Thurston House (30 page)

Where did you ever get that dress, little one? She smiled at the fond words, but there was nothing little about her now. She had grown to a considerable height, and was tall for a woman, but not too much so. She had stopped growing just in time, and she had a long graceful neck, and long thin arms, which showed well in the elegant dress. My word, child, you look like a goddess.

She glowed in the warmth of his love as she smiled up at him. I'm glad you like it. Amelia helped me pick out the material when she was here. I ordered it just for tonight, Papa.

And when she arrived at the opera house on Mission Street with her father, she didn't regret it. Metallic fabrics and sequins in a riot of colors were the fashion, and her dress was subtler than most, but as beautiful as any dress there. The women of San Francisco had gone wild in wearing their largest jewels, their finest gowns, and all their best plumage for the occasion. The opera had actually opened the night before, but tonight, with Caruso's performance of Carmen, was the greatest social event, and there were balls planned at the Palace, St. Francis, and Delmonico's afterward. The Thurstons were planning to join a group of their friends at the St. Francis, but Sabrina was excited enough now, just seeing the crowds of elaborately dressed women going in, and again at intermission. It was a long way from their quiet life in St. Helena, and she suddenly realized that these were going to be the most exciting months here, and she was thrilled that they had come to San Francisco.

As they left the opera several hours later, she gently pressed her father's arm, and he looked down at her to see if something was wrong, but instead he saw her beaming up at him and she looked like a fairy princess.

'Thank you, Papa.

What for? he asked as they reached their carriage.

For all this. I know you didn't want to come back to the city and open the house. You did it for me, and I'm loving every minute.

Then I'm glad we did it. And the funny thing was that he really was glad. It was exciting being out in the world again, he had forgotten how pleasant it could be at times, if it wasn't excessive. And there was something wonderful about presenting his only child to the world. She was graceful and intelligent and kind, poised and lovely. ' He beamed to himself, there weren't enough words to describe just how lovely she was. He looked down at her happily as she looked out the window in fascination as they rode to the St. Francis Hotel. And the ball they attended was absolutely splendid. Everyone imaginable was there, including Caruso himself at one point, and there seemed to be a festive air all over the city, as people went from one ball to another and then on to smaller parties. The opera had been a major social event, and Sabrina was glad that her ball wasn't for another three weeks. It would give people time to calm down again, and get ready for some more excitement. It would have been impossible to compete with the glitter of the evening of Carmen.

It was three o'clock in the morning when they got home, and Sabrina could scarcely conceal a yawn as she walked slowly up the grand staircase of Thurston House with her father. What a beautiful evening, Papa' . He agreed that it had been, and then Sabrina giggled, If Hannah could only see us now, coming home at three in the morning. They both laughed, imagining her frown and sharp scolding. She would have thought it decadent and indecent. Sabrina laughed again, And she would have told me that I'm just like my mother. Whenever she doesn't like what I'm doing, that's what she says. Those two must have really hated each other. Sabrina grinned and Jeremiah smiled. It was funny now, but it hadn't been then. Very little that Camille had done was funny.

They did hate each other. They had some awful fights when I first brought your mother to Napa. And then, for the first time in twenty years, he remembered the ring Hannah had found. Thank God she had, if not, there would have been no Sabrina, he reminded himself. But like others, it was not a story he would ever tell his daughter, and he was grateful that Hannah hadn't either. She was a decent woman and had been a good friend, for a long, long time.

