The pioneer

In the darkness of the early November night Colonel Parrish rattled across town in a hired carriage. It was half-past eight when he left his rooms (they were a fine suite on a sunny corner of Kearney Street), and now as he turned into Folsom Street he calculated that if the girls were ready they could be en route by nine o’clock. In the autumn of 1870 the hours for evening entertainments were still early, and the particular entertainment to which the Colonel intended taking June and Rosamund Allen was one of the regular receptions which united the aristocracy of San Francisco at the house of Mrs. Ira Davenport.

The great detached bulks of the buildings that the carriage passed gleamed with lights, for Folsom Street was still the home of the elect. From the arch of lofty porches hall lamps cast a faint gleam into the outer darkness of shrubberies and lawns. Through the scroll-work of high iron gates the imbedded flags of the marble paths shone white between darkly grassed borders. Here and there a black façade was cut into by rows of long, lighted windows, uncurtained and unshuttered. The street suggested seclusion, wealth and dignity. The fortunes, which were later to erect huge piles on San Francisco’s wind-swept hill-crests, had not yet arisen to blight the picturesqueness of the gray, sea-girdled city.

His own house was one of the largest in the street. Now, in the darkness, it loomed an irregular black mass, cut into with squares and slits of light. Just a month before the lease of his tenants had expired, and he was able to see one, at least, of his dreams realized—Alice’s daughters quartered under his roof.

The revolution of Fortune’s wheel had been, where the Allens were concerned, sudden and dizzying. The ledge, that man for years had fruitlessly sought, in one night had been laid bare. Even for the time and the country it was a startling reversal of conditions. In the spring Beauregard Allen had been a beggar. In the summer he saw himself a man of wealth. Experts pronounced the discovery one of moment. The mine, called the Barranca, was regarded as richer in promise than the Buckeye Belle. Distant portions of the tract, which had come into his possession in so unlooked for a manner, were sold for large sums. The whole region was shaken into astonished animation and Foleys was more effectually wakened from the dead than it would have been by the Colonel’s original scheme.

Allen’s sloth and despondency fell from him like a garment. With the ready money from the land sales he at once began the development of the prospect hole. In July a square tunnel mouth and a board shed intruded on the sylvan landscape near the landslide. In September a fair-sized hoisting works housed the throb of engines and the roll of cars. The noise of Beauregard Allen’s strike went abroad through foot-hill California and its echo rolled to San Francisco, where men who had known him in the early days suddenly remembered him as “Beau” Allen, the handsome Southerner, who had come to grief and dropped out of sight in the fifties.

In September he came down to San Francisco and saw the Colonel. The meeting at first was constrained, but as Allen spoke of his daughters and the plans for their happiness and welfare that he had in view the constraint wore away and the two men talked as beings united by a mutual interest. The Colonel had recognized the fact that the breach must be healed. He had had to struggle against his old repugnance, but there was nothing else for it. No wrong, however deep, should stand between him and Alice’s daughters, and he could not know the daughters without accepting the father. And how he did want to know them! They had already brought brightness and purpose into his life. In an effort to treat the matter lightly he told himself that the harboring of old resentments, when they blocked the way to the forming of new ties, was too much like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Deep in his heart lay the feeling that, apart from his affection for them, they might need him. He knew Allen of old, and Alice was dead.

It was their father’s intention to have them make San Francisco their home. In the larger city they would have the advantages of society and chances to marry well. One of the objects of his visit was to look about for a house whence they could be launched into the little world in which he once had played his part. It was thus that the Colonel, the lease of his old tenant having just expired, was able to offer them his own house for as long a period of years as they might wish.

