Book: A Ward of the Golden Gate

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"I think," continued the colonel, falling back upon the pillow with
an air of relief, "that he told others--of his own kidney, sir,--
though it was a secret among gentlemen. But they have preferred to
be silent now--than AFTERWARDS. They know that I'm ready. But I
can't keep this up long; some time, you know, they're bound to
improve in practice and hit higher up! As far as I'm concerned,"
he added, with a grim glance around the faded walls and threadbare
furniture, "it don't mind; but mine isn't the mouth to be stopped."
He paused, and then abruptly, yet with a sudden and pathetic
dropping of his dominant note, said: "Hathaway, you're young, and
Hammersley liked you--what's to be done? I thought of passing over
my tools to you. You can shoot, and I hear you HAVE. But the h--l
of it is that if you dropped a man or two people would ask WHY, and
want to know what it was about; while, when I do, nobody here
thinks it anything but MY WAY! I don't mean that it would hurt you
with the crowd to wipe out one or two of these hounds during the
canvass, but the trouble is that they belong to YOUR PARTY, and,"
he added grimly, "that wouldn't help your career."

"But," said Paul, ignoring the sarcasm, are you not magnifying the
effect of a disclosure? The girl is an heiress, excellently
brought up. Who will bother about the antecedents of the mother,
who has disappeared, whom she never knew, and who is legally dead
to her?"

"In my day, sir, no one who knew the circumstances," returned the
colonel, quickly. "But we are living in a blessed era of Christian
retribution and civilized propriety, and I believe there are a lot
of men and women about who have no other way of showing their own
virtue than by showing up another's vice. We're in a reaction of
reform. It's the old drunkards who are always more clamorous for
total abstinence than the moderately temperate. I tell you,
Hathaway, there couldn't be an unluckier moment for our secret
coming out."

"But she will be of age soon."

"In two months."

"And sure to marry."

"Marry!" repeated Pendleton, with grim irony. "Would YOU marry
her?"

"That's another question," said the young man, promptly, "and one
of individual taste; but it does not affect my general belief that
she could easily find a husband as good and better."

"Suppose she found one BEFORE the secret is out. Ought he be
told?"

"Certainly."

"And that would imply telling HER?"

"Yes," said Paul, but not so promptly. "And you consider THAT
fulfilling the promise of the Trust--the pledges exchanged with
that woman?" continued Pendleton, with glittering eyes and a return
to his own dominant tone.

"My dear colonel," said Paul, somewhat less positively, but still
smiling, "you have made a romantic, almost impossible compact with
Mrs. Howard that, you yourself are now obliged to admit,
circumstances may prevent your carrying out substantially. You
forget, also, that you have just told me that you have already
broken your pledge--under circumstances, it is true, that do you
honor--and that now your desperate attempts to retrieve it have
failed. Now, I really see nothing wrong in your telling to a
presumptive well-wisher of the girl what you have told to her
enemy."

There was a dead silence. The prostrate man uttered a slight
groan, as if in pain, and drew up his leg to change his position.
After a pause, he said, in a restrained voice, "I differ from you,
Mr. Hathaway; but enough of this for the present. I have something
else to say. It will be necessary for one of us to go at once to
Santa Clara and see Miss Yerba Buena."

"Good heavens!" said Paul, quickly. "Do you call her THAT?"

"Certainly, sir. You gave her the name. Have you forgotten?"

"I only suggested it," returned Paul, hopelessly; "but no matter--
go on."

"I cannot go there, as you see," continued Pendleton, with a weary
gesture towards his crippled ankle; "and I should particularly like
you to see her before we make the joint disposition of her affairs
with the Mayor, two months hence. I have some papers you can show
her, and I have already written a letter introducing you to the
Lady Superior at the convent, and to her. You have never seen
her?"

"No," said Paul. "But of course you have?"

"Not for three years."

Paul's eyes evidently expressed some wonder, for a moment after the
colonel added, "I believe, Hathaway, I am looked upon as a queer
survival of a rather lawless and improper past. At least, I have
thought it better not socially to compromise her by my presence.
The Mayor goes there--at the examinations and exercises, I believe,
sir; they make a sort of reception for him--with a--a--banquet--
lemonade and speeches."

"I had intended to leave for Sacramento to-morrow night," said
Paul, glancing curiously at the helpless man; "but I will go there
if you wish."

"Thank you. It will be better."

There were a few words of further explanation of the papers, and
Pendleton placed the packet in his visitor's hands. Paul rose.
Somehow, it appeared to him that the room looked more faded and
forgotten than when he entered it, and the figure of the man before
him more lonely, helpless, and abandoned. With one of his
sympathetic impulses he said:--

"I don't like to leave you here alone. Are you sure you can help
yourself without George? Can I do anything before I go?"

