Calico Palace (2 page)

Kendra was interested in food. She liked to cook. She liked to try new recipes, and invent others, and make surprises out of leftovers nobody else wanted to bother with. In her grandmother’s home, during her vacations from school, when things got dull she always went into the kitchen.

But here on the
Cynthia
she could not cook. And she was
not
going to sew. Kendra hated needlework, and Kendra was a decided young person. She either did something or she did not do it. She never went halfway.

Eva could sew expertly, as well as knit and embroider, and she had accomplished a good deal since they left New York. On the table lay her present piece of work, a handbag of brown linen, embroidered with her initials in a design of autumn leaves. Eva never wasted time. She was always so
right,
Kendra thought rebelliously. In all her life Eva had done only one foolish thing, and this was to marry Kendra’s father.

It had happened when she was fifteen years old. Eva lived in Baltimore. The youngest in her family, and the only girl, she was pretty and pampered and used to having her own way. One morning she was out on a horseback ride with a boy named Baird Logan, aged eighteen. Eva and Baird imagined they were in love, and all of a sudden they decided it would be a devilish adventure to run off and get married. They rode to a justice of the peace in a little town near by, added several years to their ages, and the justice, a silly old man with weak eyesight, accepted their fibs and married them. Eva rushed home and packed a few clothes in a bag, scribbled a note, and slipped away without being observed. Off they went for a honeymoon jaunt.

In a week, their horrified parents found them and brought them back. Their two fathers summoned a lawyer and told him to have the marriage annulled. Baird and Eva made no objection; they were tired of their escapade and willing to forget it. But before the annulment process could begin, Eva found that she was going to have a baby.

She wept and stormed. The two fathers paced the floor and wondered how they could ever endure the scandal. The two mothers moaned, each to her own offspring, “After all I’ve done for you,
this
is my reward!”

But the fact was there. Baird and Eva had to stay married. The parents provided a pretty little house for them to live in. Baird’s father said Baird could go into the family importing business. But nothing could keep the pretty little house from being a hideous prison.

Eva was barely sixteen when Kendra was born. By this time she and Baird hated each other. They quarreled without end. Baird started drinking, and one night, before Kendra was a year old, he rode horseback home from a party through a winter storm and caught pneumonia. In a few days he was dead.

Baird’s mother, a woman of spirit, said it was her duty to take Kendra because Eva was a fool and Eva’s mother must be a fool too or she would not have brought up such a fool of a daughter. Eva was glad to get rid of her unwanted baby, but Kendra’s grandmother did not want her either. She was merely doing her duty. As soon as Kendra was old enough, her grandmother sent her to a school in New York.

Nobody had ever told Kendra all this. Everybody was kind to her. Her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, the family friends—all the grown people were kind. But grown people
talk.
They drop remarks while you’re sitting on the floor with your doll. They look at each other across you, and sadly shake their heads. You’re just a child, they think you don’t understand. But you do understand. Ever since she could remember, Kendra had known she was a child nobody wanted.

When Kendra was four years old, Eva married Alex Taine and they went to a post west of the Mississippi River, where the army kept the frontier safe from Indians. No place for a little girl, said Eva. Alex agreed. He had no interest in Kendra. He had never seen her, and he expected to have children of his own. In this he was not disappointed, for he and Eva became the parents of two handsome sons. They had left the boys at school in New York this year, because Alex wanted Eva with him and there were no schools in California.

Kendra had seen Alex only three or four times in her life, when he and Eva visited their friends in the East. Kendra had discerned, however, that he was not at all like Baird Logan. Alex was a graduate of West Point. He was not reckless or impulsive; he planned his time and paid his bills and did what was expected of him. So did Eva, now. Eva had learned; never again was she going to make a fool of herself. She and Alex had lived at various frontier posts. She liked this. It was adventure, but a safe sort of adventure; at a frontier post, she had the whole United States Army on her side.

All these years, Kendra had stayed at school. When Eva came to New York for a visit she and Kendra would take a drive, and stop for ices and macaroons. They never knew what to say to each other and they were both relieved when it was over. On vacations Kendra would stay with her grandmother.

