Book: A Ward of the Golden Gate

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"I am waiting for Milly," she said, with a faint smile on her lips.
He fancied, in the moonlight that streamed upon her, that her
beautiful face was pale. "She has gone to the other wing to see
one of the servants who is ill. We thought you were on the veranda
smoking and I should have company, until I saw you start off, and
rush up and down the hedge like mad."

Paul felt that he was losing his self-possession, and becoming
nervous in her presence. "I thought it was YOU," he stammered.

"Me! Out in the garden at this hour, alone, and in the broad
moonlight? What are you thinking of, Mr. Hathaway? Do you know
anything of convent rules, or is that your idea of your ward's
education?"

He fancied that, though she smiled faintly, her voice was as
tremulous as his own.

"I want to speak with you," he said, with awkward directness. "I
even thought of asking you to stroll with me in the garden."

"Why not talk here?" she returned, changing her position, pointing
to the other end of the sofa, and drawing the whole overflow of her
skirt to one side. "It is not so very late, and Milly will return
in a few moments."

Her face was in shadow now, but there was a glow-worm light in her
beautiful eyes that seemed faintly to illuminate her whole face.
He sank down on the sofa at her side, no longer the brilliant and
ambitious politician, but, it seemed to him, as hopelessly a
dreaming, inexperienced boy as when he had given her the name that
now was all he could think of, and the only word that rose to his
feverish lips.

"Yerba!"

"I like to hear you say it," she said quickly, as if to gloss over
his first omission of her formal prefix, and leaning a little
forward, with her eyes on his. "One would think you had created
it. You almost make me regret to lose it."

He stopped. He felt that the last sentence had saved him. "It is
of that I want to speak," he broke out suddenly and almost rudely.
"Are you satisfied that it means nothing, and can mean nothing, to
you? Does it awaken no memory in your mind--recall nothing you
care to know? Think! I beg you, I implore you to be frank with
me!"

She looked at him with surprise.

"I have told you already that my present name must be some absurd
blunder, or some intentional concealment. But why do you want to
know NOW?" she continued, adding her faint smile to the emphasis.

"To help you!" he said, eagerly. "For that alone! To do all I can
to assist you, if you really believe, and want to believe, that you
have another. To ask you to confide in me; to tell me all you have
been told, all that you know, think you know, or WANT to know about
your relationship to the Arguellos--or to--any one. And then to
devote myself entirely to proving what you shall say is your
desire. You see, I am frank with you, Yerba. I only ask you to be
as frank with me; to let me know your doubts, that I may counsel
you; your fears, that I may give you courage."

"Is that all you came here to tell me?" she asked quietly.

"No, Yerba," he said, eagerly, taking her unresisting but
indifferent hand, "not all; but all that I must say, all that I
have the right to say, all that you, Yerba, would permit me to tell
you NOW. But let me hope that the day is not far distant when I
can tell you ALL, when you will understand that this silence has
been the hardest sacrifice of the man who now speaks to you."

"And yet not unworthy of a rising politician," she added, quickly
withdrawing her hand. "I agree," she went on, looking towards the
door, yet without appearing to avoid his eager eyes, "and when I
have settled upon 'a local habitation and a name' we shall renew
this interesting conversation. Until then, as my fourth official
guardian used to say--he was a lawyer, Mr. Hathaway, like yourself--
when he was winding up his conjectures on the subject--all that
has passed is to be considered 'without prejudice.'"

"But Yerba"--began Paul, bitterly.

She slightly raised her hand as if to check him with a warning
gesture. "Yes, dear," she said suddenly, lifting her musical
voice, with a mischievous side-glance at Paul, as if to indicate
her conception of the irony of a possible application, "this way.
Here we are waiting for you." Her listening ear had detected
Milly's step in the passage, and in another moment that cheerful
young woman discreetly stopped on the threshold of the room, with
every expression of apologetic indiscretion in her face.

"We have finished our talk, and Mr. Hathaway has been so concerned
about my having no real name that he has been promising me
everything, but his own, for a suitable one. Haven't you, Mr.
Hathaway?" She rose slowly and, going over to Milly, put her arm
around her waist and stood for one instant gazing at him between
the curtains of the doorway. "Good night. My very proper chaperon
is dreadfully shocked at this midnight interview, and is taking me
away. Only think of it, Milly; he actually proposed to me to walk
in the garden with him! Good night, or, as my ancestors--don't
forget, MY ANCESTORS--used to say: 'Buena noche--hasta manana!'"
She lingered over the Spanish syllables with an imitation of Dona
Anna's lisp, and with another smile, but more faint and more
ghostlike than before; vanished with her companion.

