BREAKS IN THE RAIN
“I had no time to hate because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so simple I
Could finish enmity.”
--DICKINSON.
For two days after her hysterical outburst Mariposa kept her room, sick
in body and mind. The quick succession of nerve-shattering events,
ending with the death of Shackleton, seemed to stun her. She lay on the
sofa, white and motionless, irresponsive even to the summons of the
boys, who drummed cheerfully on her door as soon as they came home from
school.
Fortunately for her, solitude was as difficult to find in that slipshod
_ménage_ as method or order. When the boys were at school, young
Mrs. Garcia, in the disarray that attended the accomplishment of her
household tasks, mounted to her first-floor boarder and regaled her
with mingled accounts of past splendors and present miseries. Mrs.
Garcia spoke freely of her husband and the affluence with which he had
surrounded her. The listener, looking at the faded, blond prettiness of
her foolish face, wondered how the Juan Garcia that Gamaliel Barron had
described could have loved her. Mariposa had yet to learn that Nature
mates the strong men of the world to the feeble women, in an effort to
maintain an equilibrium.
Once or twice the old señora came upstairs, carrying some dainty
in a covered dish. She had been born at Monterey and had come to
San Francisco as a bride in the late fifties, but had never learned
English, speaking the sonorous Spanish of her girlhood to every one she
met, whether it was understood or not. Even in the complete wreck of
fortune and position, in which Mariposa saw her, she was a fine example
of the highest class of Spanish Californian, that once brilliant and
picturesque race, careless, simple, lazy, happy, lords of a kingdom
whose value they never guessed, possessors of limitless acres on which
their cattle grazed.
The day after Shackleton’s death Mrs. Willers appeared, still aghast
at the suddenness of the catastrophe. Mariposa did not know that a few
days previously, Shackleton had acquainted the newspaper woman with
his intention of sending her to Paris with Miss Moreau, the post of
correspondent to _The Trumpet_ being assigned to her. It had been the
culminating point of Mrs. Willers’ life of struggle. Now all that lay
shattered. Be it said to her credit her disappointment was more for the
girl than for herself. She knew that Shackleton had made no definite
arrangements for the starting of Mariposa on her way. All had been _in
statu quo_, attending on the daughter’s recovery from her mother’s
loss. Now death had stepped in and forever closed the door upon these
hopes.
Mrs. Willers found Mariposa strangely apathetic. She had tried to cheer
her and then had seen, to her amazement, that the girl showed little
disappointment. That the sudden blow had upset her was obvious. She
undoubtedly looked ill. But the wrenching from her hand of liberty,
independence, possibilities of fame, seemed to affect her little. She
listened in silence to Mrs. Willers’ account of the Bonanza King’s
death. As an “inside writer” on _The Trumpet_ the newspaper woman had
heard every detail of the tragic event discussed threadbare in the
perturbed office. Shackleton had been found, as the paper stated,
sitting at his desk in the library at Menlo Park. He had been writing
letters when death called him. His wife had come in late at night and
found him thus, leaning on the desk as if tired. It was an aneurism,
the doctors said. The heart had been diseased for years. No one,
however, had had any idea of it. Poor Mrs. Shackleton was completely
prostrated. It was not newspaper talk that she was in a state of
collapse.
“And it was enough to collapse any woman,” said Mrs. Willers, with a
sympathetic wag of the head, “to come in and find your husband sitting
up at his desk stone dead. And a good husband, too. It would have
given me a shock to have found Willers that way, and even an obituary
notice in the paper of which he was proprietor could hardly have called
Willers a good husband.”
Two days’ rest restored Mariposa to some sort of balance. She still
felt weak and stunned in heart and brain. The lack of interest she
had shown to Mrs. Willers had been the outward sign of this internal
benumbed condition. But as she slowly dressed on the morning of the
third day, she felt a slight ripple of returning life, a thawing of
these congealed faculties. She heard the quick, decisive step of
Barron in the hallway outside, and then its stoppage at her door, and
his call through the crack, “How are you this morning? Better?”
“Much,” she answered; “I’m getting up.”
“First-rate. Couldn’t do better. Get a move on and go out. It’s a day
that would put life into a mummy. I’d take you out myself, but I’ve got
to go down town and lasso one of my victims.”
Then he clattered down the stairs. Mariposa had not seen him since
their supper together. Every morning he had stopped and called a
greeting of some sort through the door. She shrank from meeting him
again. The extraordinary remark she had made to him haunted her. The
only thing that appeased her was the memory of his face, in which there
was no consciousness of the meaning of her words, only consternation
and amaze at the effect his news had produced.
