Part 14

The Italian and Spanish quarter was even more interesting. It was farther round, on one of the steepest faces of the hill. The streets seemed to share the characteristics of their occupants. They all started out bravely from the level ground, ascended for a few energetic blocks, then gave up the effort and appeared to lazily collapse in a debris of unkempt houses and squalid yards. But no one seemed to care. A tranquil indifference pervaded the quarter. Only the old houses--grave, stucco-fronted dwellings, with long windows under floriated cornices, and iron balconies skirting the upper stories--had the air of looking out on this degradation of the once prosperous region with the sad, patient dignity of a broken old age. Here and there, too, stood those dwellings, relics of Spanish taste, which maintain a secret and arresting suggestion of mystery. They are ramparted from vulgar eyes by a high plaster wall, which, through a curved archway, gives egress up a flight of steps. All is dark, mossy, and quiet. Over the top of the wall great strands of ivy hang, and only an angle of windowed roof rises above the sheltering cypress- and pepper-trees.

But through decay, poverty, and dirt the love of beauty still spoke. It met Viola's eye and gave her its message in the touch of green, in the brilliant blossom that rejoiced in its existence on balcony-rail and window-ledge. Flowers were the one ornament that was cheap. They hung from windows, and stretched out frail blossoms from shadowed angles. They grew bushily in glad luxuriance on sunny roofs, and put forth buds of perfect beauty behind broken, grimy panes. When the sun touched them they bloomed, bravely, splendidly, prodigally, giving forth their best. Old verandas, sagging under their weight of decrepitude and household overflow, held their gardens. In the most menacing of the alleys there was the gleam of flower and leaf from starch- and soap-boxes on the ledges below unwashed, unshuttered casements. Viola had seen children leaning over the sills as they searched with pouting, busy gravity for a bud to pluck; and sometimes she caught a glimpse of the coarse, painted face of some humble Aspasia of the quarter bending over her window-garden, where the flowers bloomed as luxuriantly for her as they did for the children on the floors above.

With the advance of winter and its multiplying gaieties, Viola's engagements at the florist's grew more and more frequent, her hours longer. Her employer realized that she was a more than ordinarily valuable acquisition, and constantly demanded the assistance of her skill and taste. She was often detained till long after dark, when she made a weary way up the hill to the cold dinner that had been awaiting her since six o'clock. On one of these nights, at the beginning of the rainy season, she walked past her destiny unseeing and unsuspecting.

It had been a lowering day. The clouds lying low and gray over the city bulged with rain which did not fall. The wind was moist and sweet, smelling as if it had blown over miles of rich earth, quick with germinating seed. People were out with umbrellas, and the children as they came home from school were protected by mackintoshes and rubbers.

* * * * *

Gault, walking up Kearney Street in the gray of the late afternoon, observed his sister-in-law's coupé standing at the curb before a popular confectioner's. As he approached, Letitia emerged from the shop, her hands full of small boxes, and crossed the sidewalk to the carriage. He encountered her half-way, and paused with her by the carriage door for a moment's greeting. Gault did not see as much of his brother's household as formerly. They knew of Viola Reed's disappearance; and Letitia from delicacy and Maud from a sense of guilty embarrassment refrained from urging him to reëstablish himself on the old footing of careless intimacy.

He said now, in response to Letitia's query why he absented himself so much, that he was getting old and had to go to bed early. "For beauty sleep, you know," he added, looking at her with his eyes smiling behind his glasses. "You don't need that, do you, Tishy? Hullo, there's the rain!"

The first drops, swollen, slow, and reluctant, spotted the pavement. The air felt curiously damp, and had a languid softness in its touch.

Letitia looked up at the low-hanging clouds, and a drop fell on her cheek.

"Yes, there it is," she said. "Get in the carriage and come home to dinner, John. No one will be there--just ourselves."

He said he had an engagement for dinner.