At eight o'clock the next morning Paul was standing beside his
portmanteau on the veranda.

"But this is a sudden resolution of yours, Hathaway," said Mr.
Woods. "Can you not possibly wait for the next train? The girls
will be down then, and you can breakfast comfortably."

"I have much to do--more than I imagined--in San Francisco before I
return," said Paul, quickly. "You must make my excuses to them and
to your wife."

"I hope," said Woods, with an uneasy laugh, "you have had no more
words with Don Caesar, or he with you?"

"No," said Paul, with a reassuring smile, "nothing more, I assure
you."

"For you know you're a devilish quick fellow, Hathaway," continued
Woods, "quite as quick as your friend Pendleton. And, by the way,
Baker is awfully cut up about that absurd speech of his, you know.
Came to me last night and wondered if anybody could think it was
intentional. I told him it was d--d stupid, that was all. I guess
his wife had been at him. Ha! ha! You see, he remembers the old
times, when everybody talked of these things, and that woman Howard
was quite a character. I'm told she went off to the States years
ago."

"Possibly," said Paul, carelessly. After a pause, as the carriage
drove up to the door, he turned to his host. "By the way, Woods,
have you a ghost here?"

"The house is old enough for one. But no. Why?"

"I'll swear I saw a figure moving yonder, in the shrubbery, late
last evening; and when I came up to it, it most unaccountably
disappeared."

"One of Don Caesar's servants, I dare say. There is one of them,
an Indian, prowling about here, I've been told, at all hours. I'll
put a stop to it. Well, you must go then? Dreadfully sorry you
couldn't stop longer! Good-by!"


CHAPTER IV.


It was two months later that Mr. Tony Shear, of Marysville, but
lately confidential clerk to the Hon. Paul Hathaway, entered his
employer's chambers in Sacramento, and handed the latter a letter.

"I only got back from San Francisco this morning; but Mr. Slate
said I was to give you that, and if it satisfied you, and was what
you wanted, you would send it back to him."

Paul took the envelope and opened it. It contained a printer's
proof-slip, which he hurriedly glanced over. It read as follows:--

"Those of our readers who are familiar with the early history of
San Francisco will be interested to know that an eccentric and
irregular trusteeship, vested for the last eight years in the Mayor
of San Francisco and two of our oldest citizens, was terminated
yesterday by the majority of a beautiful and accomplished young
lady, a pupil of the convent of Santa Clara. Very few, except the
original trustees, were cognizant of the fact that the
administration of the trustees has been a recognized function of
the successive Mayors of San Francisco during this period; and the
mystery surrounding it has been only lately divulged. It offers a
touching and romantic instance of a survival of the old patriarchal
duties of the former Alcaldes and the simplicity of pioneer days.
It seems that, in the unsettled conditions of the Mexican land-
titles that followed the American occupation, the consumptive widow
of a scion of one of the oldest Californian families intrusted her
property and the custody of her infant daughter virtually to the
city of San Francisco, as represented by the trustees specified,
until the girl should become of age. Within a year, the invalid
mother died. With what loyalty, sagacity, and prudence these
gentlemen fulfilled their trust may be gathered from the fact that
the property left in their charge has not only been secured and
protected, but increased a hundredfold in value; and that the young
lady, who yesterday attained her majority, is not only one of the
richest landed heiresses on the Pacific Slope, but one of the most
accomplished and thoroughly educated of her sex. It is now no
secret that this favored child of Chrysopolis is the Dona Maria
Concepcion de Arguello de la Yerba Buena, so called from her
ancestral property on the island, now owned by the Federal
government. But it is an affecting and poetic tribute to the
parent of her adoption that she has preferred to pass under the
old, quaintly typical name of the city, and has been known to her
friends simply as 'Miss Yerba Buena.' It is a no less pleasant and
suggestive circumstance that our 'youngest senator,' the Honorable
Paul Hathaway, formerly private secretary to Mayor Hammersley, is
one of the original unofficial trustees; while the chivalry of the
older days is perpetuated in the person of Colonel Harry Pendleton,
the remaining trustee."