But Allen, swollen with the pride of his new fortunes, would rent no house. He would buy one, a fitting home for two such girls as his. When it came to that, the Colonel was as willing to sell as to rent. The price of thirty thousand dollars was put upon the Folsom Street mansion, and Allen, being much impressed by its size and old-fashioned splendor, purchased it, paying down the sum of ten thousand dollars, while the Colonel held a mortgage maturing in three years for the other twenty thousand. Allen, despite his sudden accession to wealth, claimed that his expenses just now were of the heaviest. In October he contemplated the building of a twenty-stamp mill at the mine, and the shaft house was to be enlarged. The winter outfits for his daughters would be costly. It was his intention that June and Rosamund should be as richly and modishly clad as any of the young women who cast a glamour over the society of the city.

To-night they were to make their entrance into that society. Mrs. Davenport was an old friend of the Colonel’s and he had asked for the invitations, assuring her that she would find his protégées two of the prettiest and sweetest girls in the world. Now as he sprang from the carriage and pushed open the tall gate of scrolled iron-work he smiled to himself, cheerfully confident that he had not overstated the charms of the Misses Allen.

His ring brought one of the new Chinese servants to the door, a quiet man, soft-footed as a cat, and clothed in freshly-laundered white. Standing in the hall under the light he watched this spectral figure flit noiselessly up the stairway. The hall, papered in a deep reddish-purple on which here and there the gleam of gold arabesques was faintly visible, was wide and dim. It would require a galaxy of lamps thoroughly to dispel the gloom that lurked in its dusky corners. A stately staircase, thickly carpeted and with a darkly-polished hand-rail, ran up in front of him. There was a light again at the top of this throwing faint glimmerings on receding stretches of wall, also somberly papered.

Through the wide arch on his right he could look into a half-lighted parlor, where a globe or two in the chandelier shone a translucent yellow. To his left the doors into the reception-room were open, and here by a table, a reading lamp at his elbow, sat Beauregard Allen smoking a cigar. He was in evening dress, but a button or two of unloosened waist-coat, and the air of sprawling ease that marked his attitude, did not suggest the trim alertness of one garbed and tuned for festival.

“Good evening, Parrish,” he said. “The girls will be down in a minute. I’m going to beg off. Can’t drag me away from a good cigar and comfortable chair on such a damned cold night.”

His face was flushed; he had evidently been drinking more than was consistent with a strictly temperate standard, a condition which often marked him after dinner. But the old tendency toward an open and unabashed inebriety had been conquered. Well-dressed, his beard trimmed, the sense of degradation and failure lifted from him, he looked a stalwart, personable man, in whom the joy of life was still buoyantly and coarsely alive.

The Colonel, leaning against the door frame, was about to launch into the desultory conversation that fills gaps, when the rustle of skirts on the stairs caught his ear. June and Rosamund were descending, their cloaks on their arms that they might show themselves in their new finery. Their mourning for their mother took the form of transparent black gauze, through which the delicate whiteness of their youthful arms and shoulders gleamed. They laughed as they met the Colonel’s eye, both slightly abashed by the unwonted splendor of their attire.

Their sudden rise from poverty, their translation to the city, and their short stay in its sophisticated atmosphere, had already worked a marked change in them. Their air of naïvely blushing rusticity was gone. They looked finer, more mondaine, than they had only six weeks before. Rosamund, who was of an ample, gracious build, had already, by the aid of the admirable dressmaker who had fashioned her gown, achieved a figure of small-waisted, full-busted elegance, which, combined with her naturally fine carriage, gave her an appearance of metropolitan poise and distinction. She had that bounteous and blooming type of looks which is peculiar to the women of California, and which (as is the case with the character that accompanies it) is curiously lacking in feminine subtility and romantic suggestion. By far the handsomer of the two sisters she was not destined to cast the spell over the hearts of men which was the prerogative of June.

She too had improved, but neither skilful dressmakers nor luxurious surroundings would ever make her a radiantly good-looking or particularly noticeable person. Her hair, which had been so unsightly six months before, was now her one beauty. It hung round her head in a drooping mass of brown curls, the longest just brushing the nape of her neck. Through them was wound a ribbon of black velvet in the manner of adornment sometimes seen in eighteenth century miniatures.

