The fire and the gold (13 page)

"I know," Quent said. "This whole week I've been practically bursting with pride because I'm a San Franciscan." Then he looked sheepish. "Don't mind my lapse into the sentimental—if s temporary."

If she hadn't been so tired she might have answered She'd liked him better for his show of feeling.

After that they were silent. The wind was blowing in from the Gate and Melora was grateful for the chill of it against her face. She had no motoring veil over her sailor hat and strands of hair whipped out from the restraint of bone hairpins. No matter. She couldn't care less.

Vaguely she recalled that she had wanted to talk to Quent alone. But she could not rouse herself to make the effort.

They had covered four blocks when the engine wheezed and died. Quent tried cranking again, but nothing happened. He sighed ruefully.

"Sometimes I think Father is right and the automobile will never replace the horse. Well, there's nothing for it. ni have to take a look at the critter's innards. Why don't you curl up in the back seat, Melora, and see if you can catch forty winks while I tinker?"

She caught more than forty winks, for it took Quent a while to find the difficulty. She went soundly asleep and only wakened when a terrible dream of earthquake and roaring fire engulfed her and jarred her back to consciousness. She sat up in the back seat to find the car vibrating, the engine sputtering and blasting.

Quent got the car into motion before it changed its mind. As she shook the heaviness of sleep from her eyes, Melora felt refreshed and rested. Her feet had stopped throbbing.

This time the car made it clear up the hill to Lafayette Square—almost home—before one of the tires gave out with a long wheezing sigh as the air whistled out of it.

Quent looked over his shoulder at Melora. "As I was saying about horses— Well, never mind. Let's leave the car here for now and walk across the park. I'll come back and change the tire tonight or tomorrow morning. I've had enough for the moment."

He opened the rear door and held out his hand as she stepped down. Fog was drifting in overhead and in the park the refugees crawled into tents and shelters, or pulled what wraps they had about them. The sight was so familiar now that Melora hardly gave them a second look. She was awake, her mind alert. Now she could choose the words she must speak to Quent.

"I want to give you back your ring," she said, slipping it from her finger as they walked along. "I don't think this was very clever of us in the first place. And now it seems merely childish. The only thing to do is tell everyone the truth and stop this silly pretense."

"I haven't noticed you pretending very hard," Quent said. He kept his hands in his pockets and did not even look at the ring she held out to him. His mouth had tightened as if he were angry.

"Let's not argue about it," Melora said. "I don't want to be burdened with this any longer."

"Because of Tony?"

She hated the warmth that swept into her cheeks. "Of course not! Tony hasn't anything to do with it. I hardly know him and—"

"Spare me the denials," he said, "I'm not blind, even if your mother is." He turned on the path and faced her. "Look, Melora, I've known you most of my life. And I know Tony pretty well. I know he's all wrong for you."

Now it was her turn to grow angry. "Tony regards you as a friend," she said coldly. "But I can't say you're proving yourself a very loyal one. Besides, why should you care what I think of Tony?"

For a moment he didn't answer, then he spoke as coldly as she. "You're quite right, Melora. It's nothing to me what you do." He started on again and she walked beside him. "But the others concerned do mean something to me. This is no time to upset everybody with our foolishness. Whether you and I are engaged or not engaged, isn't anything to carry on about at this particular time. Your mother has enough to worry her. Though it's really Father I'm thinking of most. I hadn't dreamed he'd be so pleased. Now, with all he has on his shoulders, I'd feel guilty about disillusioning him."

"I'm not happy about having fooled him either," Melora admitted, "but just the same I don't want to—"

Quent cut her off. "Father's putting up a good front, but he's worried sick about what's going to happen. He doesn't see any way out at the moment. He has already written Mother telling her to stay in New York with our eastern relatives for now. But she'll have to take Gwen out of private school when the term is up."

"I—I'm sorry about that," Melora said helplessly.

