Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (43 page)

“
Nate, please . . .”

“
No, Annie, don’t pretend you don’t feel uncomfortable with the pretense. No wonder you’ve gotten so upset with what the Framptons are doing. But that is what I want to save you from. If I get this job, and even if I don’t and I have to find a job in a better paying firm, in a few years I will make enough so that you can stop working, sell the boarding house if you want, and have your own home and family, with me. You deserve that, and I want to give it to you.”

“
Nate, what are you . . .”

Again he ignored her and rushed on, and she heard him say, “…and because I care so deeply for you, because I hope that you will be my wife someday, I can’t stand the idea of you being hurt. Surely, if you also care for me, you would want to consider my feelings in this, accept my right to ask you to stop doing anything that puts you in danger.”

Without warning, there was silence, but the words kept reverberating in her head, stoking her anger. Bile rose in her throat and she knew if she didn’t get the words out she would choke.

“
I can’t believe what I just heard,” Annie said, snatching her hand from his. “Sell the boarding house, stop working? You don’t understand me at all, or you would never ask that of me. So, I get tired, and I have doubts about being Madam Sibyl. But how could you think I would want to hand over my life and my independence to anyone, even to you? I did that once, and it was nothing but hell on earth, for me and for him. And you want to join the state Republicans and kowtow to men like the Big Four railroad tycoons, who fought the new state constitution? Just so you can support me? Work yourself into an early grave for some corrupt politicians, so I can sit by and do . . . what? Let my skills and brain atrophy? Nate, what were you thinking?”

Nate practically shouted at her. “I was thinking how much I love you, Annie.”

“
Love me? Nate, how could you?”

Suddenly Annie knew if she didn’t get away this instant, from this man who had turned into some stranger in front of her eyes, she would suffocate. So she turned, pulled open the door, and fled.

“
The Past is dead that was so sweet, Lost is the love, we called our own; Our life has reached its noonday heat, The road is rough for weary feet, And yet we walk alone.”
Divided Lives
—
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1879

Annie’s head, saturated with unshed tears, pounded as the old alarm clock rattled out the message that it was six in the morning and time for her to get up. Without opening her eyes, she swatted it silent. At least she had gotten a few hours sleep. She had insisted on helping Beatrice and Kathleen clean up after the party, for her sake as well as theirs. She had calculated that if she worked hard enough and fell into bed late enough she would be too exhausted to think or feel, and fall right to sleep, which is what happened when she dragged herself up to her room at two in the morning.

She had sent Beatrice off to bed at midnight because she knew, no matter what, her friend would get up in time to produce a full breakfast for the boarders this morning. Biddy’s cousin Tilly had stayed to help, and, in fact slept over, since Annie was not about to let her go home alone. This meant that Kathleen could sleep past her usual five o’clock rising time because Tilly would be here to help out this morning.

I really must figure out a way to hire her for at least twenty hours a week, she is such a help to Kathleen, and the training she will get will be invaluable.

That thought led too closely to the fantasy she had been building of a shared life and shared income with Nate that would have made hiring Tilly a much easier proposition, so Annie sat up and opened her eyes. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and, filtered by fog, the light from the gas lamp across the street had only succeeded in turning the room a ghostly gray. She closed her eyes and remembered the bright colors of last night: the red, orange, and yellow flickers of the bonfire flames, echoed in the garishly carved pumpkins that lined the fence; the ruddy red of the pile of apples, gleaming in the light of a full moon; the rich browns of cakes and cookies, filled with walnuts and figs and raisins; and the flashes of blue, green, and scarlet from the dresses worn by girls who had shed their somber servant garb for their “night out” best.

Then she opened her eyes again, and all the color of her world was gone, snuffed out by reality.

When Annie had left Nate in the study, her intent had been to flee upstairs to her own room, but halfway up the first flight of stairs she ran into Kathleen, who had been looking for her. Some of the older guests were leaving and wanted to thank her for hosting the party. Once she was back down in the kitchen, she realized she didn’t have the luxury of indulging her emotions, so she moved into a place that had become quite familiar territory when she lived with her in-laws, where there simply was no connection between what she felt and how she acted.

As she stood near the back gate, giving hugs and handshakes to various members of Beatrice’s and Kathleen’s families, Nate had walked up to her and said stiffly that he was afraid he needed to leave, but that he hoped she would be available if he called on her the next evening to continue their conversation. Annie hadn’t been able to do anything more than nod and watch him disappear into the night.

That’s when the colors of her world had disappeared.

She dreaded today. Last night she had managed to forestall any questions by Kathleen and Beatrice as to why Nate had left so precipitously. When Esther started to come up to her at one point, Annie simply shook her head and the older woman had looked distressed, but turned away. Today the questions would come, and Annie didn’t know what she was going to say to the three women who cared so much about her. She couldn’t tell them Nate asked her to marry him, but that he had ruined any chance that this would ever happen.

Esther, why did you have to meddle? How different things might have been if you had just let me tell him about the barrels in my own way.

She really had planned on telling him last night, when they had some privacy, and she had hoped that she could convince him that if she stopped going to the séances she would be safe. He wouldn’t have been so upset and angry, he wouldn’t have felt he had to justify his anger by telling her that he hoped to make her his wife.
He wouldn’t have told me that he wanted to marry me to rescue me from my life. Save me, that’s what he said.

But wasn’t it good that Nate’s true feelings came out? What if she had been fooled a second time by a man’s professions of love?
Sell the boarding house?
How could he imagine she would want to sell this house? What would happen to Beatrice and Kathleen? Did he not even care about them? Or did he simply expect that they would be happy to come work for him in the grand house he’d build in the Western Addition with the new vast wealth he was going to amass, feeding at the Republican party trough.

