Part 12

Viola had spent the morning in the garden, sitting under the great fig-tree, sewing. The house was unbearable to her, and she wondered why her father had chosen to remain there, working methodically over an old solitaire he was trying to recall. Late in the afternoon, her work done, she resolved to go out for a walk. Entering the sitting-room with her hat and gloves in her hand, she found the colonel still sitting at the table, upon which the cards were arranged in twelve neat piles. He had mastered the solitaire, and now refused to accompany her on the ground that he had an engagement to teach it to Corinne, who had that day gone to school for the first time. He seemed to be looking forward to the few hours of the child's society that the afternoon would give him, and had set forth on a corner of the table a little feast of cookies and fruit with which to regale her when the solitaire became irksome. Viola was not sorry that he would not come. She liked being alone, with nothing to interrupt the aimless flow of her thoughts.

The air was clear, fresh, and fine. The languor of the warm weather was gone, and the girl, as she fared toward one of the little plazas which at intervals interrupt the passage of the long streets, felt the promise of autumn. Sitting on a bench in the plaza, she looked out over the city, and caught a glimpse of the sparkle of the river at the end of an open vista, and, cutting into the thin pink of the sunset sky, roof beyond roof and chimney over chimney. The golden dreaminess of summer was over, with its brooding, purposeless inaction. The haze of churned-up yellow dust, was dispersed by a breath that held a prophecy of coming cold, sharp and imperious. There was a stir in the air, a promise in the flaring sky. Its light fell on Viola's face, and seemed to suddenly send a shaft into her deadened heart. She moved and looked up, almost as if some one had spoken to her. On the pallor of her lifted face the reflected glow shone like gilding.

The dead lethargy that had held her all summer seemed to be breaking. As she sat staring at the illuminated sky, her mind sprang back like a mended spring, past all the despair and struggle of the past three months to the life behind it, and then forward to the future. A rousing of energy, a sense of work to do, a return of force and will, ran through her in a brisk, revivifying current. The checked stream of her life seemed to burst the barrier that had held it and to move onward again.

There was work for every one, and work was the purpose of existence. She had claimed happiness as a right, demanded what is not to be; then, when the inexorable ruling will had interposed, had dropped from the ranks in the passion of a thwarted child. The glory and the dream--who realized them? Who of the millions about her had touched the happiness she had expected to seize and hold? Why should she be exempt from the grinding that forces the grain from the chaff? All yearned, aspired, dreamed, and yet, never achieving, lived on, learning their lesson of obedience. Only some bowed their necks to the yoke more quickly than others.

There was a second plane of life--a plane to which some were rudely hurled and some crept by degrees. Here you went sternly on, and did the work before you for its own sake, not for yours. And thus, in time, self might be conquered and its insistent cry for recognition be stifled. There was a corner in the world for every one, where they took their broken idols and set them up, and some day would look at them and smile over the anguish there had been when they fell.

The sunset deepened to a fine, transparent red, which looked as if it had been clarified of all denser matter. It gave a flush to Viola's upward-looking face. Her thoughts turned from the vague lines they had been following to closer personal ones. The love for her father, that had seemed frozen, gushed up in her heart. His face, with its wistful glance, came before her; a hundred instances of her past coldness rose in accusing memory. There was something better yet than work. Love--that was the axis of the world; that made life possible, and the sacrifice of self full of use and meaning; that was the key-note of the whole structure of existence.

She rose to her feet, and rapidly, with her old firm alertness of step, moved out through the plaza. She wanted to run, to find the old man and, taking his head in her arms, whisper her contrition. Through street after street her swift footfall woke sharp, decisive echoes. Her face had lost its look of dejection and was set in lines of firmness and resolution. People, as she passed, turned to look at her--at the young face so full of a steady purpose, at the eyes deep with a woman's aspirations. Her thoughts flew forward, high-strung, exalted, beating against the confining limits of time and space. She would take him back to San Francisco. They would go together. How had she had the heart to hurt him so! Now, all blindness swept away by the breaking down of her egotism, she knew what he had suffered.

It was almost dark when she reached the house, and as she went up the path from the gate she saw lights springing out here and there in the upper windows. In the passage to her own room she came upon Mrs. Seymour lighting the gas, her back toward the stair-head. The elder woman, hearing the girl's light step, turned with the match in her hand. Viola, still engrossed in her own thoughts, mechanically smiled a greeting. Mrs. Seymour's face, with the crude gaslight falling on it, was unresponsively grave.

"I'm glad that's you," she said; "I've had a sort of scare about your father."

"Scare!" exclaimed Viola, stopping with a start. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing for you to get frightened about. It's all over now. He had a sort of a sinking spell, that was all, when he was playing them cards with Corinne. She come out and hollered for me, and I come up and found him looking white and kind o' queerish. He said he'd only lost his breath. I gave him some brandy, and it seemed to pull him together all right. But I didn't, some way or other, like his looks. I sorter wished you was here."

