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THE FOLLOWING EVENING BEATA dressed very carefully. She disliked black. She hardly ever wore it from choice. Her coloring was delicately fair, serene. Her skin was still flawless and the odd wisps of white in her hair were lost in the natural pale gold. Lilacs and soft grays, the other accepted colors of later mourning, looked marvelous on her. Black was such a harsh color, or more correctly, lack of color, but it was still too soon to discard it.
And of course she must be modest, everything should be high to the throat, and with little in the way of ornament to relieve it. Ingram would be amused, if he could see her. He had taken pride in her beauty, even if he seldom commented on it without some barb. There was always a worm in the apple.
What did beauty matter anyway? It was the mind and the soul that were the real person.
She had had her dressmaker create two or three black dresses. They had been prepared a few months ago, when Ingram was first taken to the hospital. Now she selected the least unflattering, and her maid assisted her to fasten it. It was right up almost to the chin—as if she were smitten with grief! What did it say? That she was a hypocrite.
The waist was tight and the skirt full. It was going to be uncomfortable. Still, what did that matter? She must stand up straight, walk with her head high, or that neck would choke her.
She should wear jet earrings. Everybody did for mourning. Diamonds would look frivolous.
She thanked the maid, stood up from the dressing table stool, and walked across the room toward the door. Then she stopped in amazement. The reflection she saw in the mirror was startling. She looked fierce and lonely, but quite beautiful…all moonlight and shadow. The perfect widow. How absurd!
She never played games with arrivals. To be early inconvenienced people; to be late was rude. To arrive fashionably late in order to make a spectacular entrance with as many as possible of the other guests already there to notice was supremely arrogant, an affectation she deplored.
She arrived a few minutes after the hour, and was welcomed in the hall by Miriam. If Beata were winter, Miriam was blazing late autumn. Her hair was the color of the last leaves, her gown russet, mahogany, and black. But of course it was far lower cut, displaying the warmth of her skin and the fire in her topaz necklace. Her face had the same beauty and passion Beata remembered from long ago. Time had refined it, but left no visible blemish.
“Thank you,” she said to Beata immediately. “I don’t imagine you feel like going anywhere, but believe me, I really am happy to see you.” She turned to lead the way into the withdrawing room. Beata scarcely had time to notice the magnificence of the hall with its glorious chandelier blazing with light. The floor was not black and white as many marble floors were, but a delicate mixture of creams and soft earth colors that accentuated the deeper tones of the pilasters that framed the fireplace and the recesses on the walls to the side. The staircase, which occupied most of the central wall, was not dark wood but carved and rounded marble also.
“We have invited very few other guests,” Miriam went on. “Actually only Giles Finch from the university, and Lord Justice Walbrook, whom you must already know.”
“Only slightly,” Beata replied, trying to bring his face to mind.
“He is recently a widower.” Miriam opened the door to the withdrawing room. It was huge, with fireplaces at both ends and sufficient space to house two complete sets of furniture of the utmost comfort. The shades of autumn warmth and polished wood were complemented by the most startling touches of a bright color between blue and green, such as one might find in the tail of a peacock or in tropical seas. They glowed in velvet or satin cushions and in ornaments of glass in exquisite shapes—globes and spires and painted dishes.
It jolted in Beata’s mind memories of more than twenty years ago, before she had ever met Ingram. She had spent her earlier years in California, in San Francisco before there was gold discovered in the sand and pebble shores of the American River, before fever had gripped the minds of investors, adventurers, and exploiters from half the world.
She had been born in England, but when her mother died, her father had decided to follow his love of adventure and take her with him out to the west coast of America and the lands that then belonged to Mexico. Since returning to England, marrying Ingram, and settling down, she had almost forgotten some of the wilder things she had done in the past. Some she had forgotten by choice, and only with long and deliberate effort, things she spoke of to no one.
She remembered the early mission posts set up by the Franciscan monks after the first Spanish explorers landed on the coast. How Spanish the buildings were, full of columns or arcades. Even the names of them rolled off the tongue like the words of a song.
The current priests were Franciscan as well, and worked among the people of the nearby settlements. At nineteen she had fallen in love with one of them. She remembered his dark brown robes with the rope around his waist, and his gentle smile. Perhaps she was absurd, but his dedication had f
illed her with longing to feel just as deeply about something herself, anything.
Of course nothing had happened between them, but the ardent melancholy of her dreams lingered. She remembered standing in the hot sun talking to him, trying to think of something to say that he would think wise. She so badly wanted to impress him. If she closed her eyes now she could smell the dust and the water on the stone and the sharp astringent aroma of crushed herbs. At times when Ingram was hurting her, she had done so deliberately, trying to bring back the innocence she had felt then, the ritual words of forgiveness.
Then she and her father had gone north to San Francisco, to the cooler, bright light on the sea. That was just after the first gold had been found in the river. Her father had set up trade. The wealth, the new people had arrived so fast, he had worked every day and half the night just to keep up with it. He became rich. At that time it was still all good.
She had married—not well, but adequately. It didn’t do to be a single woman in those days, unless you were a schoolteacher, or something of the sort. She had had no wish for that, although looking back, she thought it would have been a fine calling. She wanted to taste life far more deeply than any children’s classroom could offer. How naïve! But marriage then was an unexplored land for her, full of hope. There had been good times and bad, probably like the marriages of most of the young women she had known.
Then her husband had been killed in a stupid gunfight over a gold claim. She became a respectable widow, and had no desire to marry again. Her father had been too busy to force the issue, but that was a subject she still would not ever revisit willingly.
She still had vivid memories of San Francisco as it grew almost overnight, like a mushroom in a rich meadow. She could remember walking down the street where her father’s emporium was and hearing the shouts of building workers, carpenters, roofers, men hauling timbers in horse-drawn wagons. New houses went up every day, and still it was nothing like enough, because more and more ships kept arriving.
Every morning she had drawn back the curtains to look out of her bedroom window with eager anticipation. Her father had always given her some luxuries, like curtains, a proper tin bath with feet, soft leather boots. Her memory was mixed with pleasure and pain, gratitude for all those small things that had mattered so much then. And then there had been the pain of how he changed, how he died.
People were a little mad with gold fever. There were always new ships in the bay, so many she could hardly see the bright water for their hulls jammed together and the forest of masts. They had crews from all over the earth bringing gold prospectors, gamblers, adventurers, profiteers, and men and women desperate for a new life.
She had befriended a few. She remembered Holly, plump and bright-eyed when she arrived. Months later she was thin, gaunt-faced, her skirts tucked up as she stood in the river endlessly digging and shifting through the pebbles, panning for gold. She and her husband lived on the riverbank, cooked on an open fire, slept on the ground. Beata never knew if they found anything.
More ships came into the bay. Too often their crews caught the gold fever as well and abandoned ship to go prospecting. The captains had to remain; they had no men to work the sails, or anything else. They came ashore, too, bringing with them anything they could use or sell. Some of the ships were even taken apart to use the precious timbers for building houses.
This was where Beata’s father had made his money, lots of it. She had tried to put it from her memory, but it came back now like an incoming tide. For Aaron and Miriam it was a far shorter time ago. For the guests, Finch and Walbrook, it was a land only of the imagination.
Beata spoke to Miriam now, in this gorgeous room, as if the time between had melted like snow, leaving only the small traces of one winter behind.
She began by admiring the room, which was easy to do. Then she noticed one of the paintings, and recognized the place.
