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Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner

G >> Geraldine Bonner >> Treasure and Trouble Therewith




"Read that," said the young man and handed her the paper. "_Sacramento
Courier_--'C. C's San Francisco Letter.'"

She took it and read while he watched her with twinkling eyes. They were
great pals, these two; had been since they met in Portland, five years
ago. He was on his way to Stanford, and had seen her doing a singing and
dancing act in a wretched vaudeville company. That vision of a girlhood,
beset and embattled, the pitifulness of its acquired hardness, had called
to his western chivalry and made him her champion. Ever since he had
helped and encouraged, his belief and friendship a spur to the ruthless
energy, the driving ambition, that had landed her in the Albion six
months before.

As she read she began to smile, then squeals of delight broke from her.

"You old press agent!" she cried, hitting at him with the comb and still
reading, and then: "You pet, you precious pet!"

She finished on a little cry and cast the paper to the floor.

"Oh, Charlie, oh, my good, _dear_ Charlie!" Her face was suddenly stirred
with an upswelling of emotion. No other man in her hard and sordid
experience had been to her what Charlie Crowder had, never a lover,
always a friend.

"Now, Pancha," he said pleadingly, "don't look at me like that or I'll
burst into sobs."

She rose and, putting her hands on his shoulders, kissed him on the
forehead with a sexless tenderness. Her eyes were wet and to hide it she
turned to where her costume lay on the chair. Crowder had nothing to
say; these bursts of gratitude from his friend made him embarrassed.

"Look," she cried suddenly and snatched up the box of roses, "even a
Johnny at the stage door. That's going some," and thrusting her hand
into the box, she plucked up by their heads a handful of blossoms. Their
pure sweet breath flowed out on the coarse scents with which the small
place reeked.

Crowder affected a shocked surprise.

"What's this? A lover at last and I kept in ignorance."

"This is his first appearance, not a yap till tonight. And look at the
yap." She dropped the box and took out from under the paper a card which
she held toward him, "Some style about _that_ yap."

It was the square of pasteboard furnished by the florist. On it was
written in a small, upright hand, "Let me offer you these roses, sweet as
your voice, delicate as your art, and lovely as yourself. An admirer."

Crowder raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes in exaggerated
amazement.

"Well, well, well! I must look into this. Who _is_ the gentleman ?"

"I haven't a guess." She took the card and dwelt on it delightedly.
"Ain't it stylish writing--scratchy and yet you can read it? And the
words, they're almost poetry. I never got flowers before with a sentiment
as swell as that."

"Don't you honest know who it is?" said Crowder, impressed by the flowery
profusion of "the sentiment."

"Not me. Jake brought 'em in after the second curtain. They were left by
a messenger boy. Whoever he is he certainly does things in a classy way.
Maybe he's a newspaper man to write like that."

Crowder opined he was not. He could hardly imagine one of his
fellows--even secure in his anonymity--permitting his pen such
florid license.

"When you break through the dark secret let me know. Then I'll come round
and cast my searchlight eye over him and see if he's a proper companion
for little Panchita."

"No fear," she cried, throwing the card back in the box. "Little
Panchita's got a searchlight eye of her own. Believe _me_, it's a good,
trained, old eye. Now skiddoo. I've got to slip into my togs and then me
for home and a glass of milk. If he comes to the surface with another
gasp I'll tell you."

When he had gone she dropped the kimono and put on a blouse and skirt,
both old and shabby. Her actions were quick and harmonious, no
unnecessary moves made, the actions of one trained to an economy of time
and labor. On a wall hook behind a curtain she hung her gypsy dress,
touching it lightly, flicking off dust, settling the folds. Poverty had
taught her this care, as ambition was teaching her a thrift that made her
associates call her mean.

What they thought was a matter of indifference to her. Before she had
reached the Albion she knew herself superior and had plans that stretched
far. About these she was secret. Not one, not even her father, knew the
amount of money she had saved, or that, when she had accumulated enough,
she intended going East and to Europe. She felt her powers and dreamed of
a future on stages far finer than the Albion's. Once she had thought her
father could help her. Two years ago he _had_ sold a prospect for four
thousand dollars, but he had lost the money in an unlucky mining venture
in Oregon. That ended all hopes of his assistance. Even if he did make
another strike he needed what he got for himself; he was getting on, he
wanted to buy a ranch and settle down. If she was to reach the summit of
her desire--and she would reach it or die--she must do it herself. So she
worked doggedly, nursed her voice, hoarded her earnings and said nothing.

