Ancestors: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

  XII

  The teamster had deposited her at Taylor and Jackson streets, and as shepassed the Trennahans' door it occurred to her to ask how they fared.The house appeared to be uninjured, but the electric bell was useless,and it was not until she had knocked several times that an old Mexicanservant answered the summons. Then she learned that the family had leftfor Menlo Park in their touring car immediately after the earthquake, asthe boys were at the country-house with their tutor. The woman had beenmaid for many years to Mrs. Polk and had lived with Magdalena since heraunt's death. She was a privileged character, and during Isabel's visithad accepted her relationship to the house of Yorba and waited on herpersonally.

  "So tired you look," she said. "Come in, no?" Then, as the invitationwas declined, she leaned her stout shapeless figure against thedoor-frame and begged Isabel for an account of her experience. Isabelgave it briefly, and the old woman shook her head. "So terreeblaything!" she sighed. "Seventy years I live in California and this themore bad earthquake I never feel. My mother she feel the greatearthquake of 1812 in the south, when the padres plant a long straightbranch in the middle of the square of San Gabriel, and it never stopshake for four months. Ay yi, California! I theenk we all go into thebay this morning, and I fall down twice when I run to see how littleSenorita Inez she feeling. Ay yi!"

  "Why did you not go to the country?"

  "And who take care the house? The car come back bime-by for the otherservants, but I no go. Si, I can go in the train--then--perhaps. But noin automobilia. Is devil, no less."

  "Well, if you should be frightened come up to me," and Isabel went onhurriedly to her own home, suddenly reminded of the uncertainty of herrelative's nerves. But Victoria was standing on the porch staringoutward with such an intensity of gaze that she took no notice ofIsabel's approach. And when Isabel reached her side, she too stoodsilent for a time. _The Call_ Building was on fire. This square tower ofseventeen stories and a dome, with some seventy windows on each side,had caught fire at the top, and as the flames devoured the contents ofone floor as quickly as possible that they might dart down anotherflight and gorge themselves anew, in an incredibly short time the twohundred windows in sight, and no doubt those in the rear, were spoutingflames like the mouths of so many cannon: each sharply defined, owing tothe indestructible nature of the walls. Volumes of white smoke pouredupward to be lost in the black clouds above. At times the fire andsmoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in aBacchanalian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers ofsparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burningdistrict the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeledalong like colossal water-spouts. The roar of the fire waxed louder asone listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a seaclimbing over a land its time had come to devour.

  Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene,conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a momentlater it was shot with a million sparks.

  Victoria announced briefly that they were to have lunch of a sort, butfor her part she would prefer a bath.

  A bath, however, was out of the question, and, without washing thecinders from their faces and hands, they sat down to beefsteak fried onone of the oil-stoves used for heating the Mansard story, and cannedvegetables. That much indulgence they might have permitted themselves,but human nature is prone to extremes, and they were tuned to a severeeconomy that might embrace more than water for some weeks to come.

  Isabel sent a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of beer down to Mr.Clatt, and the servant returned with the information that the faithfulwharfinger was sitting on a chair in front of the launch, a pistol onhis lap; and that already a small crowd was crouched like buzzards infront of him. Isabel asked Victoria if she cared to retreat, but theolder woman shook her head.

  "Do you?" she asked.

  "Oh no. I shall remain until the last minute, certainly until I knowwhat Elton's plans are. If the launch is seized we can go down to FortMason or out to the Presidio. Every one is in the same boat. I shouldhate being too comfortable. But I don't think you should sleepout-of-doors. It is always damp at night."

  "I can stand as much as you can. I am quite fit again. And this is thefirst time, for heaven knows how many years, that anything hasinterested me. I shall stay till the last minute; and surely no firecould climb this hill. Did I tell you that Mr. Trennahan came up at onceand asked me to go to Menlo Park with them? Ungrateful--but I have notthought of it since."

  Isabel announced her intention to take a nap. "No one knows what mayhappen to-night," she said. "And I feel as if I had not slept for aweek."

  She fell asleep at once. Lady Victoria awakened her by burstingunceremoniously into her room.

  "You must get up and look!" she cried. "The Palace Hotel and the otherbig newspaper buildings are on fire. The sight is something awful--andwonderful."

  Isabel ran to the window. All the valley was a rolling sea of flame, andall space seemed to be filled with enormous surging billows of smoke.From every window of the Palace Hotel, an immense square building ofsome seven stories, from the great newspaper buildings, and from otherbrick and stone structures near by, tongues of flame were leaping; thewooden buildings were mere shapeless furnaces. Again a volume of smokedescended, and for the moment nothing was to be seen but a red blursomewhere in the midst of rolling black.

