Hard-Pan/Chapter 3
AT this period of his history the colonel's exchequer must have been in a particularly depleted condition, for it was not a week after John Gault's visit that he again appeared at the office, and this time requested a loan of forty dollars.
Had the colonel, during this interview, exhibited some of that shamefaced and conscious embarrassment that the most hardened borrowers will show, his benefactor would have felt less miserably ill at ease. But the old man was as suave and affably benignant as if he were conferring a long-solicited favor. That there was something of shame in his barefaced assaults upon the purse of his daughter's friend seemed an idea that had never entered his mind. No disconcerting scruples marred his appreciation of his sudden good fortune. Pride was evidently a possession of which he was as poorly supplied as he was with the tangible goods of this world.
He was in the best of spirits; indeed, to John Gault's suspicious eye he had the triumphant air of a man who had found a good thing. He came into the office with a jaunty tread and an alert, all-embracing glance, and left it showering smiles and bows on its chief and his clerks. The sun of his prosperity seemed to have warmed and brightened him in every way. He told inimitable stories of the early days, which—unhampered by the presence of his daughter—were less egotistical, and not always so conventional, as those he regaled Gault with at home. He was as pressing as ever in his invitations to call, and into these introduced Viola's name as being a participator with himself in the desire of seeing their mutual friend as often as his time and inclination would lead him to the house near South Park.
After this visit the vague irritation and moodiness that Gault had felt gave place to a poignant sense of uncertainty and doubt. Naturally of a suspicious nature, the life he had led, the surroundings in which he had passed from youth to maturity, the large experience of evil gained in a twenty years' residence in a thoroughly loose and lawless city, had intensified his original tendency till he was now prone to suspect where suspicion was either a folly or an insult. He had the vain man's dread of being fooled, imposed upon, made ridiculous, and he was proud of his keenness in detecting such intentions.
At twenty-two he had come from Harvard to San Francisco, had plunged into the fashionable life of the day, and being the son of wealthy and well-known parents, had quickly learned the bitter lessons which society teaches its followers. People said John Gault had never married because he believed in no woman. This was an aspersion upon his sound, if narrow, common sense. He was afraid of marriage, of a terrible disillusionment, followed by a lifetime of conventionally correct misery. What he feared in it was himself. He dreaded that he might not make the woman he married happy, and deep in his soul he cherished the same dream as Balzac, who once wrote: "To devote myself to the happiness of a woman has been my ceaseless dream, and I suffer because I have not realized it." With the passage of the years he had grown narrower and more ambitionless. When he met Viola Reed he was sinking into the dull apathy of a self-engrossed and purposeless middle age.
Her attraction for him was sudden and compelling. He often wondered why he liked her so much. He had known hundreds of women who were prettier and quite as clever. About Viola there was a curious, distinguishing touch of refinement that he did not find in many of the beauties and belles who were so ready to smile on him at the fortnightly cotillions and subscription germans. The delicate modesty of her beauty satisfied his exacting eye. There was something subtle and rare about her, a suggestion of romance in her wide, pondering eyes, a charm of mystery behind the face that looked so youthful and yet was so femininely secretive. She always seemed to say the right thing, and that and the soft tones of her voice were keenly pleasing to his fastidious taste.
At first he had merely sought her society for the passing pleasure he had derived from it. He was reaching that stage of life when he found it difficult to be interested in new people, and where the long tedium of a dinner next a handsome and pretentious partner was beginning to assume the aspect of a martyrdom. There was nothing irksome or commonplace or tedious in the evenings spent in the house near South Park; even the colonel ceased to be a bore when his daughter sat by listening. Gault began to like going there better than going anywhere else. On the days when he decided that he would spend the evening at the Reeds', he found himself looking forward to the visit all the afternoon. The anticipation of it lay like a glad thought at the bottom of his heart. On the night that Letitia had asked him about Colonel Reed's daughter, he had nearly arrived at a conclusion—that Viola Reed was the one woman in the world for him.
Nearly, but not quite. The next day Colonel Reed had come and borrowed the first fifty dollars.
This simple action had disturbed John Gault's serenity. The second and third visits tore the fabric of his dream to pieces. If the old man had only made his request once, he would have thought no more of it than of the numberless other loans which he had contributed to the human wreckage left by the receding tides of San Francisco's several booms. But the colonel's subsequent appearances, so closely following on Gault's visits, awoke a sudden swarm of suspicions that began buzzing their importunate warnings into his ears. Why had the old man been so effusive in the beginning? Why had he invited him, insisted even, upon his calling? Was he so determinedly hospitable merely to secure a listener to his reminiscences? And if he had acted upon his own impulses at first,—which certainly seemed the case,—Viola could have stopped him later on. Gault had noticed that her word seemed law to her father.
In the pain of his doubts he surreptitiously made inquiries, and discovered that Colonel Reed's penury was of the past five years' duration. Up to that time he had still held small properties and realized on them at intervals. People who knew said that since then his circumstances had been desperate, and yet it was known of all men that he was engaged in no paid employment. It was the one point upon which the pride of the erstwhile millionaire was firm. Viola did no work, either. In the West, the woman laboring to help sustain the ruined fortunes of her family is so common a spectacle that the strong man, secure in his riches and his health, felt a species of fierce indignation against the girl for her seeming idleness.
