by Gwen Bristow
Oliver grinned and helped himself to a sprig of grapes from the dish on the table. “Did you ever see a pious hypocrite?”
“Why yes, I think so.”
“I bet you’ve never seen one like Bartlett.” Oliver shook his head wisely. “Bartlett is one of the leading merchants of St. Louis. His store gets the trade of all the best people, because he’s such an uplifting influence in the community. He’s a pillar of the church, doesn’t drink or gamble, leads crusades against saloons and dance-halls and other dens of vice. He stands it from September to April. Then in April he leaves St. Louis for Santa Fe. He stays fairly sober on the trail, has to, you can’t lead a wagon train if you’re in a drunken daze, but at least out in the open he can forget his piety and use language that would send him into a coma if he heard it at home. And when he gets to Santa Fe, he really lets go and raises cain.”
Garnet was amazed. “He drinks like this all the time he’s here? But how does he do any trading?”
“He has a partner. An American named Wimberly, who lives in Santa Fe all the year round. As soon as Bartlett gets his wagons through the pass, he’s done. Wimberly does the selling, while the holiest deacon of St. Louis swaggers around the plaza with a girl on each arm, singing songs and pouring down aguardiente until he falls on his face and somebody gets him home.”
Garnet could not help laughing, though she was still puzzled. “But don’t a lot of the traders go through St. Louis?” she asked. “Don’t they burst out laughing when they see him poking around with a Bible and a temperance tract and a sanctimonious look?”
“They burst out laughing,” said Oliver, “but they don’t tell the local worthies what they’re laughing at. It would spoil the fun. And don’t you tell on him either, if you should run into anybody who knows him when we go back through St. Louis next year.”
“But where did he meet Florinda? In St. Louis?”
“I’ve no idea. Here’s Florinda. She’ll tell us.”
Florinda opened the bedroom door noiselessly, and gave them a mischievous smile as she closed it behind her. Oliver went to meet her.
“How’s Bartlett?”
“Safe in dreamland. I don’t know how long it’ll last. Thank you both for waiting. Don’t you want something to drink?” She made a gesture toward the bottles. “Red wine, white wine, aguardiente—he’s got everything.”
Oliver declined, saying they had just finished dinner. “Can I pour some for you?” he asked.
“No thanks. I don’t like any of it.” Florinda sat down, past the corner of the wall so she could look diagonally across the table at them. She glanced down, running her finger along the joining of two boards in the table. “Look, dear people,” she began, “you’re not annoyed with me for coming to Santa Fe, are you?”
“Of course not,” Oliver answered in surprise, and Garnet added,
“I’m nearly speechless with being so glad to see you. Why did you think we’d be annoyed?”
“Well you might have been. And I did want to explain. I wouldn’t like to have you get the idea that I was hanging on to your coat-tails, expecting you to take care of me.”
“I never thought of it,” said Oliver.
“I’m so glad,” said Florinda. She went on earnestly. “You see, I haven’t told Mr. Bartlett I knew you. He won’t remember how I spoke to you today, so if you want to have it that you never laid eyes on me before you got here, that’s all right. I won’t bother you at all.”
“Oh for pity’s sake, Florinda,” said Oliver, “tell Bartlett anything you please. I don’t mind his knowing about New Orleans. And I’m sure Garnet doesn’t.”
Garnet agreed, and Oliver asked,
“Did you come with Bartlett all the way from St. Louis?”
She nodded. “He asked me to come out here, and go back with him this fall.”
“You didn’t tell me you knew any of the Santa Fe traders,” said Garnet.
“I didn’t. I’d never heard of Santa Fe before you told me. I met him on the boat.” Florinda gave them a humorously intimate smile. “There’s something else I want to tell you. Oliver, is Mr. Bartlett a very good friend of yours?”
“Why no. I’ve met him here every summer for several years past, when I came to Santa Fe from Los Angeles. That’s all.”
Florinda adjusted one of the flowers in the red jar. “Then—if he didn’t know quite as much about me as you do, you wouldn’t think it was your duty to tell him?”
