I
It had rained so persistently in San Francisco during the first week of
January, 1854, that a certain quagmire in the roadway of Long Wharf had
become impassable, and a plank was thrown over its dangerous depth.
Indeed, so treacherous was the spot that it was alleged, on good
authority, that a hastily embarking traveler had once hopelessly lost
his portmanteau, and was fain to dispose of his entire interest in it
for the sum of two dollars and fifty cents to a speculative stranger on
the wharf. As the stranger's search was rewarded afterwards only by
the discovery of the body of a casual Chinaman, who had evidently
endeavored wickedly to anticipate him, a feeling of commercial
insecurity was added to the other eccentricities of the locality.
The plank led to the door of a building that was a marvel even in the
chaotic frontier architecture of the street. The houses on either
side--irregular frames of wood or corrugated iron--bore evidence of
having been quickly thrown together, to meet the requirements of the
goods and passengers who were once disembarked on what was the muddy
beach of the infant city. But the building in question exhibited a
certain elaboration of form and design utterly inconsistent with this
idea. The structure obtruded a bowed front to the street, with a
curving line of small windows, surmounted by elaborate carvings and
scroll work of vines and leaves, while below, in faded gilt letters,
appeared the legend "Pontiac--Marseilles." The effect of this
incongruity was startling. It is related that an inebriated miner,
impeded by mud and drink before its door, was found gazing at its
remarkable facade with an expression of the deepest despondency. "I
hev lived a free life, pardner," he explained thickly to the Samaritan
who succored him, "and every time since I've been on this six weeks'
jamboree might have kalkilated it would come to this. Snakes I've seen
afore now, and rats I'm not unfamiliar with, but when it comes to the
starn of a ship risin' up out of the street, I reckon it's time to pass
in my checks." "It IS a ship, you blasted old soaker," said the
Samaritan curtly.
It was indeed a ship. A ship run ashore and abandoned on the beach
years before by her gold-seeking crew, with the debris of her scattered
stores and cargo, overtaken by the wild growth of the strange city and
the reclamation of the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded;
her retreat cut off by wharves and quays and breakwater, jostled at
first by sheds, and then impacted in a block of solid warehouses and
dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing
hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her.
But still a ship despite her transformation. The faintest line of
contour yet left visible spoke of the buoyancy of another element; the
balustrade of her roof was unmistakably a taffrail. The rain slipped
from her swelling sides with a certain lingering touch of the sea; the
soil around her was still treacherous with its suggestions, and even
the wind whistled nautically over her chimney. If, in the fury of some
southwesterly gale, she had one night slipped her strange moorings and
left a shining track through the lower town to the distant sea, no one
would have been surprised.
Least of all, perhaps, her present owner and possessor, Mr. Abner Nott.
For by the irony of circumstances, Mr. Nott was a Far Western farmer
who had never seen a ship before, nor a larger stream of water than a
tributary of the Missouri River. In a spirit, half of fascination,
half of speculation, he had bought her at the time of her abandonment,
and had since mortgaged his ranch at Petaluma with his live stock, to
defray the expenses of filling in the land where she stood, and the
improvements of the vicinity. He had transferred his household goods
and his only daughter to her cabin, and had divided the space "between
decks" and her hold into lodging-rooms, and lofts for the storage of
goods. It could hardly be said that the investment had been
profitable. His tenants vaguely recognized that his occupancy was a
sentimental rather than a commercial speculation, and often generously
lent themselves to the illusion by not paying their rent. Others
treated their own tenancy as a joke,--a quaint recreation born of the
childlike familiarity of frontier intercourse. A few had left
carelessly abandoning their unsalable goods to their landlord, with
great cheerfulness and a sense of favor. Occasionally Mr. Abner Nott,
in a practical relapse, raged against the derelicts, and talked of
dispossessing them, or even dismantling his tenement, but he was easily
placated by a compliment to the "dear old ship," or an effort made by
some tenant to idealize his apartment. A photographer who had
ingeniously utilized the forecastle for a gallery (accessible from the
bows in the next street), paid no further tribute than a portrait of
the pretty face of Rosey Nott. The superstitious reverence in which
Abner Nott held his monstrous fancy was naturally enhanced by his
purely bucolic exaggeration of its real functions and its native
element. "This yer keel has sailed, and sailed, and sailed," he would
explain with some incongruity of illustration, "in a bee line, makin'
tracks for days runnin'. I reckon more storms and blizzards hez
tackled her then you ken shake a stick at. She's stampeded whales
afore now, and sloshed round with pirates and freebooters in and outer
the Spanish Main, and across lots from Marcelleys where she was rared.
