In The Face Of Death (2 page)

CALIFORNIA

EIGHT YEARS LATER

Excerpts from the journal of Madelaine de Montalia.

San Francisco, 18 May, 1855

At last! And only four days later than anticipated when we left the mountains. Had I been willing to travel on the river from Sacramento, we would have arrived on the date anticipated. . . . If all goes as I have requested, six cases of my native earth will be in one of the warehouses, waiting for me, which is just as well as I have now got down to less than a single chest of it.

My escort have brought me to a very proper boarding house on Sacramento Street, and gone on themselves to suitable lodgings. A Missus Imogene Mullinton, a highly respectable widow from Vermont, owns this place and takes only reputable, single women. She has given me a suite of three rooms at the top of the house, her best, and for it I am to pay $75 a month, or any fraction of a month; a very high price for such accommodations, but I have discovered that everything in San Francisco is expensive. The suite will do until I can arrange to rent a house for three or four months. In a week or so I must begin my hunt for one, after I have got my bearings here.

. . . I have the records of my studies to occupy me, and I welcome the opportunity to review and organize what I have learned of the Indians I have met these last seven years. There is so much I have to assess. This respite will provide me the opportunity to decide how I may best structure my book on what I have learned on my journey west. . . .

Tomorrow I will have to pay off my escort, which will require a trip to the bank to establish my credit there, and to begin making my acquaintance with the city. Doubtless the excellent Missus Mullinton can direct me to Lucas and Turner; the documents from their Saint Louis offices should be sufficient
bona fides
to satisfy them.

At the corner of Jackson and Montgomery, the new Lucas and Turner building was one of the most impressive in the burgeoning city; located near the shore of the bay and the many long wharves that bristled far out into the water, the bank was well situated to sense the thriving financial pulse of San Francisco.

Madelaine, wearing the one good morning dress she had left from her long travels, stepped out of the hackney cab and made her way through the jostling crowds on the wooden sidewalks to the bank itself. As she stepped inside, she felt both relief and regret at being once again back in the world of commerce, progress, and good society. Holding her valise firmly, she avoided the tellers’ cages and instead approached the nearest of the desks, saying, across the balustraded barrier, “Pardon me, but will you be kind enough to direct me to the senior officer of the bank?”

The man at the desk looked up sharply. “Have you an appointment, Ma’am?” he asked, noticing her French accent with faint disapproval, and showing a lack of interest that Madelaine disliked, though she concealed it well enough. He was hardly more than twenty-two or -three and sported a dashing moustache at variance with his sober garments.

“No, I am just arrived in San Francisco,” she said, and opened her valise, taking out a sheaf of documents, her manner determined; she did not want to deal with so officious an underling as this fellow. “I am Madelaine de Montalia. As you can see from this” —she offered him one of the folded sheets of paper— “I have a considerable sum on deposit with your Saint Louis offices, and I require the attention of your senior officer at his earliest convenience.”

The secretary took the letter and read it, his manner turning from indulgent to impressed as he reviewed the figures; he frowned as he read through them a second time, as if he was not convinced of what he saw. Folding the letter with care, he rose and belatedly gave Madelaine a show of respect he had lacked earlier. “Good gracious, Madame de Montalia. It is an unexpected pleasure to welcome you to Lucas and Turner.”

“Thank you,” said Madelaine with a fine, aristocratic nod she had perfected in her childhood. “Now, will you please show me to the senior officer? You may use those documents to introduce me, if that is necessary.”

“Of course, of course,” he said, so mellifluously that Madelaine had an urge to box his ears for such obsequiousness. He opened the little gate that separated the desks from the rest of the floor, and stood aside for her as she went through, her head up, the deep green taffeta of her morning dress rustling as she moved. “If you will allow me to go ahead and. . . .” He made a gesture indicating a smoothing of the way.

She sighed. “If that is necessary.”

He made an apologetic grimace. “Well, you see, there are very few wealthy young women alone in San Francisco. And you were not expected.” Again he gestured to express his concern.

