After luncheon the red lacquer cabinet went away. She watched it off as the last remnant of the old life. She felt strangely indifferent to what yesterday she thought would be so many unbearable wrenches. Finally nothing was left but her own few possessions, gathered together in a corner of the front room—two trunks, a screen, a table, a long, old-fashioned mirror and some pictures. Yesterday morning she had bargained with a cheap carter, picked up on the street corner, to take them for a dollar, and now she sat waiting for him, while the day grew duller outside, and the fog began to sift itself into fine rain.
The servant, who was to close and lock the cottage, begged her to go, promising to see to the shipping of the last load. Mariposa needed no special urging. She felt that an afternoon spent in that dim little parlor, looking out through the bay window at the fine slant of the rain would drive her mad. There was no promise of cheer at the Garcia boarding-house, but it was, at least, not haunted with memories.
A half-hour later, with the precious desk, containing the marriage certificates and Shackleton’s gift of money, under her arm, she was climbing the hills from Sutter Street to that part of Hyde Street in which the Garcia house stood. She eyed it with deepening gloom as it revealed itself through the thin rain. It was a house which even then was getting old, standing back from the street on top of a bank, which was held in place by a wooden bulk-head, surmounted by a low balustrade. A gate gave access through this, and a flight of rotting wooden steps led by zigzags to the house. The lower story was skirted in front by a balcony, which, after the fashion of early San Francisco architecture, was encased in glass. Its roof above slanted up to the two long windows of the front bedroom. The pepper-tree, of which Mariposa had spoken to Essex, was sufficient to tell of the age of the property and to give beauty and picturesqueness to the ramshackle old place. It had reached an unusual growth and threw a fountain of drooping foliage over the balustrade and one long limb upon the balcony roof.
To-day it dripped with the rest of the world. As Mariposa let the gate bang the impact shook a shower from the tree, which fell on her as she passed beneath. It seemed to her a bad omen and added to the almost terrifying sensation of gloom that was invading her.
Her ring at the bell brought the whole Garcia family to the door and the hall. A child of ten—the elder of the young Mrs. Garcia’s boys—opened it. He was in the condition of moisture and mud consequent on a game of baseball on the way home from school. Behind him crowded a smaller boy—of a cherubic beauty—arrayed in a very dirty sailor blouse, with a still dirtier wide white collar, upon which hung locks of wispy yellow hair. Mrs. Garcia, the younger, came drearily forward. She was a thin, pretty, slatternly, young woman, very baggy about the waist, and with the same wispy yellow hair as her son, which she wore in the popular bang. It had been smartly curled in the morning, but the damp had shown it no respect, and it hung down limply nearly into her eyes. Back of her, in the dim reaches of the hall, Mariposa saw the grandmother, the strange old Spanish woman, who spoke no English. She looked very old, and small, and was wrinkled like a walnut. But as she encountered the girl’s miserable gaze she gave her a gentle reassuring smile, full of that curious, patient sweetness which comes in the faces of the old who have lived kindly.
The younger members of the family escorted the new arrival upstairs. She had seen her room before, had already placed therein her piano and many of her smaller ornaments, but its bleakness struck her anew. She stopped on the threshold, looking at its chill, half-furnished extent with a sudden throttling sense of homesickness. It was a large room, evidently once the state bedroom of the house, signs of its past glory lingering in the elaborate gilt chandelier, the white wall-paper, strewed with golden wheat-ears, and the marble mantelpiece, with carvings of fruit at the sides. Now she saw with renewed clearness of vision the threadbare carpet, with a large ink-stain by the table, the rocking-chair with one arm gone, the place on the wall behind the sofa where the heads of previous boarders had left their mark.
“Your clock don’t go,” said the cherubic boy in a loud voice. “I’ve tried to make it, but it only ticks a minute and then stops.”
“There!” said Mrs. Garcia, with a gesture of collapsed hopelessness, “he’s been at your clock! I knew he would. Have you broken her clock?” fiercely to the boy.
“No, I ain’t,” he returned, not in the least overawed by the maternal onslaught. “It were broke when it came.”
“He did break it,” said the other boy suddenly. “He opened the back door of it and stuck a hairpin in.”