The Gray Dawn

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Gray Dawn

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During these busy years the Sherwoods had quite methodically continued to
lead their customary lives. He read his morning paper on the veranda of the
Bella Union, talked his leisurely politics, drove his horses, and in the
evening attended to his business. She drove abroad, received her men
friends, gave them impartial advice and help in their difficulties, dressed
well, and carried on a life of many small activities. The Sherwoods were
always an attractive looking and imposing couple, whenever they appeared.
About three or four times a year they drove into the residential part of
town and made a half-dozen formal calls--on the Keiths among others.
Probably their lives were more nearly ordered on a routine than those of
any other people in the new city.

One afternoon Sherwood came in at the usual hour, deposited his high hat
carefully on the table, flicked the dust off his boots, and remarked
casually:

"Patsy, I've sold the business."

Mrs. Sherwood was pinning on her hat. She stopped short, her hand halfway
to her head, as though turned to marble. After a moment she asked in a
quick, stifled voice:

"What do you mean?"

"Well," replied Sherwood, continuing methodically to readjust his dress,
"I've been thinking for some time that times were changing. The gambling
business is losing tone. I don't see the same class of people I used to
see. Public sentiment--of the very best people, I mean--is drifting away
from it. In the future, in my judgment, it's not going to pay as it ought.
I've been thinking these things for some time. So when a bona fide
purchaser came along----"

But he got no further. With a smothered cry she let her arms drop. Her
customary poise had vanished. She flung herself on him, laughing, crying,
gasping.

"Why, Patsy! Patsy!" he cried, patting her small, sleek head as it pressed
against his shoulder. "What is it, dearie? Tell me? What's wrong?"

He was vastly perturbed and anxious, for she was not at all the type that
loses control readily.

"Nothing! nothing!" she gasped. "I'll be all right in a minute. Don't mind
me. Just let me alone. Only you told me so suddenly----"

"Don't you want me to sell?" he asked, utterly bewildered.

Gradually he gathered from her disjointed exclamations that this was just
the one thing she had wanted, secretly, for years; the thing she had
schooled herself not to hope for; the last thing in the world she had
expected. And to his astonishment he gathered further that now she was free
she could take her place with the other women----

"But I hadn't the slightest idea you wanted to!" he interrupted at this
point. "You've never showed any signs of paying the slightest attention to
them before!"

She was drying her eyes, and looking a little happily foolish.

"I knew better than to give them a chance to snub me," she told him. "Now
I'm respectable."

But at this Sherwood reared his crest.

"Respectable!" he snorted, "What do you mean? Haven't you always been
respectable? I'd like to see anybody who would hint--"

"You're a dear, but you're a man," she broke in more calmly. "Don't you
know that a gambler's wife isn't respectable--in their sense of the word?"

"But every mother's son of them gambles!" cried Sherwood. "It's a perfectly
legal and legitimate occupation!"

"The men do; we'd always get along if it was only a question of the men.
But the women make distinctions--"

"Look here!" he broke out wrathfully. "There's Dick Blatchford mixed up in
dirty work for dirty money I wouldn't lay my fingers on; and Terry, or
Brannan, or McGowan, or all the rest of the boodling, land-grabbing,
pettifogging crew! Why, if I made my living or spare cash the way that gang
of pirates and cutthroats do I'd carry a pair of handcuffs for myself.
Honest! Respectable! I've got no kick on their methods; it's, none of my
business. But their wives are all right. I don't see it!"

"It's all names, I acknowledge," she soothed, "just names, I attach no more
weight to them than you do. Don't you suppose I'd have said something if I
had thought you were doing anything wrong? But that's the way they play the
game, and it is their game. If we play it we've got to accept their rules.
Don't you see?"

"Well, it's a mighty poor game," grumbled Sherwood, "and they strike me as
an exceptionally stupid lot of women. They'd drive me to drink. I don't see
what you want to bother with them for."

"They are," she agreed. "They won't amuse me much--you couldn't understand
--it's just the _idea_ of it--But I won't be looked down on, even by my
inferiors! Tell me, Jack, when we sell the business are we going to be
wealthy, will we have plenty of money?"

A hurt look came into his fine, straightforward eyes.

"Haven't you always had all you wanted, Patsy?" he inquired.

"Of course I have, you old goose! But I want to know what our resources are
before I plan my campaign."

