Belle Cora: A Novel (72 page)

I heard my name shouted. I saw a familiar misshapen slouch hat (now with patches) and a black silk hat, and a moment later, as a clutch of men between us happened to move away, I saw Charley and Pete. I walked toward them. Charley kissed me and took my arm, and the two of them told me what had happened.

Three days earlier, a store owner had been knocked on the head and robbed of two thousand dollars. The police had caught the man suspected of the crime: the notorious English Jim, from London by way of the vast British prison that was Australia. Somehow or other, Sam Brannan and his friends had gotten English Jim away from the police and had sent out these handbills calling for a rally in Portsmouth Square, where, just now, from the balcony of City Hall, Brannan had given a speech in favor of hanging the thief immediately (“No courts! No lawyer’s tricks!”). The mayor had then spoken out on behalf of constituted
authority—don’t be hasty, let the law take its course—and at last a man with the heroic appellation of William Tell Coleman had suggested the compromise of a small trial, a people’s trial, free of legal technicalities and guaranteed to be over by sundown. The crowd had not been told where the trial would take place, but Big Pete had a tip that Brannan had commandeered the recorder’s office on the second floor of City Hall, and curiosity led us to the office.

The recorder’s office, ordinarily a place where deeds were registered, smelled so strongly of stale sweat, unwashed feet, whiskey, and rotting teeth that one greeted the lighting of cigars with relief. Men tipped their hats and offered me their seats, and I sat near the front, close to the windows; Charley and Pete stood along the back of the room, near the door. There were many silk hats and black frock coats, but also many flannel shirts and bandannas, not because any laboring men were here but because San Francisco’s rich thought of themselves as frontiersmen and took their tone from the miners. In the front row, turning to speak to some men behind him, sat Sam Brannan, looking moderately drunk, as he always was by this time of day. He was tall and angular, with a narrow, goatlike face, shaggy sideburns like two big brown brushes down to his chin, a long skinny nose, and sleepy eyes that never participated in the rest of his expression; they had the same fatigued look whether he was saying that tonight he would take three of my gals to bed with him at once and use them in ways I had never imagined—how much would that cost?—he had the money!—or screaming that gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill; or that a man should be hung right away, without any lawyer’s tricks. Fantastic overnight success, success such as no man could achieve by his merits, had gone to his head; only his complete destruction could teach him anything now. Brannan was talking in a friendly way to a long-haired, clean-shaven fellow, uncommonly handsome, who I later found out was William Tell Coleman, the man who had suggested giving English Jim the courtesy of a mock trial before they hanged him. (The prisoner kept on insisting that he was not English Jim and had never even heard of English Jim, and furthermore that he had not robbed any store, but no one believed him.)

I searched the room for habitués of my house. With an impact as palpable as a stone striking my chest, I saw Jeptha seated beside Herbert
Owen on the side of the room farthest from the windows: I watched them until Jeptha looked up. He returned my glance calmly. I thought perhaps he had seen me first and had time to collect himself. Certainly I hoped that’s what it was. To demonstrate my indifference, I gave him a tepid smile. He turned away from me. With a dry mouth, I asked the man beside me, “Who’s the preacher?” for Jeptha was wearing a white clerical collar, and another man said, “Reverend Talbot, he’s the new minister at the Unitarian church on Clay Street.”

My heart beat against my ribs as if to say I could stay here if I wanted, but
it
was getting out of this terrible place. I had seen him last almost exactly a year ago, when he was about to go to the mines with Herbert Owen. I knew from advertisements in the newspapers that Herbert Owen had returned to San Francisco and opened up an auction house. I had wondered what had happened to Jeptha of course.

At two o’clock, the trial began. Despite its location in a government office, it was an illegal trial, circumventing regular judicial processes so that a man might be hanged that very evening by the men now playing the roles of prosecutor, defense, judge, and jury.