Yet it must take so little to keep them. They owned the house they lived in, and employed no servant, Viola doing all the work of the small menage. He had tried to persuade himself that the colonel was using him for his banker without the girl's knowledge, and then Letitia, with her heavy feminine common sense, had laid her finger on the weak spot in that argument. How could a sudden influx of money enter into so small a household without the cognizance of the person who managed it all? It was nonsensical to think of. She knew—and if she knew, was she not party to the whole sordid, ugly plot?
But here he always stopped. It was impossible. It could not be. The image of her face rose before him, as it often did now, making him feel disgusted and ashamed that even in thought he should have done her an injury. There was a mistake somewhere. It would explain itself. But he knew that until it did explain itself he would know no peace; for he could not live without seeing her, and at every visit he felt her charm penetrate deeper into his heart, despite his lurking doubts.
He spent hours in pondering as to the best way to silence these doubts without letting her suspect their existence. Even if she were cognizant of it, he could hardly speak to her of her father's borrowing. Yet in his thought she always seemed so simple, so girlish, so young, that he was sure if he could see her alone, and perhaps turn the conversation upon some analogous subject, her ignorance would speak from every feature. He had grown to know all the varying expressions of her face, and he felt that he could detect the slightest change of color or tremor of consciousness on its pale innocence.
He did not, however, know at what hour he was likely to find her by herself. He had always gone in the evening, as it was the colonel who asked him, and who invariably designated that time. Gault fancied that his visits were the old man's chief amusement and recreation, and that he so particularly insisted upon the evening in the desire not to miss them. Upon this hypothesis he concluded that he ran a better chance of finding Viola alone in the second half of the day, and on his first disengaged afternoon he left his office early, with the intention of walking across town to South Park.
It was not late enough in the season for the summer winds to have begun, and the straw, dust, paper, and general refuse that they sweep away with their steady, cold breath lay thick on the pavements. In the hard light of afternoon the dreary quarter looked even meaner and more squalid than it did by night. The wayfarer could see the dirt on the little shop-windows, the dinginess of the wares displayed. The small, open stands, where shell-fish and oyster cocktails were sold, were thick with flies. Behind the grimed glass of the pawnbroker's windows lay the relics of vanished days of splendor and extravagance. Old-fashioned pieces of jewelry, broken ornaments, rusted pistols, gold-mounted spectacles, mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, were heaped together in neglected disorder. Now and then the entrance of a second-hand clothes store gave a glimpse of a dark interior hung with clothes, between which the sharp Jewish faces of the patron and his wife peered out eagerly.
John Gault's eyes passed over this with slow disgust. What might not the constant sight of such naked poverty breed in the most sensitive soul! Day after day Viola must have passed this way, must have seen the human spiders waiting in their dark web, perhaps might have chaffered with them, or recognized her own jewelry among the tarnished relics in the pawnbroker's window.
He turned into the wider avenue, where gentility had once dwelt in its bulky palaces. They seemed to stare with wide, unshuttered windows, drearily speculating on the desolation of the street and their own decay. Around them gardens stretched unkempt and parched, here and there an aloe or some vigorously growing shrub striking a note of color in the uniform grayness. High iron gates, richly wrought, but eaten into by rust, hung open from broken hinges, or were tied together with ravelings of rope. One of the most imposing, still standing upright, was held ajar with a piece of broken brick. It gave entrance to a circular sweep of driveway and a large garden full of rankly growing shrubs and vines and headless statues, with a rusty fountain-basin in the center, and urns still showing the corpses of geraniums. Inside Gault saw some of the children of the neighborhood playing games, and realized that the broken brick was evidently of their introduction. This was the house which had been built by Jerry McCormick thirty-odd years before. It had the appearance of having been deserted for a century.
A few turns down narrower streets brought the wayfarer to the Reeds' home. He had only seen it once before by daylight, and now eyed it with curiosity. Though age and poverty showed in its peeling stucco walls, in the untended vines that hung about the bay-window, in the rotting woodwork of the old gate, it still had the air of a place that is lived in and cared for. Inside the gate the pathway of black-and-white marble was clean and bright. Round the root of the dracæna there was a flower-bed planted with mignonette. On the other side of the flagged walk fuchsias and heliotrope were trained against the high fence which separated the house from its next-door neighbor.
In answer to his ring Viola opened the door. She was dressed in a blue-and-white gingham dress, the sleeves of which were rolled up to the elbows, and showed arms slightly rounded and white as milk. She wore an apron and had a pair of scissors in her hand. When she saw who it was the color of joy ran in a beautiful flush over her face.
"You never came at this time before," she said in the hall, hastily pulling down her sleeves. "I never thought for a moment it was you, or I should n't have come to the door with my sleeves this way."