And yer she sits peaceful-like just ez if she'd never been outer a
pertater patch, and hadn't ploughed the sea with fo'sails and studdin'
sails and them things cavortin' round her masts."
Abner Nott's enthusiasm was shared by his daughter, but with more
imagination, and an intelligence stimulated by the scant literature of
her father's emigrant wagon and the few books found on the cabin
shelves. But to her the strange shell she inhabited suggested more of
the great world than the rude, chaotic civilization she saw from the
cabin windows or met in the persons of her father's lodgers. Shut up
for days in this quaint tenement, she had seen it change from the
enchanted playground of her childish fancy to the theatre of her active
maidenhood, but without losing her ideal romance in it. She had
translated its history in her own way, read its quaint nautical
hieroglyphics after her own fashion, and possessed herself of its
secrets. She had in fancy made voyages in it to foreign lands; had
heard the accents of a softer tongue on its decks, and on summer
nights, from the roof of the quarter-deck, had seen mellower
constellations take the place of the hard metallic glitter of the
Californian skies. Sometimes, in her isolation, the long, cylindrical
vault she inhabited seemed, like some vast sea-shell, to become musical
with the murmurings of the distant sea. So completely had it taken the
place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had forgotten
she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in fashion and scant in
quantity. After the first surprise of admiration her father's lodgers
ceased to follow the abstracted nymph except with their eyes,--partly
respecting her spiritual shyness, partly respecting the jealous
supervision of the paternal Nott. She seldom penetrated the crowded
centre of the growing city; her rare excursions were confined to the
old ranch at Petaluma, whence she brought flowers and plants, and even
extemporized a hanging-garden on the quarter-deck.
It was still raining, and the wind, which had increased to a gale, was
dashing the drops against the slanting cabin windows with a sound like
spray when Mr. Abner Nott sat before a table seriously engaged with his
accounts. For it was "steamer night,"--as that momentous day of
reckoning before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly
known to commercial San Francisco,--and Mr. Nott was subject at such
times to severely practical relapses. A swinging light seemed to bring
into greater relief that peculiar encased casket-like security of the
low-timbered, tightly-fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of
space, and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a
characteristic ornament. The sliding door of the cabin communicated
with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned off so as to form a
small passage that led to the open starboard gangway, where a narrow,
inclosed staircase built on the ship's side took the place of the
ship's ladder under her counter, and opened in the street.
A dash of rain against the window caused Rosey to lift her eyes from
her book.
"It's much nicer here than at the ranch, father," she said coaxingly,
"even leaving alone its being a beautiful ship instead of a shanty; the
wind don't whistle through the cracks and blow out the candle when
you're reading, nor the rain spoil your things hung up against the
wall. And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own--ship--you
know, looking over his bills and getting ready to give his orders."
Vague and general as Miss Rosey's compliment was, it had its full
effect upon her father, who was at times dimly conscious of his
hopeless rusticity and its incongruity with his surroundings. "Yes," he
said awkwardly, with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude;
"yes, in course it's more bang-up style, but it don't pay--Rosey--it
don't pay. Yer's the Pontiac that oughter be bringin' in, ez rents go,
at least three hundred a month, don't make her taxes. I bin thinkin'
seriously of sellin' her."