"Going in up to your neck, are you?" he commented ruefully.

She nodded. Her eyes were bright, and a spot of colour glowed in either
cheek.

"Course I am. What can I spend?"

"You can have whatever you want."

"That's too vague, too indefinite. How rich--or poor--are we going to be?"

"We'll be rich enough."

"Very?"

"Well--yes, very. The business has paid, investments have panned out. I got
a good cash purchase price."

"How much can I spend a year?" she persisted. "It doesn't matter whether
it's much or little, but I want to know."

"What a mercenary little creature!" he cried facetiously, then sobered as
he saw by the expression of her face that this, apparently trivial thing
meant a great deal to her. "Oh, fifty thousand or so won't cripple us."

"A year?" she breathed, awed.

He nodded.

"Oh!" she cried rapidly. "Then we'll have a house--a house built for our
very own selves, our very own plans!"

"Why, I thought we were very comfortable here!" he protested, a little
dismayed. "Haven't we room enough? I'll make Rebinot cut a door----"

"No! no! no! a house of my own!" She was on fire with excitement, walking
restlessly up and down. He watched her a moment or so. His slower
imagination was kindling. He was beginning to grasp the symbolism of it,
what it meant to her, the release of long-pent secret desires. As she
passed him, he seized her and drew her gently to his knee.

"Patsy!" he cried contritely, "I didn't realize! I didn't guess you weren't
perfectly contented here!"

She brushed his cheek with hers.

"Of course you didn't," she reassured him.

"If you'd the slightest----"

She threw her head back proudly, her breast swelled.

"I married you to lead your life. Jack, whatever it was," she told him, "to
be your _help_mate."

"You're the game little sportsman in this town!" he cried. "And if you want
to make those flub-dubs crawl, by God you sail in! I'll back you!"

Ten minutes later she asked him:

"What are you going to do, yourself, Jack? Somehow, I can't imagine you
idle."

"Well," said Sherwood, "the boys are organizing a stock exchange, and it
struck me that it might be a good idea if I went into that."

She began to laugh softly, in affectionate amusement.

"Stop it!" he commanded indignantly. "I know that laugh, What have I done
now?"

"I was just thinking what a nice, _respectable_ gambler you are going to be
now," she said, "It's in your blood, Jack, and I love it--but it's funny!"

XXXII

But now, at the very sources, the full flood of the somewhat turbid tide of
prosperity was beginning to fail. The ebb had not yet reached the civic
consciousness. It would have required a philosopher, and a detached
philosopher at that, to have connected cause and effect, to have forecast
the inevitable trend of events. If there were any philosophers they were
not detached! Nobody had discovered the simple truth that extravagance,
graft, waste, cost money; and that the money must come from somewhere.
Realization on its property and taxes were the twin sources of the city's
revenues. The property was now about all sold or swindled away. Remained
the taxes. And it is a self-evident truth that people will pay high taxes
cheerfully only so long as they themselves are making plenty of money
easily.

Up to this period such had been the case. Prices had been high, wages had
been high, opportunities had been many. Enormous profits had been the rule.
Everybody had invariably made money. These conditions upset the mental
balance of the shipping merchants back East. A madness seemed to obsess
them for sending goods to California. The mere rumour of a want or a lack
was answered by immense shipments of that particular commodity. The first
cargo to arrive supplied the want; all the rest simply broke the market. It
was a gamble as to who should get there first. The immediate and
picturesque consequence was a fleet of beautiful clipper ships, built like
racing yachts, with long clean lines and snowy sails. They made
extraordinarily fast voyages, and they promptly condemned to death the old-
fashioned, slow freight carriers. Indeed, four-hundred odd of these
actually rotted at anchor in the bay; it had not paid to move them! Some of
these clippers gained vast reputations: the _Flying Cloud_, the _White
Squall_, the _Typhoon_, the _Trade Wind_. The markets were continually in a
state of glut with goods sold at auction. This condition tightened the
money market, which in turn reacted on other branches of industry. Again,
the great fires of '49-'53 resulted in the erection of too many fireproof
buildings. Storage was needed, and rentals were high, so everybody plunged
on storehouses. By '54 many hundreds of them stood vacant, representing
loss. At that period the first abundance of the placers began to fall off.

