Thurston House Page 21

“Yes, I did, you little minx. You know, you’re a shocking child.” He attempted to glare at her as he took his seat beside her. “If anyone sees us, they’ll think I’m mad to let you do this.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Papa.” She patted his hand in a motherly fashion. “I’m a very good driver.”

  “And a very brazen girl, you little hussy.” But it was obvious how much he loved her, and a moment later she renewed her questions about his work. She had an ulterior motive and he knew it. “Yes, I did, and I know why you’re asking. And yes, we are going to San Francisco tomorrow. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Oh, yes, Papa!” She beamed at him and rounded a bend in the road without looking, almost turning over the coach as her father gasped and reached for the reins, but she corrected the problem swiftly and deftly herself and then smiled demurely at him as he roared with laughter.

  “You’re going to be the death of me yet, one way or another.” But that was something she didn’t like to hear, even in jest. Her face clouded over, as it always did, and he was sorry he had said it.

  “That’s not funny, Papa. You’re all I have, you know.” She always made him feel remorseful when he said something like that to her, and he tried to lighten the moment.

  “Then kindly attempt not to kill me with your driving.”

  “You know perfectly well I seldom make a mistake.” And as she said it, she rounded another corner, this time with surgical precision. She looked at him with glee. “That was better.”

  “Sabrina Thurston, you’re a monster.”

  She bowed politely from her seat. “Just like my father.” Except she wondered now and then if it was actually more like her mother … what had she been like?… whom had she resembled?… why did she die so young?… she had a thousand unanswered questions about the woman. There wasn’t a single portrait of her in their house, not a miniature, not a sketch, not a photograph, nothing. And her father had said only that she had died of influenza when Sabrina was a year old. Period. End of story. He said that he had loved her very much, that they had been married on Christmas Eve in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886, and that Sabrina had been born a year and a half later in May of 1888, and a year later, her mother had died, leaving him grief-stricken. He explained to her too that he had built Thurston House before marrying her mother, and now some fifteen years later, she knew that it was still the largest house in San Francisco, but it was a relic, a tomb, a place that she would enter “someday,” but not now, and not with him. And at times, as they drove through San Francisco, her curiosity almost overtook her. So much so that she had developed a plan, and the next time she went to town with him she was going to try it. “Are we still going to the city tomorrow, Papa?”

  “Yes, you little villain, we are. But I have meetings at the Nevada Bank all day, and you’ll have to keep yourself amused. In fact, I told Hannah that I didn’t think you should come with me this time”—she began to object before he even finished his sentence and he held up a hand for silence—“but I knew that that was exactly what you’d say, so I told her that for my own peace and quiet, I was taking you with me. You’ll have to make it up with your tutor next week, Sabrina. I won’t have you avoiding your lessons by running around with me.” For a moment he sounded stem, but he wasn’t really worried. She had always been an excellent student, and they both knew that she often learned more by being with him. Normally, he might even have offered to let her go to the bank with him, but a full day of meetings would be too much for her. “Take some books with you. You can study a little at the hotel, and we’ll go out when I get home. There’s a new play I thought you might like to see. I wrote and asked the bank president’s secretary to get tickets for us.” Sabrina clapped her hands and then grabbed at the reins again as they pulled into their own driveway and the horses slowed down.

  “That sounds lovely, Papa.” And she knew exactly what she was going to do when he was at his meetings. “And you can’t complain, I got you home safely.”

  He scowled at her and drew on his cigar. “The next time you take out my best coach, I would be grateful if you would be so kind as to ask me.” She jumped lightly to the ground with a smile, enjoying the pungent smell of his cigar.

  “Yes, sir.” And with that she bounded into the house, and greeted Hannah with a shout and the report that they were going to the city the next day.

  “I know, I know …” She clapped her hands over her ears. “Lower your voice. My God, you’re loud, girl. Your father don’t even need to send them fancy cables of his from the mine. You could just hang out the window and shout all the way to Philadelphia for him.”