As Rosey knew her father had experienced this serious contemplation on
the first of every month for the last two years, and cheerfully ignored
it the next day, she only said, "I'm sure the vacant rooms and lofts
are all rented, father."
"That's it," returned Mr. Nott thoughtfully, plucking at his bushy
whiskers with his fingers and thumb as if he were removing dead and
sapless incumbranees in their growth, "that's just what it is--them's
ez in it themselves don't pay, and them ez haz left their goods--the
goods don't pay. The feller ez stored them iron sugar kettles in the
forehold, after trying to get me to make another advance on 'em, sez he
believes he'll have to sacrifice 'em to me after all, and only begs I'd
give him a chance of buying back the half of 'em ten years from now, at
double what I advanced him. The chap that left them five hundred cases
of hair dye 'tween decks and then skipped out to Sacramento, met me the
other day in the street and advised me to use a bottle ez an
advertisement, or try it on the starn of the Pontiac for fire-proof
paint. That foolishness ez all he's good for. And yet thar might be
suthin' in the paint, if a feller had nigger luck. Ther's that New
York chap ez bought up them damaged boxes of plug terbaker for fifty
dollars a thousand, and sold 'em for foundations for that new building
in Sansome Street at a thousand clear profit. It's all luck, Rosey."
The girl's eyes had wandered again to the pages of her book. Perhaps
she was already familiar with the text of her father's monologue. But
recognizing an additional querulousness in his voice, she laid the book
aside and patiently folded her hands in her lap.
"That's right--for I've suthin' to tell ye. The fact is Sleight wants
to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she stands with the two fifty
vara lots she stands on."
"Sleight wants to buy her? Sleight?" echoed Rosey incredulously.
"You bet! Sleight--the big financier, the smartest man in 'Frisco."
"What does he want to buy her for?" asked Rosey, knitting her pretty
brows.
The apparently simple question suddenly puzzled Mr. Nott. He glanced
feebly at his daughter's face, and frowned in vacant irritation.
"That's so," he said, drawing a long breath; "there's suthin' in that."
"What did he SAY?" continued the young girl, impatiently.
"Not much. 'You've got the Pontiac, Nott,' sez he. 'You bet!' sez I.
'What'll you take for her and the lot she stands on?' sez he, short and
sharp. Some fellers, Rosey," said Nott, with a cunning smile, "would
hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ain't my style. I
just looked at him. 'I'll wait fur your figgers until next steamer
day,' sez he, and off he goes like a shot. He's awfully sharp, Rosey."
"But if he is sharp, father, and he really wants to buy the ship,"
returned Rosey, thoughtfully, "it's only because he knows it's valuable
property, and not because he likes it as we do. He can't take that
value away even if we don't sell it to him, and all the while we have
the comfort of the dear old Pontiac, don't you see?"
This exhaustive commercial reasoning was so sympathetic to Mr. Nott's
instincts that he accepted it as conclusive. He, however, deemed it
wise to still preserve his practical attitude. "But that don't make it
pay by the month, Rosey. Suthin' must be done. I'm thinking I'll
clean out that photographer."
"Not just after he's taken such a pretty view of the cabin front of the
Pontiac from the street, father! No! he's going to give us a copy, and
put the other in a shop window in Montgomery Street."
"That's so," said Mr. Nott, musingly; "it's no slouch of an
advertisement. 'The Pontiac,' the property of A. Nott, Esq., of St.
Jo, Missouri. Send it on to your Aunt Phoebe; sorter make the old
folks open their eyes--oh? Well, seein' he's been to some expense
fittin' up an entrance from the other street, we'll let him slide. But
as to that d----d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his
stuck-up airs and high-falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's
regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation."
"How can you say that, father!" said Rosey, with a slight increase of
color. "It was your own offer. You know those bales of curled
horsehair were left behind by the late tenant to pay his rent. When Mr.
de Ferrieres rented the room afterwards, you told him you'd throw them
in in the place of repairs and furniture. It was your own offer."
