Part 50 (1/2)

Lady Victoria and Isabel came forth, and they all made their way rapidly down to n.o.b Hill. The stair was more rickety than ever, and many of the older houses they pa.s.sed looked badly shaken within, if not without--every door was open. The floors were covered with plaster; more often than not the furniture and ornaments, and even mantels, were ma.s.sed in an indistinguishable heap. The Hofers' door, like the rest, was open, and they saw that the spiral marble stair was a pile of glittering splinters and that the pictures had been turned completely round or flung across the hall. Mrs. Hofer had been too eager to reign on n.o.b Hill to wait for a new foundation. Several of the servants were sitting on the steps, and informed Gwynne that all the family, including the children, had gone out in two automobiles an hour before, to see the city.

They walked down the hill, stopped many times by returning citizens anxious to impart information. The Italians on Telegraph Hill were mad with terror: ”they were no Californians,” in accents of bitter contempt.

Portsmouth Square was full of Chinamen laughing at the women that had run there from the hotels without shoes on their feet, and only an opera or automobile cloak over their night-clothes. Even more amused were those Oriental philosophers at the white scared faces of the prisoners clinging to the bars of the jail. n.o.body could tell how many people had been killed by falling roofs and walls, although the wildest stories were current, but so far there were more doctors and nurses attending to business than patients to care for. Down in the Mechanics' Fair Building, which had been converted into an emergency hospital, they were working as methodically, with book and pencil, as well as with bandage and instrument, as if earthquake and fire were a part of the daily routine. ”Almost everybody was quiet, but there were sights down there, Oh, Lord, there were sights!” One man b.u.t.ton-holed Gwynne, as he had b.u.t.ton-holed others on his ascent, and informed him that he had ”got down there” just in time to see two hundred and fifty thousand dollars go up in smoke. ”Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it has taken me twenty years to make it!” he reiterated, with an excited bitterness that was almost hilarious. He did not ask Gwynne if he had lost anything, but pa.s.sed on to b.u.t.ton-hole the next man and pour out his tale of individual protest; upon him the earthquake and fire had made a personal attack.

”How strange it seems to be in the midst of so much _life_--mere physical life,” said Lady Victoria. ”A whole city tense and helpless! I wonder that man could think of himself. We are all mere fragments of one great whole.”

Her eyes were still restless and bright, her mask had fallen, and with it, curiously, many of her years. For a time, at least, the heavy burden of self had slipped from her tired spirit.

Few stood in the doorways, or even gardens; nearly every one not exploring the city was in the middle of the street. In the boarding-house district, half-way down the hill, the corners were crowded with people watching the fires, although as many more had gone to the heights to command a better view. Some were still dazed and white with terror, a few looked distraught; more than one man was as nervous as his wife. But the majority were calm, although they wore an expression of being ready for anything. A few, mindful of the California tradition, were joking and relating the absurdities of their experience.

There was no question that the shock had been far greater in the city than in and about Rosewater, and both Isabel and Gwynne, to Lady Victoria's disgust, expressed a regret that they ”had missed anything.”

But it was possible that the convulsion had been even worse elsewhere.

St. Peter was built over a known fault, and San Francisco was not; and indeed news was already coming into the city of coast hamlets that had literally been torn to pieces. Other wild rumors were flying about. New York had disappeared. Chicago had been swept by a tidal wave. As the telegraph wires were all down no one attempted to account for these items of news, but so much had already happened that if the eastern hemisphere had dropped to the level of Atlantis, no one would have stared.

When they reached Union Square they found it so crowded that they hardly could make their way. Not only the guests of the St. Francis Hotel, that flanked it, had taken refuge in the open, but those of many other hotels. A few of the men were still in pyjamas, and of the women in dressing-gown or opera-cloak, caught up as they fled. But the majority had ventured back and dressed themselves, so that the ”sights” were not what they may have been an hour earlier. But no one seemed to care for shelter; at all events they liked companions.h.i.+p in misery, although few besides the foreign members of the Grand Opera Company were voluble.

