Ancestors: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

  XV

  She barely touched the breakfast prepared by the methodical Sugihara,who had already buried the silver, and cut the pictures from theirframes, rolled, and tied them securely.

  "It is only a question of a few hours," he said. "The dynamiting so farhas done more harm than good. They take a house at a time instead of ablock, and as it falls apart it ignites another on the opposite side ofthe street. The army doesn't like to interfere, and the mayor has toolong been obsequious to capital. Mr. Clatt is still there with thelaunch behind him. I took him down his breakfast some time ago. He toldme to tell you that he'd 'got his job cut out for him now, as the Dagoswere beginning to leave Telegraph Hill.'"

  Isabel had one or two moments of panic as she watched those waves offlame beat up the hill, and pictured them raging up the eastern slopesas well; but the panic passed, for she knew that there were two exitsstill open. The heavens were black. A disk like a sealing-wax waferindicated the position of the sun. The heat was terrific. The dynamitingwas incessant, but it did not drown the roar and the eager furiouscrackle of the flames, the reverberating crash of falling walls. And theflames were the redder for the blackness above. Cinders were falling allover the heights, and the smoke burned the eyes.

  "I shall feel like Casabianca presently, and rather ridiculous," shereflected, "but I shall stay till the last possible moment." She wentwithin and packed a pillow-case with Lady Victoria's laces and otherportable objects of value and adornment, then gathered up similarbelongings of her own, tied the case firmly about the neck, stood itwhere it could be snatched in flight, and returned to the porch.

  The boarding-house district, several blocks of large wooden houses,seemed literally to be swept from its foundations by those rushingpillars of fire. The whole quarter was wiped out in an hour, and thenthe fire turned its attention to the higher slopes.

  It played with them for a while, darting west and returning for a morselat which it leaped with the agility of a living monster, went westagain; then, its appetite whetted and its greed insatiable, it startedstraight for Nob Hill. The soldiers drove the faithful servants out ofthe houses at the point of the bayonet. Then--in a moment--the familiarcurtains were blowing out of the windows--shrivelled to a crisp andpursued by the red rage behind.

  Sugihara did not go through the form of cooking luncheon. He knew thathis mistress would not eat, and he had as little appetite himself. Hefolded his arms on the top of the fence and waited for the signal toretreat.

  Isabel went into the house repeatedly and dipped her burning face into abasin of water, but returned quickly to her post. The fire was runningfrom the east along California Street hill; she saw the men who had beencutting pictures from their frames in the Institute of Art flee to thewest, then watched the Gothic structure flare up and burn like an oldhay-stack: that monument to a millionaire whose name would be alreadyforgotten had it not been tacked to the gift. The fire reachedCalifornia Street, on the edge of the plateau, from the south, coming upthe west side of Taylor Street. Other great houses of the rich were somany roaring furnaces--several were curiously neglected and isolated bythe fire, that seemed to have gone mad with its own lust. The easternslopes were a mass of smouldering ruins, not black, but the mostexquisite tints of violet, rose, chrome, gray, sepia, yellow. Theylooked, with their arches and columns, towers and broken walls, like theRoman Forum and the Palatine Hill on a colossal scale. About and throughthem floated clouds of fine white ashes, ghostly restless dust ofunthinkable treasure.

  Suddenly, hardly crediting her eyes, Isabel saw an automobile labor upthe steep acclivity, through that swirling furnace, and dart acrossCalifornia Street and in the direction of Russian Hill. She knew thatGwynne was in it, and a moment later Hofer discharged him at the foot ofthe steps, then ran the car out Jackson Street at the top of its speed.

  Gwynne walked up the steps and along the plank walk. Isabel recognizedhim by his carriage, for he was as black as a coal-heaver and most ofhis hair was burned off.

  "I should like to wash first," he said, as he came up the house flight."The water will go with the rest."

  "Of course. Do you want anything to eat."

  "No, I had some sandwiches a while ago."

  He went up to his room and Isabel awaited him in the farthest corner ofthe living-room, where it may have been a trifle less hot and less noisythan elsewhere.

  He came down in a moment. "That was a close shave," he said. "We didn'tknow what we were in for, and it was either go on and hope for betterluck at the top, or dive down into a very good imitation of a livevolcano."

  He was recognizable, although his khaki clothes were black and burned,and one side of his head made him look as if he had just been dischargedfrom a military hospital.

  "I shall rest for a few moments and then go back," he said, throwinghimself into a chair opposite Isabel. "I never forgot you, but I madesure Stone had delivered my message and that you were on the ranch. Isaw my mother and Miss Montgomery an hour ago. You must get out of thisat once."

  "Tell me what you have been doing," said Isabel evasively.

  "I have been alive," he said, intensely. "Never in all my days have Ifound life so wonderful. Battle is nothing to it. For the best part oftwo days I have been dodging the open jaws of death every minute; andthe sensation of pitting one's puny human strength and the accumulatedwit of several thousand years of varied civilization against an elementin its might has inspired me with the only consummate approval of lifethat I have ever known--although I might have known it the day beforeyesterday if you had looked as you do now." He sat steadily regardingher for a few moments without speaking, but he was sensible of noimmediate wish to touch her. That, too, belonged to a possibly greaterbut far different to-morrow. He was keyed very high. He did not feelhimself so much a human being as a component part of one force disputingevery inch of the progress of a mightier.