  “Thank you, Hannah.” She curtsied teasingly, kissed the old woman’s leathery cheek, and raced up the stairs to her room to wash her hands before dinner. She was always spotlessly clean and instinctively well dressed without anyone saying anything to her. There was indeed something of Camille Beauchamp in her. And Hannah looked at her retreating back now and spoke to Jeremiah.

  “You’re going to have your hands full in a few years, Jeremiah.”

  He smiled at Hannah and hung up his coat. “She tells me that she’s going to live with me forever, and work for me at the mines.”

  “That’s a ladylike prospect.”

  “So I told her.” He sighed and followed Hannah into the kitchen. He still liked talking to her, they had been friends for more than thirty years, and in some ways she was his closest friend, and he was hers. And she adored Sabrina. “The truth is she’d be wonderful with the mine, it’s a damn shame she’s not a boy.” It was seldom that he said that.

  “Maybe she’ll marry some fine young man whom you can teach all you know, and you can leave it all to your grandkids.”

  “Maybe.” He wasn’t ready to think about that yet, and it would be years before Sabrina married. But on the other hand, he wasn’t getting any younger, and the year before he’d had a problem with his heart. It had terrified Sabrina when she had found him unconscious in his dressing room, but he was fine after that, and they had all tried to forget that it had happened. But the doctor reminded him often to slow down, a piece of advice that made Jeremiah smile. He wondered who would speed up to make up for his slowing down.

  “You’re getting old, Jeremiah. You’d best start to be thinking about your future”—she nodded her head in the direction of the stairs that led to Sabrina’s room—“and hers. You’re still hanging on to that house in town, ain’t you?”

  He smiled a sad half smile. “Yes. And I know you think I’m crazy, you always did. But I built it with love and I’ll give it to Sabrina with love. She can sell it if she wants. I don’t ever want her to turn to me and say ‘Why didn’t you save that for me, Papa?’ ”

  “What will she want with a house ten times bigger’n a barn, and in San Francisco to boot?”

  “You never know. I’m happy here. But maybe she’ll want to live in the city when she grows up. This way she’ll have that choice.” He fell silent and they both thought of Camille. She had never deserved all the kindness he had shown her, and he had never heard from her again, not a word, or a sign, or a letter. But he was still married to her legally anyway. Her father had written him a few times, apparently she went to live in Venice for a while, and then moved to Paris, and she had stayed with the man she had fled with, calling herself Countess and pretending to be married to him. They had no money, and France was having a hard winter and Orville Beauchamp had broken his resolve and went to see her. His wife had died, and Hubert had married a girl in Kentucky. And Jeremiah was determined never to let him see Sabrina. He wanted no reminder, no one who could possibly tell Sabrina something different from what he himself had told her for years. Orville Beauchamp had no one else. He was all alone now, and went to Paris to see his little girl, who was apparently living in squalid conditions in a house outside Paris, and she had given birth to a stillborn son, but when he attempted to bring her back to the States, she refused to go with him. He described her as ‘crazed by a passion I couldn�
��t understand. She clung to her worthless lover and refused to leave him.’ Jeremiah also read between the lines that she had begun drinking, and was probably playing with absinthe, but whatever her problems, they were no longer his. Orville Beauchamp had died a few years later, and Camille had never come home. Jeremiah had no further news after that, and he was relieved not to. He wanted no contact with her to taint Sabrina’s life, no chance that someone would tell her her mother hadn’t died of influenza when he said she had. For Jeremiah and Sabrina, the door was closed, and Camille would never pass through it again.

  There had never been anyone like her in his life again, never anyone he cared for as much, or behaved as foolishly for, never anyone, except of course Sabrina. She was the love of his life now, his reason for living. And there were others who kept his senses alive, when that was what he wanted. There was a house of women in San Francisco that he visited, when Sabrina wasn’t with him, and a teacher in St. Helena he had dinner with from time to time. Mary Ellen had long since married and had moved to Santa Rosa, and whenever Amelia Goodheart came to town to see her daughter, Jeremiah and Sabrina delighted in seeing her. She was as marvelous as ever and Sabrina adored her.

