Calico Palace (68 page)

Something was always going on in the plaza. People in San Francisco liked to celebrate. The anniversary of a battle, the birthday of a hero, a stirring piece of news—at any such event they rushed to the plaza with bands and cheering. The day a steamer brought word that California was now a state of the Union, they rang bells and tooted horns and had a parade, and fired so many guns that it sounded like a war.

Admission to the Union was important. They had felt like exiles, remote and unrecognized here in this far outpost of their country. Now they were part of their country. They resented anybody who did not realize how important this was. At Marny’s bar an innocent newcomer remarked to Hiram that the new Union Hotel was as fine a hostelry as the finest in the States. At this, Hiram and three other men at the bar exclaimed together, “Sir, we are
in
the States!”

The stranger hastily said, “Yes, yes, of course, excuse me.” Before long, new arrivals learned to say “back East” instead of “in the States.” If they did not learn fast enough, affronted Californians taught them.

Dwight finished Pocket’s new building. A handsome structure of brick and iron, it stood on the site of the old building, on Washington Street facing the plaza. The reading rooms were in front, and behind them were living quarters for Pocket and his partner, Mr. Gilmore. When asked, Pocket said business was going along nicely, thank you.

While Pocket was still content to live in a room behind his office, Hiram was not. Hiram had moved into the new Union Hotel. This hotel, the best in San Francisco, stood in the same block as the Calico Palace, next door to the Parker House.

In the Parker House itself the whole second floor had been rented by a theatrical producer from New York, who turned it into a theater called the Jenny Lind. He brought in first-class actors, and the plays were good. San Francisco playgoers were not easy to please. Too many of them had come here from the leading cities of the world, and they were used to good theater. They liked the Dramatic Museum well enough, but the Museum offered mostly farces, and song-and-dance acts. The Jenny Lind actors gave real plays, and they did it well.

Marny and Dwight went there often. Marny told Kendra that not only were the plays good but the manager was a smart fellow. He had done something new: he had given his theater two entrances. One of these led through the barroom; the other opened directly into the theater itself. For the first time in San Francisco, you could get into a place of public entertainment without passing a bar.

Marny herself did not object to passing a bar. However, the ladies of Happy Valley did object. More and more successful men were sending home for their wives. The presence of these ladies in a public place gave it an air of quality. And at the Jenny Lind Theater, not only could they avoid the bar, but they could see to it that their husbands did the same.

The new idea worked. Of the four hundred seats in the theater, seldom were more than twenty or thirty occupied by women, and not all these women were matrons proud of their virtue. But in the expensive boxes, almost any evening you could see leading men of San Francisco with their wives.

While they pretended to ignore women not as chaste as themselves, these ladies did send Marny glances bright with interest. They had heard of her—it was hardly possible to live in San Francisco and not hear about Marny of the Calico Palace—and her green eyes and flamelike hair made her easy to recognize. They whispered. Was it true that she came of a fine family back East? That her father had been a college professor? Or was it a banker? Marny was amused. She conducted herself with propriety that matched their own, and let them whisper all they pleased.

Hiram came to see Kendra and asked if she would go to the plays with him. They sat together in a private gambling room not in use at the time, and Hiram spoke to her candidly across the card table.

“I know the calendar of good form back East,” he said. “A widow isn’t supposed to be seen until she has been a widow at least a year. But this isn’t back East. Anyway, I think you’re too smart to want to bury yourself alive.”

Kendra smiled back at him. “I think it’s silly,” she answered, “to say that a woman who has been bereaved should sit at home wrapped in her grief. It’s like saying that when you’ve been ill it’s bad manners to try to get well. I’d like to go with you, thanks.”

He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. She noticed that Hiram’s hand was not as rough as it had been when he was working a rocker at Shiny Gulch. But it was still a big confident hand, hard and strong. “I always knew you had good sense, Kendra,” he said.

The next evening she went with Hiram to the play, wearing a flowered silk dress she had borrowed from Marny. As usual, the audience was mostly men, and she received a shower of admiring glances as she sat down. Kendra wondered which of these men had sent her letters proposing marriage. She still received these letters, and tore them up half read.

