Fool's Gold (7 page)

Mrs Revel smiled rather grimly at the newcomers and proceeded to make the introductions. There were a dozen or so at various tables and others still arriving. The majority were elderly, although one middle-aged lady turned up with four of her eight daughters in tow.

‘Mrs Pikeman and her invaluable young ladies,’ commented Miss Cooper as she fluttered past. ‘Without them, I would not be able to run my little school.’

They were working on an exquisite patchwork quilt.

‘For Hester. She’s to marry an attorney from New York State. So handsome,’ said young Gertrude dreamily. ‘Fortunate Hester!’

She earned herself a reproving glance from her mother. ‘We also do some plain sewing for the poor,’ Edith Pikeman informed her gravely, drawing the attention from her blushing sister. ‘We have merely put it aside for a week or two while we finish the quilt for Hester’s wedding.’

As an unknown quantity, Alicia was at first allowed to do no more than trim the edges of the strips under the eagle eye of Mrs Sharples, the wife of one of the Steamship Company’s captains, but when she broke off to stitch a little shawl from a scrap of material for Tamsin’s doll, and it was seen that her stitches were as small, neat and even as Edith’s or Gertrude’s, they were swift to draw her in to stitch at the quilt.

All around her fingers were flying busily — but not as busily as the tongues. Miss Cooper’s parlour was for these woman the social centre of Sacramento. Many of them had come in from the surrounding country, from the ranches or the local river stations, to go to church in the morning and then to dine with their husbands at one of the few respectable hotels now to be found in the Capital. Afterwards, their husbands would forgather in bars and smoking rooms to discuss the price of beef, grain or gold, or the shortcomings of the Governor or President, and in such establishments there was no place for women — no place for ladies, at any rate.

Others, such as Mrs Revel, lived in Sacramento itself, but the shortage of polite female society was so acute still that they were only too pleased to leave their own four walls, or the stores or warehouses where they worked alongside their husbands throughout the week, and come to this oasis of civilisation.

They gave Alicia a warm welcome, although they were inclined to-make a fuss of little Tamsin, which put Alicia on edge, for fear she might cause offence — or let something fall about their past.

Something of this Miss Cooper must have sensed, for when she came in with the last of the guests, she gently extricated Tamsin from the circle of cooing ladies and dispatched her, kindly but firmly, to a little antechamber that opened off the main parlour. A group of boys and girls were seated around a large nursery style table playing pencil and paper games. Miss Cooper entrusted Tamsin to the care of a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl, gawky and clumsy as only twelve-year-old girls can be, who glowed with pride at being given such a responsibility.

Alicia had braced herself for a stream of questions about herself — where she had come from, who her husband had been — but she was relieved to find that the ladies were more interested in what she was doing now than in her past. So many Californians had originally travelled west to avoid something in their past, whether situation of birth, brushes with the law or bankruptcies and business losses, that it was not considered polite to enquire too closely.

‘Miss Cooper tells me that you are assisting in the Carsons’ store, my dear Mrs Owens,’ said Mrs Spalding. ‘Have you heard the rumour that the Hopkins and the Huntingtons are planning to combine? Does Mrs Carson think that it will affect her trade?’

‘Sacramento is growing so rapidly now, ma’am, that I should imagine there would be room for any number of stores.’

‘Thank Heavens they chose us for the Capital,’ said another lady with iron grey hair neatly coiffed. ‘At least we know we’ll still be here in ten years time and can plan some civilising influences, such as schools and libraries and opera houses, without having to leave them to rot when the seams run out! No one who has not lived in as many mining camps as I have can fully appreciate the joys of a settled life!’

There were murmurs of agreement from around the room.

‘What schools are there in Sacramento?’ Alicia enquired, glad to find that the topic of conversation had moved away from her.

‘Oh, my dear ma’am!’ fluted Mrs Revel, a tall, angular lady who spoke as much as possible without fully opening her mouth, which possessed two rows of blackened stumps. ‘It really is too dreadful! Of course, my husband insisted on sending the boys back to my sister in Saint Louis to be educated, but for the poor girls …! Either you must swallow your prejudices and send them to the Catholic convent schools, where the education is very well but they are exposed to all the Romish influences at such an impressionable age, or they must make do with study at home.’

