AT THE PALMETTO HOTEL
For about four months the persons who made up what might be considered as
Captain Horn's adopted family had resided in the Palmetto Hotel, in San
Francisco. At the time we look upon them, however, Mrs. Cliff was not
with them, having left San Francisco some weeks previously.
Edna was now a very different being from the young woman she had been.
Her face was smoother and fuller, and her eyes seemed to have gained a
richer brown. The dark masses of her hair appeared to have wonderfully
grown and thickened, but this was due to the loose fashion in which it
was coiled upon her head, and it would have been impossible for any one
who had known her before not to perceive that she was greatly changed.
The lines upon her forehead, which had come, not from age, but from
earnest purpose and necessity of action, together with a certain
intensity of expression which would naturally come to a young woman who
had to make her way in the world, not only for herself, but for her young
brother, and a seriousness born of some doubts, some anxieties, and some
ambiguous hopes, had all entirely disappeared as if they had been
morning mists rolling away from a summer landscape. Under the rays of a
sun of fortune, shining, indeed, but mildly, she had ripened into a
physical beauty which was her own by right of birth, but of which a few
more years of struggling responsibility would have forever deprived her.
After the receipt of her second remittance, Edna and her party had taken
the best apartments in the hotel. The captain had requested this, for he
did not know how long they might remain there, and he wanted them to have
every comfort. He had sent them as much money as he could spare from the
sale, in Lima, of the gold he had carried with him when he first left
the caves, but his expenses in hiring ships and buying guano were heavy.
Edna, however, had received frequent remittances while the captain was at
the Rackbirds' cove, through an agent in San Francisco. These, she
supposed, came from further sales of gold, but, in fact, they had come
from the sale of investments which the captain had made in the course of
his fairly successful maritime career. In his last letter from Lima he
had urged them all to live well on what he sent them, considering it as
their share of the first division of the treasure in the mound. If his
intended projects should succeed, the fortunes of all of them would be
reconstructed upon a new basis as solid and as grand as any of them had
ever had reason to hope for. But if he should fail, they, the party in
San Francisco, would be as well off, or, perhaps, better circumstanced
than when they had started for Valparaiso. He did not mention the fact
that he himself would be poorer, for he had lost the _Castor_, in which
he was part-owner, and had invested nearly all his share of the proceeds
of the sale of the gold in ship hire, guano purchases, and other
necessary expenses.
Edna was waiting in San Francisco to know what would be the next scene in
the new drama of her life. Captain Horn had written before he sailed from
Lima in the Chilian schooner for the guano islands and the Rackbirds'
cove, and he had, to some extent, described his plans for carrying away
treasure from the mound; but since that she had not heard from him until
about ten days before, when he wrote from Acapulco, where he had arrived
in safety with his bags of guano and their auriferous enrichments. He had
written in high spirits, and had sent her a draft on San Francisco so
large in amount that it had fairly startled her, for he wrote that he had
merely disposed of some of the gold he had brought in his baggage, and
had not yet done anything with that contained in the guano-bags. He had
hired a storehouse, as if he were going regularly into business, and from
which he would dispose of his stock of guano after he had restored it to
its original condition. To do all this, and to convert the gold into
negotiable bank deposits or money, would require time, prudence, and even
diplomacy. He had already sold in the City of Mexico as much of the gold
from his trunk as he could offer without giving rise to too many
questions, and if he had not been known as a California trader, he might
have found some difficulties even in that comparatively small
transaction.
The captain had written that to do all he had to do he would be obliged
to remain in Acapulco or the City of Mexico--how long he could not tell,
for much of the treasure might have to be shipped to the United States,
and his plans for all this business were not yet arranged.
Before this letter had been received, Mrs. Cliff had believed it to be
undesirable to remain longer in San Francisco, and had gone to her home
in a little town in Maine. With Edna and Ralph, she had waited and waited
and waited, but at last had decided that Captain Horn was dead. In her
mind, she had allowed him all the time that she thought was necessary to
go to the caves, get gold, and come to San Francisco, and as that time
had long elapsed, she had finally given him up as lost. She knew the
captain was a brave man and an able sailor, but the adventure he had
undertaken was strange and full of unknown perils, and if it should so
happen that she should hear that he had gone to the bottom in a small
boat overloaded with gold, she would not have been at all surprised.
Of course, she said nothing of these suspicions to Edna or Ralph, nor did
she intend ever to mention them to any one. If Edna, who in so strange a
way had been made a wife, should, in some manner perhaps equally
extraordinary, be made a widow, she would come back to her, she would do
everything she could to comfort her; but now she did not seem to be
needed in San Francisco, and her New England home called to her through
the many voices of her friends. As to the business which had taken Mrs.
