A Little Girl in Old San Francisco

Laverne was not to go to school the next day, lest she might inadvertently touch upon the adventure. And so the two girls steeped themselves in Romance. Carmen had heard more than one confidence within the cloistered walls that had never gone to confession. There were girls with their destinies mapped out before them as hers had been, sent there to keep them from the grasp of another love which had already caught them, girls praying for husbands with the life of a nun before them. They went out and sat under the pine tree.

"Oh," said Carmen, "if you have had no greater love and no greater sorrow than that for a bird, your life has flowed evenly enough. But you Americanos are so much colder of blood."

In the main, it was a wonderful day to Laverne, but she felt that she did not need any other love than that of Uncle Jason.

"You are such a child," Carmen said almost pityingly. Yet it was an unknown childhood to her.

Miss Holmes brought down one of her frocks, that, with a spasm of economy, she had meant to make over for the child. She had grown a little stouter in this wonderful climate, and could not wear it. She glanced at the slender virginal form, and decided what could be done. Carmen was handy with her needle, there had been need enough in her straitened life.

No one came near them. Pablo had forgotten about the Estenegas, or thought of them vaguely as children, and this was a friend of Missy's.

Jason Chadsey was much puzzled what course to pursue. The right way seemed to be to send word to the Señora Estenega. But the tidings could just as well be sent if he found Joseph Hudson untrustworthy. The vessel came in Saturday afternoon. The master was watching out, and saw Mr. Chadsey on the pier. He waved his broad-fronted tarpaulin, and was answered by the return wave of a hand. There were some orders to give, the boat was made fast, and Hudson sprang ashore. And as the elder man looked full into the young, trusty face, his heart went out to the lovers, and he resolved to befriend them.

So he brought him home to supper, and it was planned that they would go over to Sausalito on the morrow and find a priest to marry them. Then he must secure a vessel going northward, and be out of the way some months at least, for he knew Spanish vengeance was quick and sharp. He had heard a few stories about Pascuel Estenega's treatment of servants that were rather chilling. The matter had been so well managed that he had not been suspicioned at all, and when the vessel left Monterey, the disappearance had not been whispered outside the convent walls. But that was not to say no search had been made.

Jason Chadsey accompanied them, and stood as sort of sponsor for the marriage. The priest was old and not inquisitive, or perhaps the fee in hand convinced him that all things were right. The sponsor was curiously touched by the unalloyed delight of the young couple, who seemed now so perfectly content that they made love in the most unabashed fashion, while before, Carmen had appeared shy and in terror.

They returned to the home that had sheltered them, and Hudson thought it best to take some trip up northward, perhaps settle there for a while. Already there was much trading up to the Columbia River. Chadsey hated to give up so trusty and capable a man. He might fit out a vessel with miscellaneous stores; indeed, that was the way to carry trade to strange places. He would put Joseph Hudson in as captain, and leave the bargain-making in his hands.

Miss Holmes did some shopping for the young wife, as it was not deemed prudent for Carmen to venture out. She longed ardently to see her little sisters, and begged that Laverne might go and call on them. The latter had not seen them for a long while, the watchful sister had discouraged any intimacy.

Laverne had begun school on Monday with many injunctions from Miss Holmes to be most watchful over herself. She had a wonderful secret now. Olive Personette never had had anything like it, for her sister's engagement had been announced at once. And she was so full of that, and the marriage in the early autumn, that she could hardly steady her mind sufficiently to pass her examinations. Then she was going to the Academy next year. They were all young ladies in the department, you had nothing to do with little girls. There were to be three bridesmaids, and their attendants were to wear full military costumes.

"Don't you think I might go over to the sisters?" Laverne pleaded. "I would be very, very cautious. Carmen wants so to hear about them."

Miss Holmes was almost afraid, but the pleading eyes conquered.

She went after school. There was the long, bare corridor, with one table and a big registry book, two wooden benches, and a few chairs. The adobe floor had been painted gray, like the walls, and it looked cheerless to the American girl.