Viola looked relieved.

"Oh, he's had that several times before. It's his heart, the doctor said; but he didn't seem to think it was anything serious. You frightened me."

Mrs. Seymour walked down the hall to the gas-jet by the stair-head.

"You don't want to get frightened," she said over her shoulder; "but I don't think you know much about sickness, and, if I was you, I'd get the doctor to-morrow."

"I'll do that anyway," said Viola, as she opened the door of the colonel's room.

The picture that she entered upon was reassuring. The lamp was lighted under its opaque yellow shade, and cast its chastened light over the center of the room. Here Corinne lay on the floor, the pack of cards spread out before her. In the intensity of her absorption she kicked gently on the floor with her toes, making a soft but regular tattoo. Near by sat the kitten, its tail curled neatly round its front feet, ink-black save for the transparent yellow-green of its large watching eyes. The colonel leaned over the arm of his chair, following the game as intently as the child. He was laughing when Viola came in, and pointing with a long forefinger at a possible move that Corinne had not seen. Both were so interested in their play that they did not heed the opening of the door. Viola stood in the aperture, regarding them with pleasure and relief. A slight smell of brandy in the air was the only indication that there had been sickness here a short time before.

At the sound of the closing of the door they both looked up. Over the colonel's visage the same childishly embarrassed expression flitted that Viola had noticed a few days before. Corinne, on the contrary, merely gave the newcomer the short side look of begrudged attention, and returned to the cards, murmuring, "It's only Viola."

The girl went across to her father, and taking his hand, curled her soft fingers around it in a warm, infolding clasp.

"Mrs. Seymour says you haven't been well," she said.

The unexpected caress made the old man forget the game, and his face flushed with pleasure. He leaned toward her with the content of a forgiven child.

"It was nothing--just a little turn like I had the other day. First a pain, and then something comes fluttering up near your throat. The heat knocked me out. But it scared Corinne."

"He got the color of the pitcher," said Corinne, not moving her eyes from the cards, but sparing enough time to give a jerk of her head in the direction of a white china water-pitcher on the table.

"You ought to have seen Corinne. She went out in the passage and made a noise as if there was a fire."

"I was scairt," said Corinne, "and hollered for mommer. I don't want you to scare me that way again, colonel."

The colonel and Viola laughed.

"I'll try and not have it happen again," said the old man. "You know, I always do what you tell me."

"Mostly always," Corinne absently agreed. "I'm going to put this ten-spot here. Look, colonel, isn't that the best move?"

The old man leaned forward, studying the contemplated move. Viola drew back, watching him. She had noticed his pallor when she came in. Now his face, settled into lines of gravity, appeared to have suddenly collapsed and withered into the gray hollows of decrepitude. Her heart contracted at the sight. She turned away, under the pretense of pulling off her gloves, and said:

"I made a plan when I was out this afternoon. I think you'll like it."

"Let's hear it," he said, turning back from the cards and watching her with a fond half-smile.

"Something I think you'll like--oh, ever so much!" She patted and pinched the limp gloves into shape, not looking at him.

"Hit me with it," he said. "Mrs. Seymour's just given me that glass half full of brandy; you can't expect me to guess after that."

"That we should go back to San Francisco."

Her news had more effect than even she had expected. The colonel sat up as if he had been struck, his lips quivering into a smile that he feared to indulge.

"Do you mean that, Viola? Do you really mean it?" he asked.

"Of course I do. I thought you'd like it."

"But do you like it? Do you want to go? Isn't there--wouldn't you rather stay here?"

"Oh, no." She struck lightly on the edge of the table with the gloves, avoiding his eyes. "I'd rather be there. We've had our little change, and we can go back. It's our home, anyway; and we've enough money to last for a long time yet."

"Of course we have, and it doesn't matter if we haven't." The old man's face burned with excitement and joy. "But the house is sold! Where shall we go? Oh, that doesn't matter, either. We can get rooms near there. You'd like to be back near the old place, wouldn't you? We could go to Mrs. Cassidy's; you know she rents her two back rooms on the second floor. Oh, Viola--to be back again!"

He sank back in his chair, his eyes half shut in the ecstasy of this sudden restoration to happiness.

"Just think of it!" he said. "To see the bay again, and Lotta's Fountain, and Montgomery Street! and to smell the sea outside the Golden Gate when the wind's that way! and to feel the fog! Viola, you don't know what I've suffered. I never meant to tell you."

"I know--I know now. But I didn't guess at first--truly, father, I didn't know at first."

"Why, of course not, honey--how should you? And it doesn't matter now. It's all over, and we're going to have the time of our lives. But it was awful, wasn't it? Everything was so lonesome and strange. And those dreadful people! But we won't have any more bother with them. When'll we start? Let's not waste any time."

