THE WOMAN TALKS
“My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned; then
I spake with my tongue.”--PSALMS.
The morning after her interview with Essex Mariposa had appeared at
breakfast white-cheeked and apathetic. She had eaten nothing, and when
questioned as to her state of health had replied that she had passed
a sleepless night and had a headache. Mrs. Garcia, the younger, in a
dingy cotton wrapper belted by a white apron, shook her head over the
coffee-pot and began to tell how the late Juan Garcia had been the
victim of headaches due to green wall-paper.
“But,” said Mrs. Garcia, looking up from under the lambrequin of blond
curls that adorned her brow, “there’s nothing green in your wall-paper.
It’s white, with gold wheat-ears on it. So I don’t see what gives you
headaches.”
“Headaches _do_ come from other things besides green wall-paper,” said
Pierpont; “I’ve had them from overwork. I’d advise Miss Moreau to give
her pupils a week’s holiday. And then she can come down some afternoon
and sing for me.”
This was an old subject of discourse at the Garcia table, Mariposa
continually refusing the young man’s invitations to let him hear and
pass judgment upon her voice. Since he had met her he had heard further
details of the recital at the opera-house and the opinion of Lepine,
and was openly ambitious to have Mariposa for a pupil. Now she looked
up at him with a sudden spark of animation in her eyes.
“I will some day. I’ll come in some afternoon and sing for you--some
afternoon when I have no headache,” she added hastily, seeing the
prospect of urging in his eyes.
Barron, sitting opposite, had been watching her covertly through the
meal. He saw that she ate nothing, and guessed that the headache she
pleaded was the result of a wakeful night. The evening before, when he
had gone in to see the little boys in bed, he had casually asked them
if they had been playing games that afternoon in which shouting had
been a prominent feature.
“Indians?” Benito had suggested, sitting up in his cot and scratching
the back of his neck; “that’s a hollering game.”
“Any game with screams. When I came in I thought I heard shouts coming
from somewhere.”
“That wasn’t us,” said Miguel from his larger bed in the corner. “We
was playing burying soldiers in the back yard, and that’s a game where
you bury soldiers, cut out of the papers, in the sandy place. There’s
no sorter hollering in it. Sometimes we play we’re crying, but that’s
quiet.”
“P’raps,” said Benito sleepily, “it was Miss Moreau’s gentleman in the
parlor. I let him in. They might have been singing. Now tell us the
story about the Indians and the pony express.”
This was all the satisfaction he got from the boys. After the story
was told he did not go downstairs, but went into his own room and
sat by his littered table, thinking. The details of his entrance
into the house a few hours before were engraved on his mind’s eye.
By the uncertain gaslight he saw the dark face of the stranger, with
its slightly insolent droop of eyelid and non-committal line of
clean-shaven lip. It was to his idea a disagreeable face. The simple
man in him read through its shield of reserve to the complexities
beneath. The healthily frank American saw in it the intricate
sophistication of older civilizations, of vast communities where “God
hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”
On his ear again fell the cold politeness of the voice. Gamaliel
Barron was too lacking in any form of self-consciousness, was too
indifferently confident of himself as a Westerner, the equal of any and
all human creatures, to experience that sensation of _mauvaise honte_
that men of smaller fiber are apt to feel in the presence of beings of
superior polish. Polish was nothing to him. The man everything. And
it seemed to him he had seen the man, deep down, in that one startled
moment of encounter in the hall. Thoughtfully smoking and tilting back
in his chair, he mentally summed him up in the two words, “bad egg.” He
would keep his eye on him, and to do so would put off the trip to the
mines he was to take in the course of the next two weeks.
The next morning Mariposa’s appearance at the breakfast table roused
the uneasiness he felt to poignant anxiety. With the keenness of
growing love, he realized that it was the mind that was disturbed more
than the body. He came home to lunch--an unusual deviation, as he
almost invariably lunched down town at the Lick House--and found her
at the table as pale and distrait as ever. After the meal was over he
followed her into the hall. She was slowly ascending the stairs, one
hand on the balustrade, her long, black dress sliding upward from stair
to stair.
He followed her noiselessly, and at the top of the flight, turning to
go to her room, she saw him and paused, her hand still touching the
rail.