"Well, then, get in the carriage and drive with me down to South Park, where I have a message to give a scrub-woman. I've got something I want to say to you."

He obediently entered, and the coachman turned the horses' heads in the direction of South Park.

The afternoon had suddenly darkened as if a pall had been unfurled across the sky. The streets without had burst into a forest of umbrellas, already shining, and agitated with curiously unsteady movements as the bearers hurried this way and that. The rain was still falling slowly, but the drops were large. A little flurry of wind lashed the window with them as the coupé made its way through the mêlée of vehicles and over the car-tracks at Lotta's Fountain. An eery, yellowish light seemed to be diffusing itself from the horizon, and to have crept along under the dark cope of the storm.

Letitia leaned forward, looking out at the figures of the passers-by, butting against the wind with lowered umbrellas, and then jerking them aside and giving a scared look up and down for a threatening car. Gault, leaning back, could see her profile clearly defined against the pale square of the window. On the little seat in front of them she had dropped all her parcels, and a bunch of violets that she had thrust into a convenience for that purpose filled the carriage with its soft and subtle fragrance. Outside, the bells of the cars clanged furiously, and at moments the rain was dashed against the window and then diverted.

"Well, Tishy," he said, "what's the communication you're going to make? As far as I know, when a lady speaks solemnly of having an important matter to impart, it only means one thing."

"What's that?" asked Letitia, without responding to the raillery of his tone.

"That she is going to be married."

"Well, that's just it," she answered, and continued to look out of the window.

"What?"

Gault leaned forward and tried to see what her face revealed. It was handsome as ever, calm and imperturbable.

"That's just it," she repeated, turning toward him and letting her eyes dwell gravely on his. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Tishy!" he ejaculated. "Why, you amaze me!"

"Why should I?" she queried. "Everybody gets married sometime or other."

"I know, but--who is it?"

"Tod McCormick."

"Oh, Letitia!" he exclaimed in quite a different tone--a man's tone of sudden revolt and protest. "Tod McCormick?"

"Yes, of course, Tod McCormick. I should think you would have guessed him in a minute."

"He's the last person I ever should have thought of."

"Well, isn't that odd! Everybody knows Tod's been fond of me. It's been going on for years--five or six, I should think."

"A woman doesn't marry a man because he happens to be fond of her. She marries a man because she happens to be fond of him."

"She sometimes does--if she's very lucky, and things turn out exactly right. But things don't often turn out exactly right. Besides, I like Tod."

"Yes--like him, of course. Everybody likes him. Maud likes him, and Mortimer, and, I've no doubt, hundreds of other people. But liking's a poor sort of thing to marry on. It's a bad substitute for love. A woman ought to love the man she marries."

"Yes, I suppose she ought; and in novels she always does--unless she hates him terribly. But in real life girls don't love or hate so desperately as all that. We just go along easily, taking things as they come."

"Why are you going to marry him, if you don't love him?" he asked in a tone of irritation.

"I think it's better to marry. You see, there isn't really anything else for a girl like me to do. Besides,--don't misunderstand me,--I tell you I like him very much."

He ignored the remark and said:

"I don't see what you want to marry for at all. Wait till the right man comes along."

"Oh, the right man!" she answered, with a little laugh which was the nearest approach to a bitter laugh he had ever heard from her. "That's what they keep telling us. But we may have met the right man, and he's never found out that he was the right man, or perhaps hasn't felt that we were the right woman."

"A man must be a fool if he can't see when a woman cares for him," he answered.

For a moment Letitia looked silently out of the window; then she continued, but without turning her head: "Men seem to think that women can marry any one they want. We have to wait till we're asked. And the men that ask us are not always the men that we would like the best. Novelists would make you think a girl has nothing to do but make her choice from dozens of suitors who are all crazy about her. But that's not true--not in California, anyway. I've only had three real offers in my life, and I've got money, and"--she made a little pause, and then added bravely--"and I'm handsome."

