Part 5

Her mother had been an actress--one of the stars of San Francisco's hectic youth. Dissimulation might be instinctive with a woman of Viola Reed's heredity. It was the whole art of acting; it was in her blood. He thought of all he had ever heard of her mother, of her few years of fame and glory, so splendidly ended by her marriage to the bonanza millionaire. It had been a wonderful, glittering life, quenched in an early death. He had never heard anything against her character, but she had been an actress, the essence of whose art is the capacity to both conceal and assume emotion. And her daughter, in personal appearance at least, resembled her. He had heard that from the colonel himself.

A feeling of weariness and disillusion took possession of him, and in the sickness of heart that it brought he thought suddenly of Letitia. She was the one woman he knew that he could always rely on to be true and steadfast and genuine. Why had he not loved her--a woman a man could trust forever, and handsome enough to be the wife of a king? There would be no doubts nor difficulties in a life with her; it would be all kindness and cheer and sympathy. And even as he thus reflected, he knew that love for Letitia was as far from him as was indifference to the woman whom he mistrusted.

At the very hour that Gault was walking moodily across town from South Park, Letitia, the object of his thoughts, was rolling along the asphalted streets of the Western Addition in Mrs. Mortimer Gault's coupé. Her sister was with her, and both ladies were dressed with a rustling splendor which betokened festal doings. For they, too, were en route to the McCormick tea. This was, in fact, a large reception given by Mrs. McCormick to little Prince Dombroski, a gentleman who had come from Russia to wed a Californian heiress, and was receiving a helping hand from the McCormicks, who on this particular afternoon had gathered together all maiden and widowed San Franciscan wealth for his inspection.

Letitia had dressed herself for the occasion with great care. When she had appeared at the front door and descended the stairs to the carriage, she had presented so dazzling a picture that even the coachman, a well-trained functionary imported from the East, could hardly forbear staring at her. She was regally clothed in a costume of bluish purple, with much yellow lace, fur, cream-colored satin, and glints of gold braiding about the front. There was a purple jewel at her throat, and a bunch of pale, crape-like orchids, that toned with the hue of her dress, was fastened on her breast. Clad thus in the proudest production of a great French modiste, Letitia was really too handsome to be quite in good taste. But she was used to sumptuous apparel, and carried it with the air of an actress who knows how to take the stage.

Maud Gault was somewhat less punctual to-day than her sister. Letitia sat in the carriage waiting for her, and finally, by the brushing of silken skirts and an advancing perfume of wood-violet, was apprised of her sister's approach. The elder woman gave the address to the coachman and then sprang in.

Hardly had the door closed when she looked at Letitia with a kindling eye, and said:

"Oh, Tishy, I know the funniest thing!"

Letitia knew that her sister had something of note to impart. Mrs. Gault's dark cheek was flushed a fine brick-red, her eye was alight. She was pulling on her gloves as she spoke.

"Do you remember that night, only a few weeks ago, when you asked John about Colonel Reed's daughter?"

"Yes."

"And do you remember that he said he'd never seen her?"

"No, he didn't say that," corrected Letitia; "he said he'd heard of her."

"And what else?" asked the other, stopping in her glove-pulling to fix Letitia with a keen eye.

"I don't think he said anything else. I don't remember anything."

"But he certainly led us to believe that he didn't know her. Didn't he, now?"

Letitia paled slightly. Her eyes, looking frankly troubled, were fastened on her sister.

"Yes--I think so. Why?"

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gault, bridling with the consciousness of her important announcement, "he knows her well. He goes there all the time. He's having a regular affair with her. Did you ever know anything to beat men?"

"How do you know?" said Letitia, looking down and picking at the gold arabesques on her dress.

"Mortimer told me last night. He made me swear I wouldn't tell a living soul. You must remember that, by the way, or I'll get into trouble. Mortimer saw Colonel Reed in the office the other day, and that red-haired clerk, the one John took in because his mother was crazy or consumptive or something, told Mortimer Colonel Reed came there often, and that John went out to see him at his home somewhere near South Park. Doesn't that beat the band? John going calling in South Park on Colonel Reed's daughter, and then pretending to us that he doesn't know her! If John knew the man had said anything about it, he'd kick him down all the stairs in the building, if they reached from here to the ferry."