“Miss Moreau,” he said, “you’re tired out--too tired to teach. Let me
go and put off your pupils. I’ve a lot of spare time this afternoon.”
“How kind of you,” she said, looking faintly surprised; “I haven’t any
this afternoon, luckily. I don’t work every day; that’s the point I’m
trying to work up to; that’s my highest ambition.”
She looked down at his upturned face and gave a slight smile.
“_Is_ it overwork that kept you awake last night and makes you look so
pale to-day?” he queried in a lowered voice.
“Oh, I don’t know,”--she turned away her face rather impatiently,--“I’m
worried, I suppose. Everybody has to be worried, don’t they?”
“I can’t bear to have you worried. There isn’t one wild, crazy thing in
the world I wouldn’t do to prevent it.”
He was looking up at her with his soul in his eyes. Barron was not the
man to hide or juggle with his love. It possessed him now and shone
on his face. Mariposa’s eyes turned from it as from the scrutiny of
something at once painful and holy. He laid his hand on hers on the
rail.
“You know that,” he said, his deep voice shaken.
Her eyes dropped to the hands and she mechanically noticed how white
her fingers looked between his large, brown ones. She drew them softly
away, feeling his glance keen, impassioned and unwavering on her face.
“Something’s troubling you,” he continued in the same voice. “Why won’t
you let me help you? You needn’t tell me what it is, but you might let
me help you. What am I here for but to take care of you, and fight for
you, and protect you?”
The words were indescribably sweet to the lonely girl. All the previous
night she had tossed on her pillow haunted by terror of Essex and what
he intended to do. She had felt herself completely helpless, and her
uncertainty at what step he meant to take was torturing. For one moment
of weakness she thought of pouring it all out to the man beside her,
whose strong hand on her own had seemed symbolic of the grip, firm and
fearless, he could take on the situation that was threatening her. Then
she realized the impossibility of such a thing and drew back from the
railing.
“You can’t help me,” she said; “no one can.”
He mounted a step and stretched his hand over the railing to try to
detain her.
“But I can do one thing: I can always be here, here close to you, ready
to come when you call me, either in trouble or for advice. If ever you
want help, help of any kind, I’ll be here. And if you had need of me I
think I’d know it, and no matter where I was, I’d come. Remember that.”
She had half turned away toward her door as he spoke, and now stood in
profile, a tall figure, with her throat and wrists looking white as
milk against the hard black line of her dress. She seemed a picture
painted in few colors, her hair a coppery bronze, and her lips a clear,
pale red, being the brightest tones in the composition.
“Will you remember?” he said.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“And when you want help come to me, or call for me, and if I were at
the ends of the world I’d hear you and come.”
She turned completely away without answering and, opening her door,
vanished into her room.
For the next three or four days she looked much the same. Mrs. Garcia,
junior, talked about the green wall-paper, and Mrs. Garcia, senior,
cooked her Mexican dainties, which were so hot with chilli peppers that
only a seasoned throat could swallow them. Mariposa tried to eat and to
talk, but both efforts were failures. She was secretly distracted by
apprehensions of Essex’s next move. She thought of his face as he had
raised his hand to his smitten cheek, and shuddered at the memory. She
lived in daily dread of his reappearance. The interview had shattered
her nerves, never fully restored from the series of miserable events
that had preceded and followed her mother’s death. When she heard the
bell ring her heart sprang from her breast to her throat, and a desire
to fly and hide from her persecutor seized her and held her quivering
and alert.
Barron’s anxiety about her, though not again openly expressed,
continued. He was certain that some blow to her peace of mind had
been delivered by the man he had seen in the hall. He did not like
to question her, or attempt an intrusion into her confidence, but he
remembered the few words she had dropped that evening. The man’s name
was Essex, and he was a friend of Mrs. Willers’. Barron had known Mrs.
Willers for years. He had been a guest in the house during the period
of her tenancy, and though he did not see her frequently, had retained
an agreeable memory of her and her daughter.
It was therefore with great relief that, a few days after his meeting
with Essex, he encountered her in the heart of a gray afternoon
crossing Union Square Plaza.
