A Little Girl in Old San Francisco

She worked steadily at her lessons. Then she had a race with Bruno, and waited out on the steps for Uncle Jason. What would happen to her to-morrow? It might be an elegant parting gift. How strange Mrs. Westbury had been. No one had influenced her in just that way before.

Then she went to bed and fell asleep with the ease of healthy youth. Jason Chadsey tossed and tumbled. What would to-morrow bring? How would Laverne take it? Must she go? Would she go? How could he endure it?

"One," the solemn old clock downstairs said. "Two." He had half a mind to get up. Hark, what was that? Or was he dreaming? Oh, again, now a clang sharp enough to arouse any one. Fire! Fire! He sprang out of bed and went to the window. Was it down there on the bay? He stood paralyzed while the clamor grew louder, and flames shot up in great spires, yellow-red against the blue sky. And now an immense sheet that seemed to blot out the middle of the bay, as if it could run across. "Clang, clang," went the bells.

"Oh, what is it, fire?" cried Miss Holmes.

"Fire down on the docks. I must go. Do not disturb Laverne."

Let her sleep now. She would know sorrow soon enough.

He dressed hurriedly and went out. The stars were still shining in the blue sky, though round the edges toward the eastward there were faint touches of grayish white. But the zenith seemed aflame. Up went the great spires grandly, a thing to be admired if it brought no loss. He went stumbling down the rough ways in the semi-darkness. Once a stone rolled and he fell. Then he hurried on. Other people were out – you could discern windows crowded with heads. Was San Francisco to have another holocaust? There were shrieks and cries. The noise of the engines, blowing of horns, whistles, boats steaming up, others being towed out in the bay, wooden buildings hastily demolished to stay the progress of the red fiend. Crowds upon crowds, as if the sight were a new one.

On the corner of Davis Street he sat down on a barrel, close by a stoop, overwhelmed by the certainty. Why go any nearer? The rigging of a vessel had caught, the flames twisted this way and that by their own force, as there was no wind, fortunately.

All the labor of years was swallowed up, her fortune, her luxuries, her pleasures. Another twelve months and it would have been secured. But, alas! she would not be here to share it. Did it matter so very much? His soul within him was numb. Since he had lost her, what need he care for a prosperity she could not share?

The hot air swept his face. Pandemonium sounded in his ears. Men ran to and fro, but he sat there in a kind of dumb despair that all his life should have gone for nought, labor, and love as well.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DECISION OF FATE

Pablo told them the heart-breaking news. But about eight o'clock Uncle Jason returned. The fire was out, there were only heaps of smoking ashes and smouldering brands. Jason Chadsey had been warmly sympathized with, proffered assistance to rebuild, to recommence business, and would have been deluged with whiskey if he had accepted. That was still a panacea for all ills and troubles. But he refused, and wandered about in dogged silence. No one knew the whole loss.

In the farther office desk he had slipped a box with a string of pearls for his darling's birthday. Some one had said pearls were for blondes, and in spite of much out-of-door living, she had kept her beautiful complexion. Then crushed by the astounding news, he had forgotten about it.

"Oh, Uncle Jason!" Grimed as he was with smoke and cinders, she flew to his arms, and sobbed out her sorrow.

"There, there, dear." His voice had the stress of fatigue and great emotion. "I am not fit to touch. And I can't talk now. I am tired to death. Give me a cup of coffee."

"I don't believe I will go to school to-day," she said, with fine disregard of rules. "And yet I ought. There are the translations to be handed in."

"Yes, do go. I must get some rest."

"I'll come home at noon," kissing him fondly.

He nodded. He was a broken old man in what should have been the prime of life. He drank his coffee, then took the whiskey he had refused down on the dock, went to his room, and after a good cool wash, threw himself on the bed.

The fire was on everybody's tongue. Not that fires were a rarity. But this might have been much worse, yet it was bad enough for Jason Chadsey. The air was still full of smoke, there was a dense fog and a cloudy sky. Everywhere you heard the same talk.

The lessons at school went on well enough, though Laverne's nerves were all of a tremble. Just after eleven as recess began she was summoned to the reception room.

David Westbury had been out to the fire and come in again.