Viola had turned away to the tall glass behind him, under the pretense of taking off her hat. She could not control her tears. As she stood, seeing her blurred image dark against the lamplight, she could hear the colonel babbling on, apparently too preoccupied to notice that she was not answering:

"It'll be warm when we get back--not this diabolical heat, but just soft and sunny. The hills will be all brown. Presently there'll be a smell of eucalyptus in the air, but that won't be till later, when the evenings are short. Oh, I'm so glad we're going back! It's like getting out of prison."

He was suddenly silent, and Viola heard him making a slight rustling movement in his chair. Then the room was very quiet, for Corinne had stopped beating with her toes. For a space Viola struggled with herself, biting her lips, and surreptitiously taking out her handkerchief and pressing it against her face. She was more afraid of the piercing eyes of Corinne than of her father, and when she had controlled herself sufficiently to be presentable, she looked in the mirror to see if Corinne had been observing her. Instead, she saw the child standing up some few steps away from the colonel, regarding him with an expression of keen, suspended intentness that was at once curious and fearful.

As Viola's eyes encountered the reflection, and read in it terror and alarm, Corinne spoke in a quick, frightened voice:

"Look at the colonel, Viola. He looks so queer. I don't like him."

Viola was at his side before the child had ceased speaking.

The colonel's head had dropped forward on his breast. A yellowish, waxen hue had spread over his face, and his eyes, cold and brooding, were staring straight before him.

"Father!" she said, touching his hand with a strange fearfulness she had never felt before.

The word sounded portentously loud in the deep, mysterious stillness that had settled on the room. Awe of something majestic and terrible clutched Viola's heart. As she stood staring, she heard the child screaming down the hall:

"Mommer! Mommer! the colonel's sick again, and his eyes are open. Oh, come quick--come quick!"

A moment later Mrs. Seymour's heavy footfall sounded at the doorway, and she entered panting. As her glance fell on the colonel, she gave a sharp sound.

"What is it?" whispered Viola, her tongue suddenly dry and stiff as a piece of leather. "He won't speak."

Mrs. Seymour stepped forward, and laying her hand on the colonel's eyes, softly closed the lids.

"He won't never speak no more, my dear," she said gently.

Viola looked at her with a wild and terrified face.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Seymour!" she cried. "Oh, no--oh, not that! We were just going away--we were going home! Oh, it couldn't be that; it's too cruel, it's too unnecessary. He wanted so to go! There was no harm in it. Why couldn't they have waited till we'd got home?"

She raised her hands to her head in a gesture of dazed despair, and fell senseless into Mrs. Seymour's arms.

VII

One week from the day Viola had told her father of their contemplated return to San Francisco, Colonel Reed had passed into a memory.

Death had come and gone so quickly--so terribly, bewilderingly quickly! Viola had hardly realized what had happened to so check and change the current of her life when the days had already sprung back to their monotonous routine, and the other boarders had laid aside the expressions of lugubrious solemnity which they had worn while death had hushed the house. Now, while she sat still and stupid in her room up-stairs, they told funny stories and "joshed" each other at dinner, as they had "joshed" the old pioneer a few weeks before. Even Corinne had returned to the doll and the kitten, though, out of consideration for Viola, she played with them furtively on the corner of the balcony, where, with the assistance of an old umbrella and a pair of towels, she had built herself what she called a house. One morning, stepping out upon the balcony, Viola came upon the child lying face downward and whispering to herself while she played the solitaire the colonel had taught her, with the pack of cards he had bought for her a few days before his death.

The waters of oblivion had closed without a ripple over the old pioneer. In the dingy boarding-house where he had spent the last months of his life his name was unknown, and his fellow-lodgers had come to regard the personal part of his reminiscences as figments of his imagination. So obscure had been his situation, so little trusted his own words, that his passing had not even been awarded the short newspaper notice that is evoked by the death of the most commonplace forty-niner. In the Sacramento boarding-house Colonel Reed was as a stranger in a strange land. Only his daughter, Mrs. Seymour, and Bart Nelson were the mourners at the funeral of the man who had once been one of the most extravagant and picturesque figures of California's brilliant youth.

At the end of the week Viola was to return to San Francisco. In her heart-sickness and desolation she had turned to her home as a cat does. After the first stunned bewilderment she woke to a sense of loneliness that chilled her to the marrow. The world seemed terribly wide and menacing as she stood thus hesitating on its verge. For the first time in her life she realized what it meant to be alone, to be thrown into that great maelstrom without a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on.