As soon as he had finished, Paul took a pencil and crossed out the
last sentence; but instead of laying the proof aside, or returning
it to the waiting secretary, he remained with it in his hand, his
silent, set face turned towards the window. Whether the merely
human secretary was tired of waiting, or the devoted partisan saw
something on his young chief's face that disturbed him, he turned
to Paul with that exaggerated respect which his functions as
secretary had grafted upon his affection for his old associate, and
said:--

"I hope nothing's wrong, sir. Not another of those scurrilous
attacks on you for putting that bill through to relieve Colonel
Pendleton? Yet it was a risky thing for you, sir."

Paul started, recovered himself as if from some remote abstraction,
and, with a smile, said: "No,--nothing. Quite the reverse. Write
to Mr. Slate, thank him, and say that it will do very well--with
the exception of the lines I have marked out. Then bring me the
letter, and I will add this inclosure. Did you call on Colonel
Pendleton?"

"Yes, sir. He was at Santa Clara, and had not yet returned,--at
least, that's what that dandy nigger of his told me. The airs and
graces that that creature puts on since the colonel's affairs have
been straightened out is a little too much for a white man to
stand. Why, sir! d--d if he didn't want to patronize YOU, and
allowed to me that 'de Kernel' had a 'fah ideah' of you, 'and
thought you a promisin' young man.' The fact is, sir, the party is
making a big mistake trying to give votes to that kind of cattle--
it would only be giving two votes to the other side, for, slave or
free, they're the chattels of their old masters. And as to the
masters' gratitude for what you've done affecting a single vote of
their party--you're mistaken."

"Colonel Pendleton belongs to no party," said Paul, curtly; "but if
his old constituents ever try to get into power again, they've lost
their only independent martyr."

He presently became abstracted again, and Shear produced from his
overcoat pocket a series of official-looking documents.

"I've brought the reports, sir."

"Eh?" said Paul, absently.

The secretary stared. "The reports of the San Francisco Chief of
Police that you asked me to get." His employer was certainly very
forgetful to-day.

"Oh, yes; thank you. You can lay them on my desk. I'll look them
over in Committee. You can go now, and if any one calls to see me
say I'm busy."

The secretary disappeared in the adjoining room, and Paul leaned
back in his chair, thinking. He had, at last, effected the work he
had resolved upon when he left Rosario two months ago; the article
he had just read, and which would appear as an editorial in the San
Francisco paper the day after tomorrow, was the culmination of
quietly persistent labor, inquiry, and deduction, and would be
accepted, hereafter, as authentic history, which, if not thoroughly
established, at least could not be gainsaid. Immediately on
arriving at San Francisco, he had hastened to Pendleton's bedside,
and laid the facts and his plan before him. To his mingled
astonishment and chagrin, the colonel had objected vehemently to
this "saddling of anybody's offspring on a gentleman who couldn't
defend himself," and even Paul's explanation that the putative
father was a myth scarcely appeased him. But Paul's timely
demonstration, by relating the scene he had witnessed of Judge
Baker's infelicitous memory, that the secret was likely to be
revealed at any moment, and that if the girl continued to cling to
her theory, as he feared she would, even to the parting with her
fortune, they would be forced to accept it, or be placed in the
hideous position of publishing her disgrace, at last convinced him.
On the other hand, there was less danger of her POSITIVE imposition
being discovered than of the VAGUE AND IMPOSITIVE truth. The real
danger lay in the present uncertainty and mystery, which courted
surmise and invited discovery. Paul, himself, was willing to take
all the responsibility, and at last extracted from the colonel a
promise of passive assent. The only revelation he feared was from
the interference of the mother, but Pendleton was strong in the
belief that she had not only utterly abandoned the girl to the care
of her guardians, but that she would never rescind her resolution
to disclaim her relationship; that she had gone into self-exile for
that purpose; and that if she HAD changed her mind, he would be the
first to know of it. On this day they had parted. Meantime, Paul
had not forgotten another resolution he had formed on his first
visit to the colonel, and had actually succeeded in getting
legislative relief for the Golden Gate Bank, and restoring to the
colonel some of his private property that had been in the hands of
a receiver.

This had been the background of Paul's meditation, which only threw
into stronger relief the face and figure that moved before him as
persistently as it had once before in the twilight of his room at
Rosario. There were times when her moonlit face, with its faint,
strange smile, stood out before him as it had stood out of the
shadows of the half-darkened drawing-room that night; as he had
seen it--he believed for the last time--framed for an instant in
the parted curtains of the doorway, when she bade him "Goodnight."
For he had never visited her since, and, on the attainment of her
majority, had delegated his passing functions to Pendleton, whom he
had induced to accompany the Mayor to Santa Clara for the final and
formal ceremony. For the present she need not know how much she
had been indebted to him for the accomplishment of her wishes.

