“There may be heaven; there must be hell;
Meantime there is our earth here—well!”
—BROWNING.
The fears of Mrs. Garcia held Barron to the house till the morning light was fully established. This was late, even for the winter season, as the rain still fell heavily, retarding the coming of day with a leaden veil.
He made his report at the police station, and then went down town to his office where business detained him till noon. It was his habit to lunch at the Lick House, but to-day he hurried back to the Garcias’, striding up the series of hills at top speed, urged on by his desire to hear news of Mariposa. He burst into the house to find it silent—the hall empty. As he was hanging his hat on the rack, young Mrs. Garcia appeared from the kitchen, her bang somewhat limp, though it was still early in the day, her face looking small and peaked after her exciting night’s vigil.
Mariposa was still asleep, she said in answer to his query. The señora had given her a powerful sleeping draft and had said that the rest would be the best restorative after such a shock. If, when she waked, she showed symptoms of suffering or prostration, they would send for the doctor.
“Have you found her paper?” she asked anxiously. “She seemed in such a way about it last night.”
He muttered a preoccupied answer, mentioning his visit to the police station.
“What was it, anyway? Do you know?” inquired the young woman who was not exempt from the weaknesses of her sex.
“Some legal document, I think, but I don’t know. The police can’t do much till they know what it is.”
“Perhaps it was a will,” said the widow, whose sole literature was that furnished by the daily press; “though I should think if it was a will she’d have told about it by now and not kept it hid away up there. Anyway, she thought a lot of it, for when she came to I told her her money was all right, and she said she didn’t care about the money, she wanted the paper.”
“I’ll see her when she wakes,” said Barron, “and find out what it was. Our affair now is to see that she is not frightened again and gets well.”
“Well, mother says to let her sleep. So that’s what we’re going to do. No one’s going to disturb her, and Pierpont, who got back an hour ago, has promised not to give any lessons all afternoon.”
The conversation was here interrupted by the appearance of the Chinaman, who loungingly issued from the kitchen, shouted an unintelligible phrase at his mistress, and disappeared into the dining-room. His words seemed to have meaning to her, for she pulled off her apron, saying briskly:
“There, dinner’s ready and we’re going to have enchilados. Don’t you smell them? The boys will be crazy.”
A cautious inspection made after dinner by young Mrs. Garcia, resulted in the information that Mariposa still slept. Barron, who was feverishly desirous to know how she progressed and also anxious to learn from her the nature of the lost document, was forced to leave without seeing her. A business engagement of the utmost importance claimed him at his office at two or he would have awaited her awakening.
It was nearly an hour later before this occurred. The drug the señora had administered was a heroic remedy, relic of the days when doctors were a rarity and the medicine chest of the hardy Spaniard contained few but powerful potions. The girl rose, feeling weak and dizzy. For some time she found it difficult to collect her thoughts and sat on the edge of her bed, eying the disordered room with uncomprehending glances. Bodily discomfort at first absorbed her mind. A fever burned through her, her head ached, her limbs felt leaden and stiff.
The sight of the opened desk gave the fillip to her befogged memory, and suddenly the events of the night rushed back on her with stunning force. She felt, at first, that it must be a dream. But the rifled desk, with the money which the Garcias had gathered up and laid in a glittering heap on the table, told her of its truth. The man’s face, yellow and flabby, with the dark line of the shaven beard clearly marked on his jaws, and the frightened rat’s eyes, came back to her as he had turned in the first paralyzed moment of fear. With hot, unsteady hands she searched through the scattered papers and then about the room, in the hope that he had dropped the paper in the struggle. But all search was fruitless. She remembered his tearing it from her grasp as Barron’s shout had sounded in the passage. He had escaped with it. The irrefutable evidence of the marriage was in Essex’s hands. He had her under his feet. It was the end.
