THE REVELATION
“Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and for joy and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love--but praise, praise, praise,
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death,
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I hear,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled Death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.”
--WHITMAN.
From the day when Mrs. Willers had appeared with the news of
Shackleton’s interest in her daughter, Lucy’s health had steadily
waned. The process of decay was so quiet, albeit so sure and swift,
that Mariposa, accustomed to the ups and downs of her mother’s invalid
condition, was unaware that the elder woman’s sands were almost run.
The pale intensity, the coldness of the hand gripped round hers, that
had greeted her account of the recital at the Opera-House, seemed to
the girl only the reflection of her own eager exultation. She was
blind, not only from ignorance, but from the egotistic preoccupations
of her youth. It seemed impossible to think of her mother’s failing in
her loving response, now that the sun was rising on their dark horizon.
But Lucy knew that she was dying. Her feeble body had received its
_coup de grâce_ on the day that Mrs. Willers brought the news of
Shackleton’s wish to see his child. Since then she had spent long hours
in thought. When her mind was clear enough she had pondered on the
situation trying to see what was best to do for Mariposa’s welfare. The
problem that faced her terrified her. The dying woman was having the
last struggle with herself.
One week after the recital at the Opera-House she had grown so
much worse that Mariposa had called in the doctor they had had in
attendance, off and on, since their arrival. He was grave and there was
a consultation. When she saw their faces the cold dread that had been
slowly growing in the girl’s heart seemed suddenly to expand and chill
her whole being. Mrs. Moreau was undoubtedly very ill, though there was
still hope. Yet their looks were sober and pitying as they listened to
the daughter’s reiterated asseverations that her mother had often been
worse and made a successful rally.
An atmosphere of illness settled down like a fog on the little
cottage. A nurse appeared; the doctors seemed to be in the house many
times a day. Mrs. Willers, as soon as she heard, came up, no longer
over-dressed and foolish, but grave and helpful. After a half-hour
spent at Lucy’s bedside, wherein the sick woman had spoken little,
and then only about her daughter, Mrs. Willers had gone to the office
of _The Trumpet_, frowning in her sympathetic pain. It was Saturday,
and Shackleton had already left for Menlo Park when she reached the
office. But she determined to see him early on Monday and tell him of
the straits of his old friend’s widow and child. Mrs. Willers knew the
signs of the scarcity of money, and knew also the overwhelming expenses
of sickness. What she did not know was that on Friday morning Mariposa
had wept over her check-book, and then gone out and sold the diamond
brooch.
The long Sunday--the interminable day of strained anxiety--passed,
shrouded in rain. When her mother fell into the light sleep that now
marked her condition, Mariposa mechanically went to the window of the
bedroom and looked out. It was one of those blinding rains that usher
in the San Francisco winter, the water falling in straight lances
that show against the light like thin tubes of glass, and strike the
pavement with a vicious impact, which splinters them into spray. It
drummed on the tin roof above the bedroom with an incessant hollow
sound, and ran in a torn ribbon of water from the gutter on the eaves.
The prospect that the window commanded seemed in dreariness to match
the girl’s thoughts. That part of Pine Street was still in the
unfinished condition described by the words “far out.” Vacant lots
yawned between the houses; the badly paved roadbed was an expanse of
deeply rutted mud, with yellow ponds of rain at the sewer mouths. The
broken wooden sidewalk gleamed with moisture and was evenly striped
with lines of vivid green where the grass sprouted between the boards.
Now and then a wayfarer hurried by, crouched under the dome of an
umbrella spouting water from every rib.
The gray twilight settled early, and Mariposa, dropping the curtain,
turned to the room behind her. The light of a small fire and a shaded
lamp sent a softened glow over the apartment, which, despite its
poverty, bespoke the taste of gentlewomen in the simple prettiness of
its furnishings. The nurse, a middle-aged woman of a kindly and capable
aspect, sat by the fire in a wicker rocking-chair, reading a paper.
Beside her, on a table, stood the sick-room paraphernalia of glasses
and bottles. The regular creak of the rocking-chair, and an occasional
snap from the fire, were the only sounds that punctuated the steady
drumming of the rain on the tin roof.
A Japanese screen was half-way about the bed, shutting it from the
drafts of the door, and in its shelter Lucy lay sleeping her light,
breathless sleep. In this shaded light, in the relaxed attitude of
unconsciousness, she presented the appearance of a young girl hardly
older than her daughter. Yet the hand of death was plainly on her, as
even Mariposa could now see.