Then they passed into the drawing-room. The afternoon light streamed through the bare emptiness of this once stately apartment, revealing the long crack that zigzagged across the mirror, and the rents in the colonel's arm-chair. In the rear half of the room there were only one or two pieces of furniture, evidently seldom used, and pushed back into the corners. The double doors leading from here were open, and vouchsafed the visitor a view of one of those long and spacious dining-rooms, with an outer wall of glass, often seen in old San Francisco houses. Fronting this glass wall were tiers of plants, some mounted on rough boxes, some on tables. They were of many sizes and sorts, but the feathery foliage of the maidenhair was most in evidence. It seemed to be growing in every kind of receptacle, from the ordinary flower-pot to a tomato-can on one side and a huge kerosene-oil tin on the other. Near the dining-table was a chair, and the table itself was littered with brown paper, cut neatly into circular pieces about three inches in diameter.
Viola moved forward to close the doors, but was arrested by her visitor.
"Why, you 've a regular conservatory in there. What beautiful plants!"
She held the door open and let him look in, though apparently not quite at her ease.
"Yes," she said; "I have great luck with ferns. Some people have, you know. It 's just because we take more care of them than others."
"My sister-in-law would die of envy if she could see those," said Gault, indicating the maidenhairs; "she 's always buying that sort of thing, and they 're always dying."
Viola looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. The color deepened in her cheeks, and then she looked away and began to play with the lock of the door.
"She must buy a great many?" she said, with a questioning inflection.
"Cart-loads," said he, absently, wondering what had caused her augmented color, and watching her as he would always now watch her whenever there was the slightest deviation from her normal manner.
"And I suppose," she said, "she spends a great deal on them?"
"I suppose so," he answered, "judging by the number that I 've seen wither in their prime and disappear, and new ones take their places the next day."
Viola pressed the lock in and shot it out.
"Are any of them dead just now?" she asked, in rather a small voice.
"Dozens, probably. It seems to me some of them are always dead, only they 're considerate enough not to all die at the same time."
There was a moment's pause. Gault's gaze was diverted from her face to the high, old-fashioned room, with its marble mantel carved in fruits and flowers and its bare sideboard. Then Viola said:
"Your sister-in-law always gets her plants from the large florists, does n't she? Some one on Kearney or Sutter Street?"
"I dare say she does; but I 'm sure I don't know. I can't control my curiosity any further—what were you going to do with those round bits of paper you were cutting when I came in?"
She looked at him quickly, a look of sharp, dubious inquiry; then, as she met the amused curiosity of his glance, she gave a little laugh and said:
"I was going to make jam."
"But you don't make jam out of paper?"
"No; those are for the tops of the glasses. I soak them in brandy and put them on, and they preserve it."
He looked at the papers, then back at her. As their eyes met the delight each felt in the other's presence found expression in a simultaneous burst of laughter. For a moment they stood facing each other, laughing in foolish but happy lightness of heart.
"Now, you know," he said, "I 'm a credulous person, but is n't that going too far? Why, if you used all those things you 'd have jam enough to feed the American army."
Her laughter died, and looking slightly confused, she put out her hand, seized the other door, and drew them together with a bang.
"There!" she said, dropping the catch; "you can't see any more. You 're too curious, in the first place, and you don't believe me, which is worse."
"I 've found out the skeleton in the closet," he said, as they walked back into the front room. "It 's the colonel's passion for jam. I 've heard of a passion for pie running in families, but jam 's something new."
The bare austerity of this bleak apartment seemed to cast a sudden chill over their high spirits. Gault, sitting in the colonel's chair, reverted in thought to the object of his visit, and wondered how he could turn the conversation in the direction he had intended. His preoccupation, and the sense of shame he felt at the mean part he contemplated playing, made him respond to her conversational attempts with dry shortness. She grew constrained and embarrassed, and finally, in a desperate attempt to arrest a total silence, said:
"Don't you like my new cushion? You 've never noticed it!"
The visitor's slow glance moved in the direction indicated, and rested on a cretonne cushion in one of the wicker chairs.
"It 's a perfect beauty," he said, with as much enthusiasm as he thought the occasion required.
"I 'm glad you think it 's pretty," she answered, evidently much pleased. "I ought not to have bought it, I suppose, but I do love pretty things."
"Why ought n't you to have bought it? What is the matter with it?"
"Nothing; I mean it was an extravagance. I sometimes think how perfectly delightful it would be to be able to go into stores and buy furniture and ornaments and curtains just whenever you wanted."
This remark dispelled Gault's preoccupation. He remained in the same position and continued staring at the cushion, but his glance had changed from its absent absorption to a fixed and listening intentness.
Viola saw that she had interested him, and continued with happy volubility:
"Sometimes, when I have nothing to do and am here alone, I think how I would furnish this room if I could buy anything I saw, and could just say to some outside person, the way princesses do, 'I have bought so much; please pay the bill.' I 've done it in white and gold, and in crimson with black wood, teak or ebony, very plain and heavy; and also in striped cretonnes with bunches of flowers, and little chairs and sofas with spindle legs. There 's a great deal of satisfaction in it. It 's almost as good as having it really happen."
"It sounds very amusing," said Gault, as she paused; "but then, castles in the air," he added, turning to look at her, "are never quite the same as the real thing."
"If you can't get the real thing, you take the castles in the air," she answered, smiling.
"Tell me some more of yours."