She began to dress slowly and with constant pauses. Every movement seemed an effort; every stage of her toilet loomed colossal before her. The one horror of the situation kept revolving in her brain, and she found it impossible to detach her thoughts from it and fix them on anything else. At the same time she could think of no way to escape, or to fight against it.
Next Sunday it would all be in The Era. Those words seemed written in letters of fire on the walls, and repeated themselves in maddening revolution in her mind. It would all be there, sensationally displayed as other old scandals had been. She saw the tragic secret of the two lives that had sheltered hers, the love that had been so sacred a thing written of with all the defiling brutality of the common scribe and his common reader, for all the world of the low and ignoble to jeer at and spit upon.
She stopped in her dressing and pressed her hands to her face. How could she live till next Sunday, and then, when Sunday came, live through it? There were three days yet before Sunday. Might not something be done in three days? But she could think of nothing. Something had happened to her brain. If there was only some one to help her!
And with that came the thought of Barron. A flash of relief went through her. He would help her; he would do something. She had no idea what, but something, and, uplifted by the idea, she opened the door and looked up the hall. She felt a sudden drop of hope when she saw that his door was closed. But she stole up the passage, watching it, not knowing what she intended saying to him, only actuated by the desire to throw her responsibilities on him and ask for his help.
The door was ajar and she listened outside it. There was no sound from within and no scent of cigar-smoke. She tapped softly and receiving no answer pushed it open and peered fearfully in. The room was empty. The man’s clothes were thrown about carelessly, his table littered with papers and books. From the crevice of the opened window came the smell and the sound of the rain, with a chill, bleak suggestion.
A sudden throttling sense of lonely helplessness overwhelmed her. She stood looking blankly about, at the ashes of cigars in a china saucer, at an old valise gaping open in a corner. The room seemed to her to have a vacated air, and she remembered hearing Barron, a few days before, speak of going to the mines again soon. Her mind leaped to the conclusion that he had gone. Her hopes suddenly fell around her in ruins, and in his looking-glass she saw a blanched face that she hardly recognized as her own.
Stealing back to her room she sat down on the bed again. The house was curiously quiet and in this silence her thoughts began once more to revolve round the one topic. Then suddenly they broke into a burst of rebellion. She could not bear it. She must go, somewhere, anywhere to escape. She would flee away like a hunted animal and hide, creeping into some dark distant place and cowering there. But where would she go, and what would she do? The world outside seemed one vast menace waiting to spring on her. If her head would stop aching and the fever that burned her body and clouded her brain would cease for a moment, she could think and come to some conclusion. But now—
And suddenly, as she thought, a whisper seemed to come to her, clear and distinct like a revelation—“You have your voice!”
It lifted her to her feet. For a moment the pain and confusion of developing illness left her, and she felt a thrill of returning energy. She had it still, the one great gift neither enemies nor misfortune could take from her—her voice!
The hope shook her out of the lethargy of fever, and her mind sprang into excited action like a loosened spring. She went to her desk and placed the gold back in its bag. The five hundred dollars that had seemed so meaningless had now a use. It would take her away to Europe. With the three hundred she still had in the bank, it would be enough to take her to Paris and leave her something to live on. Money went a long way over there, she had heard. She could study and sing and become famous.
It all seemed suddenly possible, almost easy. Only leaving would be hard—fearfully. She thought of the door up the passage and the voice that in those first days of her feebleness had called a greeting to her every morning; the man’s deep voice with its strong, cheery note. And then like a peevish child, sick and unreasonable, she found herself saying:
“Why does he leave me now when I want him so?”
No—her voice was all she had. She would live for it and be famous, and the year of terror and anguish she had spent in San Francisco would become a dim memory upon which she could some day look back with calm. But before she went she would sing for Pierpont and hear what he said.