The girls grumbled a little at their father’s defection, but the truth was that they were so excited by the evening’s prospect that their regrets had a perfunctory tone. In the carriage they plied the Colonel with questions as to the nature of the entertainment and the people they were likely to meet. It amused and somewhat puzzled him to see that the anticipation of what he had supposed would be a beguiling and cheerful amusement was throwing them into nervous tremors. As the large outline of the Davenport house rose before them, all attempt at conversation died, and they sat, stiff and speechless, on the seat opposite him.

The Davenport house, as all old Californians know, was at that time and had been for ten years, the focus of the city’s social life. Mrs. Davenport was a Southerner and had been a beauty, facts which had weighed with the San Franciscans since the days when “the water came up to Montgomery Street.” The Southern tradition still retained much of its original power. The war had not broken it, and the overwhelming eruption of money, which the Comstock was to disgorge, had not yet submerged the once dominant “set.” At its head Mrs. Davenport ruled with tact and determination. She appeared to the Allens as a graciously cordial lady of more than middle age, whose sweeping robe of gray satin matched the hair she wore parted on her forehead and drawn primly down over the tips of her ears.

To the sisters it was the entrance into a new world, the world their parents had strayed from and often described to them. Seated in arm-chairs of yellow brocade they surveyed the length of the parlor, a spacious, high-ceilinged apartment, of a prevailing paleness of tint and overhung by crystal chandeliers. The black shoulders of men were thrown out against the white walls delicately touched with a design in gilding. Long mirrors reproduced the figures of women rising from the curving sweep of bright-colored, beruffled trains. A Chinaman, carrying a wide tray of plates and glasses, moved from group to group.

Soon several of the black coats had gathered round the chairs of June and Rosamund. The Colonel had to give up his seat, and June could see him talking to men in the doorways or dropping into vacant places beside older women. He kept his eye on them, however. It delighted him to see that their charm was so quickly recognized. Round about him their name buzzed from a knot in a corner, or a group on a sofa. Many of those present had known Beauregard Allen in his short heyday. Almost everybody in the room had heard of his strike near Foleys and sudden translation from poverty to riches.

When at length the Colonel saw the chair beside June vacant he crossed the room and dropped into it. He was anxious to hear from her how she was enjoying herself.

“Well,” he said, “the old man’s been frozen out for nearly an hour. Didn’t it make you feel conscience-stricken to see me hanging round the doorway looking hungrily at this chair?”

“I was dying for that man to go,” she answered. “I did everything but ask him.”

“Oh, you sinner!” he said, looking into her dancing eyes. “Where will you go to when you die?”

“Where do you think you will?” she asked, grave, but with her dimple faintly suggested. “I’d like to know, because then I can arrange to have just about the same sort of record, and we could go together.”

He could not restrain his laughter, and she added in her most caressing tone,

“It would be so dreary for you to go to one place and me to be in another.”

Before he could answer she had raised her eyes, glanced at the door, and then suddenly flushed, her face disclosing a sort of sudden quick snap into focused attention.

“Mr. Barclay,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t expect to see him to-night.”

The Colonel turned his head and saw Jerry Barclay entering the room in the company of a lady and gentleman. Many other people looked at them as they moved to where Mrs. Davenport stood, for they were unquestionably a noticeable trio.

The woman was in the middle, and between the proud and distinguished figure of Barclay and the small, insignificant one of her other escort, she presented a striking appearance. She was of a large, full build, verging on embonpoint, but still showing a restrained luxuriance of outline. A dress of white lace clothed her tightly and swept in creamy billows over the carpet behind her. It was cut in a square at her neck, and the sleeves ended at her elbows, revealing a throat and forearms of milky whiteness. This ivory purity of skin was noticeable in her face, which was firmly modeled, rather heavy in feature, and crowned with a coronet of lusterless black hair. She was hardly handsome, but there was something sensational, arresting, slightly repelling, in the sleepy and yet vivid vitality that seemed to emanate from her.

