Calico Palace (65 page)

But this time Marny and Norman were among the lucky people. The fire began just south of the plaza. The wind, blowing from the northwest, swept the flames into the blocks still farther south and away from the plaza resorts. The unfinished Calico Palace was not touched. Nor was the Verandah, nor the El Dorado nor the Bella Union, nor Blossom’s house of joy, nor Hiram’s half-built bank nor Pocket’s library. Also untouched were the furnishings Marny and Norman had bought for the upper floors of the Calico Palace. These had been stored in a warehouse well away from the damaged neighborhood.

Marny lost nothing. But for four hours, while Norman and Chad and the Blackbeards guarded the Calico Palace from the swarming looters, Marny stood within scorching distance of the flames. She watched, she twisted her hands till they hurt, she shook with terror lest the wind change. By the time the fire-fighters had stopped the blaze, and the smoke clouds were drifting toward the sandhills south of town, Marny was weak with exhaustion.

Dwight was as frightened as she was. He had promised that Hiram’s bank and the Calico Palace would be fireproof. But they could not be fireproof as long as they were still half done, the upper windows nothing but holes through which sparks could blow in to ignite the wooden floors inside. By the time they were walking together back to the hotel, Dwight confessed to Marny, “I feel like a man who has lived through an earthquake.”

Leaving her at the hotel, Dwight set out to get his workmen back to work. Marny went into the kitchen, where Kendra had put on the coffee pot and was warming up yesterday’s soup. Marny dropped into a chair by the table, and sat leaning her forehead on her hand.

“Give me a cup of coffee, will you?” she asked. “And add a drop of brandy. A big drop of brandy.”

Kendra complied. “Don’t you want something to eat, Marny?”

“Not yet.” Marny reached for the cup. “First let me get my nerves untangled.”

Kendra sat down across from Marny. She said nothing, waiting while Marny sipped the coffee laced with brandy. After several minutes Marny said, “I wonder how many more fires I can live through without going to pieces.”

Kendra wondered too. “Was it an accident this time?” she asked. “Or arson again?”

“I don’t know,” said Marny. She added wearily, “What difference does it make?”

She pushed her empty cup across the table. “May I have another one like that?”

Kendra filled the cup again and added the brandy. Marny smiled and thanked her. As she raised the cup she gave a questioning look around. “Where’s Rosabel?”

“Mr. Fenway came to get her as soon as the fire started,” said Kendra. “She hasn’t come back.”

“Maybe I should be like Rosabel,” said Marny. “Catch a rich husband and let him do the worrying.” She pondered the idea, and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m not the domestic type.”

Kendra spoke thoughtfully. “Haven’t you ever thought of getting married?”

“Oh yes, I suppose every girl thinks of it sometimes.” Marny paused a moment, sipped coffee, and went on. “I’m not opposed to marriage. For other people, I mean. But I just don’t think I was meant for it. I’m a gambler and a poplolly and I’m doing fine.”

Never without a pack of cards, when her cup was empty Marny reached into the pocket of her skirt and took them out.

“I’ll tell my fortune,” she said, “and see if there are any more disasters in my future.”

She began laying out the cards, while Kendra watched. Kendra had observed before now that when Marny played any kind of solitaire game she played it cleanly. Marny was honest with herself.

As she finished her layout Marny exclaimed jubilantly. “Look at the kings! And all those lovely diamonds clustered around the queen. Men, money, and no sign of danger. Now please, may I have a bowl of soup? Thank you for being so patient.” She swept up the cards. “I’m doing fine,” she said again.

She said it still again when Dwight came in. Dwight brought her a present, a pair of earrings made of California gold, each earring made like a yellow California poppy with a pearl like a drop of dew on one petal. These pearls were white, to complement the necklace with the pearls of pink and black. Marny wore the full set when she dealt cards that evening.

The June fire took place on a Friday. By Monday the blackened area was alive with carpenters. Norman came pleading to Dwight. He said the Fourth of July would mean big doings in the plaza. There would be guns and music and speeches, and a spectacular flag-raising on a flagpole a hundred and eleven feet tall, a gift to San Francisco from the people of Oregon. Also, some brave young men—Pocket and Hiram among them—had organized fire-fighting squads, with great rivalry about which company would have the brightest engines and the fastest horses and the most resplendent uniforms. These volunteer firemen planned to present themselves formally on the Fourth, with ceremonies in the plaza and a parade of engines through the streets.