‘My own daughters, all of them, were educated out here,’ said Mrs Pikeman proudly. ‘At home at first, then they followed a course of study laid down by Miss Cooper while they helped out with the younger ones. And I don’t think they could have turned out better if I’d sent them back east to one of these fancy Young Ladies’ Academies. And what’s more,’ she went on in the tones of one who will not brook any argument, ‘both Agnes and Matilda have determined to do the same with their boys when they come to be old enough. Why, if we keep on sending our young people back east to be educated, stands to reason they’ll be educated for life back east and there they’ll stay, when what we want is to educate them for life in California.’

‘I have great hopes of Mr Tukey,’ offered one lady nervously.

‘Tukey!’ exclaimed Mrs Sharples scornfully. ‘Who’s to say he won’t run out of funds, just as Harkness did? They called on him to begin high school teaching months ago and all he can say is “he hopes to commence shortly”! Oh, for teaching wagon drivers to write their name and reckon up, he will do very well, but can we base the prosperity of the state on that?’

‘And he has over a hundred more applicants than places,’ added Mrs Spalding. ‘So he don’t take anyone under ten …’

‘I think you’d go far to find a better teacher than Miss Cooper,’ insisted Mrs Pikeman. ‘As for sending your child to the
public
schools. Well! It’s just asking for ’em to catch smallpox and cholera and — and — infestations! More teachers like Miss Cooper is what we need.’

‘Kind of you to say so, Mrs Pikeman, but we can’t get away from the fact that I have no qualifications to teach the older ones. I can’t help thinking that it would be better if we had some good Protestant educators here in Sacramento for them.’

‘There’s always the new college in Benicia,’ sniffed one lady.

‘True. And I believe that Miss Atkins is establishing her Seminary along all the best principles of modern education, but we should have one here! After all, are we not the Capital? We should be giving the lead!’

The conversation began to turn on what constituted a good education for girls, but when Mrs Pikeman and Mrs Revel, to no one’s particular surprise, began to bicker in a rather more personal manner, Miss Cooper intervened to bring the discussion to a close.

‘Perhaps Mrs Owens would read to us while we finish off our sewing for today,’ she suggested in her soft musical voice. ‘Gertrude, would you look after the children? And ask Louisa to fetch the
Pilgrim’s Progress
for Mrs Owens, if you please?’

She turned back to Alicia who had laid her sewing aside obediently. ‘We read Sir Walter Scott at our Wednesday meeting, but I think Bunyan more suitable for the Sabbath. The children learn a verse or two from the Bible each week.’ She gestured towards the antechamber where the smaller children were listening to Gertrude reading to them from a large leather-bound Bible. ‘But of course, not Tamsin, dear child. I don’t expect she can read small print yet.’

‘Oh, indeed, ma’am. I taught her some time ago and she is ever eager to learn more.’

‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Miss Cooper. ‘Perhaps when she is a little older, she will join our classes.’

‘The moment you can find a place for her, ma’am, she will be there.’ She had sown the seed; now she’d have to wait and see if it struck.

Louisa stood at her side with the book. ‘We had just left the Slough of Despond, ma’am,’ she offered shyly, pointing out the relevant paragraph with a none too clean forefinger. Alicia began to read.

They had almost finished the chapter when an impatient knocking was heard.

‘A little early for the gentlemen,’ said Miss Cooper with a puzzled frown.

The maid appeared at the door after a moment. ‘Mrs Lamarr,’ she announced, and in swept the most beautifully dressed woman Alicia had ever seen. The woman herself was quite a handsome blonde, but so showily was she clad that one noticed the clothes first.

An extremely close-fitting pale blue bodice, elaborately trimmed with French lace, tapered down to a narrow waist whence it flared out into a wide billowing skirt of darker blue, flounced with lace and ribbons, which only emphasised its width, a width that could not possibly have been produced by the usual layers of starched and quilted petticoats.

Miss Cooper stood quite overwhelmed by the sight, her usual polite greetings dying on her lips.

‘My dear Letitia, I can see you are quite
bouleversée
by my new
toilette
,’ cooed the newcomer before Miss Cooper could recollect herself. ‘Splendid, is it not?’ She posed just inside the door, the focus of all attention.

‘Quite — splendid,’ faltered Miss Cooper.

‘But my dear Letitia, you must — yes, positively you must — have your doorways altered. One can scarcely pass through them. In San Francisco, everyone is having double doors put in.’

‘It seems a little extravagant!’ murmured Miss Cooper faintly.

‘But it is de
rigueur
, my dear, positively it is! For the crinoline, you know, is become all the rage. It will sweep from San Francisco even to this benighted backwater, I promise you.’