Mrs. Willers was hastening down to _The Trumpet_ office after a
morning’s work in her own rooms. Her rouge had been applied with the
usual haste, and she was conscious that three buttons on one of her
boots were hardly sufficient to retain that necessary article in place.
But she felt brisk and light-hearted, confident that the article in her
hand was smart and spicy and would lend brightness to her column in
_The Trumpet_.
She greeted Barron with a friendly hail, and they paused for a moment’s
chat in the middle of the plaza.
“You’re looking fresh as a summer morning,” said the mining man, whose
life, spent searching for the mineral secrets of the Sierra, had not
made him conversant with those of complexions like Mrs. Willers’.
“Oh, get out!” said she, greatly pleased; “I’m too old for that sort of
taffy. It’s almost Edna’s turn now.”
“I’ll be afraid to see Edna soon. She’s going to be such a beauty that
the only safety’s in flight.”
The mother was even more pleased at this.
“You’re right,” she said, nodding at him with a grave eye; “Edna’s a
beauty. Where she gets it from is what stumps me. My glass tells me
it’s not from her mommer, and my memory tells me it’s not from her
popper.”
“There’s a man on your paper called Essex,” said Barron, who was not
one to beat about the bush; “what sort of a fellow is he, Mrs. Willers?”
“A bad sort, I’m inclined to think. Why do you ask?”
“He was at the house the other afternoon, calling on Miss Moreau. I met
him in the hall. I didn’t cotton to him at all. She told me he was a
friend of yours and a writer on _The Trumpet_.”
He looked at her inquiringly, hardly liking to go farther till she gave
him some encouragement. He noticed that her expression had changed and
that she was eying him with a hard, considering attention.
“Why didn’t you like his looks?” she said.
“Well, I’ve seen men like that before--at the mines. Good-looking
chaps, who are sort of imitation gentlemen, and try to make you take
the imitation for the real thing by putting on dog. I didn’t like his
style, anyhow, and I don’t think she does, either.”
“You’re right about that,” said Mrs. Willers; “do you know what he was
there for?”
“Something about music lessons, she said. I didn’t like to ask her.”
“Music lessons!” exclaimed Mrs. Willers, with a strong inflection of
surprise.
“Yes,” said Barron, uneasy at her tone and the strange look of almost
agitated astonishment on her face; “and I’m under the impression he
said something to her that frightened her. As I was coming up the
steps that afternoon I heard distinctly some one call out in the
drawing-room. I burst in on the full jump, for I was certain it was a
woman’s voice, and that man came out of the drawing-room as I opened
the door. He was smooth as a summer sea; said he hadn’t heard a sound,
and went out smirking. Then I went into the drawing-room to see who had
been in there and found Miss Moreau, leaning against the wall and white
as my cuffs.”
He looked frowningly at Mrs. Willers. She had listened without moving,
her face rigidly attentive.
“Mariposa didn’t tell you what they’d been talking about?” she asked.
“No; she told me nothing. And when I asked her about the screams she
said I’d been mistaken. But I hadn’t, Mrs. Willers. That man had scared
her some way, and she’d screamed. She called for Benito and Mrs.
Garcia. I heard her. And she’s looked pale and miserable ever since.
What does that blackguard come to see her for, anyway? What’s he after?”
“Her,” said Mrs. Willers, solemnly; “he wants to marry her.”
“Wants to marry her! That foreign spider! Well, he’s got a gall.
Humph!--”
Words of sufficient scorn seemed to fail him. That he should be
similarly aspiring did not at that moment strike him as reason for
moderation in his censure of a rival.
“And is he trying to scare her into marrying him? I wish I’d known
that. I’d have broken his neck in the hall.”
“Don’t you go round breaking people’s necks,” said Mrs. Willers, “but
I’m glad you’re in that house. If Barry Essex is going to try to make
her marry him by bullying and bulldozing her, I’m glad there’s a man
there to keep him in his place. That’s no way to win a woman, Mr.
Barron. I know, for that’s the way Willers courted me. Wouldn’t hear of
my saying no; said he’d shoot himself. I knew even then he wouldn’t,
but I didn’t know but what he’d try to wound himself somewhere where
it didn’t hurt, leaving a letter for me that would be published in the
morning paper. So I married him to get rid of him, and then I had to
get the law in to get rid of him a second time. A man that badgers a
woman into marrying him is no good. You can bank on that.”
