Calico Palace (57 page)

She realized that Dwight had paused expectantly.

She said, “Dwight, you’re so kind, so gallant! Coming here to see me when you must be the busiest man in town!”

Dwight smiled his appreciation. Marny had no notion of yielding at once; first she wanted to be sure he deserved her. She went on,

“I know how much you have to do, but I wonder if you could spare time to go out with me?”

His face brightened. “Why Marny, I’d do anything for you!” He took her hand in both of his. “Where do you want to go?”

“I’d like to have a look at the plaza. But I’m told there’s so much confusion in that neighborhood, I wouldn’t be safe going there alone.”

Dwight vehemently agreed with this. Of course she must not go there alone. Most positively not. He would go with her, and protect her.

—And show the town what a conquest he’s making, Marny thought with amusement. A man who wins a trophy is entitled to some renown.

She said, “Thank you so much, Dwight. It’s good of you. I’ll run up and put on my bonnet and shawl.”

He solicitously asked if she had mud-boots. Marny said yes, she had bought them here in the store because the boys had warned her that the plank sidewalks had burnt or broken in many places and the mud was deep. She promised Dwight she would wear them.

Standing before the glass in Mr. Fenway’s room, she decided that she looked well, considering what she had been through. She had bought the bonnet and shawl in the store. They were a pleasant shade of gray that set off her red hair; the bonnet had a green plume that matched her eyes, and she had bought gray kid gloves with pearl buttons. The rubber boots were not pretty, but her skirt would hide them except when she had to lift it to cross a miry spot. As she put on her gloves she smiled at her reflection, and went downstairs.

With a proud smile Dwight took her arm and escorted her through the main salesroom, bowing to acquaintances as he went. The men did not surround her now; with Dwight at her side they knew better. Dwight led her through the front doorway, into a day raw and cold and feathery with fog. They walked along Montgomery Street to the corner of Washington, and started up the hill toward Kearny Street and the plaza.

As they walked, Marny looked around her with amazement. She had known the men of the burnt area were rebuilding, but she had not dreamed how fast they were doing it. Kendra and Loren had given their Christmas party last Sunday; the fire had broken out before dawn Monday morning; today was Friday, and this was the first time since the fire that Marny had been in the street. Remembering the devastation she had seen as she sloshed through the mud in that bitter daybreak, she was almost awestruck.

The litter, the ashes, the pieces of buildings torn up to stop the fire, nearly all had been cleared away and wagons were busy hauling off the rest. Marny saw the frames of six or seven ready-made houses already standing on the sites of others lost in the holocaust. Workmen were fitting the doors and windows. The better buildings were being put up with less impatience, but several of these were under way. The air clanged with the noise of tools and the shouts of men wielding them. In lots still vacant, other men walked about, measuring, calculating, drawing plans.

As they reached the corner of Kearny Street she saw the Verandah, scorched but not hurt; and on the opposite corner she saw the beginning of a new El Dorado. Next door, men were unloading a wagon full of bricks on the site of the Parker House. Built of frame, the Parker House had burnt like brushwood; evidently they were going to make it stronger this time. On the site of Denison’s Exchange a two-story structure was already half done.

“How in the world,” she marveled, “can they do it so fast?”

With a smile of disdain Dwight answered, “Tarpaper and toothpicks.”

He told her the owners of Denison’s Exchange had made an arrangement with a contractor, signed before the ashes were cold. The contractor had promised to have a new building ready in sixteen days. If he met his contract they were to pay him two thousand ounces of gold; for every day over sixteen he was to forfeit part of his pay. “But the way it’s going,” said Dwight, “I shouldn’t be surprised if he gets it done in ten days instead of sixteen, and they’ll be in business. If,” he added with a shrug, “
if
a good wind doesn’t blow it down.”

—Or, thought Marny, if a dropped cigar doesn’t set it on fire again.

But though all this was dramatic, she had not come out to look at Denison’s or the Parker House or the El Dorado. She wanted to see what was being done about the Calico Palace, and as she tried to look farther along Kearny Street her view was hindered by these other structures and blurred by the fog. She told Dwight she would like to go nearer.