"I am quite accustomed to it," said Pendleton, quietly. "It
happens once or twice a year, and when I go out--well--I miss more
than I do here."

He took Paul's proffered hand mechanically, with a slight return of
the critical, doubting look he had cast upon him when he entered.
his voice, too, had quite recovered its old dominance, as he said,
with half-patronizing conventionality, "You'll have to find your
way out alone. Let me know how you have sped at Santa Clara, will
you? Good-by."

The staircase and passage seemed to have grown shabbier and meaner
as Paul, slowly and hesitatingly, descended to the street. At the
foot of the stairs he paused irresolutely, and loitered with a
vague idea of turning back on some pretense, only that he might
relieve himself of the sense of desertion. He had already
determined upon making that inquiry into the colonel's personal and
pecuniary affairs which he had not dared to offer personally, and
had a half-formed plan of testing his own power and popularity in a
certain line of relief that at once satisfied his sympathies and
ambitions. Nevertheless, after reaching the street, he lingered a
moment, when an odd idea of temporizing with his inclinations
struck him. At the farther end of the hotel--one of the parasites
living on its decayed fortunes--was a small barber's shop. By
having his hair trimmed and his clothes brushed he could linger a
little longer beneath the same roof with the helpless solitary, and
perhaps come to some conclusion. He entered the clean but scantily
furnished shop, and threw himself into one of the nearest chairs,
hardly noting that there were no other customers, and that a single
assistant, stropping a razor behind a glass door, was the only
occupant. But there was a familiar note of exaggerated politeness
about the voice of this man as he opened the door and came towards
the back of the chair with the formula:--

"Mo'nin', sah! Shall we hab de pleshure of shavin' or hah-cuttin'
dis mo'nin'?" Paul raised his eyes quickly to the mirror before
him. It reflected the black face and grizzled hair of George.

More relieved at finding the old servant still near his master than
caring to comprehend the reason, Hathaway said pleasantly, "Well,
George, is this the way you look after your family?"

The old man started; for an instant his full red lips seemed to
become dry and ashen, the whites of his eyes were suffused and
staring, as he met Paul's smiling face in the glass. But almost as
quickly he recovered himself, and, with a polite but deprecating
bow, said,--"For God sake, sah! I admit de sarkumstances is agin
me, but de simple fack is dat I'm temper'ly occupyin' de place of
an ole frien', sah, who is called round de cornah."

"And I'm devilish glad of any fact, George, that gives me a chance
of having my hair cut by Colonel Pendleton's right-hand man. So
fire away!"

The gratified smile which now suddenly overspread the whole of the
old man's face, and seemed to quickly stiffen the rugged and
wrinkled fingers that had at first trembled in drawing a pair of
shears from a ragged pocket, appeared to satisfy Paul's curiosity
for the present. But after a few moments' silent snipping, during
which he could detect in the mirror some traces of agitation still
twitching the negro's face, he said with an air of conviction:--

"Look here, George--why don't you regularly use your leisure
moments in this trade? You'd make your fortune by your taste and
skill at it."

For the next half minute the old man's frame shook with silent
childlike laughter behind Paul's chair. "Well, Marse Hathaway,
yo's an ole frien' o' my massa, and a gemman yo'self, sah, and a
senetah, and I do'an mind tellin' yo'--dat's jess what I bin gone
done! It makes a little ready money for de ole woman and de
chilleren. But de Kernel don' no'. Ah, sah! de Kernel kill me or
hisself if he so much as 'spicioned me. De Kernel is high-toned,
sah!--bein' a gemman yo'self, yo' understand. He wouldn't heah ob
his niggah worken' for two massas--for all he's willen' to lemme go
and help myse'f. But, Lord bless yo', sah, dat ain't in de
category! De Kernel couldn't get along widout me."

"You collect his rents, don't you?" said Paul, quietly.

"Yes, sah."

"Much?"

"Well, no, sah; not so much as fom'ly, sah! Yo' see, de Kernel's
prop'ty lies in de ole parts ob de town, where de po' white folks
lib, and dey ain't reg'lar. De Kernel dat sof' in his heart, he
dare n' press 'em; some of 'em is ole fo'ty-niners, like hisself,
sah; and some is Spanish, sah, and dey is sof' too, and ain't no
more gumption dan chilleren, and tink it's ole time come ag'in, and
dey's in de ole places like afo' de Mexican wah! and dey don' bin
payin' noffin'. But we gets along, sah,--we gets along,--not in de
prima facie style, sah! mebbe not in de modden way dut de Kernel
don't like; but we keeps ourse'f, sah, and has wine fo' our
friends. When yo' come again, sah, yo' 'll find de Widder Glencoe
on de sideboard."