"Yes, but I didn't reckon ther'd ever be a big price per pound paid for
the darned stuff for sofys and cushions and sich."
"How do you know HE knew it, father?" responded Rosey.
"Then why did he look so silly at first, and then put on airs when I
joked him about it, eh?"
"Perhaps he didn't understand your joking, father. He's a foreigner,
and shy and proud, and--not like the others. I don't think he knew
what you meant then, any more than he believed he was making a bargain
before. He may be poor, but I think he's been--a--a--gentleman."
The young girl's animation penetrated even Mr. Nott's slow
comprehension. Her novel opposition, and even the prettiness it
enhanced, gave him a dull premonition of pain. His small round eyes
became abstracted, his mouth remained partly open, even his fresh color
slightly paled.
"You seem to have been takin' stock of this yer man, Rosey," he said,
with a faint attempt at archness; "if he warn't ez old ez a crow, for
all his young feathers, I'd think he was makin' up to you."
But the passing glow had faded from her young cheeks, and her eyes
wandered again to her book. "He pays his rent regularly every steamer
night," she said, quietly, as if dismissing an exhausted subject, "and
he'll be here in a moment, I dare say." She took up her book, and
leaning her head on her hand, once more became absorbed in its pages.
An uneasy silence followed. The rain beat against the windows, the
ticking of a clock became audible, but still Mr. Nott sat with vacant
eyes fixed on his daughter's face, and the constrained smile on his
lips. He was conscious that he had never seen her look so pretty
before, yet he could not tell why this was no longer an unalloyed
satisfaction. Not but that he had always accepted the admiration of
others for her as a matter of course, but for the first time he became
conscious that she not only had an interest in others, but apparently a
superior knowledge of them. How did she know these things about this
man, and why had she only now accidentally spoken of them? HE would
have done so. All this passed so vaguely through his unreflective
mind, that he was unable to retain any decided impression, but the
far-reaching one that his lodger had obtained some occult influence
over her through the exhibition of his baleful skill in the horsehair
speculation. "Them tricks is likely to take a young girl's fancy. I
must look arter her," he said to himself softly.
A slow regular step in the gangway interrupted his paternal
reflections. Hastily buttoning across his chest the pea-jacket which
he usually wore at home as a single concession to his nautical
surroundings, he drew himself up with something of the assumption of a
ship-master, despite certain bucolic suggestions of his boots and legs.
The footsteps approached nearer, and a tall figure suddenly stood in
the doorway.
It was a figure so extraordinary that even in the strange masquerade of
that early civilization it was remarkable; a figure with whom father
and daughter were already familiar without abatement of wonder--the
figure of a rejuvenated old man, padded, powdered, dyed, and painted to
the verge of caricature, but without a single suggestion of
ludicrousness or humor. A face so artificial that it seemed almost a
mask, but, like a mask, more pathetic than amusing. He was dressed in
the extreme of fashion of a dozen years before; his pearl gray trousers
strapped tightly over his varnished boots, his voluminous satin cravat
and high collar embraced his rouged cheeks and dyed whiskers, his
closely-buttoned frock coat clinging to a waist that seemed accented by
stays.
He advanced two steps into the cabin with an upright precision of
motion that might have hid the infirmities of age, and said
deliberately with a foreign accent:--
"You-r-r ac-coumpt?"
In the actual presence of the apparition Mr. Nott's dignified
resistance wavered. But glancing uneasily at his daughter and seeing
her calm eyes fixed on the speaker without embarrassment, he folded his
arms stiffly, and with a lofty simulation of examining the ceiling,
said,--
"Ahem! Rosa! The gentleman's account."
It was an infelicitous action. For the stranger, who evidently had not
noticed the presence of the young girl before, started, took a step
quickly forward, bent stiffly but profoundly over the little hand that
held the account, raised it to his lips, and with "a thousand pardons,
mademoiselle," laid a small canvas bag containing the rent before the
disorganized Mr. Nott and stiffly vanished.