She knew he was unhappy with his work at the law firm, unhappy that his uncle wasn’t taking any of his suggestions seriously, but she never imagined that he would be willing to sell out and work for either political party. She was sure he had agreed with her distaste for the political corruption that seemed inevitable in a state so dominated by the wealth of the Nevada Silver Kings and the Central and Southern Pacific Railroad.

But maybe everything he had said had been just to please her, while he was busy thinking that it would all change when they married. Isn’t that what men did when courting, tell the woman anything to get her to say yes? John certainly had. All the claptrap about being partners in life, when he’d clearly thought she was some sort of idiot who would be content to defer to him in everything, even as he systematically gambled away her fortune. She’d thought Nate was different.

I can’t believe Nate expected me to quit working. How could he know me so little?

She supposed she should be impressed he was sensitive enough to have caught her growing disillusionment with being Madam Sibyl. She wasn’t sure anyone else had figured that out, but to think she wanted to quit working altogether?
He’d seemed genuinely shocked at how she had responded. He’d thought that the fact that he loved her was enough.

Why isn’t it enough?
Because I don’t love him?
But was that true?
If she didn’t love him, why did she feel like her world had turned to ashes at the thought of him leaving the city, moving to Sacramento, being away for years? She had hidden, even from herself, how hard it had been the month and a half he had been at his parents’ ranch. She had told herself that it was the emotional backwash from the events of the summer that had drained the joy from her days, not his absence.

But love isn’t enough, not if I don’t trust him, and how can I trust him if he doesn’t respect who I am, the life I have made for myself? If he thinks I need to be saved from that life.

She had given him permission to call on her tonight, but she couldn’t imagine that it would make any difference, and she hated the idea of having to go through another emotional upheaval. If she knew anything about human nature, the blow to his pride would have festered, and he’d try to bully her into admitting she’d been the one at fault, that she had misinterpreted what he’d said. Maybe he’d cancel, be too embarrassed to come. After all, he’d said he loved her, and she hadn’t said she loved him in return. How could a man, with Nate’s pride, ignore that? Maybe he’d never come again, just send round a note and end the relationship by mail. Wouldn’t that be easier for them both?

The note came two hours later, as Annie prepared to meet with her first client. She was sitting in the small study, putting the finishing touches on the wig and cosmetics that turned her ordinary coloring and features into those of the exotic Madam Sibyl. Kathleen came in and handed her an embossed envelope, delivered by messenger.

He’d sent his regrets. He had another engagement that had to take precedence. He’d signed it, “Sincerely, Nathaniel Dawson.”

Then, and only then, did Annie cry.

*****

A flash of pale light stabbed up from the floor and the trap door slowly opened and was thrown back. The girl emerged and carefully lowered the door closed. The room glowed dimly with morning light. She went over to the trunk and opened the lid, pulling out a warm jersey and a pair of pants. Stripping off her nightgown, she changed, and then rooted around for a cap, a pair of stockings, and shoes. When she found them, she first pulled on the cap and then put on the stockings and shoes. She next went over to the window facing the back yard. She tugged at the window, getting it to move up with great effort. She took a rope that was lying coiled on the floor, found the end that had a slipknot already tied, and looped the coiled rope over her shoulder. She stood and looked out the window for a few minutes. Abruptly, she climbed onto the windowsill and disappeared.

“
In Monday’s
Chronicle
was a full exposure of the Calabasas Land and Mining swindle, whereof George C. Perkins, Republican machine and railway candidate for Governor, is a leading director.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1879”

Nate stood and looked with discontent at his reflection in the mirror. He had to stoop down to get a full view of his face, just one of the myriad inconveniences provided by his room in Mrs. McPherson’s boarding house on the south side of Telegraph Hill. Others included a bed that was too short, a rag rug that seemed to have been made out of scraps of burlap, a three-legged table with mismatched legs that frequently dumped off the piles of books he placed on it, an easy chair that was so low to the floor his knees practically rose up to his ears when he sat in it, an oil lamp that smoked, a wardrobe that was too short for his topcoats to hang without bunching at the bottom, and a ceiling that sloped to such a degree that half the room was unusable unless he crouched over like an orangutan.

His Uncle Frank had moved into this boarding house perched on Vallejo Street nearly thirty years ago, and he had a well-appointed suite of rooms on the second floor. When Nate had come up from the ranch to live with his uncle while he attended Boys High, he had been given this room, one of four carved out of the attic. For some reason, no one, himself included, had questioned that he would return to it six years ago when he came to work in his uncle’s firm after finishing his Harvard law degree. What had seemed a spacious palace to a boy, who had previously shared a small room and a bed with his brother, now felt like a shabby prison cell.

A prison with a distinctly unpleasant odor, compliments of the boiled cabbage the cook was making for dinner. A dinner, thank the almighty, he wouldn’t have to sit through because Anthony Pierce had sent round a note this morning asking Nate to join him at Franklin’s Steak House, where local Republicans were celebrating their state-wide victories against the Workingmen’s Party and the Democrats. A dinner where Nate was to be given a chance to meet with either Augustus Hart or his chief of staff, Jaffry, about a job in the attorney general’s office.
If only the dinner had been last night, the disaster with Annie might have been avoided.

At least it got him out of having to call on her tonight. He’d regretted having asked to see her as soon as he had left the party yesterday evening. When he got the message from Pierce this morning, he’d sent her a note canceling their appointment. She was probably relieved, and he didn’t know what the hell he would have said to her anyway. What was there to say? He’d poured out his hopes and dreams, told her he loved her, and she’d acted like he had insulted her. If she wanted to see him, let her make the first move.