The fire and the gold (5 page)

"Mama's had such an awful time," Cora said. "She didn't want to leave the house at all, but Gran said there was no point in staying till the last minute."

Her mother held out a smooth, plump hand to Melora, who knelt to take it in her own larger one.

"I'm so glad you're here!" Mrs. Cranby cried. "How you ever found us, I can't think. You were another worry on top of leaving the house and having to give up everything your Papa and I have lived with and loved for so many years. Everything we've built together!"

Tears showed signs of starting again, and Mrs. Forrest spoke quickly. "You're not the only one, Addy. Thousands of other people are losing everything too."

Mama dabbed at her eyes with a scrap of lace handkerchief. "You don't understand, Nell. You never did have an ounce of sentiment in you. It's our life that's going up in flames—Andrew's and mine."

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Forrest. "Your lives haven't been touched at all."

But Melora squeezed her mother's hand sympathetically. Mama wasn't so awfully strong, and she'd always lived a gay, happy, comfortable life. This would be harder for her than for a woman like Mrs. Forrest.

"Don't you worry," Melora said. "We stopped in at the house an hour or so ago and it's still all right. Quong Sam's there and you know he'll take care of everything if it's possible. Look, I've brought out Papa's Kwan Yin."

Her mother's gaze rested briefly on the golden face of the statue and then she closed her eyes.

"Ugh—that thing! I don't see why you had to pick that to rescue."

"Papa is fond of it," Melora reminded her. She and Cora exchanged a secret smile. It was something of a joke in the family the way Mama was jealous of Kwan Yin. She had never liked the fact that Papa felt he should have a retreat at the top of the house, where he could close the door and be quiet with his own thoughts. Mama said he was home so seldom that she wanted him near her every minute. Since his study was Kwan Yin's haven, she had centered a certain resentment on the goddess.

Mrs. Forrest had seated herself on the grass and taken off her high laced shoes. Now she was sorting over the items she had obtained from the grocery shop, while Alec helped her eagerly.

"Where is Gran?" Melora asked her sister.

Cora gestured uphill. "She said she'd climb to higher ground and see what the fire was doing."

"How is she?" Melora went on. "I was worried about her before I left for Chicago."

"You go see for yourself," Cora told her. "She's surprised us all. I'd never have thought it!"

Melora set the statue carefully out of harm's way beneath the umbrella and got to her feet. The book she kept with her. She would indeed go see for herself. Both Quong Sam's and Alec's remarks made it sound as though Grandmother had taken full charge as she used to do. Mama had never been the managing kind except when it came to matters of etiquette and propriety.

Melora climbed the hill between' groups which had encamped in the square. Some people looked stunned, as if they couldn't believe what was happening, could only sit apathetically, staring at nothing. But mostly everyone seemed to be behaving as if this were a picnic, an adventure. They lounged about in curious costumes with odd possessions gathered nearby, and laughed and joked as if this were a great lark. There was none of the panic here that Melora had seen on the Oakland mole. The most frightened ones had already run away. She smiled readily at strangers, who as readily smiled back, and she liked the feeling of comradeship that seemed to draw these hundreds of refugees together.

She found her grandmother standing with her back against the peeling trunk of a eucalyptus tree, her gaze fixed on the city below. She had not tied a veil over her head and she wore no hat, so that there were bits of black char in the silver gray of her hair. Yet she managed somehow to look as neat and tidy as usual, and there was a serenity about her, even as she watched the burning city.

Tears closed Melora's throat. Until this moment she had felt that she must keep putting out energy, that she must not give up, that she must struggle toward this reuniting with her family. But now a reaction of weakness swept through her.

"Gran!" she cried and stumbled blindly up the last rise of hill.

Grandmother Melora Bonner turned and the warmth of her smile was like an embrace, even before she held out her arms.

"I knew you'd find us if your tram came through," Grandmother said.

Melora put her wet cheek against her grandmother's softly crumpled one and held her tight.