Norman reminded Dwight that crowds of people would be out. They would throng the bars and gambling houses. Couldn’t Dwight have the second floor of the Calico Palace finished in time for Marny to open her parlor on the Fourth of July?

Dwight’s answer was stern.

“Make up your mind,” he retorted. “If you want a shack that will turn to flinders next time some rattlehead starts playing with matches, I can give you all four stories in time for the Fourth. But if you want a building that will stay there, let me do it my way.”

“When I think,” groaned Norman, “of the rent we pay that bloodsucker Norrington, whether we’re making a good income or no income at all—”

Dwight was not touched. And impatient though he was, Norman was wise enough to yield. He returned to the public room of the Calico Palace. Marny went on with her private card game at the Gresham Hotel. Kendra continued preparing meals. Between meals she went with Rosabel to help her choose furnishings for her home.

True to his ways, Mr. Fenway was making careful preparation for his marriage. After looking at many sites he had said that the best part of town for a home was the section called Happy Valley, in the southern part of town. Happy Valley was a family neighborhood, growing as more wives came from the States to join their husbands. Amid the turmoil of the gold rush these ladies had made an island of their own. In Happy Valley you heard no raucous music, no click of rondo balls, no midnight tipplers singing in the street. Here Mr. Fenway had bought a lot and set up a readymade white house. Still cautious, he said he would build a brick house later, when he and his bride had lived in this area long enough to be sure they wanted to make it their permanent place of abode.

Meanwhile he had told Rosabel to buy whatever furnishings she liked and have the bills sent to him. All this was so new to Rosabel that she could not help being timorous. She was glad of Kendra’s advice.

Kendra wondered how Rosabel had lived before she met Norman; if she had known her parents, if she had ever had any sort of home. Rosabel never told her, and she never asked.

But whatever lay behind her, it was plain that Rosabel was happy in the prospect of what lay ahead. So was Mr. Fenway. Seeing them together, Kendra could not question his genuine fondness. No doubt Rosabel had told him much that she had not told anybody else. And no doubt Mr. Fenway knew what he wanted and was getting it and did not care what anybody might think.

The celebration of the Fourth of July began the evening of the third. The heroes of the fire brigades met for preparations. By the time they had polished the engines and groomed the horses and put on their gorgeous livery and visited a few bars, they were too skittish to wait for tomorrow. They swarmed into the plaza, shook the earth with guns and firecrackers, and finally, in the middle of the night, they hitched up the fire horses, scrambled upon the shiny new engines, and gleefully paraded all over town.

Men at Marny’s card table, provoked by the racket, loudly wondered if these eager lads would ever be of use. Marny shrugged tolerantly.

She was planning to take a holiday tomorrow. Rosabel and Mr. Fenway were going to spend the day watching the festivities, and Kendra had invited Pocket and Hiram to dinner. Marny intended to sleep until noon.

But at five o’clock on the morning of the Fourth, the firebells woke her up. Some wretch had piled a lot of dry planks in the yard behind a saloon on Clay Street, and had set them afire. The engines rushed out with a clatter worse than that of last night. In a short, a very short time, they were clattering back again. The firemen had proved their worth. The fire was out. No damage had been done. The celebration could proceed as planned.

Pocket and Hiram came to dinner that evening. Kendra served roast beef, Dwight poured red wine, and they all made merry. Dwight and Kendra and Marny praised the quick work of the fire companies, and Marny added that such quick work was remarkable in view of the fact that so many of the boys must have been suffering from bottle fatigue. But though she laughed as she spoke, her mind was not at rest.

The firemen were brave men and gallant. They had put out the fire. But the hoodlums were still here. Marny feared there would be a next time, and a next time. The firemen’s efforts might not always be enough.

However, the present was so engrossing that she did not think long about the past or the future. While the second floor of the Calico Palace had not been ready for the holiday, it was ready two weeks later. Marny opened her parlor, and Dwight went on with the upper floors.

