The fire and the gold (7 page)

Alec inched his way ahead of the others, curious and eager, carrying Smokey, while Melora came up the steps last. She had always loved to come to this house whenever Gran would bring her. But how strange to be coming here now!

The massive front door was set in an archway and opened into a dim, wide hall, paneled in dark wood. The only light from outside shone through a high stained glass window on the left. A wide stairway of rich cherry wood jogged upward in the middle of the hall and a balcony rimmed the open stair well on the floor above. Downstairs, toward the front of the house, were the closed doors of the drawing room, and at the rear, facing the bay, was a smaller parlor.

Melora looked for her grandmother and saw her standing straight and proud at the foot of the stairs, playing hostess as gracefully as she must have done so often in the years that were gone. Her eyes, which had seemed lusterless for the last few months, were bright now. She blinked several times rapidly. This house must seem a lonely place to her, Melora thought. It was not Mama but Gran whose memories were most concerned with painful loss in this house. But Gran showed her feelings for no more than a moment.

"Do come upstairs and settle into your room," Gran said to Mrs. Forrest. "Of course you must stay with us until you get in touch with Howard."

Mrs. Forrest bowed graciously and went up the stairs. Gran rustled on ahead in her full black skirt, stepping casually over earthquake wreckage, and began to identify each room.

Adelina, of course, must move into the master bedroom, while Alec could have the smaller room adjoining. The guest room at the front of the house would, she was sure, be most comfortable for Mrs. Forrest. She herself preferred the small tower room which had once been her own little sitting room. As for the girls—

"There are more rooms on the third floor. May we look up there?" Melora said quickly. She too had taken to the idea of a room in a tower and she knew there was another one just above Gran's.

Her grandmother nodded her permission and went flitting from room to room among wreckage and the muss and confusion left behind by a family in flight. All these beds must be changed, of course, and the moment the girls had picked their own rooms they could come down and help. Fortunately, most of the furniture in the house belonged to her.

"We will not touch the Hoopers' clothes or best china," Gran said, "and we'll repay them for any food we eat. I don't think they'll begrudge us the use of the rest until we can purchase new supplies of our own."

Cora, running upstairs after Melora, laughed softly.

"Listen to her! She sounds as though there was no fire eating up the town a few blocks away, and as though all we had to do was run downtown to the White House and order new bedding. Yet day before yesterday she wouldn't even get up."

"Now she knows how much we need her," Melora said.

A crystal chandelier, surprisingly unhurt, hung down into the stair well from the second floor ceiling, and the balcony wound around above it. On one newel post was set a tall brass torch ending in a globe for a gas jet, broken now. Since the house was wired for electricity this was no longer used. The second floor balcony hall was paneled completely in a dark wood that reflected no light, and the girls had to grope their way to a narrower staircase leading to the third floor.

The tenants had apparently not occupied this upper floor. When Melora opened the door of the tower room the musty smell of long disuse came to her, but even dead air untainted by smoke was a relief to breathe. It did not take long, however, for the smoke smell to invade even this retreat. She flung open one of the tower windows, hoping for a clear breath from the bay, but the air was hot and dead and smoke-heavy.

Cora ran down the hall to the front of the house to find a place for herself, while Melora looked about the little room. A narrow bed stood unmade in the comer and there were a few other furnishings. She set the statue of Kwan Yin carefully upon a shelf along the wall and then turned to look at herself in the square mirror over the bureau. Streaks of soot blackened her forehead and one cheek, and she was thoroughly dusty and bedraggled. She had dampened her handkerchief again in the fingerbowl of water and now she dabbed at her face once more. Oh, for the luxury of soap and water!

Cora came in and pulled her to the window where they could look out toward the calm waters of the bay. The hills around the Golden Gate rose serene and undisturbed as always, and far out there the sky was blue and unsmirched. Only the unusual activity on the water betrayed that something was afoot in the city of San Francisco. That portion of the bay which they could glimpse was dotted with craft—everything from larger vessels to the tiniest of tugs, all well loaded with people. More refugees being taken away? Or sightseers come to stare at a city's death agonies?