Letitia was silent. She thought of the conversation on Sunday, and the woman who had been the heroine of the novel. All the sunshine seemed to go out of the afternoon, and the innocent joy she had taken in putting on her beautiful clothes suddenly shriveled up and vanished.

"He might go out there and see Colonel Reed's daughter and not tell us about it," she said, "and yet not--not be exactly in love with her."

"Dear me, Letitia," said her sister, pettishly, "what a dunce you are! Do you suppose John's going to drag himself over to South Park to see Colonel Reed's daughter because he's taken a philanthropic interest in her father? One would think you'd been raised in Oshkosh or Milpitas, to hear the things you sometimes say. But that's not all. This morning I was in the Woman's Exchange, and who should be there but old Biddy McCormick herself. I can't endure her, you know, especially since she's got this little prince-creature up her sleeve; but I'm always polite to her because of Tod and you--and things generally. You never can tell what may happen. And I heard her say, 'Not that jam; I always buy the same kind--Miss Viola Reed's.' So I up and said, as innocent as Mary's little lamb, 'Do tell me, Mrs. McCormick, what jam that is you're buying. Everything you have is always so delicious.' And she said, 'It's some that's made by a woman named Reed, who lives across town somewhere.' Then, when she'd gone, I corralled the girl, and she told me it was made by a Miss Viola Reed, who lives--"

Mrs. Gault opened her jeweled card-case and produced a slip of paper with an address written on it. She handed this to Letitia, and said with an air of triumph:

"That's where she lives. Now you'll have to admit, Miss Letitia Mason, that there are no flies on your little sister!"

Letitia looked at the address and gave it back.

"No," said her sister; "you keep it. That's my little scheme. You're to go there now--this afternoon--and order jam. Do you see?"

"But I don't want any jam, and you never eat it."

"Good gracious, Tishy, how awfully stupid you are to-day! What a fortunate thing it is that you and Mortimer have got me to take care of you! Of course you don't want jam. I never heard of any civilized being who did. But I suppose you'll admit that you want to see this girl?"

"I don't think I do," said Letitia. "I don't see why I should."

"Well, I do," said Mrs. Gault, with asperity. "Don't you take an interest in John? Don't you want to see if he's fallen into the clutches of an adventuress?"

"She doesn't sound at all like an adventuress, Maud. I never heard of an adventuress making jam for her living."

"Jam for her living! Bosh! Can't you imagine how she tells that to John, and shows him the glasses in the corner cupboard, and lets him find her stirring things in a big pot on the kitchen stove? Oh, she's no fool, my dear! Will you go and see her?"

"I'd rather not."

"Very well, then; if you care so little for John, you needn't go. I'll do it myself, and I can tell you, I'll size her up."

Letitia looked uneasy. She knew nothing of Miss Reed except that she was poor and pretty. But she did not like the thought of subjecting even an unknown female to Mrs. Gault's mercies, when her interest was so evidently hostile and her curiosity so poignant.

"If you think somebody must go, then I will," she said pacifically. "I don't see the use of it, but I can go better than you."

"All right," said Mrs. Gault, immediately placated. "You'd better go now. It's always best to do a thing when you have the opportunity."

"No," said Letitia; "I don't think I'll do that."

"Why not? Is it possible you're so crazy to see that miserable little prince that I could put in my hat-box?"

"I don't care about him," answered the girl, with unmoved placidity. "I don't like to go--to go this way." She made an explanatory gesture toward her dress.

Mrs. Gault looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"Why? What's wrong about your clothes?"

It was painful, but Letitia had to explain:

"If she's so poor as all that--and everybody says so--I don't think it's--it's--quite nice, some way or other, for me to go in this dress." Her voice took on a sudden tone of decision. "I won't do it, anyway."

Her sister knew the tone, and knew that there was no use in combating the mood it indicated.

