Timepiece (3 page)

“Your father came to mine?”

“No. To sell goods to the miners. He said it is easier to pan gold from a purse than a river.”

“A wise man, your father. I have never seen so many fools work so hard for easy money and end up with so little of it. How did he fare in the business?”

“Unfortunately, my father was not of good health. He died shortly after our arrival
in the valley. The West is not an easy place for a man used to the comfortable life of nobility.”

“Your father was a nobleman?”

“My father was the second son of a baron.”

David studied her carefully, resting his chin on his hands. “And that makes you . . .”

“It makes me nothing, as I am an American.”

David nodded. “It is just as well,” he said. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “A title is much too troublesome and high-minded.”

MaryAnne glared back, certain that she or, at the very least, her ancestors had been offended. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I believe Your Grace was saying,” David said, adopting an exaggerated British accent. “My Most Reverend, Most Noble, Right Honorable, Venerable, Duke, Duchess, Squire, Lord, Lady, Baron,
Baroness, Viscount, Marquess, Earl.” He breathed out in feigned exasperation. “It is a business in itself and all too tiresome.”

“You mock me!”

David waved a hand. “No. No. I am merely amused by the show.”

MaryAnne sat back, her arms folded defensively across her chest. “America has its castes.”

“True. But in America they are for sale.”

MaryAnne glowered, then suddenly stood up, brushing down her skirt as she rose. “I think I shall go now, Mr. Parkin.”

Her response surprised him and the smile left David's face.

“I have offended you.”

“Not in the least,” she replied, raising her chin indignantly.

“No, I have. I am sorry. Please don't go.”

She said nothing.

“I apologize, Miss Chandler. I did not
mean to be offensive. Attribute my rudeness to my crass upbringing as an American. Surely you cannot begrudge me of that.”

“Pity you, perhaps.”

“Touché,” David said, grinning.

She retrieved her coat from the pole and put it on. David walked over to the doorway. “MaryAnne, I should like to work together. I will pay you eighteen dollars a week. If you choose to accept, you may begin immediately.”

MaryAnne lifted her chin proudly, retaining an air of indignation. “I will see you Monday morning at five minutes to eight, Mr. Parkin.”

David grinned. “It will be a pleasure, Miss Chandler.”

 

“My new secretary manifests a peculiar confederation of English ritual and American sensibility. I enjoy her company, though she seems of a rather serious nature and I wish she were not so formal.”

David Parkin's Diary. April 29, 1908

An hour after the close of the business week, Gibbs, the company's head clerk, lumbered up the stairway sporting a tumbler in each chubby fist. When he reached David's office, he was breathing heavily. He set the glasses on the desk and announced, “I brought you some port.”

David was standing behind his desk
thumbing through a leather-bound manual. He brought the volume to his desk and sat down.

“Ah, you are well trained, Gibbs. Or at least opportunistic. Thank you.” He bowed back over the book.

Gibbs took a chair in front of the desk and claimed one of the drinks as his own. “The Salisbury mine is now in possession of a new ore crusher and our account runneth over.”

“Well done, Gibbs. It is a strong year.”

“They have all been strong years.” Gibbs looked around the room. “Your girl is gone?”

“MaryAnne? Yes, she has left for the day.”

“You have not said much of her.”

David continued reading, acknowledging the observation with only a nod.

“Is she capable?”

David looked up from his register.
“She is wonderful. In fact, I am growing quite fond of her.”

Gibbs pushed back in his chair. “Fond? Why so?”

David closed the book. “She is a curiosity to me. She has the work ethic of a farm wife and the refinement of the well-bred.” He took a drink. “Only better, for it is not an acquired grace, but a natural refinement.”

“Refinement?” Gibbs laughed. “Wasted on the likes of you.”

David grinned. “No doubt.” He set down his tumbler. “Still, they use the pig to find truffle.”

“A fitting analogy, I might say.”

“You might not,” David countered.

Gibbs laughed. “Her apparel is common enough.”

“Mark me. She is a poor woman with nobility hidden beneath rags.”

“And you a rich man with the common touch. How incongruous.”

“How perfect.”

“How so?”

David leaned back in his chair. “Two oddities make a normality. It works in mathematics, as in life.”

“You are still just talking about a secretary?” Gibbs asked sardonically.

David studied his associate's expression with consternation.

“I have said more than I ought and you have clearly heard more than I have said.” He lifted his glass to the light. “Is there much talk among the typists?”

“Some. They like a scandal and if they cannot find one, they invent one.”

“Then I suppose I am doing them a service of sorts.” He leaned back over his register. “Still, I wish she were not so formal.”