I kept trying to see it through Jeptha’s eyes, but that was hard, because I did not know what his opinions were now. Was he a Brannan man or a Broderick man? Unless he was changed beyond recognition, he would think that the prisoner was innocent until proved guilty. But Jeptha had not spoken. Perhaps he was planning to speak up if it actually came to the rope. Jesus had been lynched—he would make that point. And I would stand up and shout out: Gentlemen, don’t let this man confuse you. I know him. He’s a killer. He killed a child on the
Juniper
, and another, our child, on the
Flavius
. Do you admire me, gentlemen? Give me justice; enjoy my gratitude. And the cry would go up: Hang him! You heard the lady! No lawyers! Hang him!

WITH ALL THE DULL PARTS LEFT OUT
, the trial went quickly. There was an intermission while the jury went to question the injured store owner in his home a few blocks away. Spectators shared flasks of whiskey. I got up to talk to Charley and Big Pete.

“You’ll never guess who’s in the room,” I murmured as coolly as I could. “My former husband. The preacher,” I said, and I pointed toward
Jeptha, and just as I was pointing, a young woman who had come in by way of the door behind us walked to his chair; I had not yet seen her face, but I knew who she was without quite believing it. When she reached the row where Jeptha and Herbert Owen were sitting, she took out a jug and some sandwiches. I wanted to sit down or lean on something, but there was nowhere to sit, and nothing to lean on except Charley, while he watched me with his tranquil brown eyes that missed nothing and revealed nothing. “That’s my cousin Agnes.”

Agnes sat with Jeptha for a while, talking with him and watching him eat and drink. She offered him her cheek and he kissed it; he rose to escort her out, but she shook her head and left. Her clothes were simple and becoming. She looked cleaner than soap. The men’s eyes were on her, and if for me men had removed their hats, for her they laid their hats solemnly across their chests, as if she were the American flag. They
did
make a distinction between her kind of woman and mine, after all.

There was a wedding ring on her hand. I felt the bile rising in my throat.

THE JURY RETURNED, HAVING SPOKEN
to the wounded shopkeeper in his home and given him an opportunity to identify the prisoner. Witnesses came forward to say that English Jim had also committed a murder in a mining camp, so the jury need not feel uneasy about hanging the man merely for theft. The jury retired. When they filed back into the room an hour later, the foreman said they had not been able to reach a unanimous decision.

“Hang ’im! Majority rules!” yelled Brannan, and some like-minded men cried, “Who bribed the jury?” and “Hang the jury!” The jurors drew their guns. I rejoined Charley and Big Pete, and we left.

THE NEXT MORNING, I WENT TO
Herbert Owen’s auction house. Though I had furnished my house from auctions, until now I had avoided Herbert Owen’s establishment, because I did not think it would be good for my peace of mind to hear of his adventures with Jeptha in the gold fields. But now my peace of mind was gone, and I was trying to restore it.

Herbert’s place was located half a block from the edge of the fourth great fire. The neighborhood still smelled of ashes, and I passed the misshapen
remnants of the prefabricated iron buildings that had been put up after the third fire, the insides of which had been intolerable in warm weather. Their owners had been willing to work in buildings that were as hot as stoves in exchange for the confidence that they would never burn. Instead of burning, these iron buildings had melted.

Owen stood at a high desk, running an auction, when I came in. I sat in the back row. He wore a black frock coat, a black satin waistcoat, and a silk hat. When he noticed me, he gave me a big smile. A year in California was like ten years back east, and to him I counted as an old friend from his pioneer days.

When I had been there about twenty minutes, he announced “Lot Seventeen” and lovingly put a handsome wood-and-leather case on the desk. With a stage magician’s sign language—with the salesmanlike dexterity that makes objects look justifiably proud—he snapped open the brass catches, turned the case, and raised its lid to afford us a forbidden peek at two solid-gold-handled derringers on a green baize lining: virgins both, fired just once, at the factory, to make sure that they could do their duty when the fatal hour arrived. A few bids later, they were mine. Some of the men in the room knew who I was, and I heard this well-informed group telling the others that the pistols had been bought by a parlor-house madam, no doubt as a gift for her lover, an Italian gambler.

When the day’s business had been done, Herbert Owen invited me to a quiet room full of curious objects and uncorked a bottle of champagne that came from the cellar of a man who had briefly flourished as a waterfront developer. Owen had found success here; he seemed much more confident than the man I had known aboard the
Juniper
.