“Well,” said Barron, “I’m glad you’ve told me this. I’ll keep my eye on
Mr. Essex. I was going to the mines next week, but guess I’ll put it
off.”
“Do. But don’t you let on to Mariposa what I’ve told you. She wouldn’t
like it. She’s a proud girl. But I’ll tell you, Mr. Barron, she’s a
good one, too; one of the best kind, and I love her nearly as much as
my own girl. But look!” glancing at an adjacent clock with a start, “I
must be traveling. This stuff’s got to go in at once.”
“Good by,” said Barron, holding out his hand; “it’s a good thing we had
this minute of talk.”
“Good by,” she answered, returning the pressure with a grip almost as
manly; “it’s been awfully good to see you again. I must get a move on.
So long.”
And they parted, Barron turning his face toward the Garcia house, where
he had an engagement to take the boys to the beach at the foot of Hyde
Street, and Mrs. Willers to _The Trumpet_ office.
Her walk did not occupy more than fifteen minutes, and during that time
the anger roused by the mining man’s words grew apace. From smothered
indignation it passed to a state of simmering passion. Her conscience
heated it still further, for it was she who had introduced Essex to
Mariposa, and in the first stages of their acquaintance had in a
careless way encouraged the friendship, thinking it would be cheerful
for the solitary girl to have the occasional companionship of this
clever and interesting man of the world. She had thoughtlessly kindled
a fire that might burn far past her power of control and lead to
irreparable disaster.
She inferred from Barron’s story that Essex was evidently attempting
to frighten Mariposa into smiling on his suit. The cowardice of the
action enraged her, for, though Mrs. Willers had known many men of many
faults, she had counted no cowards among her friends. Her point of view
was Western. A man might do many things that offend Eastern conventions
and retain her consideration. But, as she expressed it to herself in
the walk down Third Street, “He’s got to know that in this country they
don’t drag women shrieking to the altar.”
She ran up the stairs of _The Trumpet_ building with the lightness of
a girl of sixteen. Ire gave wings to her feet, and it was ire as much
as the speed of her ascent that made her catch her breath quickly at
the top of the fourth flight. Still, even then, she might have held
her indignation in check,--years of training in expedient self-control
being a powerful force in the energetic business woman,--had she not
caught a glimpse of Essex in his den as she passed the open door.
He was sitting at his desk, leaning languidly back in his chair,
evidently thinking. His face, turned toward her, looked worn and hard,
the lids drooping with their air of faintly bored insolence. Hearing
the rustle of her dress, he looked up and saw her making a momentary
pause by the doorway. He did not look pleased at the sight of her.
“Ah, Mrs. Willers,” he said, leaning forward to pick up his pen and
speaking with the crisp clearness of utterance certain people employ
when irritated, “what is it that you want to see me about?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Willers abruptly and with battle in her tone; “why
should I?”
“I have not the least idea,” he answered, looking at his pen, and then,
dipping it in the ink, “unless perhaps you want a few hints for your
forthcoming article, ‘The Kind of Shoestrings Worn by the Crowned Heads
of Europe.’”
Essex was out of temper himself. When Mrs. Willers interrupted him he
had been thinking over the situation with Mariposa, and it had seemed
to him very cheerless. His remark was well calculated to enrage the
leading spirit of the woman’s page, who was as proud of her weekly
contributions as though they had been inspired by the genius of George
Eliot.
“Well,” she said, and her rouge became quite unnecessary in the flood
of natural color that rose to her face, “if I was going to tackle
that subject I think you’d be about the best person to come to for
information. For if you ever have had anything to do with crowned heads
it’s been as their bootblack.”
Essex was startled by the stinging malice revealed in this remark. He
swung round on his swivel chair and sat facing his antagonist, making
no attempt to rise, although she entered the room. As he saw her face
in the light of the window he realized that, for the first time, he saw
the woman stirred out of her carefully acquired professional calm.
As she entered she pushed the door to behind her, and, taking the chair
beside the desk, sat down.
“Mr. Essex,” she said, “I want a word with you.”
