Murder -- Fiction; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
The dull gray light that had chilled shore and sea began to take on a
warmer glint. I knew the east was growing rosy. And still she did not
come. The fishing-boats began to go out, and at my back I heard the
first murmur of the city stirring out of sleep. Two of the fishermen,
Italians, stood on the wharf and stared at my carriage curiously, but I
hardly noticed them. I felt as if I were outside of all the world, and
everything usual that could happen.
The wind was freshening, picking up whitecaps on the bay, and presently
I noticed that the lugger had shifted her position, had moved out a
little from under the lea of the hill, and I saw they were running up
sail on board. One large flapping white wing, and then another, rose
and spread beyond the trees. I could even hear the piping sound of the
sailors' voices; and then, with a veering and a tilting, and finally
with a graceful bowing motion, she stood away from the hill and began
to go out to sea.
Beautiful sight that it was I looked at it with despair. I could not
believe it. How had the Spanish Woman got on board without my seeing
her? Could she have slipped along through the bewildering shadows and
so evaded me; or had she gone on board even before I had come? but, no,
that couldn't be, for then the lugger could have sailed immediately, I
thought, as I stood on the step of the carriage and watched the ship
carrying my last hope swing round and dip her nose deep in the channel
tide.
"There is only one chance," I said to myself. "Perhaps she will have
left some word for him behind her at the house."
The thought had no sooner come into my mind than it possessed me with
the conviction that this must be so. For when I remembered her looks
and her words to me as she talked of him I felt sure that nothing could
make her quite desert him, even though he had disappointed her. The
idea of her house which a little while ago had terrified me, came now
like an inspiration. I did not know what I should do or say when I
reached it, "But something will tell me what to do when I am there," I
thought, as we retraced our way over the floundering track of the hills.
When, for the second time that morning, I found myself in front of the
Spanish Woman's gate, I sprang out of the carriage without a moment's
hesitation. I told the man to drive back to our house on Washington
Street and tell Mr. Fenwick there that I wanted him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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