"Do you think this house will burn too?" Cora asked uneasily. "Is there any use in our trying to settle down?"

Melora shook her head. "I don't know. And Gran doesn't either. But she's smart to keep us busy. Then we won't start counting our losses. It's better not to think of those things now. Let's go down and help her."

But Cora did not move toward the door at once. Her hair, usually caught back by a hair bow at the nape of her neck, had come loose. It curled in soft tendrils about her shoulders, making her look less than her sixteen years.

"We'll pull through somehow," Melora said. "Just think of all the other times San Francisco has burned down."

Cora nodded. "I know. It isn't that. I really don't think any of this is very bad right now. There's still the feeling of excitement to key us up. But I can't believe in it, Melora. I keep thinking of your old rag doll, Cindy, that you used to play with as a little girl. I brought her down from the attic the other day just for a joke and put her in the chair beside your bed to greet you when you came home. And she's still sitting there. I know it!"

Melora knew what her sister meant. She'd felt that too. The Cranby house and everything in it was completely alive and clear in her mind. She could walk through it in her thoughts just as she had done yesterday afternoon in reality. She could feel the banister beneath her hand, hear the creak of that top step, see her own room—just as Mama had redone it for last Christmas. She could count all the little belongings she had not bothered to take with her on her trip to Chicago. Everything was there. Nothing was changed.

And yet it was. So dreadfully.

"Let's go down," she repeated and she and Cora turned toward the stairs together.

"I'm glad you're here, Melora," Cora said. "We've missed you."

As they reached the second floor, Quong Sam came hurrying to find them.

"Missy M'lory!" he cried. "You hully up flont door. Mista Kint here. Mista Kint in devil wagon."

Melora saw the open sympathy in her sister's eyes and could hardly suppress her irritation. She would be happy to see Quent, of course, but not in the way Cora expected.

The "devil wagon" Melora recognized at once as Mr. Will Seymour's Oldsmobile car. "Uncle Will" they all called him by way of courtesy, though of course Quent's father wasn't a real uncle. But now it was Quent, not Uncle Will, who sat behind the wheel of the car.

He waved at the two girls as if he were on his way to a picnic. "We made it! And without another flat tire." He leaned over to speak to someone who was examining the spoked wheels on the far side of the i car. "Everything all right, you think?"

There was a mumbled reply and Quent got out to see for himself.

In the tonneau sat a plump lady, middle-aged, but strikingly handsome and rather foreign-looking. She was hatless and had ignored the stylish pompadour hairdress of the day to pull glossy black wings down from a center part ending in a coil on the back of her neck. Her lips were as red as though she might have touched them with pigment, and her dark eyes had a lively snap to them. When she spoke, greeting Melora with easy friendliness, she made quick, expressive gestures with hands that were small for her size.

Heaped about her in the car were rolled-up cylinders of various lengths and on the leather seat beside her was a huge laundry basket filled to the brim and covered over with a flowered challis wrapper.

"Good morning," Melora returned her greeting and came down the steps toward the car.

"Madre mia, it is not a. good morning!" the lady in the tonneau said, her smile flashing in contrast to her lugubrious words. 'That I should live to see such a day as this! My poor feet! Had not the young Mr. Seymour come in this beautiful car, I must have sat down on the sidewalk to burn like everything else. For not a step more could I have taken. Not one step!"

Beyond the car the studier of tires rose to his feet and smiled at the woman in the back seat—a smile which included Melora and her sister. The young man was the book clerk, Tony Ellis.

"Now, now," he said to the protesting lady, "you know you'd always take one more step as long as it was necessary. This young lady is Miss Melora Cran-by, of whom I have told you." He looked at Melora, as if to point up the fact that he had talked about her. "Miss Cranby, my mother, Mrs. Ellis. This second young lady I don't know—" He paused inquiringly.

Cora's dimples were in evidence as she regarded Tony and his mother with interest. Melora introduced her sister, while Quent Seymour unbent from examining a tire to glance at them.

"So you already know Tony? From the bookstore, I suppose. He and I went to school together."