"Gad!" he exclaimed. "It's that Chadsey's place! And he had a tremendous stock, a new shipload just in, some others waiting to be loaded up. This is a queer town where every so often there's a big fire. The only amends is that it is rebuilt better. Half of the old rookeries ought to come down, they look so forlorn and ancient."

"Oh, David. Well, if he has lost everything he will be the more willing to give up the girl."

"He will give her up, anyhow," in a determined tone. Some things Chadsey had said still rankled in David Westbury's mind.

He went downtown again. Yes, it was ruin sure enough. Being prosperous now, he could afford to pity the unfortunate ones. Chadsey had gone home. The police were in charge, to keep off the roughs and the thieves.

"We must have the matter settled to-day," he declared to his wife.

"I know where she is at school. Let us go there."

"Excellent. I should like to see her alone. It is right that she should hear my story."

So to the school they went. Laverne came in a little flurried, and yet bewitching in her simple girlhood. Her bodice was rather low about the throat, with some edging around, and a band of black velvet encircled her white neck. Her skirt was ankle length, and the man noted her trim, slender feet, with the high arch of the instep.

Mrs. Westbury kissed her with warmth and tenderness. Her eyes were luminous this morning, and the flushes showed above the delicately tinted cheeks; her whole air was pleading, enchanting.

"You know I said there was a strange story for you to hear," she exclaimed, when they had talked at length about the fire. "Mr. Westbury will tell you."

He began to pace up and down, as was his habit, so slowly that it gave him an air of thoughtfulness. Mrs. Westbury had her arm around Laverne.

"Yes, a rather curious story, yet numbers of these instances crop out along life. Friends, often relatives are reunited, tangled threads are straightened, mysteries explained. In a little village in Maine lived a girl and her two friends, they were a little too old for real schoolmates. Her name was Laverne Dallas."

Why, that was her mother's name. And Maine. She began to listen attentively, just as one pieces out a dream that has nearly escaped from memory. And Westbury! Why, she had forgotten she ever had any other name than Chadsey – it was her story as well, and now she looked at the man, who certainly had nothing repellant about him, and the story of those early years was pathetic as he lent it several appealing embellishments. She really could not remember him with any distinctness. The death of her grandmother, the pale, reserved mother, coughing and holding on to her side, the coming of Uncle Jason, who it seemed was no uncle at all, her mother's death, and all the rest was school and play.

"Oh! Oh!" she cried, and hid her face on Mrs. Westbury's shoulder.

"So you see you are my little daughter. Your own mother is not here to care for you and make you happy, but here is a new mother, who has learned to love you unaware. And now we are returning to London, and will take you with us, and give you the life that rightly belongs to you – "

"Oh, no, no," she interrupted with poignant pathos. "I cannot go. I could not leave Uncle Jason in this sad loss and trouble. He has been so good, so kind, so tender – "

"As if an own father could not be that! Laverne, my darling, my own little girl!"

If he had been poor he would have thought any child a great burden. He was not the sort of man to make sacrifices for any one. They would have irked him terribly. But in prosperity he was very indulgent. There are many such people. Jason Chadsey would have shared his last dollar, his last crust, ungrudgingly.

They began to set the matter before her in a reasonable, practical light. Henceforward she would be a burden on Mr. Chadsey, who had already done so much for her. She would have in her parents' care accomplishments, travel, society, a lovely home, pleasures of all kinds, and now she was old enough to enjoy them. And they wanted her. Her father had the lawful right, would have until she was of age.

"I must go home," she said at length. "It is so strange. I must think it over. And if Uncle Jason wants me – "

"And we want you." Agnes Westbury gave her a tender embrace, as she wiped the tears from her own eyes. They could not be allowed to run riot down the cheeks as Laverne's were doing.

She rose unsteadily.

"Have you no word for me, your father?"

She went to the outstretched arms and hid her face on his breast. She could not love all at once. She could not break Uncle Jason's heart.

"I know it must seem strange, but I think Mr. Chadsey will recognize my right in you. We must see him – "

"To-morrow, then," she interrupted. "Let me have this afternoon to consider, to talk."

