| Show the lucky lawn laurences lawrences eiffes ces M by kathleen norris by Hat histen norris ferriu icsis CHAPTER I 1 the lawrence family although in the best beit sense of the word pioneers had not come to the golden west vest by mearis means of covered wagons tavy had find deft their boston moo moorings tings ilie the gentlefolk of means and lei leisure unit that they were in the year of our lord 1819 nod had sailed galled elegantly rio for Buenos atres aires and around the horn they had bad loitered in valparaiso and in lima for some weeks things searlla jeas lly in a leisurely day and had in due time come up the stormy coast of and had dropped anchor in thi the opalescent harbor of peaceful terba buena for san francisco had been still familiarly known as yerba buena then add the blue waters of the bay had bad lapped the strand at montgomery streets street the globe trotters magnificent philip lawrence and his hia rail frail indian bhail ed pretty wife had ad remained on the ship for a few days for the settlement on shore prom promised ased small comfort for tourists early in their second week however they had been obliged to seek acs ics lodging 0 Ilig ashore abl this was for two reasons one n e important one ridiculous the important re reason ason was that an heir belr holthe to the lawrences Lawren ces was about to be born the absurd reason wai was th that at some preposterous person had discovered gold or had bad pretended to at a place called sutter creek ant and that efer everyone jobe tn in yerba buena had promptly lost his senses philip and abigail lawrence naturally did not lose their senses they were rich anyway they were above this andl undignified edified scramble for lucre philip had an income of three thousand a year and fattier father owned five sailing vessels including this very abby baldwin tn in which they badmale had made their wonderful honeymoon trip cut but the sailors and indeed the officials of the abby baldwin had biad felt differently they were not above acquiring fortunes and they had bad instantly deserted the ship and ann made de for the gold region the rumor of gold spreading like prairie flie fire e between breakfast and the noon dinner had found the ship emptied by sunset philip nod and abigail cad bad signaled a chinese crab catcher and in his little shallop lop with stained brown sails he had bad rowed them and their carpet bags ashore they had bad gone one to the ant ans a quaint looking adobe house bouse on a i hill bill with an upper balcony and shutters there were no windows but there were tents of 0 mosquito netting over the bed and the bare floors were clean downstairs was merely a level af div arcades earthen floored and I 1 smelling bf bc spilled wine where men lounged on benches and where the frenchwoman herself tended the bar but the upstairs room had been com abigail had eaten a shore share meal of fish stew dumplings dumpling dump lings 3 fresh soft black figs soar broad bread and thin wi wine with some appetite toils tl ais 0 would O uld d do 6 for alisi the present she had fiad arild s bild bifone but one vituld could not live quite like a d sa savage affer all and immedi k breal breakfast fast tomorrow philip must find a really I 1 nice place and a nurse it not then they would have to goback go back t ro the ship so much roual tor for philips benefit but wheal he had bad gone out after supper abigail had felt very low spirited indeed they had been eleven months getting so far and the baby waldue was due la in a few weeks time perhaps it would be weeks before they could get a crew on the abby baldwin philip had returned hushed flushed distressed pas and annoyed from his search the next nevit morrO morning hg he be had returned flushed distressed and increasingly annoyed from the searches of the following days the was not only the best it appeared to bethe only possible place for abigail to stay and to contemplate a confinement there with the noise and drinking and the smell of w wind I 1 do b below stairs nod and with nobody ednold madame SIa dimie bouvier to attend her was madness desperate philip had rented a spanking spank lne team and a loose wheeled buggy and had bad begun to delre about the adjoining country looking for shelter pitr it had become obvious now that the crew was not going to return to the alibi aaby baldwin the ship swung rotting at her anchor tn in a dismal company ot of other deserted vessels and tb ue sun bun beat down upon their empty decks wee week k in and week out while the bides coffee and rope packed beneath slowly decayed abigail had covered passionate pages with the story of their adventures and had put the letters into the conval canvas nap flap of lii her trunks trunk under bodei the pasted picture ot of the lift little le girl with the rope of roses some day they would got get home again philip the sties and the baby and what a story they would have to tell I 1 meanwhile fifty all miles ei southeast of foggy yerba buena they had found refuge on a rancho MOW it was managed oy dy sit widows widow one senora castellazo castellazzo Cast ellazo who elivd farther south in another hachen da and was willing to rent this one to the strangers strang cra it had contained no furnishings when the law had moved in put but many trips to the abby baldwin had pretty well transformed the dismal place philip breathlessly grateful that somehow with the aid of 0 a mormon llor nion doctor from benicia anns nil the care of 0 two stolid walleyed wall eyed mexican women Abl All gall had actually brought forth a first born daughter had in made ade no complaints ile he had had cartel carted down wagon loads of chairs carpets china bed linen boors books all the persona ional possessions of himself and bis big bride A bridel bride 1 poor abigail had laughed forlornly an on the first anniversary of her wc day it had found it her er weak and weary stretched on a mat tra sa cs on the floor of one of the cool rooms with a burning august day bammer hammering jg awny away at the spread level acres of the rancho outside beside her had been annie sarah they had brought her in hot dusty dusky grapes and hot dusty figs and warm wine and finally dually goats milk to solace her in her ordeal except for foi that neither Ale mexican woman had volunteered anything they had watched the frightened doubtful breathless struggle apathetically until their oily brown hands bid bad actually grasped annie sarah after that they hail had seemed capable leable enough antiwan Ant an way iway it had been