She had no intimates--few acquaintances, even. The houses and streets of San Francisco came to her mind with a more friendly aspect than the people. Mrs. Seymour had asked her if she should write to any one. She had answered that there was no one to write to. The good-natured landlady had gazed at the girl--looking so slight and pale in her somber draperies--with a frowning and fidgeted anxiety. She thought it a very hazardous thing to let this delicate creature, still half stupefied by a sudden blow, go away alone and unprotected into a city of strangers. But Viola insisted. To herself she kept reiterating, "I want to go home." It seemed to her as if the gaunt, gray city, crowded on its wind-swept hills, would welcome her with the silent, understanding love of a mother. It was the one friend she knew and trusted.

After the expenses of the colonel's funeral were paid and her score settled with Mrs. Seymour, she had still nearly one thousand dollars left. This to her represented a little fortune. Even without work she could live on it for several years. Economy had been the only completed branch in Viola's education, and in this she was as proficient as she was ignorant of all pertaining to business and the investment or disposal of money. If she could find employment she would put her money away--tie it up in an old glove, and hide it in the bottom of her trunk. Mrs. Seymour had refused to allow her to leave until she had positively arranged for a place of abode which would be waiting and ready for her. Under the direction of that sensible woman, Viola had written and engaged one of Mrs. Cassidy's upper back rooms--it being the only place of its kind in the city where she knew the people.

The evening before her departure the last leaf was added to this momentous and miserable Sacramento chapter. Meeting her in the sitting-room, Bart Nelson had detained her and made a halting and bashful offer of marriage. Viola, too stunned by the terrible surprise of the past week to have room for any more astonishment, had listened to him indifferently, and then politely but coldly refused him.

The young man seemed to be astonished. He looked at her incredulously.

"But--but," he stammered, "what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to San Francisco to-morrow," she answered, rather wearily, as she knew he was aware of her purpose.

"But what are you going to do when you get there?"

"I'm going to work at something."

"Work at something! What in the world can you work at? You look as if you hadn't strength enough to grind an organ! You must be crazy."

"I can work at anything," she said, almost absently. "Besides, I have money to live on, enough for a long time--several years."

He looked at her moodily, amazed by her indifference.

"It would be a hundred times better for you to stay here and marry me. I'd take care of you and support you. Ain't that better for a woman than scratching along by herself? Mrs. Seymour says you haven't got a friend in San Francisco."

"No; but I don't mind that. I don't want to marry. I don't ever want to."

"But isn't it better to have a man to work for you, and give you a nice comfortable home, and--well--of course, be fond of you, and all that--than to go off by yourself, trusting to luck to get work? You don't know what you're in for."

"Perhaps I don't. But truly, there's no use talking about it any more. I can't. I couldn't, no matter what happened. It was kind of you to think of me. Thank you, and good-by."

When she had gained her own room she stood among her scattered possessions, thinking. No one knew how terrifying her loneliness seemed to her. As she looked out at it now, so close at hand, to begin to-morrow, her heart sickened, and the bleakness of an encompassing world, all strange, all cold, all uncaring, seemed to encircle her. Were not protection, companionship, home, at any price, better than this? She recalled the young man's coarse but good-natured face, his passion shining through the businesslike phlegm of his manner, and uttered a vehement exclamation, at the same time making a gesture as though repulsing him. There were some things that even to a woman in her position were impossible.

The next day she started, turning her back on her father's grave, and her face toward the city where she had been born and yet had not a friend.

Had Mrs. Cassidy heard this stricture upon her lonely condition, she would have hotly denied it. Mrs. Cassidy told Viola that she would be at once a mother and a father to her, and Micky Cassidy, her son, would fill the various positions of male relations that, in Miss Reed's case, were as yet untenanted. The impulsive widow did her best to make the girl feel at home, and certainly offered Viola the consolation of shedding many tears with her, and of lauding the colonel's good qualities till even the girl's dulled emotions were roused, and she wept as she had not done since her father's death.

But her home-coming was sharpened with pangs that she had not reckoned on when her first longing to return to the city swept over her. Every step of her surroundings was reminiscent of her father and of their close companionship. All the byways held recollections of him, of small happenings that, at the time, had been pregnant with joy or anxiety, of little jokes they had had together. The shops they dealt at seemed as if they might at any moment disgorge his tall, angular figure, with its quick, decisive step, the old face alight with smiles as his eye fell on her.

One afternoon, after she had been home a week, she was returning from a walk, slowly traversing the familiar streets, absorbed in her own thoughts. So engrossed was she that, for the moment, the Sacramento interval, with all that it had held, was obliterated from her mind, and, walking loiteringly, she turned the accustomed corner and approached the house. Her suspension of memory lasted till she had her hand on the gate. Then, with a sudden, dizzying rush, the consciousness of the present returned. She felt faint and sick, and stood holding the gate-post and looking up at the house with a frightened face. When she had mastered herself she went home to her room at Mrs. Cassidy's and locked herself in. Mrs. Cassidy knocked at her door three times that evening, but Viola would not open it, even when the widow, through the keyhole, extolled the merits of the tea she had waiting on the tray.