“It’s been lovely, all of it,” Sara murmured, curled in a heap of cushions on the floor by Helen’s low chair. She laid her long, beautiful artist’s hand on Helen’s. “It’s terrible to see things end.”
The fire settled together with a soft, snuggling sound. In the dusk Willetta’s face was dimly white, and the little spark of red on Anne’s cigarette-tip glowed and faded. They sat about the dying fire in a last communion of understanding that seemed threatened by the darkness around them. Already the room had taken on something of the forlornness of all abandoned places, a coldness and strangeness shared in Helen’s mind by the lands to which she was going, the unknown days before her.
The dull ache at her heart became pain at a sudden memory of Paul’s face. She straightened in her chair, closing her fingers more warmly around Sara’s.
“I’m sure of one thing,” she said earnestly. “It hurts to—to let go of anything beautiful. But something will come to take its place, something different, of course, but better. The future’s always better than we can possibly think it will be. We ought to know that—really know it. We ought to be so sure of it that we’d let go of things more easily, strike out toward the next thing. Like swimming, you know. Confidently. We ought to live confidently. Because whatever’s ahead, it’s going to be better than we’ve had. I tell you, girls, I know it is.”
She arrived breathlessly at the docks next day, rushing down at the last minute in a taxicab jammed with bundles. Sara and Willetta were part of the mad whirl of the morning, dashing with her to straighten out a last unexpected difficulty with the passports, hounding a delaying express company, telephoning finally for a taxicab to carry the trunks to the docks. Willetta had gone with it to see that the trunks got aboard; Sara had made coffee and toast and pressed them upon Helen while she was dressing. The telephone had rung every moment.
It was ringing again when Helen, clutching her bag, her purse, her gloves, slammed the door of the little house and ran down the stairs of Jones Street to the waiting cab. Bumping over the cobbles, with Sara beside her, and the bags, the hatbox, an armful of roses, the shawl-strapped steamer-rug, jostled in confusion about her, she looked through the plate-glass panes at San Francisco’s hilly streets, Chinatown’s colorful vegetable markets and glittering shops, Grant Avenue’s suave buildings, and felt nothing but a sense of unreality. Incredible that these would still be here when she was gone! Incredible that she was going, actually going!
“You have the keys, Helen dear?” Sara’s lips quivered.
“Yes—I think so.” She dug them from her purse. “Give them to Willetta for me, will you? I’m afraid I’ll forget. I hope she’ll be happy in the little house.” For the hundredth time she glanced at her wristwatch. “If you hear who it was that was telephoning, explain to them that I simply had to run or I’d miss the boat, won’t you dear? And you’ll write.” How inadequate, these commonplace little remarks! Yet what else could one say?
The taxicab stopped in the throng of automobiles about the wharves, the man must be paid, bags and steamer-rug and flowers pulled out. Willetta was there, laughing with tears in her eyes. The little Chinese woman was there and Anne and Mr. Hayden. She was surrounded, laughing, shaking hands, saying something, anything.
They were at the gangplank, across it, on the deck of the steamer now, in the packed crowd. All around them were tears and laughter, kisses, farewells. She was shaking hands again. Miss Peterson, the stenographer from the Post, was pressing a white package into her hands; two little girls from Telegraph Hill had come down to bring a hot, wilted bunch of weed-flowers; Mary O’Brien, from the settlement house she had written about, and others, acquaintances she had hardly remembered, men with whom she had danced at the Press Club—“Oh, Mr. Clark! How good of you to come—! Goodbye!—Goodbye!” “Hope you have a fine trip.” “Oh, thank you!—Thank you!—Goodbye!”
The whistle blew; the crowd eddied about her. A last hug from Sara, tremulous kisses, Willetta’s damp cheek pressed against hers, a sob in her throat. The last visitors were being hurried from the ship. Someone threw a bright paper ribbon, curling downward to the wharf. Another and another, scores of them, hundreds, sped through the sunshine, interlacing, caught by the crowd below, while others rose in long curves to the deck, till the steamer was bound to the shore by their rainbow colors.
Another whistle. Slowly, with a faint quivering of its great hulk, the ship awoke, became a living thing beneath her feet. The futile, bright strands parted, one by one, curled, fell into the water. The crowd below was a blur of white faces. Brushing her hand across her eyes, she found her own little group, Willetta, Anne, Sara, close together, waving handkerchiefs. Across the widening strip of water she waved her roses, waved and waved them till the docks were blots of gray and she could no longer see the answering flutter of white. The ship was slowly turning in the stream, heading out through the Golden Gate.
When the last sight of the dear gray city was lost, when the Ferry Tower, the high cliffs of Telegraph, the castle-like height of Russian Hill, the Presidio, Cliff House, the beach, had sunk into grayness on the horizon, she went down to her stateroom. It was piled with gifts, long striped boxes that held flowers, baskets of fruit, square silver-corded packages that spoke of bonbons, others large and small. She had not known that so many people cared.
A blind impulse had brought her into this little place where she could lock a door behind her and be alone. She had felt that she could give way there to all the tears she had not shed. But she felt only
