And in San Francisco itself, everywhere around them, they heard the hiss of escaping gas, the screams and groans of the dying, the further rumbles and crashes as damaged timbers and cracked walls broke at last. But in that first awful stillness as the dust settled and new collapses threatened, in those stunned moments as she swayed against Rhodes and his strong arm held her up, Roxanne realized that besides death and destruction, the earthquake had brought them something else. In the shock of the catastrophe, she had almost forgotten: Only minutes before she had been about to lose either her life or her love. But now Gavin was gone and nothing stood between them—she could stay with Rhodes again.
And then suddenly they were both aware that the stillness around them was disintegrating. Groans began to be heard from the dusty heap of rubble and broken walls that had once been a great hotel.
At the sound, Rhodes leaped forward and began tossing away timbers and heaving aside blocks of stone. “Go find help,” he cried over his shoulder to Roxanne. “A cart. Shovels. Crowbars. There are people buried under all this—we’ve got to dig them out.”
Silently, swift-footed, Roxanne obeyed. She found a place where the sewers were being repaired before the earthquake struck. There were plenty of shovels. Help was harder to find. Everyone was distracted, everyone had their own problems. People were buried under hundreds of structures. The city was a scene of incredible carnage.
She brought the shovels back to Rhodes.
With grim determination, all day long she worked beside him. They did manage to rescue a number of people from the rubble before a new collapse brought the last wall of the building down and the groans ceased forever. Panting, they leaned upon their shovels for a moment, each realizing the other had made a gallant effort. Just as all across San Francisco, other survivors had scrambled up and made valiant efforts to save themselves and their city.
And they might have done it—except for the fire.
Chapter 38
The fire began in fifty places at once, even as the earth shuddered and rocked, and raged through some five square miles. Before it had burned itself out four days later, most of four hundred ninety city blocks—including the entire business district and most of the residential areas of San Francisco, lay in smoke-blackened ruins. The conflagration had burned like a mighty torch, reaching some two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, a fierce chattering fire-storm of flames that melted glass and exploded stone, an ocean of fire that terrified beholders and charred the very earth in its path. All through it sweating men dug people out of the rubble. All through it the horse-drawn fire engines clanged wildly, and people shouted and lugged their possessions—what they could save—through broken streets, heaved up by the earthquake. As fires raged uncontrolled, a torrent of refugees fled down Market Street toward the Ferry Building. The city came under martial law, and the roar of the fire and the clanging engines were augmented by great booms as buildings were dynamited in an effort to halt the spreading flames.
Some of the loveliest buildings in San Francisco were blown up in an attempt to halt the fire, some of the grandest homes. One of the worst moments came for Roxanne when she found Josie Mawkins lying with a broken leg on a white cot in one of the makeshift hospitals that had been thrown up. Under Josie’s anxious questioning, Roxanne had to admit that Josie’s house had been reduced to rubble. To her surprise, Josie thought about that a while and then shrugged. “You know, Rox,” she said, “I was tired of retirement anyway. Think I’ll go back into business when this is over—that is, if the bank’s still standing.” Roxanne assured her it was and left, marveling at Josie’s resilience.
All through those terrible days, Roxanne and Rhodes worked tirelessly, digging out those who had been buried alive, assisting them onto carts that would take them to doctors, sometimes even driving those carts themselves. They ate what scraps of food they could snatch, and ignored their own needs. What a sight they were: the powerful man in torn evening clothes with the grimy face; the supple woman with her wild, dirty blond hair working beside him in what remained of her glittering white ball gown. Doggedly they worked until either the long terrible tongues of the rapidly spreading flames or the grim-faced bayonet-carrying troops drove them back. Through the town rushed wild-eyed people, clad in whatever they had been wearing, or whatever was most valuable or closest at hand: women in nightgowns, weighted down by fur-coats, wearing picture hats and pushing baby carriages; men in long johns and shawls dragging carts; even an occasional night-shirted old man in a stocking cap wandering about lost and barefoot.
But somehow, through incredible efforts, a kind of order was at last restored, and Rhodes and Roxanne, leaning on their shovels to rest, gazed into each other’s dirty faces.
Although they had hardly spoken to each other except small necessary phrases like, “Help me with this plank,” or, “I think I hear someone under that pile of bricks,” or, “If we could raise this beam—” now, at least, they knew their long ordeal was ended. They smiled at each other; together they had won through.
But the smile on Roxanne’s face faded as she saw Rhodes grow serious.
“One thing I must know, Roxanne: Why did you promise to marry Gavin in the first place?”
