—Whitman.
From the day when Mrs. Willers had appeared with the news of Shackleton’s interest in her daughter, Lucy’s health had steadily waned. The process of decay was so quiet, albeit so sure and swift, that Mariposa, accustomed to the ups and downs of her mother’s invalid condition, was unaware that the elder woman’s sands were almost run. The pale intensity, the coldness of the hand gripped round hers, that had greeted her account of the recital at the Opera-House, seemed to the girl only the reflection of her own eager exultation. She was blind, not only from ignorance, but from the egotistic preoccupations of her youth. It seemed impossible to think of her mother’s failing in her loving response, now that the sun was rising on their dark horizon.
But Lucy knew that she was dying. Her feeble body had received its coup de grâce on the day that Mrs. Willers brought the news of Shackleton’s wish to see his child. Since then she had spent long hours in thought. When her mind was clear enough she had pondered on the situation trying to see what was best to do for Mariposa’s welfare. The problem that faced her terrified her. The dying woman was having the last struggle with herself.
One week after the recital at the Opera-House she had grown so much worse that Mariposa had called in the doctor they had had in attendance, off and on, since their arrival. He was grave and there was a consultation. When she saw their faces the cold dread that had been slowly growing in the girl’s heart seemed suddenly to expand and chill her whole being. Mrs. Moreau was undoubtedly very ill, though there was still hope. Yet their looks were sober and pitying as they listened to the daughter’s reiterated asseverations that her mother had often been worse and made a successful rally.
An atmosphere of illness settled down like a fog on the little cottage. A nurse appeared; the doctors seemed to be in the house many times a day. Mrs. Willers, as soon as she heard, came up, no longer over-dressed and foolish, but grave and helpful. After a half-hour spent at Lucy’s bedside, wherein the sick woman had spoken little, and then only about her daughter, Mrs. Willers had gone to the office of The Trumpet, frowning in her sympathetic pain. It was Saturday, and Shackleton had already left for Menlo Park when she reached the office. But she determined to see him early on Monday and tell him of the straits of his old friend’s widow and child. Mrs. Willers knew the signs of the scarcity of money, and knew also the overwhelming expenses of sickness. What she did not know was that on Friday morning Mariposa had wept over her check-book, and then gone out and sold the diamond brooch.
The long Sunday—the interminable day of strained anxiety—passed, shrouded in rain. When her mother fell into the light sleep that now marked her condition, Mariposa mechanically went to the window of the bedroom and looked out. It was one of those blinding rains that usher in the San Francisco winter, the water falling in straight lances that show against the light like thin tubes of glass, and strike the pavement with a vicious impact, which splinters them into spray. It drummed on the tin roof above the bedroom with an incessant hollow sound, and ran in a torn ribbon of water from the gutter on the eaves.
The prospect that the window commanded seemed in dreariness to match the girl’s thoughts. That part of Pine Street was still in the unfinished condition described by the words “far out.” Vacant lots yawned between the houses; the badly paved roadbed was an expanse of deeply rutted mud, with yellow ponds of rain at the sewer mouths. The broken wooden sidewalk gleamed with moisture and was evenly striped with lines of vivid green where the grass sprouted between the boards. Now and then a wayfarer hurried by, crouched under the dome of an umbrella spouting water from every rib.
The gray twilight settled early, and Mariposa, dropping the curtain, turned to the room behind her. The light of a small fire and a shaded lamp sent a softened glow over the apartment, which, despite its poverty, bespoke the taste of gentlewomen in the simple prettiness of its furnishings. The nurse, a middle-aged woman of a kindly and capable aspect, sat by the fire in a wicker rocking-chair, reading a paper. Beside her, on a table, stood the sick-room paraphernalia of glasses and bottles. The regular creak of the rocking-chair, and an occasional snap from the fire, were the only sounds that punctuated the steady drumming of the rain on the tin roof.
A Japanese screen was half-way about the bed, shutting it from the drafts of the door, and in its shelter Lucy lay sleeping her light, breathless sleep. In this shaded light, in the relaxed attitude of unconsciousness, she presented the appearance of a young girl hardly older than her daughter. Yet the hand of death was plainly on her, as even Mariposa could now see.
Without sound the girl passed from the room to her own beyond. Her grief had seized her, and the truth, fought against with the desperate inexperience of youth, forced itself on her. She threw herself on her bed and lay there battling with the sickness of despair that such knowledge brings. Twilight faded and darkness came. In answer to the servant’s tap on the door, and announcement of dinner, she called back that she desired none. The room was as dark about her as her own thoughts. From the door that led into the sick chamber, only partly closed, a shaft of light cut the blackness, and on this light she fastened her eyes, swollen with tears, feeling herself stupefied with sorrow.