Her voice trembled from exhaustion. She took a few unsteady steps. The noon bells began to ring, and again she said she must go.

They importuned her to accompany them to the Folsom House to dinner, but she would not consent. Then her father insisted that she should have a hack, but she refused that strenuously. They walked together some distance.

"Arrangements must be made to-morrow morning," her father said authoritatively. She felt as if she had been metamorphosed into some other person. Laverne Westbury! it made her shiver. She liked the old personality so much better. Must she go away? This was all the real home she had ever known, this strange, odd, ever-changing Old San Francisco. Why, over here there was a row of tents when they first came. And the queer little one-room and two-room adobe houses, and the tangled-up streets that ended at some one's house. How plainly she could see it all!

She began to climb the hill wearily. Then some one came to meet her, helped her tenderly over the rough places. They did not pause at the house, but took the winding path up to the pine tree that grew more beautiful every year, with its shining needles and gray-green, fuzzy buds, almost like little kittens rolling and tumbling in the wind. Balder the beautiful was resting here. Here Victor had really said good-by to her. Why, Victor was in London. And suddenly London seemed to emerge from the gloom of the Tower, and the execution of King Charles and a hundred other melancholy reminiscences.

"Laverne!" her uncle began.

"Oh, I know! I know! They both came to school. They told me everything. But I shall not go. Do you think I could be so ungrateful, so heartless now in all this trouble? And I love you. It is years of love between us, and only a few weeks with them. Oh, no, no!"

There was a long silence. A vireo came and sang his merry lilt in the tree overhead. The fog and a good deal of the smoke had cleared away, and the sun was shining.

He was very glad of the love. It would comfort him all the rest of the weary way.

"Listen, child," he said at length, and he went carefully over the ground. The strongest point of all was that the law would give her to her father the next four years. And now he would have to start in anew and make another fortune. "I am not too old," he declared, with a little pride.

A word had caught her, just as one catches a ball with a chain at careless throw.

"Four years," she said. "Why, then when I am twenty-one I could come back. Four years only! Will you be waiting for me? I shall surely come."

She would be married before that. A pretty young girl with a fortune was not likely to be left on the bush. He caught at it, too. It would smooth the way since the parting had to be. He had nothing; Westbury had it all.

"Oh," she cried impulsively, "I can think how you loved my mother. Was she happy there at the last with you? But you two should have been married, and I should have been your child. Why do things, wishes, events go at cross-purposes?"

Alas! no one could tell. It was one of the great world's mysteries.

Miss Holmes summoned them to dinner presently. She had heard the story, and though it was hard, they had to admit that the child belonged to her father while she was under age.

Half the night Laverne thought she would defy them all and stay. Would her father want to drag her away a prisoner? What was a father's love like? Wasn't the playing at it better and holier; the sense of loss somewhere else making it diviner, giving it a yearning that a full right could never quite embody? She did not like the full right to be taken, she would rather be coaxed a little and led along. And she could not positively decide about Mrs. Westbury. Some girls she found were quite extravagant in their protestations and then forgot. Olive was one; there was another very sweet girl in school who wanted always to be caressing the one she liked. Isola was not always demonstrative. They did have some delightful quiet times. Were not women girls grown larger and older?

It was strange, Laverne thought, how nearly every one was ranged on Mr. Westbury's side. The Personettes admired him, Mrs. Folsom considered him a gentleman, and at that time the term was a compliment. The schoolgirls envied her the romance and the going abroad. Even Miss Holmes thought it the right and proper thing to do. Uncle Jason did not discuss the right, with him there was nothing else to do.

Other matters troubled him. Property had been queerly held in the city. There had been squatters, there had been old Mexican deeds, claims coming up every now and then to be settled with difficulty. Jason Chadsey had leased the ground and the waterfront when it had not been very valuable. He had bought one building, erected others. In a year more the lease would expire. Already large prices had been offered for it. He could not rebuild, though generous friends had proffered him any amount of money. He felt unable to take the stir and struggle for no end, that he could not explain. Like a wounded animal, he wanted to go off in quiet and seclusion and nurse his hurts. He had been worsted everywhere, let him give up.

