Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [133]
Francie knew it was the end. The play was over and the actors had to return to reality.
Darkness fell and the harbor outside glimmered with a thousand points of light. They were silent, thinking their own thoughts, until she could stand it no longer and she told him she must go.
He took her hand across the table, inspecting the wedding band sadly and said, “Francie, why won’t you let me replace this? I’ll come with you to San Francisco—”
She quickly shook her head, panicked at the thought of his being in San Francisco. She had to put him off. She shrugged her pretty shoulders and said coolly, “Maybe this was just a shipboard romance after all. In a few weeks you’ll have forgotten all about me. I’ll just be the woman you met on the S.S. Orient, outward bound from San Francisco for the South China Seas.”
“It’s no shipboard romance,” he said vehemently. “You know how I feel about you.”
They walked silently to the foyer and he kissed her hand lingeringly, then she left him. She trailed up the curved marble staircase, half-turning, her hand on the banister, to look at him. He was watching her and their eyes locked for a final moment, then she walked on up the stairs to her room.
Edward waited until she had disappeared from sight. Hunching his shoulders disconsolately, he thrust his hands deep in his pockets and strode out into Pedder Street. A movement in the shadows outside the hotel caught his eye and he glimpsed a ragged coolie staring at him, then he melted back into the shadows and was gone. It was odd, but he could have sworn it was the coolie from the Peak Tramway. Shrugging, he turned away, too wrapped in his own emotions to think any more of it. Still, at the back of his mind lingered the faint memory that the face he had seen was not Chinese, but Western.
The next morning as dawn broke Francie stepped into the Hong Kong Hotel’s white launch that would take her to the S.S. Aphrodite, anchored in the deep water bay. Pedder Wharf and the Praya were a seething mass of coolies and she would have been unable to pick out the one who watched her so intently as the launch sped across the bay to the waiting ship. But Sammy saw her and there was despair in his eyes; she was returning to San Francisco and he knew if he was ever to achieve his revenge he must go there too.
He turned quickly away and made his way through the streets to the docks where he had worked loading the crates onto the small lighters that carried them out to the cargo vessels in the bay. It was impossible for a poor coolie like him to join the crew of a legitimate cargo ship, but he would join up with one of the evil-smelling old trading junks no matter what port it took him to, and from there he would make his way halfway around the world, port by port, ship by ship, back to San Francisco and Francesca Harrison.
CHAPTER 29
Harry returned to the mansion on Nob Hill that Louisa had never even seen because she refused to leave her horses. He was tired of endless green English paddocks under a sheet of rain. He hoped he never saw another horse—except at the track, and he vowed never to look at another woman in britches. He wanted city streets under his feet again and more urban pleasures.
He decided to turn over a new leaf. He would go to work. The next day he rose at seven-thirty, bathed, dressed, breakfasted exceptionally well to fortify himself, and arrived at the new Harrison Building on Market Street promptly at nine.
The burgundy-uniformed doorman sprang to open the door as the Harrison Rolls came to a stop. He swept off his peaked cap and said, “Good morning, Mr. Harrison, sir. It’s good to see you back.”
Harry nodded distantly. He had rarely set foot in his own office building, but today he meant to make his presence felt. The double-height ground floor was given over to the Harrison Mercantile & Savings Bank’s main branch, though there were a dozen others scattered throughout California. It had