Mariposa’s head bent over the keys. When she came to view it this way, her sixteen dollars a month did not seem so big with promise as it did when ten dollars for rent was all it had to yield up.
“I’ve heard about those rich people who are looking for prima donnas to develop, but I don’t know where to find them, and I don’t see how they’re to find me. The only way I can ever attract their notice is to sing on the street corner with a guitar, like Rachel. And then I’d have to have a license, and I’ve got no money for that.”
She rose, and swept with the gait of a queen into the next room. Her mother was lying on a sofa drawn closely to a tiny grate, in which a handful of fire flickered.
Lucy was still a pretty woman, with a thin, faded delicacy of aspect. Her skin was singularly white, especially on her hands, which were waxen. Though love and happiness had given her back her youth, her health had never recovered her child’s rude birth in the desert and the subsequent journey across the Sierra. She had twined round and clung to the man whom she had called her husband, and with his loss she was slowly sinking out of the world his presence had made sweet for her. Her daughter—next in adoration to the hero who had succored her in her hour of extremity—had no power to hold her. Lucy was slowly fading out of life. The girl had no knowledge of this. Her mother had been a semi-invalid for several years, and her own youth was so rich in its superb vigor, that she did not notice the elder woman’s gradual decline of vitality. But the mother knew, and her nights were wakeful and agonized with the thought of her child, left alone, poor and unfriended.
Mariposa sat down on the end of the sofa at the invalid’s feet and took one of her hands. She had loved both parents deeply, but the fragile mother, so simple and unworldly, so dependent on affection for her being, was the object of her special devotion. They were silent, the girl with an abstracted glance fixed on the fire, meditating on the future of her voice; the mother regarding her with pensive admiration.
As they sat thus, a footfall on the steps outside broke upon their thoughts. The cottage was so built that one of its conveniences was, that one could always hear the caller or the man with the bill mounting the steps before he rang. The former were rarer than the latter, and Mariposa, in whose eventless life a visit from any one was a thing of value, pricked up her ears expectantly.
The bell pealed stridently and the servant could be heard rattling pans in the kitchen, evidently preparatory to emerging. Presently she came creaking down the hall, the door opened and a female voice was heard asking for the ladies. It was a visitor. Mariposa was glad she had stayed in that afternoon, and with her hand still clasping her mother’s, craned her neck toward the door.
The visitor was a tall, thin woman of forty years, her cheaply fashionable dress telling of many a wrestle between love of personal adornment and a lean purse. She was one of those slightly known and unquestioningly accepted people that women, in the friendless and unknown condition of the Moreaus, constantly meet in the free and easy social life of western cities.
She was a Mrs. Willers, long divorced from a worthless husband, and supporting, with a desperate and gallant courage, herself and her child, who was one of Mariposa’s piano pupils. Her appearance gave no clue to the real force and indomitable bravery of the woman, who, against blows and rebuffs, had fought her way with a smile on her lips. Her appearance and manner, especially in this, her society pose, were against her. The former was flashy and over-dressed, the latter loud-voiced and effusive. A large hat, flaunting with funeral plumes, was set jauntily on one side of her head, and a spotted veil was drawn over a complexion that was carelessly made up. Her corsets were so long and so tight that she could hardly bend, and when she did they emitted protesting creaks. No one would have thought from her flamboyantly stylish get-up that she was a reporter and “special” writer on Jake Shackleton’s newly-acquired paper, The Morning Trumpet! But in reality she was an energetic and able journalist. It was only when adorned with her best clothes and her “society” manners that she affected a sort of gushing silliness.
“Well,” she said, rustling in, “here’s the lady! How’s everybody? Just as cozy and cute as a doll’s house.”