Sister Anasticia was not quite sure. The children were busy with the study hour. But Laverne pleaded with the same eyes that she had won Miss Holmes, and presently the sister brought the children in, and seated herself at the table with some needlework.

They were full of quiet joy, and squeezed Laverne's hands with the old friendliness. And they had so much to tell her. Carmen was to be married soon, the wedding gowns were being made, and they were beautiful. The old home had been dismantled, the city was to cut streets through it. They did not care, it was a lonely old place. They were going to Monterey to live, and they were so glad. Carmen would be a great lady, and live on a fine estate, ride around in her carriage, and give balls, and they would all be so happy.

Juana resembled her mother in face and figure. But Anesta had shot up into a tall girl, and suggested Carmencita, carried her head rather haughtily.

The sister rapped on the table with her thimble, raising her eyes.

"You are too noisy and too frivolous," she said, with severity.

They kissed each other good-by.

"I wish we could come over and see you," Juana whispered. "We always had such a good time. Perhaps you will come to Monterey," wistfully.

"Oh, I think I shall," was the hopeful reply.

Carmen was so glad to hear about them, and how they looked, and if they seemed happy. She had considered writing letters to them a great hardship, now she felt she could fill pages and pages. She wondered how it was that her heart was so overflowing with love. And the thought that she might never see them again filled her eyes with tears.

"Oh, I do wonder if Pascuel will desire to marry either of the girls?" she cried in half affright.

"But if he is so old – "

"That doesn't seem to matter where there is money. And Papa Estenega wanted both branches of the family united. And if I had not had a son!"

She shuddered, thinking of the poor wife who had drowned herself.

It was not until the last of the week that Captain Hudson was ready to start with his venture. Carmen packed her plain trousseau, and was most grateful for all the kindness.

"I shall see you sometime again," she said, in a broken voice, "but not in quite a while. It will be best to stay until they have forgotten about me. I shall be cast out, you know. They will take my name off the books, and excommunicate me, I think. But I shall be an American, and you do not fear such things, so I will try not to. Oh, how good you have all been to me. I can never repay, but I shall pray night and morning, and you will live in my thoughts."

They started out Saturday afternoon. Jason Chadsey pressed a roll of money in the bride's hands. In those days wedding gifts were pure friendship. There would be a full moon, and they could sail all night, for a full moon on the Pacific Coast was something really beyond description. Jason Chadsey sat out on the step enjoying it. He always felt beauty keenly, though he had no words for it. This was why he delighted in the child's prattle. She had so much imagination.

Had he been young once and loved like that? Young people of to-day put their love in passionate words, rapturous kisses. They were not afraid of making it the best thing of life, as it was. And his love had only sipped the dregs.

Was Laverne crying? "What is it, dear?" he asked.

"The house seems so lonely, just as if some one had been buried, as it did when Balder was killed. Uncle Jason, couldn't we go somewhere? Or if something would happen again. I liked Captain Hudson so much. And Carmencita has grown so sweet. Oh, it has been such a lovely week, but it went so rapidly. Does the time pass quickly when you are happy, and slowly when you are a little dull?"

"But you have me," he said jealously.

"I couldn't live without you." She nestled closer.

"I want you always, always."

"And sometime we might go up North. It is a queer, wild country, grand, but not as beautiful as the southland, with its millions of flowers. Something like Maine, I reckon."

"I've almost forgotten about Maine."

"Up there the mountain peaks are covered with snow the year round."

"Then it is like the Alps."

"And the great Columbia River. No towns to speak of, but stations, hunters, and trappers, and fur animals, and wildness of every kind, game of every kind."

Something of the old adventurous life stirred within him. But he had the little girl. And when they began their travels, she would be older and have a taste for beautiful things.

Yes, the house did seem lonesome, but Laverne was very busy, and events began to happen. Mrs. Folsom made another move, this time to quite a fine family hotel, and she gave a housewarming on going in. Old friends, there were not many of them, and new friends, of whom there was an abundance, for she was a favorite as a householder. Dick had grown up into a jaunty, well-looking young fellow, and had not plunged into ruinous excesses, partly because his mother had kept a sharp oversight, and the rest his clean New England stamina, the wrecks had filled him with disgust and repulsion.