She enjoyed the play. After this she went often to the theater, either with Hiram or with Hiram and Pocket together. Sometimes, when she and Hiram went there without Pocket, they caught sight of him with a girl friend of his own. He escorted various girls, and always they were attractive girls.

“Pocket has better luck with women than any other man in town,” Hiram said to her with a chuckle. “Even in San Francisco, where a girl can be a crosseyed hunchback and still have admirers, Pocket can take his choice of them all.”

Glancing at Pocket’s profile, Kendra was not surprised. He was a handsome man. And a likable man. She wondered if he often thought of that girl back in Kentucky. He had said he did not care about her any more. Kendra was sure he did not. But though a wound might heal, she reflected, it could still leave a scar that would never go away.

Another evening as she entered the theater she saw Mr. Fenway and Rosabel. They were occupying a box with Hiram’s partner, the quiet little banker Mr. Eustis, and a lady Kendra did not recognize. Hiram told her the lady was Mrs. Eustis, who had recently arrived from back East to join her husband. Kendra gave an exclamation. “Oh! I’m glad.”

“Glad of what?” Hiram asked with a spark of mischief.

“I’m glad she’s in a box with Rosabel. You know as well as I do how some women are, about a girl like Rosabel.”

Hiram was laughing. “My pretty blue-eyed friend,” he said, “you’re not
that
innocent. Rosabel is now a married woman, but that’s not all. She’s married to a leading citizen, and a rich one. All her sins are forgotten.”

“I told you, I’m glad,” Kendra repeated. “This is what she wanted and I’m glad she’s getting it.”

Just then Rosabel turned her head and saw them, and they exchanged smiles of greeting. Rosabel wore a dress of pink-flowered satin, and in her hair pink satin flowers held with a jeweled pin. Her black curls danced on her cheeks, and she looked pretty and pampered and content. Kendra noticed that Mr. Fenway, though he kept his solemn dignity, also looked content.

After the play they all had a chat. Mrs. Eustis proved to be a nice little woman, with a good deal to say about the dreadful hardships she had endured while crossing the Isthmus. Rosabel listened demurely, but Kendra saw her lips twitch. The route across the Isthmus was now guarded by the United States Army. Along the way were American lodging houses where travelers could sleep, if not in luxury, at least without fear of being murdered before morning. Rosabel could remember when things had been otherwise. But she kept quiet and let Mrs. Eustis prattle.

When Mr. and Mrs. Eustis had said good night, Rosabel spoke to Kendra.

“Come to see me,” she invited. “My house is all furnished now and ready for company.”

Kendra thanked her. She was wondering if Rosabel was also going to invite Marny to call. —If she doesn’t, thought Kendra, I won’t go.

But even as she thought this, Rosabel was saying, “Drag Marny away from her card table and bring her with you.” She glanced at Mr. Fenway. “You’ll drive them, won’t you, Silas?”

Mr. Fenway said he would be glad to. Let them agree upon an afternoon, and he would call for Marny and Kendra in his carriage and escort them to Happy Valley.

The time now was November, and the afternoon they chose for their call proved to be cold and cloudy, but the carriage was well cushioned and Mr. Fenway tucked a warm robe over their knees. In Happy Valley the houses had a look of cheerful neatness. There were fresh curtains at the windows, potted ferns on the porches, and even children playing games in the yards. Mr. Fenway and Rosabel still lived in the readymade house he had set up before their marriage, but he said he approved of the neighborhood and expected to start a brick house shortly.

They found Rosabel in a parlor lighted and warmed by a large wood fire, welcome in the gray chill of the day. Besides the furniture Kendra had helped her select, the parlor had cushions and footstools, a bookcase full of books, and a really splendid rosewood piano. Near the fire was a table on which stood a silver tea service. Rosabel poured tea and passed little sandwiches, with no more fluttering than might have been expected of any bride not yet quite used to receiving callers in her own home. It was a pleasant home, well kept, and Kendra said so. Mr. Fenway, sipping tea and nibbling an olive sandwich, solemnly quoted Scripture.

“As the Good Book tells us, madam,” said Mr. Fenway, “‘a prudent wife is from the Lord.’”