‘But … but … dear Mrs Lamarr … it is so wide,’ protested Miss Cooper. ‘However do you sit down?’

‘Certainly not in one of those antiquated armchairs of yours, my dear Letitia,’ said the newcomer crushingly. ‘But if Agnes or Gertrude or whichever of the dear Pikeman girls it is would be so kind as to exchange, I do believe I shall make do with her chair.’

Overwhelmed by the confidence of Mrs Lamarr and unheeding of her mother tugging at her sleeve to try to keep her in her seat, Edith Pikeman stumbled to her feet and held the chair for the newcomer who subsided with a rustle of expensive silks on and all around the vacated chair.

With a sniff that spoke more than any words, Mrs Pikeman rescued the quilt from beneath the sea of blue.

‘What, ladies, still at your endless stitching?’ enquired Mrs

Lamarr, raising her eyebrows at the assembled group.

Several of them looked daggers at her, but only Mrs Revel responded.

‘Indeed. And we were reading
Pilgrim’s Progress
.’ She didn’t say ‘Until you were so rude as to interrupt’ but it was implicit in her tone.

Mrs Lamarr raised her eyes eloquently to the ceiling and folded her hands demurely in her lap. ‘Then, pray, continue.’

Chapter Seven

The gentlemen soon after began arriving in twos and threes, but Alicia read steadily on to the end of the chapter. Then she laid the book aside and helped Edith collect up the pins and needles while the sewing was carefully folded away.

The maids brought in the tea trays and the connecting doors were thrown open to reveal buffets and side tables laden with vast arrays of some of the most mouthwatering little cakes and biscuits, cold meats and relishes, sweets and titbits that Alicia had seen for some time. Waffle cake, hoe cake, johnny cake and dodger cake all vied for her attention and out of the corner of her eye she could see Tamsin staring open-mouthed at the spread.

The arrival of the tea was a signal for the little groupings of ladies to break up and circulate, exchanging greetings and news with the gentlemen who had arrived to join their wives and daughters. Miss Cooper’s receptions were unusual in that the entertainment was not planned to suit the gentlemen. There was no separate room set aside for them to talk of elections, governors and the price of produce while the ladies were reduced to look at each other’s toilettes till they knew each pin by heart, or talk of Parson Somebody’s last sermon on the day of judgement or Doctor T’otherbody’s latest cure until tea came to relieve their boredom. Here they could play their part in the conversations, which made it much more lively.

Some of the men Alicia had already met, for a number of them had made a point of coming into Carsons’ store to cast an eye over the new assistant, but they greeted her politely enough now, under the watchful eye of the Reverend’s sister.

Miss Cooper drew Alicia across the room to stand with her and hand out the tea she was dispensing. ‘An excellent way to get to know our little society,’ she murmured.

Alicia handed out the delicate cups and saucers and exchanged pleasantries until she suddenly caught sight of Mr Jones, the elderly clerk from the California Steamboat Company who had escorted her home the previous Saturday. She hoped that he would not let drop where she lived, for she was quite sure that it would not be favourably looked on by the assembled company. Folly to have come here, she told herself angrily. Better to have stayed aloof; she still had some pride left.

She was relieved when Mr Jones caught her eye and merely bowed politely. Besides, it was too late to be uninvolved: standing beside Miss Cooper, handing round the cups of fragrant tea, she was introduced to the manager of Wells, Fargo & Company, the Sacramento manager of the California Steam and two of his captains, the two Crocker brothers, Charles, the store manager, up from San Francisco to discuss the railroad, and his brother Edwin, a leading attorney and tipped soon to be a judge.

It was a motley assortment of people to be collected under one minister’s roof. At any gathering west of the Mississippi, the men far outnumbered the ladies and while some of them were polished ladies’ men, looking well at their ease sipping tea and eating dainty rout cakes, others like Captain Sharples — a giant of a man who looked as though he could, with one wide gesture, bring the walls of the minister’s house crashing around their ears like Samson in the temple — looked as though they had rather be anywhere else but here.

Inevitably, much of the discussion centred on events in San Francisco, and when Alicia heard someone mention the Vigilantes, she found she was quite relieved to be confined to the tea table.

‘If you’ll excuse me a moment, dear Mrs Owens,’ began Miss Cooper. ‘I must just have a word with Mrs Crocker — Mrs Edwin Crocker, of course — about our plans. You’d never guess, as she’s so quiet, but she is the prime mover in the State campaign to found good schools for this flood of young people we have … And charities — you’d be surprised how much money she manages to raise for our Asylums and Orphanages, just by a little gentle persuasion.’