"You have the queerest notions," she said, with a resigned sigh; "but do as you like. It's all the same, if you do go to-morrow. Only you must promise that you won't back out."

Letitia promised.

On the afternoon of the next day she stood before her glass and critically eyed her reflection. She had put on a plain tailor-made suit, which fitted her heavily molded figure with unwrinkled smoothness. A brown turban crowned her reddish hair, and the exquisite pallor of her skin was obscured by a thin veil. Letitia did not approve of herself in this modest garb. She accepted the dictum that "beauty should go beautifully." But for the mission upon which she was bound she had selected her attire with an eye to its fitness and propriety.

It was a gray afternoon, with a breath of fog in the air. Already the city was beginning to show signs of the summer exodus, and Letitia was glad that in her journey across town she met no acquaintances and attracted no more attention than that frankly candid stare which is male California's passing tribute to beauty.

Though she had been born in South Park, she knew nothing of this side of the city, and found herself as much a stranger as its inhabitants would have been had they been transported to the aristocratic heart of the Western Addition. Finally, however, after some questioning of small boys and much retracing of steps, she found the house, and walked up the path with the black-and-white flagging.

Letitia was one to whom the word "shyness" has no meaning. She possessed her full share of the Westerner's placid self-approval, and with it that careless curiosity which makes an incursion into new surroundings interesting. Yet, as she stood waiting for the door to open, she experienced a sensation of nervousness quite new to her. Her heart had ached more in the last twenty-four hours than it had since her mother's death, years before. If Viola Reed was an adventuress or if she was a saint, the situation was equally painful to this splendid-looking creature, who, for all her regal air and stately immobility of demeanor, was only a woman of a simple, almost primitive type.

The door was opened by Viola, in her blue gingham dress and her apron. At the sight of her visitor she looked startled almost into speechlessness. Letitia announced the fact that she had come on business, and an invitation to enter brought her sweeping into the little hall and the drawing-room beyond.

Here the two girls looked at each other for one of those swift exploring moments in which women seem to take in every detail of dress, every peculiarity of feature and revealing change of expression, that a rival has to show. Letitia, with all her apparent heaviness, had keen perceptions. With a sinking at her heart she saw the beauty of the gray eyes fastened shyly upon her, and realized what must be the power of the delicate charm, so far removed in its soft, dependent femininity from her own. She saw that this girl had a distinguishing refinement she could never boast, and that it was strong enough to triumph over such poverty-stricken surroundings as, in all her experience, she had never before encountered. Her quick eye took in the gaunt emptiness of the room as John Gault's could not have done in a week's arduous examination. She saw the split and ragged shades in the windows, the ribs of twine in the old carpet, the rents in the colonel's chair.

Viola, for her part, saw one of the handsomest and most imposing young women she had ever gazed upon. The very way Letitia rustled when she moved, and exhaled a faint perfume with every movement, seemed to breathe an atmosphere of fashion and elegance. She had never seen her before, and had no idea who she was. Letitia soon put an end to this condition of ignorance.

"My name is Mason," she said judicially--"Letitia Mason. I am the sister of Mrs. Mortimer Gault."

At this announcement an instantaneous change took place in Viola. For a second she looked alarmed, then her face stiffened into lines of pride and anger. The eyes that had been so full of a naïve admiration were charged, as by magic, with a look of cold antagonism. Letitia felt her own breath quicken as she realized how much the name of Gault must mean to this girl.

Viola attempted no answer to the introduction, and Miss Mason hastily went on:

"My sister heard that you made jam--very good jam. We don't like what we get in the stores, so we thought we would try yours."

Viola had now found her voice,--a very low and cold one,--and answered:

"You can get it at the Woman's Exchange. I sell it there all the time."

"Yes, I know that," said Letitia; "but we thought it would be better to buy it straight from you; that--perhaps--it--perhaps it would save time and trouble."

"I don't see how it could do that. This part of town is a long distance out of everybody's way."

"Yes, of course it is," the other agreed eagerly; then, with a sudden happy inspiration, "but I thought you might have a larger variety here--that you might have a good many different kinds on hand. I don't want all the same sort."

