Victorian San Francisco Stories (Volume 2) by M. Louisa Locke

Author:M. Louisa Locke
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: M. Louisa Locke
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 3

Friday, early evening, October 7, 1881

O’Malley’s, Beale Street

* * *

MOST FRIDAYS, which was Kathleen’s usual night off, Patrick would pick her up at the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse around seven. By this time, dinner at the boardinghouse would have been prepared and served, so little Tilly only had to handle helping Mrs. O’Rourke with the clean-up on her own. This schedule also left Patrick and Kathleen plenty of time to go out to dinner and go dancing afterwards before heading home. She tried not to stay out past eleven on those nights; otherwise she was too tired the next morning when she still had to rise at five-thirty to get the oven going. However, this evening she’d asked permission to leave at four-thirty in the afternoon in order to meet Patrick at the O’Malleys at five.

Kathleen liked October in San Francisco––the warm days, the cold nights, and festivities of All Hallow’s Eve. She didn’t even mind the rain, which often blew in from the ocean. This afternoon, with the sun still above the dunes to the west, the walk down the three and a half blocks to Market had been so pleasant that she decided to walk the rest of the way to Beale Street. She always enjoyed the bustle of Market, liked peering in the shop windows, watching the carriages as they pulled into the center courtyard of the Palace Hotel. She even enjoyed inspecting the well-dressed men going down Montgomery to the Nevada Bank, wondering if any of them were one of the Silver Kings. Kathleen knew that her mistress, Mrs. Dawson, didn’t think much of the men like James Flood who made their millions in silver mining. She said they weren’t honest and treated their workers poorly. But Kathleen knew that Mr. Flood and his three partners had started out poor, and it made her proud to think that fellow Irishmen had done so well. She’d even heard rumors that James Flood’s wife, Mary, had started out a parlor maid!

However, when she turned off Market, down Beale Street, she felt an uneasy chill. Looking around, she realized the large, two-story factories that lined Fremont and First Street, the next streets over from Beale, were blocking the setting sun. But the chill was more than physical. The men lounging in shadowed saloon doorways stared at her and made rude comments, a small knot of boys and girls planted in the middle of the sidewalk refused to move, forcing her to step onto the street to pass, and two old grandmothers checking out the bin of potatoes in front of a grocer’s looked at her with undisguised suspicion as she passed by.

She suddenly felt conspicuous in her navy-checked polonaise, which was the Dawsons’ last year’s Christmas present to her, the nicest dress she’d ever owned. She usually reserved the outfit for Sunday mass, but Patrick had told her that after their meeting with Mrs. O’Malley he wanted to take her to one of the better restaurants in North Beach that he’d heard about.

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