Mr Spalding brought his cup back to be refilled.

‘Thank you, ma’am. I wonder, ma’am,’ he coloured up under his tight starched collar, ‘you may have heard tell of Miss Letitia’s musical evenings? Do you sing?’

‘Well I —’

‘Would you permit me to escort yon on Saturday?’ He mopped his damp forehead with a colourful kerchief. ‘With my mother, of course!’

Before she could answer him, there was a stir behind them.

‘Why, Jack Cornish!’ purred a seductive and silken voice. ‘I had not thought this was
at all
the kind of gathering to attract
you
!’

It was Mrs Lamarr. She had effectively barred the Colonel’s way with a swish of broad skirts and he did not look to be in the least pleased about it.

‘Mrs Lamarr.’ He nodded in acknowledgement, his manner cool and offhand while hers was openly flirtatious.

‘But of course you’d heard that we were back from San Francisco?’ She ended on a teasing note, peeping up at him through darkened lashes enviously long.

‘On the contrary, ma’am. What Sacramento heard of your stay in San Francisco led everyone to believe that your honeymoon would be an unusually extended one.’ His voice grated. Alicia wondered that the blonde did not stand aside and let him pass, to bring the uncomfortable exchange to an end, but Mrs Lamarr was made of sterner stuff.

‘Oh, cruel, Jack,’ she whispered. Then she made a little moue of disgust. ‘And so we should have stayed, but Mr Lamarr, the naughty man, declared that he positively could not stay away from his ranch any longer. Really, he was quite rustic about it.’

‘Indeed, ma’am? One would have thought that his duties in the legislature might have brought him back even sooner.’

A ripple of amusement ran through the room, and there was even a hastily smothered giggle. Alicia, finding herself staring, turned her attention hastily back to the tea table, but she need not have worried: every eye in the room was fixed on this oddly contrasting couple.

Miss Cooper, recovering her composure, stepped into the breach.

‘My dear Mrs Lamarr, you must excuse us. Colonel Cornish and I have a great deal to discuss and I know he has to leave shortly if he is to conclude all his business and still reach Tresco before it is quite dark.’

The smile that the Colonel gave Miss Cooper was quite dazzling, transforming his whole face. Just as she whisked him away from Mrs Lamarr, a thick-set man appeared in the doorway, a heavy scowl on his rather podgy face.

‘Cornish.’

‘Lamarr.’ The acknowledgement was glacial. The Colonel stepped aside to allow the newcomer to enter and then proceeded to turn his back on the room while he entered into a deep discussion with Miss Cooper.

‘If looks could kill …’ crowed one of the ladies.

‘The way she threw herself at him, what could one expect?’ came the sour reply.

Alicia continued to dispense the tea, wishing she could make out what Miss Cooper and the Colonel were saying. What they had in common she could not imagine, and at the same time, she despised herself for wanting to know.

The Lamarrs interrupted them rather unceremoniously to take their leave, giving the cue as they left for the party to split up into groups and gossip in corners.

‘Oh dear! I do so dislike it when people start chin-wagging at someone else’s expense!’ regretted Miss Cooper, moving across with the Colonel towards the tea-table.

‘Don’t fret about it, m’dear,’ Cornish consoled her. ‘If Bella thought they
weren’t
talking about her, she’d feel she’d failed.’

‘It’s very naughty of you to say so,’ scolded Miss Cooper. ‘After all, if you had not been here, I daresay there might not have been all this gossip and speculation. And with all that upset, I quite forgot to introduce you to Mrs Owens, a newcomer to our little community. Mrs Owens, this is Colonel Cornish of the Tresco Ranch just outside Sacramento, one of our biggest landowners and a great help in the campaign to set up schools and a library.’

‘Indeed?’ Alicia could feel her eyebrows raising in disbelief at this unlikely aspect of the Colonel’s character.

‘I have already had the pleasure of making Mrs Owens’ acquaintance at Carsons’,’ he said, an unexpected warmth in his deep voice. ‘And really, to introduce me thus on a day when I’m having all my old follies thrown in my face will give Mrs Owens a very strange notion of me.’

The Sharples were taking their leave and Miss Cooper scuttled off to remind them of next Saturday’s musical soirée.

