The wild figure of Mariposa at the kitchen door summoned Mrs. Brown. Lucy was not dead, but dying. A few moments later Mariposa found herself rushing hatless through the rain for the doctor, and then again, in what seemed a few more minutes, standing, soaked and breathless, by her mother’s side. She sat there throughout the night, holding the limp hand and watching for a glimmer of consciousness in the half-shut eyes.
It never came. There was no rally from the collapse which followed the mother’s confession. She had lived till this was done. Then, having accomplished the great action of her life, she had loosed her hold and let go. Once, Mrs. Brown being absent, Mariposa had leaned down on the pillow and passionately reiterated the assurance that she would give the promise Lucy had asked. There was a slight quiver of animation in the dying woman’s face and she opened her eyes as if startled, but made no other sign of having heard or understood. But Mariposa knew that she had promised.
On the evening of the day after her confession Lucy died, slipping away quietly as if in sleep. The death of the simple and unknown lady made no ripple on the surface of the city’s life. Mrs. Willers and a neighbor or two were Mariposa’s sole visitors, and the only flowers contributed to Lucy’s coffin were those sent by the newspaper woman and Barry Essex. The afternoon of the day on which her mother’s death was announced, Mariposa received a package from Jake Shackleton. With it came a short note of condolence, and the offer, kindly and simply worded, of the small sum of money contained in the package, which, it was hoped, Miss Moreau, for the sake of the writer’s early acquaintance with her parents and interest in herself, would accept. The packet contained five hundred dollars in coin.
Mariposa’s face flamed. The money fell through her fingers and rolled about on the floor. She would have liked to take it, piece by piece, and throw it through the window, into the mud of the street. She felt that her horror of Shackleton augmented with every passing moment, gripped her deeper with every memory of her mother’s words, and every moment’s perusal of the calm, dead face in its surrounding flowers.
But her promise had been given. She picked up the money and put it away. Her promise had been given. Already she was beginning dimly to realize that it would bind and cramp her for the rest of her life. She was too benumbed now fully to grasp its meaning, but she felt feebly that she would be its slave as long as he or she lived. But she had given it.
The money lay untouched throughout the next few days, Lucy’s simple funeral ceremonies being paid for with the proceeds of the sale of the diamond brooch, which Moreau had given her in the early days of their happiness.
CHAPTER VIII
ITS EFFECT
“Flower o’ the peach,
Death for us all, and his own life for each.”
—Browning.