"Has the colonel many friends here?"

"Mos' de ole ones bin done gone, sah, and de Kernel don' cotton to
de new. He don' mix much in sassiety till de bank settlements bin
gone done. Skuse me, sah!--but you don' happen to know when dat
is? It would be a pow'ful heap off de Kernel's mind if it was
done. Bein' a high and mighty man in committees up dah in
Sacramento, sah, I didn't know but what yo' might know as it might
come befo' yo'."

"I'll see about it," said Paul, with an odd, abstracted smile.

"Shampoo dis mornen', sah?"

"Nothing more in this line," said Paul, rising from his chair, "but
something more, perhaps, in the line of your other duties. You're
a good barber for the public, George, and I don't take back what I
said about your future; but JUST NOW I think the colonel wants all
your service. He's not at all well. Take this," he said, putting
a twenty-dollar gold piece in the astonished servant's hand, "and
for the next three or four days drop the shop, and under some
pretext or another arrange to be with him. That money will cover
what you lose here, and as soon as the colonel's all right again
you can come back to work. But are you not afraid of being
recognized by some one?"

"No, sah, dat's just it. On'y strangers dat don't know no better
come yere."

"But suppose your master should drop in? It's quite convenient to
his rooms."

"Marse Harry in a barber-shop!" said the old man with a silent
laugh. "Skuse me, sah," he added, with an apologetic mixture of
respect and dignity, "but fo' twenty years no man hez touched de
Kernel's chin but myself. When Marse Harry hez to go to a barber's
shop, it won't make no matter who's dar."

"Let's hope he will not," said Paul gayly; then, anxious to evade
the gratitude which, since his munificence, he had seen beaming in
the old negro's eye and evidently trying to find polysyllabic and
elevated expression on his lips, he said hurriedly, "I shall expect
to find you with the colonel when I call again in a day or two,"
and smilingly departed.

At the end of two hours George's barber-employer returned to
relieve his assistant, and, on receiving from him an account and a
certain percentage of the afternoon's fees (minus the gift from
Paul), was informed by George that he should pretermit his
attendance for a few days. "Udder private and personal affairs,"
explained the old negro, who made no social distinction in his
vocabulary, "peroccupyin' dis niggah's time." The head barber,
unwilling to lose a really good assistant, endeavored to dissuade
him by the offer of increased emolument, but George was firm.

As he entered the sitting-room the colonel detected his step, and
called him in.

"Another time, George, never allow a guest of mine to send away
wine. If he don't care for it, put it on the sideboard."

"Yes, sah; but as yo' didn't like it yo'self, Marse Harry, and de
wine was de most 'xpensive quality ob Glencoe"--

"D--n the expense!" He paused, and gazed searchingly at his old
retainer.

"George," he said suddenly, yet in a gentle voice, "don't lie to
me, or"--in a still kinder voice--"I'll flog the black skin off
you! Listen to me. HAVE you got any money left?"

"'Deed, sah, dere IS," said the negro earnestly. "I'll jist fetch
it wid de accounts."

"Hold on! I've been thinking, lying here, that if the Widow Molloy
can't pay because she sold out, and that tobacconist is ruined, and
we've had to pay the water tax for old Bill Soames, the rent last
week don't amount to much, while there's the month's bill for the
restaurant and that blank druggist's account for lotions and
medicines to come out of it. It strikes me we're pretty near
touching bottom. I've everything I want here, but, by God, sir, if
I find YOU skimping yourself or lying to me or borrowing money"--

"Yes, Marse Harry, but the Widder Molloy done gone and paid up dis
afernoon. I'll bring de books and money to prove it;" and he
hurriedly reentered the sitting-room.

Then with trembling hands he emptied his pockets on the table,
including Paul's gift and the fees he had just received, and
opening a desk-drawer took from it a striped cotton handkerchief,
such as negro women wear on their heads, containing a small
quantity of silver tied up in a hard knot, and a boy's purse. This
he emptied on the table with his own money.

They were the only rents of Colonel Henry Pendleton! They were
contributed by "George Washington Thomson;" his wife, otherwise
known as "Aunt Dinah," washerwoman; and "Scipio Thomson," their
son, aged fourteen, bootblack. It did not amount to much. But in
that happy moisture that dimmed the old man's eyes, God knows it
looked large enough.