Without sound the girl passed from the room to her own beyond. Her
grief had seized her, and the truth, fought against with the desperate
inexperience of youth, forced itself on her. She threw herself on her
bed and lay there battling with the sickness of despair that such
knowledge brings. Twilight faded and darkness came. In answer to the
servant’s tap on the door, and announcement of dinner, she called
back that she desired none. The room was as dark about her as her own
thoughts. From the door that led into the sick chamber, only partly
closed, a shaft of light cut the blackness, and on this light she
fastened her eyes, swollen with tears, feeling herself stupefied with
sorrow.
As she lay thus on the bed, she heard the creaking of the wicker-chair
as the nurse arose, then came the clink of the spoon and the glass, and
the woman’s low voice, and then her mother’s, stronger and clearer than
it had been for some days. There was an interchange of remarks between
nurse and patient, the sound of careful steps, and the crack of light
suddenly expanded as the door was opened. Against this background,
clear and smoothly yellow as gold leaf, the nurse’s figure was revealed
in sharp silhouette.
“Are you there, Miss Moreau?” she said in a low voice. Mariposa started
with a hurried reply.
“Well, your mother wants to see you and you’d better come. Her mind
seems much clearer and it may not be so again.”
The girl rose from the bed trying to compose her face. In the light of
the open door the woman saw its distress and looked at her pityingly.
“Don’t tire her,” she said, “but I advise you to say all you have to
say. She may not be this way again.”
Mariposa crossed the room to the bed. Her mother was lying on her side,
pinched, pale and with darkly circled eyes.
“Have you just waked up, darling?” said the girl, tenderly.
“No,” she answered, with a curious lack of response in manner and tone;
“I have been awake some time. I was thinking.”
“Why didn’t you send Mrs. Brown for me? I was in my room passing the
time till you woke up.”
“I was thinking and I wanted to finish. I have been thinking a long
time, days and weeks.”
Mariposa thought her mind was wandering, and sitting down on a chair
by the bedside, took her hand and pressed it gently without speaking.
Her mother lay in the same attitude, her profile toward her, her eyes
looking vacantly at the screen. Suddenly she said:
“You know my old desk, the little rose-wood one Dan gave me? Take my
keys and open it, and in the bottom you’ll see two envelopes, with no
writing. One looks dirty and old. Bring them to me here.”
Mariposa rose wondering, and looking anxiously at her mother. The elder
woman saw the look, and said weakly and almost peevishly:
“Go; be quick. I am not strong enough to talk long. The keys are in the
work-box.”
The girl obeyed as quickly as possible. The desk was a small one
resting on the center-table. It had been a present of her father’s to
her mother, and she remembered it from her earliest childhood in a
prominent position in her mother’s room. She opened it, and in a few
moments, under old letters, memoranda and souvenirs, found the two
envelopes. Carrying them to the bed she gave them to her mother.
Lucy took them with an unsteady hand, and for a moment lay staring at
her daughter and not moving. Then she said:
“Put the pillows under my head. It’s easier to breathe when I’m
higher,” and as Mariposa arranged them, she added, in a lower voice:
“And tell Mrs. Brown to go; I want to be alone with you.”
Mariposa looked out beyond the screen, and seeing the nurse still
reading the paper, told her to go to the kitchen and get her dinner.
The woman rose with alacrity, and asking Mariposa to call her if the
invalid showed signs of fatigue, or any change, left the room.
The girl turned back to the bedside and took the chair. Lucy had taken
from the dirty envelope a worn and faded paper, which she slowly
unfolded. As she did so, she looked at her daughter with sunken eyes
and said:
“These are my marriage certificates.”
Mariposa, again thinking that her mind was wandering, tried to smile,
and answered gently:
“Your marriage certificate, dear. You were only married once.”
“I was married twice,” said Lucy, and handed the girl the two papers.
Still supposing her mother slightly delirious, the daughter took the
papers and looked at them. The one her eye first fell on was that of
the original marriage. She read the names without at first realizing
whose they were. Then the significance of the “Lucy Fraser” came upon
her. Her glance leaped to the second paper, and at the first sweep
of her eyes over it she saw it was the marriage certificate of her
father and mother, Daniel Moreau and Lucy Fraser, dated at Placerville
twenty-five years before. She turned back to the other paper, now more
than bewildered. She held it near her face, as though it were difficult
to read, and in the dead silence of the room it began to rustle with
the trembling of her hand. A fear of something hideous and overwhelming
seized her. With pale lips she read the names, and the date, antedating
by five years the other certificate.
“Mother!” she cried, in a wild voice of inquiry, dropping the paper on
the bed.
Lucy, raised on her pillows, was looking at her with a haggard
intentness. All the vitality left in her expiring body seemed
concentrated in her eyes.