They had reached the downhill path and they stood for a moment side by side while Melora balanced the ring in her hand. She didn't want to return it to her finger, yet she felt trapped by Quent's words, just as she had been by Gran's. It wasn't just that she didn't want people to think ill of her. She couldn't humiliate Uncle Will like this, or have Quent's pride hurt by the remarks others might make about the broken engagement.

"Put it on," Quent said more gently. "Even if it doesn't mean anything, I'm trusting you with it. Some day I may want it for something that isn't make-believe. You'd better not lose it."

She slipped it back on her finger and started downhill. "All right then. We'll leave it this way for now."

"Good enough," Quent said, but he sounded stiff and distant.

They walked the rest of the way home in silence.

Many things happened early in May. A warming, reassuring letter arrived from Melora's father. The one thing he cared about, he wrote, was to know they were all safe. The loss of possessions did not really matter. He loved them all and he would be with them before very long.

Mama and Cora wept openly over the letter. Melora's eyes were wet too. When her father came home everything would be made right It had always been so.

There was a letter from Quent's mother also. She wrote in a more excited vein, both anguished and despairing. Sylvia Seymour was not one to shrug possessions aside so lightly. Uncle Will read parts of her letter to them at dinner one evening and shook his head over it worriedly.

He was going through a difficult period and Quent had had to stop driving for the Red Cross and stay home to assist him. The moment the location of the temporary Seymour office had been made public through the newspapers, lines of policy holders had begun to form outside the Bonner house. People who held policies with the company, but who had, most of them, lost all their own records and papers, were now demanding that Seymour's pay up the insurance at once and in full. This of course was impossible. Even if the company had been prepared to meet so heavy a load of payments, money was still the scarcest commodity in the city and though the banks were open again, withdrawals had been limited to five hundred dollars per depositor.

Day after day Quent and his father and one or two clerks had interviewed the endless lines of men and women who had insurance with the company.

A number of good things had happened too, however. Glass, shattered by the quake, was now back in the windows, so the house was warmer. There was plenty of water again and an inspector had come around to look at repaired chimneys and had given out permits to build fires indoors. The gas and electricity were still off, though there were no longer any limitations on using lamps and candles at night.

The Hooper family, who had rented this house from Grandmother, returned and announced that they had had enough of San Francisco. They were newly settled in Oakland. Mrs. Hooper sent a dray for their belongings. There was still enough of the original Bonner furniture to keep the house going. And the money paid in by the "boarders" had helped to buy new supplies, now available in the stores again.

One-story redwood shops were going up on Van Ness Avenue, and some of San Francisco's best stores were opening for business. Fillmore was crowded with stores and offices, flags flying everywhere, with what Gran said was a regular mining town atmosphere.

There had been one change among the boarders.

Mrs. Ellis had gone to live with her family on Telegraph Hill, though Tony had remained. Transportation was still a problem and he was nearer to the new Gower & Ellis shop here.

Mr. Gower had located in an old house on Van Ness and was stocking it with books he managed to obtain on credit. Mama had shaken her head over such optimism. Who could afford books at a time when even potatoes were a luxury? But Gran said if she knew the human species, this would be the very time when people would reach out for luxuries. And indeed, Tony reported that buyers were coming in. He said too that in the makeshift shops people were buying silks and satins, as often as they bought workaday materials. Insurance money had begun to come in from outside companies and people who had seldom had money to spend before, now found themselves with cash in pocket. The prospect of more was always good for credit.

Melora continued with her work at the relief center until she was no longer needed. Still unfinished in the drawer of the table in her room was the detailed account she had started to write her father about the days of the fire. She'd had no time to work on it further. Instead, she had written him a more hurried letter, and had almost forgotten the other.

She was sitting in her room that afternoon in late May writing in her diary, glancing up now and then to look out the window toward the Gate. For once no fog was rolling in and the sun was bright as it dipped toward the water. Watching the sails of vessels standing out clearly against it, she recalled something Tony had told her recently when they were talking about books. It was something he had read The Costanoans, who had been natives of California before the Spaniards came, had called the Pacific the Sundown Sea.