She was ready to leave, her hat, a little black velvet toque, pulled down
over her hair, a long shaggy ulster clothing her to the ankles. As she
went to the dressing table to put out the light she saw her image in the
glass and paused, eyeing it. So far her appearance had had no value for
her save as a stage asset. Now she looked at herself with a new, critical
interest. Behind the footlights she was another person, blossomed into an
exotic brilliance, took on fire and beauty with the music and excitement.
Might not a man seeing her there be disappointed when he met her as she
really was? She studied her face intently, viewing it at different
angles, judging it by the standards of her world. By these she found it
wanting, and with a wistful sigh she stretched out her hand and turned
off the light.

It was nearly midnight when she walked down the side streets that led to
the car line which took her home. Overhead the fog hung, covering the
city with a luminous rack which here and there parted, showing segments
of dark, star-dotted sky. Passing men looked at her, some meeting a
defiant stare, others a face so chastely unresponsive that they averted
their eyes as if rebuked. On the car she took an outside seat, for she
loved the swift passage through the night with the chill air on her face.
The grip man knew her and smiled a greeting, and as she mounted the step
she answered cheerily. Now and then as the car stopped he spoke to her,
leaning over his lever, and she twisted round to reply, friendly, frank,
intimate. Until she came to San Francisco his class was the best she had
ever known.

It was part of her economy to live in the Mission. She had two rooms
there in the old Vallejo Hotel, a hostelry once fashionable, now fallen
on dreary days. It fronted on a wide street where new business buildings
rose beside gabled houses, detached and disconsolate in the midst of
withered lawns. The Vallejo was a connecting link between these samples
of the new and the old. It belonged to the ornate bay-windowed period of
the seventies. Each of its "front suites" had the same proud bulge, and
its entrance steps were flanked by two pillars holding aloft ground glass
globes upon which its name was painted in black. Tall buildings were
unknown in those days; the Vallejo boasted only three stories and its
architect had never dreamed of such an effete luxury as an elevator.
Built on the filled-in ground of Mission Creek, it had developed a
tendency to sag in the back, and when you walked down the oil-clothed
hall to the baths, you were conscious of a list to starboard.

The Vallejo patrons did not mind these drawbacks, or if they did, thought
of the low rates and were uncomplaining. All things considered, you got a
good deal for your money. The place was quiet and respectable; even in
its downfall it clung desperately to its traditions. It took no
transients, required a certain standard of conduct in its lodgers, and
still maintained a night clerk in the office of its musty front hall.

Pancha thought it quite regal. If it was a proud elevation for her to
reign at the Albion, it was a corresponding one for her to have two rooms
to herself in a real hotel. As she ascended the stairs--her apartment was
on the second floor--she looked about her, taking in satisfactory
details, the worn moquette carpet, the artificial palm on a pedestal in
the corner, the high, gilt-topped mirror at the turn on the stairs. It
all seemed to her what she would have called "refined"; she need never be
ashamed to have a visitor come there.

In her parlor she lit the light and surveyed her surroundings with an
increasing satisfaction. It was a startlingly ugly room, but she thought
it a bower of elegance. What gave her authority on the stage, what had
already lifted her above the mass, seemed to fall from her with her
costume. That unwavering sense of beauty and grace, that instinctive
taste which lent her performance poetry and distinction, left her at the
wings. Now her eye dwelt, complacent, on the red plush chairs, the
coarse lace curtains, the sofa pillows of etched leather and dissonant
colors, the long mirror between the windows, and each and all received
her approval. As she had thought on the stairs, she thought again--no
one would be ashamed to receive a visitor, no matter how stylish, in
such a room.

She put her roses in a vase and then fetched a bottle of milk from the
window sill and a box of crackers from the bureau drawer. Setting these
on the marble-topped table beside the droplight she sat and ate. It was
too cold to take off her coat and from its pocket she drew the card that
had come with the flowers. As she sipped and munched, the shadows of the
room hovering on the light's circular edge, she read over the words,
murmuring them low, her voice lingering on them caressingly.

It was the first knock at the door of her dreams, the first prismatic ray
of romance that had penetrated the penumbra of brutal realities in which
she had lived.