The thought had hardly formed in her mind when she was out in the hall and stealing noiselessly down the stairs of the silent house. It struck her as odd that the house should be so quiet, as these were the hours in which Pierpont’s pupils usually made the welkin resound with their efforts. Perhaps he was out. But this was not so, for in the lower hall she met the girl with the fair hair and prominent blue eyes who possessed the fine soprano voice she had so often listened to, and who in response to her query told her that Mr. Pierpont was in, but not giving lessons this afternoon.
In answer to her knock she heard his “come in” and opened the door. He was sitting on a divan idly turning over some loose sheets of music. The large, sparsely furnished room—it was in reality the back drawing-room of the house—looked curiously gray and cold in the drear afternoon light. It was only slightly furnished—his bed and toilet articles being in a curtained alcove. In the center of its unadorned, occupied bareness, the grand piano, gleaming richly, stood open, the stool in front of it.
“Miss Moreau,” he said, starting to his feet, “I thought you were sick in bed. How are you? You’ve had a dreadful experience. I’ve been sending away my pupils because I was told you were asleep.”
“Oh, I’m quite well now,” she said, “only my head aches a little. Yes, I was frightened last night—a burglar came in, crept up the bough of the pepper-tree. I was dreadfully frightened then, but I’m all right now. I’ve come to sing for you.”
“To sing for me!” he exclaimed; “but you’re not well enough to sing. You’ve had a bad fright and you look—excuse me”—he took her hand—“you’re burning up with fever. Take my advice and go upstairs, and as soon as Mrs. Garcia comes in we’ll get a doctor.”
“No—no!” she said almost violently; “I’m quite well now. My hand’s hot and so is my head, but that’s natural after the fright I had last night. I want to sing for you now and see what you say about my voice.”
“But, you know, you can’t do yourself justice and I can’t form a fair opinion. Why do you want to sing this afternoon when you wouldn’t all winter?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t mind telling you. I’m going to Europe to study. I’ve just made up my mind.”
“Going to Europe! Isn’t that very sudden? But it will be splendid! When are you going?”
“Soon—in a day or two—as soon as I can get my things packed in my trunks.”
He looked at her curiously. Her manner, which was usually calm and deliberate, was marked by tremulous restlessness. She spoke rapidly and like one laboring under suppressed excitement.
“Come,” she said, going to the piano stool and pushing it nearer the keyboard, “I’ll be very busy now and I don’t want to waste any time.”
He moved reluctantly to the piano and seated himself.
“Have you your music?” he asked.
“No, but I can sing what some of your pupils do. I can sing ‘Knowest thou the land?’ and Mrs. Burrell sings that. Where is it?”
Her feverish haste and nervousness impressed him more than ever as her hands tossed aside the sheets of piled-up music, throwing them about the piano and snatching at them as they slipped to the floor. From there he picked up the ‘Mignon’ aria which she had overlooked and spreading it on the rack struck the opening notes. She leaned over him to see the first line and he felt that she was trembling violently. He raised his hands and wheeled round on the stool.
“Miss Moreau,” he said, “I truly don’t think you’re well enough to sing. Don’t you think we’d better put it off till to-morrow?”
“No, no—I’m going to now. I’m ready. I’m anxious to. I must. Begin again, please.”
He turned obediently and began again to play the chords of accompaniment. He had been for a long time intensely anxious to hear her voice, of which he had heard so much. It irritated him now to have her determined to sing when she was obviously ill and still suffering from the effects of her fright.
The accompaniment reached the point where the voice joins it. He played softly, alert for the first rich notes. Mariposa’s chest rose with an inflation of air and she began to sing.
A sound, harsh, veiled and thin, filled the room. There was no volume, nor resonance, nor beauty in it. It was the ghost of a voice.
The teacher was so shocked that for a moment he stumbled in the familiar accompaniment. Then he went on, bending his head low over the keys, fearful of her seeing his face. Sounds unmusical, rasping, and discordant came from her lips. Everything that had once made it rich and splendid was gone, the very volume of it had dwindled to a thin, muffled thread, the color had flown from every tone.