A lovely name. She could remember the way Tony had spoken the words, giving them a ringing sound. Only Tony, of all the people she knew, seemed to realize that words in themselves could move the emotions, stir the imagination. Perhaps that was because he wanted to be an actor. He liked to roll words sonorously on his tongue, so that it was thrilling to hear him recite poetry.

Tony, Tony, Tony,

She found she was writing his name on the diary page before her and threw down her pen. Did he think of her too like this? But how could she ever know as long as Quent's ring stood guard upon her finger?

Her mother's voice calling from the stairs broke in upon her thoughts. "Melora! Have you seen Alec? Is he with you?"

Melora roused herself and went to the door. Right after lunch, she told her mother, she had heard Alec say that he was going out to play with his friends in the square.

Mama wrung her hands despairingly. "That riffraff! Refugees! Do come help us look for him, Melora. We can't find him anywhere."

"We're refugees too," Melora couldn't help reminding her. "We're just the lucky ones with a roof over our heads."

But it was true Alec had begun to run with a gang of rather rough boys older than he was. She knew her mother's concern might well be justified.

"Quong Sam has gone over to the square," Gran said when they came downstairs. "He knows which boys Alec plays with and where their families are. He'll bring the boy home, so stop fussing, Addy."

It was nearing suppertime. Tony had just come home, and Quent, hearing excited voices, had left the drawing-room-office where he was helping his father finish up the day's work. In a few minutes Sam was back, having collared two boys of ten and eleven. He marched the two firmly to the foot of the steps.

"You talkee!" he said when he had confronted them with Mama, who hurried out to the little balcony above the steps. "You tellee Missy Clanby whas-sa matta Alec."

The two boys looked plainly frightened, but they stopped their wriggling and the younger one began to blubber.

"We to? him and tol' him not to tag around after us! We don't wanta play with babies all the time!"

Gran came to the top of the steps looking down at them. "Where did you go today when Alec tagged after you?" she asked sternly.

The older boy wriggled under Sam's firm grip. "Gosh, your Chinaman is choking me! What Billy says is right. Some of us wanted to go exploring up on Nob Hill and we told him he was too little and he should ought to stay home. But he come along anyway. We didn't tell him to do what he did."

"Never mind that!" said Gran. "What did he do?"

"Well—he knew we thought he was a baby and he got this notion he could show us he was just as brave as us. So there was this burned-down house with the big high steps and he said—that is, we said we bet he couldn't go up there and jump off the top down into the ruins."

Mama cried out at that. "There was another quake this afternoon!"

"What happened, fellow?" Quent broke in. "Hurry up and tell us."

The boy went on, his words dragging. "Alec climbed up those ol' steps all right. And his dog went up 'em too. We—we just left him there and came home."

"It was a good chance to get away from him," the smaller boy put in. 'Honest, ma'am, we didn't try to make him jump."

"Did he, or didn't he?" Gran snapped.

Both boys shook their heads. "We don't know, ma'am," the older boy said. "We didn't stay to see. We just thought he'd come on down and go home himself when he found we'd beat it."

"Where is this house with the steps?" Quent asked.

The older boy said, "Up near the top of the hill somewhere. It's hard to tell where places are anymore."

"Think you could find your way back and show us the steps?" Quent asked.

"My mom said I was to come right home to our tent and not go any place else," the younger boy put in promptly.

Matt, the older one, however, was willing to try.

Quent reassured Mrs. Cranby and Gran. "Don't worry. I'll hitch up the rig and take this fellow up Nob Hill right away. We'll find Alec all right."

"I know he's been hurt!" Mama cried. "I can feel it. If he could have come home he'd have been here long before this. Do hurry, Quent."

Melora followed Quent down to the carriage house at the foot of the garden and Tony came with her.

"Let me go along, Quent," Melora offered. "Maybe I can help if—if Alec really is hurt."