Calico Palace (4 page)

Here a proud smile broke the gravity of Mr. Chase as he caught sight of something over her shoulder. Kendra turned, and saw coming toward her two lieutenants of the United States Army. They were young, they were good-looking, they were scrubbed and barbered and as correct as if they had come only yesterday out of West Point. As they halted before her and bowed, they looked so much alike that for the moment she distinguished them by noting that one had brown eyes and the other blue.

The brown-eyed one spoke first. “Miss Logan? Lieutenant Morse, at your service.”

The blue-eyed one said, “Lieutenant Vernon. The colonel has given us the honor of seeing you home, Miss Logan.”

Kendra began to understand what Mr. Chase had told her. Morse and Vernon were so excited at being her escorts that they could hardly keep their dignity as officers and gentlemen. Gallantly they led her to a hitching post where their horses waited, and gallantly helped her into a saddle.

They rode along the soggy waterfront street, Morse and Vernon talking with all their might. This beach road, they said, was called Montgomery Street in honor of the naval hero who had first raised the American flag in San Francisco. They pointed out a rickety building grandly called the New York Store, and another store named the Bee Hive, and Buckelew’s watch repair shop near the landing point, and the tailor shop of Lazarus Everhard. Farther on they showed her the store owned by the two traders she had met at the point, Chase and Fenway.

“Everybody is so glad to see you!” Morse exclaimed.

“Now,” Vernon said joyfully, “we can have the dance!”

“We’ve been planning the dance a long time,” said Morse, “but we wanted to wait for you.”

“We’re going to have it,” said Vernon, “in the parlor of a new boarding place, the Comet House—” He broke off. “This is the corner of Clay Street. We turn here.”

Clay Street was a streak of mud leading straight up a hill. Kendra flinched. “Good heavens! It’s like riding up the side of a steeple!”

But she could not help herself, so she started up. Like the beach road, this “street” was a mere track with no distinction of road and sidewalk. As they came to the City Hotel, Morse told her this was the general meeting place of the town. “We drop in there,” he said, “to hear what’s happening. If anything,” he added with an angry little laugh.

“Nothing ever happens in San Francisco,” Vernon agreed vehemently.

Across from the City Hotel was the town square. The men said that in Mexican days this had been called the plaza, and most people still called it that. The plaza was an open space slanting down the side of the hill. In the plaza was an old adobe building, which they told her had once been a Mexican customhouse and now served as an army barracks.

They rode past shanties with crudely painted signs of carpenters, cobblers, blacksmiths. Kendra saw a few men in flannel shirts and muddy black trousers, plodding up the hill, and two or three women in sunbonnets and gingham aprons. San Francisco did look like a place where nothing ever happened. In her mind she said—I’ll
make
something happen. I’ll do
something.

But in a town like this, what?

“Tell me about the people who live here,” she said hopefully.

“Well, the traders,” said Morse, “and a few settlers who came out in covered wagons, and quite a colony of Mormons. They came by ship from New York.”

“And drifters,” said Vernon, “and runaway sailors.”

“And crackbrains,” said Morse. “The kind who invent perpetual motion machines, or think up schemes for getting gold out of sea water.”

“One of those,” Vernon remarked, “is roaming around right now. Only it’s fresh water this time. A creek somewhere near Sutter’s Fort—that’s across the bay. This fellow has a tin box with gravel in it. He says the gravel is gold.”

Kendra felt a spark of interest. “Gold? Where did he get it?”

Laughing, Vernon explained. “He says the creek bed is made of gold instead of sand. He wants somebody to lend him money to buy provisions, so he can go back and scoop up a million dollars.”

“Does anybody believe him?” she asked.

“Oh no. We’re always getting that sort. We let ’em talk. Breaks the monotony.”

They were nearing the top of the hill. Beyond it Kendra could see more hills, reaching in long dim waves toward the sea. A muddy track ran across the face of the slope, parallel to Montgomery Street at the bottom. Along this track stood a row of dwellings, square like boxes and painted a glaring white. Morse and Vernon told her this was Stockton Street, the neighborhood of the Mormons. An enterprising Mormon carpenter named Riggs, after building a house for his own family, had built another next door for rent, and Colonel Taine had taken the second house. They rode along till they came to it.