And then, last summer, Kendra finished school. She came back to her grandmother in Baltimore, and about this time Alex was ordered to San Francisco. He sailed on the troopship, and Eva engaged a stateroom on the
Cynthia.
But while Eva was in New York waiting for the ship to sail, Kendra’s grandmother had a stroke and died.

This was why Kendra was now on her way to San Francisco. Her other grandparents—Eva’s parents—had died some years before, and there was nobody Eva could leave her with. Kendra’s aunts and uncles were as sweet as ever. They said, if this bereavement had to take place what a mercy that it happened while Kendra’s mother was here to take care of the dear girl. What they meant was, they were not going to be bothered with Eva’s ill-gotten brat.

Eva came to Baltimore, gracious and well dressed as always. She said she would write Alex at once and send the letter by one of the couriers who carried army dispatches. She would be delighted, said Eva, to have her charming daughter with her.

Like the aunts and uncles, she did not mean what she said. Eva did not find her daughter charming. Other people might admire Kendra’s blue eyes and the dark hair growing to an arrow on her forehead. But Eva did not. Kendra looked like Baird Logan, and every glance at Kendra reminded Eva of the trouble she had made for herself when she ran off with him.

As Kendra sat here in the cabin of the
Cynthia,
she remembered how Eva had suggested, in her own tactful way, that Kendra drop the surname Logan and let herself be called Kendra Taine. “As long as you lived with a grandmother named Mrs. Logan,” said Eva, “calling yourself Logan was a matter of course. But I am Mrs. Taine. Your being named Logan will be—well, puzzling. You understand, don’t you?”

Kendra understood. She knew her mother regarded that first marriage as a bit of childish folly and wanted to be reminded of it as little as possible. Kendra resented this. And Kendra was no more like her mother in nature than in looks. Eva had tact and grace; Kendra was forthright as a storm. The only way she knew to answer was to say what she meant. She said,

“I won’t tell people my name is Taine. Maybe you’re ashamed of Baird Logan but I’m not. He was my father and my name is Logan and it’s going to stay Logan till I get married.”

Eva knew when she had lost. Smiling pleasantly she replied, “Very well, Kendra.”

They had not referred to the matter again. Those pleasant, tactful smiles of Eva’s were part of the endless pretending that made it possible for them to live together. Kendra hated pretending.

“Now why,” said Loren’s voice beside her, “should you be so gloomy?”

Kendra started. Loren stood by the chair next to hers, smiling down at her. He looked so amiable, so brotherly, that he made her feel like talking. But she was not going to tell him what she had been thinking about. She detested people who whined, and anyway, Loren would not have understood if she had told him. Loren had grown up in a small New England town. His home had been the easy-going sort, with wide fireplaces and comfortable old furniture and a lot of children and parents who loved them all. He simply would not have been able to comprehend the sort of lonesomeness Kendra had felt all her life.

He stood looking down at her, his eyes bright in his happy face. Loren’s eyes were a clear light brown, like cider. Kendra said,

“Loren, I was just thinking—how far is it from New York to San Francisco?”

This was something Loren did know about. He answered promptly, “By way of Cape Horn, seventeen thousand miles.”

Kendra gave her head a shake. “It’s a long way. It’s such a long way it scares me. It makes me feel like a nobody. So—unimportant.”

“But you
are
important!” he exclaimed impulsively. “Here on the
Cynthia,
you’re more important than you know.” He caught his words. “Well, it’s getting late. I’d better see if the captain has any orders.”

He went out. Kendra looked after him with a puzzled frown. This was the second time he had started to say something and had broken off.

Now what, she wondered, could he have been talking about when he said that on the
Cynthia
she was more important than she knew?

N
OW BEGAN THE BATTLE
of the Horn. Day after day the
Cynthia
creaked and tumbled as she fought to get from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific, while the wind raged against her.