"Oh, they 're just silly dreams, and mercenary ones, too. My castles are all built on a foundation of money. It 's a dreadful thing to have to acknowledge, but I 'm afraid I am mercenary. And it 's such a horrid fault to have."
"But is n't it rather a useful one?" he could not forbear asking.
"Not so far. Once I had my palm read by a palmist, and he told me I was going to be very prosperous—to have great riches. That 's one of my best castles in the air. I 'm all the time wondering about it, and where my great riches are coming from."
She spread both hands, palms up, on the table, and studied them as if trying to elicit further secrets from their delicately lined surfaces.
"Great riches!" she repeated. "Where could a person suddenly find great riches? The mining booms are over, and in California people don't strike oil-wells in their gardens. I 'm afraid it will have to be either begging, borrowing, or stealing. I wonder which I would succeed best in."
With the last words she raised her bent head, and her eyes, diminished in size by her laughter, rested full on his. Their glance was clear, candid, and innocently mirthful as that of a merry child.
As he stared at her, almost vacantly, the notes of a clock, striking somewhere in the back of the house, fell with crystalline distinctness upon the silence.
"One—two—three—four—five," she counted absently, with each number touching the table with a finger-tip.
Gault rose to his feet, remarking with unfeigned surprise on the lateness of the hour. She looked suddenly confused and annoyed at the realization of her unintentional rudeness, and asked him if he would not remain till her father's return. But he pleaded an engagement he had made to attend the tea given that afternoon by Mrs. Jerry McCormick, and, with a hand pressure and the conventional words of farewell, brought his visit to a close.
Outside, he turned to the right and walked slowly forward toward where the rumble of traffic indicated one of the large and populous thoroughfares of the district. Before him, at the end of the street's long vista, the sunset glowed pink, barred by a delicate scoring of telegraph-wires. Even as he looked it deepened and burned higher and higher up the sky, while at the far end of the vista it concentrated into a core of brightness, as though a conflagration were in progress there.
What was he to think? He felt his mind confused and full of warring images. He had been almost afraid of what she might say—she who was to him the ideal of all that was gentlest and truest and most maidenly. And yet what had she said to disturb or annoy him? It was only the foolish prattle of a girl who is happy and in high spirits. And even as he made these assurances to himself, sentences from the past interview surged up to the surface of his mind: "I 'm afraid I 'm mercenary, and it 's such a horrid fault to have." "Where are my riches coming from? It will have to be either begging, borrowing, or stealing."
Her mother had been an actress—one of the stars of San Francisco's hectic youth. Dissimulation might be instinctive with a woman of Viola Reed's heredity. It was the whole art of acting; it was in her blood. He thought of all he had ever heard of her mother, of her few years of fame and glory, so splendidly ended by her marriage to the bonanza millionaire. It had been a wonderful, glittering life, quenched in an early death. He had never heard anything against her character, but she had been an actress, the essence of whose art is the capacity to both conceal and assume emotion. And her daughter, in personal appearance at least, resembled her. He had heard that from the colonel himself.
A feeling of weariness and disillusion took possession of him, and in the sickness of heart that it brought he thought suddenly of Letitia. She was the one woman he knew that he could always rely on to be true and steadfast and genuine. Why had he not loved her—a woman a man could trust forever, and handsome enough to be the wife of a king? There would be no doubts nor difficulties in a life with her; it would be all kindness and cheer and sympathy. And even as he thus reflected, he knew that love for Letitia was as far from him as was indifference to the woman whom he mistrusted.
At the very hour that Gault was walking moodily across town from South Park, Letitia, the object of his thoughts, was rolling along the asphalted streets of the Western Addition in Mrs. Mortimer Gault's coupé. Her sister was with her, and both ladies were dressed with a rustling splendor which betokened festal doings. For they, too, were en route to the McCormick tea. This was, in fact, a large reception given by Mrs. McCormick to little Prince Dombroski, a gentleman who had come from Russia to wed a Californian heiress, and was receiving a helping hand from the McCormicks, who on this particular afternoon had gathered together all maiden and widowed San Franciscan wealth for his inspection.
Letitia had dressed herself for the occasion with great care. When she had appeared at the front door and descended the stairs to the carriage, she had presented so dazzling a picture that even the coachman, a well-trained functionary imported from the East, could hardly forbear staring at her. She was regally clothed in a costume of bluish purple, with much yellow lace, fur, cream-colored satin, and glints of gold braiding about the front. There was a purple jewel at her throat, and a bunch of pale, crape-like orchids, that toned with the hue of her dress, was fastened on her breast. Clad thus in the proudest production of a great French modiste, Letitia was really too handsome to be quite in good taste. But she was used to sumptuous apparel, and carried it with the air of an actress who knows how to take the stage.
Maud Gault was somewhat less punctual to-day than her sister. Letitia sat in the carriage waiting for her, and finally, by the brushing of silken skirts and an advancing perfume of wood-violet, was apprised of her sister's approach. The elder woman gave the address to the coachman and then sprang in.
Hardly had the door closed when she looked at Letitia with a kindling eye, and said:
"Oh, Tishy, I know the funniest thing!"