Father and daughter kissed good night outside the master suite that was Sabrina's now, and when she walked into her bedroom, she looked out the window at the beautifully manicured gardens. How different they had been five years before when she'd climbed the fence. It was a jungle out there then, she smiled to herself, and she thought of her mother looking out those same windows late at night when she came home from some ball or party. She felt the house alive around her, as it had been nearly twenty years before. It seemed right that she should be here now, and it seemed right too that this beautiful house had come back to life. It had seemed so sad and empty five years before as she crept around it for the first time. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror as she took off the pearls from Amelia and then the gold dress she had enjoyed wearing so much. And as she looked at her reflection and then glanced at the enamel clock on the night table, she noticed that it was already almost four in the morning. A faint thrill ran through her, she had never been up so late, except maybe once when there was a flood at the mine and her father hadn't come home until morning, but never just for fun. And this had been the most fun evening of her life. She could hardly wait for her ball, she thought to herself, as she went to bed, and turned out the light. She lay trying to go to sleep for almost an hour, but she was much too excited by everything she'd seen and the parties they'd been to. She wondered if her father was awake too, and finally she got up and wandered into her little dressing room. She didn't want to go to bed, instead she wanted to stay awake and watch the dawn. She didn't want to miss anything going on, she felt more alive than she ever had before, and as she slipped a white satin dressing gown on and looked for her slippers, she decided to go downstairs for a cup of warm milk, but halfway down the grand staircase, she felt a strange swaying sensation, as though she were on an ocean liner and they had just hit a swell. It was as though the house rose and sank, but it seemed to go on moving for an endless period of time and suddenly it registered what was happening. They were having an earthquake, and as she dashed down the front stairs toward the front door, the entire stained-glass dome exploded in a shower of colored panes and splinters on the floor beneath it. She just missed being cut to shreds as she stood trembling in the doorway, not sure what to do. Her father had often spoken of the quakes of '65 and '68, but all she could remember was that you were supposed to stand in the doorway, and now she stood there, with the door open, shivering in the chill April air as the house began to shudder again, but this time it subsided more quickly. Everything in the house suddenly seemed to be askew. Small tables had fallen over, glass had shattered, silver had crashed to the floor, and she looked around at the rubble now and realized that her arm had been cut by a piece of falling glass from the window beside her. There was a dark stain of blood spreading across the shoulder of her nightgown, as she heard a door open above and her father's voice shout into the darkness. He had already looked for her in her bedroom and couldn't find her.

Sabrina! Sabrina, are you there! He saw her standing in the open doorway then and came running down the stairs to find her, just as the servants seemed to explode out of their rooms from the top floor. Two of the women were hysterical, the others were crying, and even the men seemed shaken up, as another jolt hit them and this time, they all felt a mounting wave of panic. There was noise from the street beginning to reach them now, people shouting, and there were crashing sounds as though pieces of houses were falling into the streets. Sabrina realized later that many of the brick chimneys had come tumbling down, and when she ventured out with her father an hour later, after he bandaged her shoulder, they saw bodies lying dead in the streets, beneath the bricks from the fallen chimneys. It was her first glimpse of death, and she was shocked at what she saw. Everywhere, there were people in the street, the earthquake had done considerable damage, and there were injured people all around them, but what became obvious by midmorning was that the city's greatest problem were the fires the earthquake had ignited and most of the water mains had been broken, so the firemen had no water to fight with. Worse still, the alarm systems no longer worked, and the fire chief himself had been killed in the collapse of a fire station. There was panic in the air, but everyone was still hopeful that the fires would be isolated shortly. The worst of all were burning south of Market, beyond the Palace Hotel. The hotel itself had its own well and was able to put out whatever fires threatened it at close range. But the columns of black smoke that began to cover the city by that Wednesday afternoon began to fill all of San Francisco with terror. Mayor Schmitz asked General Funston at the Presidio to assist him, and the Army was doing all that they could by that evening. A general curfew had been ordered and no one was to wander the streets from dusk to dawn, and strict orders had been issued forbidding indoor cooking.

And on Nob Hill, Jeremiah and Sabrina had thrown open their gates, and were allowing everyone in to camp in their gardens, use their home, and cook in one area which had been set aside to meet the neighborhood's needs. And Jeremiah himself was in the old Hall of Justice at Kearny and Washington with the Committee of Fifty, which was attempting to organize the city to survive the disaster. By the next day, they had been driven out of their location and had gone to Portsmouth Square, and this time Sabrina insisted on coming with him.