  "Great God, what men!" he burst out. "I have been with some member ofthe Committee of Fifty, on and off, these two days, to say nothing oflast night--Mr. Phelan invited me to serve on it yesterday morning. Theyare superb, not daunted for a moment, talking already of the new city,of the opportunity this conflagration has given them to make it over inevery way. Architects were engaged before three o'clock yesterdayafternoon. And the young business men that have been cleaned out! Theytalk only of the enormous possibilities of the future. I rememberreading once of much the same spirit exhibited by Londoners after theGreat Fire. It is the most wonderful thing in the world that for a fewdays at least you are permitted to cherish an unleavened respect forhuman nature. Every mean cowardly and selfish trait that chains man toearth is moribund to-day, in the normal at least; and the rats have runto other holes. The higher qualities, those that have inspired the worldsince it began, are in full possession. And, by Jove, it is going to bethe pioneer life over again! Do you remember that I regretted once Icould not be in at the foundation and growth of a great city, also thatthe drawback to such an opportunity was that one was never conscious ofhis part? Well, now we are back to the conditions of the Fifties, and weknow it. We shall work for tremendous stakes, and in no doubt of theresult."

  "The enthusiastic moment has come," said Isabel.

  "Rather. Here is my part cut out for me. Here I stay and become a chieffactor in making this city greater even than before. That is enough forany man. And there will be plenty of fight. Politics will crawl back tonew strongholds, as soon as men become egos again, but I shall fightthem here, not in the country."

  He stood up, and Isabel asked, hastily: "Have you had no sleep?"

  "Hofer and I broke into an empty house in the Western Addition towardsmorning and slept on the floor for three hours. I have known harderbeds. I must go. I felt that I must look at you and order you to leaveat once."

  "I don't want to leave the city."

  "You must go. The fire will have taken this house before midnight. Youwill be ordered out before that. They may save the city west of Van NessAvenue, for the mayor at last has con
sented that several blocks shall beblown up at once. I am carrying dynamite. If I saw Russian Hill on fireand was not sure that you were out of harm's way, it would unnerve me,and I need all the nerve I've got."

  "I can go down to Fort Mason."

  "I want to know that you are out of the city. I think my mother isbetter off where she is. She is working with a will down there andabsolutely refused to leave. I did not insist--no fire could cross thosesand-lots, and I fancy she needs occupation. But you must go."

  "I should be as safe."

  "Perhaps. But I should be beset by fears that you had ventured too far.I can be quite impersonal, keen, steady of hand and brain, if you areout of the city."

  "Very well, I will go."

  "The day the fire is over I will go for you and we will marry and livein any shanty we can find--begin life together like any Forty-niners.You can help others as much as you choose then. There will be work forall--but now there is not, cannot be until organization begins. And Imust be free to take care of you. Will you go at once? The launch isstill there."

  "Yes, I will go at once."

  He left her, and a few moments later she was walking down the other sideof the hill, the voluminous pillow-case slung over her shoulder. Besideher trudged Sugihara, the ancestors under one arm, and his library underthe other. The street along the water-front was a moving mass ofrefugees from Telegraph Hill, and Mr. Clatt was standing in the launch,on the alert. He gave a shout of delight as he saw Isabel, and she wavedher hand. As she reached the wharf and forced her way through theItalians and Mexicans, who regarded her with no great favor, she noticeda small party of Chinese evidently in distress. The woman, magnificentlyarrayed, and hardly larger than a child, was huddled against thesea-wall, dumbly protesting that she could go no farther. Her face wastwisted and her eyes were staring with pain and fright. A pretty childin three shirts of different colors, all silken and embroidered, waswailing in the common language of his years, and the young husbandargued with his wife in vain: she made no response, but her passiveresistance was as effective as if her feet had been six. She would notlet her maid touch her, and her husband dared not relinquish his hold onhis strong-box while surrounded by his formidable neighbors of TelegraphHill.

  Isabel, glad to be able to do something for some one, told him to handthe box to Mr. Clatt, then carry his wife on board the launch. The nursefollowed with the child, while Isabel and Sugihara, having cast theirown burdens on board, and drawn their pistols, brought up in the rear.

  As the launch entered the current that would carry it east of AngelIsland, Isabel looked at her guests--the Chinese wife and her childlying on the cushions of the cabin, stolid once more; the big-footedmaid and the husband, his strong-box between his knees, seated opposite;the Japanese, sitting cross-legged on the roof, his back to the land--nodoubt to emphasize his contempt for the rabble; Mr. Clatt, shaking hisfist at a group of vociferating Italians--and smiled grimly as sherecalled the romantic boat party that escaped from Pompeii. She did notfeel in the least romantic, but she felt something greater and deeper.

  She turned her head many times to look at the wonderful spectacle of theburning city, the red curtain in the background, along whose frontrushed the pillars of fire driven by the rolling masses of smoke. Wherethe fires on Nob Hill had burned low the flames looked like redsprouting corn. Fairmont had caught at last. It stood, a great squarepile of white stone against the red background, and from its top alonepoured a steady square volume of curling white smoke. The windows, andthere were many hundreds of them, looked like plates of brass. The lastthing she saw, as the launch shot up the bay towards San Pablo, was awave of fire roll down Telegraph Hill, and hundreds of black pigmiesfleeing before it.

  It was a beautiful evening of perfect peace when the launch enteredRosewater creek. The marsh was bathed in all the faint colors of theafterglow. The birds were singing. People were sitting under the treesin their parks or gardens. A fisherman was sailing up to Rosewater withhis catch. But for the red light in the south and the faint sound as ofa besieging army, there was nothing to recall that a civilization hadbeen arrested and a great city was burning down to its bones.

  THE END

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  THE CONQUEROR A FEW OF HAMILTON'S LETTERS THE ARISTOCRATS SENATOR NORTH HIS FORTUNATE GRACE PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES RULERS OF KINGS THE TRAVELLING THIRDS THE BELL IN THE FOG

  (_CALIFORNIA SERIES_)

  REZANOV THE DOOMSWOMAN THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE THE CALIFORNIANS AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS A WHIRL ASUNDER