Letitia knew that her sister had something of note to impart. Mrs. Gault's dark cheek was flushed a fine brick-red, her eye was alight. She was pulling on her gloves as she spoke.
"Do you remember that night, only a few weeks ago, when you asked John about Colonel Reed's daughter?"
"Yes."
"And do you remember that he said he 'd never seen her?"
"No, he did n't say that," corrected Letitia; "he said he 'd heard of her."
"And what else?" asked the other, stopping in her glove-pulling to fix Letitia with a keen eye.
"I don't think he said anything else. I don't remember anything."
"But he certainly led us to believe that he did n't know her. Did n't he, now?"
Letitia paled slightly. Her eyes, looking frankly troubled, were fastened on her sister.
"Yes—I think so. Why?"
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gault, bridling with the consciousness of her important announcement, "he knows her well. He goes there all the time. He 's having a regular affair with her. Did you ever know anything to beat men?"
"How do you know?" said Letitia, looking down and picking at the gold arabesques on her dress.
"Mortimer told me last night. He made me swear I would n't tell a living soul. You must remember that, by the way, or I 'll get into trouble. Mortimer saw Colonel Reed in the office the other day, and that red-haired clerk, the one John took in because his mother was crazy or consumptive or something, told Mortimer Colonel Reed came there often, and that John went out to see him at his home somewhere near South Park. Does n't that beat the band? John going calling in South Park on Colonel Reed's daughter, and then pretending to us that he does n't know her! If John knew the man had said anything about it, he 'd kick him down all the stairs in the building, if they reached from here to the ferry."
Letitia was silent. She thought of the conversation on Sunday, and the woman who had been the heroine of the novel. All the sunshine seemed to go out of the afternoon, and the innocent joy she had taken in putting on her beautiful clothes suddenly shriveled up and vanished.
"He might go out there and see Colonel Reed's daughter and not tell us about it," she said, "and yet not—not be exactly in love with her."
"Dear me, Letitia," said her sister, pettishly, "what a dunce you are! Do you suppose John's going to drag himself over to South Park to see Colonel Reed's daughter because he 's taken a philanthropic interest in her father? One would think you 'd been raised in Oshkosh or Milpitas, to hear the things you sometimes say. But that 's not all. This morning I was in the Woman's Exchange, and who should be there but old Biddy McCormick herself. I can't endure her, you know, especially since she 's got this little prince-creature up her sleeve; but I 'm always polite to her because of Tod and you—and things generally. You never can tell what may happen. And I heard her say, 'Not that jam; I always buy the same kind—Miss Viola Reed's.' So I up and said, as innocent as Mary's little lamb, 'Do tell me, Mrs. McCormick, what jam that is you 're buying. Everything you have is always so delicious.' And she said, 'It 's some that 's made by a woman named Reed, who lives across town somewhere.' Then, when she 'd gone, I corralled the girl, and she told me it was made by a Miss Viola Reed, who lives—"
Mrs. Gault opened her jeweled card-case and produced a slip of paper with an address written on it. She handed this to Letitia, and said with an air of triumph:
"That 's where she lives. Now you 'll have to admit, Miss Letitia Mason, that there are no flies on your little sister!"
Letitia looked at the address and gave it back.
"No," said her sister; "you keep it. That 's my little scheme. You 're to go there now—this afternoon—and order jam. Do you see?"
"But I don't want any jam, and you never eat it."
"Good gracious, Tishy, how awfully stupid you are to-day! What a fortunate thing it is that you and Mortimer have got me to take care of you! Of course you don't want jam. I never heard of any civilized being who did. But I suppose you 'll admit that you want to see this girl?"
"I don't think I do," said Letitia. "I don't see why I should."
"Well, I do," said Mrs. Gault, with asperity. "Don't you take an interest in John? Don't you want to see if he's fallen into the clutches of an adventuress?"
"She does n't sound at all like an adventuress, Maud. I never heard of an adventuress making jam for her living."
"Jam for her living! Bosh! Can't you imagine how she tells that to John, and shows him the glasses in the corner cupboard, and lets him find her stirring things in a big pot on the kitchen stove? Oh, she 's no fool, my dear! Will you go and see her?"
"I 'd rather not."
"Very well, then; if you care so little for John, you need n't go. I 'll do it myself, and I can tell you, I 'll size her up."
Letitia looked uneasy. She knew nothing of Miss Reed except that she was poor and pretty. But she did not like the thought of subjecting even an unknown female to Mrs. Gault's mercies, when her interest was so evidently hostile and her curiosity so poignant.
"If you think somebody must go, then I will," she said pacifically. "I don't see the use of it, but I can go better than you."
"All right," said Mrs. Gault, immediately placated. "You 'd better go now. It 's always best to do a thing when you have the opportunity."
"No," said Letitia; "I don't think I 'll do that."
"Why not? Is it possible you 're so crazy to see that miserable little prince that I could put in my hat-box?"
"I don't care about him," answered the girl, with unmoved placidity. "I don't like to go—to go this way." She made an explanatory gesture toward her dress.
Mrs. Gault looked at her uncomprehendingly.
"Why? What's wrong about your clothes?"