“Who is it?” said June in a low voice. “What a curious looking woman!”

The Colonel, who had been surveying the new-comers, looked at his companion with eyes in which there was a slight veiled coldness. The same quality was noticeable in his voice:

“Her name’s Newbury, Mrs. William Newbury. Her husband’s a banker here.”

“Is that her husband with her, that little man?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s so old! He looks like her father. What did she marry him for?”

“I don’t know. I’m not her father-confessor. He’s got a good deal of money, I believe.”

The Colonel did not seem interested in the subject. He picked up June’s fan and said,

“How did you like the young fellow who had this chair just now, Stanley Davenport? He’s the last unmarried child my old friend has left.”

The girl’s eyes, however, had followed the new-comers with avid, staring curiosity, and she said,

“Very much. Are Mrs. Newbury and her husband great friends of Mr. Barclay’s?”

“I believe they are. I don’t know much about her. I know her husband in business. He’s a little dried up, but he’s a first-rate fellow in the main.”

“Is she an American? She looks so queer and foreign.”

“Spanish, Spanish-Californian. She and her sister were two celebrated beauties here about twelve years ago. Their name was Romero—Carmen and Guadalupé Romero—and they were very poor. Their grandfather had been a sort of a Shepherd King, owned a Spanish grant about as big as a European principality, and when the Gringo came traded off big chunks of it for lengths of calico and old firearms and books he couldn’t read. The girls were friends of Mrs. Davenport’s only daughter Annie, and she gave them a start. Carmen—she was the elder of the two—married an Englishman, a man of position and means that she met in this house. She lives over in England. This one—Lupé—married Newbury about ten years ago.”

“Do you think she’s pretty?” asked June, anxious to have her uncertainty on this point settled by what she regarded as expert opinion.

“No. I don’t admire her at all. She was handsome when she married. Those Spanish women all get too fat. You saw something of Barclay at Foleys after I left, didn’t you?”

She dropped her eyes to the hands folded in her lap and said with a nonchalant air,

“Yes, he was at Foleys for over a week. He came back from Thompson’s Flat just after you left, and he used to come and see us every afternoon. We had lots of fun. He helped us with the garden, and he didn’t know how to do anything, and we had to teach him.”

“You saw a lot of Rion Gracey too, I suppose,” said her companion, with a sidelong eye on her.

It pleased him to note that at this remark she looked suddenly conscious.

The Colonel had for some time cherished a secret hope. It was one of the subjects of mutual agreement which had made it easier for him and Allen to bury the hatchet. The latter had told him of Rion Gracey’s continued visits to the cottage throughout the summer, and both men had agreed that no woman could find a better husband than the younger of the Gracey boys.

June’s conscious air was encouraging, but her words were aggravatingly non-committal.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “we saw Mr. Gracey often. He was always coming into Foleys to buy supplies for the Buckeye Belle.”

At that moment Barclay, who had turned away from his companions, saw her, and with a start of recognition followed by a smile of undisguised pleasure, hurried toward her. The Colonel rose with some reluctance. He was surprised and not entirely pleased at the open delight of the young man’s countenance, the confident friendliness of his greeting. He gave up his chair, however, and as he crossed the room to one of his elderly cronies, he saw that Mrs. Newbury was watching Jerry Barclay and June with a slight, lazy smile and attentive eyes.

“I came here to-night solely to see you,” said the young man, as soon as the Colonel was out of earshot.

“But how did you know I was here?” asked the innocent June. “I never told you.”

“No, you naughty girl, you never did. But I heard it.”

“Little birds?” she queried, tilting up her chin and looking at him out of the ends of her eyes.

“Little birds,” he acquiesced. “And why didn’t you let me know? Don’t I remember your making me a solemn promise at Foleys to tell me the first thing if you ever came to San Francisco? You were doubtful then if you ever would.”

“Yes, I think you do,” she agreed. “That is, if you’ve got a good memory.”

“You evidently haven’t.”