The Calico Palace was what Dwight wanted to show her. He warned her, however, that the plank sidewalk on Kearny Street had sizzled away in the fire, and while there had been no actual rain since then, in these fog-drenched days the mud simply could not get dry. They stood at Washington Street and Kearny, at the corner where the gamblers had sunk a line of stoves to make the crossing possible. Dwight asked her to wait here while he tested the footing.

Marny stayed where she was, standing on a hastily repaired piece of sidewalk in front of the Verandah. She watched Dwight as he made his way along. Dwight’s rubber boots came up to his knees, but he moved with care. Some of these puddles covered slush where a man could go down to his waist. “Well, Miss Randolph!” said a man’s voice at her side. Marny gave a puzzled start. Hardly anybody ever called her “Miss Randolph.”

Beside her stood Captain Pollock. He had his usual air of sturdy health, and he was well dressed, still in his dark blue seaman’s garb, crisply neat except for the mud on his boots. He had not taken off his cap. This surprised her a little. Most men in San Francisco uncovered their heads and bowed at the sight of any woman at all. Pollock gazed at her, not so much with anger as with angry triumph.

“So,” he said, “it has happened to you too.” Marny gave a sigh of annoyance. She would have liked to step off the sidewalk and go after Dwight, but she decided quickly that a minute with Pollock was better than the risk of stepping into a mudhole three feet deep. “Oh, let me alone,” she said to him. She added, “You silly fool.”

“I shall not detain you,” said Captain Pollock. “I was merely about to suggest that now you have some inkling of how I feel, when I look at the wreck of the
Cynthia.
”

“At least,” Marny returned, “I’m fighting. I’m building again. You won’t fight. You may as well go back to New York.” She had a sudden mischievous idea. “If you want to go back,” she said sweetly, “the
Oregon
leaves next week and I can sell you a ticket.”

Pollock regarded her with hatred. He gave her a slow, contemptuous smile. “As always,” he said, “queen of the mantraps.”

“Well, yes,” answered Marny. “And a pretty good one, if I do say so myself.”

At that moment she found Dwight Carson beside her again. Dwight had glanced around to see if she was being bothered, and at sight of Pollock he had hurried back. He took Marny’s arm. To Pollock he said,

“Careful, captain. You’re jumping a claim.”

Marny felt a little jolt in her mind. Dwight was mighty sure of himself, calling her a “claim” before she had even seen the new Calico Palace. She had not made him any promises and she was not going to make any right away. She thought he deserved her, but again, let him prove it.

Pollock was giving Dwight a coldly courteous bow. “I beg your pardon, sir.” He strode off, down the hill toward the waterfront.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” Dwight said to Marny, his voice full of regret. “Did that man say anything rude to you?”

“Oh no,” said Marny. “He just has a crack in his head. Scared to open an umbrella in the house, all that sort of thing. Hadn’t you heard?—he thinks I brought bad luck to his ship.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard that. He’s scared of red hair.” Dwight looked fondly at the coppery tendrils blowing around the brim of her bonnet. “Think of that. Just think of it.”

He glanced toward the bay, and the masts of the empty vessels barely visible through the fog.

“I doubt he could move that ship now,” Dwight remarked, “even with a first-class crew. Not without a lot of work, anyway. Stuck here since last spring, nobody taking care of her—by now I bet she’s splitting at the seams. But he shouldn’t worry, he’s making a living.”

“Doing what?” she asked with curiosity.

“He’s opened a brickyard, and bought part of a lumber company. Maybe not doing as well as if he still had his ship, but not suffering.” Dwight lost interest in Pollock.

Observing this, Marny said, “Oh, let’s forget him, Dwight. Show me what you’re doing about the Calico Palace.”

While Dwight held her arm protectively, and Marny with her free hand lifted her skirts above the mud, they crossed the road on the path of stoves and then made their way along the squashy roughness of Kearny Street. The street was full of men, hurrying, talking, arguing, panting as they pushed laden wheelbarrows through the muck. It was not an easy walk, but Marny enjoyed it. For now she saw what she had been looking for: Dwight’s carpenters rebuilding the Calico Palace. As she saw them she gasped with delight. The foundation was laid, a sturdy foundation of bricks and mortar, and the walls were on the way up.

“Oh, Dwight!” she cried happily.

He smiled down at her. “Like it?”