It was painful, but Letitia had to explain:
"If she 's so poor as all that—and everybody says so—I don't think it 's—it 's—quite nice, some way or other, for me to go in this dress." Her voice took on a sudden tone of decision. "I won't do it, anyway."
Her sister knew the tone, and knew that there was no use in combating the mood it indicated.
"You have the queerest notions," she said, with a resigned sigh; "but do as you like. It 's all the same, if you do go to-morrow. Only you must promise that you won't back out."
Letitia promised.
On the afternoon of the next day she stood before her glass and critically eyed her reflection. She had put on a plain tailor-made suit, which fitted her heavily molded figure with unwrinkled smoothness. A brown turban crowned her reddish hair, and the exquisite pallor of her skin was obscured by a thin veil. Letitia did not approve of herself in this modest garb. She accepted the dictum that "beauty should go beautifully." But for the mission upon which she was bound she had selected her attire with an eye to its fitness and propriety.
It was a gray afternoon, with a breath of fog in the air. Already the city was beginning to show signs of the summer exodus, and Letitia was glad that in her journey across town she met no acquaintances and attracted no more attention than that frankly candid stare which is male California's passing tribute to beauty.
Though she had been born in South Park, she knew nothing of this side of the city, and found herself as much a stranger as its inhabitants would have been had they been transported to the aristocratic heart of the Western Addition. Finally, however, after some questioning of small boys and much retracing of steps, she found the house, and walked up the path with the black-and-white flagging.
Letitia was one to whom the word "shyness" has no meaning. She possessed her full share of the Westerner's placid self-approval, and with it that careless curiosity which makes an incursion into new surroundings interesting. Yet, as she stood waiting for the door to open, she experienced a sensation of nervousness quite new to her. Her heart had ached more in the last twenty-four hours than it had since her mother's death, years before. If Viola Reed was an adventuress or if she was a saint, the situation was equally painful to this splendid-looking creature, who, for all her regal air and stately immobility of demeanor, was only a woman of a simple, almost primitive type.
The door was opened by Viola, in her blue gingham dress and her apron. At the sight of her visitor she looked startled almost into speechlessness. Letitia announced the fact that she had come on business, and an invitation to enter brought her sweeping into the little hall and the drawing-room beyond.
Here the two girls looked at each other for one of those swift exploring moments in which women seem to take in every detail of dress, every peculiarity of feature and revealing change of expression, that a rival has to show. Letitia, with all her apparent heaviness, had keen perceptions. With a sinking at her heart she saw the beauty of the gray eyes fastened shyly upon her, and realized what must be the power of the delicate charm, so far removed in its soft, dependent femininity from her own. She saw that this girl had a distinguishing refinement she could never boast, and that it was strong enough to triumph over such poverty-stricken surroundings as, in all her experience, she had never before encountered. Her quick eye took in the gaunt emptiness of the room as John Gault's could not have done in a week's arduous examination. She saw the split and ragged shades in the windows, the ribs of twine in the old carpet, the rents in the colonel's chair.
Viola, for her part, saw one of the handsomest and most imposing young women she had ever gazed upon. The very way Letitia rustled when she moved, and exhaled a faint perfume with every movement, seemed to breathe an atmosphere of fashion and elegance. She had never seen her before, and had no idea who she was. Letitia soon put an end to this condition of ignorance.
"My name is Mason," she said judicially—"Letitia Mason. I am the sister of Mrs. Mortimer Gault."
At this announcement an instantaneous change took place in Viola. For a second she looked alarmed, then her face stiffened into lines of pride and anger. The eyes that had been so full of a naïve admiration were charged, as by magic, with a look of cold antagonism. Letitia felt her own breath quicken as she realized how much the name of Gault must mean to this girl.
Viola attempted no answer to the introduction, and Miss Mason hastily went on:
"My sister heard that you made jam—very good jam. We don't like what we get in the stores, so we thought we would try yours."
Viola had now found her voice,—a very low and cold one,—and answered:
"You can get it at the Woman's Exchange. I sell it there all the time."
"Yes, I know that," said Letitia; "but we thought it would be better to buy it straight from you; that—perhaps—it—perhaps it would save time and trouble."
"I don't see how it could do that. This part of town is a long distance out of everybody's way."
"Yes, of course it is," the other agreed eagerly; then, with a sudden happy inspiration, "but I thought you might have a larger variety here—that you might have a good many different kinds on hand. I don't want all the same sort."
Viola rose and went to the door that led to the dining-room. Her resentment was not more obvious than her embarrassment. There was something tremulous in the expression of her face that gave Letitia a wretched feeling that only pride enabled her to keep back her tears.
"I have just the same here that I have at the Exchange," she said, opening the doors.
The visitor followed her. In the gray of the afternoon the long room, with its tiers of plants and its bare sideboard and mantelpiece, looked even colder and drearier than the drawing-room. Viola opened a cupboard and indicated the lines of glass jars standing on the shelves. She tried to be businesslike, and told their contents and prices, but her voice betrayed her. Letitia, listening to her and staring at the Chinese cracker-jar that was the sole adornment of the sideboard, suddenly felt sick with disgust at herself for intruding, at her sister, at John Gault.
