by Poppy
She said tiredly, "Speak to your friends, Maurice, and I'll see you tomorrow."
"Also I have observed something else. I will be playing monte at one of the tables in the Palace."
"That's our best," Josh said.
"Several young ladies, well-dressed but appearing of complete respectability, are employed there."
"Window dressing," Josh said. "An ounce a day and found."
"Merely to be pleasant to the customers." Then with pretended horror, "No, no. Not to touch the cards. That is not permitted. Ever. Fortunately."
"Bar and card tables," Josh said. ''They bring in food for the customers but no private dining rooms. Respectable trade only."
"This is for the afternoon and evening. Your free time, that is as you please." Maurice shrugged.
"They would have to understand I have my household responsibilities," Poppy said sharply.
"That would be as you wished, I'm certain."
Chapter Twenty-four
POPPY sat at the kitchen table, stared at the blank if sheet of paper, and chewed thoughtfully on her pen. She must write to Daisy. Every day for the last month, she had told herself she must write to Daisy. But what?
Daisy must have been notified when she and Andy disappeared from Cornwall. She might have been told there had been trouble with smugglers that night. Possibly Dex had seen Daisy in London and told her that he had seen them in Paris and knew they had sailed for San Francisco. Or he might not have.
She simply could not explain everything that had happened. She could tell how things were now, and if that left Daisy in utter confusion, it could not be helped.
She drew a deep breath, dipped her pen and wrote.
Dear Daisy,
Andy and I are safe and well in San Francisco. We can collect our mail at the post office here.
And a pretty penny that would cost. She had seen men just come to town walk into the post office, shell out every dollar in their pockets, fifteen or twenty, grab their letters, and not seem to grudge that they had nothing left to pay for a meal. Still, no answer could possibly arrive for five or six months, or twice that if the ships were slow or delayed by storms, so she would not worry about that today.
Our thoughts often turn to our dear Mother and our happy home in Pallminster Lane. We miss London.
Poppy blinked rapidly. She would not allow herself to think she might never see London again.
Even now in late summer, the weather here is delightfully cool with bright sun and brisk breezes. We have a comfortable house.
She thought about that and nodded agreement with herself. Daisy would say horses were stabled better than this, but Daisy had never lived in San Francisco. In these few months, houses had been built up all around them, proper two-and three-story houses with railed porches, some prettily painted in two different colors, and with small trees planted in front.
We own it and the house next door.
Daisy would not question that. Everybody all around the world knew hatfuls of gold dust and fistfuls of nuggets were to be found in California for the mere scooping up.
That house is rented to three respectable gentlemen from the same emporium where I am employed.
Poppy beamed self-approval. The use of the word emporium was masterly. It could mean anything Daisy chose to think it meant.
Andy is employed at an iron manufactory under the tutelage of a smith we knew in England. He likes his work.
Truly she had a gift for writing. That word tutelage was very nice with Daisy so dead set on education. Andy did like his work, and she had seen no reason to spoil his pleasure by telling him the smith had been an informer on the smugglers. The poor man doubtless had been driven to it, frantic to get money for his fare to California.
She chewed her pen again. Daisy had never heard of Yankee Bill, so she would not be interested to know he had been so disgusted after one week in the gold fields that he had come back to town, sold his outfit for fantastic prices-fifty dollars for his boots alone-and shipped out on a Maine clipper, swearing never to leave the sea again. Daisy might be seeing Dex in London-no, she would not let herself feel jealous-so it was best not to mention Jack, either. Despite all Bill could say about the hard conditions out in the gold fields, Jack had been wild to get there, and he had left before he was really healed. He wrote, swearing he was quite recovered and everything was going well, but he had moved on twice now to places where he heard talk of rich new strikes. She did not like it that he wrote he always panned enough to have money to pay for his food when he went to town for supplies.
Surely it was not possible for a man to pan those streams running with gold and find so little he starved. She knew nuggets as big as fists were not found every day, but gold was everywhere.
She frowned and sighed. What else could she tell Daisy?
There are not many married ladies and almost no respectable unmarried females here. Most gentlemen would like to be joined in matrimony, but life is hard on the ladies even with a kind gentleman who provides well. They must do their own cooking, washing, and scrubbing and are held at it all day long.
She glanced around her with approval. Andy was good about carrying wood and water, and since she had ruled that outdoor boots must be removed at the door, one floor scrubbing a week did very well. Her house was not a burden.
One gentlema highly regarded in the 'community spends much time trying to persuade me to that state. He was a Vigilante and is a member of a Volunteer Fire Department.
Daisy would not understand how important such things were, especially to a man with political ambitions. But she would not cross the paragraph out or Daisy would vow she had lost all trace of gentility.
He promises he will hire a cook-though one stepped off the boat here last week and was instantly offered six hundred dollars a month, as I understand she has a notable hand with pastry-or take rooms in the best boardinghouse. He also offers a carriage and to make a settlement.
