“She said California girls are as flavorless as the pistachio. Doesn’t that seem an odd thing to say?”
“Is the pistachio so flavorless?”
“That is not what I mean. She must have known that most of her auditors were California girls. What is the point in telling us we are flavorless?”
“You said she was pleased with herself.”
“Who is herself a California girl. But I am sure she considers herself an uncommon one.”
We walked on.
“I think I would not be that way,” Amelia said.
I did not inquire her meaning. In the moonlit dark, scuds of fog drifted seemingly close enough overhead to reach up and touch. Down a block I could see the hulk of the McNair mansion, a line of first-floor windows alight. Beau must be there, unless he was abroad on his “researches,” the idea of which angered me as much as Joaquin Miller’s pretensions.
To the left the moon gleamed on the high smooth planking of Charles Crocker’s spite-fence, another Railroad outrage, and a project Bierce had assigned me that I hadn’t begun to work on yet. I berated myself that I would think to recoup being scared off of Senator Jennings by scarifying Charles Crocker.
Amelia said, “I would have neither the presumption nor the courage to send verses I have written to Mr. Bierce.”
I said carefully that I would be pleased if she would give me her poems to read. Again she was silent for a time.
“I do not think I will do that, thank you,” she said finally, and it seemed best not to disagree with her. “Tom,” she said, “I think you must be very careful not to become like Mr. Bierce.”
“Yes,” I said, and she gripped my hand in her strong hand. The street steepened beneath our feet. Below and on the right ahead of us were the high gables and the lighted windows of the Brittain house. Amelia halted.
“If you wish to kiss me you must kiss me now!”
I kissed her lips. Embracing her affected my knees, kissing her my breath.
“That was very nice,” she whispered, as we continued our descent to 913 Taylor. When we climbed the stairs a figure rose from a chair on the porch, the constable on duty, raising his helmet in salute to Amelia.
“All safe and quiet on the premises, Miss Brittain,” he said.
He retreated down the porch while I bid Amelia good night. “It was such a lovely day for me, Tom,” she whispered. When she turned away I saw by the light through the window that her face gleamed with tears.
23
PILLORY, n. – A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction—prototype of the modem newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.
–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
On Monday morning Bierce was not in his office. The chalky skull gaped at me as I seated myself at my desk. I heard the approaching hard rap of footsteps. It was not Miss Penryn, but a woman in a tweedy, country jacket and skirts, and a tight-fitting cap sporting a pheasant feather curved over her forehead like a sickle. It was Lillie Coit.
“Good morning, Mrs. Coit!” I said, jumping to my feet.
She squinted at me out of her brown, freckled face, frowning, then producing a smile. “Oh, it is Mr. Redmond. Bierce’s not here?”
“He hasn’t arrived yet, Mrs. Coit.”
She moved inside the office to seat herself in the spare chair beside Bierce’s desk. She did not sit with her ankles crossed, but with her feet planted eight inches apart in sturdy brown shoes.
“Are you a friend of Bierce’s, Mr. Redmond?”
She was gazing at me with her mouth pursed and her eyes intent. It was a serious question.
“I think so,” I said.
“I am his friend also. And what a talent he has for quarreling with his friends! What a talent he has for former friends. If I tell him what I have come to tell him, I am afraid that I will become a former friend.”
I had seen Bierce quarreling with a former friend last evening.
“Yesterday I saw Mollie Bierce and the children in the village,” Mrs. Coit said with a sigh. “That is a very unfortunate situation.” She leaned forward toward me.
“Mr. Redmond, Bierce likes to boast that no one, man or woman, has seen him in the buff. Are you aware of this curious source of pride? I know he was wounded in the War. Can you tell me if his wound is such a disfiguring one that he would not want even his wife to see him—bare?” I thought she had colored slightly, but her face was so sun-browned it was difficult to tell.
“He was wounded in the temple, at Kennesaw Mountain.” It was all I knew.
She tossed her head with a commotion of the pheasant feather. “Might a head wound then explain his difficulties with friends?”
I said, “He takes certain matters very seriously, Mrs. Coit, and is apt to give his opinion seriously. I know he has recently lost a friend by an overly honest review of the poetry of a relation.”
“Ina Coolbrith,” Lillie Coit said, nodding. “How he loves poet-baiting. Let me tell you this, Mr. Redmond. His philanderings are too well known.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“If one is unfaithful to a spouse,” she went on, “one does everything possible not to advertise the fact so as not to cause unnecessary pain. That is simply decent manners.”
I nodded in agreement.
“I do not take Mollie Bierce’s part, you understand. But if he is so contemptuous of her and her family, why did he marry her? He is causing her unnecessary pain.”
“I know that he has a number of women friends,” I said.
“Young man, those are not friends, those are mistresses. They are a very different thing.”
I felt my own face burn.
“He will lose her,” Lillie Coit said. “Perhaps that is his intention.
There are certain men who like to boast that they are not the marrying kind, as though this makes them a more admirable member of their gender. But he will lose more besides. He will lose his children. I know he loves that girl child, and the older boy—Day. Mr. Redmond, I see Bierce, if he does not change his ways, losing his friends, losing his wife, losing his children. I shudder to think of his declining years. What can be this inclination he has to destroy every association he has of love or friendship?”
“Mrs. Coit,” I said. “In the quarrel that I spoke of, his former friend spoke of him as a disappointed man.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you not understand that, Mr. Redmond? He is a terribly disappointed man. He should be a great personage. He should be a writer of international fame. Instead he is merely a local poet-baiter and Railroad scold. He is mired in satire. This City, the West! has caught satire like a disease! He sees that Mark Twain has broken free of it. Mark Twain has found his heart, but Bierce cannot find his. He is a bitterly disappointed man.”
I said I was sorry to hear her say this.
“I can say it because I consider him my friend, but I wonder how long it will be before there is a quarrel, or a pretext resulting in one.
“This is what I have come to tell him,” she went on. “And I cannot describe how relieved I am that he is not here. I wonder if you would be able to convey my fears to him, Mr. Redmond?”
“I cannot,” I said. “I am only his associate. I cannot presume to advise him. He would not wish to feel he had been judged.”
She batted at the end of the pheasant feather, as though it had interfered with her vision, and rose.
“I’m sure that is true,” she said. “It is a shame, however.” She departed in her sudden manner, with her hard quick steps on the flooring of the hallway.
When Bierce came in, walking briskly, he slapped his hands together and insisted that I accompany him to the Palace Hotel for oysters and eggs. I told him that Mrs. Coit had stopped in to see him.