Just then, the first of the mantel clocks struck the seventh hour, immediately followed by a chorus of bells, gongs, and chimes, all counting out the hour in a different voice. Gibbs, accustomed to the
hourly pandemonium, waited for it to settle before continuing. “I think you are asking for trouble, David. Love and business do not mix well.”

“Gibbs, you surprise me. What do you know of love?”

The man licked the rim of his glass, then set it down on the desk. “Only that it is the worm that conceals the hook.”

“You are cynical.”

“And you are not?”

David frowned. “I should be.”

Gibbs nodded knowingly. He had grown up with David in the California mining town of Grass Valley and knew of what David spoke. David's mother had abandoned him as a child and stolen from him as an adult.

Rosalyn “Rose” King, a music hall singer of mediocre ability, had married David's father, Jesse Parkin, believing he would someday strike the mother lode. Ten years later the two had managed to
produce only a son and a miserly shaft mine called the Eureka.

The year David turned six, Rose abandoned the Midas dream and left everything, including David, behind. It wasn't until the lonely and celebrationless Christmas day of that year that David accepted that his mother wasn't coming back.

Thirteen years to the month of her departure, the Eureka lived up to its name. It was to be one of the largest gold strikes in California history.

Jesse ceded the mine to his son's care, built a sixteen-hundred-acre ranch in Santa Rosa, and settled about the life of a Western Gentleman. Not two years later, Jesse was thrown from a horse and died instantly of a broken neck.

Gibbs accompanied David as he buried his father in the foothills of Mount Saint Helena. David mourned greatly.

The following spring, David received a letter from a mother he no longer knew.
Rose had come West to Salt Lake City and learning of her husband's fortune and recent demise, inquired into the will. Learning that David was the sole heir and not yet married, she invited him to come and live with her, with the urgent request that he send money ahead.

Against Gibbs's advice, David sold the mine. In a day when the average annual income was scarcely more than a thousand dollars, the Eureka fetched two million.

David wired twenty-five thousand dollars to his mother and purchased, sight unseen, an elaborate Salt Lake City mansion for them to reside in.

By the time he and Gibbs arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in spring of 1897, his mother had taken the money and moved to Chicago with a man she had met only three weeks previously, leaving only a penned regret that forever lies pressed between the pages of David's journal.

As powerful as David had become financially,
in matters of the heart he was vulnerable and Gibbs brooded over him, protecting him from those who sought financial gain through romantic liaison. This role gave Gibbs no pleasure, however, for he knew his friend's loneliness. Despite David's unhappy experience, he desired the companionship marriage brings, but was not sure how to proceed, viewing women much as the novice card player who understands the rules, but not how the game is really played.

David finished his drink, then set it down in front of him as his friend studied him sadly. Gibbs gathered the empty glasses and stood to leave. “Still, she is quite pretty.”

After a moment, David looked up. “Yes. Quite.”

 

“The first mechanical clock was invented in the year
A.D.
979 in Kaifeng, China. Commissioned by the boy emperor for the purpose of astrological fortunetelling, the clock took eight years to construct and weighed more than two tons. Though of monstrous dimensions, the device was remarkably efficient, striking a gong every fourteen minutes and twenty-four seconds, nearly identical to our modern-day standard, at the same time turning massive rings designed to replicate the celestial movements of the three luminaries: the sun, the moon, and selected stars, all of which were crucial to Chinese astrological divination.

“When the Tartars invaded China in 1108, they plundered the capital city and after disassembling the massive clock,
carted it back to their own lands. Unable to put the precision piece back together, they melted it down for swords.”

Note in David Parkin's Diary

MaryAnne knocked gently at David's door, then opened it enough to peer in. “Mr. Parkin, you have a visitor.”

David glanced up. “Who is it?”

“He would not give his name. He says he is a close friend.”

“I am not expecting anyone. What does he look like?”

“He is an older gentleman . . .”

David shrugged.

“. . . and he is a Negro.”

“A Negro? I do not want to see any Negroes.”

“I am sorry, sir. He said he was a close friend.”

Just then, the man appeared behind MaryAnne. He was a large man, dressed as a soldier in a navy cotton shirt and tan pants with a leather bullet belt clasped to a silver cavalry buckle. He smiled at David. “David, you givin' this nice lady a bad time.”

David grinned. “I could not resist. Come in, Lawrence.”

Surprised, MaryAnne stepped back and pulled open the door for him to enter.

“Sorry, ma'am. It's David's sense of humor.”

“Or lack of,” she replied.

Lawrence laughed jovially. “I like you, ma'am. Who is this lady, David?”

“Lawrence, meet Miss MaryAnne Chandler. She is my new secretary. Miss Chandler, this is Lawrence. He is the godfather to most of the clocks you see in this room.”