That night was a troubled one to the simple-minded proprietor of the
good ship Pontiac. Unable to voice his uneasiness by further
discussion, but feeling that his late discomposing interview with his
lodger demanded some marked protest, he absented himself on the plea of
business during the rest of the evening, happily to his daughter's
utter obliviousness of the reason. Lights were burning brilliantly in
counting-rooms and offices, the feverish life of the mercantile city
was at its height. With a vague idea of entering into immediate
negotiations with Mr. Sleight for the sale of the ship--as a direct way
out of his present perplexity, he bent his steps towards the
financier's office, but paused and turned back before reaching the
door. He made his way to the wharf and gazed abstractedly at the
lights reflected in the dark, tremulous, jelly-like water. But
wherever he went he was accompanied by the absurd figure of his
lodger--a figure he had hitherto laughed at or half pitied, but which
now, to his bewildered comprehension, seemed to have a fateful
significance. Here a new idea seized him, and he hurried back to the
ship, slackening his pace only when he arrived at his own doorway.
Here he paused a moment and slowly ascended the staircase. When he
reached the passage he coughed slightly and paused again. Then he
pushed open the door of the darkened cabin and called softly:--
"Rosey!"
"What is it, father?" said Rosey's voice from the little state-room on
the right--Rosey's own bower.
"Nothing!" said Mr. Nott, with an affectation of languid calmness; "I
only wanted to know if you was comfortable. It's an awful busy night
in town."
"Yes, father."
"I reckon thar's tons o' gold goin' to the States tomorrow."
"Yes, father."
"Pretty comfortable, eh?"
"Yes, father."
"Well, I'll browse round a spell, and turn in myself, soon."
"Yes father."
Mr. Nott took down a hanging lantern, lit it, and passed out into the
gangway. Another lamp hung from the companion hatch to light the
tenants to the lower deck, whence he descended. This deck was divided
fore and aft by a partitioned passage,--the lofts or apartments being
lighted from the ports, and one or two by a door cut through the ship's
side communicating with an alley on either side. This was the case
with the loft occupied by Mr. Nott's strange lodger, which, besides a
door in the passage, had this independent communication with the alley.
Nott had never known him to make use of the latter door; on the
contrary, it was his regular habit to issue from his apartment at three
o'clock every afternoon, dressed as he has been described, stride
deliberately through the passage to the upper deck and thence into the
street, where his strange figure was a feature of the principal
promenade for two or three hours, returning as regularly at eight
o'clock to the ship and the seclusion of his loft. Mr. Nott paused
before the door, under the pretence of throwing the light before him
into the shadows of the forecastle; all was silent within. He was
turning back when he was impressed by the regular recurrence of a
peculiar rustling sound which he had at first referred to the rubbing
of the wires of the swinging lantern against his clothing. He set down
the light and listened; the sound was evidently on the other side of
the partition; the sound of some prolonged, rustling, scraping
movement, with regular intervals. Was it due to another of Mr. Nott's
unprofitable tenants--the rats? No. A bright idea flashed upon Mr.
Nott's troubled mind. It was de Ferrieres snoring! He smiled grimly.
"Wonder if Rosey'd call him a gentleman if she heard that," he chuckled
to himself as he slowly made his way back to the cabin and the small
state-room opposite to his daughter's. During the rest of the night he
dreamed of being compelled to give Rosey in marriage to his strange
lodger, who added insult to the outrage by snoring audibly through the
marriage service.
Meantime, in her cradle-like nest in her nautical bower, Miss Rosey
slumbered as lightly. Waking from a vivid dream of Venice--a child's
Venice--seen from the swelling deck of the proudly-riding Pontiac, she
was so impressed as to rise and cross on tiptoe to the little slanting
porthole. Morning was already dawning over the flat, straggling city,
but from every counting-house and magazine the votive tapers of the
feverish worshipers of trade and mammon were still flaring fiercely.