You stay here.

I will not! She eyed him with determination. I'm coming with you. I want to be with you, Papa. And she was so stern about it that he relented and let her come. There were other women on the committee, and together they were doing what they could to help the dying city. It was a ghastly moment in the history of San Francisco, and Jeremiah could scarcely believe it as he looked around him. Later that day he was told that all of the mansions on one side of Van Ness had been dynamited, in an effort to save the west end of the city, and he could scarcely believe it. Worse yet, they had to leave their location at Portsmouth Square, and the Committee of Fifty moved its headquarters to the almost finished Fairmont Hotel, where they stayed until the fires reached Nob Hill, and they left just in time as the flames leapt around them and gutted the inside of the hotel, and then roared along to the Flood mansion. Jeremiah urged the committee to Thurston House then, where they met for a last time before having to abandon Nob Hill completely. The hill itself seemed to be in flames, and the fire darted where it chose, destroying some houses, leaving others intact, burning some to the ground and gutting others. When the Committee of Fifty left the house at the end of the third day, Thurston House itself was still intact. The gardens were badly charred, and the trees along the front of the property had all fallen, but the fa+cade itself was barely touched by the flames and all of the damage inside had been done by the earthquake and not the fire. As Sabrina stood in the doorway looking into the beautiful home, she couldn't believe the destruction that had been wrought in three days. It was like a nightmare that refused to end, since the first moment she'd felt it, standing on the stairs. She looked up now at the empty place where the dome had been, and all she saw was a dark sky filled with smoke. She was surprised to realize that it was already nightfall. She wasn't even sure what day it was, she just knew that the holocaust had been going on for days, and the streets had been filled with screams and shouts and dead and dying people. She had bandaged hundreds of arms and faces and legs, led lost children to shelters, helped women search for children that could not be found, and now she slumped down on the staircase of Thurston House with a sigh of exhaustion. The servants had all fled, either to lend assistance or go in search of family or friends, and she knew that her father was upstairs. He had looked exhausted every time she'd seen him and she thought now of going to see how he was. Perhaps he needed a brandy or she should go to one of the collective kitchens on Russian Hill for something for him to eat. He was not a young man and the past few days had been a tremendous strain for them all.

Papa! She called out as she walked up the stairs. Her legs felt like tree trunks as she lumbered up the steps, almost falling with exhaustion. She could still hear the shouts from outside and knew that the fires on Nob Hill weren't extinguished yet. She suddenly wondered if they ever would be. Papa! ' She saw him sitting slumped with fatigue in a chair in his private sitting room. He had his back to her but she could see that he was as tired as she felt. She hadn't seen him look like that since the last flood in the mines, and she went to him with a gentle step and bent to kiss his head. Hello, Papa. She sighed deeply and sat down on the floor at his feet, reaching quietly for his hand. How much they had been through that night, and in some ways how much they had been spared. Neither of them had been hurt, the house was damaged but still there, and she had heard that the chandelier at the opera house had gone crashing to the floor. Imagine if the earthquake had happened the previous night! Do you want something to eat, Papa? She looked up at his face, and suddenly stared. He was looking straight at her with unseeing eyes, and feeling terror leap at her throat as it never had before, she was instantly on her knees and touching his face. Papa! Papa! Speak to me! But there was no sound there, no voice, no words, no life. He had come home from the meeting of the Committee of Fifty at the Fairmont Hotel, led the meeting to his home, and come upstairs when the committee departed' . Papa! It was a shriek in the empty, silent house, and she began to shake him now, but his body slowly slid to the floor, where he lay and she held him close, the sobs overtaking her as the fires had overtaken the town. He was dead. Quietly, without a sound, he had come to this room, to this chair, and sat down ' and died, at sixty-three years of age, leaving Sabrina an orphan, entirely on her own, two and a half weeks before her eighteenth birthday.