Part 53 (1/2)

”I shall not take anything. My laces are in the chiffonniere. I do not care to enter the house again.”

Isabel fetched her hat and jacket, for in spite of the fire it would be cold near the water; and a few moments later she stood on the edge of Green and Jones streets, on the other side of the hill, and watched Victoria and Anne, carrying a large clothes-basket between them, carefully making their way down to the level. They had a walk of some thirteen blocks before them, but the streets were full of people and of ruddy light.

She returned to the house and sat down on the porch, her eyes diverted from the fire for a moment by the picture of Sugihara, a pair of eye-gla.s.ses in front of his spectacles, comfortably established on a chair in the garden and reading by the lamp of the burning city. It was apparent that he had forgotten the 18th of April.

Isabel was alone but a moment. Stone burst in upon her. He had approached from behind, and came running down the hill.

”Isabel,” he cried. ”Get a bottle of champagne.”

”Champagne?”

”Yes. It may be six months before I see another--but that is a mere detail. I want to drink to the old city.”

Isabel, who liked him best in his dramatic moments, found a bottle of champagne. He knocked the head off, and filling the gla.s.s, went down to the first landing of the long narrow flight of steps. He held the gla.s.s high, pointing it first towards the middle of what had been Market Street, and was now a river of fire, then slowly s.h.i.+fting it along towards Kearney and Montgomery, as he named the restaurants that had given San Francisco no mean part of her fame.

”Here's to Zinkand's, Tait's, The Palace Grill! The Poodle Dog!

Marchand's! The Pup! Delmonico's! Coppa's! The Fas.h.i.+on! The Hotel de France! And here's to the c.o.c.ktail Route, the Tenderloin, and the Bohemian Club! And here's--” By this time his voice was dissolving, and the gla.s.s was describing eccentric curves. ”Here's to the old city, whose like will never be seen this side of h.e.l.l again. Pretty good imitation of heaven in spots, and everything you chose to look for, anyway. And the prettiest women, the best fellows, the greatest all-night life, the finest cooking, the wickedest climate. Here's to San Francisco--and d.a.m.n the bounder that calls her 'Frisco!”

Then he drank what was left of the contents of his gla.s.s and hastily refilled it. After he had finished the bottle luxuriously, he held out his hand to Isabel. ”Come along?” he asked. Then, as she shook her head: ”I must go back to Paula and the kids. The mattresses are out in the Park already. You are in no danger, what with the neighbors above and the patrol. Good luck to you,” and he vanished.

Isabel was alone at last, a state she had unconsciously wished for all day--it seemed a month since the morning. She sat down and leaned her elbows on the railing. Now that the sun was gone, the heavens, or the smoke obscuring them, were as red as that sea beneath which seemed to devour a house a minute as it rolled out towards the Mission and worked with all its might among the great business blocks between Market Street and Telegraph Hill. Some one had estimated that the columns of fire were seven miles high, and they certainly looked as if they had melted the very stars. Here and there was a play of blue flames, doubtless from some explosive substance, and when the dynamite shot the entrails from a house there was a gorgeous display of fireworks--the golden showers of sparks symbolizing the treasure that blackened and crumbled in dropping back to earth.

Before sitting down she had swept the distant hills with her field-gla.s.s and seen thousands of people lying not ten feet apart, like an exhausted army after battle. In that intense glare she could even study the eccentric positions of the fallen headstones and monuments in the old deserted cemeteries--Lone Mountain and Calvary. The cross on the lofty point of the bare hill behind the Catholic cemetery was red against the blackness of the west; and hundreds of weary mortals were huddled about its base. She tried to pity all those terrified uncomfortable creatures out there, but again the part they played in the greatest natural drama of modern times occurred to her, and she thought that should console them.