With a sigh he at last recalled himself to his duty, and, drawing
the pile of reports which Shear had handed him, he began to examine
them. These, again, bore reference to his silent, unobtrusive
inquiries. In his function as Chairman of Committee he had taken
advantage of a kind of advanced moral legislation then in vogue,
and particularly in reference to a certain social reform, to
examine statistics, authorities, and witnesses, and in this
indirect but exhaustive manner had satisfied himself that the woman
"Kate Howard," alias "Beverly," alias "Durfree," had long passed
beyond the ken of local police supervision, and that in the record
there was no trace or indication of her child. He was going over
those infelix records of early transgressions with the eye of
trained experience, making notes from time to time for his official
use, and yet always watchful of his secret quest, when suddenly he
stopped with a quickened pulse. In the record of an affray at a
gambling-house, one of the parties had sought refuge in the rooms
of "Kate Howard," who was represented before the magistrate by HER
PROTECTOR, JUAN DE ARGUELLO. The date given was contemporary with
the beginning of the Trust, but that proved nothing. But the name--
had it any significance, or was it a grim coincidence, that spoke
even more terribly and hopelessly of the woman's promiscuous
frailty? He again attacked the entire report, but there was no
other record of her name. Even that would have passed any eye less
eager and watchful than his own.

He laid the reports aside, and took up the proof-slip again. Was
there any man living but himself and Pendleton who would connect
these two statements? That her relations with this Arguello were
brief and not generally known was evident from Pendleton's
ignorance of the fact. But he must see him again, and at once.
Perhaps he might have acquired some information from Yerba; the
young girl might have given to his age that confidence she had
withheld from the younger man; indeed, he remembered with a flush
it was partly in that hope he had induced the colonel to go to
Santa Clara. He put the proof-slip in his pocket and stepped to
the door of the next room.

"You need not write that letter to Slate, Tony. I will see him
myself. I am going to San Francisco to-night."

"And do you want anything copied from the reports, sir?"

Paul quickly swept them from the table into his drawer, and locked
it. "Not now, thank you. I'll finish my notes later."

The next morning Paul was in San Francisco, and had again crossed
the portals of the Golden Gate Hotel. He had been already told
that the doom of that palatial edifice was sealed by the laying of
the cornerstone of a new erection in the next square that should
utterly eclipse it; he even fancied that it had already lost its
freshness, and its meretricious glitter had been tarnished. But
when he had ordered his breakfast he made his way to the public
parlor, happily deserted at that early hour. It was here that he
had first seen her. She was standing there, by that mirror, when
their eyes first met in a sudden instinctive sympathy. She herself
had remembered and confessed it. He recalled the pleased yet
conscious, girlish superiority with which she had received the
adulation of her friends; his memory of her was broad enough now
even to identify Milly, as it repeopled the vacant and silent room.

An hour later he was making his way to Colonel Pendleton's
lodgings, and half expecting to find the St. Charles Hotel itself
transformed by the eager spirit of improvement. But it was still
there in all its barbaric and provincial incongruity. Public
opinion had evidently recognized that nothing save the absolute
razing of its warped and flimsy walls could effect a change, and
waited for it to collapse suddenly like the house of cards it
resembled. Paul wondered for a moment if it were not ominous of
its lodgers' hopeless inability to accept changed conditions, and
it was with a feeling of doubt that he even now ascended the
creaking staircase. But it was instantly dissipated on the
threshold of the colonel's sitting-room by the appearance of George
and his reception of his master's guest.

The grizzled negro was arrayed in a surprisingly new suit of blue
cloth with a portentous white waistcoat and an enormous crumpled
white cravat, that gave him the appearance of suffering from a
glandular swelling. His manner had, it seemed to Paul, advanced in
exaggeration with his clothes. Dusting a chair and offering it to
the visitor, he remained gracefully posed with his hand on the back
of another.