For a bar or two she went on, then she stopped. Pierpont dared not turn at first. But he heard her behind him say hoarsely:
“What—what—is it?”
Then he wheeled round and saw her with wild eyes and white lips.
For a moment he could say nothing. Her appearance struck him with alarm, and he sat dumb on the stool staring at her.
“What is it?” she cried. “What has happened to it? Where is my voice?”
“It’s—it’s—certainly not in good condition,” he stammered.
“It’s gone,” she answered in a wail of agony; “it’s gone. My voice has gone! What shall I do? It’s gone!”
“Your fright of last night has affected it,” he said, speaking as kindly as he could, “and you’re not well. I told you you were feverish and ought not to sing. Rest will probably restore it.”
“Let me try it again,” she said wildly. “It may be better. Play again.”
He played over the opening bars again, and once more she drew the deep breath that in the past had always brought with it so much of exultation and began to sing. The same feeble sounds, obscured as though passing through a thick, muffling medium, hoarse, flat, unlovely, came with labor from her parted lips.
They broke suddenly into a wild animal cry of despair. Pierpont rose from the stool and went toward her where she stood with her arms drooping by her sides, pallid and terrible.
“Don’t look like that,” he said, taking her hand; “there’s no doubt the voice has been injured. But rest does a great deal, and after a shock like last night—”
She tore herself away from him and ran to the door crying:
“Oh, my voice! My voice! It was all I had!”
He followed her into the hall, not knowing what to say in the face of such a calamity, only anxious to offer her some consolation. But she ran from him, up the stairs with a frantic speed. As he put his foot on the lower step he heard her door.
He turned round and went back slowly to his room. He was shocked and amazed, and a little relieved that he had failed to catch her for he had no words ready for such a misfortune. Her voice was completely gone. She was unquestionably ill and nervous—but— He sat down on the divan, shaking his head. He had never heard a voice more utterly lost and wrecked.
Barron’s business engagement detained him longer than he had expected. The heavy rain was shortening the already short February day with a premature dusk when he opened the gate of the Garcia house and mounted the steps.
He had made a cursory investigation of the ground under the pepper-tree when he went out in the early morning. Now, before the light died, he again stepped under its branches for a more thorough survey. The foliage was so thick that no grass grew where the tree’s shadow fell, and the rain sifted through it in occasional dribbles or shaken showers. The bare stretch of ground was now an expanse of mud, interspersed with puddles. Here and there a footprint still remained, full of water. He moved about the base of the tree studying these, then looking up into the branch along which the burglar had crept to the balcony. What paper could the girl have possessed of sufficient value to lure a man to such risks?
With his mind full of this thought his glance dropped to the root of the trunk. A piece of burnt paper, half covered with the trampled mud, caught his eye, and he picked it up and absently glanced at it. He was about to throw it over the fence into the road, when he saw the name of Jacob Shackleton. The next moment his eyes were riveted on the printed lines here and there filled in with writing. He moved so that the full light fell on it through a break in the branches. It was a minute or two before he grasped its real meaning. But he knew the name of Lucy Fraser, too. Mariposa had once told him it had been her mother’s maiden name.
For a space he stood motionless under the tree, staring at the paper, focusing his mind on it, seizing on waifs and strays from the past that surged to the surface of his memory. It dazed him at first. Then he began to understand. The mysterious drama that environed the girl upstairs began to grow clear to him. This was the document that had been stolen from her last night, the loss of which had thrown her into a frenzy of despair—the record of a marriage between her mother and Jake Shackleton.
Without stopping to think further he thrust it into his pocket and ran to the house. As he mounted the porch steps the scene of his first meeting with Mariposa flashed suddenly like a magic-lantern picture across his mind. He heard her hysterical cry of—“He was my father!” Another veil of the mystery seemed lifted.