“No doubt,” she said, and halted in front of a large door of polished oak. While the secretary rapped, Madelaine examined her brooch watch, thinking she would be fortunate to be out of the bank much before noon.

“Come in,” came the crisp order from a sharp, husky voice.

The secretary made a slight bow to Madelaine, then stepped into the office, discreetly closing the door behind him, only to emerge a few minutes later, all smiles and half-bows, to open the door wide for her in order to usher her into the oak-paneled office of the senior officer of the bank.

The man who rose behind the orderly desk surprised Madelaine a little; he was younger than she had expected—no more than his mid-thirties—sharp-featured, wiry and tall, with bright red hair and steel-colored eyes, and a pinched look about his mouth as if he were in constant discomfort. His dark suit was neat as a uniform and he greeted her with fastidious correctness. “William T. Sherman, senior officer of Lucas and Turner in San Francisco, at your service, Madame de Montalia.”

She shook his hand at once. “A pleasure, Mister Sherman,” she said, liking his decisive manner. “I hope you will be willing to help me establish an account here.”

His face did not change but a glint appeared in his eyes. “Certainly.” He signaled to the secretary. “Jenkins, leave us to it. And don’t close the door.”

Madelaine saw that the secretary was flustered. “But I thought—” he said.

“I will handle the opening of this account. Given the size of this lady's resources, such an account would need my authorization in any case.” He came around the end of his desk not only to bring a chair for Madelaine, but to hurry Jenkins out of his office. He carried one of the Queen Anne chairs to a place directly across the desk from his, and held it for Madelaine. “Madame?”

As she sat down, Madelaine smiled up at Sherman. “Thank you,” she said, and noticed a quick frown flicker across his face.

Taking his place behind the desk once more, Sherman spread out two of the letters in her packets of documents on the wide expanse of leather-edged blotter. “I see you deposited ninety-five thousand pounds sterling in the Saint Louis office of this bank in 1848. The most recent accounting, from a year ago, shows your balance only slightly reduced.” He regarded her with curiosity. “That is a considerable fortune, Madame. And odd that it should be in pounds sterling, not francs.”

“I inherited most of it,” she said, not quite truthfully, for in the last century she had been able to increase her wealth far beyond what her father had amassed. “And I have lived in London for more than ten years before I came here. Much of my money is in England.” She made no mention of the funds she had in France, Italy and Switzerland.

“And you have not squandered it, it would seem. Very prudent. Unusual, you will permit me to say, in a young woman.” He looked at her with increasing interest. “What do you want me to do for you? How much were you planning to transfer to this branch? In dollars?”

“I would think that twenty-five thousand would be sufficient,” she said. “In dollars.”

He coughed once. “Yes; I should think so. More than sufficient. Unless you are determined to cut a dash in society, you will find the sum ample. That’s five times my annual salary.” He confided this with chuckle and a scowl. “Very well, Madame,” he went on more affably. “I will put the transaction in order. And in the meantime, you will be free to draw on funds up to . . . shall we say, five thousand dollars?”

Madelaine nodded. “That would be quite satisfactory, since you are able to contrive to live on it for a year, though prices here are much higher than I anticipated. Still, I should be able to practice good economy.”

“You certainly have until now, given the state of your account.” He cocked his head, a speculative light in his eyes, his long fingers moving restlessly as if searching for a pencil or a cigar. “Unless these funds have only recently passed to your control? In that case I would recommend you seek an able advisor, to guide you in the matters of investment and management. . . .”

“Mister Sherman—” she interrupted, only to be cut off.

“Forgive me. None of my business. But I can’t help but wonder how it comes that you want twenty-five thousand now and have spent less than half of that in the last seven years?” He braced his elbows on the desk and leaned forward, his chin propped on his joined hands.

“My studies did not require it,” she answered, determined not to be affronted by his directness.

“Ah, you were at school,” he said, his expression lightening. He slapped his hands on the blotter and sat back, his questions answered to his satisfaction.

“Something of the sort,” she responded, in a manner she thought was almost worthy of Saint-Germain.