It was, indeed, a wonderful day. Through her parted curtains she saw
details of the splendor in the bits of turquoise sky between the
houses, and the vivid greens of the rain-washed gardens. When the sun
was well up, and the opened window let in delicious earth scents, she
put on her hat and jacket and went out, turning her steps to that high
spine of the city along the crest of which California Street runs.
Has any place been found where there are finer days than those
San Francisco can show in winter? “The breaks in the rain,” old
Californians call them. It is the rain that gives them their glory,
for the whole world has been washed clean and gleams like an agate
beneath a wave. The skies reflect this clearness of tint. There are no
clouds. The whole arch is a rich blue, fading at the horizon to a thin,
pale transparency. The landscape is painted with a few washes of fresh
primary colors, each one deep, but limpid, like the tints in the heart
of a gem. And in this crystalline purity of atmosphere every line is
cut with unfaltering distinctness. There is no faintness, no breath
of haze, or forgotten film of fog. Nature seems even jealous of the
smoke wreaths that rise from the city to blur the beauty of the mighty
picture, and the gray spirals are hurriedly dispersed.
Mariposa walked slowly, ascending by a zigzag course from street to
street, idly looking at the houses and gardens as she passed. People
of consideration had for some time been on the move from South Park to
this side of town. The streets through which the young girl’s course
led her were now the gathering place of the city’s successful citizens.
On the heights above them, the new millionaires were raising palaces,
which they were emulating on the ascending slopes. Great houses reared
themselves on every sunny corner. The architecture of the bay-windowed
mansion with the two lions sleeping on the front steps had supplanted
that of the dignified, plastered-brick fronts, with the long lines of
windows opening on wrought-iron balconies.
These huge wooden edifices housed the wealth and fashion of the
city. Mariposa paused and stood with knit brows, looking down from a
vantage-point on the glittering curve of greenhouse and the velvet
lawns of Jake Shackleton’s town house; there was no sign of life or
occupation about it. Curtains of lace veiled its innumerable windows.
Only in the angle of lawn and garden that abutted on the intersection
of two streets, a man, in his shirt-sleeves, was cutting calla lilies
from the hedge that topped the high stone wall which rose from the
sidewalk.
Finally, on the crest of the hill, where California Street runs between
its palaces, the girl paused and looked about her. The great buildings
were new, and stood, vast, awe-compelling monuments to California’s
material glory. Their owners were still trying to make themselves
comfortable in them. There were sons and daughters to be married from
them. Perched high above the city, in these many-windowed aeries, they
could look down on the town they had seen grow from a village in the
days when they, too, had been young, poor and struggling. What memories
must have crowded their minds as they thought of the San Francisco they
had first seen, and the San Francisco they saw now; of themselves as
they had been then, and as they were now!
Mariposa leaned against a convenient wall top and looked down. The city
lay clear-edged and gray in the cup made by its encircling hills. It
had not yet thrown out feelers toward the Mission hills, and they rose
above the varied sweep of roof and chimney, in undulating greenness,
flecked here and there by the white dot of a cottage. The girdle of the
bay shone sapphire-blue on this day of still sunshine. From its farther
side other hills were revealed, each peak and shoulder clear cut
against its neighbor and defining themselves in a crumpled, cobalt line
against the faint sky. Over all Mount Diavolo rose, a purple point,
pricking up above the green of newly grassed hills, about whose feet
hung a white fringe of little towns.
Turning her eyes again on the descending walls and roofs, the watcher
saw a long cortège passing soberly between the gray house-fronts on a
street a few blocks below her. As she looked the boom of solemn music
rose to her. It was a funeral, and one of unusual length, she thought,
as her eyes caught the slow line of carriages far back through breaks
in the houses. Presently, in the opening where two streets crossed,
the hearse came into view, black and gloomy, with its nodding tufts of
feathers and somberly caparisoned horses. Men walked behind it, and the
measured music swelled louder, melancholy and yet inspiring.
Suddenly she realized whose it was. The rich man was going splendidly
to his rest.
“My father!” she whispered to herself. “My father! How strange! how
strange!”
The cortège passed on, the music swelling grandiosely and then dying
down into fitful snatches of sweetness. The long line of carriages
moved slowly forward, at a crawling foot-pace.
The daughter leaned on the coping of the wall, watching this last
passage through the city of the father she had known so slightly and
toward whom she felt a bitter and silent resentment.
She watched the nodding plumes till they were out of sight. How
strangely death had drawn together the three that life had separated!
In six months the woman and two men, tied together by a twist of the
hand of Fate, had been summoned, one after the other, into the darkness
beyond. Would they meet there? Mariposa shuddered and turned away. The
black plumes had disappeared, but the music still boomed fitfully in
measured majesty.
