The Trembling Hills
Page 21
“Nick is all right,” Allison said with an air of confidence. “We don’t have to worry about him.”
“Why are you sure?”
“Nick’s careful. He’s not like Uncle Ritchie. Uncle Ritchie would take a stick of dynamite and see how close he could get to the fire. But Nick won’t take foolish chances.”
They sat in silence again and Sara, who had begun to lose her sense of courage and strength, felt oddly comforted.
Allison said, “Nick’s like bread, isn’t he?”
For a moment Sara didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she remembered the game Allison had played long ago, before the city of San Francisco had begun to burn. Yes, she thought, Nick was like bread. Something to live by, to depend on. She remembered that he had thought Allison’s term unflattering.
“With butter?” Sara asked, smiling a little in the dark. “Don’t you think we ought to add butter?”
“No,” said Allison. “With Nick you don’t need any butter.”
It was still early morning when they heard someone pounding on the front door. Allison flew down the stairs and reached the door first, with Sara right after her.
In the doorway, bowing with his usual formality, stood Ah Foong. When he spoke his words permitted no contradiction.
“Miss Valady say you come now. She wantchee you Valady house, Missy Sala. Also fam’ly of Mista Nick.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” Sara said. “I’ll tell Mama and we’ll come at once.”
When she saw Ah Foong, Mrs. Jerome was disturbed. “We need not go to Miss Varady’s house,” she told him. “We can go to the Park as others are doing.”
But this time Mrs. Renwick objected and the rest bore her out. There was no point in camping in a park if a house waited for them in a safer area. So Mrs. Jerome dropped her opposition and went silently to oversee the last-minute things that had to be done. Sara watched her mother uneasily. She was not at all sure what would happen when she and Miss Varady faced each other.
The women put their hats on and gathered up their various bundles. Until the last minute, Sara hoped that Nick might come. But when they were all outside and he still had not appeared, she gave up looking for him. As her mother pointed out, Nick would know where to find them.
There was a moment when Ritchie spoke directly to Judith before they left. “I’m going to see you to the Varady house before I go back to help in the fire area,” he said.
Judith did not look at him. “That’s not necessary. I’m sure you can do more good somewhere else.”
But Ritchie, though he flushed angrily, did not leave them.
Mrs. Renwick had apparently heeded Sara’s suggestion, because Allison, her face red from heat and pride, clutched Comstock under one arm and two of her mother’s plates, carefully wrapped, under the other.
Ah Foong marched ahead, carrying Nick’s basket of papers, and Sara and Allison followed close on his heels. Ritchie helped Mrs. Renwick, and Judith walked on the other side of her mother. Mrs. Jerome came last, making sure their little group stayed together.
As they turned west the steep drop of the hill shielded them from the withering heat at their backs. And hats were fine things for catching cinders. But the fire was on their left too, roaring at the foot of every street. The Nob Hill mansions stood serenely, indifferent to their doom. And always the dynamite blasts crashed along the nerves, shattering in their unexpectedness. No matter how you braced yourself, you weren’t ready for the explosion when it came.
California Street looked safe enough and along it the endless stream of refugees stumbled. Once in a while there was a burst of song and even laughter. One old man, resting on a washbasket filled with his possessions, called to them as they went by.
“Wait till you see the city we build next time!” And again there was laughter.
Sara began to feel a pride and a kinship for the strangers around her. She too belonged to San Francisco. These were her people.
Now and then they rested, but always they picked up their burdens and went on again. Ahead lay Van Ness and the house of Hester Varady. But to judge from the way the wind was blowing and the way the fire downhill seethed toward the west, it might be that Van Ness Avenue was doomed too.
17
When they reached Van Ness they saw water being used for the first time. Here some of the mains were still intact and soot-blackened firemen and civilians worked with lengths of hose. Someone said there was a fireboat as well, down at the end of the street pumping water from the bay. If necessary, one fireman claimed, they’d blast every house on the avenue to hold the line here.
Toward the Market Street end, some of the houses on the east side of Van Ness were already burning, but here the western houses stood bleak and waiting, their façades dripping wet where firemen had hosed them down to help resist sparks.
They reached the Varady house to find it had suffered little outward damage from the earthquake. Ah Foong led them inside, where the usual broken bric-a-brac, cracked mirrors, fallen plaster were in evidence. Only Mrs. Jerome remained near the doorway, reluctant to meet Miss Varady.
Geneva greeted them eagerly, but looked only for the absent Nick.
“He said he’d get back to us when he could,” Sara told her. “He—he’s helping where he is needed.”
“Of course,” said Geneva. “Nick would do that. Do come in, everyone. Aunt Hester is waiting for you in the drawing room.”
The great room was dim, and Sara blinked to accustom her eyes to the gloom. Miss Varady waited for them as calmly as though nothing untoward were going on outside. The crowding vines sheltered the room to some extent from both heat and red light. A great bowlful of roses stood on the piano. So long had the refugees breathed smoke and dust that the scent of the flowers seemed astonishing and unreal.