Gault leaned forward, and, in a sudden élan of admiration for the honest, simple, strong-hearted creature, took her hand.

"Dearest Tishy," he said, "don't do this. Don't make a hasty marriage with a man who is--who is--not worthy of you."

Her hand remained motionless for a moment, and then she drew it away.

"Don't say that. Tod's quite worthy of me," she answered. "He's a first-rate fellow, but you never liked him, and so you never appreciated his good points. He's not good-looking, and that's made people misunderstand him."

Gault smothered a groan, and she went on:

"You asked me why I wanted to marry at all. There's nothing else for a woman in my position to do. I'm not bright. I can't do anything like writing, or painting, or making statues. All I do now is to help Maud when she has dinners, and talk to the dull people. And you know"--her voice dropping to a key of naïve confidence--"I sometimes feel that I'd like to have a home of my own--a house where I could do just what I liked, and have the sort of people I liked to dinner. Maud doesn't care for the kind of people I do."

"Why don't you have it, then? You're of age; you're financially independent. You can do exactly what you like. You seem to forget that this is the United States at the end of the nineteenth century."

"No, I don't forget; but that doesn't make it any easier for me. I can't go off and live all by myself. And think what a fuss Mortimer and Maud would make! It would drive Maud crazy if I did that. People would say I'd quarreled with her, and she can't stand people saying things like that. I don't like it, either. And it would hurt Mortimer's feelings dreadfully. He'd think I wasn't happy with them. You couldn't make him understand. Besides, I don't want to live in a house of my own all alone. I'd die of the blues. Think how dismal I'd be with nobody but servants and Chinamen!"

Gault looked out of the window near him and made no immediate response. The appearance of squalor which marked the street was intensified by the rain, which was now falling heavily. Already the pavements shone with the greasiness of well-tramped mud. Miserable pedestrians, without umbrellas and in scanty clothes, stood under the dripping projections before show-windows, looking out with yellow, dejected faces. Others plodded drearily onward, their heads lowered against the descending flood. Women passed, with bare, red hands gripping at their sodden skirts. In the depths of the dark interiors Gault had seen so often, lights were being kindled that shone like small red sparks in the thick, smothering gloom. Without turning from the window, he said:

"But why marry Tod? If you want liberty, a larger and more independent life, why not choose some one else?"

Letitia was silent for a moment. Then she said in rather an offended tone:

"There's nothing so dreadful about Tod. I don't like the way you speak about him. It sounds as if he was idiotic or deformed. I like him more than I do almost any one. I respect him, too. And then," she added, in one of her uncontrollable bursts of candor, "there's nobody else wants to marry me."

Gault gave an annoyed ejaculation. The carriage turned from the main thoroughfare and began jolting over the cobbles of a paved street.

"Then wait till somebody better does," he said. "Heavens, Letitia! to think of you, that I've always looked upon as a model of reason and sense and intelligence, throwing yourself away like this, when five-ten years from now will be time enough for you to marry."

"I'll be twenty-seven next month," replied Letitia, with her ruthless regard for veracity.

The carriage here stopped at a high-stooped porch, and the coachman, alighting, delivered Letitia's message. While they waited, silence rested between its occupants, and continued when they were once more rattling over the uneven cobbles toward the wider street they had recently left.

Darkness had settled by this time, and the lamps were breaking out in every direction, the long lines of the rain looking like threads of glass against their light. The force of the storm was augmenting. The drops beat on the top of the carriage with a drumming, pugnacious violence, and now and then dashed across the window. There were already pools in the hollows of the pavement, and from bent gutter-pipes long ribbons of water, torn by the gusts, sprang down on unwary passers-by.

Letitia took her handkerchief and rubbed away the moisture on the pane. She was looking out on the spectacle of the swimming streets with apparent interest. The conversation had not been resumed. She had nothing more to say, and Gault sat back in his corner immersed in silent thought. Once he had asked her if her engagement to Tod was a fully accomplished and recognized fact. To this she had replied that it was not, exactly, as Tod was to receive her final answer on the following Sunday, but that as far as she was concerned it was a settled thing.