Poppy shook her head. She had not meant to run on like that, but it was always a shadow on her day knowing Jeremiah Dunbar would be waiting for her at the Palace, patient and respectful, but always there.She had not taken him in aversion, but she could not imagine kissing him any more than she could Josh. Except she could imagine kissing and hugging Josh like a brother or a father, because he was a sweet, dear man. He had left his shop the day after they moved in here, and that was like a mother leaving a month-old baby, for all he admitted Efram was the best of sons, to tell her about the two dead Ingots. They obviously had been newly arrived steerage passengers from the Bonne Irene, by their filthy French clothes and half-starved, pallid appearance, and they had been found stabbed, in back of a cheap sailors' lodging. Josh had gone to look at the bodies because he had heard one of them had gold napoleons hidden in his shoes. He had noticed the shoes were covered with the kind of sand and mud found in the shop yard where Andy and Jack had been attacked. Somebody had made sure they would never tell about that attack or who had planned it. Later, Maurice had visited Amalie and reported Josie was still working for Madame. The First Mate seemed to have sailed with the Bonne Irene.
Poppy shivered and shook her head. Her mind was wandering, and she must finish this letter so she could take it with her to the Palace.
I am content with the condition in life in which I find myself and do not contemplate any change at this time.
With all expressions of esteem to our dear Mother and kindest wishes for your continued health and happiness, we remain your dutiful children,
Poppy and Andy
Captain Stowe had said he would stop by the Palace tonight to take the letter when he sailed for England in the morning. She folded it and hesitated over the address. She did not know whether Daisy was married and a titled lady, or still living in Pallminster Lane. Frowning, she sealed it and writing large and clear put down the name and street of Dex's bank. Daisy still would have her business affairs there. That would not have changed.
The blue satin dress, with th
e cream ruffles at the breast to match the ruffled underskirt, was laid out on her bed. She held it up and shook it. No doubt about it, the dress was shabby with that cigar bum in the skirt and the rubbed places at the waist. She would wear it just this once, for all the gentlemen said it made her look as if she had just stepped out of a stained-glass window.
She tied a lace scarf over her smooth curls. The wind sweeping down over the hills would tangle them into a mop of hoydenish tendrils. The letter went with her cream satin slippers-those were sadly shabby too -into the small marketing basket. Then she put on her shawl and boots. The planked sidewalks and streets were spreading everywhere, but with all the new building there were always mud holes.
The walk to work was as good as a fair every day. With the houses so small and crowded, people lived on the streets. Even the crowds at the Crystal Palace had not been as mixed as these. Chinese and islanded, Spanish men in serapes and pretty Chilean girls in scarves, Indians and odd-speaking Australians, blacks and frock-coated city men, peddlers and sailors with their sea gaits, all overflowed the sidewalks and jostled in a slow-moving stream on the street along with the burros driven by the miners, the loaded horse-drawn wagons, and the fine carriages. Poppy always looked for new arrivals with their trays of trade goods, often things that had been scarce for weeks. One man was having luck with his shoestrings. While she watched, the price went from fifty to seventy-five cents. Another, with an open red face, was selling eastern newspapers at a dollar apiece and saying frankly he had used them to pad his packing but, yes, they were the newest, only came ashore yesterday.
She longed to buy a Pacific Daily but that was Nicholas Amberson's paper, and she did not quite dare, for Jeremiah might see it in her basket. She did not understand why the two men hated each other so much, but then she did not understand politics. Instead, she bought the new Golden Era. She had not seen this week's issue, and if it did not compare with dear Mr. Dickens's Household Words, still it was very good.
Then she saw the fine black carriage and stepped forward and bowed. She laughed when the two ladies looked over and straight through her. Madame Dixmer had been quite right about her near-albino daughter. Within a month, she had her married to a gold millionaire, at least he was called that, who had set them up with that fine carriage and was building them a handsome mansion on the edge of town. Now neither of them seemed to have the faintest memory of the Bonne Irene or a certain ex-hussar.
What had become of the ex-hussar? Probably he was another one who had ended up knifed in some dark alley. If lucky, he had been quietly buried when nobody claimed him, instead of being tossed out on the sand at the water's edge with dozens of others who had come to similar ends. Poppy shivered.
She stopped to watch the antics ot a sailor's monkey and listen to a street fiddler. The steam paddy passed, carrying sand from the hills to fill in still more of the waterfront. It was followed by a wagonload of whiskey barrels, but the oxcart behind that was something she did not see every day. The whole world was swarming the streets on this fine sunny day.
She bought a string of dried chilis from a peddler. Andy had got so he liked his beans Mexican style. Then she again stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and bowed. This time her bow was returned. More, Madame waved and beamed. She had done well, renting a fine three-story house Poppy had seen but never entered. Now she had a carriage-though perhaps it was hired -and was showing off some of her girls. She had a new redhead, a touch carroty but pretty in the face, and a slender dark girl who looked like Josie at first glance but was only the same type. Poppy frowned, then shrugged. She was not going to think about that.