Miss Varady left her high-backed chair and came toward them. She wore cool pale green today and one had the feeling, looking at her, that no disaster could ever ruffle a hair of her head, or cause the slightest change in her demeanor.
Though the others went into the drawing room, Mrs. Jerome remained in the hall. She had not wanted to come to this house at all, and had done so only to remain in the party. Ritchie bowed as charmingly over Miss Varady’s hand as if the occasion had been a party, and Hester Varady seemed pleased.
Of all the group, Mrs. Renwick had rallied most surprisingly. Not once on the walk from Nob Hill had she mentioned her fluttering heart. Having rescued her plates and William’s picture, she had apparently resigned herself to the loss of all else. Now she regarded Miss Varady with an open and lively interest.
Miss Varady’s attention, however, had been caught by the little girl who stood in the doorway with an unhappy Comstock in her arms.
“Take that cat out of here,” she ordered. “I cannot abide cats. Put him outside at once.”
Allison, who had set her mother’s plates down to struggle with the uneasy cat, stared at her.
“If my cat has to go outside, I will too,” she said.
Sara drew her quickly into the hall, out of her aunt’s sight. “You needn’t put him outside, but perhaps you’d better keep him out of her way for a little while. I’ll try to explain that he’s one of the family.”
“Comstock doesn’t like her either,” said Allison.
And indeed Comstock was showing a remarkable antipathy for this house and its mistress. With a final struggle he leaped from Allison’s grasp and landed lightly on the hall carpet. Then he rose to the tips of his toes, while his tail bristled and every hair on his body stood on end, until he was a monstrous size.
Mrs. Jerome watched him in sympathy. “That’s exactly how I feel in this house,” she admitted.
“It’s because he’s not a witch’s cat,” Allison said. “He likes good people.” She let Comstock stay where he was, but kept near lest he dart away.
“Not now,” Mrs. Jerome said. She was tired after the long walk, but she held herself erect and somehow remote from these surroundings. “I don’t want to go near that woman until I have to. Perhaps we won’t stay here after all. You go back if you like, Sara. I’ll keep Allison company.”
Pulled two ways, Sara’s curiosity won out and she returned to the drawing room to find the others sitting about uneasily in stiff chairs. Miss Varady dispatched Ah Foong to make tea with the aid of a spirit lamp in the kitchen.
“You are all quite safe here,” she assured them. “My house will not burn.” But her assurance was to be contradicted almost at once.
They heard steps outside and a man came through the front door, walked into the drawing room without ceremony.
“Who’s in charge here?” he demanded, looking at Ritchie.
Miss Varady answered him. “I am in charge. What do you wish?”
“Orders,” he said. “You’ll have to leave. Everyone out of the house. Fire’s blowing this way. You can start for Golden Gate Park, if you want. Or if you don’t care to go so far, there’re a lot of folks camping in Lafayette Square. But don’t take more than ten minutes to get out of here.”
“What if we do not choose to leave?” Miss Varady said.
He stared at her. Then he slapped a holster on his hip. “You’ll leave. We don’t waste time arguing. I’ll be back in a bit to see that you’ve cleared out.”
He went out and Sara could see that her aunt’s eyes glittered with anger.
“Well,” said Ritchie, “I suppose we’d better start. I’ll see you as far as the Square, and then come back to the fire lines here.”
Miss Varady stood beside her chair, watching Ritchie follow them from the room. Geneva hovered beside her aunt anxiously. Sara stayed where she was.
“Stop twittering!” said Miss Varady to Geneva. “You’ll go with the others, of course. And you, Sara. Don’t go any farther than Lafayette Square. When it’s over you can come back here. All of you. I shall be happy to make you welcome and as comfortable as possible.”
As Nick had expected, Hester Varady was enjoying her dramatic role.
Geneva hurried after Mrs. Renwick, eager to ask about Nick, but Miss Varady made no move toward the door.
“Aren’t you coming with us, Aunt Hester?” Sara asked.
Miss Varady shook her head. “I shall not leave my house. Ah Foong and I will remain here.”
“Then I’ll stay too,” said Sara.
The decision surprised her a little. She had made it without thought. But now that the words were spoken, she knew this was what she wanted to do. There had been enough of tame retreat. The women were in no danger, and her mother would not need her for the moment.
Miss Varady, however, had other ideas. “You will go with the rest,” she told Sara and her words were a command.
For a moment Sara thought of rebelling. Then she turned away. There was a better means of staying than to oppose her aunt openly.
She went to the door where Mrs. Jerome still waited. The man from the Citizens’ Patrol had gone on to the next house and was paying no attention.
“If it gets too bad here, I’ll come to find you in the Square,” she whispered to her mother. “But for now I’d like to stay. This is where everything is happening.”
Her mother looked at her sadly, but she did not protest. It was as if she had done all she could do. Now what lay between Sara and Hester Varady was out of her hands. There was dignity in the way she drew Sara to her, kissed her cheek lovingly, and then turned away to join the others. For an instant Sara felt as she had as a child, seeing her mother go away from her on some errand, being uncertain of her return. But now she was grown and she could not cling as once she might have done.