Leaning back in the darkened corner, Gault bitterly inveighed against the social system which allows such a mismating; against the narrowing laws of conventionality which had fettered so strong a spirit as Letitia; above all, against that weakness of the woman which makes life alone so impossible to her unsufficing and dependent spirit. What a fate for this creature, so rich and tender in her splendid womanhood! Letitia to make such a marriage--Letitia, whom nature had designed to be some strong man's guide and solace, to be the queen of a gracious home, the mother of tall sons and blooming daughters! It was a sacrilege.

The carriage rolled out upon Market Street, amid a din of car-bells and the roar of intersecting streams of traffic. The outlines of the high newspaper buildings were hazy in the blur of the rain, but their illuminated windows seemed dotting the sky far up toward the zenith, where they burst into a splutter of lights. From every point cars seemed to be advancing, with their lanterns shooting rays through the wet, and stretches of pavement and pools of water gave forth sudden gleams. The whole scene, lights magnified and outlines erased by the rain, had a chaotic, broken effect of glaring radiance and softly dark, looming vagueness.

Letitia again rubbed the window and leaned forward. Her companion could see the outline of her head against the light, as if it were a silhouette backgrounded with gold-leaf. Why should he not marry her? Would he not be a better mate for her than the witless and sickly boy to whom she intended binding her blooming youth, for whom she would pour out the treasures of her heart and reveal the sacred places of a nature that he could never understand or appreciate?

She did not care for Tod. Her very assertions of a liking for him seemed to the man of the world proof of her indifference. He could make her care for him. He was certain of it. He was certain that even now she had more real affection for him--far removed from love though it was--than she had for the brainless lad who next Sunday would be her acknowledged fiancé.

What was the use of wasting a life in regrets for what was past, for what was irrevocably gone? Alone, he would go drearily on, forever dreaming of his lost paradise. He was so wretched in the isolation of his own accusing loneliness! Life was slipping by him unlived. The future loomed dark and terrible, bereft of hope and promise. He cowered before its vast, cold emptiness. There was nothing that offered him a refuge from its enveloping despair but an affection in which he could forget the might-have-beens that now were unforgettable. The dreariness of that long road would only be beguiled by a loved presence at his side, a soft hand in his. And he would make Letitia happy--a thousand times happier than she would be with Tod.

His thoughts reached an abrupt decision. He leaned forward.

"Letitia," he said, in a tone the low pitch of which did not conceal a peremptory note.

"Yes," she answered rather listlessly, without turning from the window.

"I have something to say to you."

"Is it that you're going to be married, too?" she asked, smiling.

"No--at least, I don't know. Listen to me. I want--"

She checked him with a sudden cry, and leaned forward, staring out of the window.

"Oh, John--wait! That girl! Did you see her? I'm almost sure it was Viola Reed."

In an instant every thought of Letitia had vanished from his mind.

"Where?" he said. "What girl? Which way did she go?"

"Look out of the back window," said Letitia, greatly excited. "Do you see her? A woman in black, walking quickly. I just caught a glimpse of her side face as she moved her umbrella, and it looked very like."

Through the small back window Gault saw the woman--a slender figure in black, the head bent forward under the fronting shield of her umbrella. As she passed a lamp he saw the gleam of blond hair. She was walking so rapidly that already she was some distance away. He pulled the strap, and the carriage came to a jolting halt.

"Letitia," he said, turning toward her and trying to speak quietly, "you'll excuse me, won't you? I'm going to get out. Yes, I'm going to follow her--I must. I don't know whether it's she or not, but it may be. Good night."

He was out and the door shut before Letitia could answer. As the carriage rolled on she turned and through the window followed his pursuing figure with eagerly interested eyes.