All the old friends met, of course. Mrs. Dawson was rosy and plump, and had retired to a stylish house with servants and carriage. The Dawson Café was one of the better-class institutions of the town, and coining money. Miss Gaines stood at the head of fashionable modistes, and there was no appeal from her dictum. You could accept her style or go elsewhere. There had been offers of marriage, too, she laughingly admitted to her friends. "Ten years ago I should have accepted one of them gratefully; now I value my independence."

Dick Folsom went over to Laverne.

"I haven't seen you in so long and you have grown so, I hardly knew you," he said. "May I beg the honor of your hand for this quadrille?"

She was quite longing to dance and accepted.

"We oughtn't forget each other after that five months' journey together," he remarked in one of the pauses. "Does it ever seem queer to you, as if it was something you dreamed? I can't make it real. But they've improved the overland so much, and when we get the railroad – presto; you will see a change! If we were only nearer England. But there's China, if we are not swamped by the pigtails and pointed slippers! How queer they are! We don't need to go to foreign lands to study the nations. I sometimes wonder what the outcome of all this conglomeration will be!"

"We are so far off," she replied in a sort of tentative fashion. "It's almost like another town."

"Yes. They'll tumble you down presently, as they did before. You wouldn't know the old place, would you? They've carted away stones and débris to fill up the marshy edges of the bay. And there's a long, straight street, a drive out to fine country ways. Is there any other land so full of flowers, I wonder!"

"And they are so royally lovely. Think of great patches of callas in blossom nearly all the time. Miss Holmes said when she was at home she used to nurse up one to blossom about Easter. If she had two flowers she thought it quite a marvel."

What a soft, musical laugh the child had! They used to run races on the boat, he remembered, and he had enough boyish gallantry to let her win. They ought to be dear old friends.

"Do you ever go out to drive on Sunday afternoon?"

"It's Uncle Jason's day, the only leisure he has. And we spend it together."

"He's had stunning luck, too. Getting to be a rich man."

"Is he?" she said simply.

"Is he? Well, you ought to know," laughing.

"He doesn't talk much about business."

"A great country this is for making fortunes! The trouble is that you can spend them so easily. But I'm bound to hold on to mine, when I get it made."

Some one else took her. He looked after her. She would be a pretty girl presently and quite worth considering. He had a good opinion of himself, and was not going to be lightly thrown away.

They trudged up the hill just after midnight. Laverne was gay and chatty, recounting her good times. It seemed as if she had as much attention as Olive from the younger men, and Olive was always so proud of that.

Uncle Jason gave a sigh.

"Oh," she cried, "you look tired. Don't you like parties? I thought it splendid!"

"I'm getting old, dear – "

"Oh, you mustn't get old!" she interrupted impulsively. "Why can't people turn back a little somewhere along, and be young again? For, you know, I can't get old very fast, and I think – yes, I am quite sure I don't want to. I'm having such a splendid time since you were so lovely to Carmen, and made her happy. I sometimes think if you had sent her back to Monterey – but you couldn't have done that, could you?"

"No, dear," he answered softly.

He had heard a point discussed this evening that did trouble him a little. They were talking of lowering Telegraph Hill again. He was not ready to go yet. In two years maybe. She would not have any lovers by that time, and then they could start off together. He must not grow old too fast.

The next happening in their little circle did interest her a good deal. Howard Personette had finished his year's term at college, and come home quite unexpectedly, when his father had intended him to finish and take a degree.

"I'm not a student, I'm convinced of that," he announced rather doggedly. "I don't see any sense in keeping at what you don't like, and don't mean to follow. I want the stir and rush of business instead of splitting hairs about this and that. I've been awfully homesick the last year, and dissatisfied, but I knew you would not agree to my coming home, so I just came. And if there's nothing else for me to do, I'll go to work on the streets."

Students were expected to study in those days. Athletics had not come in for their diversion. Mr. Personette was disappointed. He wanted to make a lawyer out of his son, and to lay a good foundation for the years to come.

Mrs. Personette rather sympathized with the eager young fellow, who was ready to take up any active life.