Gwynne and Victoria and Isabel saw many of their acquaintance, not all recognizable at first, for even those that had returned to their rooms to dress themselves had taken little pains with their hair. One woman of great beauty, however, whose husband's hat surmounted her flowing locks, was just informing Isabel that she had reached that frame of mind where vanity was pressing apprehension to the wall, when there was an explosive sound, another as of rus.h.i.+ng wings, the crowd stumbled against one another, and the large buildings about the square rocked. Again there was an exodus, and some clutching and gasping; but only a few of the refugees from the burning district, sitting on the furniture they had dragged with them, screamed. It was over in a few seconds, and then Gwynne pressed his women gently out of the crowd and down, through the tide of refugees, to Market Street. They walked in the middle of the street, for the sidewalks in this business district, where many of the buildings were of brick or stone, were littered with the debris of fallen cornice and shattered windows and chimneys. Market Street was kept open for automobiles, and the crossing refugees; the spectators stood on the edge of the northern pavement only, and in some cases on the top of bricks that represented an outer wall. A number of the refugees were marching towards the ferries, although a curtain of smoke bounded the lower end of Market Street. Others were moving stolidly towards the western hills. All were burdened with pillow-cases packed with clothing, or dragged trunks, cribs, baby-carriages, in which was a strange a.s.sortment of utensils, children, and household pets. The sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe of these unwieldy objects could be heard in a monotonous reiteration above the distant roar and crackling of the flames. Behind the tide of humanity rolling in from the burning district, at the end of every street, was a vista of flame and smoke. And the dark clouds were mounting higher and higher, lit with a million golden sparks. The temperature was tropical.

People were already beginning to talk in phrases: The doomed city. The fire zone. Razed to the ground. Brains were not active, and any one energetic enough to put a few expressive words together was sure of disciples. Here, more than elsewhere, it was apparent that the army was in possession of the city. Mounted officers rode slowly up and down, and at the mouth of each of those dusky and menacing avenues was a guard with drawn bayonets. They permitted the unfortunate to emerge, but few to enter. In spite of the audible energy of the fire, the slow tramp of the refugees, the sc.r.a.ping of their furniture on the ill-paved streets, the city was extraordinarily silent. People scarcely spoke above a mutter. There was no shouting of orders. Even the children were not whimpering, the tawdry women were not hysterical, not a parrot raised his voice nor a dog whined. Faces were dazed, blank, imprinted with a stolid determination to get to a place of safety and keep families and belongings together. The present moment was as much as they could grasp, and truth to tell there was a good deal in it.

Some of the sightseers speculated mildly--those that owned no property in this district--as to what would happen if the wind drove the fire much farther north. The opposite side of the street was lined with some of the greatest business houses in the city. The Palace Hotel looked like the rock of Gibraltar. Not a vase in its court had been overturned, some one said. The other buildings were of stone, brick, concrete. They had stood the earthquake; even the great square tower of the Call Building, unsupported by other buildings, had barely lost a cornice. Was it possible that the fire would take them? But the fire was rolling nearer every moment, for it met little to resist it but wood. Down by East Street several of the Market Street buildings were blazing. But no doubt the marines would extinguish those, and surely that sea of flame would break and retreat before the wall of rock opposite; and behind it were other structures of stone and brick and concrete. Now and then a refugee, permitting his attention to be drawn from his own little affairs, told that the back windows of these buildings were already hung with wet blankets, and that people stood by the cisterns on the roofs, hose in hand. But the South of Market Street fraternity shook a united head, and when the new phrase, The doomed city, was wafted into its dull ears, it adopted it promptly, and marched on muttering it over and over.

XI

Already a number of automobiles had flown by, some filled with people anxious to leave town before it might be too late, but most of them containing surgeons and their a.s.sistants, or relays of firemen, alone permitted to enter the burning district; or prominent men bound for the citizens' meeting to be held in the cellar of the old jail in Portsmouth Square, a site upon which their ancestors had gambled and Jenny Lind had sung. Gwynne, who was already beginning to chafe at inaction, to feel the excited blood shake his pulses, was revolving excuses to send his mother and Isabel home, when an automobile came charging down Market Street at a terrific rate of speed. From some distance he recognized Hofer sitting beside the chauffeur. Not in the least considering his act, he stepped in front of the crowd and made a signal. Hofer responded with a shout, the automobile slowed slightly, two men stood up and clutched Gwynne, dragging him into the machine. Gwynne's long legs flew backward as if he were plunging head first over an embankment, and he had only time to right himself, turn and shout ”Go home,” before the automobile had regained its speed and was out of sight.