gotten over so somehow and abigail had been free to cry a little thinking of her room at home in hn an orderly shaded massachusetts chu village with mas lavender scented jane linen n an on the smooth bed roses la in a green glass vase on the bureau and the lace curtains blowing softly in and out of file opened upstairs windows lilacs Lilac ii trembling grass and grandpas grave la the graveyard and doughnuts and current jelly oh ob dear As a soon oon as ahe baby and the mother were well aion upon the road to normal living ph philip flip and abigail had seriously discussed going home then old oid senora castellano Castel layo had died and her sons had wished to dispose of the santa clara hacienda cleoda ha four hundred acres for hundred dollars philip had considered it a wise investment there was fruit some fruit there already there were sheep and cattle included in the sale price it if figs and grapes would would grow there why no not t other fruits peaches and pears ue he would take his wife and daughter back to new england gland lie he promised on the first suitable ship it would be a long hard bard trip for a woman with a baby but the journey across the plains would be worse and there was no further hope of the abby balilia Bal ilIn no upon consideration it had seemed to philip that this sunshiny sheltered flat fiat region well In inland larVI was the coming district and that by holdin holding gonto onto this property ten years fifteen years lie he and abigail could not tall fall to be a mong among the prosperous pioneers of the new world philip was one of the men who had shot dead the gold craze with an epigram a flash in the life pan Alean meanwhile while fann fanny lacy had been born look here young lady arent there any boys where you came from philip bid bad said half serious halt half teasing as he held his second daughter in his arms abigail had bad looked at lilal him anxiously but he had not been really angry only it had been rather trying that a flue fine ship had left tor for south america and eastern ports on the very next nest day she had delayed so long in san francisco harbor that philip and abl abi pall gail had really hoped to be able Is t sall ball on tier her but fanny lucy limy had anil delayed too and had unconsciously affected her parents destinies thereby for 1 or letters had gone to boston in that ship shifts and letters four months later somehow had struggled land in answer the respective families of 0 abigail and philip had find been perfectly delighted at their venture ven and wrote that they were certainly envious of the live dwellers in a country where there was no snow no thunderstorms and no poverty abigail wrote glowing gloning accounts of 0 her new life to the family at home site she and philip were going to build a really nice a ice frame house witt with bay windows a bathroom and a cupola every thin thang they touched prospered people called them the lucky lawrences Lawren ces and abigail had eight daughters and one son and the girls all married during the late sixties and early seen ties in a land in which women were still rare and prized san francisco grew like a mushrooms mushroom ant and philip might hate bare opened a thousand doors to great itic wealth alth had bad he 4 as he had rowed them and their carpet sags bags ashore been a man to see hut but he closed one on after the other with his fits own hand unit went blindly on in an infatuation ot of satisfaction alth his rolling acres his miles of fruit trees the growing family over which lie he ruled sti supreme preme some of the girls went ent east when they married some lived in san francisco or stockton some died it was not a salubrious day for pioneer women with one out of every seven dying in childbirth some were poor opening boardInghouses boarding houses scrimping in lonely crossroad villages cut but no one of them ever forgot that she was a lucky lawrence and belonged to a distinguished new Eu augland gland family they talked incessantly of the significant fact that the lav laurences lawrences Lawren bences ces had not come to california as pioneers oh dear not nol mother lawrence had come to san francisco harbor on her wedding trip on one of grandfather baldwins baldvins Bald wins own trading ships the one son patterson rat terson lawrence duly married too and lived in the house with which his parents had replaced the old adobe lin hacienda clenda abigail and after her her daugh ter ln in law in their fervor to encourage shade in that hot dry country plan planted teil everything upon which they could put their hands close to the house they did not foresee that the pampas painting grasi and the verbena trees the peppers anil and roses and evergreens ever greens would grow doser closer thicker darker every year eventually the pretentious old frame building with Its scallops of mill work and its bay windows its cupola and roof was caught tightly in dusty heavy leafage and the gurden garden filled ailed with mossy slippery patches where even in summer ho light fight crept in on the sickly ly grass for for thirty years the mouse house of lawrence had been in eclipse and the garden showed it IL acre by acre old philip lawrence and his fits son patterson rat terson had watched their fortunes decline the old pioneer of the yerba buena days lived to see the end of the century and the end of his own prosperity and died leavin leaving what remained in hands even less capable than his own for patterson lawrence was a poet who lived merely to gather worthless old books about him to dream over the painstaking penning of insignificant essays which were rarely printed and for or which he was never paid at forty he married a poets daughter who had bad been precariously existing for all her sixteen years upon bread water and the sonnets from the portuguese in a shanty on kincon hill editha before her early death brought to the house of lawrence two sons and three daug daughters liters sixteen when she married ten years later when arlel ariel was born she quietly happily expired to music as it were for patterson had been reading poetry to her the four older children by some miracle quiet and occupied down by the creek and arlel ariel in her mothers arms taking a fourth day view of life when death came she looks as it if she were listening lall it ashes going 1 1 to 1 be a great poet and make all our fortunes fortun esl 1 editha had bad said and one minute later she had slipped away leaving the prophecy to gild little arkels childhood TO lb BE CONTINUED |