"The East is so different," he explained. "Perhaps if I hadn't been born here and breathed this free, exhilarating air all my life, I might have toned myself down and stayed. But I had begun to hate books, and what was the use maundering away several years?"

Olive thought him quite a hero. Captain Franklin said if there was any lack of employment in the city he could come out to Alcantraz. They would be very glad to have a fellow who was not afraid to work.

"Why, I should feel proud of him, shouldn't you?" Laverne asked of Uncle Jason.

"That depends," he answered, with a shake of the head.

But if one came home from an indifference to study, another was going to take a greater absence. Four years without coming home at all! The journey was long and expensive, and there seemed a better use for vacations.

This was Victor Savedra, who had many student longings. And so one afternoon the two sat out under the pine, their favorite place, and he was explaining to Laverne his plans for a few years to come.

"Father wanted me to go to Paris," he said. "If I meant to be a physician, I think I would. But first and last and always I mean to be an American citizen. I suppose I might go to Yale or Harvard, but that seems almost as far away, and my choice appears more satisfactory all around," smiling a little. "We like the new, but we have a hankering for the old civilizations, and the accretions of knowledge."

They both looked out over the Golden Gate, the ocean. There were dancing sails, jungles of masts, cordage like bits of webs, tossing whitecaps in strong contrast to the blue, and over beyond, the green, wooded shores. The old semaphore's gaunt arms were dilapidated, and it was to come down. But it had thrilled hundreds of hearts with its tidings that friends, neighbors, and greatest joy of all, letters from loved ones in lands that seemed so distant then.

Now the lack of rain had dried up vegetation, except the cactus and some tufts of hardy grass. The little rivulet was spent, there was only a bed of stones. But they had managed to keep something green and inviting about the house. A riotous Madeira vine flung out long streamers of fragrant white blooms that seemed to defy fate laughingly. Down below they were levelling again, this time for a last grade, it was said.

"It will all be so changed when I return. I wonder where you will go? For you cannot climb up to this eyrie. You would be perhaps a hundred feet up. They want the sand and the débris to fill in the big piers they are building. Why, they will almost sweep the great hill away, but they will have to leave the rocks by the sea. It will be a new San Francisco."

"Why, it is almost new now," and she smiled.

"Everything will have changed. And we shall change, too. I shall be twenty-three when I come back."

Laverne looked at him wonderingly. They had all been big boys to her, and she had been a little girl. True, he had grown to man's estate in height, and there was a dainty line of darkness on his upper lip. It had been so imperceptible that just now it seemed new to her.

"And I shall be – why, I shall be past nineteen then," she commented in surprise.

"And – and married," he hazarded. The thought gave him a pang, for that was new, too.

"No," she returned, looking up at him out of innocent eyes, while the faint rose tint in her cheek never deepened. "No, I shall not be married in a long, long time. Presently Uncle Jason and Miss Holmes and I are to set out on a journey, just as they do in some of the stories. We shall go to the strange lands he tells me about, we shall see the people in their native element," and she smiled at the conceit, "where we see only a dozen or two here. What do you suppose draws them to California?"

"Why, the stories of gold, of course." Their coming and going did not interest him. "I wonder if you will be in London?" he inquired.

"Oh, of course. I want to see the Queen and the palaces, and Edinburgh, and Holyrood, and all the places those proud old Scots fought over, and poor Marie Stuart! And Sweden and Norway, and the midnight sun, and the Neva, and St. Petersburg – "

She paused, out of breath.

"London is what interests me," he interposed. "And if you could come over next summer – "

She shook her head. "No, it won't be next summer, but it may be the year after," she returned gravely.

"And if it was my vacation. Then I might join you for a few weeks."

"That would be splendid." Her soft eyes glowed.

"I shall keep thinking of that."

"Oh, will you? Then I will think of it, too. And it is queer how time runs away. You hardly notice it until the bells ring out for New Year's."

"I wonder – if you will miss me any?" and his voice fell a trifle, though he tried to keep anxiety out of it.