I drained my glass. “Tell me about Jeptha and Agnes,” I said, unable to wait any longer. “How in the world could such a thing occur? Did he ever tell you what she did?”

“I think …” he began carefully. “I believe, yes, that I know what you refer to.”

“Are we still friends, Herbert? Did he poison your mind against me?”

“No, I like you both. I always have.”

“Then be candid with me. Don’t spare my feelings. Tell me everything.”

“I guess you deserve to know,” he said, rubbing his chin, and he began:
“Last year, when we were getting ready to go to the mines, he started drinking a great deal.”

“We’re talking about Jeptha.”

“Yes. We walked into a saloon one day, and … he said something peculiar. He said he hadn’t had strong drink since he was a boy.”

I shut my eyes for a while, remembering 1837.

“After that, every evening he’d drink. He’d toss four or five drinks down his throat, and then he’d pick a fight with a stranger, which would come to fists. Once, while he was drunk, he posted a letter. I asked who it was to; he said, ‘The girl I left behind.’

“This all happened over about a week. By then we were outfitted and we left town. There’d been so much rain, the roads were like porridge. We started prospecting one place and another. At a few places we made enough to meet expenses, and about six months after we left San Francisco, we found a placer that we were experienced enough to know was going to be very good. We started working it. In the camp, he was sober all day; he saved his drinking for the evening. By then people had gotten wind of our strike, and we had lots of neighbors, and we couldn’t stop them—the rule is, we’re only entitled to twenty feet apiece. In the camp, in the evenings, after he drank, he would quarrel until punches were thrown, and it was dangerous now, because there were serious things to fight over, like water rights and boundaries, and every other man had a Colt in his belt. I tried to be his friend, but it was difficult: he was dirty, he stank, he let his beard grow. His ribs showed, and he had a festering ulcer on his shin. One day we heard a loud noise up and down the river. Men were shouting and whooping. But it wasn’t gold they were shouting about. It was a woman. It was Agnes. She found Jeptha, and he was dumbfounded. She took his hand, and looked him over, and started sobbing, and …” Owen stopped, his head down, looking across his brows for permission to go on.

“I told you, don’t spare me.”

“She said, ‘Look what she’s done to you. I will do better.’ I left them to talk in private. The next time he and I were alone he said, ‘She came all this way—by Panama. She risked her life.’ He told her about Philippe, but she said she already knew, because it had been in his letter. ‘She says I wrote to her,’ he said. I told him he had. He said, ‘I don’t remember! I
must have been drunk. What am I going to do?’ I said, ‘I don’t think it’s up to you anymore.’ I judged that just from what I’d already seen of her. She’d traveled two thousand miles for him. She must have set off as soon as she got his letter.”

I looked at the ceiling for a while, picturing that scene, letting it work on me.

“How much gold did you find?” I asked after a while. “Did you get rich?”

“I was already rich; my family is rich. But it was enough for me to start this business without their help, and enough for Jeptha to buy a house in Happy Valley and put up a third of the money needed to build the church. Really just enough so it counts as success, which is everything here. At all events, Agnes took him in hand, cleaned him up, and nursed him, and she talked to him about God, and I don’t know what was said, but I’m pretty sure it was she who decided that he had become a Unitarian, or maybe just that he could still use his gifts and do some good, and not think that he’d cheated the people who sent him here. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks before he married her.”

“Well,” I said at last, “if I were a vengeful woman …” I stopped, and when I was sure my voice would be steady, I began again: “If I were vengeful, I could embarrass him. He’s a minister, and his ex-wife is a parlor-house madam. I could turn them into a pair of clowns with that news. But I won’t. Tell them that when you see them. I’ll keep the secret so long as they do. And you won’t tell anyone, either, will you, Herbert?”

“Whatever you want, Belle.”

I felt restless and agitated. I wanted to take a walk, to be alone with my thoughts, but I didn’t want to show Herbert Owen the full degree of my distress, so I made myself stay awhile longer. We talked over old times on the
Juniper
, and what had happened to various passengers we knew from those days.

At this time, I was asking everybody about David Broderick and Sam Brannan. It turned out that, like most of the businessmen in town, Owen was a Brannan man.