This was an interesting fact, but Melora had other questions to ask. "Quent, what's happening now? The fire isn't up Nob Hill, is it?"

'Things look pretty bad," Quent said, sounding as if he enjoyed the excitement. "I don't see how they'll stop it. All our servants skipped out yesterday. Father sent them off in the carriages in order to get the horses safely away. He just kept the buggy himself. And of course this car."

"Where is your father?" Melora asked.

"Right now he's working on the Mayor's Committee of Fifty. They started out with headquarters in the Hall of Justice on Portsmouth Square, but got burned out last night. They've been moving from one place to another ever since. Father told me to cut some of the best paintings in his collection from their frames and bring them outside the fire lines. So of course I thought of this place." He grinned. "Besides, I was longing to see you, Melora."

Melora threw him a quick look of reproval. This was no time for nonsense and she particularly did not like it with Tony looking on.

"Well, bring them into the house, Quent," she said. "And you, Mrs. Ellis, won't you come in and rest? I think we'll be safe enough here for a while."

Mrs. Ellis accepted with obvious relief, and Tony sprang around the car to open the door and assist his mother to the ground.

"That would be fine," he said gratefully to Melora. "I'm afraid we can't ride any farther with Quent."

"Come on, Cora-Melora," Quent directed, using the old nickname with which he had teased both girls when they were children. "Fall to work here and help get these canvases indoors. Father has threatened to have my head if I don't get this car promptly over to Franklin Hall on Fillmore Street. That's the latest retreat of the Citizens' Committee. All cars are being commandeered for official use."

Quong Sam had informed the rest of the household of Quent's arrival and then returned to be of use himself. Gran and Mrs. Forrest came hurrying out, eager for news. While Tony helped his mother across the sidewalk, Sam and the two girls filled their arms with the art treasures Quent had managed to rescue from the Seymour mansion.

Mrs. Ellis was too heavy for her own small feet and she tottered a little as Gran came down the steps and held out her hand in greeting. Gran remembered Tony from the bookstore and she welcomed his mother like an old friend.

Mrs. Forrest turned at once to Quent. "What is the news, my boy? What's happening to the city now?"

Quent rubbed the back of a hand across his face, leaving a streak of soot in its wake.

"Fire's circling Nob Hill and eating its way up Russian Hill," he said. "We had to go clear around to get through. It's even licking the foot of Telegraph Hill."

"Ah, my family!" Tony's mother cried, and her son consoled her quickly.

"But the dynamiting?" Mrs. Forrest persisted. "Isn't that serving its purpose?"

"Father doesn't think so. He thinks they're just blowing up a lot of places that might be saved. And the fire's skipping right through most of the time. It's even turning back in some places to catch the spots it missed yesterday."

It was Cora who first thought of the practical, "Have you had anything to eat?" she asked, speaking to Quent, but with an eye for Tony.

"Now there's a thoughtful girl!" Quent approved. "Why do I love your sister when she never thinks of such matters? To put it bluntly, I'm starved. And I'm sure Tony and Mrs. Ellis must be too."

Ouong Sam heard the words and dumped his armload of paintings unceremoniously upon Melora so that he could find something for the guests to eat.

Gran was talking to Mrs. Ellis. "Of course you're not going on to Golden Gate Park. We have all the room in the world and there's no reason why you and your son shouldn't stay here." She glanced at Quent. "That goes for you and your father too. K you can't get back up Nob Hill tonight, just you come right over here. We'll put you up. After all—" she threw Melora a quick look—"you're practically related to this family."

Melora flushed and became preoccupied with carrying her load into the house. This whole thing had to be stopped, and soon. But she would have to talk to Quent alone first and get his co-operation. Otherwise goodness knew what crazy attitude he might take.

When she came back outside, she sat on the rail of the balcony above the others and watched Sam bring beans and soup to Mrs. Ellis and the two boys.

Mrs. Forrest continued to ply Quent with questions. "I presume the downtown biildings are burned to tha ground? The Mission Bells offices were in the Call Building. My son edits the magazine, but where he is now, I don't know. Probably in Oakland."