Agriculture was beginning to be undertaken seriously; and while this would
be an ultimate source of wealth, its immediate effect was to diminish the
demand for imported foodstuffs--another blow to a purely mercantile city.

All this made for excitement, some immediate gain, but a sure ultimate
loss. Markets fluctuated wildly. A ship in sight threw operators into a
fever. No one knew what she might be carrying, or how she would, affect
prices. It was, therefore, positively unsafe to keep-many goods is stock.
Quick, immediate sales were the rule. And failures were many.

Now in these middle fifties the pinch was beginning at last to itself felt.
Everybody was a little vague about it all, and nobody had gone so far as to
formulate his dissatisfactions or his remedies. The tangible result was the
formation of two as yet inchoate elements, representing the extremes of
ideas and of interests.

The first of these elements--that can with equal justice be called the
parasitic or the middleman class--consisted in itself of several sorts of
people. The nucleus was a small, intellectually honest set of men who
believed, in the law _per se_, in the sacredness of formal institutions in
the constitution, and in the subservience of the individual to the
institution. This was temperamental. Behind them were many much larger
groups of those needed either the interpretation or the protection of the
law for their private interests. These were of all sorts from honest
literal-minded dealers, through shady contractors and operators, down to
grafters and the very lowest type of strong-arm bullies. The tone and
respectability came from the first, the practical results from the second.
The first class had a genuine intellectual contempt for men whose minds
could not see--or at least would not accept--the same subtleties that it
did. Its members were fond of such phrases as the "lawless mob," or the
"subversion of time-honoured institutions." This small, subjectively
honest, conservative, specially trained element must not be forgotten in
the final estimate of what later came to be known as the "Law and Order"
party.

On the other hand was first of all an equally small nucleus of thinking men
whose respect for the law, merely as law, was not so profound; men who
were, reluctantly, willing to admit that when law completely broke down in
encompassing justice, individualism was justified in stepping in. Behind
them was a vast body of more or less unthinking men who recognized the
indubitable facts that the law had become a farce, that justice had
degenerated to tricks, and who were, therefore, instinctively against law,
lawyers, and everybody who had anything to do with them.

Strangely enough this made for lawlessness on both sides. Those who
believed in "law and order" committed crime or misdemeanour or mere
injustice, sure of escape through some technicality. Those who distrusted
courts administered justice illegally with their own hands! Nor was this
merely in theory. San Francisco at that time was undoubtedly the most
corrupt and lawless city in the world. Street shootings, duels, robberies,
ballot-box stuffing, bribery, all the crimes traceable to a supine police
and venal or technical courts were actually so commonplace as to command
but two or three lines in the daily papers. Justice was completely
smothered under technicalities and delays.

The situation would have been intolerable to any people less busy than the
people of that time. For political corruption in a vigorous body politic is
not, as pessimists would have us believer an indication of incipient decay,
but only an indication that a busy people are willing to pay that price to
be left alone, to be relieved of the administration of their public
affairs, When they get less busy, or the price in corruption becomes too
high, then they refuse to pay. The price Francisco was paying becoming very
high, not only in money, but in other and spiritual things. She could still
afford to pay it; but at the least pressure she would no longer afford it.
Then she would act.

XXXIII

In the second year of his residence Keith had a minor adventure that
shifted a portion of his activities to other fields. He was in attendance
at a council meeting, following the interests of certain clients. The
evening was warm, the proceedings dull. Opened windows let in the sounds
from the Plaza and a night air that occasionally flared the smoky lamps.
The clerk's voice was droning away at some routine when the outer door
opened and a most extraordinary quartette entered the chamber. Three of
these were the ordinary, ragged, discouraged, emaciated, diseased "bums,"
only too common in that city. In early California a man either succeeded or
he failed into a dark abyss of complete discouragement; the new
civilization had little use for weaklings. The fourth man can be no better
described than in the words of a chronicler of the period. Says the worthy
diarist:

"He was a man of medium stature, slender but very graceful, with almost
effeminate hands and feet--the former scrupulously kept, the latter neatly
shod--and with a certain air of fragility; very soft blue eyes with sleepy
lids; a classically correct nose; short upper lip; rosy, moist lips. His
clothes: a claret-coloured coat, neither dress nor frock, but mixed of both
fashions, with a velvet collar and brass buttons; a black vest, double
breasted; iron-gray pantaloons; fresh, well-starched, and very fine linen;
plain black cravat, negligently tied; a cambric handkerchief; and dark kid
gloves. He wore gold spectacles, and carried a malacca cane."

