Gold (6 page)

“
We have had dinner there, yes.”

“
Your daughter is a phantom of delight.”

“
Wordsworth?”

“
Wordsworth.” He stood and paced to the door and back with his head down, his hands clasped
behind him.

“
I agree to advance you the five thousand dol
lars,” he told her.

Startled, she said,
“You agree?”

“
If you meet certain conditions.”

Pamela waited.

“First, you will pay interest at the usual rate.”

“
Which is?”

“
Two percent per month. Second, in addition
to selling provisions, our establishment will offer
entertainment and games of chance.”

“
You mean it will be a music and gambling
hall.”

“
Those are words commonly used to describe
such places. I’ve just returned from the north. In the right location and with the proper manage
ment, we can clear two thousand a month.”

“
Two thousand! I hadn’t expected so much.
But I find gambling distasteful. I’ll need time to
consider, Mr. Rhynne. May I have a week?”

“
Agreed.” He stepped to her, bent down to
grasp her shoulders and kissed her lips. Pamela
gasped, her lips opening, and for an instant, no
more, she responded to him. Then, turning her
head away, she suddenly grew angry. Before she
could strike out at him, he stepped back.

“
If we become partners,” he said, “consider
that as payment in full of your first month’s inter
est.” He turned only to stop short.

In the open doorway, eyes wide and mouth
agape, stood Selena.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Pamela and Selena climbed Telegraph Hill with
the sky cloudless above them and the waters of
the bay sparkling below. As if by unspoken agree
ment, neither mentioned Diego, though now and
again Selena glanced covertly behind them. A day
and a night had passed since Diego’s horse had
been returned by a man Robert Gowdy had hired. Still, Selena expected to espy at any moment three
horsemen in black.

“
There’s Mr. Rhynne,” Pamela said as they
neared the top. She gestured toward three men be
low them in frock coats and high plug hats.
Rhynne kept looking from the pocket watch in his
hand to the entrance of the bay.

Selena glanced at her mother.

“
He’s offered to advance me money to open a store in the mining camps,” Pamela went on.

Selena nodded to herself,
looking down at the
tall man between his two companions. Was that
the explanation for the scene she’d witnessed in
her mother’s room yesterday? An agreement
sealed with a kiss? It was certainly unlike Pamela.

“
It would be wonderful to get away from San
Francisco,” Selena said carefully. Actually her
heart was leaping at the chance to go north, where
there was gold and excitement. She added inno
cently, “Mr. Rhynne must be here to watch for the
clipper too.”

“
Mr. Rhynne is a gambler,” Pamela said. “I
suspect he has his own private reason for waiting
down there. As I told you, he’ll help us in our
store venture—but with conditions. We must also
operate a gambling and music hall. And a saloon as well, I suppose.”

“
If we did, I could sing,” Selena said eagerly.
“That man who heard me sing in New York said
I should be on the stage.”

“
You were a child then. I cannot have you ex
hibiting yourself in front of a group of drunken
miners. Beyond the impropriety, it wouldn’t be
safe. There’s no point in discussing it anyway because I’ve decided not to accept Mr. Rhynne’s offer. I discovered after talking to him he’s in
volved in another business besides gambling.”

“
Which is?”

“
He provides entertainers for the miners.”

“
You mean singers and dancers?”

“
No, I do not mean singers and dancers. You
know who I mean. I mean women who cater to
the baser instincts of lonely men. In our position, Selena, without prospects, we can’t afford to be
associated with a man of that kind.”

“
Who told you? Robert Gowdy? You know
he’d say anything if he thought it would keep you
in San Francisco.”

“
I’m sure Mr. Gowdy was telling the truth. You
have no idea, Selena, what some men are like,
how far they’ll stoop to satisfy their lust for money and power. And if I have my way you never will
know.”

Selena knew Pamela was thinking of Lord
Lester. He was my father, she wanted to say. I couldn’t help loving him. But she said nothing,
brushing away the thought as she brushed away
all thoughts of that trek across the continent to
California.

When they reached the top of the hill, they
climbed onto a large flat rock to gaze out over the bay toward the Pacific Ocean. Overhead seagulls
whirled and dipped. To their right was a hut with
the windmill-like arms of the semaphore telegraph on top while below a ship was coming into the bay
under full sail.

“
It’s not the Flying Cloud,” Pamela said. “From
her flag she must be a clipper on the China run.”

Selena heard the disappointment in her moth
er’s voice and thought guiltily that she herself
didn’t care whether or not there was news from
“home.” The Flying Cloud would have brought
English mail, but to Selena, England was no
longer home. California was.

When the ship passed the tip of an island in the
bay one of the men with Rhynne threw his hat to the ground. “He’s giving money to Mr. Rhynne,”
Selena said.

