Calico Palace

by Gwen Bristow

  “Join me?” she asked Kendra.

  “No thanks, I’m all right.”

  “I’m all right too,” said Marny, “but I do think it’s delightful, what can be done with grapes and grain.” She took a sip and smiled.

  Some boxes of bar supplies, not yet opened, were stacked in a corner. Kendra set her candlestick on the pile and sat on the stair by Marny. For a minute or so Marny sipped in comfort. Kendra was about to make a remark about the wedding when she saw Marny give a start. “What is it?” Kendra asked.

  “I heard something. Listen.”

  Kendra listened. She heard it too. A little whimper, and another little whimper. The sounds came from outside, just beyond the closed door. Marny asked,

  “Now what do you suppose that is?”

  They listened again. The wind had quieted and they had no difficulty hearing the little moaning sounds, faint and pitiful. “It’s an animal, crying,” said Kendra. “Let’s look.”

  She went to the door, slipped back the bolt, and drew the door open a few inches. As she did so, a white streak went past her and vanished in the darkness behind the staircase. From the black hiding place the little sounds began again, like quavers of terror. As Kendra closed the door, Marny set her glass on the stair and stood up too. Taking the candle from the pile of boxes where Kendra had placed it, she followed the quavers, and moved the candle so she could see into the black space behind the stairs.

  “Oh Kendra,” she exclaimed, “it’s a kitten. A tiny scared lost kitten.”

  They both looked into the dark corner. It seemed that the kitten, frightened by the noise and lights of the plaza, maybe kicked by some fellow staggering away from a bar, had fled here to the inside of the block, and trembling with fear, had huddled against the door. The door was set into the wall, and the dark angle gave at least a bit of shelter from the hostile world. As Kendra opened the door the kitten had sensed something unknown, no doubt an enemy, and had run again, this time inside, and had taken refuge in the first dark corner it saw. Here it was now, shivering with fear and hunger and wretchedness.

  They could hardly tell what the kitten looked like. All they could see was a whitish blob. But they could tell that the kitten was miserable and no doubt famished.

  Neither Kendra nor Marny had ever felt any particular interest in cats. But neither of them could bear to let a helpless creature go hungry while they had food.

  “Is there any milk left?” Marny asked.

  Milk, bought daily from the milk cart, was one of the most expensive commodities in San Francisco, but Marny was moved with too much sympathy to care. Kendra went up to the pantry, where she had set the milk by a window to keep cool. Taking the cover off the jar, she poured milk into a pan and brought it down, and set it by the staircase.

  “Now then,” she said to the quivering little blob in the corner.

  At first the kitten was too scared to move. But milk was food, and the kitten was shaking with hunger. Marny and Kendra stepped back and stood very still so as to give the poor little thing nothing more to be afraid of. After a few minutes the kitten could resist no longer. It began to move from its hiding place. Slowly, tremulously, it came to the pan of milk. It looked around for danger, but Marny and Kendra remained motionless, watching. The kitten put out its pink tongue and touched the surface of the milk. The milk disappeared.

  When they talked about it later Marny and Kendra could only use the word disappeared. The whole panful of milk seemed to go almost at a gulp. This done, the kitten ran and hid again behind the stairs.

  “We can’t leave it here,” said Kendra. “When the Blackbeards open the door in the morning, the kitten will run out and get killed. Let’s take it upstairs.”

  “All right,” said Marny. “I’ll send one of the boys out to put some sand in a box.”

  She bent to pick up the kitten. This was not easy, for the kitten was still shaking with fear, but it had no place to flee to, and Marny finally managed to get it between her hands. As she did so she gave a little cry of pity.

  “Oh Kendra, the poor little wretch! I never felt anything so thin. Like a bag of sticks.”

  Kendra felt a sweep of compassion. An egg, she thought, would be ideal nourishment for their foundling, but eggs were even more costly than milk. More than once a dozen eggs for her baking had cost the Calico Palace half an ounce of gold. “Marny,” she asked, “could we spare an egg? I’ll pay for it.”

  Marny answered promptly, “The egg is on the house.”