Alicia swallowed nervously. If Tamsin saw the Colonel, she might approach him with a demand to know where Chen Kai was. A swift glance reassured her: Tamsin was still in the antechamber, drawing under the close supervision of Edith Pikeman, who had retired there when Mrs Lamarr had so unceremoniously deprived her of her chair.

She looked back to find the Colonel looking down at her with a smile on his face. She racked her brain for something to say, but inspiration had deserted her. To cover her confusion, she turned away and poured the rancher a cup of tea, quite forgetting to ask first whether he wanted one or not.

‘Miss Cooper said you were campaigning for schools and — and a library,’ she said as she poured. ‘Are all the Senators in favour?’

‘I doubt it. Anyway, I’m not in the Senate.’

‘Oh! I see. Only I thought …’

‘I leave politics to the hot air merchants, such as Lamarr. There are many better ways of getting a State on its feet than by talking about it endlessly.’ He propped his shoulders against the wall and folded his arms, looking down at her with a cynical expression on his face. ‘Congregate a hundred Americans anywhere, they immediately lay out a city, draw up a State Constitution and apply for admission to the Union, while twenty-five of them become candidates for the United States Senate, so they can go back east and set Washington to rights. Just as Gwin did. But none of that benefits the people who
live
in that new State! Action, that’s what we need. Not words!’

‘I agree with you, Colonel,’ she said with a smile. ‘Then you have a personal interest in the outcome … for your own children’s education?’

‘I have no children. Nor a wife, thank God!’ he replied bluntly as he took the cup. ‘A new state is the last place in the world for pampered women and children. Let them stay back east until all is settled.’

‘Then why the schools?’

‘Because not everyone thinks like me, unfortunately. If we must have women and children, then let the children at least be educated here, not back east where they are taught to be fit for nothing!’ he said roundly, unconsciously echoing Mrs Pikeman’s earlier words.

‘I think you overstate your case. Times have changed. After all, California has been a state now for nearly five years and here we are in the capital, surely as civilised a town as we are like to find?’

‘Oh, I grant you, San Francisco will soon have every vice of any city back east, and Sacramento is never far behind, but I believe that the cities have little to say to our future. The prosperity of California lies in its fertile lands and few of your San Francisco or Sacramento ladies have anything to contribute there.’

‘Then Mrs Crocker and Miss Cooper are wasting their time?’

‘Oh, they do their best and do it very well, I take nothing away from them, but neither of them can stand up to the vested eastern interests. And the hot air spouters will insist that the schools — our schools! — are set up on eastern lines, in order that we may appear civilised to the effete Easterners!’ he exploded angrily. ‘Latin primers and Greek gobbledegook! California has a much greater need for a mining college — and for an agricultural college!’

‘One to teach the gold-grubbers more scientific ways of tearing the land apart and the other to teach ’em how to put it together again,’ she agreed gravely.

‘A woman with a sense of humour, by God! And a brain!’ The frown vanished from between his eyes to be replaced by a broad grin. ‘Mr Owens is a lucky man indeed!’

‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Colonel,’ scolded Miss Cooper. ‘Mrs Owens, here’s Mr Jones wants to know whether he may offer you his escort home again.’

‘I’d be pleased to offer Mrs Owens my escort if Mr Owens isn’t available,’ said the Colonel sternly, trying to freeze the clerk out.

Alicia flushed at the thought of the Colonel’s reaction to Widow Grey’s rooming house. ‘Thank you Mr Jones,’ said Alicia with a calmness she did not feel. ‘You are very kind, Colonel, but indeed it is on Mr Jones’s way and quite out of yours.’

She turned to pass out of the hall and was very relieved to see the Colonel detained by Edwin Crocker. Once in the hall she hurried Tamsin into her shawl and tried to whip her away before the Colonel could see her — or she him. He had not associated her with Mrs Langdon yet — but the presence of the child might speed him to make the connection and she had no wish to see herself pilloried in the eyes of the assembled company as the destitute beggar she must have seemed that day out at Tresco.

‘Lisha?’ demanded Tamsin with a little frown. ‘Don’t we know that man?’

‘No, my dear. Now say your goodbyes to Miss Cooper.’

‘Goodbye, Miss Cooper,’ said Tamsin with an obedient curtsey. ‘And thank you for a pleasant afternoon.’

‘You must come again, dear child,’ said Miss Cooper with a soft smile. ‘Perhaps your mama will bring you again next Sunday. Now, run along with Gertrude and fetch the fruit Rachel has put out for you in the kitchen while I have a word with your mama.’