“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.