And now he shrank from penetrating further, for he began to see. If Mariposa had some sore secret to hide let her keep it shut in her own breast. All he had to do was to give the paper to her as soon as he could. In the moment’s passage of the balcony and the pause while he inserted his latch-key in the door he tried to think how he could restore it to her without letting her think he had read it. The key turned and as the door gave he decided that it must be given her at once without wasting time or bothering about comforting lies.
He burst into the hall and then stood still, the door-handle in his hand. In the dim light, the two Garcia ladies and the two boys met his eyes, standing in a group at the foot of the stairs. There was something in their faces and attitudes that bespoke uneasiness and anxiety. Their four pairs of eyes were fastened on him with curious alarmed gravity.
He kicked the door shut and said:
“How’s Miss Moreau?”
The question seemed to increase their disquietude.
“We don’t know where she is,” said young Mrs. Garcia.
“Isn’t she in her room?” he demanded.
“No—that’s what’s so funny. I thought she was sleeping an awful long time and I just peeked in and she isn’t there. And Benito’s been all over the house and can’t find her. It seems so crazy of her to go out in all this rain, but her outside things are not in the closet or anywhere.”
They stood silent for a moment, eying one another with faces of disturbed query.
The opening of Pierpont’s door roused them. The young man appeared in the aperture and then came slowly forward.
“Have you seen Miss Moreau?” he said to young Mrs. Garcia.
“No,” said Barron hurriedly; “but have you?”
“Yes, she was down in my room this afternoon singing.”
“Singing!” echoed the others in wide-eyed amazement.
“Yes, and I’m rather anxious about her. That’s why I came out when I heard your voices. She’s had a pretty severe disappointment, I’m afraid. She seems to have lost her voice.”
“Lost her voice!” ejaculated Mrs. Garcia in a low gasp of horror. “Good heavens!”
The boys looked from one to the other with the round eyes of growing fear and dread. The calamity, as announced by Pierpont, did not seem adequate for the consternation it caused, but an oppressive sense of apprehension was in the air.
“What made her want to sing?” said the widow; “she was too sick to sing.”
“That’s what I told her, but she insisted. She was determined to. She said she was going to Europe to study.”
“Going to Europe!” It was Barron’s deep voice that put the question this time, Mrs. Garcia being too astonished by this last piece of intelligence to have breath for speech. “When was she going to Europe?”
“In a day or two—as soon as she could pack her trunks, she said. I don’t really think she was quite accountable for what she said. She was burning with a fever and she seemed in a tremendously wrought-up state. I think her fright of the night before had quite upset her. I tried to cheer her up, but she ran away as if she was frantic. Have any of you seen her?”
“No,” said Mrs. Garcia, her voice curiously flat. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” echoed Pierpont. “Gone where?”
“We don’t any of us know. But she’s not in the house anywhere. And now it’s getting dark and—”
There was a pause, one of those pregnant pauses of mute anxiety while each eyed the other with glances full of an alarmed surmise.
“Perhaps the robber came and took her away,” said Benito in a voice of terror.
No one paid any attention. As if by common consent all present fastened questioning eyes on Barron. He stood looking down, his brows knit. The silence of dumb uneasiness was broken by the entrance of the Chinaman from the kitchen. With the expressionless phlegm of his race he lit the two hall gas-jets, gently but firmly moving the señora out of his way, and paying no attention to the silent group at the stair foot.
“Ching,” said Barron suddenly, “have you seen Miss Moreau this afternoon?”
“Yes,” returned the Celestial, carefully adjusting the tap of the second gas, “she go out hap-past four. She heap hurry. She look welly bad—heap sick I guess; no umblella; get awful wet.”
With his noiseless tread he retreated up the passage to the kitchen.
“Well, I’ll go,” said Barron suddenly. “She’s just possibly gone out to see some one and will be back soon. But no umbrella in this rain! Have her room warm and everything ready.”
He turned round and in an instant was gone. The little group at the stairpost looked at one another with pale faces. It was possible that Mariposa had gone out to see some one. But the dread of disaster was at every heart.