Forgiven (15 page)

She smiled at that, and we went down to the parlor and sat by the fire for the rest of the afternoon.

At teatime, Miss Everts appeared.

I went to her. “I’ve been harsh.” It was the best I could do in the way of apology for some of my behavior. She was my employer, after all, and I needed to be in her good graces. But I also admitted some grudging respect for her. For what she might have done for Mei Lien.

But she brushed me away. “It was not you.” She straightened her back. “I’ve allowed myself to drift into sentimentality. Compassion is an acceptable emotion. Sentimentality leads to regret, and regret is dangerous.”

I certainly knew about regret. Regret that I hadn’t stood up for my pa. Regret that I hadn’t made him leave Yellowstone sooner so we could have a respectable life. Regret that I hadn’t rescued Min. Regret all the way back to not having my mother with me as I was growing up.

“I see you and Mei Lien have resumed lessons? Oh, that’s lovely work, my dear. Yes, this will do very nicely, don’t you think, Mei Lien?”

The two exchanged a look I couldn’t fathom: Mei Lien nodded and smiled.

Miss Everts turned to me. “I take it the dress has arrived. Well. Now that you’re ready to attend, we’d best discuss our little ruse before the Henderson affair.”

“Ah. My so-called career.”

“You are an artist’s model. That accidental pretense has given me an opportunity. Mei Lien, would you mind getting us all some tea?”

Miss Everts shut the drawing room door behind Mei Lien. She wanted to speak to me alone. Indeed, her next words were a rush of confusion to my ears. “I know your primary concern is for your father. But we can do nothing for the moment, and I have something else to attend to. You can help me. I need you to play the part.”

Phillipa Everts had no clue about the part I already played with respect to Wilkie. But there was, in fact, nothing I could do until I’d uncovered more about the intertwined relationships—that brotherhood of families—and figured out how to get to Wilkie. “I’ll try.”

“It’s simple. We must create a story for you. Say, you have come to visit me after having been discovered in Santa Fe. Will that suit? I’ve brought you here. There will be many patrons of the arts at this social gathering. In the next few days, before the party, we shall visit one well-known artist.”

A knotty fear wormed inside me. “Will I have to do anything . . . peculiar?” I didn’t know how else to put it.

She looked at me, sharp. “No. Nothing. And that is my sincere promise. I only need to buy a little more time. Create a diversion.”

“For what?”

She turned away, silent for a moment. She continued. “With you adding the new element of distraction at that event, I should be able to slip some things by—”

“Miss Everts, I wish you’d explain this more plainly.”

She fixed her gray eyes on me. “If I did, I’d be afraid you’d give it all away.”

Now she had me peeved again. Give what away? And if anyone could hold a secret, it was me.

“The artist’s name is Sebastian Gable. He’s a good friend. I’ll try and arrange things for Monday.”

I nodded, biting my tongue. Secrets and more secrets, and I was tugged in two directions. I put my hand on my throat, felt the key that lay hidden, touched the cameo at my collar. From a scarlet-colored silk gown and rich Will Henderson to David Wong and Josiah Wilkie. From Nat Baker’s daughter to Phillipa Everts’s protégé. Art to artifice. I didn’t know anymore who I was, or where I’d come from, or where I was going.

Chapter
TWENTY-ONE

April 9, 1906

 

 

 

 

ʺKULA,ʺ MISS EVERTS’S VOICE BELIED HER IMPATIENCE with me. “It’s perfectly all right. He wants to do a series of studies of your face. Normally, he only paints landscapes. But he’s working on something different.” Miss Everts pulled on her gloves as I waited by the door.

“And you said he’ll pay?”

“Handsomely. Which you could send to your father’s defense.” Jameson drove us to the home of Sebastian Gable. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but my nerves were calmed the minute we walked through the door and stood in his broad entry hallway. His paintings were everywhere, and what a collection they made.

I’d never seen the like. These landscapes were not dreamy or dark. They were so colorful and riotous that I had to whisper to Miss Everts if he painted real, actual places.

