The fire and the gold (15 page)

Alec's face was screwed up with pain, but he had seen Matt and he would not cry out again. One of the workmen said he was going toward Lafayette Square and would see that Matt got home, so they needn't be crowded. Quent took up the reins and Melora held Alec in her lap, with his hurt leg across Tony's knees. Smokey crouched at their feet, looking up now and then to reassure himself that his master was still there.

The sun had gone down and the opal twilight was fading. A big moon, just risen, hung low in the sky, giving a metallic glow to ruin and desolation. As the buggy jogged toward the dip of the hill, the pale light touched a shimmering white doorway that rose below them. A half dozen marble pillars, classically beautiful, supported the marble beam of a door. Three shallow marble steps led upward between the pillars. There was nothing more—just that ghostly doorway, the darkening sky beyond, and through the opening, silhouetted against the sky, the faraway, shattered dome of City Hall.

"Look!" cried Melora softly. "How lonely it seems!"

"That's where the Townes lived," Quent said. "Looks like everything's gone except the marble doorway."

"Doorway into the past," said Tony softly.

The buggy turned the comer and jogged on.

"Depends on which way you look through it," Quent said. "Maybe it's a doorway to the future."

To cheer Alec he began to sing and the other two joined in.

Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along; Merrily we roll along o'er the deep blue sea.

But even while Melora's lips moved in the words, she found that her thoughts were divided. Alec's hurt first, and her worry about how serious it was. Then Tony's words back there in the ruins—when he might have told her what he saw in that girl who came into the shop with her mother. And finally, the queer thing that Quent had said just now about the marble doorway. Not a door into the past, as Tony had called it, but one to the future. She would never have expected Quent to say a thing like that

At home there was a commotion when the boys carried Alec in, but surprisingly Mama did not go all to pieces. It was as if she had reached the very pit of despair when she thought Alec had been killed. Nothing else could ever be as bad as that.

Watching her, Melora remembered how Gran had said they'd have to give her a little time.

Quong Sam had gone for a doctor. Cora was setting water to heat in the kitchen, and Quent and Tony had been shooed out of the way by Gran. Since there was nothing more Melora could do at the moment, she went upstairs to her room.

Pulling open the small drawer of her table, she took out the sheets of paper on which she had started that account for her father so many days ago. The urge to write to him was strong now—her diary wouldn't do. But somehow the words came too fast and in too disordered a fashion to make sense. There seemed to be altogether too much to tell all at once.

While she sat there, helpless to make her pencil do her bidding, she heard someone knocking downstairs at the front door. Everyone else was busy, so she went down to answer it

The man who stood at the door was Chinese, though he wore no queue down his back. He was rather a young man, dressed not as an Oriental servant, but in a conservative American business suit of dark gray. He bowed ceremoniously and spoke without a trace of pidgin English.

"Good evening. I am sorry to trouble you, but is this the house of Mrs. Bonner?"

'That's right," Melora said.

"I am looking for my uncle, Quong Sam," the young man went on. "After the recent disaster he sent word to me in Berkeley, but I have been concerned for him. I decided to come over and see for myself. My name is Eddie Quong."

"We're happy to see you," she said, "I'm Melora Cranby. Please come in." As she led him into the parlor she went on to explain. "Quong Sam is out just now—getting a doctor. My young brother has had an accident. But he'll be back soon and you'll find him in good health. He's been wonderful. I don't know what we'd have done without him. Won't you sit down?"

Young Mr. Quong said he regretted to hear of her brother's accident. He hesitated just a moment before he seated himself in a parlor chair. "I am not sure my uncle will approve if he finds me here." He smiled faintly.

"I don't know why not," said Melora. "Sam is one of the family, goodness knows. We're happy to welcome any relative of his."

Gran had heard the knocking and she came downstairs to see who was there. When Melora introduced Eddie Quong, she held out her hand in warm greeting.