CHAPTER III.


Although the rays of an unclouded sun were hot in the Santa Clara
roads and byways, and the dry, bleached dust had become an
impalpable powder, the perspiring and parched pedestrian who rashly
sought relief in the shade of the wayside oak was speedily chilled
to the bone by the northwest trade-winds that on those August
afternoons swept through the defiles of the Coast Range, and even
penetrated the pastoral valley of San Jose. The anomaly of straw
hats and overcoats with the occupants of buggies and station wagons
was thus accounted for, and even in the sheltered garden of "El
Rosario" two young girls in light summer dresses had thrown wraps
over their shoulders as they lounged down a broad rose-alley at
right angles with the deep, long veranda of the casa. Yet, in
spite of the chill, the old Spanish house and gardens presented a
luxurious, almost tropical, picture from the roadside. Banks,
beds, and bowers of roses lent their name and color to the grounds;
tree-like clusters of hanging fuchsias, mound-like masses of
variegated verbena, and tangled thickets of ceanothus and spreading
heliotrope were set in boundaries of venerable olive, fig, and pear
trees. The old house itself, a picturesque relief to the glaring
newness of the painted villas along the road, had been tastefully
modified to suit the needs and habits of a later civilization; the
galleries of the inner courtyard, or patio, had been transferred to
the outside walls in the form of deep verandas, while the old adobe
walls themselves were hidden beneath flowing Cape jessamine or
bestarred passion vines, and topped by roofs of cylindrical red
tiles.

"Miss Yerba!" said a dry, masculine voice from the veranda.

The taller young girl started, and drew herself suddenly behind a
large Castilian rose-tree, dragging her companion with her, and
putting her finger imperatively upon a pretty but somewhat
passionate mouth. The other girl checked a laugh, and remained
watching her friend's wickedly leveled brows in amused surprise.

The call was repeated from the veranda. After a moment's pause
there was the sound of retreating footsteps, and all was quiet
again.

"Why, for goodness' sake, didn't you answer, Yerba?" asked the
shorter girl.

"Oh, I hate him!" responded Yerba. "He only wanted to bore me with
his stupid, formal, sham-parental talk. Because he's my official
guardian he thinks it necessary to assume this manner towards me
when we meet, and treats me as if I were something between his
stepdaughter and an almshouse orphan or a police board. It's
perfectly ridiculous, for it's only put on while he is in office,
and he knows it, and I know it, and I'm tired of making believe.
Why, my dear, they change every election; I've had seven of them,
all more or less of this kind, since I can remember."

"But I thought there were two others, dear, that were not
official," said her companion, coaxingly.

Yerba sighed. "No; there was another, who was president of a bank,
but that was also to be official if he died. I used to like him,
he seemed to be the only gentleman among them; but it appears that
he is dreadfully improper; shoots people now and then for nothing
at all, and burst up his bank--and, of course, he's impossible,
and, as there's no more bank, when he dies there'll be no more
trustee."

"And there's the third, you know--a stranger, who never appears?"
suggested the younger girl.

"And who do you suppose HE turns out to be? Do you remember that
conceited little wretch--that 'Baby Senator,' I think they called
him--who was in the parlor of the Golden Gate the other morning
surrounded by his idiotic worshipers and toadies and ballot-box
stuffers? Well, if you please, THAT'S Mr. Paul Hathaway--the
Honorable Paul Hathaway, who washed his hands of me, my dear, at
the beginning!"

"But really, Yerba, I thought that he looked and acted"--

"You thought of nothing at all, Milly," returned Yerba, with
authority. "I tell you he's a mass of conceit. What else can you
expect of a Man--toadied and fawned upon to that extent? It made
me sick! I could have just shaken them!"

As if to emphasize her statement, she grasped one of the long
willowy branches of the enormous rose-bush where she stood, and
shook it lightly. The action detached a few of the maturer
blossoms, and sent down a shower of faded pink petals on her dark
hair and yellow dress. "I can't bear conceit," she added.

"Oh, Yerba, just stand as you are! I do wish the girls could see
you. You make the LOVELIEST picture!"

She certainly did look very pretty as she stood there--a few leaves
lodged in her hair, clinging to her dress, and suggesting by
reflection the color that her delicate satin skin would have
resented in its own texture. But she turned impatiently away--
perhaps not before she had allowed this passing vision to impress
the mind of her devoted adherent--and said, "Come along, or that
dreadful man will be out on the veranda again."

"But, if you dislike him so, why did you accept the invitation to
meet him here at luncheon?" said the curious Milly.