“Yes. Why, that one’s Goleta Point, and there’s Mount Tam. In a few weeks, when the wildflowers are out in all their glory, you’ll see. This is the way it looks here later in the spring, and in summer and fall.”

Mr. Gable appeared from the end of the hall. He greeted Miss Everts, and turned to me. He made a slight bow. “Miss Baker. I’m delighted. And happy you’ve given me this opportunity. Phillipa has told me so much about you. Come.” He pointed down the hallway to an open door through which intense light spilled.

All that light came from a bank of windows that formed one wall of his studio. Even in the gray weather—rain had finally given way to dull and damp—the light in this room was rich and cheering. Paintings in various stages of completion hung or stood or leaned on the other surfaces. He’d set a chair in the center of a low dais.

“Would you like anything? Some tea?” His courtly manners settled my nerves once and for all.

I sat and posed for him for over an hour while he sketched. Every so often he would ask me to move or turn and look in another direction. Miss Everts sipped tea and watched him work. When he finally seemed satisfied, he let me see what he had done.

There were three or four studies all done in pencil, and I felt both embarrassed and thrilled. It was me, but it was not me, and he’d captured something else, something inside me. Obstinacy. Pride.

“What will you do with these?” I asked.

“I am working on something different. A large work, a series of murals. It’s a commission for the State Capitol. I want to represent California in a new way. The new California. All of her people, waking to a new century.” He paused. “Would you care to see what I’ve begun?”

“I’d love it.”

He led me to the back wall and pulled a cord, revealing from behind a curtain a series of three huge panels, eight feet high and ten feet long, in various stages of completion. He led me along, pointing out places and people, the snowy Cascades, the southern deserts, the industry and commerce, and the great bay of San Francisco, its fleets of ships and flower-studded slopes and bustling thoroughfares.

“This is beautiful.” I paused. I followed with my finger his representation of Market Street. “But you’ve forgotten something.”

“Really?” He seemed interested, leaning toward the painting first, and then turning to me, puzzled.

“You’ve left out the cruelty.”

I heard the sharp intake of breath from Miss Everts. I felt Mr. Gable’s eyes on me.

I didn’t care. “You’ve left out the alleys in Chinatown. The bawdy houses in the Barbary Coast. Did you mean to leave them out?”

“Kula.” Miss Everts’s tone was sharp.

“No, Phillipa, she’s quite right. I shall make amends for it, shall I?”

We exchanged a glance, and he gave me another slight bow. “I believe I know where to place you in this work. I would like to make new sketches. Would you be willing to return?”

I nodded.

 

In the hallway at her house, Miss Everts handed me an envelope with twenty-five dollars. Twenty-five dollars! For one hour’s work, if you could call it that. Why, twenty-five dollars was a fortune for so little effort.

“Your comments were quite forward,” she said.

I knew they were. I didn’t know what came over me. Why should I care about the lives of these girls, these unfortunates—what did they mean to me? I’d been looking after myself for long enough, and all I wanted was freedom from what I’d seen as my own slavery. All I wanted was to free my pa so that we could then make a life for ourselves. And a life for me with a rich husband and a high station and pretty things all around. What did the lives of these girls—the ones behind the bars—matter to me?

They mattered. They did. I would never forget their eyes, their thin fingers. Oh, I still wanted a decent life for myself, but maybe I could have everything I’d always wanted, and more besides. Maybe I could have something more, something larger than even my dreams.

“But it was also quite right that you spoke up,” Miss Everts murmured, her words an echo to my thoughts. Her steel eyes met mine. I squared my shoulders. “Now. On Thursday night, you will have to pretend you know nothing of that side of life in San Francisco. You will have to put on a show. Can you do that?”

I nodded, once.

“Only a little while longer. That’s all. Then you’ll understand. Then I’m confident you’ll be able to help your father. It will all come out right.” She turned to remove her hat and left me fingering the envelope.