CHAPTER VII

THE PICAROON


The Argonaut Hotel--all San Franciscans will remember it--had, like the
Vallejo, started life with high expectations and then declined. But not
to so complete a downfall. Fashion had left it, but it still did a good
business, was patronized by commercial travelers and old customers from
the interior, and had a solid foundation of residentials, married couples
beaten by the servant question and elderly men with no ties. Its position
had been against it--on that end of Montgomery Street where the land
begins to rise toward Telegraph Hill, with the city's made ground behind,
and in front "the gore" where Dr. Coggeswell's statue used to stand.
People who lived there were very loyal to it--not much style, but
comfort, quiet and independence.

Three days before the events in the last chapter a man entered its office
and asked for rooms. He was an impressive person, of the kind who usually
went to the Palace or the St. Francis. Ned Murphy, the clerk, sized him
up as an Easterner or maybe a foreigner. There was something
foreign-looking about him--you couldn't just tell what; it might be the
way he wore his hair, brushed back straight from his forehead, or an
undemocratic haughtiness of bearing. He looked as if he was used to the
best, and he acted that way; had to be shown four suites before he was
satisfied and then took the most expensive, second floor front, two rooms
and bath, and you could see he didn't think much of it. Ned Murphy lived
up to him with an unbroken spirit, languidly whistled as he slid the
register across the counter, looked up the hall with a bored air, and
then winked at the bell boy holding the bags. But when the stranger had
followed the boy up the stairs--the Argonaut had no elevator--he pulled
the register round and eagerly read the entry--"Boye Mayer, New York." A
foreign name all right; you couldn't fool him.

He told the switchboard girl, who had been taking it all in from her
desk, and she slid over to size up the signature. She thought he mightn't
be foreign--just happened to have that sort of name--he didn't talk with
any dialect. When the bell boy came back they questioned him, but he was
grouchy--feller'd only given him a dime. And say, one of them suit cases
was all battered and wore out, looked like the kind the hayseeds have
when they come up from the country.

In his room the man went to the window, hitched back the lace curtains
and threw up the sash. Life in the open had made these shut-in places
stifling, and he drew in the air with a deep relish. Evening was falling,
a belated fog drifting in, wreathing in soft whorls over the hills,
feeling its way across their summits and through their hollows. It made
the prospect depressing, everything enveloped in a universal, dense
whiteness. He surveyed it, frowning--the looming shapes of the high land
beyond, the line of one-story hovels sprawled on the gore. To the right
the street slanted upward toward Telegraph Hill whence smaller streets
would decline to the waterfront and the Barbary Coast. He knew that
section well and smiled a little as he thought of it and of himself, a
ragged vagrant, exploring its byways.

His thoughts stopped at that memory--the lowest point of his fall--hung
there contemplative and then turned backward. They passed beyond his
arrival in California, his days of decay before that, the first gradual
disintegration, back over it all to the beginning.

Thirty-six years ago he had been born in New York, a few months after
the arrival of his parents. They were Austrians, his father an officer
in the Royal Hungarian Guards, his mother a dancer at the Grand Opera
House in Vienna. When Captain Ruppert Heyderich, of a prosperous
Viennese family, had, in a burst of passionate chivalry, married Kathi
Mayer, end coryphee on the second row, he had deserted the army, his
country and his world and fled to America. Captain Heyderich had not
committed so radical a breach of honor and convention without something
to do it on, and the early part of the romance had moved smoothly in a
fitting environment. Their only child, Lothar, could distinctly recall
days of affluence in an apartment on the Park. He had had a governess,
he had worn velvet and furs.

Then a change came; the governess disappeared, also the velvet and furs,
and they began moving. There was a period when to move was a feature of
their existence, each habitat showing a decrease in size and splendor.
Lothar was nine, a lanky boy with his hair worn _en brosse,_ in baggy
knickerbockers and turn-over white collars, when they were up on the West
Side in six half-lighted rooms, with a sloppy Hungarian servant to do all
the work. That was the time when his father taught languages and his
mother dancing. But _he_ went to a private school. Captain Heyderich
never got over his European ideas.