This house was square and white like the others. The ground around it consisted of soft black mud, in which Mr. Riggs had laid a line of stepping stones.

Eva came across the porch, brisk, cheerful, as much at home as if she had lived in San Francisco a year. She greeted them cordially.

“Come in, there’s a fire burning and I’ve made coffee.” As they went into the hall she gestured toward a door at one side. “Kendra, this is our room, and yours is the one behind it.” She opened a door at the other side of the hall. “Now this,” she said merrily, “is our dining room, living room, library, drawing room—we’re going to be very grand and call it the parlor.” Laughing, she exclaimed, “Isn’t it all
dreadful
?”

Kendra thought it certainly was.

Barely finished, the house smelled of raw lumber and fresh paint. The hall ran through from the front door to the back. On each side were two rooms—the bedrooms at one side, on the other the general room that Eva was blithely calling the “parlor,” and behind it the kitchen. This was all.

Kendra went to look at her bedroom. She found it a small room with two small windows. Light came in dimly, and she could hear the panes rattling in the wind.

There was a narrow bedstead, so clumsy that she felt sure it had been made in one of the workshops she had passed on her way up the hill. To serve for a chair there was a wooden box, and for a dressing table another box on which stood a pitcher and washbowl.

Kendra thought of her grandmother’s home in Baltimore, red brick with white woodwork and marble steps, and in front a lawn and flower beds. She thought of her own room there, the dainty furniture, the ruffly curtains, the soft deep rug by her bed.

—And my mother, she thought,
likes
living in such places as this.

From across the hall came the sound of voices and the aroma of coffee. Leaving her gloves and bonnet on the bed Kendra went into the parlor. The furniture here consisted of a rough table, and more boxes for chairs. Eva and Alex, with the two lieutenants, were drinking coffee from tin cups, while a plump rosy woman about thirty years old bustled around with the pot. Eva introduced her as Mrs. Riggs, wife of the carpenter, and said she had agreed to come in every day and help with the housekeeping.

“We’re going to be quite comfortable,” said Eva. “Mrs. Riggs says the New York Store has chairs, brought around the Horn. I can get calico from Chase and Fenway, to make curtains and bedspreads. And I’ll stuff cushions for the chairs, and braid rugs for these bare floors.”

Alex smiled proudly at the two younger men, and Vernon said, “The colonel told us, Mrs. Taine, ‘Wherever she goes, she brings civilization in her hands.’”

Kendra had never stuffed a cushion, she had no idea how one went about braiding a rug and she did not think she could ever learn. But she was finding out why her mother liked the frontier. It was not merely the adventure. Like an artist who enjoys his power to take a hunk of clay and turn it into something beautiful, Eva enjoyed her talent for turning a shack into a calico palace.

After a while the lieutenants said goodby. Eva said she had put a meal on the stove and Mrs. Riggs had been watching it for her. She went into the kitchen to say they would have lunch now. Mrs. Riggs brought in the dishes, while Kendra waited expectantly. For one thing, the time was well past noon and she was hungry; for another, after being limited so long to shipboard fare she was eager for something new. She had been wondering what people ate in San Francisco.

She came to table, and her hope fell flat. They sat on boxes and ate off tin plates borrowed from the army stores, but this she would not have minded if the food had not been utterly dull: boiled beef, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes. Kendra ate because anything was better than nothing; but Alex must have noticed her disappointment, for he remarked that food in California was generally dull. People lived on beef from the ranches, beef and more beef till they were tired of it. They had little else. The errand boy from Chase and Fenway was going to bring a box of groceries later today, but Alex could not say what these would be.

When they had finished, Alex went to the army headquarters on the beach. A soldier had ridden up the hill, leading a horse for him and bringing Eva the two weekly papers, the
Californian
and the
Star.
Eva was not, however, interested in the local news. As Alex rode away she told Kendra she wanted to step next door with Mrs. Riggs.

“Mrs. Riggs is going to show me her household arrangements,” said Eva. “If that errand boy brings the groceries, tell him to leave them in the kitchen.”

She went out. The newspapers lay on the table. Kendra picked up the
Star.

She read that two men had been arrested for robbing a bowling alley. Another man, presumably more honest, had opened a workshop for making chairs and tables.