Oliver chuckled. “My dear Florinda, I’ve no sense of duty toward Deacon Bartlett. I’m not going to tell him anything.”
“Thank you so much. I didn’t think you would, but it’s good to be sure.”
“What don’t you want me to tell him?” Oliver asked.
“Well—” Florinda was laughing silently. “Well, you see, Mr. Bartlett doesn’t know I’ve ever done anything like this before.”
“Oh,” Oliver said with amusement.
“But really,” Florinda urged, “I haven’t hurt him. I kept him entertained on the trail, and I mended his clothes and washed them whenever there was water enough, and since we’ve been in Santa Fe I’ve put him to bed when he was drunk and made cold packs for his head and waited on him the morning after. He’s just as happy as he can be. I haven’t done him any harm.”
“My dear girl, it never occurred to me that you had. If you’re asking me, I think he’s very lucky.”
Garnet was laughing. She hadn’t meant to laugh. But when she was with Florinda, it seemed she was always laughing about things that had seemed serious before.
“Maybe I’d better tell you how it happened,” Florinda continued. “Oliver, do you mind if I say all this in front of Garnet?”
Oliver said no, and Garnet exclaimed,
“If you don’t tell me what happened I’m going to die. He doesn’t know you were the star of the Jewel Box?”
Florinda shook her head. She glanced around at the bedroom door. A heavy snore reassured her. She turned back to them.
“Well, it was like this. Here I was on the boat, all dressed up in those black clothes. And they did the job, Garnet, just like you said they would. Everybody was so nice to me. The gents bowed, and the ladies smiled at me with such sweet sympathy, and everything was just lovely. There wasn’t a soul who gave a sign of knowing me. So the second day I went up on deck for some air, like you said I could. There was a gent who had just got on that morning. He was traveling alone. He drew up a chair for me, and picked up my handkerchief, and offered me a magazine to read. All in the most respectful manner. I thought he must be a preacher, or maybe a college professor.” Her lips trembled merrily as she added, “You’d never think it to see him here, but Mr. Bartlett can be as dignified as a tree full of owls.”
“Yes, I know,” said Oliver. “Then what happened?”
Florinda gave them a wide-eyed look. “Now really,” she said, “I’ve been around quite a lot in my time, but for the first day or two he had me fooled completely. It didn’t occur to me that this noble gent was putting on an act the same as I was. He kept doing little things for me, like moving my chair out of the wind and bringing me a rug to put over my knees. I thanked him as nicely as I could. To show appreciation I even read some in his magazine. It was just awful, something about how it was everybody’s duty to set a good example for everybody else. I didn’t understand it very well. Then after a while he sat down and talked, and I’m always glad to have somebody to talk to. I don’t like sitting around by myself. He said what a pity it was for me to be left a widow so young, and to have to travel without a protector, and so forth. I told him what you had told me to say, that I had brought my husband South for his health and he had died there.”
Garnet was holding her fist to her upper lip, so she would not laugh out loud and interrupt the story. Florinda went on.
“The next time I saw him on deck he asked me to tell him some more about myself. And you know how it is—when a gent asks you to talk to him about yourself, what he means is he
wants you to listen while he talks to you about himself. I tell you, that man talked for three days without stopping for breath.”
Florinda laughed as she remembered it.
“I didn’t mind listening. I like to hear people talk. He told me he was a Santa Fe trader. He said he had been down the river to buy some goods, and now he was on his way back home to St. Louis. What he said about the trail was like what Garnet had told me, so I knew that much was true. But then he started in like most gents do, telling yarns. You know what I mean—here was a good-looking woman, and he had to impress her with what a big hero he was. Lord have mercy, how that man can talk! He told me how many Indians he had killed, and every time he got into an Indian fight it seemed like he was doing it single-handed, with a whole war-party after him and stampeding buffaloes ahead of him and his wagons on fire. And he was never afraid because he knew God was going to preserve him.”