"I overheard what my granddaughter just told you," she said, "and it is very true. It would be hard to imagine this household without your uncle. But in all these years we have never once met any of his family. There's been a legend for the last twenty years at least that he was putting a nephew through an American college, so we're delighted to meet the nephew. But, young man, I'm sure you haven't been going to college for twenty years, so I'm still mystified."

Eddie Quong seemed to relax a little with Gran and lose something of his Chinese reticence. "Such matters my uncle would keep to himself. Mrs. Bonner, I am my father's sixth son. My uncle has put five older brothers of mine through school and they are now living in different parts of this country. I am the last. He will be released from a burden when I graduate."

Melora could only stare. Quong Sam living so frugally on his pay that he could do a thing like this! And they'd really known nothing about it.

"Your uncle has no other family then?" Gran asked.

Eddie Quong shook his head. "His own wife and three children died long ago in China in a smallpox epidemic. The same epidemic which marked my uncle's face. After his loss he decided to come to this country. His older brother financed his trip and he promised that in return, when he was able to earn, he would send his brother's sons through school in America, if they wished to come here."

It was an astonishing story. Too many families took the years of loyalty their Chinese servants gave for granted, knowing little about their private lives, or what their personal problems might be. This was partly due to Chinese reserve which held off outside curiosity. A family seldom dared ask personal questions of the Chinese they employed.

Before Gran could say anything more Quong Sam arrived with the doctor and took him upstairs at once. Gran called to him to come down when he was through, and his "Yes, Missy" floated back to them down the stair well.

Gran held out her hand to Eddie Quong. "If you'll excuse me, I must go upstairs. But come to see us again, Mr. Ouong. We are proud to know a nephew of Quong Sam's."

The young man stood up and bowed courteously, but there was a rueful note to his words.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bonner, but my uncle would not approve."

Gran raised her eyebrows, but matters upstairs drew her and she hurried away. Melora remained with Eddie Quong and when Sam came scuttling downstairs to the parlor, she saw his disapproval. Sam had only a curt greeting. His look seemed to take in the fact that his nephew was sitting like company in the parlor of the house in which his uncle worked. Sam gestured at once toward his own cellar quarters and spoke volubly in Chinese.

Eddie Quong snapped to his feet as if a string had pulled him. His face showed no expression except for the eyes which turned once in Melora's direction, as if in apology. But it was an apology for himself, not for his uncle.

As Sam hurried off, not troubling to look back, Eddie Quong made Melora the same formal bow he had given Gran.

"My uncle is old China," he said softly as he turned to follow. Then, lest she misunderstand, he stopped and faced her again. "It is a very fine thing to be old China," he said and disappeared in the direction Sam had taken.

Melora went upstairs, touched by the little encounter. Sam was a darling, though there was no way of ever telling him so. And she liked the young nephew.

Cora came out of Mama's room just as she reached the door. "You can't go in," she said. "The doctor's sent me out too. He's going to set Alec's leg. I—let's not stay here." She put her hands over her ears, and together they ran up to Melora's room.

Tell me about what happened when you went after Alec," Cora said, and Melora explained how they'd climbed the steps and found Alec in the ruins, and of how she and Tony had stayed with him while Quent went for help.

"I wish I'd been there too," Cora said.

Melora regarded her steadily. "Why do you wish that?"

"Oh, I don't know." Cora's eyes avoided her sister's. "I suppose—except that Alec was hurt—it would have been something exciting to do."

There was a little silence. Melora had picked up her pencil and was idly drawing circles on a comer of the paper which still lay on the table.

"I've been thinking of asking Mama if we could have a party, or a picnic one of these days," she said at last. "You've lost touch with all your old friends, Cora. But I'm sure we could get Celia Norman and her brother Harry. And there's Tom and his cousin Julia. And—"

Cora broke in impatiently. "I don't give a hoot about seeing Harry or Tom. They're so young and silly and dull."

"You didn't used to think so."

"Well—a person can change. Anyway, don't bother about me, Mellie." Cora jumped up and ran to the door and down the hall to her own room before anything more could be said.