Dwight was building well. The walls of the Calico Palace were of brick, three feet thick, reinforced with iron. At the windows and doors were double iron shutters, with a space of two feet between each pair. Across the second floor front, in tall gilt letters, were the words CALICO PALACE. Hiram, looking up at the stern dark walls, said newcomers were going to think this was the Californians’ quaint way of naming the town jail.

But before long, Dwight had added a balcony with a decorative wrought iron railing, from which Marny and Norman and their friends could view the spectacles in the plaza. Every evening the sunken windows were bright, and the transparencies on the street floor gave passersby a tempting foretaste of the merriment within. When they went inside they did not notice the iron shutters; these were folded back and hidden by red velvet curtains looped with cords of yellow silk. Between the windows they saw the paintings of beautiful women, and here and there a scene from the golden hills. The gambling rooms of the Calico Palace were the most luxurious in town.

By this time nearly all signs of the fires of May and June were gone. All over the hills, new buildings were popping up like dandelions in spring. To be sure, the local clergymen spoke regretfully of the fact that the finest of these were temples of sin. The plaza preacher had quite a lot to say about the matter. But as long as the citizens flocked in with pokes of gold, Marny and Norman were not distressed.

When Marny opened her parlor in the Calico Palace, she and Kendra both set up bedrooms in the space behind it. Rosabel, wanting to keep out of Norman’s way, stayed where she was in the Gresham Hotel for the few weeks left before her wedding. The ceremony took place early in August, in the Congregational Church on Jackson Street.

There were now seven churches in San Francisco. Mr. Fenway had contributed without bias to the whole group. Not, he explained, that he exactly held with any of them, but they did keep a lot of people out of devilment. He chose the Congregational Church for his wedding because this had been the one he had attended with his mother when he was a boy in New Bedford.

They had the ceremony at eleven o’clock in the morning so the guests could get to shelter before the wind began to raise the dust clouds. Hiram and Pocket, handsomely attired, escorted Kendra, in a gray dress and bonnet which they told her were most becoming. Norman was not present, but Marny attended with Dwight. Marny wore a plain straw bonnet and a plain dark blue dress with a modest V-shaped opening at the throat. She also wore the chain with the pendant of two pink pearls and a black one.

She wore the chain because Dwight wanted her to. When he had said so, Marny had demurred. “Dwight, really, nobody wears that sort of jewelry in the morning! And never to church!” But Dwight said, “What do you care? Wear it anyway.” So Marny put it on, though she privately remarked to Kendra, “The French word ‘esclavage’ has two meanings. It’s the word for a woman’s collar of jewels, it also means ‘bondage.’ The French are so definite.”

But she spoke with good humor. If Dwight wanted her to wear the necklace as a badge of possession, she was willing. It was a small price to pay for watching the Calico Palace rise, strong and proud, above the plaza.

Mr. Fenway was a leading citizen, and the church was well filled. Mr. and Mrs. Chase were there—dubious, but loyal. Ralph Watson attended, though Serena did not. Serena’s pregnancy was changing her figure, and she was too modest to appear thus at a wedding. But she had sent Rosabel a note of good wishes. Serena was happy to see a girl like Rosabel being reformed.

Foxy was there with the other packing boys, all scrubbed and shaved and combed to a state of discomfort, and looking as if their hands and feet were twice as big as usual. Also present were the other employees of Chase and Fenway, and a number of business acquaintances.

Among these was Captain Pollock. Kendra was surprised as she approached the church to see him coming toward it from another direction. But Hiram told her Chase and Fenway were planning an addition to their store, and the bricks were to come from Pollock’s brickyard. It was good business, as well as courtesy, for him to attend the wedding of his customer.

Pollock saw Kendra as they were about to enter the church, and with a bow he stepped aside to let her go in ahead of him. She smiled and thanked him, but he did not smile back. Behind her were Dwight and Marny. Always formally correct, Pollock waited another moment for Marny to precede him. As she passed, he gave her a stony look. His gaze moved from her face to her pearls and back again as though to show his disapproval of such display. The
Cynthia
was a rotting derelict, and Pollock would never forgive.