Those lean years came to a sudden end; Captain Heyderich's mother died in
Vienna and left him a snug little fortune. They moved once more, but this
time it was a hopeful, jubilant move, also a long one--to Paris. They
settled there blithely in an apartment on the Rue Victor Hugo, Lothar,
placed at a Lycee, coming home for weekends. He remembered the apartment
as ornate and over-furnished, voluble guests coming and going, a great
many parties, his mother, elaborately dressed, always hurrying off to
meet people in somebody's else house or hurrying home to meet them in her
own. Several times Austrian relations visited them, and Lothar had a
lively recollection of a fight one Sunday evening, when an uncle, a
large, bearded man, had accused his mother of extravagance and she had
flown into a temper and made a humiliating scene.

He was seventeen when his father died, and it was discovered that very
little money was left. Some of the relations came from Vienna and there
was a family conclave at which it was suggested to Lothar that he return
to Vienna with them and become a member of the clan. Separation from his
mother was a condition and he refused. He did this not so much from love
of her as from fear of them. They represented a world of which he was
already shy, of high standards, duties rigorously performed, pledges to
thrift and labor. Life with Kathi was more to his taste. He loved its
easy irresponsibility, its lack of routine, its recognition of amusement
as a prime necessity. He delivered his dictum, his mother wept triumphant
tears, and the relations departed washing their hands of him.

After that they went to London and Lothar made his first attempts at
work. They were fitful; the grind of it irked him, the regular hours wore
him to an ugly fretfulness. He tried journalism--could have made his
place for he was clever--but was too unreliable, and dropped to a space
writer, drifting from office to office. In his idle hours, which were
many, he gambled. That was more to his taste, done in his own way, at his
own time--no cramping restrictions to bind and stifle him. He was often
lucky and developed a passion for it.

He was twenty-three when they returned to New York, Kathi having begged
some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a
woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting
her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and
rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of blood and a
deep-rooted moral resemblance. They led a wandering life, following
races, hanging on the fringes of migrating fashion, sometimes hiding
from creditors, then reestablished by a fortunate coup. But in those
days he was still careful to pick his steps along the edges of the law,
just didn't go over though it was perilous balancing. When she died he
was relieved and yet he grieved for her. He felt free, no longer
subject to her complaints and bickerings, but in that freedom there was
a chill, empty loneliness--no one was beside him in that gingerly
picking of his steps.

It was when he was twenty-seven--not quite lost--that the news came from
Vienna of an unexpected legacy. His uncle, dying at the summit of a
successful career, had relented and left him fifty thousand dollars. He
assured himself he would be careful--poverty had taught him--and at first
he tried. But the habits of "the years that the locust had eaten" were
too strong. Augmented by several successful speculations it lasted him
for six years. At the end of that time he was ruined, worn in body,
warped in mind, his mold finally set.

After that he ceased to pick his way along the edges of the law, he
slipped over. He followed many lines of endeavor, knew the back waters
and hinterlands of many cities, ceased to be Lothar Heyderich and was
known by other names. It was in Chicago, the winter before this story
begins, that an attack of pneumonia brought him to the public ward of a
hospital. Before his discharge, a doctor--a man who had noticed and been
interested in him--gave him a word of warning:

"A warm climate--no more lake breezes for you. If you stay here and keep
on swinging round the circle it won't be long before you swing back here
to us--swing back to stay. Do you get me?"

He did, his face gone gray at this sudden vision of the end of all
things. The doctor, in pity for what he was now and evidently once had
been, gave him his fare to California.

It had been hell there. The climate had done its work, he was well, but
he had felt himself more a pariah than ever before. He had seemed like a
fly crawling over a glass shield under which tempting dainties are
clearly visible and maddeningly unattainable. A man wanted money in
California--with money could lead the life, half vagabondage, half lazy
luxury, that was meat to his longing. Never had he been in a place that
allured him more and that held him more contemptuously at arm's length.

He had sunk to his lowest depth in this tantalizing paradise, tramped the
streets of cattle towns, herded with outcasts lower than himself. In Los
Angeles he had washed dishes in a cafeteria, in Fresno polished the
brasses in a saloon. And all around him was plenty, an unheeding prodigal
luxuriance, Nature rioting in a boundless generosity. Her message came to
him from sky and earth, from sweep of flowered land, from embowered
village and thronging town--that life was good, to savor it, plunge in
it, live it to the full. At times he felt half mad, struggling to exist
in the midst of this smiling abundance.

