CHAPTER II
MARGUERITE TARLETON’S impression of the hour in which she found herself widowed and penniless was very vague; she was down with brain fever in the hour that followed.
The Civil War had left her family with little but the great prestige of its name and the old house in New Orleans. Nevertheless, the house slaves having refused to accept their freedom, Marguerite had “never picked up her handkerchief,” when, in a gown fashioned by her mammy from one of her dead mother’s, she made her début in a society which retained all of its pride and little of its gaiety. Her mother had been a creole of great beauty and fascination. Marguerite inherited her impulsiveness and vivacity; and, for the rest, was ethereally pretty, as dainty and fastidious as a young princess, and had the soft manner and the romantic heart of the convent maiden. Hayward Tarleton captured twelve dances on this night of her triumphant début, and proposed a week later. They were married within the month; he had already planned to seek for fortune in California with what was left of his princely inheritance.
When Tarleton and his bride reached San Francisco the fortune he had come to woo fairly leaptinto his arms; in three years he was a rich man, and his pretty and elegant young wife a social power. It was a very happy marriage. Marguerite idolised her handsome dashing husband, and he was the slave of her lightest whim. Their baby was petted and indulged until she ruled her adoring parents with a rod of iron, and tyrannised over the servants like a young slave-driver. But the parents saw no fault in her, and, in truth, she was an affectionate and amiable youngster, with a fund of good sense for which the servants were at a loss to account. She had twenty-six dolls at this period, a large roomful of toys, a pony, and a playhouse of three storeys in a corner of the garden.
Then came the great Virginia City mining excitement of the late Seventies. Tarleton, satiated with easy success, and longing for excitement, gambled; at first from choice, finally from necessity. His nerves swarmed over his will and stung it to death, his reason burnt to ashes. He staggered home one day, this man who had been intrepid on the battle-field for four blood-soaked and exhausting years, told his wife that he had not a dollar in the world, then went into the next room and blew out his brains.
The creditors seized the house. Two hours before Mrs. Tarleton had been carried to Rincon Hill to the home of Mrs. Montgomery, a Southerner who had known her mother and who would have offered shelter to every stricken compatriot in San Francisco if her children had not restrained her. Lee, who had been present when her father spoke his lastwords to his wife, and had heard the report of the pistol, lost all interest in dolls and picture-books forever, and refused to leave the sick-room. She waited on her mother by day, and slept on a sofa at the foot of the bed. Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed that the child was positively uncanny, she was so old-fashioned, but that she certainly was lovable. Her own young children, Tiny and Randolph, although some years older than Lee, thought her profoundly interesting, and stole into the sick-room whenever the nurse’s back was turned. Lee barely saw them; she retained no impression of them afterward, although the children were famous for their beauty and fine manners.
When Mrs. Tarleton recovered, her lawyer reminded her that some years before her husband had given her a ranch for which she had expressed an impulsive wish and as quickly forgotten. The deeds were at his office. She gave her jewels to the creditors, but decided to keep the ranch, remarking that her child was of more importance than all the creditors put together. The income was small, but she was grateful for it. Her next of kin were dead, and charity would have been insufferable.
Mrs. Hayne, a reduced Southerner, whom Tarleton had started in business, offered his widow a large front room on the third floor of her boarding-house at the price of a back one. In spite of Mrs. Montgomery’s tears and remonstrances, Mrs. Tarleton accepted the offer, and persuaded herself that she was comfortable. She never went to the table, nor paid a call. Her friends, particularly the Southernersof her immediate circle, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Geary, Mrs. Brannan, Mrs. Cartright, and Colonel Belmont were faithful; but as the years passed their visits became less frequent, and Mrs. Montgomery was much abroad with her children. Marguerite Tarleton cared little. Her interest in life had died with her husband; such energies as survived in her were centred in her child. When there was neither fog nor dust nor wind nor rain in the city, Lee dressed her peremptorily and took her for a ride in the cable-cars; but she spent measureless monotonous days in her reclining chair, reading or sewing. She did not complain except when in extreme pain, and was interested in every lineament of Lee’s busy little life. She never shed a tear before the child, and managed to maintain an even state of mild cheerfulness. And she was grateful for Lee’s skill and readiness in small matters as in great; her unaccustomed fingers would have made havoc with her hair and boots.
“Did you never, never button your own boots, memmy?” asked Lee one day, as she was performing that office.
“Never, honey. When Dinah was ill your father always buttoned them, and after she died he wouldn’t have thought of letting any one else touch them; most people pinch so. Of course he could not do my hair, but he often put me to bed, and healwayscut up my meat.”
“Do all men do those things for their wives?” asked Lee in a voice of awe; “I think they must be very nice.”
“All men who are fit to marry, and all Southern men, you may be sure. I want to live long enough to see you married to a man as nearly like your father as possible. I wonder if there are any left; America gallops so. He used to beg me to think of something new I wanted, something it would be difficult to get; and he fairly adored to button my boots; he never failed to put a little kiss right there on my instep when he finished.”
“It must be lovely to be married!” said Lee.
Mrs. Tarleton closed her eyes.
“Was papa perfectly perfect?” asked Lee, as she finished her task and smoothed the kid over her mother’s beautiful instep.
“Perfectly!”
“I heard the butler say once that he was as drunk as a lord.”
“Possibly, but he was perfect all the same. He got drunk like a gentleman—a Southern gentleman, I mean, of course. I always put him to bed and never alluded to it.”