Florinda whistled softly. “Honestly, Oliver, I don’t know how he fools them so in Missouri. The men might believe that holy act he puts on, but I should think any girl who knows anything at all about gents could see through him like glass. Sometimes gents just talk like that for the fun of talking. They don’t really expect you to believe them. But Mr. Bartlett—why, he thinks you believe every word of it. And—oh dear, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but when a gent thinks you’re believing every word he says—” She paused, looking from one of them to the other.
“I think I know what you mean,” said Oliver. “He starts to believe it himself. Then he’s helpless.”
“That’s it. You can make him do anything you please.”
“So—?” Oliver prompted.
“So all of a sudden,” said Florinda, “it occurred to me that I might like to go to Santa Fe. I’d been practically cracking my head with trying to figure out what I was going to do when I got off that boat. I don’t know how to be anything but an actress, and I didn’t dare show my face in public again. I might have got a place pulling bastings for a dressmaker, but as long as that man Reese was combing the country for me I wouldn’t have felt comfortable even in the back room of a dressmaker’s shop. In fact, I was in boiling water up to my neck and I had to get out of it. I thought it would be a fine idea just to disappear for a while. Nobody would think of looking for me eight hundred miles beyond the frontier. Besides, it wasn’t like anything I’d ever done before, it would be a real adventure and it might be fun. And Mr. Bartlett was sitting there so pleased with himself. He was—well, excuse me, Garnet, but he was trying to seduce this simple-minded young widow, and with his great opinion of himself, it wouldn’t be any surprise to him to find that he’d succeeded.” She smoothed back a lock of her hair and fixed it in place with a hairpin. “So I let him persuade me to— Oliver, how do you say it in front of a nice girl?”
Oliver suggested, “To leave the narrow path for the primrose path?”
“That’s it. The primrose path in this case being the Santa Fe Trail.”
“Was it hard?” he asked.
“He thought it was,” said Florinda.
“I mean, was it hard for you?”
“For me?” Florinda said, with such innocent astonishment that Oliver put his head down on his hand and shook with mirth. Garnet laughed too, but at the same time she gazed upon Florinda respectfully. She did think, however, that Mr. Bartlett should have been ashamed of himself.
Florinda waited for Oliver’s laughter to subside enough for him to hear her again. Then she went on.
“Don’t you see how it was? I never meant to start anything with that widow’s costume. But the way things happened, I couldn’t explain it. And as I told you, I haven’t done him any harm.”
“And as I told you,” said Oliver, “I think he’s very lucky.” He glanced around the room. “I’ve seen these lodgings of Bartlett’s before. They never looked like this. Orderly, dusted, flowers on the table.”
“He loves it. And don’t you see, if you told him the truth, it would spoil everything for him. He feels so proud every time he looks at me. He thinks he’s made such a conquest.”
“I understand,” said Oliver. “You can trust us both.”
“Thank you so much,” said Florinda. “Nothing about the Jewel Box, or the Flower Garden—”
From the room behind her Mr. Bartlett called her name. Garnet started. But Florinda made a good-natured gesture. She began to get up.
“Well, dear people, I’ll see you later. That’s my cue to go soothe his fevered brow.”
Garnet stood up too. As Florinda started toward the bedroom door Garnet put a restraining hand on her arm.
“Wait a minute. I haven’t thanked you for those emeralds.”
“Sh, darling!” Florinda glanced at the door, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Don’t mention emeralds. He doesn’t know I ever had any.” She opened the door. “Yes, Mr. Bartlett, here I am.”
Oliver set up shop in a building that he rented every summer, not far from the Silvas’ house. Customers streamed in all day long. He was very busy, and Garnet did not see much of him between breakfast and dark. But she was not lonely. For now that Florinda had made sure her presence would not be unwelcome, she came to see Garnet nearly every day.
Garnet seldom saw Mr. Bartlett at all. Florinda said he usually woke up with a heavy head, and required cold packs and firewater before he could get up. But once on his feet, he went off to the Fonda or the gambling houses, and Florinda had plenty of leisure. She spoke of Mr. Bartlett with a humorous tolerance, as though he were a child she had promised to take care of. But Garnet could not help asking if life with him didn’t get to be an awful nuisance.