Victoria turned to Isabel with wide eyes. ”It looked like kidnapping!”

she exclaimed.

”I fancy they merely want him at the citizens' meeting. No doubt they want every steady clear brain they can muster. I think I had better go out and see what has become of Paula and the children. Will you come?”

Victoria shook her head. ”This is all too interesting,” she said. ”I must see more of it, and I am no longer afraid. When I am tired I will go home. Shall we agree to meet there for luncheon?”

Isabel nodded and started up Stockton Street alone, intending to take the first car that led in her sister's direction. Some of the trolley wires were down, but no doubt others were uninjured, and the cable-cars had always seemed to her as fixed as fate. She could no more conceive of their system being dislocated for more than an hour at a time than of the city burning. So far she was merely interested, and although sorry for the unfortunate poor, felt that the fates had conspired to do the city a service in cleaning out so objectionable a quarter. Of the millions invested in that district she did not think, but sighed as she thought of South Park and Rincon Hill. Still, they would have been obliterated in the course of events and before long; and as for the fire itself it would be stopped by the great walls of masonry on and near Market Street. She looked eastward down the deserted streets towards the bay, and although the vista there also was closed with flame and smoke, the fires were far away, and the marines were fighting it.

She pa.s.sed many people ascending and descending, some with pressed lips, others arguing with a certain fettered excitement against the pessimistic att.i.tude. After she left the business blocks the sidewalks again were free of debris, although she could see the ruin within. The disreputable section of this street, known as the ”Red light district,”

was crowded with women, to whose rescue or comfort no man would seem to have come. Isabel looked at them with an irresistible curiosity, but no sense of repulsion; she even stopped and answered their eager questions as best she could. She was possessed with the idea that there was but one person in San Francisco that day, no matter what the optical delusion. She was not at all dazed, but utterly impersonal.

Even in the blazing suns.h.i.+ne most of these women were handsome, and young. But all a.s.surance was gone; when not strained and haggard from the recent and the menacing terror, they looked indescribably forlorn.

But they were very quiet. Isabel heard but one excited cry, and something of its thrill ran along her own nerves. ”My G.o.d! The wind is blowing from the southeast and it's blowing strong!”

Isabel glanced back. It seemed to her that the great suspended waves of smoke, red-lined, were rolling with more energy, and they certainly were inclining west as well as north. She wondered, with some irritation, why the wind blew from the southeast when the first of the trades should be roaring in from the Pacific. A strong steady west wind and the fire would be blown towards the bay, where it could be extinguished from the marine boats. Every time a gust ruffled her hair she shook her head irritably, wondering that she had ever loved the wind.

She reached California Street. The cars were not running. Far down where they should have started she saw nothing but smoke. Nor was there the usual rumble indicating that the cable was at work, a sound which was among the first of her memories. She turned west and climbed the almost perpendicular blocks to the summit of n.o.b Hill. The beautiful ma.s.sive pile of white stone, to be known when finished as Fairmont Hotel, and which had already done so much to redeem the city from its architectural madness, looked as serene and unravaged as if it crowned a hill of ancient Athens; but so, for that matter, did its neighbors, two as faultless in their way; the others appearing even more outrageous than usual, inasmuch as they had had their opportunity to disappear and failed to take advantage of it.

From the summit of the hill Isabel gave a hasty glance southward, then walked rapidly west; the fires seemed to cover far more ground than when she had first looked at them from Russian Hill, an hour ago.

After she had tripped over two large paving-stones that had met in an upward bulge, she took more note of detail. Some of the houses had private cisterns, and their roofs and walls were still quite wet.