“
I should have guessed they didn’t climb half-
way up the hill for the view. They had a wager on
the time the ship would reach the island.”

“
Mother!” Selena clutched Pamela’s arm.
“Over there, riding up the hill. I knew he’d come.”

A lone horseman, dressed in black and wearing
the low flat-brimmed hat of the
Californios
, urged
his mount to clamber over a steep rise, then gal
loped upward in a zigzag pattern. Sunlight flashed
from the silver ornaments on the horse’s trap
pings.

“
It is Diego,” Selena said. Her heart pounded.
From fear? From longing? “What shall we do?”
They were the only ones on the top of the hill and
the semaphore hut was almost a quarter of a mile
away.

“
We’ll go to meet him, of course,” Pamela said.

Diego crested the hill and reined to a halt a
hundred feet from them. Vaulting from his stal
lion with a single, fluid motion, he stood watching them. Despite his velvet suit with wide-bottomed
slashed pants, he seemed, to Selena, somehow less
imposing than he had at the rancho.

Diego approached them with a stiff-legged gait, as though once off his horse he had left his natural
element behind. Pamela stopped, reaching out her arm to hold Selena back too. Selena had no inten
tion of rushing forward, however. Though on first seeing Diego she thought she might throw herself
into his arms, now that she faced him she saw
him more as a threat, not so much to herself as to
her mother.

Diego swept off his hat and bowed. Pamela
nodded and Selena stared. Almost on tip-toe Diego
walked toward them, like a wary puma stalking
his prey, his eyes never leaving theirs. In his belt Selena saw the butt of a pistol she had not noticed
there the day before.

“
You had no cause for fear,” he said to Selena.

Pamela answered coolly for her daughter.
“Se
lena changed her mind,
Senor
de la Torre. She
does not wish to marry you. She will not marry
you.”

Diego glanced from Pamela to Selena and back again.
“I talked with my sister, Esperanza. I love
Esperanza with all my heart, yet her words, seem
ing as gentle as the breeze, often gather force and
become as the whirlwind.”

“
Your sister didn’t make my daughter change
her mind. I didn’t make her change her mind.
Selena is old enough to make decisions. In our
world, a woman of her age must decide for her
self.”

Her mother, Selena thought, was more than a
match for Diego. She wouldn’t have to say a word.

“
You believe me to be . . .” Diego hesitated. “What is it the English say? A searcher for gold?”

“
A prospector?”

“
A man who marries for the dowry of his bride-
to-be.” His dark eyes flashed. “I am not. I renounce your money. I renounce your lands be
yond the seas. I am Diego de la Torre. That is
enough.”

Pamela drew in her breath.
“Don Diego,” she
said, “we have no lands, no money. Our fortune
consists of one parcel of land forty-eight
varos
wide in San Francisco. We have nothing else.
Nothing.”

“
At the Mission of Santa Clara you spoke of the
green fields of your home in England where the
lands of your husband, who is now dead, extended
in all directions farther than the eye can see. You told me of your great house, your servants, your carriages, your many horses. You told me of all these things and more.”

“
You must have misunderstood me. My husband owned those lands I told you of but he lost
them. They were sold to pay his debts. Sometimes
having too much land is worse than owning none
at all.”

“
You made me believe the lands were yours.
You made me believe they became yours with the
death of your husband. You
made me believe your
daughter Selena would receive a portion of the
lands when she married.”

His voice had become quieter, more deadly.
Selena wished he would shout and wave his arms
as the Americans did. That she could understand.

“
When one person speaks Spanish as his native
tongue,” Pamela told him, “and the other is accus
tomed to English, there are bound to be misunderstandings. I thought you were the wealthy one with many leagues of grazing lands to the
south.” She smiled but Selena noticed a tic at the
corner of her mother’s mouth.

“
So,
senor
,” Pamela told him, trying for a light tone. “We were both mistaken.”

Diego leaned forward until his face was inches
from Pamela’s. He sneered, “You laugh, you
make sport. And you speak less than the truth. It is you who do not understand. I am in disgrace.
Diego de la Torre is the butt of sly laughter in
the cantinas, at the ranchos of my friends, in my own house. I cannot ride to a fiesta ever again. I
can never marry, for who will have me? I have
become like the mud on the ground, like the drop
pings of cattle. I am nothing.”

“
I’m sure—” Pamela began.

“
I, Diego de la Torre of the de la Torres of
Mazatlan, of the de la Torres admired throughout
Castile, have been tricked by a woman. I have
been held up to the scorn of the world by a
woman. By you. My life is worth
nada
to me.
Nada
” He flung his hat to the ground.