"Yo' finds us heah yet, Marse Hathaway," he began, elegantly toying
with an enormous silver watch-chain, "fo' de Kernel he don' bin
find contagious apartments dat at all approximate, and he don'
build, for his mind's not dat settled dat he ain't goin' to
trabbel. De place is low down, sah, and de fo'ks is low down, and
dah's a heap o' white trash dat has congested under de roof ob de
hotel since we came. But we uses it temper'ly, sah, fo' de
present, and in a dissolutory fashion."

It struck Paul that the contiguity of a certain barber's shop and
its dangerous reminiscences had something to do with George's lofty
depreciation of his surroundings, and he could not help saying:--

"Then you don't find it necessary to have it convenient to the
barber's shop any more? I am glad of that, George."

The shot told. The unfortunate George, after an endeavor to
collect himself by altering his pose two or three times in rapid
succession, finally collapsed, and, with an air of mingled pain and
dignity, but without losing his ceremonious politeness or unique
vocabulary, said:--

"Yo' got me dah, sah! Yo' got me dah! De infirmities o' human
natcheh, sah, is de common p'operty ob man, and a gemplum like
yo'self, sah, a legislato' and a pow'ful speakah, is de lass one to
hol' it agin de individal pusson. I confess, sah, de circumstances
was propiskuous, de fees fahly good, and de risks inferior. De
gemplum who kept de shop was an artess hisself, and had been niggah
to Kernel Henderson of Tennessee, and do gemplum I relieved was a
Mr. Johnson. But de Kernel, he wouldn't see it in dat light, sah,
and if yo' don' mind, sah"--

"I haven't the slightest idea of telling the colonel or anybody,
George," said Paul, smiling; "and I am glad to find on your own
account that you are able to put aside any work beyond your duty
here."

"Thank yo', sah. If yo' 'll let me introduce yo' to de
refreshment, yo' 'll find it all right now. De Glencoe is dah. De
Kernel will be here soon, but he would be pow'ful mo'tified, sah,
if yo' didn't hab something afo' he come." He opened a well-filled
sideboard as he spoke. It was the first evidence Paul had seen of
the colonel's restored fortunes. He would willingly have contented
himself with this mere outward manifestation, but in his desire to
soothe the ruffled dignity of the old man he consented to partake
of a small glass of spirits. George at once became radiant and
communicative. "De Kernel bin gone to Santa Clara to see de young
lady dat's finished her edercation dah--de Kernel's only ward, sah.
She's one o' dose million-heiresses and highly connected, sah, wid
de old Mexican Gobbermen, I understand. And I reckon dey's bin big
goin's on doun dar, foh de Mayer kem hisself fo' de Kernel. Looks
like des might bin a proceshon, sah. Yo' don' know of a young lady
bin hab a title, sah? I won't be shuah, his Honah de Mayer or de
Kernel didn't say someting about a 'Donna'"

"Very likely," said Paul, turning away with a faint smile. So it
was already in the air! Setting aside the old negro's
characteristic exaggeration, there had already been some
conversation between the colonel and the Mayor, which George had
vaguely overheard. He might be too late, the alternative might be
no longer in his hands. But his discomposure was heightened a
moment later by the actual apparition of the returning Pendleton.

He was dressed in a tightly buttoned blue frock-coat, which fairly
accented his tall, thin military figure, although the top lappel
was thrown far enough back to show a fine ruffled cambric shirt and
checked gingham necktie, and was itself adorned with a white
rosebud in the button-hole. Fawn-colored trousers strapped over
narrow patent-leather boots, and a tall white hat, whose broad
mourning-band was a perpetual memory of his mother, who had died in
his boyhood, completed his festal transformation. Yet his erect
carriage, high aquiline nose, and long gray drooping moustache lent
a distinguishing grace to this survival of a bygone fashion, and
over-rode any irreverent comment. Even his slight limp seemed to
give a peculiar character to his massive gold-headed stick, and
made it a part of his formal elegance.

Handing George his stick and a military cape he carried easily over
his left arm, he greeted Paul warmly, yet with a return of his old
dominant manner.

"Glad to see you, Hathaway, and glad to see the boy has served you
better than the last time. If I had known you were coming, I would
have tried to get back in time to have breakfast with you. But
your friends at 'Rosario'--I think they call it; in my time it was
owned by Colonel Briones, and HE called it 'The Devil's Little
Canyon'--detained me with some d--d civilities. Let's see--his
name is Woods, isn't it? Used to sell rum to runaway sailors on
Long Wharf, and take stores in exchange? Or was it Baker?--Judge
Baker? I forget which. Well, sir, they wished to be remembered."

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