“He is very spirited, if that is what you mean,” she said. “He does get into difficulties by it. He is afraid his mother is coming to reprimand him for the trouble he has been in through only the slightest fault of his own—which we mentioned. His sister is engaged to be married to the son of the duke of Beltravers, and Lady Caroline is anxious that no scandal disrupt that proceeding.”
Interesting information for Bierce.
I said I had passed by the McNair mansion on Nob Hill. “It is very impressive.”
“It is very large! Beau tells me he has never been in all the rooms. You know, there is a ghost. Isn’t that European! The servants say it looks very like Beau. Of course it is old Mr. McNair when he was young, before he became such an abominable old reprobate. My father says he was terribly dishonest!
“And one evening I was there for supper when there was such a commotion! One of the maids had encountered the ghost in the solarium.”
I said carefully that it seemed probable that there were similar ghosts in other Nob Hill mansions, the manifestations of other dishonest old reprobates when young.
“The simply mad thing is that sometimes the McNair ghost makes off with the cut flowers!
“And is there anything new on those horrible murders?” she asked, switching subjects.
“You must know there has been another. Not, however, one of the women of Morton Street. The widow of a respected judge. A woman from Santa Cruz, whose house was then burned no doubt to destroy some papers that would have created a scandal.”
Amelia’s eyebrows rose. “What fascinating work you are engaged in as a journalist, Mr. Redmond!”
I felt I had dishonestly elicited her esteem.
“Well, it is certain that Mr. McNair has been no part of any of this,” she said. “And I am very grateful for anything you may have done to establish his innocence.”
I had no response for that.
I accompanied her to the City of Paris, where she halted before store windows that presented laces and shimmering silks. Bedecked mannequins extended gloved hands.
“I will leave you here, Mr. Redmond. Thank you for the tea, and the interesting conversation!” With her light laugh and her parasol tapping, she strode inside.
I continued on toward Old City Hall and once jumped to kick my heels together. The fact that Amelia Brittain was no longer engaged to Beau McNair had raised my spirits.
That evening in the cellar of the Barnacles’ house I took off my jacket and shirt and pummeled the buggy seat, shooting out rights and lefts, sweating in the dim cool, breathing dust from my target. I was aware that Belinda was watching me, seated on the top cellar step with her knees and feet together and her hands clasped in her lap. I banged away, flinging my fists wide open one moment, and the next pulled together defensively with my chin in my shoulder and sweat tickling on my sides.
When I stopped, panting, and draped a towel around my neck, preparatory to a visit to the baths, Belinda said, “You act like you’re mad at somebody, Tom.”
“Just the opposite,” I told her.
8.
FIDELITY, n. – A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
In Sacramento, en route by train to Virginia City, in a delay announced as not less than two hours, I walked the four blocks from the station to my parents’ house, a peeling white-painted bungalow set back from the street, with a narrow porch and two dormer windows on the second story. At least three times during my youth, in the floods of the Sacramento River, the water had come up into the house and warped the boards of the hallway so there was always a reminding faint stink of river mud.
In the upstairs rooms my two brothers and my sister and I had listened to our father and mother fight downstairs, and celebrate in their bedroom their spells of concord as noisily as they fought. My brothers and sister were older than I, and they all cleared out of the house as soon as they could find the means, but I hung on to take my diploma from the Christian Brothers and then, with a twenty-dollar gold piece sewn into my pocket, rode the deck of the steamer down the river to the City.
In the dark central hallway I called my mother’s name. A familiar oppression sat on my shoulders with the redolence of old mud and the waft of boiled onions and dishwater from the kitchen. My mother stood at the stove in her shoes with the sides cut out to favor her bunions. She swung toward me with her sweet, toothless smile, her blue eyes aproned with dark flesh like a raccoon’s eyes.
“Tommy!”
She let herself fall into my arms with a dramatic motion. “What are you doing here, for anyway’s sake?”
“Riding the cars to Virginia City.”
She pursed her lips at me. “Aren’t you the fine gentleman!”
I grinned back at her and said I was getting finer day by day.
“Let me get my teeth in and make some lemonade. I’ll send the boy next door for the Gent.”
“I’ve got an hour.”
I sat on the porch in one of the ragged wicker chairs with my feet up on the rail gazing out on the dusty street where a ginger mutt barked at a passing Chinaman. The yelps reverberated hollowly in the heat. I remembered chasing Chinamen with the other Catholic boys. We were all dead set against pigtails, for reasons I could no longer remember.
My mother brought me the lemonade and sat down beside me. She had put in her teeth, changed her dress and combed her hair into a gray-streaked bun on top of her head.
“Have you been saying your prayers, Tommy?” she asked.
“Not as often as I should, Ma.”
“The Good Lord will forgive you anything, Son. But you must ask for His forgiveness.”
“Yes, Ma.”
But I had come to Bierce’s way of thinking, that prayer was “to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.” I myself would be ashamed to pray to the Good Lord for the gift of a Nob Hill young lady, and I had too much pride to confess impure thoughts of her as well.
My mother listened to my relation of my successes in San Francisco as a fledgling reporter for The Hornet. I bragged a little, enlarged a bit. She appreciated good news so much it was impossible not to make some up to satisfy her appetite. I did not mention slashed whores, however, feeling I had entertained her sufficiently.
“How’s the Gent?” I asked.
“He’s working for the SP. Mr. Wallingford thinks he’s a natural wonder. Oh, he could sweet-talk an orang-outang out of a banana.” She said this with pride.
She wanted to know why I was going to Virginia City. “The Gent says the lode is all used up, people moving on. They’ll be closing the mines soon. He is the world authority on anything to do with mining except how to make money by it.”
I listened to secondhand reports of the successes of Michael in Denver, Brian in Chicago and Emma in Portland with her third baby.
“Do you know what he does for the SP?” I said.
She peered up and down the street and lowered her voice. “Bobby Wallingford works over at the legislature. I think he passes out money to the Representatives and Senators. The Gent probably carries his carpetbag and the account book. He’d like giving money away. He has always been good at that.”
I produced the Manila cigar with its red, white and blue band someone had given Bierce and passed it on to my mother.
“Thanks, baby,” she said, pocketing the cigar.
I heard the clatter of hoofs before I saw the Gent appear. He turned the corner on a handsome gray, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, holding up an arm in greeting. He tied the gray’s reins to the fence and stamped up the walk to embrace me.