“I remembered it perfectly and was waiting until we got settled in our new house before I wrote you. I was going to give you a surprise.”

“Well, you’ve surprised me enough already.” He leaned a little nearer to her, and looking at her with eyes that were at once soft and bold said: “You’ve changed so; you’ve changed immensely since I saw you last.”

She dropped her eyes and said demurely,

“I hope it’s for the better,” then looked up at him and their laughter broke out in happy duet.

The Colonel heard it across the room, and glancing at them felt annoyed that June should look so suddenly flushed and radiant. Evidently she and Jerry Barclay, in the ten days he had spent at Foleys, had become very good friends.

An hour later the Misses Allen were standing at the top of the steps that led from the porch to the street. Guests were departing in all directions, and the lanterns of carriages were sending tubes of opaque, yellow light through the fog. The Colonel had gone in quest of theirs, cautioning his charges to wait in the shelter of the porch for him. Here they stood, close-wrapped against the damp, and peering into the churning white currents. Just below them two men, the collars of their coats up, paused to light their cigars. One accomplished the feat without difficulty; the other stood with his hand curved round the match, which many times flamed and went out.

Suddenly June heard his companion say between puffs,

“Queer, Mrs. Newbury being here!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other, drawing a new match from his pocket, “Mrs. Davenport knew the Romero girls long before they were married. They were friends of Annie Davenport’s. Nobody’d ever breathed a word against either of them then. She wouldn’t throw Lupé down on a rumored scandal. I don’t see how she could.”

“Lots of people have. And you call it a ‘rumored scandal’ all you want; everybody believes it. She owns him body and soul.”

The other man had at last induced the tip of his cigar to catch. He threw back his head and drew a few quick inspirations.

“That’s the story. But a woman like Mrs. Davenport is not going to damn her daughter’s friend on hearsay. Women have got a creed of their own; they believe what they want to and they disbelieve what they want to. She wants to believe that the affair’s purely platonic, and she does it.”

“But Barclay! To hang round her that way in public—what a fool!”

“Oh, Barclay!”—a shrug went with the words—“he does what he’s told!”

The man turned as he spoke and saw the two girls above him on the step. He threw a low-toned phrase at his companion, and without more words they started out and were absorbed in the darkness. Almost simultaneously a carriage rattled up and the Colonel’s voice bade June and Rosamund descend.

A half-hour later, as they were mounting the stairs to their rooms, June said suddenly,

“Did you hear what those men were saying on the steps as we stood there waiting?”

They had both heard the entire conversation, and though they did not understand the true purport of the ambiguous phrases, they realized that they contained a veiled censure of Mrs. Newbury and Jerry Barclay. Their secluded bringing up in an impoverished home where the coarseness of the world never entered had kept them ignorant of the winked-at sins of society. Yet the crude frankness of mining camps had paraded before their eyes many things that girls brought up in the respectable areas of large cities never see.

“Yes, I heard them,” said Rosamund.

“What did they mean? I didn’t understand them. They seemed to think there was something wrong about Mrs. Newbury.”

“I don’t know what they meant. But I didn’t like her looks at all. I wouldn’t want her for a friend.”

“They said something of Mr. Barclay too, didn’t they?”

“Yes; they said he was a fool and did as he was told.”

“Well,” said June, bristling, “those are just the two particular things about him I should think were not true. But there was some one that they said she—I suppose that meant Mrs. Newbury—owned body and soul. Whom do you suppose they meant?”

“Her husband,” said Rosamund promptly. “Whom else could they mean?”

June had felt depressed on the way home. At these words her depression suddenly vanished and she became wreathed in smiles. Thrusting her hand through Rosamund’s arm she gave it an affectionate squeeze, exclaiming with a sudden sputter of laughter,

“Well, if his soul isn’t a better specimen than his body I don’t think it’s much to own.”

Rosamund was shocked; she refused even to smile, as June, drooping against her shoulder, filled the silence of the sleeping house with the sound of her laughter.