"I didn't accept; the Mother Superior did for me, because he's the
Mayor of San Francisco visiting your uncle, and she's always
anxious to placate the powers that be. And I thought he might have
some information that I could get out of him. And it was better
than being in the convent all day. And I thought I could stand HIM
if you were here."

Milly gratefully accepted this doubtful proof of affection by
squeezing her companion's arm. "And you didn't get any
information, dear?"

"Of course not! The idiot knows only the old tradition of his
office--that I was a mysterious Trust left in Mayor Hammersley's
hands. He actually informed me that 'Buena' meant 'Good'; that it
was likely the name of the captain of some whaler, that put into
San Francisco in the early days, whose child I was, and that, if I
chose to call myself 'Miss Good,' he would allow it, and get a bill
passed in the Legislature to legalize it. Think of it, my dear!
'Miss Good,' like one of Mrs. Barbauld's stories, or a moral
governess in the 'Primary Reader.'"

"'Miss Good,'" repeated Milly, innocently. "Yes, you might put an
e at the end--G-double-o-d-e. There are Goodes in Philadelphia.
And then you won't have to sacrifice that sweet pretty 'Yerba,'
that's so stylish and musical, for you'd still be 'Yerba Good.'
But," she added, as Yerba made an impatient gesture, "why do you
worry yourself about THAT? You wouldn't keep your own name long,
whatever it was. An heiress like you, dear,--lovely and
accomplished,--would have the best names as well as the best men in
America to choose from."

"Now please don't repeat that idiot's words. That's what HE says;
that's what they ALL say!" returned Yerba, pettishly. "One would
really think it was necessary for me to get married to become
anybody at all, or have any standing whatever. And, whatever you
do, don't go talking of me as if I were named after a vegetable.
'Yerba Buena' is the name of an island in the bay just off San
Francisco. I'm named after that."

"But I don't see the difference, dear. The island was named after
the vine that grows on it."

"YOU don't see the difference?" said Yerba, darkly. "Well, I do.
But what are you looking at?"

Her companion had caught her arm, and was gazing intently at the
house.

"Yerba," she said quickly, "there's the Mayor, and uncle, and a
strange gentleman coming down the walk. They're looking for us.
And, as I live, Yerb! the strange gentleman is that young senator,
Mr. Hathaway!"

"Mr. Hathaway? Nonsense!"

"Look for yourself."

Yerba glanced at the three gentlemen, who, a hundred yards distant,
were slowly advancing in the direction of the ceanothus-hedge,
behind which the girls had instinctively strayed during their
conversation.

"What are you going to do?" said Milly, eagerly. "They're coming
straight this way. Shall we stay here and let them pass, or make a
run for the house?"

"No," said Yerba, to Milly's great surprise. "That would look as
if we cared. Besides, I don't know that Mr. Hathaway has come to
see ME. We'll stroll out and meet them accidentally."

Milly was still more astonished. However, she said, "Wait a
moment, dear!" and, with the instinctive deftness of her sex, in
three small tugs and a gentle hitch, shook Yerba's gown into
perfect folds, passed her fingers across her forehead and over her
ears, securing, however, with a hairpin on their passage three of
the rose petals where they had fallen. Then, discharging their
faces of any previous expression, these two charming hypocrites
sallied out innocently into the walk. Nothing could be more
natural than their manner: if a criticism might be ventured upon,
it was that their elbows were slightly drawn inwards and before
them, leaving their hands gracefully advanced in the line of their
figures, an attitude accepted throughout the civilized world of
deportment as indicating fastidious refinement not unmingled with
permissible hauteur.

The three gentlemen lifted their hats at this ravishing apparition,
and halted. The Mayor advanced with great politeness.

"I feared you didn't hear me call you, Miss Yerba, so we ventured
to seek you. As the two girls exchanged almost infantile glances
of surprise, he continued: "Mr. Paul Hathaway has done us the honor
of seeking you here, as he did not find you at the convent. You
may have forgotten that Mr. Hathaway is the third one of your
trustees."

"And so inefficient and worthless that I fear he doesn't count,"
said Paul, "but," raising his eyes to Yerba's, "I fancy that I have
already had the pleasure of seeing you, and, I fear, the
mortification of having disturbed you and your friends in the
parlor of the Golden Gate Hotel yesterday."

The two girls looked at each other with the same childlike
surprise. Yerba broke the silence by suddenly turning to Milly.
"Certainly, you remember how greatly interested we were in the
conversation of a party of gentlemen who were there when we came
in. I am afraid our foolish prattle must have disturbed YOU. I
know that we were struck with the intelligent and eloquent devotion
of your friends."

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