“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:
“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.
“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.