As Viola's voice went on,—"These are apricots; they 're fifty cents. Those on that shelf are strawberry and raspberry; they are only thirty,"—Letitia's shame and indignation worked up to a climax and a resultant resolution.
She took up one of the glasses and, looking at the legend written in neat script on the paper top, said:
"I think I ought to tell you how I happened to come here. It 's really a secret and you must n't tell. What I said at first was not quite the case. No one at our house knows anything about this but me. I 'm going to buy these preserves for my brother-in-law and tell him I made them. I 'm going to fool him. Do you understand? It 's just a little joke."
Letitia delivered herself of this amazing effort at invention with admirable composure, for it was the first elaborate and important falsehood she had ever told in her life. Viola, turning from her contemplation of the shelves, looked at her, relieved but not quite comprehending.
"So I hunted you up myself at the Exchange," continued Letitia, plunging deeper into the slough of deception, but knowing now that she had gone too far to compromise with truth, "and came here myself this way so as to keep it all dark."
Viola's face had cleared with each word. As the other ended, her lips parted in the smile that John Gault found at once so irresistible and so enigmatic. Letitia found nothing enigmatic in it. She only thought, with a piercing dart of pain, "She is still prettier when she smiles."
"It 's very amusing," said Viola; "but why do you want to fool him?"
Letitia was even ready for this, so expert does the first lie make us in perpetrating the second.
"He says I am useless and can't do anything. I am going to show him that I can make jam."
Viola was rather shocked, but relief and amusement combined to make her light-hearted, and this time she laughed.
"But the writing," she said. "Won't he see by that that it 's not yours? There 's writing on every glass."
"Oh, that will be all right. I 'll have the Chinaman put it out in a dish. But you 'll promise not to give me away?"
"Oh, I never will," said Viola. "In fact," she continued naïvely, "I 'd rather have it that way myself. You see, many people—all people, that is—don't know that I do this."
She stopped and looked tentatively at Letitia, as if curious to see how she was taking these revelations.
"Do what?" asked Letitia, not understanding.
"Make the jam. Not that I mind much. But it's a little sort of fancy of my father's. Sometimes older people have those ideas, and it's best to humor them, I think; don't you?"
"Oh, much the best," assented the other, turning aside and looking at the plants. "It 's best to humor everybody; it's so much easier to get on. What beautiful ferns!"
"Yes; I am quite proud of them. But this is a splendid window for ferns."
"Did you raise these yourself? I never saw such plants out of a greenhouse."
Viola was now eagerly interested.
"Yes, I grew them all—some of them from a few roots like black threads. I sell these, too. There is a man at one of the Kearney Street florists' who used to live near here and knew us, and he buys them from me. At Christmas I do quite well."
Letitia examined the ferns.
"I wonder if you would let me buy one or two of them," she said. "We can't get such plants at our florist's, and I am fonder of them than of any other kind of fern."
Viola agreed with a blush of pleasure, and after some consultation four ferns were selected. The visitor was amazed at their cheapness, but concealed her astonishment. Then she bought three dozen jars of the jam. She did not pay for them, but said that on the following day she would send the money by a messenger, who would also bring away the purchases.
Standing in the doorway, about to leave, she said:
"I 'm glad to have seen you. It 's so interesting for a person like me, who can't do anything, to meet some one who is clever and of use in the world. Good-by!" She held out her hand, and Viola, surprised, put hers into it. "Don't forget to keep our secret. It makes a person feel like a conspirator, does n't it? I think, too, Colonel Reed 's quite right to want to be reticent about business matters. So you and I 'll keep dark about this little transaction of ours."
This was the most diplomatic sentence Letitia had ever given vent to in her life.
She walked slowly away from the house, her eyes downcast in thought. The superb health she had inherited from an untainted peasant ancestry made her imagination dull, and lightened such sufferings as she had encountered in her easy, care-free life. Even now she experienced none of those fierce pangs that jealousy and disappointed love provoke in the women of a more sophisticated stock. She was made on that large, calm plan on which an all-wise nature creates the maternal woman—she whose destiny it is to bear strong children to a stalwart sire. But this afternoon, for the first time in her life, she knew what it was to feel her heart lying heavy in her breast like a thing of stone.
It was late when she reached home. Mrs. Gault was to give a dinner that evening, and as Letitia passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of her sister, in a loose creation of pink silk and lace, which swelled out behind her like a sail, hurrying round the bedecked dining-table, followed by two meek and attentive Chinamen. Knowing the indignation of Maud should she be late, she ran to her room and made her toilet with the utmost speed.
She was just completing this important rite, and, seated at her dressing-table under a blaze of electric light, was selecting an aigret for her hair, when the door opened and Mrs. Gault entered.
She had discarded her ebullient draperies of pink silk, and was sheathed tightly in her favorite yellow, from which the olive skin of her bared neck emerged in polished smoothness. As she came forward she had one hand full of diamond brooches, which she pinned with apparent carelessness round the edge of the low bodice.
"Well, Tishy," she said, sitting down by the dressing-table, "what happened?"