She should turn off toward the handsome red brick structures with music blaring from them that housed the gambling establishments. But the motley rows of shops and peddlers lining the long wharf were enticing. At the comer she hesitated over a bargain in men and boys' socks in an iron store that had not exploded in the last big fire. Last winter every merchant in town had decided men's socks would be in short supply and had ordered them by the gross. Now they were selling below their factory cost. Andy wore out a pair of socks a week.
A pale blue flash on the street caused her to swing around. That carriage, with the smart chestnut horses, was the only one of its kind in town. She glared at the pale, elegant girl riding in it, chaperoned only by her black maid. Felicite Pannet did not usually appear in public without her mama, and yet she was obviously driving out on the Long Wharf to meet an arriving ship.
Gossip said the international banker's daughter was more strictly chaperoned than even the daughters of the wealthy Spanish rancheros. So somebody important and very special must be arriving. Felicite's pale blue dress, exactly matching the carriage, and the faint blush and smile on her delicate face hinted at more.
Poppy twisted the handle of her basket until the fibers crushed under her fingers. Who could be that important? Perhaps she was driven, obsessed by bitterness, but she thought she knew.
Before she had been three days in San Francisco, the minute she felt she could leave Jack and Andy alone, she had gone out ostensibly to talk to the owner of the Palace about a job but actually to inquire about banking arrangements in the town. That gold nearly had got them all killed, and she had to know if Dex had been helpless to provide for her in any other way.
Pete, the head bartender, had a genial face, and she questioned him. "Girl, if you expect to be saving money you've got all the banks you could want in this town. There's even an English bank if you want to stick to your own nationality. International? There's Guy Pannet. He's not connected with any bank that I know.
He's more a representative, you could almost call him an ambassador, for important people all over Europe. Like the titled gentry that come over here with their own servants and horses and cases of liquor and dozens of guns to look at the wild westerners in the auriferous districts. Don't widen your eyes at me-that's exactly what I've heard them call the gold diggings. And they like to take a look at the aborigines and do a little huntin', As for regular banks, go over to Montgomery Street and see for yourself."
Poppy did. She looked at the long row of red brick buildings and went into the English bank on the corner. Through the clouds of tobacco smoke, she watched the men go up to the counters and thump down large leather bags of gold dust. The clerks extracted the black sand, weighed the gold and packed it in boxes. The customers were unwashed men with long beards and jack boots, come straight from the diggings to deposit their wealth, but she did not doubt that in a few hours they would be washed, shaved, and changed so they could hardly be distinguished from the frock-coated bank officials. She looked at the huge lumps of quartz on exhibit, listened to talk about the fireproof cellars that had proved safe even in the last big fire when the brick buidings did bum, and went out with rage at Dex burning as hot as that fire inside her.
With a few scribbles of his pen, Dex could have arranged a draft or a credit for her here. Any bank or banker would know who he was and his banking connections and honor his request. Instead he had put them in a position to be terrorized during that long, terrible voyage, and in danger of their lives once ashore, with actual scars they would carry for the rest of their days.
He had done that, deliberately made the choice, because something was more important to him than her safety. That was close to unforgivable, though she might have been willing to listen to a reasonable excuse.
Then after .she caught a glimpse of Felicite Pannet and listened to the talk about her, she knew it was beyond any forgiving. The girl was wealthy and a beauty, and everybody knew the only suitor her family favored was that handsome young fellow, scion of another of the great banking houses, who turned up in San Francisco every now and again inquiring about some titled heir who had disappeared into the wilds and was rumored lost. So because of that pale-faced, yellow-haired girl, that daughter of a member of the great aristocrats of international: banking from whom no secrets of fund transfers, however handled, could be kept concealed, he had
risked Andy and Poppy's lives rather than let it be guessed he had paid off a lovely young mistress. She had meant that little to him, and the girl was that important. She could only hate Dex, futilely.
But what if it was Dex, arriving in San Francisco, setting foot on the wharf in minutes now, that Felicite had gone to meet? Would he continue to try to pretend that a girl named Poppy did not exist?
Chapter Twenty-five
POPPY longed to run down to the wharf, to be there if to watch the passengers step ashore. And what would she do if Dex did walk down the gangplank with eyes only for Felicite waiting to meet him? Fling herself at him to his horror and embarrassment? Or stand aside like some gutter waif while he brushed past her without a glance?
Felicite could be meeting any of a hundred other people, Poppy told herself and knew she lied. All San Francisco knew that that arrogant beauty could not be bothered to bestir herself to as much as a smile for anybody less than the heir to a great title. Or a great bank.
To go running down to the wharf with her little marketing basket, to hover in the shadow of that fine matched pair, could only bring hurt and humiliation. She had a job, a job that milk-faced ladylike chit could never fill in a hundred years, and she had better get there.