“I was married twice,” she said slowly.
“But how? When? What does it mean? Mother, what does it mean?”
“I was married twice,” she repeated. “In St. Louis to Jake Shackleton,
and in Placerville, five years after, to Dan Moreau. And I was never
divorced from Jake. It was not according to the law. I was never Dan’s
lawful wife.”
The girl sat staring, the meaning of the words slowly penetrating her
brain. She was too stunned to speak. Her face was as white as her
mother’s. For a tragic moment these two white faces looked at each
other. The mother’s, with death waiting to claim her, was void of all
stress or emotion. The daughter’s, waking to life, was rigid with
horrified amaze.
Propped by her pillows, Lucy spoke again; her sentences were short and
with pauses between:
“Jake Shackleton married me in St. Louis when I was fifteen. He was
soon tired of me. We went to Salt Lake City. He became a Mormon there,
and took a second wife. She was a waitress in a hotel. She’s his wife
now. He brought us both to California twenty-five years ago. On the
way across, on the plains of Utah, you were born. He is your father,
Mariposa.”
She made an effort and sat up. Her breathing was becoming difficult,
but her purpose gave her strength. This was the information that for
weeks she had been nerving herself to impart.
“He is your father,” she repeated. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
Mariposa made no answer, and again she repeated:
“He is your father. Do you understand? Answer me.”
“Yes--I don’t know. Oh, mother, it’s so strange and horrible. And
you sitting there and looking at me like that, and telling it to me!
Oh,--mother!”
She put her hands over her face for an instant, and then dropping them,
leaned over on the bed and grasped her mother’s wrists.
“You’re wandering in your mind. It’s just some hideous dream you’ve had
in your fever. Dearest, tell me it’s not true. It can’t be true. Why,
think of you and me and father always together and with no dreadful
secret behind us like that. Oh--it can’t be true!”
Lucy looked at the papers lying brown and torn on the white quilt.
Mariposa’s eyes followed the same direction, and with a groan her head
sank on her arms extended along the bed. Her mother’s hand, cold and
light, was laid on one of hers, but the dying woman’s face was held in
its quiet, unstirred apathy, as she spoke again:
“Jake was hard to me on the trip. He was a hard man and he never loved
me. After Bessie came he got to dislike me. I was always a drag, he
said. I couldn’t seem to get well after you were born. Coming over the
Sierras we stopped at a cabin. Dan was there with another man, a miner,
called Fletcher. That was the first time I ever saw Dan.”
Mariposa lifted her head and her eyes fastened on her mother’s face.
The indifference that had held it seemed breaking. A faint smile was on
her lips, a light of reminiscence lit its gray pallor.
“He was always good to anything that was sick or weak. He was sorry for
me. He tried to make Jake stop longer, so I could get rested. But Jake
wouldn’t. He said I had to go on. I couldn’t, but knew I must, if he
said it. We were going to start when Jake said he’d exchange me for the
pair of horses the two miners had in the shed. So he left me and took
the horses.”
“Exchanged you for the horses? Left you there sick and alone?”
“Yes, Jake and Bessie went on with the horses. I stayed. I was too sick
to care.”
She made a slight pause, either from weakness, or in an effort to
arrange the next part of her story.
“I lived there with them for a month. I was sick and they took care of
me. Then one day Fletcher stole all the money and the only horse and
never came back. We were alone there then, Dan and I. I got better. I
came to love him more each day. We were snowed in all winter, and we
lived as man and wife. In the spring we rode into Hangtown and were
married.”
She stopped, a look of ineffable sweetness passed over her face, and
she said in a low voice, as if speaking to herself:
“Oh, that beautiful winter! There is a God, to be so good to women who
have suffered as I had.”
Mariposa sat dumbly regarding her. It was like a frightful nightmare.
Everything was strange, the sick-room, the bed with the screen around
it, her mother’s face with its hollow eyes and pinched nose. Only the
two old dirty papers on the white counterpane seemed to say that this
was real.
Lucy’s eyes, which had been looking back into that glorified past of
love and youth, returned to her daughter’s face.
“But Jake is your father,” she said. “That’s what I had to tell you.
He’ll be good to you. That was why he wanted to find you and help you.”
“Yes,” said Mariposa, dully, “I understand that now; that was why he
wanted to help me.”
“He’ll be good to you,” went on the low, weak voice, interrupted by
quick breaths. “I know Jake. He’ll be proud of you. You’re handsome
and talented, not weak and poor spirited, as I was. You’re his only
legitimate child; the others are not; they were born in California.