  Beating the precious egg into another pan of precious milk, while Marny stood beside her holding the kitten and trying to soothe its tremors, Kendra realized all of a sudden that what had swept over her just now was not merely compassion. It was love. She had so yearned for something to love again. Now she had it. A baby kitten, alone and forsaken and in desperate need. The kitten needed her and she needed the kitten, and she was going to keep it.

  The kitten was so frightened that they decided to give it—for the present at least—a room of its own. They unlocked a storeroom that had a window, and here they put a folded blanket and a sandbox and the pan of milk with the egg.

  “There now,” Marny said to the kitten, “you have all the comforts. Your own little bed, your own little privy, your own little bedtime snack. Now whatever did I do with my own little glass of grog?”

  The kitten, lapping up the milk and egg, did not look around.

  When they saw the kitten by daylight they were shocked at its pitiful ugliness. Its fur had fallen off in patches, so that it had a look of being moth-eaten. Scrawny from starvation, it did feel like a bag of sticks. In its short little life it must have known nothing but abuse, for it was so tremulous that for days Marny and Kendra could feel its fear of them, even when they approached with pans of food.

  Norman was not enthusiastic. “If it was a good big ship’s cat,” he said, “and could be of some use at rat-catching—”

  “I want this kitten,” said Kendra, “and I’m going to keep it. If I can’t keep it here, any restaurant in town will be glad to have my cakes.”

  The kitten stayed. And after a few weeks of food and kindness, Marny and Kendra discovered one day that their ugly little stray had turned into a beauty.

  Instead of being like a bag of sticks, the kitten now seemed to have hardly any bones at all, so easily it folded up to fit any way they held it in their hands. Its fur was thick and white, with black markings as if somebody had shaken a pen over it, scattering blots. Its eyes were green, not a pert clover-green like Marny’s, but a pale delicate shade, the green of the first new leaves of spring. “The eyes of an aristocrat,” said Marny. No longer frightened, the kitten played and scampered about. They could pick it up whenever they pleased, and the kitten purred, and liked to be fondled.

  They wanted to give a name to their little friend. But here they were in a quandary. Names had gender and so had cats, but this cat was still so young that they did not know how to make sure of its sex.

  Still, the problem was not too difficult. One of the frequent gamblers in Marny’s parlor was a veterinarian named Dr. Wardlaw. The next time he came in Marny asked for his aid. Chuckling with amusement, Dr. Wardlaw followed her into the hall behind the parlor and she brought him the kitten. A minute or two later Marny reported to Kendra, who was taking a pan of raisin cookies out of the oven.

  “Our cat,” announced Marny, “is a girl.”

  Kendra looked up with interest. “How did he tell?”

  “It’s really quite simple,” said Marny. “He showed me. You upend the cat and look for a certain little button. A girl cat has two buttons, a boy cat has only one.”

  Marny went back to her card table, but after closing time she came into Kendra’s room to discuss the question of a name. As the room had space for only one chair, Kendra sat on the cot with the kitten in her lap. She stroked its satiny fur and marveled that this kitten should be the same trembling castaway who had come crying to the door.

  “Let’s
give her a real name,” said Kendra. “Not Tabby or Snowball or something ordinary like that.”

  “Oh yes,” Marny agreed. “Not a name that could belong to just any cat. Something that fits this cat.”

  They began to consider names.

  “Natalie,” said Kendra. “Madeline. Lucinda. Winifred.”

  “Diana,” said Marny. “Clarice. Nicolette.”

  She paused thoughtfully. Kendra went on.

  “Henrietta. Gwendolen. Lysiane. Geraldine—”

  Marny echoed, “Geraldine.”

  “Do you like Geraldine?” asked Kendra.

  “Yes,” said Marny, “it has the right ring. It reminds me of something.” With a frown of concentration she repeated, “Geraldine. Geraldine. It fits. Why does it fit? Geraldine.” A light broke over her face and she sat up straight. “Oh yes! I know! Remember that spooky poem by Coleridge? Geraldine the beautiful waif, coming mysteriously out of the dark? Remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember,” Kendra said laughing, “if I ever heard it. You’re the one who knows things like that. What happens in the poem?”

  “Why, the lady Christabel opens the castle door at midnight to bring in fair Geraldine, and then Geraldine turns out to be a witch.”