It was Viola. At the end of the block she turned into the florist's, where she had agreed to come and spend the evening helping Miss Gladys on some extra orders. She passed through the store into the room beyond, and, donning her black apron, was soon busy. The two girls were working and talking together when Gault stopped at the street door and swept the flower-scented interior with a searching gaze. He had done this at every shop on the block. Yet, though he went up and down, hunting in every corner, in every darkened doorway where she might possibly have sought shelter, she had disappeared as completely as if the passing glimpse of her had been a vision.

Letitia had evidently made a mistake. Slowly through the rain Gault walked home to his rooms.

It was two hours later when Viola started to leave the florist's. The storm was raging with all the malignant intensity of driving rain and a wind that lay in wait at corners and sprang upon the wayfarer. She made part of her journey on the electric car, but the long climb up the hill had to be accomplished on foot. About this high point the wind met few obstacles, and swept by, shouting hoarsely in the joy of its freedom.

It played with Viola like a cat with a mouse--at one moment swept her forward in a sail-like spread of skirt, at the next turned upon her, buffeting her furiously back against the streaming walls, tearing at her hat, driving the rain into her face, down her neck, up her sleeves. It seized her umbrella and whisked it this way and that, while she held its handle and helplessly followed its eccentric course. When half-way up the hill she was forced to shut it, and then, angry with her for thus terminating its sport, the wind concentrated its spiteful anger upon her.

It blew steadily in her face, except at the moments when she crossed an intersecting street. Then it seemed to blow from all points at once, seizing her and shaking her, whirling her about, throwing her against a gate or into the drenched, yielding leafage of a hedge, and then creeping up behind her and beating against her with a force that almost sent her on her face. Her clothes clung to her, saturated and heavy, confining her limbs with their clammy hold. The water streamed off her hat and oozed out of her shoes. Once she was forced to take shelter on a door-step, under the jutting roof of a balcony. From this she crept onward, clinging close to the walls, down which water ran in wide rills, and where long strands of creepers struck her with their wet leaves. Once in the cottage, she threw her clothes out of the window on the balcony, and crept shivering to bed.

The storm wore itself away in the course of the week, to be followed by an interval of bright weather, and then by other storms. There were short ones, when the rain came and went with a sudden rolling up of clouds and breaks of blue, and the sun burst out hopefully and licked up the moisture. There were long ones, when the rain fell in warm, rustling floods, copious but gentle, that assuaged the earth's thirst and poured down in silvery lances from a low, swollen sky. There were blustering ones, that lashed the windows and threshed against the pavements, flooded the sewers, and tried to force an entrance through opened casements and doors left ajar. And then the great, conscientious, businesslike ones, which went on day after day, oblivious of anything but their duty to thoroughly saturate the dry ground far down through its parched crust to where the seeds lay waiting for the moisture that was to give them life.

So the time wore on till Christmas began to loom close at hand, and all the town was agog with its holiday shopping.

Maud Gault and Letitia splashed about the dripping streets in a hired coupé, which returned from every trip full of packages. Mortimer went alone to Shreve's and bought his wife and sister-in-law costly surprises. John ordered his presents,--there were a good many of them,--all but the beautiful turquoise clasp for Letitia, which he selected himself. Tod gave his mother money to buy his sisters suitable gifts, but took with him a friend of acknowledged taste when he went to choose the necklet of small diamonds and emeralds that was to carry his greetings to the fortunate Miss Mason.

On Christmas eve Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Gault gave a large dinner for their sister, whose engagement to Mr. Theodore McCormick had been announced a short time before. Society had often predicted this finale to the attachment which it was known Mr. Theodore McCormick had long cherished for Miss Mason. Society did not concern itself about Miss Mason's sentiments on the subject. That Mr. Theodore McCormick was the only son of Jerry McCormick, one of the richest of the bonanza men, was supposed to be sufficient ground for Miss Mason to have been pleased and flattered by his choice of herself. Society regarded her as a very lucky girl.