She saw advertisements for most of the stores she had passed this morning. Chase and Fenway offered brooms, buckets, nails, axes, paint, brandy, gin, combs, tobacco, pans, soap, wine, and matches. The tailor, Lazarus Everhard, announced that he would make army uniforms. The New York Store urged everybody to buy Vegetable Pills, a remarkable remedy guaranteed to cure smallpox, gout, consumption, and female troubles. The Bee Hive had corkscrews, garden seeds, gunpowder, men’s hats, and women’s shawls.

Just here Kendra looked up.

And there he stood.

She did not know—as long as she lived she did not know—if she had just happened to look up then or if she had felt his eyes upon her, telling her to do so. But look she did, and across the page of the
Star
she saw him.

He stood in the doorway, a strange man, the most beguiling stranger she had ever seen, watching her with a frank audacious pleasure. As their eyes met, he smiled.

He was about thirty years old, tall, lean, healthy. Standing there with one hand on the door and the other at his side, he had a simple loose-jointed grace. His clothes were practical—leather jacket, plaid wool shirt, trousers of brown twilled worsted tucked into stout boots that came nearly up to his knees. He wore no hat, and his brown hair was tumbled by the wind, one wavy lock falling over his forehead to touch his eyebrow. His gaze at her was steady, his smile wise and experienced, and Kendra felt instantly that he knew more about women than she knew about men. She felt, in fact, that he knew more about everything than she did, which made it an even greater tribute that he should be regarding her now with such admiration plain and undisguised.

He looked straight at her and she looked straight at him. For a moment their eyes held, while he did not speak and she could not. It was only a moment, but it was a moment longer than necessary before he said,

“How do you do. I’m the errand boy from Chase and Fenway.”

Kendra started. He did not look like any errand boy she had ever seen. As she dropped the paper on the table he continued,

“I hope I’m not intruding. But the doors were open, so I came in.”

He had such an easy way of speaking that he made it easy for her to answer. “It’s quite all right,” she said. “We were expecting you, Mr.—?”

“My name is Ted Parks,” he answered, his smile returning as he went on, “and you’re Kendra Logan?”

“Why yes. Who told you?”

“Mr. Chase. He has a good power of description, but he didn’t quite prepare me. I hardly expected to find anyone so—vivid.”

Ted Parks let his gaze sweep over her. Again, it lasted only a moment, but it was a moment that made her aware of her graceful figure and her dark blue eyes and the arrow of hair on her forehead; it made her feel
discovered,
as if nobody had ever really looked at her before. Then Ted leaned over and lifted a box from the floor beside him. Hoisting the box to his shoulder he asked, “Now where do I put this?”

Kendra opened the door to the kitchen. She was still far from tranquil. The adoration of the lieutenants had not stirred her, not after what Mr. Chase had said about the shortage of girls. But Ted Parks had a splendid impudence, as if he was used to having plenty of girls to choose from, all eager to be chosen. As he followed her into the kitchen Kendra asked,

“How long have you been in San Francisco?”

“Nearly a year,” said Ted. With a merry twinkle he added, “But don’t think I’m interested in you because girls are scarce. I’m interested because you’re you.”

He had read her thoughts so clearly that Kendra could not answer, but Ted saved her the need of it. As he set the box on the kitchen table he said,

“I came over from Honolulu.”

“Why did you come over?” asked Kendra. She was alert with curiosity.

Ted shrugged. “No reason. I kept hearing about California, thought I’d take a look.”

Scatterbrained, she thought. Doesn’t plan his life. Alex would never approve of him.

Ted was gesturing toward the box. “Don’t you want to see what I’ve brought? Or maybe you’re one of those people who never know what they’re eating?”

“I certainly am not!” she retorted. “I like food and I like to cook. Show me.”

“I’m so glad you like to cook!” Ted exclaimed. “It’s no fun choosing food for people who don’t care.”

“I’m going to cook our dinners,” said Kendra.

In that moment she had made up her mind. She could not make a palace out of a shack but she could make a luscious meal out of any food not absolutely poisonous, and she was going to do it here. She was not going to eat the tasteless kind of stuff her mother had served today. Ted was saying,