  Cuddling the kitten in her lap, Kendra demanded, “Do you think this innocent ball of fluff looks like a witch?”

  “Geraldine in the poem didn’t look like a witch either,” said Marny. “She was beautiful. Our kitten is beautiful. Our kitten did come mysteriously out of the dark, like Geraldine; she did plead that she was lost and helpless, like Geraldine; the time was midnight, you did open the door.”

  “What became of Geraldine in the poem?” asked Kendra.

  “Nobody knows. He never finished it.”

  “And we don’t know what’s going to become of our kitten,” said Kendra, “nor of ourselves either. Yes, I think that’s the right name.”

  So they called the kitten Geraldine.

  Marny, who had never had a pet before, became as fond of the kitten as Kendra was. “I’m beginning to understand the charm of animals,” she said a day or two later, stroking Geraldine’s head while Geraldine purred with pleasure. “They love you quite as much as most people do, and they don’t talk so much.”

  Kendra smiled and agreed. But Norman said grumpily, “Cats don’t love anybody but themselves. When a cat shows liking for you, you can be sure the cat wants something.”

  “Why yes,” Marny answered. “Isn’t it remarkable, how many human traits they have?”

  But though she answered, she did not argue. She knew Norman was in a grouchy mood. He missed Rosabel. He missed her for two reasons: first, because she had been a good companion; and second, because her presence had attracted the sort of patrons that Norman called bons garçons, because they spent money easily. Norman had good musicians both in the public room on the street floor and in Marny’s parlor upstairs, but they were all men. The bons garçons kept asking him when he was going to bring in another girl to take Rosabel’s place at the piano. But a girl who combined Rosabel’s talent with her clever charm would have been hard to find anywhere, and with the general scarcity of women in San Francisco Norman’s hopes of replacing Rosabel were dim. He knew it was his own fault that he had lost her, and this did not improve his temper.

  Now and then he paid attention to a girl, taking her to dinner or to a show at the new theater called the Dramatic Museum. None of the girls really pleased him much, though he did enjoy the shows. The Dramatic Museum was on California Street just below Kearny. It was a well managed theater, offering a variety of entertainments, sometimes a serious play, more often an evening of song and dance and comedy. Marny liked to go there with Dwight, leaving her card table to the Harvard man. The players protested her absence, but she always returned to the card table after the show and stayed there till closing time. She told them they appreciated her more for having had to wait for her.

  Norman could scoff all he pleased at Marny and Kendra’s adoption of a stray cat. But Hiram and Pocket and Dwight, though they had no great love for cats, all admitted that they might have done the same thing themselves, being soft-hearted. Dwight said he would get his carpenters to build Geraldine a home. He asked what structural plan would please her best.

  Marny and Kendra had observed that Geraldine liked to sleep in a box, preferably one turned on its side so she could look out. Dwight designed a hut shaped like an oversized loaf of bread. He put air-holes at the back, and in front a latticed door so if Geraldine had to be shut up she could still see what was going on. At the top he fixed a handle, so the girls could pick up the hut and carry it around. The hut was light in weight, but strong and well made, for Dwight respected his work, whatever it was. They folded a soft old shawl and put it in for a bed, and Geraldine now had a more comfortable dwelling place than most people in San Francisco.

  When the hut was finished Hiram and Pocket came over to admire it, bringing Geraldine a gift of fresh fish. With the pleasure of an artist whose work is well esteemed, Dwight led them both into Marny’s parlor and treated them to refreshments, Pocket to cheese rolls and coffee, Hiram to the best whiskey at the bar.

  Unlike Norman, Dwight was in good humor these days. He had finished Hiram’s bank, a building of two stories and an underground vault. The Calico Palace was rising steadily, and now Dwight added a balcony at the back, so Geraldine would have a place to play. Here he set up a wondrously contrived wooden framework, on which Geraldine could climb when she felt like taking exercise, and he surrounded the balcony with a flat-topped railing where she could sit and look down at the world.

  Besides the Calico Palace, Dwight had begun two smaller buildings. Marny told Kendra all his work was going well. Another reason for his cheer was that the buildings were costing less than he had expected.