San Francisco, 23 May 1855

Missus Mullinton has given me the address of an excellent dressmaker and the first of my new clothes should be delivered tomorrow. There are six other ensembles on order, to be delivered in three weeks. Once I have settled in, I will need to order more.
. . .
I suppose it is worth getting back into corsets for the pleasure of wearing silk again. . . .

There is a private concert tomorrow afternoon that Missus Mullinton wishes to attend and has asked me to accompany her. Now that she knows I have money and some social position, she is determined to make the most of them, convinced I will add to her consequence in the town. I might as well go with her, for if I am going to remain here for three or four months, I will need to enlarge my acquaintances or risk speculation and gossip, which would do me no good at all. So I will hear the concert and indulge in whatever entertainments are thought proper by San Francisco society, and learn what I can of the lands to the south of here. And there may be another advantage in such actions. Perhaps I will find someone who is to my liking, whom I please, who is willing to be very, very discreet. In a place like this, lapses are not easily forgiven by anyone. . . .

Prices for everything are very high here. Some say it is the wealth of the gold rush, making people careless of money, and others say it is because it is so costly bringing goods overland or sending them by sea, around the Horn. . . .

My chests are at the Jas. Banner Warehouse near where Columbus and Montgomery streets converge. I must make arrangements to retrieve them soon, not only because I am low on my native earth, but because the costs for storing the chests are outrageous. I had rather keep them in the safe at Lucas and Turner for such sums. . . .

The house on Jackson Street was a fine, ambitious pile, made of local redwood timber and newly painted a deep green color, unlike many of its paler neighbors, with the trim in yellow, to contrast the white lace curtains in most of the windows. It faced the street squarely with an Italianate portico of Corinthian columns, set back from the roadway and approached by a half-moon drive.

When Missus Mullinton alighted from the rented carriage, she fussed with her bonnet before stepping aside for her guest to join her.

Madelaine de Montalia had donned her new dress, an afternoon frock suitable for early suppers and garden parties, and as such, unexceptionable for this concert. It was a soft shade of lavender, with bared shoulders framed by a double row of ruched silk. The bodice was fitted and came to a point in the front over a skirt of three tiers of ruched silk spread over moderate crinolines. For jewelry, she wore a necklace of pearls and amethysts; her coffee-colored hair was gathered in a knot, with two long locks allowed to escape and fall on her shoulders. An embroidered shawl was draped over her arms and in one hand she held a beaded reticule. As she descended from the carriage, Madelaine silently cursed the enveloping skirts.

A Mexican servant, whose angular features revealed a significant admixture of Indian blood, ushered them into the house, explaining in heavily accented English that the host and hostess were in the ballroom to receive their guests, as he bowed in the direction they should go.

“We are not the first, are we?” asked Missus Mullinton, afraid that she had committed an intolerable gaffe.

“Oh, no. There are others here already,” the servant assured the two women with a respectful lowering of his eyes.

“Thank goodness,” said Missus Mullinton in an undervoice to Madelaine as they went along the corridor to the rear of the house. “It would not do to have it said we came early.”

“Whyever not?” asked Madelaine, who had become more punctual as she grew older.

“My dear Madame,” said Missus Mullinton in shock, “for women to arrive while only the host and hostess are present smacks of impropriety, particularly since you are new in town.” Her long, plain face took on an expression of shock as she considered this outrage.

“Then it would be better to arrive late?” asked Madelaine, trying to determine what Missus Mullinton sought to achieve.

“Heavens, no, for then it would seem that we did not appreciate the invitation,” said Missus Mullinton. “I am very pleased that we have made our arrival so well.” She raised her voice as she stepped into the ballroom antechamber. “You may find our entertainments here sadly dull, Madame, after the excitements of London.”

“Possibly,” said Madelaine. “But as I have not been in London for eight years, I think what you offer here will suit me very well.” She smiled at the couple approaching them, he of medium height and bristling grey hair, she a very pretty woman with a deep bosom and fair hair, in a fashionable dull red afternoon dress that did not entirely become her; she was at least a decade her husband’s junior.