“Like it!” Marny repeated. She sighed with rapture. “So much done already. And that’s not tarpaper and toothpicks.”

“You’re mighty right it’s not,” he assured her. “This new building is going to be better than the old one. Thicker walls. Two staircases.”

Marny walked nearer, along a pathway of boards that the workmen had laid in the mud. She told him about the transparencies she had ordered from Bruno Gregg, and he told her about the iron shutters he was going to put at the doors and windows to keep the building safe from burglars after closing time. They stood talking until the twilight crept around them, and men began to carry lanterns in the street. As they walked back to Montgomery Street she asked,

“Where do you live, Dwight? You were not burnt out, were you?”

“No, I had good luck, didn’t lose anything. I used to live in a room over my office, but lately I’ve moved into that new hotel on Pacific Street, the Gresham.”

“Do you like it there?”

“Oh yes. I’ve got two rooms all to myself, one of them on a corner.”

“
Two
rooms!” she echoed in amazement. Most men in San Francisco, no matter how prosperous, had to share bedrooms with two or three others, as Norman was doing now at the St. Francis. Few were even so lucky as Hiram and Pocket, with one room occupied by only the pair of them.

Dwight nodded proudly. “And good solid walls,” he said. “Space. Privacy.”

Space and privacy were both so rare that Marny’s voice was almost reverent as she exclaimed, “How on earth did you manage to get two rooms of your own?”

“I built the hotel,” Dwight returned laughing, “with rooms for myself at one corner. That was part of the contract.”

Marny thought of Hiram and Pocket’s description of their room at the St. Francis—two bunks in a space eight feet by six, with paper-thin walls on both sides. She thought of her own drafty cubbyhole above the old Calico Palace, and herself now, unwanted, in Mr. Fenway’s room over the store. “It sounds delightful,” she said truthfully.

“The Gresham is better than the St. Francis,” Dwight continued. “Not so many highflown airs about it. And they’ve got a good restaurant.”

Marny said again that it sounded delightful.

But she made him say goodby at the door of the stockroom. She was thinking—Tomorrow, maybe. Tomorrow, probably. She liked Dwight. She liked him very much. She promised to take another walk with him tomorrow, to see the progress of the Calico Palace. But this was the only promise she made. She was not going to do this all of a sudden.

She lit a candle, took off her muddy boots, went upstairs to leave these and her bonnet and shawl, and came down again to the stockroom. A few minutes later Foxy brought her a tin plate of beef and potatoes.

The food did not look appetizing. It was cold, of course, it always was, and somebody had let fall a brush of cigar ash on the beef. Marny was used to eating food that not long ago she would have thought uneatable, but she wistfully remembered the luscious meals Kendra used to serve when they lived in the cottage with Archwood. As these were no longer available, she recalled hopefully that Dwight had said the Gresham Hotel had a good restaurant. She set the plate on her improvised sewing table, and took out her knife and her tin fork and the horn spoon Pocket had left with her. Foxy stood beside her, a grin across his long bucktoothed face.

“Us boys,” he announced, “are going to see the Olympic Circus tonight.”

“Fine,” said Marny. She glanced down at her plate, still untouched. “Do you have to leave right now?”

“No ma’am, Al’s going to call me when it’s time to go. Why?”

“Because,” said Marny, “I believe it would be easier to get this beef down if I had a nip of sherry first. You have some good Spanish sherry on the shelf, haven’t you?”

Foxy said yes, he sure had. He brought her a bottle and drew the cork, and she told him to hold out his tin cup, it was no fun drinking alone. Foxy gladly complied, and while they sipped sherry he straddled a goods-box and told her the news. Foxy loved to tell news, any news at all.

The steamer
California
had arrived today, he said, from the Isthmus. Packed with passengers. Nearly three hundred men, Foxy added sadly, and only eight women.

Several of the passengers had come into the store. They had reported that a great throng of people was crowded into Panama City, waiting to come to San Francisco. There were so many of them and so few vessels to carry them that they had settled down for a long wait. Some had gone into business, opening stores, restaurants, rooming houses. A group of literary fellows had even started a newspaper to record the doings of the colony.

Al put in his head and called that it was time to get going if they wanted to see the circus. Foxy went off.