Viola rose and went to the door that led to the dining-room. Her resentment was not more obvious than her embarrassment. There was something tremulous in the expression of her face that gave Letitia a wretched feeling that only pride enabled her to keep back her tears.

"I have just the same here that I have at the Exchange," she said, opening the doors.

The visitor followed her. In the gray of the afternoon the long room, with its tiers of plants and its bare sideboard and mantelpiece, looked even colder and drearier than the drawing-room. Viola opened a cupboard and indicated the lines of glass jars standing on the shelves. She tried to be businesslike, and told their contents and prices, but her voice betrayed her. Letitia, listening to her and staring at the Chinese cracker-jar that was the sole adornment of the sideboard, suddenly felt sick with disgust at herself for intruding, at her sister, at John Gault.

As Viola's voice went on,--"These are apricots; they're fifty cents. Those on that shelf are strawberry and raspberry; they are only thirty,"--Letitia's shame and indignation worked up to a climax and a resultant resolution.

She took up one of the glasses and, looking at the legend written in neat script on the paper top, said:

"I think I ought to tell you how I happened to come here. It's really a secret and you mustn't tell. What I said at first was not quite the case. No one at our house knows anything about this but me. I'm going to buy these preserves for my brother-in-law and tell him I made them. I'm going to fool him. Do you understand? It's just a little joke."

Letitia delivered herself of this amazing effort at invention with admirable composure, for it was the first elaborate and important falsehood she had ever told in her life. Viola, turning from her contemplation of the shelves, looked at her, relieved but not quite comprehending.

"So I hunted you up myself at the Exchange," continued Letitia, plunging deeper into the slough of deception, but knowing now that she had gone too far to compromise with truth, "and came here myself this way so as to keep it all dark."

Viola's face had cleared with each word. As the other ended, her lips parted in the smile that John Gault found at once so irresistible and so enigmatic. Letitia found nothing enigmatic in it. She only thought, with a piercing dart of pain, "She is still prettier when she smiles."

"It's very amusing," said Viola; "but why do you want to fool him?"

Letitia was even ready for this, so expert does the first lie make us in perpetrating the second.

"He says I am useless and can't do anything. I am going to show him that I can make jam."

Viola was rather shocked, but relief and amusement combined to make her light-hearted, and this time she laughed.

"But the writing," she said. "Won't he see by that that it's not yours? There's writing on every glass."

"Oh, that will be all right. I'll have the Chinaman put it out in a dish. But you'll promise not to give me away?"

"Oh, I never will," said Viola. "In fact," she continued naïvely, "I'd rather have it that way myself. You see, many people--all people, that is--don't know that I do this."

She stopped and looked tentatively at Letitia, as if curious to see how she was taking these revelations.

"Do what?" asked Letitia, not understanding.

"Make the jam. Not that I mind much. But it's a little sort of fancy of my father's. Sometimes older people have those ideas, and it's best to humor them, I think; don't you?"

"Oh, much the best," assented the other, turning aside and looking at the plants. "It's best to humor everybody; it's so much easier to get on. What beautiful ferns!"

"Yes; I am quite proud of them. But this is a splendid window for ferns."

"Did you raise these yourself? I never saw such plants out of a greenhouse."

Viola was now eagerly interested.

"Yes, I grew them all--some of them from a few roots like black threads. I sell these, too. There is a man at one of the Kearney Street florists' who used to live near here and knew us, and he buys them from me. At Christmas I do quite well."

Letitia examined the ferns.

"I wonder if you would let me buy one or two of them," she said. "We can't get such plants at our florist's, and I am fonder of them than of any other kind of fern."

Viola agreed with a blush of pleasure, and after some consultation four ferns were selected. The visitor was amazed at their cheapness, but concealed her astonishment. Then she bought three dozen jars of the jam. She did not pay for them, but said that on the following day she would send the money by a messenger, who would also bring away the purchases.

