“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.