Instead of slipping into the seats provided for spectators, this striking
individual marched boldly to the open space before the mayor's chair,
followed, shamefaced and shambling, by the three bums.

"Your honours and gentlemen," he cried in a clear, ringing voice, to the
scandal of the interrupted legislators, "we are very sick and hungry and
helpless and wretched. If somebody does not do something for us, we shall
die; and that would be bad, considering how far we have come, and how hard
it was to get here, and how short a time we have been here, and that we
have not had a fair chance. All we ask is a fair chance, and we say again,
upon our honour, gentlemen, if somebody does not do something for us, we
shall die, or we shall be setting fire to the town first and cutting all
our throats."

He stood leaning lightly against his malacca cane, surveying them through
his sleepy blue eyes. The first astonishment over, they took up a
collection, after the customary careless, generous fashion. The young man
saluted with his cane, and herded his three exhibits out.

Keith, much struck, followed them, overtaking the quartette on the street.

"My name is Keith," he said, "I should like to make your acquaintance."

"Mine is Krafft," replied the unknown, "and I am delighted to accept your
proffer."

He said nothing more until he had marshalled his charges, into a cheap
eating-house, ordered and paid for a supper, and divided the remainder of
the amount collected. Then he dusted his fingers daintily with a fine
handkerchief, and sauntered out into the street, swinging his malacca cane.

"Incidents of that sort restore one's faith in the generosity of our
people," Keith remarked, in order to say something.

"Nobody has been generous," denied Krafft categorically, "and no particular
good has been accomplished. Filled their bellies for this evening; given
them a place to sleep for this night; that's all."

"That's something," ventured Keith. "It helps."

"The only way to help we have not undertaken. We have done nothing toward
finding out why there are such creatures--in a place like this. That's the
only way to help them: find out why they are, and then remove the why."

This commonplace of modern charity was then a brand-new thought. Keith had
never heard it expressed, and he was much interested.

"I suppose there are always the weak and the useless," he said vaguely.

"If those men were wholly weak and useless, how did they get out here?"
countered Krafft. "To compass such a journey takes a certain energy, a
certain sum of money, a certain fund of hope. The money goes, the energy
drains, the hope fades. Why?"

They stopped at a corner.

"I live just near here," said Krafft. "If you will honour me."

He led the way down a narrow dark alley, along which they had fairly to
grope their way. It debouched, however, into the forgotten centre of the
square. All the edges had been built close with brick stores, warehouses,
and office buildings. But in the very middle had been left a waste piece of
ground, occupied only by a garden and a low one-room abode, with a veranda
and a red-tiled roof. Under the moonlight and the black shadows from the
modern buildings it slept amid its bright flowers with the ancient air of
another world. Krafft turned a key and lighted a lamp. Keith found himself
in a small, neat room, with heavy beams, fireplace, and deep embrasured
windows. An iron bed, two chairs, a table, a screen, a shelf of books, and
a wardrobe were its sole furnishings. In the fireplace had been laid, but
not lighted, a fire of sagebrush roots.

Krafft touched a match to the roots, which instantly leaped into eager and
aromatic flames. From a shelf he took a new clay pipe which he handed to
Keith.

"Tobacco is in that jar," he said.

He himself filled and lighted a big porcelain pipe with wexelwood stem.

"What would you do about it?" asked Keith, continuing the discussion.

"What would you most want, if you were those poor men?" retorted Krafft,
blowing a huge cloud.

Keith laughed.

"Drink, food, clothes, bed," he stated succinctly.

"And work wherewith to get them," supplemented Krafft.

Keith laughed again.

"Not if I know their sort! Work is the one thing they _don't_ want."

Krafft leaned forward, and tapped the table with one of his long
forefingers,

"The lazy part of them, the earthen part of them, the dross of them--yes,
perhaps. But let us concede to them a spark that smoulders, way down deep
within them--a spark of which they think they are ashamed, which they do
not themselves realize the existence of except occasionally. What is the
deep need of them? It is to feel that they are still of use, that they
amount to something, that they are men. That more than mere food and
warmth. Is it not so?"

"I believe you're right," said Keith, impressed.

