Shackleton, a man of exceedingly methodical habits, had kept copies of his letters. There were only seven of them altogether—three from him; four in reply. The first ones were short, only a few lines, containing the request to find the ladies who, the writer understood, were in San Francisco, and ascertain their circumstances and position. Then came the acknowledgment of that, and then in a few days, the answer stating the whereabouts of Mrs. Moreau and her daughter, their means, and such small facts about them as that the mother was in delicate health and the daughter “a handsome, accomplished, and estimable young lady.”
Win looked over this correspondence, puzzled and wondering. He remembered the girl he had seen in The Trumpet office that dark afternoon, and how the office boy had told him it was a Miss Moreau, a friend of Mrs. Willers, and a singer. What motive could his father have had in seeking out this girl and her mother in this secret and effectual way? He read over the letters again. Moreau had died in Santa Barbara in the spring, the widow and her daughter had then come to San Francisco, and by the wording of the second letter he inferred that his father had been ignorant of their means, and of the girl’s appearance, style and character. It was evidently not the result of an interest in people he had once known and then lost sight of. It seemed to be an interest, for some outside reason, in two women of whom he knew absolutely nothing.
Win had heard that his father contemplated offering a musical education to some singing girl, of whom the young man knew nothing, and had seen only for a moment that day in The Trumpet office. This was undoubtedly the girl. But Shackleton evidently had not heard of her through Mrs. Willers, who was known to be an energetic boomer of obscure genius. He had hunted her out himself; had undoubtedly had some ulterior interest in, or knowledge of her some time before the day Win had seen her. It was odd, the boy thought, meditating over the correspondence. What could have led his father to search for, and then attempt to assist, a woman who seemed to be a complete stranger to him? It looked like the secret paying of an old debt.
Win put the letters in his pocket and went up to town. There was more work for him to do now than there had ever been before, and he rose to it with a spirit and energy that surprised himself. Neither he nor any one else had ever realized how paralyzing to him had been his father’s cold scorn. From boyhood, Win had felt himself to be an aggravating failure. The elder man had not scrupled to make him understand his inferiority. The mere presence of his father seemed to numb his brain and make his tongue stammer over the simplest phrases. Now, he felt himself free and full of energy, as though bands that had cramped his mind and confined his body were broken. His old attitude of posing as a fast young man of fashion lost its charm. Life grew suddenly to mean something, to be full of use and purpose.
He was left very much to himself, his mother being still too much broken to attend to business, and Maud being absorbed in her affair with Latimer, which had recently culminated in a secret engagement. This she had been afraid to tell to her domineering father and ambitious mother, and her opportunities of seeing her fiancé had been of the briefest until now. Latimer haunted the house of evenings, when Bessie was lying on the sofa in an upstairs boudoir and Win was locked in his father’s study going over the interminable documents.
The first darkness of her grief and horror past, Bessie, in her seclusion, thought of many things. One of these was the fate of Mariposa Moreau. The bonanza king’s widow, with all her faults, had that lavish and reckless generosity, where money was concerned, that marked the early Californians. This forceful woman, who had made the blighting journey across the plains without complaint, faced the fierce hardships of her early married life with a smile, borne her children amid the rude discomforts of remote mining camps, was an adept in the art of luxurious living. She knew by instinct how to be magnificent, and one of her magnificences was the careless munificence of her generosity.
Now, she felt for Mariposa. She knew Shackleton’s plans for her, and realized the girl’s disappointment. In her heart she had been bitterly jealous of the other wife’s child, who had the beauty and gifts her own lacked. It would be to everybody’s advantage to remove the girl to another country and sphere. And because her husband had died there was no reason why his plans should remain unfulfilled. Though Shackleton had assured her that the girl knew nothing, though every one connected with the shameful bargain but herself was dead, it was best to be prudent, especially when prudence was the course most agreeable to all concerned. She would rest easier; her children would seem more secure in their positions and possessions, if Mariposa Moreau, well provided for, were safe in Paris studying singing.
When she was fully decided as to the wisdom of her course, she wrote Mariposa a short but friendly letter, speaking of her knowledge of Mr. Shackleton’s plans for her advancement, of her desire to carry out her late husband’s wishes, and naming a day and hour at which she begged the young girl to call on her. It was a simple matter to ascertain Miss Moreau’s address from Mrs. Willers, and the letter was duly sent.
It roused wrath in its recipient. Mariposa was learning worldly wisdom at a rate of which her tardy development had not given promise. Great changes were taking place in her simple nature. She had been wakened to life with savage abruptness. Dormant characteristics, passions unsuspected, had risen to the surface. The powerful feelings of a rich, but undeveloped womanhood had suddenly been shaken from their sleep by a grip of the hand of destiny. The unfamiliarity of a bitter anger against the Shackletons struggled with the creeping disgust of Essex, that grew daily.
Morning after morning she woke when the first gray light was faintly defining the squares of the windows. The leaden sense of wretchedness that seemed to draw her out of sleep, gave place to the living hatred and shame that the upheaval of her life had left behind. She watched the golden wheat-ears dimly glimmering on the pale walls, while she lay and thought of all she had learned of life, her faith and happy ignorance destroyed forever.