—Tennyson.
A week had not passed since the night at the opera when Mariposa received a hasty letter from Mrs. Willers. It was only a few lines scrawled on a piece of the yellow paper affected by the staff of The Trumpet, and advising the recipient of the fact that Mr. Shackleton requested her presence at his office at three the following afternoon, yet a suggestion of triumph breathed from its every word. Mrs. Willers was clearly elated at the moment of its production. She hinted, in a closing sentence, that Mariposa’s star was rising rapidly. She, herself, would conduct the girl to the presence of the great man, and suggested that Mariposa meet her in her rooms a half-hour before the time set for the interview.
Mariposa was glad to do this, and in the few moments’ walk across town toward Third Street, to hear what Mrs. Willers thought was the object of the interview. The girl’s cheeks were dyed with excited color as they drew near The Trumpet office. Mrs. Willers was certain it was to do with her singing. Shackleton had almost told her as much. He had been immensely impressed by her voice, and now, with the Lepine Opera Company in the city, Mrs. Willers fancied he was going to have Lepine, who was a well-known impresario in a small but respectable way, pass judgment on it. Mariposa’s foot lagged when she heard this. It was such a portentous step from the seclusion of a rose-draped cottage in Santa Barbara, even to this talk of singing before a real impresario. She looked down the vista of Third Street where the façade of The Trumpet office loomed large from humbler neighbors, and Mrs. Willers saw hesitation and fright in her eyes. Like a sensible guardian she slipped her hand through the young girl’s arm and walked her briskly forward, talking of the rare chances life offers to a handicapped humanity.
The Trumpet office, as all old San Franciscans know, stood on Third Street, and was, in its day, considered a fine building. Jake Shackleton had not been its owner six months yet, and all his reforms were not inaugurated. From the yawning arch of its doorway flights of stairs led up and upward, from stories where the presses rattled all night, to the editorial story where the sentiments of The Trumpet staff were confided to paper. This latter and most important department was four flights up the dark stairway, which was lit at its turnings with large kerosene lamps, backed by tin reflectors. There was little of the luxury of the modern newspaper office about the barren, business-like building, echoing like an empty shell to the shouts of men and the pounding of machinery.
At the top of the fourth flight the ladies paused. The landing broadened out into a sort of anteroom, bare and windowless, two dejected-looking gas-jets dispensing a tarnished yellow light into the surrounding gloom. A boy, with a sleek, oiled head, sat at a table reading that morning’s issue of The Trumpet. He put it down as Mrs. Willers rose before his vision and nodded familiarly to her. She gave him a quick word of greeting and swept Mariposa forward through a doorway, down a long passage, from which doors opened into tiny rooms with desks and droplights. The girl now and then had glimpses of men seated at the desks, the radiance of the droplights hard on their faces that had been lifted expectantly as their ears caught the interesting rustle of skirts in the corridor.
Suddenly, at the end of the passage, Mrs. Willers struck with her knuckles on a closed portal. The next moment Mariposa, with the light of a large window shining full on her face, was shaking hands with Shackleton. Then, in response to his motioning hand, she took the chair beside the desk, where she sat, facing the white glare of the window, conscious of his keen eyes critically regarding her. Mrs. Willers took a chair in the background. For a moment she had fears that the nervousness she had noticed in her protégée’s countenance on the way down would make her commit some bêtise that would antagonize the interest Shackleton so evidently took in her. Mrs. Willers had seen her chief’s brusk impatience roused by follies more excusable than those that rise from a young girl’s nervous shyness and that would be incomprehensible to his hardy, self-confident nature.
But Mariposa seemed encouragingly composed. She again felt the curious sense of ease, of being at home with him, that this unknown man had given her before. She had that inspiring sensation that she was approved; that this old-time friend of her father’s had a singular unspoken sympathy with her. “As if he might have been an old friend,” she told her mother after the first meeting, “or some kind of relation—one of those uncles that come back from India in the English novels.”
Now only her fluctuating color told of the inward tumult that possessed her as he told her concisely, but kindly, that he had arranged for her to sing before Lepine, the manager of the opera, at two o’clock on the following day. Several people of experience had told him Lepine was an excellent judge. They would then hear an expert’s opinion on her voice.
“I think it’s the finest kind of voice,” he said, smiling, “but you know my opinion’s worth more on ores than on voices. So we won’t soar too high till we hear what the fellow whose business it is, has to say. Then, if he’s satisfied”—he gave a little shrug—“we’ll see.”
The interview was brought to an end in a few moments. It seemed to Mariposa that the scenes which Mrs. Willers assured her were so big with promise were incredibly short for moments so fraught with destiny. She seemed hardly to have caught her breath yet from the ascent of the four flights of stairs, when they were once again walking down the corridor, with the writing men looking up with pricked ears at the returning rustle of skirts. It was Mrs. Willers who had wafted her away so quickly.