“Any number,” he answered with ironical politeness. “Do you wish the
history of my connection with the crowned heads as court bootblack?”
“No,” she said. “I want to know what business you’ve got to go to Mrs.
Garcia’s boarding-house and frighten one of the ladies living there?”
An instantaneous change passed over Essex’s face. His eyes seemed
suddenly to grow veiled as they narrowed to a cold, non-committal slit.
His mouth hardened. Mrs. Willers saw the muscles of his cheeks tighten.
“Really,” he said, “this sudden interest in me is quite flattering. I
hardly know what to say.”
He spoke to gain time, for he was amazed and enraged. Mariposa had
evidently made a confidante of Mrs. Willers, and he knew that Mrs.
Willers was high in favor with Winslow Shackleton and his mother.
“In this country, Mr. Essex,” Mrs. Willers went on, clenching her hands
in her lap, for they trembled with her indignation, “men don’t scare
and browbeat young women who don’t happen to have the good taste to
favor them. When a man gets the mitten he knows enough to get out.”
“Very clever of him, no doubt,” he murmured with unshaken suavity.
“If you’re going to live here you’ve got to live by our laws. You’ve
got to do as the Romans do. And take my word for it, young man, the
Romans don’t approve of nagging and scaring a woman into marriage.”
“No?” he answered with a blandly questioning inflection, “these are
interesting facts in local manners and customs. I’m sure they’d be
of value to some one who was making a special study of the subject.
Personally I am not deeply interested in the California aborigines.
Even the original and charming specimen now before me would oblige me
greatly by withdrawing. It is now”--looking at the clock that stood on
the side of the desk--“half-past two, and my time is valuable, my dear
Mrs. Willers.”
Mrs. Willers rose to her feet, burning with rage.
“Put me off any way you like,” she said, “and be as fresh and smart as
you know how. But I tell you, young man, this has got to stop. That
girl’s got no one belonging to her here. But don’t imagine from that
you can have the field to yourself and go on persecuting her. No--this
is not France nor Spain, nor any other old monarchy, where a woman
didn’t have any more to say about herself than a mule, or a pet parrot.
No, sir. You’ve run up against the wrong proposition if you think you
can scare a woman into marrying you in California in the nineteenth
century.”
Essex rose from his chair. He was pale.
“Look here,” he said in a low voice, “I’ve had enough of this. By what
right, I’d like to know, do you dare to dictate to me or interfere in
my acquaintance with another lady?”
“I’d dare more than that, Barry Essex,” said Mrs. Willers, with her
rouge standing out red on her white face, “to save that girl from a man
like you. I don’t know what I wouldn’t dare. But I’m a good fighter
when my blood’s up, and I’ll fight you on this point till one or the
other of us drops.”
She saw Essex’s nostrils fan softly in and out. His cheek-bones looked
prominent.
“Will you kindly leave this room?” he said in a suppressed voice.
“Yes,” she answered, “I’m going now. But understand that I’m making
no idle threats. And if this persecution goes on I’ll tell Winslow
Shackleton of the way you’re acting to a friend of his and a protégée
of his mother’s.”
She was at the door and had the handle in her hand. Essex turned on her
a face of livid malignity.
“Really, Mrs. Willers,” he said, “I had no idea you were entitled to
speak for Winslow Shackleton. I congratulate you.”
For a moment of blind rage Mrs. Willers neither spoke nor moved. Then
she felt the door-handle turn under her hand and the door push inward.
She mechanically stepped to one side, as it opened, and the office boy
intruded his head.
“I knocked here twict, and y’aint answered,” he said apologetically.
“There’s a man to see you, Mr. Essex, what says he’s got something to
say about a new kind of balloon.”
“Show him in,” said Essex, “and--oh--ah--Jack, show Mrs. Willers out.”
Jack gaped at this curious order. Mrs. Willers brushed past him and
walked up the hall to her own cubby-hole. She was compassed in a lurid
mist of fury, and through this she felt dimly that she had done no good.
“Did getting into a rage ever do any good?” she thought desperately, as
she sank into her desk chair.
Her article lay unnoticed and forgotten by her side, while she sat
staring at her scattered papers, trying to decide through the storm
that still shook her whether she had not done well in throwing down her
gage in defense of her friend.