"Then," said Krafft triumphantly, "it _is_ work they want, work that is
useful and worth paying for."

"But there's plenty of work to be had," objected Keith, after a moment. "In
fact, there's more work in this town than there are men to do it."

"True, But it is the hard work these men have failed at. It is too hard.
They try; they are discouraged; they fall again, and perhaps they never get
up. Such men must be led, must be watched, must be stopped within their
strength."

"Who's there to do that sort of dry nursing of bums?" demanded Keith with a
half laugh.

"He who would help," said Krafft quietly.

They smoked for some time in silence; then Keith arose to go.

"It is a big idea; it requires thought," said he ruminativeiy. "You are a
recent arrival, Mr. Krafft? What is your line of activity?"

The slight, elegant little man smiled.

"I am one of the--what is it you called, them--bums of whom we talk. I try
to do what is within my power, within my strength-lest I, too, become
discouraged, lest I, too, fall again--and not get up."

"I have not seen you about anywhere," said Keith, puzzled by this speech.

"I do not go anywhere; I should be eaten. You do not understand me, and I
am a poor host to talk in riddles. I am a philosopher, not a man of action;
egotist, not an egoist; one who cannot swim in your strong waters. As I
said, one of that same class whom your bounty helped this evening."

"Good Lord, man!" cried Keith, looking about the little room. "You're not
in want?"

Krafft laughed gently.

"In your sense, no. I have my meals. Enough of me. Go, and think of what I
say."

Keith did so, and the result was the first organized charity in San
Francisco. Since 1849 men had always been exceptionally generous in
responding to appeals for money. Huge sums could easily be raised at any
time. Hospitals and almshouses dated from the first. But having given,
these pioneers invariably forgot. The erection of the buildings cost more
than they should, and management being venal, conditions soon became
disgraceful. Alms reached the professional pauper. The miner or immigrant,
diseased, discouraged, out of luck, more often died--either actually or
morally.

So much had this first interview caught his interest that Keith dropped in
on his new acquaintance quite often. It soon became evident that Krafft
lived in what might be called decent poverty. The one fine rig-out in which
he made his public appearances was most carefully preserved. Indoors he
always promptly assumed a dressing-gown, a skull cap with a gold tassel,
and his great porcelain pipe. His meals he cooked for himself. Never did he
leave his house until about three o'clock. Then, spick and span,
exquisitely appointed, he sauntered forth swinging his malacca cane. After
a promenade of several hours he returned again to his dressing-gown, his
porcelain pipe, and his books. Keith enjoyed hugely his detached,
reflective, philosophical, spectator-of-life conversation. They talked on
many subjects besides sociology. At his fourth visit Krafft made a
suggestion.

"You shall come with me and see," said he.

He led the way to the water front under Telegraph Hill, the newest and the
most squalid part of town. The shallow water was in slow process of being
filled in by sand from the grading uptown and with all sorts of
miscellaneous debris, Pending solidity, this sketchy real estate swarmed
with squatters. There were lots sunken below the street level, filled with
stagnant water, discarded garments, old boxes, ashes, and rubbish; houses
huddled closely together with stale water beneath; there were muddy alleys;
murderous cheap saloons; cheaper gambling joints; rickety, sagging
tenements. The people corresponded to their habitations. All the low
elements lurked here, the thugs, strong-arm men, the hold-ups, the heelers,
the weaklings, the bums, the diseased. In ordinary times they here dwelt in
a twilight existence; but at periods of excitement--as when the city
burned--they swarmed out like rats for plunder.

Krafft held his way steadily to the wharves. There he left the causeway and
descended to the level of the beach. Beneath the pilings, and above the
high-water mark, was a little hut. It was not over six feet square,
constructed of all sorts of old pieces of boxes, scraps of tin, or remnants
of canvas. Overhead rumbled continuously the heavy drays, shaking down,
through the cracks the dust of the roadway. Against one outside wall of
this crazy structure an old man sat, chair tilted in the sun. Even the
chair was a curiosity, miraculously held together by wires. The man was
very old, and very feeble, his knotted hands clasping a short, black clay
pipe. Inside the hut Keith, saw a rough bunk on which lay jumbled a quilt
and a piece of canvas.

"Well, John," greeted Krafft cheerfully, "I've brought a friend to see
you."

The old man turned on Keith a twinkling blue eye.

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