Florinda shrugged. “It’s better than the New York state prison,” she answered, good-humoredly.
She was always good-humored. She expressed no regrets for her brilliant life on the stage, and when Garnet asked her what she expected to do after this summer, she returned, “Why, I don’t know, dearie. I’ll get along somehow. I always do.”
Garnet smiled admiringly. By this time she had no doubt that Florinda would always get along somehow.
Florinda usually came with a basket of sewing on her arm. She had had a few clothes made in St. Louis, she said, but there had not been time to get many. Mr. Bartlett had told his partner that she was to take anything she wanted from his store, so she had plenty of material. She cut and fitted her dresses with a good deal of skill. When Garnet commented on her expertness, Florinda said that in the early days of her career she had made most of her own costumes. “You can’t afford dressmakers when you’re in the chorus,” she added.
But her stitches were sometimes straggly. She did her best, but her fingers were not pliable enough for really fine sewing. Garnet pretended not to notice this, but one day she suggested,
“Don’t you want me to help with your dresses? I’ve got nothing to do.”
“Can you sew?” Florinda asked in surprise. “I didn’t know fine ladies like you were taught anything useful.”
“You do have the silliest ideas,” Garnet retorted. “Girls’ schools always have sewing classes. Let me hem the collar while you’re doing that skirt seam.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” said Florinda, and a few minutes later she exclaimed, “Why Garnet, you do beautiful work!”
“I ought to. I must have spent a thousand hours stitching and then having to rip it out and do it over.”
After that Garnet always helped with the sewing. She picked out bits of the garment that would show, like collars and buttonholes, so Florinda’s uneven stitches would be set into the less noticeable places. She wondered if Florinda was aware of this. If she was, she never said so. She gave lavish thanks for Garnet’s help, but neither of them ever said anything to suggest that Florinda’s hands were imperfect.
While they worked, Señora Silva came in often, bringing them a plate of fruit or a bottle of wine. She took it for granted that Florinda was married to Mr. Bartlett, and Garnet did not enlighten her. Florinda enjoyed the grapes and
apples, but she would not touch wine of any sort. To avoid hurting the señora’s feelings, she would accept the wine with thanks, but when Señora Silva had left she would fill a cup and then empty it out of the window. Garnet thought maybe Mr. Bartlett’s antics had scared her, and tried to tell her that this wine was so very light that a cup of it was no more harmful than a cup of tea. But Florinda shook her head smiling. “It’s all right for everybody else, dearie. But you know how some people can’t eat strawberries without breaking out in a rash? That’s me and Demon Rum.”
She made no further explanation, and Garnet did not ask for one. Stern abstinence did not seem to be in tune with the rest of Florinda’s behavior, but it was, after all, her own business.
Garnet was glad to have Florinda there. On the trail she had been so lonesome for feminine companionship, and Florinda was always good company. They talked about clothes, and their experiences on the trail, and their impressions of Santa Fe. Sometimes they talked about New York. They had never seen each other in New York. Their two worlds had been split as though by a wall. But they had walked on the same streets and shopped at the same stores, they might even have brushed elbows on a crowded sidewalk and said, “I’m sorry,” without glancing under each other’s bonnet-brims. They had a lot to say to each other.
When Oliver came in he took her sightseeing. The streets were dirty and picturesque, and always full of people—traders and bullwhackers, blanketed Indians, little girls selling vegetables from baskets, big girls carrying jars of water and glancing temptingly at the Yankees, men leading tiny burros laden with wood, fine gentlemen in embroidered coats and trousers. They visited the gambling houses, where she saw more fine gentlemen, and fine ladies too, for in Santa Fe the gambling houses were the centers of social life. One evening she went with him to the Fonda.
It was early, but the place was full of Yankees, and their Mexican girl-friends, and a few Mexican men sipping wine or strumming guitars. Florinda was there, at a table with Mr. Bartlett and several other traders. She was pouring drinks for them and keeping them entertained, but as usual she was not taking anything herself. When Garnet and Oliver stopped by the table to speak to the group, she asked plaintively, “What do you have to do to get a drink of water in Mexico?”