When he began that upward march through the state he had no purpose, his
mind was empty as a dried nut, the terrible lethargy of the tramp was
invading him. From down-drawn brows he looked, morose, at a world which
refused him entrance, and across whose surface he would drift aimless as
a leaf on the wind. Then, the strength regained by exercise and air, the
few dollars made by fruit picking, gave a fillip to his languishing
spirit and an objective point rose on his vision. He would go to San
Francisco--something might turn up there--and with his hoarded money buy
cleanliness and one good meal. It grew before him, desirable, dreamed of,
longed for--the bath, the restaurant, the delicate food, the bottle of
wine. He was obsessed by it; the deluge could follow.

The wind, blowing through the open casement, brought him back to the
present. The night had fallen, the street below a misty rift, its lights
smothered in swimming vapor. There was brightness about it, blotted and
obscured but gayly intentioned, even the sheds on the gore sending out
golden gushes that suffused the milky currents with a clouded glow. He
lighted the gas and looked at his watch--nearly seven. He would go out
and dine--that dinner at last--and afterward drop in at the Albion and
see Pancha Lopez, "the bandit's girl."




CHAPTER VIII

THOSE GIRLS OF GEORGE'S


The Alstons were finishing dinner. From over the table, set with the
glass and silver that George Alston had bought when he came down from
Virginia City, the high, hard light of the chandelier fell on the three
females who made up the family. It was devastating to Aunt Ellen
Tisdale's gnarled old visage--she was over seventy and for several years
now had given up all tiresome thought processes--but the girls were so
smoothly skinned and firmly modeled that it only served to bring out the
rounded freshness of their youthful faces.

The Alstons were conservative, clung to the ways of their parents. This
was partly due to inheritance--mother and father were New Englanders--and
partly to a reserved quality, a timid shyness, that marked Lorry who, as
Aunt Ellen ceased to exert her thought processes and relapsed into a
peaceful torpor, had assumed the reins of government. They conformed to
none of those innovations which had come from a freer intercourse with
the sophisticated East. The house remained as it had been in their
mother's lifetime, the furniture was the same and stood in the same
places, the table knew no modern enhancement of its solidly handsome
fittings. Fong, the Chinese cook--he had been with George Alston before
he married--ruled the kitchen and the two "second boys." No women
servants were employed; women servants had not been a feature of domestic
life in Bonanza days.

That was why the house was lit by chandeliers instead of lamps, that was
why dinner was at half past six instead of seven, that was why George
Alston's daughters had rather "dropped out." They would not move with the
times, they would not be brought up to date. Friends of their mother's
had tried to do it, rustled into the long drawing-room and masterfully
attempted to assist and direct. But they had found Lorry unresponsive,
listening but showing no desire to profit by the chance. They asked her
to their houses--replenished, modern, object lessons to rich young
girls--and hinted at a return of hospitalities. It had not been a
success. She was disappointing, no snap, no go to her; the young men who
sat beside her at dinner were bored, and the house on Pine Street had not
opened its doors in reciprocal welcome. By the time she was twenty they
shrugged their shoulders and gave her up--exactly like Minnie, only
Minnie had always had George to push her along.

As the women friends of Minnie did their duty, the men friends of
George--guardians of the estate--did theirs. They saw to it that the
investments were gilt-edged, and the great ranch in Mexico that George
had bought a few years before his death was run on a paying basis. At
intervals they asked their wives with sudden fierceness if they had
called on "those girls of George's," and the wives, who had forgotten all
about it, looked pained and wanted to know the reason for such an
unnecessary question. Within the week, impelled by a secret sense of
guilt, the ladies called and in due course Lorry returned the visits. She
suffered acutely in doing so, could think of nothing to say, was
painfully conscious of her own dullness and the critical glances that
wandered over her best clothes.

But she did not give much thought to herself. That she lacked charm, was
the kind to be overlooked and left in corners, did not trouble her.
Since her earliest memories--since the day Chrystie was born and her
mother had died--she had had other people and other claims on her mind.
Her first vivid recollection--terrible and ineffaceable--was of her
father that day, catching her to him and sobbing with his face pressed
against her baby shoulder. It seemed as if the impression made then had
extended all through her life, turned her into a creature of poignant
sympathies and an unassuagable longing to console and compensate. She had
not been able to do that for him, but she had been able to love--break
her box of ointment at his feet.

Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

The barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.

Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.

A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."

The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

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Would you have your ashes scattered in Jane Austen's garden?
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight

The royal family doesn't need a poet

The power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)

Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.

(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)

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