The whistles were blowing for midday when she retraced her steps to the
Garcia house. As she mounted the stairs to the front door she became
aware that there were several people grouped on the balcony, their
forms dimly visible through the grimy glass and behind the rampart
of long-stemmed geraniums that grew there in straggling neglect. The
opening of the outer door let her in on them. She started and slightly
changed color when she saw that one of the figures was that of Gamaliel
Barron. He was sitting on the arm of a dilapidated rocker, frowningly
staring at Benito, the younger Garcia boy, against whom, it appeared, a
charge of some moment had just been brought. The case was being placed
before Barron, who evidently acted as judge, by a person Mariposa had
not seen before--a tall, thin young man of some thirty years, with a
stoop in the shoulders, a shock of fine black hair, and a pair of very
soft and beautiful blue eyes.
They were so preoccupied in the matter before them that no effort was
made to introduce the stranger to Mariposa, though Barron offered her
his armchair, retiring to a seat on the balcony railing, whence he
loomed darkly severe, from among the straggling geraniums. Benito,
in his sailor collar and wispy curls, maintained an air of smiling
innocence, but Miguel, the elder boy, who was an interested witness,
bore evidence of uneasiness of mind in the strained attention of the
face turned toward Barron.
Mariposa paused, her hand on the back of the rocking-chair. Benito
had already inserted himself into her affections. She looked from one
to the other to ascertain his offense. Both men were regarding the
culprit, Barron with frowning disapproval, the other with eyes full
of amusement. It was he who proceeded to state the case against the
accused:
“She leaned over the railing and said to me, ‘Them little boys will
be sick if they eat that crab.’ ‘What crab and what little boys?’ I
asked, quite innocently, and she answered, ‘Them little boys in the
vacant lot!’ Then I turned and saw Benito and Miguel squatting in the
grass among the tomato cans and fragments of the daily press, with a
crab that they were breaking up between them, a crab about as big as a
cart-wheel.”
“We found it there,” said Benito. “It were just lying there.”
“‘If they eat that crab,’ the lady continued, ‘they’ll be sick. It
ain’t no good. I threw it out myself. And I’ve been hollerin’ to them
to stop, and that little one with the curls, just turned round on me
and says, “Oh, you go to the devil!”’”
The complainant paused, looked at Mariposa with an eye in which she saw
laughter dancing, and said:
“That’s rather a startling way for a gentleman to speak to a lady,
isn’t it?”
Though the language used by the accused was hard to associate with his
cherubic appearance, and had somewhat shocked Mariposa’s affection,
she could hardly repress a smile. Benito grinning, as if with pride
at the prowess he had shown in the encounter with the strange female,
looked at his brother and emitted an explosive laugh. Miguel, however,
had more clearly guessed the seriousness of the offense, and looked
uneasy. Barron was regarding the younger boy with unmoved and angry
gravity. Mariposa saw that the man was not in the least inclined to
treat the matter humorously.
“Did you really say that, Benito?” he said.
“Well,” said Benito, swaying his body from side to side, and fastening
his eyes on a knife he had carelessly extracted from his pocket, “I
didn’t see what she had to do with that crab. It was all alone in the
vacant lot. How was we to know it was her crab?”
“But,” to Miguel, “she told you before not to touch it, that it was
bad, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” returned the elder boy, exceedingly uncomfortable. “She come and
leaned over the railing and hollered at us not to touch it, that it was
bad and it ’ud make us sick. Then I stopped ’cause I didn’t want to get
sick. But Ben wouldn’t, and she hollered again, and then he told her to
go to the devil, and Mr. Pierpont came along just then, and she told
him, and Ben got skairt and stopped.”
There was a moment’s silence. The younger boy continued to smile and
finger his knife, but it was evident he was not so easy in his mind.
The stranger, now with difficulty restraining his laughter, turned
again to Mariposa and said:
“If the lady had been in any way aggressing on the young gentleman’s
comfort or convenience, it would not have been exactly justifiable, but
comprehensible. But when you consider that her sole desire was to save
him from eating something that would make him sick, then you begin to
realize the seriousness of the offense. Oh, Benito, you’re in a bad
way, I’m afraid!”
“I ain’t nothing of the kind,” said Benito, smiling and showing his
dimples. “I ain’t done nothing more than Miguel.”
“I didn’t tell her to go to the devil,” exclaimed Miguel, in a loud,
combative voice.
“’Cause I said it first,” replied his brother, calmly. “You didn’t have
time.”
“Well, Benito,” said Barron, “I’ve got no use for you when you behave
that way. There’s no excuse for it. You’ve used the worst kind of
language to a lady who was trying to do a decent thing. I won’t take
you this afternoon.”