They’re Bessie’s children, and I was his only real wife. You’ll let him
take care of you? Oh, Mariposa, my darling, I’ve told you all this that
you might understand and let him take care of you.”
She made a last call on her strength and leaned forward. Her dying body
was re-vivified; all her mother’s agony of love appeared on her face.
In determining to destroy the illusions of her child to secure her
future, she had made the one heroic effort of her life. It was done,
and for a last moment of relief and triumph she was thrillingly alive.
Mariposa, in a spasm of despair, threw herself forward on the bed.
“Oh, why did you tell me? Why did you tell me?” she cried. “Why didn’t
you let me think it was the way it used to be? Why did you tell me?”
Lucy laid her hand on the bowed head.
“Because I wanted you to understand and let him be your father.”
“My father! That man! Oh, no, no!”
“You must promise me. Oh, my beloved child, I couldn’t leave you alone.
It seemed as if God had said to me, ‘Die in peace. Her father will care
for her.’ I couldn’t go and leave you this way, without a friend. Now I
can rest in peace. Promise to let him take care of you. Promise.”
“Oh, mother, don’t ask me. What have you just told me? That he sold you
to a stranger for a pair of horses, left you to die in a cabin in the
mountains! That’s not my father. My father was Dan Moreau. I can do
nothing but hate that other man now.”
“Don’t blame him, dear, the past is over. Forgive him. Forgive me. If I
sinned there were excuses for me. I had suffered too much. I loved too
well.”
Her voice suddenly hesitated and broke. A gray pallor ran over her face
and a look of terror transfixed her eyes. She straightened her arms out
toward her daughter.
“Promise,” she gasped, “promise.”
With a spring Mariposa snatched the drooping body in her arms and cried
into the face, settling into cold rigidity:
“Yes--yes--I promise! All--anything. Oh, mother, darling, look at me. I
promise.”
She gently shook the limp form, but it was nerveless, only the head
oscillated slightly from side to side.
“Mother, look at me,” she cried frantically. “Look at me, not past me.
Come back to me. Speak to me, I promise everything.”
But there was no response. Lucy lay, limp and white-lipped, her head
lolling back from the support of her daughter’s arm. Her strength was
exhausted to the last drop. She was unconscious.
The wild figure of Mariposa at the kitchen door summoned Mrs. Brown.
Lucy was not dead, but dying. A few moments later Mariposa found
herself rushing hatless through the rain for the doctor, and then
again, in what seemed a few more minutes, standing, soaked and
breathless, by her mother’s side. She sat there throughout the night,
holding the limp hand and watching for a glimmer of consciousness in
the half-shut eyes.
It never came. There was no rally from the collapse which followed the
mother’s confession. She had lived till this was done. Then, having
accomplished the great action of her life, she had loosed her hold and
let go. Once, Mrs. Brown being absent, Mariposa had leaned down on the
pillow and passionately reiterated the assurance that she would give
the promise Lucy had asked. There was a slight quiver of animation in
the dying woman’s face and she opened her eyes as if startled, but made
no other sign of having heard or understood. But Mariposa knew that she
had promised.
On the evening of the day after her confession Lucy died, slipping
away quietly as if in sleep. The death of the simple and unknown lady
made no ripple on the surface of the city’s life. Mrs. Willers and a
neighbor or two were Mariposa’s sole visitors, and the only flowers
contributed to Lucy’s coffin were those sent by the newspaper woman
and Barry Essex. The afternoon of the day on which her mother’s death
was announced, Mariposa received a package from Jake Shackleton. With
it came a short note of condolence, and the offer, kindly and simply
worded, of the small sum of money contained in the package, which, it
was hoped, Miss Moreau, for the sake of the writer’s early acquaintance
with her parents and interest in herself, would accept. The packet
contained five hundred dollars in coin.
Mariposa’s face flamed. The money fell through her fingers and rolled
about on the floor. She would have liked to take it, piece by piece,
and throw it through the window, into the mud of the street. She felt
that her horror of Shackleton augmented with every passing moment,
gripped her deeper with every memory of her mother’s words, and every
moment’s perusal of the calm, dead face in its surrounding flowers.
But her promise had been given. She picked up the money and put it
away. Her promise had been given. Already she was beginning dimly to
realize that it would bind and cramp her for the rest of her life. She
was too benumbed now fully to grasp its meaning, but she felt feebly
that she would be its slave as long as he or she lived. But she had
given it.
The money lay untouched throughout the next few days, Lucy’s simple
funeral ceremonies being paid for with the proceeds of the sale of the
diamond brooch, which Moreau had given her in the early days of their
happiness.