"Miss you? Why, of course!" She was full of wondering, and to him, delicious surprise. "We have been such friends, haven't we? Ever since that night you showed me about the dancing? I've been amazed since that I had the courage, when I hardly knew a step, but after all it was very much like dancing to the singing of the birds, and I had often done that. Olive didn't like it. We were not good friends for ever so long afterwards."

"Olive wants to be head and front of everything, and have the main attention. I'm sorry not to stay to the wedding – it will be a grand affair. And no doubt next year Olive will go off. You haven't many girl friends, have you?"

"Well," – she hesitated delicately and smiled in a half absent but adorable fashion, – "I do not believe I have. You see, we seem to live a little apart up on this hill, and there have been lessons, and riding about on the pony, and going over to your house, and most of the girls are larger – "

"The children all adore you. Oh, I hope you will go over often. I don't know what Isola would do without you."

"Yes, I shall," she said. "I'm so fond of music. If I were a poet, a real poet, you know," and she flushed charmingly, "I should write little songs to her music. They go through my brain with lovely words, and I can see them, but they don't stay long enough to be written down. Oh, yes, I shall go over often. And we shall talk about you. Of course, you will write to your father, and we shall hear."

"Yes." Something, perhaps not quite new, but deeper and stronger than any emotion he had ever known before, stirred within him. If he were going to stay here he would insist upon being her best friend, her admirer, her – He choked down some poignant pain that was delicious in spite of the hurt. He hated to think of leaving her behind, two long years. She would be seventeen then; yes, old enough for any man to marry – but she did not mean to marry, that was the comfort. And he believed it because he wanted to so very much. She was such an innocent child. If this tumult within him was love, it would frighten her, she would not know what it meant.

She slipped her hand in his. "We shall all be so sorry to have you go, but then you will return. And perhaps – oh, yes, I shall beg to go to London first," she cried eagerly.

He was different from an impulsive American. He had been trained to have great respect for the sacredness of young girls, and he owed a duty to his father, who had planned out a prosperous life for him.

The sun was dropping down into the ocean, and the fog, creeping along, sent gray and soft purplish dun tints to soften and almost hide the gold. And, oh, how the birds sang, freed most of them from family cares. The meadowlark, the oriole, the linnets, and the evening grosbeak, with a clear whistling chorus after the few melodious notes of his song. They both rose, and went scrambling down the winding path that defied Pablo's efforts to keep in order. The shifting sand and the stones so often loosened and made rough walking, so he held her up, and she skipped from one solid place to another.

Down below they were moving some houses on the newly cut street, so as to prepare for the next.

"They ought to begin at the top," she said, "but I am glad they didn't. What a great city it is!"

"And if one could see the little town it was twenty years ago!"

He would not stay to supper – he did sometimes. He wanted to be alone, to disentangle his tumultuous thoughts, and wonder if this thing that had swept over him was the romance of love.

The next fortnight was very full. They went over to Alcantraz to view the foundations for the new fortress. They went up to Mare's Island, where, in days to come, was to be the splendid navy yard, and then on a day's excursion down the bay. There was no railroad all along the coast line, though it was talked of. And after a little they left the shipping and the business behind them. All along were little clusters of houses that were some day to be thriving cities. Then long stretches of field where sheep were browsing, the wheat and oats having been cut long before, clumps of timber reaching back to the mountain ridge, clothed in a curious half shade from the slanting sun.

They left the boat at the little cove, and found a fine level where they spread out the luncheon, and decorated it with flowers, wild geranium, or rather geraniums growing wild, some of it in tall trees. Vines creeping everywhere, grapes ripening, figs and fruits of various kinds, that later, under cultivation, were to be the marvels of the world.

Isabel and her betrothed, Olive and a young lieutenant, were chaperoned by Mrs. Personette. Mrs. Savedra, the governess, and all the children, with the two from "the Hill," and Isabel's dearest friend and chosen first bridesmaid. And now Olive cared very little for her cousin, if he was a handsome young man. He was going away, and she would be married before his return, then he was too much of a student, although an elegant dancer. So he could well be apportioned to his sister and Laverne, neither in the realm of real womanhood, or society.