  Though she was well into her fifties now, she was still the most dazzling person Sabrina had ever seen, and she came to San Francisco once a year to visit her daughter and grandchildren. There were six of them and she had brought them all to St. Helena once to visit Jeremiah and Sabrina. Sabrina loved her more than any woman she had known. There was a gentleness and a warmth to her, and at the same time a brilliance and a style that delighted Sabrina. She always brought the most extravagantly beautiful clothes with her, and jewelry that took Sabrina’s breath away.

  “She’s the loveliest woman in the world, isn’t she, Papa?” Sabrina had said in awe, and her father smiled. He still thought so too and there were times when he regretted not insisting she marry him that first time on the train to Atlanta. It would have been a mad thing to do, but as it turned out, no madder than marrying Camille Beauchamp in Atlanta. In fact, years after she was gone, on a trip to New York with Sabrina he had asked Amelia to marry him again and she had ever so gently turned him down.

  “How can I, Jeremiah? I’m too old.…” She had been fifty then. “I’m set in my ways, I have my life here in New York … my home.…” For her, he would have opened up Thurston House again, and so he told her, but she was firm in her resolve to remain unmarried, and in the end he suspected that she had been right. They each had their separate lives, their children, their homes. It was too late to bring it all together under one roof, and she would never have been happy living away from New York. It was the center of her existence. But he saw her each year when she came to San Francisco to visit, and once or twice a year when he went to New York on business. In fact, unbeknownst to Sabrina, the last time he had stayed with her.

  “At our age, Jeremiah, what harm is there? Who will speak badly of us, except to whisper in admiration that we still have this much passion left,” she had giggled like a girl, “and you can’t get me pregnant.” It had been a glorious two weeks in her home, the happiest he remembered, and when he left, he gave her an exquisite sapphire brooch and choker with a diamond clasp, and on the back an inscription that made her roar with laughter, “To Amelia, with passion, J.T.” “What will my children say when they divide up my jewels, Jeremiah?”

  “That you were obviously a very passionate woman.”

  “That’s not a bad thing.” She had escorted him to the train, and this time it was she who stood on the platform, waving a huge sable muff in his direction, as the train pulled out slowly. She was wearing a magnificently cut red coat trimmed in sable with a matching hat, and he had never seen a more beautiful woman. Had he met her on the train again, he would have been just as taken with her as he had been before he met Camille. “… If I still had the strength …” he had told her before he left, but they both knew he did. He had proved it night after night during his visit to New York, and returned to San Francisco feeling renewed, and in extraordinarily good humor.

  “What’re you smiling about, Jeremiah?” He had been thinking about her over his coffee, as Hannah prepared dinner. “That woman in New York, I’ll bet you a nickel.”

  “Then you’d win.” He smiled at Hannah. He thought of Amelia often, and was still as excited as a schoolboy before her visits. But she wasn’t due in San Francisco for another six months, and he wasn’t going to New York for three or four, so it would be a long wait until he saw her.

  “She’s a fine-looking woman, I’ll grant you that.” In fact, remarkably, Hannah not only approved of her, she liked her. Amelia had won her heart when she rolled up her sleeves and helped cook dinner for Jeremiah, Sabrina, and her six grandchildren. In fact she had cooked most of the dinner, and it was better than Hannah liked to admit … flashing her diamonds as she worked, her hands flying, with an apron over her fancy New York dress, “and she didn’t even care when she spilled gravy down the front.” She had won Hannah’s admiration forever.

  “She’s more than that, Hannah. She’s a very special person.”

  “You shoulda married her, Jeremiah.” She looked reproachfully at him from the stove and he shrugged.

  “Maybe. Too late for that now. We have our lives, our children. We’re comfortable like this.” Hannah nodded, there was truth in that too. The time for foolishness was past. It was Sabrina’s turn now, or would be soon, and she only hoped that she chose wisely, more wisely than her father.

  “You going to the city tomorrow for sure?”