"All the way home I've longed for San Francisco!" she cried. "And now there'll be no San Francisco. It's going—all of it!"

"Stop that this minute!" said her grandmother, holding her away. "What nonsense are you talking? Do you think any fire on earth can burn down the important things that make up a town like this one?"

A crash of musical chords startled Melora and she looked over her grandmother's shoulder at the strangest of sights. There on a level stretch of ground a piano had been somehow hauled. And sitting on an upended wooden box before it was a thin young man banging away at the keys. His family leaned on the piano, or stood about him, raising their voices enthusiastically in song.

"That's what I mean," Gran said. "You can't down spirit like that."

But Melora did not look at the singers as she choked back her emotion. She looked at the fragile figure of her grandmother, standing there so bravely.

Gran stirred at her side. "The fire is still south of Market, but I suspect that it will reach our house during the night."

"Don't you think we ought to go to the Bonner place?" Melora asked. "Is Mama still—"

"She is indeed," Gran said. "She's full of her silly notion about refusing to beg from our tenants, the Hoopers. But give her a night in the open and I think she'll be more sensible. It won't hurt us all to camp out for one night. Well, let's go open some cans of beans. We carried all the foodstuff we could in a pillowcase and it looks as though we might be eating a right smart number of beans in the next few days."

"You can have the beans," said Melora. "I'm going to have a caviar sandwich." For the first time she remembered the book in her hands and held it out "Gran, Mr. Gower sent you this from his bookshop with his compliments."

Grandmother took the small red volume with an air of satisfaction. "How thoughtful of him. I've been wanting this to read to Alec. It will come in handy now."

And strangely enough it did. When they'd managed to make a cold meal out of tins they huddled around Gran, two to a blanket. And in the fading light of an evening that would never grow completely dark, she read sweetly aloud from The Water-Babies.

Melora listened, carried back to the day when she and Cora had been as young as Alec, and they too had listened raptly to the story of Tom, the little chimney sweep who was given the magical power to live under water. She remembered the chiming and tinkling of the river—so tempting to the dirty little sweep. She felt like the sweep herself now, with grime on her face and hands, and no water for washing.

When it grew too dark to read the words. Grandmother closed the book. But her voice went on, strong as the river itself:

"Clear and cool, clear and cool.

By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear.

By shining shingle, and foaming weir;

Under the crag where the ouzel sings.

And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled;

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child."

Several children from other groups had crawled nearer to listen, and there was a quiet creeping away when Gran's voice stopped.

Mrs. Forrest talked quietly to Grandmother for a while, wondering about her son and how she might get in touch with him. But all that would have to wait till tomorrow. Mama fell into a restless sleep, with Alec beside her, while Melora sat with her arm linked in Cora's listening to the frightening sounds of the red, angry night.

The fire was much worse after dark. Flames lit up the billowing clouds of smoke overhead, painting them savagely with crimson and orange and pale yellow. The fire had shot in a dozen new directions and there was a pulsing of heat in the air. At least no one was very cold.

To while away the long hours when sleep would not come, Melora told her sister about Chicago and their cousin's wedding. And about the trip home and the struggle she and Mrs. Forrest had had to get across to San Francisco in the early afternoon.

Once Cora asked about Quent. "Do you know what's happened to him?"

Melora shook her head. She had hardly thought of Quent since that moment on Nob Hill when they had been a block or two from his home.

"How dreadful for you not to know," Cora whispered. "But I'm sure he's all right."

For an instant Melora was tempted to confide the truth about her make-believe engagement, but she suppressed the impulse. Cora was the bubbling-over sort who could never keep such news to herself and this was not the time to upset Mama still further. Besides, all that seemed remote and unimportant now.

"I'm sure the Seymour place will escape, way at the top of the hill," Cora comforted.

Melora said nothing. Hilltops could burn too. Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill, and even high Russian Hill, where Tony Ellis lived. She closed her eyes and thought about her meeting with him that afternoon.