“He told me that you were dead,” she answered wearily. “Lost at sea—and what was I to believe when you had not come for me in Singapore?” She straightened up, and her face flushed under the dirt as she added,” He was also blackmailing me with trumped-up charges—it was marry him or hang. So, I promised to marry him. Though I fully intended to marry him and wreck his life, God forgive me.” She paused for a moment to consider all that had happened these past few days. “But then, at the ball, when you appeared, I knew that I would rather die than give you up.”
“Why didn’t we make a run for it then, Roxanne? Instead of waltzing away the night?” Rhodes asked.
“Because Gavin had his bodyguards all around; they would have not let us out of the hall,” she explained.
“And he promised to hunt me down wherever I went if I left him again.”
Lifting her smoke-blackened chin with his finger, Rhodes looked into her sad blue eyes. “Roxanne, Roxanne, I could always handle Gavin.”
She shook her head. “No one could handle Gavin. He had become too powerful.” Her voice was sharp. “Well, now you know what kind of a woman I am, Rhodes. I meant to stand up and vow to love honor and obey a man—but all the time, I was plotting to ruin him.”
“Well, I never thought that either of us was good,” Rhodes said cheerfully. “I just knew that we were made for each other. It was worth crossing the world to claim you!”
Hope and life and a surging happiness returned to make her sapphire eyes glow. Crying, laughing, Roxanne hurled herself against Rhodes. “Then you forgive me!”
His strong arms were holding her close. “There’s nothing to forgive, Roxanne.”
She pushed him away, gazed up at him intensely. “Oh, Rhodes, let them think we died in the fire! Then we can start again, salvage something of ourselves.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” he said, his voice deep and caressing. “When I was driving a cart yesterday up to the tent camp on Nob Hill, I picked up a man who’d tripped over some broken pavement and sprained his ankle. As we rode we talked, and he turned out to be one of Gavin’s lawyers. Would you believe that with the city in ruins about them, they’re already trying to straighten out his estate? Seems I’m his nearest living relative.”
She stared at him. “But you’re not even related—not really.”
Rhodes shrugged, shifting the rags on his big shoulders. “Who’s to know that? I figure the Coulters robbed me of a lot of years—years I could have spent with you. So I’ll take that inheritance. I told the lawyer that I was sailing tomorrow with the tide and that I’ll be back in six months to the day. And he doesn’t know it yet, but I’ll return with a wife. Her name will be Anne. Eventually, we’ll take up residence in New York and sell the shipping line and go into railroads or some su
ch—I’ve no love for steamers. And who’s to connect the wife of a railroad tycoon with an adventuress who died in the Great San Francisco Fire?”
Grimy and happy, Roxanne threw her arms around his neck, feeling the strong muscles under her touch. Six months they would have, six wonderful months together before they had to come back and face respectability. Six wonderful carefree months just to be lovers. Six months to be venturesome with Rhodes before he became an industrial giant, hemmed in by lawyers and accountants. Six months to be wild free Roxanne before she became that conservative matron Anne Coulter, who wintered in her Fifth Avenue town house or in the south of France, who summered in her marble villa at Newport and hired an English nanny for her slew of adorable children.
With all their recklessness, Roxanne’s eyes gleamed up at Rhodes. A sun that set red in the smoky west touched kindly their dirt and rags, and gilded their handsome silhouettes against a burned-out ruined city that would soon rise Phoenix-like from the ashes. Just as they would rise anew from the ashes of their shattered, misspent lives.
They left their shovels behind them in the rubble and, with half a crew, they sailed the battered Virginia Lass out through the Golden Gate—a leaky old ship on which to brave the wild Pacific, but it would sail them to heaven. As she boarded the familiar creaking vessel, Roxanne looked up at the billowing white shrouds above her and took a deep breath. She could almost smell the perfumed scent of islands waiting in the sun, see coral beaches and hear the rustle of the waving coconut palms that fringed blue lagoons and black volcanic sands and great seas breaking green—seas no greener than the eyes that smiled into her own, breezes no warmer than the arms that would hold her fast.
That first night out, a sliver of moon scattered diamonds over the waters, and the old ship rode the waves like a fair young clipper. When the grime of their efforts in the scarred and lovely city had been washed away, Roxanne turned to Rhodes languorously. On deck, Bevin had the wheel, and they could hear him singing in his soft baritone, a sailor’s chantey. He was happy to be at sea again and so were they.
Roxanne lay on her back in the bunk, the moonlight silvering her lovely body. Fondly, she watched Rhodes undress, toss his clothes to a chair. In matching silver perfection, he stood above her for a moment, smiling down.
And then Rhodes, for whom a loving fate had fashioned her, was in her arms again. He nuzzled her throat, his rich soft laugh rang in her ears. She sighed deeply and her pliant body melted against his own as she surrendered herself to the night, to the magic, to the man she would always love.
These Golden Pleasures Page 48