  He nodded. “Just for two days.”

  “Mind that Sabrina doesn’t get into mischief while you’re working.” She still thought the girl should stay in St. Helena.

  “I told her the same myself. But you know Sabrina.” He fully expected to see her driving a borrowed coach down Market Street one day, brandishing the whip, and grinning broadly as she waved at him and flew by. The image made him laugh as he went to wash his hands before dinner.

  19

  Jeremiah and Sabrina left for the city early the next morning, taking the train to Napa, as they always did now, and from thence the familiar steamer that Sabrina loved. It had always seemed like an adventure to her to take the boat to San Francisco, and she teased and laughed and amused her father all the way into the city, which they reached by nightfall. The journey was much shorter than it had been years before, and they shared a late dinner in the dining room of the Palace Hotel, as Jeremiah watched her. She was going to be a beautiful girl one day, when she grew up. And even at thirteen she was already as tall as most of the women in the room, and taller than some. But she still had a childlike air about her, except when she furrowed her delicate brow and began to talk to him about business. One would have thought that he was talking to a business associate, had one only listened to them and not seen who Jeremiah’s companion was. Right now she was concerned about a mite that seemed to be affecting the vines in his vineyards. He was amused at her seriousness as he watched her expound her theories to him, but the vineyards had never been his primary concern. The mines held his attention more closely and she scolded him for it now.

  “The vineyards are just as important to us, Papa. They’ll make as much money as your mines one day, mark my words.” She had said the same thing to Dan Richfield the month before and he had laughed at her. There were indeed vineyards in the valley that were beginning to make money, but it would never compare with mining for profit, everyone knew that, and Jeremiah reminded her of that now. “Years from now that may not be true. Look at the fine wines they produce in France, and all of our vines come from there.”

  “Just watch out you don’t turn into a little tippler on me, young lady. You seem mighty interested in those grapes.” He was teasing her but she wasn’t amused and she glared at him with all the seriousness of her thirteen years.

  “You should be more interested in them too.”

  “I’ll leave that to you, since you’re s
o interested in the vineyards.” It was a little less unseemly than letting her interest herself in the mines, although it was a shame not to let her do that too. She had a remarkable head for business.

  And he was reminded of it again the next day when they shared breakfast in his room, before he left for his meetings with the president of the Nevada Bank. Sabrina spent the entire time quizzing him about the business he was going to do, and it was obvious that she wished she could go along, but she seemed less wistful than she usually did about such things.

  “And what are you going to do today, little one?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked pensively out the window as she spoke, so he couldn’t see her eyes. He knew her too well and would suspect some mischief afoot. “I brought some books with me. I thought I might read this afternoon.”

  He stared at her for a moment and then glanced at his watch. “If I had time to think about that, it would probably worry me, young lady. Either you’re sick, or you’re lying to me. But you’re in luck, I’m late and I have to get going.” She smiled sweetly at him and kissed his cheek.

  “See you tonight, Papa.”

  “Be a good girl.” He patted her shoulder and then squeezed it gently. “And stay out of trouble, Sabrina Thurston.”

  “Papa!” She sounded shocked as she escorted him to the door. “I always do!”

  “Ha!” he roared as he went out the door, and she spun around on one heel, with a grin. She was free for the entire day, and she knew just exactly what she was going to do. She had brought a little money with her from Napa, and her father always gave her enough to have lunch and take care of herself while he was out. Now she stuffed her coin purse in the pocket of her gray skirt and she changed a pink blouse for an old cotton middy she’d brought with her. She changed into a pair of old boots that she wouldn’t mind getting scuffed, and half an hour later she was comfortably seated in a carriage on her way to Nob Hill. She had given the driver the address, and when they arrived, she paid her fare and stood breathlessly outside the front gate, feeling her heart pound with excitement. It was almost too exciting to believe, and she had waited months, no, years, for this moment. She didn’t know what she would do once she climbed the gate. She had no real intention of going inside. Just being on the grounds would be enough. But she was inexorably drawn to this house that her father had built for her mother.