Mrs. Westbury had wisdom enough not to make her claim at all onerous. There would be plenty of time on the long journey. Every day her old friends seemed dearer to Laverne. At Oaklands they bewailed the separation, but recognized its rightfulness, its necessity. To Isola it was a joy that she would see Victor, and she sent no end of messages.

Mrs. Savedra said to Miss Holmes, "If you desire to make a change, we shall be more than glad to have you."

David Westbury drove his wife and pretty daughter about with a proud, satisfied air. Agnes shopped for her, "just enough to make her presentable," she said when Laverne protested. But, after all, the parting was very hard.

"You must not come and see me off, Uncle Jason." She could not renounce the dear, familiar name. "If you did, I should give one wild leap and land on the wharf, and you would have to keep me. Four years – it's a long, long while, and there will be room for a great many heartaches in it, but one day they will be healed."

He obeyed her, and did not come. There were many friends who did. So she went sailing out of the Golden Gate on as fair a day as she had first entered it. Oh, how the sun shone and tipped the waves with molten gold. Never were skies bluer. Even the rocks, and the clefts, and the crannies brought out their indescribable colors, browns that deepened through every shade into purple and black, grays that were pink and mauve and dun, blues that ran into sapphire, and green and chrysoprase. Telegraph Hill and the old, time-worn semaphore. Oh, farewell, farewell, dear old San Francisco!

There was some trouble getting insurance matters straightened up and paying debts. Jason Chadsey had lost the spring of ambition and life. He would take a voyage up north with some of the explorers, then he would think of the next thing. Four years. Oh, no, she would never return. The bright, laughing, gay world would swallow her up.

Marian Holmes pitied the man profoundly through this time. They had been excellent, sensible friends. There had been two or three occasions when she would have married him if he had been really in love with her. She knew now why his love-day had passed. She enjoyed her own life, her own neat ways, her liberty. She and Miss Gaines were still very warm friends, and the latter would have liked her to come with her.

"I have a fancy to try it at Oaklands, and help Americanize these charming people, perhaps spoil them. It will be very easy and delightful. The daughter will be a rather curious study. If she were poor, she would have a fortune in her voice. She has quite a gift of poetry. I shall try to keep her from morbidness and a convent, now that she has lost her friend. And her mother wants her fitted for marriage. How these foreigners harp on that!" laughing a little.

Laverne Westbury cried herself to sleep many a night, though in the daytime she took a warm interest in all about her, and tried to be agreeable, tried to draw near to her father. He was proud of her prettiness, of her refined ways, the delicacy that had come down to her from the New England strain. It was English, and she would "take" over there. Then he was glad to have Agnes so happy. It was like a girl with her first doll. Often Laverne would rather have been left alone, but she tried not to be ungracious.

They crossed the Isthmus, quite a new experience. They went up to Washington, where David Westbury had an excellent scheme to exploit that did get taken up afterward. Then to Liverpool. The little girl never dreamed there would come a time when one could cross the continent in a week, the ocean in another, and her father's expectations seemed quite wild to her.

There was a visit over to Paris. Eugénie was at the height of her popularity, but now she had to take a little pains with her beauty. Still she was the mother of a future Emperor, she was a favorite daughter of the Church, she set the fashions and the manners of the day and did it most admirably.

It was not possible for a girl to be unhappy or cry herself to sleep amid such charming surroundings. Her French was very useful, she had been so in the habit of using it at home that she did not take it up awkwardly.

Then they must go to London and get settled. They would have a real home, an attractive place where they could entertain. Mr. Westbury would be away a good deal on flying trips, and now he would not mind leaving his wife with her pleasant companion. He really grew fond of Laverne in a proud sort of way. He liked women to have attractions. He was not jealous, he had found his wife too useful to spoil it by any petty captiousness.

Laverne was really amazed. A simple little home, Mrs. Westbury had said, but it seemed to her quite grand. A pretty court, the house standing back a little, a plot of flowers and some vines, a spacious hall with rooms on both sides, a large drawing room, smaller delightful apartments, sleeping and dressing rooms upstairs, a man and several maids, and a carriage kept on livery.