Cliff to South America, that must now be postponed, but it could not but
be a satisfaction to her that she was going back with perhaps as much
money as she would have had if her affairs in Valparaiso had been
satisfactorily settled.
Edna and Ralph had come to be looked upon at the Palmetto Hotel as
persons of distinction. They lived quietly, but they lived well, and
their payments were always prompt. They were the wife and brother-in-law
of Captain Philip Horn, who was known to be a successful man, and who
might be a rich one. But what seemed more than anything else to
distinguish them from the ordinary hotel guests was the fact that they
were attended by two personal servants, who, although, of course, they
could not be slaves, seemed to be bound to them as if they had been born
into their service.
Cheditafa, in a highly respectable suit of clothes which might have been
a cross between the habiliments of a Methodist minister and those of a
butler, was a person of imposing aspect. Mrs. Cliff had insisted, when
his new clothes were ordered, that there should be something in them
which should indicate the clergyman, for the time might come when it
would be necessary that he should be known in this character; and the
butler element was added because it would harmonize in a degree with his
duties as Edna's private attendant. The old negro, with his sober face,
and woolly hair slightly touched with gray, was fully aware of the
importance of his position as body-servant to Mrs. Horn, but his sense of
the responsibility of that position far exceeded any other sentiments of
which his mind was capable. Perhaps it was the fact that he had made Edna
Mrs. Horn which gave him the feeling that he must never cease to watch
over her and to serve her in every possible way. Had the hotel taken
fire, he would have rushed through the flames to save her. Had robbers
attacked her, they must have taken his life before they took her purse.
When she drove out in the city or suburbs, he always sat by the side of
the driver, and when she walked in the streets, he followed her at a
respectful distance.
Proud as he was of the fact that he had been the officiating clergyman at
the wedding of Captain Horn and this grand lady, he had never mentioned
the matter to any one, for many times, and particularly just before she
left San Francisco, Mrs. Cliff had told him, in her most impressive
manner, that if he informed any one that he had married Captain Horn and
Miss Markham, great trouble would come of it. What sort of trouble, it
was not necessary to explain to him, but she was very earnest in assuring
him that the marriage of a Christian by a heathen was something which was
looked upon with great disfavor in this country, and unless Cheditafa
could prove that he had a perfect right to perform the ceremony, it might
be bad for him. When Captain Horn had settled his business affairs and
should come back, everything would be made all right, and nobody need
feel any more fear, but until then he must not speak of what he had done.
If Captain Horn should never come back, Mrs. Cliff thought that Edna
would then be truly his widow, and his letters would prove it, but that
she was really his wife until the two had marched off together to a
regular clergyman, the good lady could not entirely admit. Her position
was not logical, but she rested herself firmly upon it.
The other negro, Mok, could speak no more English than when we first met
him, but he could understand some things which were said to him, and was
very quick, indeed, to catch the meanings of signs, motions, and
expressions of countenance. At first Edna did not know what to do with
this negro, but Ralph solved the question by taking him as a valet, and
day by day he became more useful to the youth, who often declared that he
did not know how he used to get along without a valet. Mok was very fond
of fine clothes, and Ralph liked to see him smartly dressed, and he
frequently appeared of more importance than Cheditafa. He was devoted to
his young master, and was so willing to serve him that Ralph often found
great difficulty in finding him something to do.
Edna and Ralph had a private table, at which Cheditafa and Mok assisted
in waiting, and Mrs. Cliff had taught both of them how to dust and keep
rooms in order. Sometimes Ralph sent Mok to a circulating library. Having
once been shown the place, and made to understand that he must deliver
there the piece of paper and the books to be returned, he attended to the
business as intelligently as if he had been a trained dog, and brought
back the new books with a pride as great as if he had selected them. The
fact that Mok was an absolute foreigner, having no knowledge whatever of
English, and that he was possessed of an extraordinary activity, which
enabled him, if the gate of the back yard of the hotel happened to be
locked, to go over the eight-foot fence with the agility of a monkey, had
a great effect in protecting him from impositions by other servants.
When a black negro cannot speak English, but can bound like an
india-rubber ball, it may not be safe to trifle with him. As for trifling
with Cheditafa, no one would think of such a thing; his grave and
reverend aspect was his most effectual protection.
As to Ralph, he had altered in appearance almost as much as his sister.
His apparel no longer indicated the boy, and as he was tall and large for
his years, the fashionable suit he wore, his gay scarf with its sparkling
pin, and his brightly polished boots, did not appear out of place upon
him. But Edna often declared that she had thought him a great deal
better-looking in the scanty, well-worn, but more graceful garments in
which he had disported himself on the sands of Peru.