Letitia looked at the array of silver that covered the table. Some jewels lay scattered among it, and the aigrets from which she had been about to choose the one she should wear. She selected a black one, and turned it round, looking at it.
"Nothing happened," she answered. "I saw her, and bought the jam and some plants. She raises plants, too."
"Is she really so pretty?"
"Yes, very—I think some people might say beautiful."
Mrs. Gault's face fell.
"She did n't say anything about John, I suppose?"
"Of course not."
"Did it seem to you that there was anything adventuressy or bad about her?"
Letitia looked at her sister—a sidelong look, which made Mrs. Gault feel rather uncomfortable.
"I never saw any one in my life that looked to me less so," she answered.
"Dear me!" ejaculated Mrs. Gault, in a dismayed tone. "You don't say so! Tishy, for goodness' sake, look where you 're putting that aigret! You look like Pocahontas, and Tod McCormick 's coming to dinner."
Letitia arranged the aigret at a more satisfactory angle, her large white arms, shining like marble through the transparent tissue of her sleeves, shielding her face.
"Then," said Mrs. Gault, returning to the more important subject, "there really may be a chance of his marrying her."
"I should think a very good one," answered Letitia, in a low voice.
"Good heavens!" breathed her sister, in the undertone of utter horror, "how awful men are! What makes you think he may intend marrying her?"
"Because," said Letitia, dropping her arms and turning on her sister with her mouth trembling and her breast agitated with sudden emotion, "no man who was any sort of a man could mean anything else."
Maud Gault was amazed by the girl's unexpected emotion. She pushed back her chair, and staring at Letitia, said vaguely:
"Why? I don't understand."
"Even if he did n't care, even if he did n't love her, he 'd marry her. Oh, Maud, she 's so helpless and so poor!"
And Letitia burst into a sudden storm of tears.
For a moment her sister sat still, looking at her in blank amazement. Then she felt a pang of feminine sympathy. So Letitia did care for him. Poor Tishy!
"There, don't cry!" she said, patting her shoulder. "You never can tell about these things. John may not care a button for this girl, or have the least intention of marrying her. You 're always seeing the dark side of things."
But her form of consolation was not well chosen. Letitia threw off the hand and raised her disfigured face.
"John may be selfish and mean and all that, and I 've no doubt he is; but he 's not mean enough, he 's not contemptible enough, to do what you think he 's doing. I 'll not believe that of him. I 'd despise him if I thought so; I 'd hate him!"
Her tears burst forth afresh, and she hid her face in her hands.
Mrs. Gault was nonplussed. She looked at her sister's shaken shoulders and bowed head with an uncomprehending but pitying eye. Then, as Letitia's sobs diminished, she said gloomily:
"How much jam did you buy?"
"Three dozen glasses," came the muffled answer.
"Good gracious!"—raising her eyes toward the ceiling in an access of horror. "What did you get so much for? Two or three would have done. We 'll not get through that by Christmas." There was no answer made to this, and after a moment or two of silence Mrs. Gault recommenced, in a brisk and unemotional tone:
"I don't understand you at all, Tishy; but I do know that if you don't stop crying you 'll look a perfect fright at dinner, and everybody will be wondering what's the matter with you."
This appeal to her pride had a good effect upon Letitia. She struggled with her tears and finally subdued them. But her flushed and swollen countenance needed much attention, and when Mrs. Gault left the room she carried with her a picture of her sister sitting before the mirror solicitously dabbing at her eyelids with a powder-puff.
When she appeared all traces of her previous distress seemed successfully obliterated. It remained for the eye of love to penetrate the restorative processes with which she had doctored her telltale countenance.
Near the end of dinner Tod McCormick, who sat beside her, leaned toward her and said, in the low tone of long-established friendship:
"What 's the matter, Tishy? You look sort of bunged up."
Letitia said nothing was the matter—why?
The small, red-rimmed eyes of Tod passed over her face, lingering with the solicitude of affection upon the delicately pink eyelids and nostrils.
"You look as if you 'd been crying," he said.
"Oh, what a silly idea!" answered Letitia, with a laugh that would have been quite successful on the stage, but could not deceive the enamoured Tod; "I have a cold."
"It 's not that you don't look as pretty as usual. No matter what you did, you 'd always be out o' sight. But it just gives me the willies to think of your being down on your luck. Honest—I can't stand it."
Letitia looked away, more to avert her face from his searching gaze than from embarrassment.
"Everybody gets blue now and then," she said carelessly.
"But you ought n't to. I 'm the one that ought to get blue—black and blue."
"I guess we all do, more or less."
"If you 'd just ease up on the way you keep giving me the marble heart," continued Tod, dropping his voice to the key of tenderness, "I 'd see to it that there 'd never be a thing to make you blue. Everything would go your way. I 'd see to it."
Letitia looked at him with a little vexed frown.
"Dear me, Tod!" she said crossly, "you 're not going to propose to me here at dinner, are you, with everybody listening, too?"
Tod looked round rather guiltily. Letitia had exaggerated. The only person who appeared to be noticing them was Mrs. Mortimer Gault, and her glance immediately slipped away from his to give the signal for withdrawal to a lady at the other end of the table.