She wondered at her lack of sentimental regret at the destruction of her beloved city. But sentiment seemed a mere drop of insult to be cast into that ocean of calamity. Moreover, she was p.r.i.c.ked by a sense that it was a living sentient thing, that city, and was getting its just dues for the hearts it had devoured, the lives it had ruined, the merciless clutch it had kept upon so many that were made for better things. To its vice she gave little thought; she fancied it was not worse than other cities, if the truth were known; it was the picturesqueness of its methods that had held it in the limelight. But that it was one of the world's juggernauts, and the more cruel for its ever laughing beguiling face--of that there was no manner of doubt.

She wondered also that she was not in a fever of anxiety about Gwynne.

She had interrogated the sentry and been informed that the automobiles carrying dynamite dashed straight down to the fire line, often within; that a number of the soldiers, whose duty it was to lay the explosive, had been wounded and carried to the hospitals; that there was always the risk of a laden machine being suddenly surrounded by fire, for many houses were ignited by the sparks, and, in that wooden district down there, burned like tinder. Perhaps, like Victoria, she was too sure of his destiny; perhaps the picture of the future with him that she had conceived refused to alter its lines; or it may be that there was no place in the impersonal arrangement of her faculties the double catastrophe had effected, for fear; or for anything beyond the impressions of the moment. Her mind worked on mechanically. She was determined to remain as long as there was a possibility of Gwynne's returning for food or care. But the soul beneath was possessed by an absolute calm. She had the sense of having been taken into partners.h.i.+p with nature that morning; so sudden and personal had been that a.s.sault, from which she yet had issued unscathed. She felt that everything that would follow in life, excepting only her love for Gwynne, would be too petty to regard more seriously than the daily meals. Not that she had more than a bare mental appreciation of the phases of love at the moment; but it possessed her and it was infinite.

She sat motionless until nearly two o'clock and then went up to her room and lay down. It was not possible to sleep for more than a few moments at a time, for the detonations were almost incessant, but she forced herself to rest, not knowing what work the morrow might have in store.

When she finally rose and looked out of her window she saw that the fire was coming up the hills.

XV

She barely touched the breakfast prepared by the methodical Sugihara, who had already buried the silver, and cut the pictures from their frames, rolled, and tied them securely.

”It is only a question of a few hours,” he said. ”The dynamiting so far has done more harm than good. They take a house at a time instead of a block, and as it falls apart it ignites another on the opposite side of the street. The army doesn't like to interfere, and the mayor has too long been obsequious to capital. Mr. Clatt is still there with the launch behind him. I took him down his breakfast some time ago. He told me to tell you that he'd 'got his job cut out for him now, as the Dagos were beginning to leave Telegraph Hill.'”

Isabel had one or two moments of panic as she watched those waves of flame beat up the hill, and pictured them raging up the eastern slopes as well; but the panic pa.s.sed, for she knew that there were two exits still open. The heavens were black. A disk like a sealing-wax wafer indicated the position of the sun. The heat was terrific. The dynamiting was incessant, but it did not drown the roar and the eager furious crackle of the flames, the reverberating crash of falling walls. And the flames were the redder for the blackness above. Cinders were falling all over the heights, and the smoke burned the eyes.

”I shall feel like Casabianca presently, and rather ridiculous,” she reflected, ”but I shall stay till the last possible moment.” She went within and packed a pillow-case with Lady Victoria's laces and other portable objects of value and adornment, then gathered up similar belongings of her own, tied the case firmly about the neck, stood it where it could be s.n.a.t.c.hed in flight, and returned to the porch.

The boarding-house district, several blocks of large wooden houses, seemed literally to be swept from its foundations by those rus.h.i.+ng pillars of fire. The whole quarter was wiped out in an hour, and then the fire turned its attention to the higher slopes.

It played with them for a while, darting west and returning for a morsel at which it leaped with the agility of a living monster, went west again; then, its appet.i.te whetted and its greed insatiable, it started straight for n.o.b Hill. The soldiers drove the faithful servants out of the houses at the point of the bayonet. Then--in a moment--the familiar curtains were blowing out of the windows--shrivelled to a crisp and pursued by the red rage behind.

Sugihara did not go through the form of cooking luncheon. He knew that his mistress would not eat, and he had as little appet.i.te himself. He folded his arms on the top of the fence and waited for the signal to retreat.