On one side of the hall were an office and a smoking room devoted to the gentlemen who called on business, and there were many of them, but they did not disturb the ladies.

Some old friends came to welcome Mrs. Westbury back, and this was Miss Westbury, who had been at school in the "States" while they were travelling about, and now would remain permanently with them. Mrs. Westbury sent out cards for a Sunday reception and presented her daughter to the guests. She was something delightfully fresh and new, a pretty, modest girl who might have been reared in any English family, and who was not handsome enough to shine down the daughters of other mammas.

It was her very naturalness that proved her greatest charm. And Mrs. Westbury found she had not made any mistake in desiring her. Young men sought her favor again. Older men lingered for a bit of bright talk. Laverne felt at times as if she were in an enchanted world. How could youth remain blind to the delight?

Then all the wonderful journeys about to famous places, art galleries, concerts, drives in the parks. It seemed as if there was no end to the money. Since prosperity had dawned upon David Westbury he had made it a rule never to want twice for a thing be it indulgence of any reasonable sort, once when he had, and once when he had not. His plans were working admirably. A golden stream was pouring in and he was in his element. A few years of this and he could retire on his competency.

She wrote to Miss Holmes and heard from her the current news about every one. Olive Personette was well married. Isola had a music master, an enthusiastic German, who insisted such a voice should not be hidden out of sight and hearing. Her father had been persuaded to allow her to sing in St. Mary's Church, recently completed in a very fine manner, on Ascension Sunday and there had been great enthusiasm over the unknown singer. Elena was growing up into a bright, eager girl who rode magnificently and danced to perfection, and was already drawing crowds of admirers, much to her mother's satisfaction, and would make amends for Isola's diffidence and distaste of society. Dick Folsom was still flirting with pretty girls. Nothing had been heard from Mr. Chadsey, except that he had gone up to the wild Russian possessions. There was inclosed a letter from Mrs. Hudson, who was a happy mother, and José was the best of husbands.

Laverne wondered at times how it was possible to hear anything of Victor Savedra. Girls were so hedged about here, everything they did inquired into. It would not be proper for her to write, and if she had an answer Mrs. Westbury would know it. She kept an excellent watch over her pretty daughter. She was really glad no one heard from Jason Chadsey. In this round of pleasure Laverne would soon forget that crude life, and not care to go back to it.

She did find many things to interest. But the Westbury society was not of the intellectual type. Then there were no stirring questions about one's own town. London seemed a great agglomeration of small places, and was to a degree finished. There was no especial Steamer day, there was no influx of miners, no great bay with its shipping at hand, and, oh, no great ocean with its multitude of denizens to watch.

Yet, of course, there were other wonderful things, the galleries, with their pictures and statues, only it seemed to her that people went quite as much to see each other's fine clothes. There were the churches, the palaces, the great piles of learning that had trained Englishmen hundreds of years. Mr. Westbury took them to the House of Commons to a debate that he was interested in, but she felt a little disappointed. Somewhere at Oxford was Victor Savedra, but what was one amid the great multitude?

They went over on the French coast for a summering and Laverne found herself quite a favorite at once. She was so modest and unassuming. American tourists had not invaded every corner of Europe. And a young American who knew French and Spanish people at home, where no one supposed they could be found, where they looked only for wild Indians, was indeed an unusual personage.

Mrs. Westbury was proud of her stepdaughter. She was so tractable, it was so easy to keep her out of the reach of undesirable admirers. Indeed, she thought she should be jealous when Laverne came to have lovers.

Then back to London again, visiting at country houses where there were hunts and much fine riding, pretty evening balls, queer old women, titled and bejewelled, to whom every one seemed to bow.

And it was while they were at Thorley that Lord Wrexford came home from the Continent, where he had been trying to live cheaply for a while. He was five and thirty, very well looking and agreeable, and though he had taken on some flesh he was not too stout for dancing, so he was invited out considerably, though he was not esteemed a catch in the matrimonial market. For it was well known that Wrexford Grange was nearly covered with mortgages. The old lord was helpless from paralysis, not able to sign his name, and too infirm in mind to consent lawfully to any measures looking to the disposal of the old place. Indeed, his death was looked for almost any time.