Amelia was waiting in the hall, wearing a tan jacket over her dress, which fitted her torso like eelskin, her bright surprised face with its fringe of curls enclosed by her bonnet. She took my arm, whispering, “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting all morning!”
“I thought you’d be at church.”
“Momma and Poppa went but I didn’t.”
When I helped her into the buggy the sun was glaring through thinning patches of fog. It was going to be a blessed good day! Amelia shed her jacket, peering back over her shoulder as we turned out of Taylor Street.
I asked if she was looking for her shadow.
“Oh, I haven’t seen him for days. I’m sure he was bored ambling along after me, and scared off by police uniforms. Where are we going?”
“Cliff House.”
“Oh, Cliff House! That’s lovely!”
We headed west through the greenery and sand dunes of Golden Gate Park in a traffic of buggies and carriages filled with well-dressed people. Streams of bicyclists pedaled along the margins of the road, and pedestrians saluted each other. I was feeling a member of the quality in my suit and vest, my polished boots and soft hat, and my hired rig, very proud to be seen with Amelia Brittain at my side. Sometimes she leaned against me, and always she exclaimed excitedly about the sights or called out to friends in other buggies, so that I was reminded of the class of life-livers that my father had extolled at Malvolio’s.
It was two o’clock when the great square tower and the lesser towers of Cliff House reared up ahead of us down a curving slant of roadway. In the vast dining room with the fog bank hovering just off Seal Rocks and the sea lions posturing there, we dined on turtle steaks and spring duck, with Veuve Clicquot to wash it down. The other tables were occupied by fashionable gents and ladies. By its reputation, the Cliff House was patronized by bankers, rich merchants, and political bosses and their lady friends. There was a fine feeling of opulence and naughtiness in the air, with Amelia exclaiming over her duck and the champagne and the views. The waiter as attentive to me as the fellow at Malvolio’s had been to my father. We became Amelia and Tom.
I knew, however, even before our bill was presented, that I was not going to be able to afford to bring Amelia in a rented rig out to the Cliff House every Sunday, without considerable help, such as my father’s poker facility and goodwill.
There was a stir of attention and glances as two people entered the dining room, a woman encased in folds and gatherings of blue material with a mass of reddish hair and a doll face of small features and red lips. Her escort was a huge old man who towered over her by more than a head. He had an impressive fall of gray beard and a ponderous way of walking so that he seemed to half surround his lady friend as the head-waiter showed them to a table behind me. I realized who they were.
“Who is that, Tom?” Amelia asked.
“That is the notorious Miss Hill and her new lawyer, who are in court against Senator Sharon. I understand they have become romantically friendly.”
Amelia gazed at them with round eyes. “She is a fallen woman!” she whispered.
“That is true.”
“What a fine complexion!”
I couldn’t see the pair without awkwardly turning. Amelia continued to gaze at them between sips of champagne.
“But that gentleman is old enough to be her father!” she said.
“Do you know who he is?”
“Should I know?”
“He is Judge Terry. He was once a justice of the California Supreme Court. He fought a duel with Senator Broderick back before the War.”
She nodded vigorously. “He was a southerner, and they wanted California to be a slave state!”
“Killing Senator Broderick made certain that California would be Free Soil,” I said. “Terry was almost lynched. He lit out for the Comstock, where he lawyered mining claims. Now he is back in California lawyering divorce cases.
“I hope she is successful in her suit,” I added, with more intensity than I had intended.
“Poppa knew Senator Sharon on the Comstock,” Amelia said. “Poppa doesn’t like him.”
“He’s a crooked, greedy, debauched old Croesus,” I said.
“I wonder if her hair is really that color,” Amelia whispered.
When we rose from our table I had another glimpse of Sarah Althea Hill, the Rose of Sharon, past Judge Terry’s broad back, her pretty face alive with motion as she talked, one hand with a finger extended making accompanying signs. No one considered her chances against Senator Sharon’s millions very good, even with Judge Terry at her side.
In the late afternoon we started back along the carriage route through the Presidio. We parked in the growing darkness above the little beach at the end of Larkin Street, where the gelding bent his neck to tug at some weeds. Amelia and I watched the lights on the Marin shore past Alcatraz.
“You may kiss me if you like,” she whispered, presenting her cheek.
I kissed her cheek. She smelled of flowers. Her lips were presented and I kissed them also and was suddenly short of breath.
“I have wanted you to do that,” Amelia said.
I did that some more, although I could spoil the moment thinking of Amelia’s degree of intimacy with Beau McNair, which Bierce had mentioned.
Amelia rested in my arms. “You must not put your hands there,” she said, twisting slightly away. “I don’t want to feel funny.”
I considered dying for her.
“Do you love me, Tom?”
“Yes!” I said.
“I’m very fond of you, but I don’t know if I love you yet. You are very different from the other young men I know.”
“How?” I said.
“Well, I don’t know any other journalists. I read what you wrote about the Mussel Slough Tragedy. My father thinks the Railroad was perfectly right in evicting those men, and putting them in jail when there was shooting.”
“So does my father.”
“My father doesn’t read novels,” Amelia said, snuggling further into my arms.
“Pardon me?”
“If you read novels you sympathize with people who are different kinds of people than you are.”
“Do you sympathize with Allie Hill?” I asked.
“Yes! That poor woman has only done what was forced upon her by cruel circumstance!”
“You don’t believe she should have sacrificed her life rather than her honor?”
“I certainly do not!” Amelia said. “And please kiss me and stop talking about these distressful matters.”
There was a good deal more kissing before I turned the rig back along Polk Street.
On Taylor Street the upstairs windows of 913 were alight, and a lamp burned in a window off the porch. Amelia started up the steps while I wrapped the reins around the iron hitching post.
Amelia screamed.
I mounted the steps in four jumps. Amelia’s screams ripped the silence. In the darkness I could see two figures down the porch, and I hurled myself toward them. Amelia had got behind the table. The man swung toward me. I hit him as hard as I could drive my fist, hit him with a left and a right while he staggered away from me. He fell against the veranda railing, which smashed under his weight. He fell through the rail and was gone in the darkness below.
The Slasher!
I sprinted down the stairs and into the shadows beneath the veranda, beating my way through the undergrowth there. He was not to be found.
Down the street I heard a police whistle.
“Tom!” Amelia leaned over the porch railing above me. Illumination burned behind her. Her face was an oval of shadow, her bare head bright with light.