She could remember him quite clearly as he'd watched her with that bright, laughing look when she turned to glance over her shoulder. He had said quite distinctly that it had not been the book alone he was thinking of when he'd invited her into the shop. He'd behaved as though she were someone special whom he wanted to know. And he'd said he would see her again. These were things to think about pleasantly now. They were thoughts to hold off thoughts of the fire.

What was happening to Tony now? Would she see him again?

Far to the north the sky was a clear dark blue and the stars still shone. It was comforting to know that somewhere there were clear skies and shining stars. Perhaps Tony too was looking at them.

The refugees in Lafayette Square talked and sang and dozed and woke through all that night of flame and shadow. In the morning a blood-red sun looked down at them briefly with its single eye, before vanishing behind the smoke pall. Morning light was pale and tired and as people stood up all over the park to stretch cramped limbs and shake out rumpled clothing, it became evident that the fire had not abated. It was creeping about below Nob Hill now.

Apparently not even the mansions of the great were to be spared. But still it had not crossed Van Ness, and Lafayette Square remained a haven.

Newcomers to the park said the Palace Hotel had burned late yesterday afternoon, and told how flames had poured from every bay window. Mrs. Forrest went off by herself for a little while. When she came back her eyes were red and it was Mama's turn to do some comforting.

Most of the buildings of the business section had gone during the night, and the fire had closed in on Portsmouth Square. Dew fell toward dawn and clothes were damp, but the morning was warm again, because of the unusual summery weather and the heat generated by the fire.

Melora, waking from an uneasy doze, shook the leaves of a nearby bush free of water drops and dampened her handkerchief in a sketchy effort to scrub her face and hands clean. Quong Sam had filled some bottles with water from the boiler in the cellar at home before the family left, but this of course must be saved for drinking.

"Are we going to stay right here all day?" Alec asked when they had breakfasted on beans again and had a few sips of the carefully rationed water.

Mama had recovered to some extent and was sitting up to comb her long fair hair, before she bound it up and tied the veil over it again. She was coughing now and then and Gran looked at her in concern.

"I don't like the sound of that cough," she said firmly. "It's time to forget your notion that if you are not mistress of the Bonner house you won't set foot in it."

Mama, coughing again, offered no further objections and Gran looked at Melora.

"Do you think you could walk over to Washington and see if the Hoopers have any room for us? Or at least for your mother."

Melora was glad of a chance to move about and so was Alec. He jumped up quickly.

"May I go with Melora, Mama? I want to see what's happening."

"I suppose you may," his mother said doubtfully. "But, Melora, don't let him out of your sight for a minute. You know how he is."

As they started out together, Melora glanced fondly at the excited boy. He was tall for his eight years and held himself erectly. His fine blond hair made a childish duck's tail point at the nape of his neck, but his straight mouth curved neither up nor down, and his chin was determined.

The square was so crowded that they had to worm their way across it, stepping over recHning figures, detouring around individual camps. Now and then they saw someone they knew, but for the most part Mama's friends had not taken refuge in the park. Probably they were still on Nob Hill, or safe in their homes farther west. Alec, however, had found some boys from his school and one of them had a tent.

"I wish we didn't have to go to any old house," he said. "Why couldn't we have a tent and just stay in the square? Maybe the Bonner house will burn down too, so what's the use of going into it? Melora, are you scared?"

She considered a moment before she shook her head. "Not any more. I was frightened all the way across the bay and right up to the minute when I found you were all gone from our house. Then I think I stopped being frightened and got used to the whole thing."

But she knew that her brave words weren't wholly true. You could never get used to a sight like this. You just didn't think about it all the time.

"How about you?" she asked Alec.

He danced a little on the path beside her. "It's an adventure, Melora. Just like in a story book. And I'm not scared any more. It was only when the house started shaking and I heard that awful roaring sound like express trains running underground that I was scared."