She returned softly to Miss Varady’s hall. She could hear Ah Foong talking to her aunt in the drawing room, and she ran toward the stairs. Up she went to the dark third floor, dropped the suitcase and pillowcase of tinned goods she had carried inside a bedroom door and stole back to the head of the stairs to listen for what happened below.
It was very still within the house. Outside the fire sounds, the shouting, the noise of blasting made an ugly chaos. She wondered how her aunt meant to deal with the patrol fellow when he returned. Before the time was up she heard Miss Varady and Ah Foong cross the lower hall, heard the quiet opening and closing of a door downstairs.
The man from the patrol was back in ten minutes as he had promised, calling out to know if everyone had left the house. No one answered. He banged about a bit, opening a door or two, slamming it shut. Then he came up to the second floor, while Sara retreated from the third-floor rail. He called again, listened, then ran downstairs and out of the house. Sara crept back to the stair well.
A door opened softly, there were footsteps close enough for her to hear. Her aunt’s voice called to her up stairs.
“Very well, Sara. You may come down now.”
She went down, astonished, and a little shamefaced. Her aunt waited for her in the dim lower hall.
“How did you know?” Sara asked.
There was no softening of Miss Varady’s expression, but she was not angry either.
“You did what I would have done at your age. Since you’ve chosen to stay, we are in this together. Fortunately the fellow didn’t look for us in my medicine closet under the stairs. Come along to the dining room and we’ll have that cup of tea and some food. If the patrol returns I shall deal with him.”
The dining room, off the lower hall at the rear of the house, was dusky behind closed shutters, and a few degrees cooler. Ah Foong brought tea and a plate of sandwiches and Sara found she was hungry. Miss Varady did not talk as they ate, and Sara wondered what thoughts went on behind her aunt’s stern calm.
When they had finished the meal Ah Foong spirited away the dishes, cleared the table. But the two women sat on in the dim room, lost at one end of the great table, with the heavy, forbidding furniture standing about in dignified array.
Once Miss Varady raised a finger as if to hush Sara, who had not made a sound. Beneath the outside noses came the clear echo of footsteps at the front door. Miss Varady rose swiftly, but before she could move Nick’s voice called from the hall and Ah Foong darted out to greet him.
Into the dining room he came, blinking to accustom his eyes to the gloom, after the fire glare outside. He stood at the far end of the table, his hands gripping a chair back as if he needed to hold to something in order to stand. His face was haggard, soot-streaked; he was utterly weary. Sara looked at him with her heart in her eyes and was glad he would not notice.
“You are all supposed to be out of this house,” he told Miss Varady. “They’ll be dynamiting across the street in the next block and this is no place to stay.”
She ignored his words. “When did you sleep last?”
Nick drew a hand over his face as if to rub away the weariness. “I had an hour or two during the night out at the Presidio. What does it matter?”
“Are you still carrying dynamite for the fire fighters?”
“No.” He shook his head again, shaking away the haze. “The auto finally broke down for good. I’ve had tire and engine trouble several times. The streets are rough going because of earthquake debris.”
“Then go upstairs and get some sleep,” Miss Varady said. “You’re no good to anybody in the state you’re in. We’re not leaving this house unless we are driven out by the fire itself. Ah Foong, bring more tea.”
“I’ve told you we can’t stay here,” Nick said dully. He could not seem to rouse himself to give a real order.
It was Miss Varady who gave the order. “Sit down. Before you collapse. Your family has retreated
safely to Lafayette Square and Geneva has gone with them. Sara chose to remain with me. And I have no intention of turning my house over to looters, or to be dynamited.”
There was plainly no arguing with her, and Nick was too tired to try. He pulled out the chair and dropped into it, leaned his head against the back and closed his eyes. In a moment he would probably have been sound asleep, but Ah Foong came with tea and food. Sara ran to take the tray from Ah Foong’s hands before he could object. She poured a cup of tea quickly, added a little sugar.
“You’ll feel better if you drink this,” she said, and set the cup beside Nick’s blackened hand, the sandwiches before him.
The hot liquid seemed to revive him as he drank. Sara, moved by a new tenderness, watched him. If only the time need not come when he would look at her again as a person and remember what had happened that night with Ritchie.
Miss Varady left her place to look more closely at Nick’s hands as he raised the teacup.
“Your hands are burned,” she said. “They need care. Ah Foong, bring me my kit.”
Ah Foong scurried off and was back in a moment with a professional-looking tray of bandages and salve. Nick allowed her to smooth on the ointment, bind his hands. She talked the while, as briskly as she worked.
“If I’d been born a man I’d have been a doctor, I think. You didn’t know that, did you? Sometimes I’m sorry I didn’t study for the medical profession in spite of the prejudice against women. Of course my father would never have forgiven me. At least I’ve learned all I could through books—and that’s a good deal.”
Nick thanked her and revived enough to question Sara. “How are the others doing? Mother? What about her heart?”
“She seems to be fine,” Sara told him. “I think she forgot about her flutters completely. But she wouldn’t leave those Japanese plates behind, no matter what. I think she felt that bringing them along was a little like saving your father.”