  Victoria communicated to Isabel the information she had received fromthe neighbors, always coming and going. People were pouring out of thecity, not only by the Southern Pacific boats to Oakland, and indirectlyto Berkeley and Alameda, but by freight-boats and launches to the Marintowns. They were obliged to make a long detour round the base of thenorthern hills, as the water-front and the streets behind were a roaringfurnace, although the fires had not crossed East Street. All houses inthe towns across the bay had opened to the refugees, tents had beenerected in the public squares, and emergency hospitals had been startedbefore nine o'clock. The militia had been called out to assist theregulars, and also the Cadet Battalion of the State University. ACitizens' Patrol had been formed to protect the still unburneddistricts, each man provided with arms at the Presidio. People on thelower slopes were now in full flight towards the western parks andhills, as well as the Presidio, many being under the impression that theferry-boats were not running. It was doubtful if a hotel or aboarding-house would harbor a soul that night; not east of Van NessAvenue, at least, and many in that region were preparing to sleep in thePark and squares, lest the fire attack them from the south. Refugees,exhausted, were lying on the doorsteps and in the streets of the WesternAddition.

  Victoria relapsed into silence and Isabel gazed down upon the beautifulterrible scene--the curtain had rolled upward again--at the enormoustongues of flame leaping from every window, the showers of goldensparks, the swooping and soaring clouds, many of them white, withconvoluted edges, and faintly tinted like the day smoke of Vesuvius.These curled white masses rolled among the black waves towards the west,and the low deep roar waxed louder as one listened to it.

  All the wooden bow-windows of the Palace Hotel had been eaten off, butit would be hours before the stoutly built old hotel ceased to feed theflames. Sometimes sheets of fire seemed to drive from the aperturesacross the great width of Market Street, to be beaten back by a solidwall of flame. In the intense clear yellow light that bathed the streetIsabel could see the twisted car tracks. More than once she fancied shesaw a prostrate body, but it may have been an achievement of theshifting flames, and certainly nothing living moved down there. Themounted officers and their men were patrolling the blocks along all thenorthern front of the fire.

  "Are you not in the least worried about Elton?" asked Isabel, abruptly.

  "Not a bit. I never worried about him when he was a child. He was alwaysthe most agile and ready youngster I ever saw."

  "But he is very venturesome. He might be caught in one of those furnacesas well as another, or killed by falling bricks."
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  "He is a man of destiny," said Victoria indifferently. "He will live toaccomplish what he was born for."

  Isabel, in truth, found worry as impossible as any other common emotion,nevertheless thought it odd that he did not come to them for a moment orsend a message. She could appreciate his wholly masculine mood, histemporary indifference to the charms of her sex, but he had an ingrainedsense of responsibility, and was more considerate than the average man.

  Lady Victoria returned to her vantage-point on the veranda, and Isabelwent down to the garden fence where the three Japs were standing, andasked them if they intended to remain--half the servants had alreadyfled from the city. Two replied that later in the day they should go toOakland where they had friends. Isabel told them that she should notpart with what little money there was in the house, and they answeredpolitely that they expected to wait for their wages. The oldest of thethree, a respectable man of thirty, who looked like, and no doubt was,a student, announced his intention to remain.

  "I can cook," he added. "Not well, but perhaps well enough for a fewdays. And perhaps if we are driven out I may go to the country with you.I should be willing to work for anything you could pay me until thingswere restored to their normal condition--if you would be good enough togive me my evenings for study."

  Isabel promised him the protection of her ranch-house, and stood talkingto him for some time. His English was unusually correct and his remarkswere more intelligent than those of the average man of her acquaintance.He told her something of Japanese earthquakes, and was good enough toadd that he had never felt quite so violent or so peculiar a series ofearth movements as California had achieved that morning. He was curiousto see the result as recorded on the seismograph, and to know at whathour it registered in Japan.

  "I think Professor Omori will come over," he said, modestly. "Thisearthquake will interest him very much. He will wish to study theground."

  "Were you not frightened?" asked Isabel, curiously.

  "I appreciated the danger, but frightened--no, miss, I think I havenever felt frightened. But I do not like fire. I have seen Tokio burn. Ishall walk about constantly and see that it does not steal upon us fromthe north or west. Some silly person might make a fire, and all thechimneys must be cracked."

  "I feel much relieved to know that you will patrol," said Isabel,wondering if she were being gracious to a prince. "Would you mind goingup to the top of the hill and asking some one if he knows whether allthe injured were taken from the Mechanics' Pavilion? It is blazing likea wood pile."

  He went up the hill and returned with the information that all thepatients, as well as the doctors and nurses, had been taken out, thelast of them while the roof was blazing, and conveyed in automobiles toother emergency hospitals far away; and that the prisoners in the CityHall had been transported, manacled, to the army prisons in the samemanner.

  "One of the gentlemen said he saw Mr. Gwynne running an automobile fullof nurses and patients--one of Mr. Hofer's machines," he added. "Andthat he returned twice at least. All the young men that own machines areacting very well, they say, transporting the injured, and makingthemselves generally useful. Many are on the roofs of the greaterbuildings with the firemen fighting the fire with blankets, and hoseattached to the cisterns. A few buildings have been saved in that way,but not many, and more or less of the water has to be turned on the men,who catch fire repeatedly from the sparks."

  Isabel went into the house and put on her hat. "I cannot keep still anylonger," she said to Victoria, a moment later. "And now I am quiterested. I shall go down and see Mrs. Hofer, and reconnoitre for myself.If Elton should come, ask him to wait for me here--he must need arest--or walk down Taylor Street."