Melora stared at the paper before her. She knew well enough what Cora had not put into words. After Tony, the boys they'd known in the past did seem foolish and young and a little dull.

She sat down and began to put words on paper and now, unexpectedly, they began to make sense. She could write to her father tonight, put down something of her impressions. It was a good thing the excitement about Alec had delayed supper. She could start this now.

She began with the goodness of Quong Sam and the pride and respect his nephew bore for him. These things too were part of San Francisco.

Once Gran came to her door with the news that the doctor had set Alec's leg and there seemed to be no injuries aside from bruises and abrasions. But not even the interruption of a quick supper stopped her.

What poured out in the hours she sat at her desk was the story of people, more than of events. There was Mr. Gower giving her a book for her grandmother and later opening a store in the front room of an old mansion on Van Ness. And there was Quent, forgetting his boredom to drive a Red Cross car until he had to turn his hand to helping his father in the desperate insurance business which had never interested him before.

She wrote about Gran too, facing the sort of trouble she had had to meet more than once in her life, and facing it with unflinching courage. Alec was in the picture of course—a small boy who could not be blamed for responding to the invitation of adventure and exploration inevitably held out by the ruins.

And, finally, knowing always that she postponed what she most wanted to say, she wrote about Tony selling burned books for the Earthquake Fund and doing a good job of it. Of Tony sitting on a pile of bricks, telling a romantic story to a little boy with a broken leg.

She could see him again as she wrote and the gay, lively picture he made—unconventional, a bit dashing; someone to make the pulses quicken, to fill the eye and the memory.

But she could not write about Cora. Her sister's interest had been caught by Tony Ellis too, and that was something she did not want to think about.

When she thought she was through and had wearily put her pencil down, she had to pick it up again to set down one more line. The words Quent had spoken when he'd said it depended on which way you looked through that lonely marble doorway on the hillside; the way he had contradicted Tony and called it a doorway to the future.

She slept very soundly that night. And Kwan Yin smiled in the darkness, wise beyond mortal wisdom.

The next day was Thursday. And Thursday was for loose ends.

Little by little the Bonner house was evolving a working routine. Monday of course was wash day, though there were at the moment not many clothes to be washed. On Tuesday the iron heated on the kitchen stove and Quong Sam made short work of the ironing. At least they had sheets and pillowcases, even if they still lacked clothes. Wednesday was for sewing and mending, and every woman busied herself with a needle. There was mending galore, and new things to be made for all of them.

Friday was for cleaning. Dust flew as the house was shaken inside out. It flew literally because these days whenever there was a wind from the east or south, dust from the ruins seeped through every crack, defeating the most watchful broom.

On Saturday Gran herself turned to baking. Not that Quong Sam couldn't make delicious pies and cakes, but there was so much extra work for him now that Gran knew he needed help. This was not a notion that Sam himself harbored. If left alone he would have shouldered all the work himself and without complaint But Gran said baking was a form of amusement for her and she'd go into a decline again if he didn't let her do it. Quong Sam was nearly as old as Gran and he was entirely as wise. The two eyed each other with complete understanding, and Sam, having let it be known that he was not fooled, gave way and allowed her to help him.

Only Thursday was a day of no definite assignments, and Melora rather dreaded it. As long as there was so much work that she had little time to stop and draw breath, she was all right. But these days when a lapse came, restlessness followed. In spite of the monotony and the fatigue, she'd loved working at the relief centers.

But now the relief work had become less imperative and better organized. She found herself needed only now and then, so she stayed home and helped around the house. That, she supposed, was right and proper and she had no business grumbling. Yet it was hard when she saw Tony go off every morning to work in the bookshop, and Quent go out on errands for his father.

Now it was Thursday again. When she found Cora idle too, Melora took her up to the tower room and put the stack of scribbled sheets into her hands.

"A letter to Papa," she said. "Or at least a record for him. I'll give it to him when he gets home. See what you think."