
front, she might have been the spirit of youth and love chanting her
joy in a primeval world.

When the last note had died away she stood for a moment staring before
her. Then suddenly she wheeled, and, catching up her skirts with one
hand, ran back toward the house, brushing between the tree-trunks and
through the chaparral with breathless haste. As she emerged from the
thicket, she saw her husband, in his rough mining clothes, standing on
the top step of the balcony.

“Gam,” she cried, “Gam!”

He started, saw her, and then waited smiling as she came running up
the garden path toward him, the blaze of the sky behind her, her face
alight with life and color.

“Why, dearest, I didn’t know what had happened to you,” he cried.
“Where did you go?”

Her unslackened speed carried her up the stairs and into his arms.
Standing on the step below him she flung hers round his shoulders, and
holding him tight, said breathlessly:

“What do you think has happened?”

“You met a bear in the wood.”

“My voice has come back.”

The two pairs of eyes, the woman’s looking up, the man’s down, gazed
deeply into each other. There was a moment of silence, the silence of
people who are still unused to and a little overawed by their happiness.

“I heard you,” he said.

“You did? From here?”

“Yes. I heard some one singing and stood here listening, watching the
light coming up.”

“Was it good?” she asked, anxiously.

“Very. I had never heard you sing before. You’re a prima donna.”

“That’s what I was going to be. You remember hearing us talking about
it at the Garcias’?”

He nodded, looking down at the face where health was coming back in
delicate degrees of coral to lips and cheeks.

“And it really did sound good?” she queried again.

“Lovely.”

“Quite soft and full, not harsh and with all the sound of music gone
out of it?”

“Not a bit. It was fine.”

She continued to hold him around the shoulders, but her eyes dropped
away from his, which regarded her with immovable earnestness, touched
by a slight, tender humor. She appeared to become suddenly thoughtful.

“You can be a prima donna still,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, nodding slightly. “I suppose I can.”

“And it’s a great career.”

“Yes, a splendid career.”

“You travel everywhere and make a fortune.”

“If you’re a success.”

“Oh, you’d be a success all right.”

She drew away from him, letting one hand rest on his shoulder. Her face
had grown serious. She looked disappointed.

“Well, do you _want_ me to be a prima donna?” she asked, looking at her
hand.

He continued to regard her without answering, the gleam of amusement
dying out of his eyes.

“Of course,” she added in a small voice, “if you’ve set your heart on
it, I will.”

“What do you think about it yourself?” he asked.

She gave him a swift, side look, just a raising and dropping of the
lashes.

“Say what you think first,” she coaxed.

“Well, then, I will.”

He put his two hands suddenly on her shoulders, big, bronzed hands,
hard and muscular, that seemed to seize upon her delicate flesh with a
master’s grip.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

She obeyed. The gray eyes held hers like a magnet.

“I think no. You don’t belong to the public, you belong to me.”

The color ran up into her face to the edge of her hair.

“Oh, Gam,” she whispered on a rising breath, “I’m so relieved.”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders and drew her close to him. With
his cheek against hers he said softly:

“You didn’t think I was that kind of a fool, did you?”

The sun had risen as they talked, at first slowly peering with a
radiant eye over the mountain’s shoulder, then shaking itself free of
tree-top and rock-point, and swimming up into the blue. The top of
the range stood all glowing and golden, with here and there a white
peak, snowily enameled. The rows of pines were overlaid with a rosy
brilliance, their long shadows slanting down the slopes as if scurrying
away from the flood of heat and light. The clear blues and amethysts
that veiled the hollow of the camp were dispersed; the films of mist
melted; a quivering silvery sparkle played over the river shallows.

In the clearing beams the life of the hive below seemed to swarm and
fill the air with the clamor of its awakening. The man and woman,
looking down, saw the toiling world turning to its day’s work--the red
dust rising beneath grinding hoof and wheel, the cars sliding swiftly
on their narrow tracks, heard the shouts of men, the hum of machinery,
and through all and over all, the regular throb of the engines like the
heart which animated this isolated world of labor.

Barron looked at his domain for an attentive moment.

“There,” he said, pointing down, “is where I belong. That’s my
life,--to work in wild places with men. And yours is with me, my prima
donna. We go together, side by side, I working and you singing by the
way.”




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With six illustrations by A. B. Wenzell

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THE GREAT NOVEL OF THE YEAR

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Emerson Hough has written one of the best novels that has come out of
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The Illustrations by Henry Hutt

12mo, 452 pages, $1.50




A SPLENDIDLY VITAL NARRATION

THE MASTER OF APPLEBY

_A romance of the Carolinas_

By FRANCIS LYNDE

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With pictures by T. de Thulstrup

12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50




A VIVACIOUS ROMANCE OF REVOLUTIONARY DAYS

ALICE _of_ OLD VINCENNES

By MAURICE THOMPSON

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VIRGINIA HARNED EDITION

12mo, with six Illustrations by F. C. Yohn, and a Frontispiece in
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“NOTHING BUT PRAISE”

LAZARRE

By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

Glorified by a beautiful love story.--_Chicago Tribune._

We feel quite justified in predicting a wide-spread and prolonged
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fiction.--_The N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._

After all the material for the story had been collected a year was
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Lazarre, is no less a person than the Dauphin, Louis XVII. of France,
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lady, scorns perils in two hemispheres, facing the wrath of kings in
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With six Illustrations by André Castaigne

12 mo. Price, $1.50




YOUTH, SPLENDOR AND TRAGEDY

FRANCEZKA

By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

There is no character in fiction more lovable and appealing than is
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time.”--_Brooklyn Times._

Charmingly illustrated by Harrison Fisher

Bound in green and white and gold 12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50




WHAT BOOK BY A NEW AUTHOR HAS RECEIVED SUCH PRAISE?

WHAT MANNER OF MAN

By EDNA KENTON

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as the “artistic temperament,” and a novel so far above the average
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It will certainly stand out as one of the most notable novels of the
year.--_Philadelphia Press._

It does not need a trained critical faculty to recognize that this book
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Note should be made of the literary charm and value of the work, and
likewise of its eminently readable quality, considered purely as a
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Literary distinction is stamped on every page, and the author’s insight
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Record-Herald._

The whole book is full of dramatic force. The author is an
unusual thinker and observer, and has a rare gift for creative
literature.--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._

“What Manner of Man” is a study and a creation.--_N. Y. World._

12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.



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