Standing in the doorway, about to leave, she said:

"I'm glad to have seen you. It's so interesting for a person like me, who can't do anything, to meet some one who is clever and of use in the world. Good-by!" She held out her hand, and Viola, surprised, put hers into it. "Don't forget to keep our secret. It makes a person feel like a conspirator, doesn't it? I think, too, Colonel Reed's quite right to want to be reticent about business matters. So you and I'll keep dark about this little transaction of ours."

This was the most diplomatic sentence Letitia had ever given vent to in her life.

She walked slowly away from the house, her eyes downcast in thought. The superb health she had inherited from an untainted peasant ancestry made her imagination dull, and lightened such sufferings as she had encountered in her easy, care-free life. Even now she experienced none of those fierce pangs that jealousy and disappointed love provoke in the women of a more sophisticated stock. She was made on that large, calm plan on which an all-wise nature creates the maternal woman--she whose destiny it is to bear strong children to a stalwart sire. But this afternoon, for the first time in her life, she knew what it was to feel her heart lying heavy in her breast like a thing of stone.

It was late when she reached home. Mrs. Gault was to give a dinner that evening, and as Letitia passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of her sister, in a loose creation of pink silk and lace, which swelled out behind her like a sail, hurrying round the bedecked dining-table, followed by two meek and attentive Chinamen. Knowing the indignation of Maud should she be late, she ran to her room and made her toilet with the utmost speed.

She was just completing this important rite, and, seated at her dressing-table under a blaze of electric light, was selecting an aigret for her hair, when the door opened and Mrs. Gault entered.

She had discarded her ebullient draperies of pink silk, and was sheathed tightly in her favorite yellow, from which the olive skin of her bared neck emerged in polished smoothness. As she came forward she had one hand full of diamond brooches, which she pinned with apparent carelessness round the edge of the low bodice.

"Well, Tishy," she said, sitting down by the dressing-table, "what happened?"

Letitia looked at the array of silver that covered the table. Some jewels lay scattered among it, and the aigrets from which she had been about to choose the one she should wear. She selected a black one, and turned it round, looking at it.

"Nothing happened," she answered. "I saw her, and bought the jam and some plants. She raises plants, too."

"Is she really so pretty?"

"Yes, very--I think some people might say beautiful."

Mrs. Gault's face fell.

"She didn't say anything about John, I suppose?"

"Of course not."

"Did it seem to you that there was anything adventuressy or bad about her?"

Letitia looked at her sister--a sidelong look, which made Mrs. Gault feel rather uncomfortable.

"I never saw any one in my life that looked to me less so," she answered.

"Dear me!" ejaculated Mrs. Gault, in a dismayed tone. "You don't say so! Tishy, for goodness' sake, look where you're putting that aigret! You look like Pocahontas, and Tod McCormick's coming to dinner."

Letitia arranged the aigret at a more satisfactory angle, her large white arms, shining like marble through the transparent tissue of her sleeves, shielding her face.

"Then," said Mrs. Gault, returning to the more important subject, "there really may be a chance of his marrying her."

"I should think a very good one," answered Letitia, in a low voice.

"Good heavens!" breathed her sister, in the undertone of utter horror, "how awful men are! What makes you think he may intend marrying her?"

"Because," said Letitia, dropping her arms and turning on her sister with her mouth trembling and her breast agitated with sudden emotion, "no man who was any sort of a man could mean anything else."

Maud Gault was amazed by the girl's unexpected emotion. She pushed back her chair, and staring at Letitia, said vaguely:

"Why? I don't understand."

"Even if he didn't care, even if he didn't love her, he'd marry her. Oh, Maud, she's so helpless and so poor!"

And Letitia burst into a sudden storm of tears.

For a moment her sister sat still, looking at her in blank amazement. Then she felt a pang of feminine sympathy. So Letitia did care for him. Poor Tishy!

"There, don't cry!" she said, patting her shoulder. "You never can tell about these things. John may not care a button for this girl, or have the least intention of marrying her. You're always seeing the dark side of things."

But her form of consolation was not well chosen. Letitia threw off the hand and raised her disfigured face.