  Marny told her why. Men of business in Honolulu and the Atlantic ports had heard of the fires in San Francisco, the frantic rebuilding, and the high prices. Eager to profit by the need, hundreds of dealers had sent out bricks and lumber. Now, said Marny, they had glutted the town. A shipment of bricks that would have cost Dwight fifty ounces of gold last year, he could now buy for ten. Sometimes even less. The sellers were not happy, but Dwight and his fellow builders were in a gladsome mood.

  People were doing a lot of building. Among others, the men of the fire companies were setting up reservoirs at strategic points about town, one of them in the plaza. The filling of each one was an occasion for ceremonies. On a September evening, with pomp and fanfare and torchlights, the firemen pumped water into the plaza reservoir. Marny went out on the front balcony to look, but she did not stay there long. The ceremony, merry as it was with its bands and shouting, gave her shivers. Any reminder of the fire danger always did.

  Marny was not a fainthearted person. But she was anxious because the danger was real. Eleven days after the plaza reservoir was filled, the firebells roused the town again.

  It was four o’clock in the morning. When the bells woke them up, Marny rushed to the safe; Kendra grabbed Geraldine.

  Geraldine now slept in her hut on the back balcony. Kendra latched the door of the hut, where Geraldine had begun to cry, half in fright and half in anger at being thus disturbed. Carrying the hut, Kendra found Marny and Norman and the Blackbeards in conference before the largest of their safes. Through an open window she could smell smoke and hear the clatter of the engines.

  The Blackbeards had just been looking out of this window. Right now Troy Blackbeard was telling them the fire was burning to the north, and might not reach the plaza at all. The best thing to do was get dressed and be ready to leave if they had to, but meanwhile to stay here on guard.

  This made sense. When Marny and Kendra had put on their clothes and their guns they stood at an upper window, each of them holding a poke of coins. Kendra had set Geraldine’s hut on a chair beside them. The fire was roaring eastward toward Montgomery Street.

  Marny spoke little. With nervous fingers
she twisted the drawstring of the leather bag in her hands. Kendra was doing the same thing. The coins in the poke did not belong to her. She did not own as much of anything as Marny. But like Marny, she had her life to lose and her sound body to be crippled if the fire should come this way. She had good reason to be afraid.

  From somewhere behind her she heard Norman’s voice, loud and angry. Lolo, afraid for little Zack, was sobbing with panic. Norman was shouting to her to keep calm. Kendra said to Marny,

  “Why doesn’t he keep calm?”

  “He’s in a bad humor all round,” Marny answered promptly, as if glad to be reminded of something besides the fire. “He wouldn’t own it for all the gold in California, but he still misses Rosabel.”

  At the mention of Rosabel, Kendra caught her breath. “Oh good heavens—I hope the fire won’t go as far as Chase and Fenway’s!”

  “I hope,” Marny said savagely, “whoever started it gets burnt up in it.”

  They never found out whether or not her wish came true. Later that day they learned that this fire had started in a combination flophouse and saloon on Jackson Street. Nobody knew if it had been set on purpose or if some fellow had gone to sleep with a lighted cigar in his hand. The fire engines had responded promptly to the alarm, but the flophouse was in an area of flimsy wooden shelters and by the time the engines got there the whole neighborhood was ablaze.

  The firemen fought gallantly, and they did manage to hold the flames within limits. The fire did not reach the Calico Palace nor the El Dorado nor the Verandah, nor the other buildings on Kearny Street facing the plaza. But it raced across another block and damaged the Alta California building; it wrecked the office of the Alta’s major rival, the Pacific News; it destroyed several fine stores and warehouses; and more important to Marny and Kendra, it destroyed the building that housed Pocket’s library and his living quarters.

  That afternoon Pocket came to the Calico Palace with Dwight. Pocket had gone to Dwight’s office to discuss the rebuilding of the library. By three o’clock they were both hungry, but several restaurants had been lost in the fire and the rest were crowded, and Dwight had said maybe Kendra would have some leftovers on hand. They brought steaks to replace what they intended to eat, and a package of liver for Geraldine. While Kendra served them a meal of bread and cold beef, they told her and Marny more details of the fire.