The change on Benito’s face was sudden and piteous. The smile was
frozen on his lips, he turned crimson, and said stammeringly, evidently
hardly believing his ears:
“To see the balloon? Oh, Uncle Gam, you promised it for a week. Oh, I’d
rather see the balloon than anything. Oh, Uncle Gam!”
“There’s no use talking; I won’t take a boy who behaves that way. I’m
angry with you.”
The man was absolutely grave and, Mariposa saw, spoke the truth when
he said he was angry. The boy was about to plead, when probably a
knowledge of the hopelessness of such a course silenced him. With a
flushed face, he stood before the tribunal fighting with his tears,
proud and silent. When he could no longer control them he turned and
rushed into the house, his bursting sobs issuing from the hallway.
Miguel charged after him.
“Oh, poor little fellow!” cried Mariposa; “how could you? Take him to
see the balloon; do, please.”
Barron made no reply, sitting on the railing, frowning and abstracted.
She turned her eyes on the other man. He was still smiling.
“Barron’s bringing up the boys,” he said, “and he takes it hard.”
“If I didn’t,” said the man from the railing, “who would? Heaven knows
I don’t want to disappoint the poor little cuss, but somebody’s got to
try and keep him in order.”
“Can’t you punish him some other way? He’s been talking about seeing
the balloon for days.”
“I wish to goodness I’d somebody to help me,” said the judge moodily;
“I’m not up to this sort of work. It makes me feel the meanest thing
that walks to get up and punish a boy for things that are just what I
did when I was the same age. But what’s a man to do? I can’t see those
children go to the devil.”
The howls of Benito had been rising loudly from the house for some
minutes. They now suffered a sudden check; there was a quick step in
the hall and Mrs. Garcia appeared in the doorway, red and angry. Benito
was at her side, eating a large slice of cake.
“What d’ye mean, Gam Barron,” she said in a high key, “by making my
son cry that way? Ain’t you got no better use for your time than to
tease and torment a poor, little, helpless boy, who’s got no father to
protect him?”
“I wasn’t teasing him, Elsie,” he answered quietly; “I only said I
wouldn’t take him out this afternoon because he behaved badly.”
“Well, ain’t that teasing, when you promised it for a week and more?
That’s what I call a snide trick. It’s just because you want to go
somewhere else, I know. And so you put it off on that woman and the
crab. Much good she is, anyway; I know her, too. Never mind, my baby,”
fondly to Benito, stroking his hair with her hand, “mother’ll take you
to see the balloon herself.”
Benito jerked himself away from the maternal hand and said, with his
mouth full of cake:
“I don’t want to go with you; I want to go with Uncle Gam. He lets me
ride in the goat-cart and buy peanuts.”
“You’ll go with me,” said Mrs. Garcia with asperity, “or you’ll not go
at all.”
“I don’t want to go with you,” said Benito, beginning to grow
clamorous; “I don’t have fun when I go with you.”
“You’ll go with me, or stay home shut up in the cupboard all afternoon.”
“I won’t; no, I won’t.”
Benito was both tearful and enraged. His mother caught his hand and,
holding it in a tense grip, bent her face down to his and said with set
emphasis:
“Do you want to stay all afternoon in the kitchen cupboard?”
He struggled to be free, reiterating:
“No, I don’t, and I ain’t goin’ to. I think you’re real mean to me; I
ain’t goin’ to go nowhere with you.”
“You mean, ungrateful little boy,” said his parent, furiously, shaking
the hand she held. “Don’t talk back to me. You’ll go with me this
afternoon and see that balloon if I have to drag you all the way. Yes,
you will.”
“I won’t,” roared Benito, now enraged past all control; and in
his frenzy to escape he kicked at his mother’s ankles through her
intervening skirts.
This was too much for Mrs. Garcia’s feelings as a mother. She took her
free hand and boxed Benito smartly on the ear. Then for a moment there
was war. Benito kicked, roaring lustily, while his mother cuffed. The
din of combat was loud on the balcony, and several of the geranium pots
were knocked over.
It remained for Barron to descend from the railing and drag the boy
away from his wrathful parent.
“Here, stop kicking your mother,” he said peremptorily; “that won’t do
at all.”
“Then make her stop slapping me,” howled Benito. “Ain’t I got a right
to kick back? I guess you’d kick all right if you was slapped that way.”
“All right,” said his mother from the doorway, “next time you come to
me, Benito Garcia, to be taken to the circus or the fair, you’ll find
out that you’ve barked up the wrong tree.”
“I don’t care,” responded Benito defiantly; “grandma or Uncle Gam will.”
Five minutes after her irate withdrawal she reappeared, calm and
smiling, the memory of her recent combat showing only in her heightened
color, and announced that lunch was ready.
At lunch the stranger was introduced to Mariposa, and she learned that
he was Isaac Pierpont, a singing teacher living in the house.