Kendra asked Rosabel about her housekeeping arrangements. Rosabel said she had the services of a married couple who lived in a cottage Mr. Fenway had built for them on a corner of this lot. The man cut wood and took care of the horses, while his wife did laundry and housework. This, said Rosabel, left her time for her music. She was taking lessons from a Frenchman who came in twice a week, and oh, she did enjoy it! She had played the piano since she was a little girl, but she had not realized till now how much there was that she did not know.

Mr. Fenway listened proudly.

They chatted about the new theater and the actors, about new fashions on display in the stores. Mr. Fenway said they must hear Rosabel play her new piano. Kendra observed that the French teacher was a good one. Rosabel had been taking lessons only three months, but already her playing showed marked improvement. Kendra told her so, and Rosabel smiled gratefully.

It was time to go. They thanked Rosabel for a pleasant afternoon, and Mr. Fenway drove them back to the Calico Palace. Not until after they got there and Kendra had gone to her own room, did she realize that Rosabel had not asked them a single question about the Calico Palace. When she saw Marny, Kendra asked if she thought Rosabel ever felt homesick for what she had left behind.

Marny’s forehead puckered as she considered this. “I don’t know,” she answered after a moment. “I wonder too. But I’ll tell you this, Kendra. If she asks us to tea again, I’m going to smile sweetly and decline.”

“Oh Marny! Why?”

“I haven’t been so bored since I left Philadelphia,” said Marny. She gave a sigh. “Sorry. I guess I’m just not the domestic type.”

A few days after this, Dwight proudly told them they would no longer be disturbed by the noise of saws and hammers. The Calico Palace was finished. Here it stood, four stories high, the finest building on the plaza. And fireproof, said Dwight. This he promised.

But though he assured them the building would not burn, he had not forgotten that there were many articles inside it that would—curtains, carpets, furniture. To be sure of an escape route if a dropped cigar set an indoor fire and smoke blocked the open stairwell, Dwight had built a narrow iron staircase at the back, leading from the fourth floor to an iron door at the bottom. The iron staircase was steep and narrow. “But it means,” said Dwight, “you can get out, and come back safe and sound the next day.”

“Dwight,” Marny said seriously, “you’re good. You think of everything.”

Dwight answered with pride. “I do try to.”

There were now seven buildings in San Francisco that had been built under Dwight’s supervision. These were the Calico Palace, Hiram’s bank, Pocket’s library, and four other banks and office buildings. They all stood in the rich area near the waterfront. Not only did they have walls of brick and iron, but Dwight had added to each one a new feature to increase its chances of safety. Their roofs were flat, and on each roof Dwight had put a tank. This meant that each owner could flood his roof with water a foot deep, and thus protect it from windblown sparks and cinders. Dwight looked over his work with the air of a general who had prepared his forces so well that now he was eager for battle.

Marny looked at the tank and up at the clouds. “Now if it will only rain!”

She got her wish. Within a week after Dwight had told her the tank was ready, the clouds broke with a howling storm. Dwight’s carefully planned gutters led the rainwater into the tank. For ten days the rain fell, broken only by a few snatches of sunshine, while Norman gleefully rubbed his hands and Marny laughed with joy. By the time the weather cleared, the tank was full and Marny exclaimed, “We have water enough for a dozen fires!”

“No we haven’t,” Dwight answered. But he added with a confident smile, “We have enough.”

As Marny said to Kendra later, they were ready for the maybe. And not only was the Calico Palace strong, it was also comfortable. The living quarters on the fourth floor were as luxurious as those of the Union Hotel. The rooms were large, well lighted, and well furnished. Even Geraldine had a little room of her own, where she would be warm and dry when the weather made her balcony unpleasant. Lulu and Lolo kept the fourth floor in order, helped by the wife of one of the bartenders.

“How gloriously different,” Marny exclaimed, “from the way I had to live last year! Shivering in the drafts, throwing the sheets out of the window when I needed fresh ones, and rats eating the soap and candles. How everything changes!”

But though she said “everything,” she did not mean everything. Some details of her life had not changed. She lived in luxury, but she still wore her gun all day and kept it beside her all night. San Francisco was as dangerous as it had ever been.