The sailors dragged at the great ropes, and the sea flung icy waves across the decks, blinding and choking the men and leaving salt in the cuts on their hands. In the cabin the four passengers sat gripping their chairs, lest they be pitched out to go rolling around like marbles. They had no heat, and at night they had no light, for the oil lamps were too dangerous to be lit on so frantic a sea. Through the days they sat in the gray glow under the skylight, at night the darkness was so thick that Kendra felt as if she could almost gather it in her hands. They went to their berths as usual, but they could not sleep much, for the waves kept shaking them awake.

Now they did have meals of hardtack, and cold, very cold, salt beef. Nothing else, for it was nearly impossible for the cook to keep a pot steady on the fire. Once in a while he did manage to make coffee, but by Captain Pollock’s orders this went to the struggling men on deck.

By morning of the fourth day Kendra’s nerves were wearing thin. The night had been so rough that she felt bruised all over, and both she and Eva were glad when the time came to get up and go into the cabin. The steward brought them another meal of salt beef and seabiscuit, and water that tasted rusty from having been stored so long in the tank. The mate came in, ate his breakfast hurriedly, and went out. Captain Pollock was still on deck.

Her hands clenched on her chair, Kendra thought how alone they were in this terrible passage at the bottom of the world, how many vessels had split where the
Cynthia
was fighting now, how lost were even the names of the people whose bones had broken on the rock of Cape Horn. Across the table sat Eva, with Bess and Bunker Anderson, grimly enduring the ups and downs. Loren came in and sat by Kendra.

“The men on deck aren’t scared,” he told her. “Half of them have sailed with Captain Pollock before. Coming back to the same captain is the highest tribute they can pay.”

Kendra smiled. He did make her feel better. Loren, who had also sailed with Captain Pollock before, went on.

“He’s a strict master, but I was glad he wanted me again. A young fellow can learn a lot working with a man like him.”

Captain Pollock came into the cabin and asked Loren to have the steward bring him some breakfast. Except for a nod he paid no attention to the passengers. The steward brought him beef and biscuit, and Pollock ate in silence, eating because he had to eat, all his thoughts outside with his ship.

Captain Pollock was thirty-six years old, a man of stalwart build, with a sailor’s ruddy weatherbeaten cheeks and a sailor’s farsighted blue eyes. His hair and beard were chestnut brown, his hands large and strong, his shoulders broad; in his own rugged way he was a handsome man. He wore nautical blue with brass buttons, and excellent shirts and boots, all kept in order by the steward, part of whose duty it was to act as the captain’s personal attendant.

Just now his clothes were soaking, his hair and beard and eyebrows frosted with salt. He had no leisure for words or rest. As soon as he had finished his bread and beef he strode across the cabin and mounted to the deck again.

But though abstracted, he did not seem worried. He simply looked like a man who had a job to do. Kendra thought the very sight of him was enough to make anybody feel more confident. She said so to Loren, who had returned to the chair beside her.

Loren agreed. He told her Pollock had been at sea since he was sixteen years old, and had been captain of his own vessel since he was twenty-five. He had been around the world four times, and not once had the underwriters been called on to pay a dollar’s insurance for a vessel or cargo under his command. At last the magnificent
Cynthia
had been built, especially for him. This was her maiden voyage.

“And how he does love this ship!” Loren exclaimed.

As he spoke, Loren glanced across the table, where Bunker Anderson was telling Bess and Eva an anecdote of his trading days in China. Lowering his voice Loren added, “Kendra, the other day I almost told you something and then thought I shouldn’t. But now I think I should. It will make you less concerned.” She listened with interest, and Loren said, “Captain Pollock is glad to have you on the
Cynthia.
”

Kendra puckered her forehead. “You mean he’s glad to have me, more than the others?”

Loren nodded. With another glance across the table to make sure the others were not listening, he said, “You bring good luck.”

Kendra’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Me? Why?”

He answered simply, “Because you’re a pure young maiden.”

Kendra burst out laughing. She was a pure young maiden—in her sheltered life she had never had much chance to be anything else—but she had a practical mind. For the captain to think this would bring good fortune to the
Cynthia
simply struck her as absurd.