Chapter
TWENTY-TWO

April 12, 1906

 

 

 

 

THE WEATHER CLEARED AT LAST, AS A BRISK, STINGING wind blew in from the ocean, blustering all those rainy clouds off to the east to make way for a robin’s-egg-blue sky behind. By noon on Thursday the sun threw glinty sparks off all the rain-washed trees and streets and houses. By the afternoon the breeze had all but dried out the city.

Either way, change was in the wind. On that Thursday it was time for me to play my part and attend the Henderson party, the first social affair of my life.

On that same Thursday my pa would stand trial, far away in Montana. I had to trust Miss Everts’s assertions that playing my role at the party would bring me closer to freeing my pa.

Dress, shoes, gloves, delicate underclothes all laid out across my bed for me.

Here was a thing I’d waited for all my life, had envied other girls for—a social occasion at which I was a guest and not a servant. And my mind was a whirl of mixed-up fears and longings and confusions. The butterflies in my stomach carried on so I couldn’t tell if it was excitement or nerves. I knew I’d see Will Henderson tonight, and yet I could not stop thinking of David Wong.

As Mei Lien helped me into my corsets, I thought I’d ask her. “How well do you know Mr. Wong?”

It seemed an innocent enough question. But maybe I’d asked it at the wrong time. Mei Lien was in the midst of tugging those laces. She gave a yank that nearly pulled me off my feet.

“Not know him,” she said. “Never see him. He never come here.”

“But he was here just the other . . .” I wheezed, and gave up as Mei Lien yanked again. It was all I could do to breathe, let alone pry further.

Jameson drove Miss Everts and me in the horseless—its bonnet pulled up snug against the breeze so we wouldn’t end up with hair like a rat’s nest—to the Henderson mansion.

My. Such a grand place. I’d seen the back entry; now we arrived in full splendor at the front. Unlike Miss Everts’s house, the mansion was made all of stone, white and gleaming in the electrics that flickered along the front. Horseless carriages and fancy traps drawn by well-groomed ponies lined the street up and down. Jameson had to pull around and leave us in the hands of the doormen, who guided us inside.

An orchestra played music in one corner. Along the wall sat a table spread with small packages—gifts for us guests to take home, Miss Everts whispered. Gifts for us!

I began to yank off my long kid gloves—dyed to match the dress—before Miss Everts stopped me. Even though they chafed my upper arms, it seemed I had to keep those gloves on all evening. I wished that I knew more about how this socializing was done. One thing was certain. I wouldn’t be slouching in that scarlet crepe dress. Thanks to the whalebone, my back was ramrod straight and my stomach tightly cinched. I didn’t think I’d be eating much, either.

Mr. Henderson greeted his guests at the entry to a room big enough for a small town. I shook his hand and made a little curtsy.

“Young Will is visiting with other guests,” Mr. Henderson said. Was he excusing his son or suggesting I leave him alone? I didn’t like the way Mr. Henderson looked at me. I was being inspected, his eyes looking me up and down. I almost thought he’d ask me to open my mouth so he could see my teeth.

As we moved away, I whispered to Miss Everts, “Where’s Mrs. Henderson?”

“Dead.”

A widower. Maybe that accounted for the examination. Still, I felt like an object, pure and simple.

Miss Everts and I made our way through the throng. Right and left I was introduced as her protégée, an artist’s model. All according to her plan. I remained silent through much of it, fearing I would give myself away by saying something foolish.

Thin-lipped matrons and their goggle-eyed husbands swirled through the room. A clutch of young women gathered in the chairs along one wall. Single men slipped in and out, stealing to the back terrace for what I presumed was a puff on a cigar. Inside grew warmer and warmer due to the press of bodies.

The mansion stretched from one exquisite room to the next, all furnished in grand high style. The central hallway featured a stair that curved up and then split in the middle, and I imagined going up one side and down the other, like the grand entrance a lady could make. Statues stood rank on rank along the hallways to either side of the stairway. I wandered off from Miss Everts’s side and peeked into this room and that for at least half an hour until she found me again and tugged me back into the ballroom.