The Trembling Hills

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “She wanted you. She has some sort of terrible compulsion to continue the Varady blood and to rule as head of a great family. She turned this compulsion on Leland and ruined his life. She would have turned it on you too, but I burned her letters without answering. I would never have gone back.”

  Mrs. Jerome closed her eyes wearily.

  “At least,” Sara said, “she can’t do anything to us now. I’m grown up and she can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. She can’t hurt you any more.”

  “You don’t know,” her mother said. “You’ve no idea of her strength.” The release of words seemed to have relaxed her, made her drowsy. “Let me sleep for a while now, Sara. I’ll feel stronger after a nap.”

  Sara took a quilt from the bed and tucked it around her tenderly. For a little while she waited, until her mother fell asleep. Then she left the room and stepped into the hall. Allison was stealing down the stairs at the far end.

  She looked around at Sara and beckoned. When Sara reached her she whispered, “I’ve got to find Comstock. Come help me. I’ve poked into every room I dared, but he isn’t anywhere. And Ah Foong wouldn’t talk to me about him at all. He’s such a queer old man. Don’t make any noise, Sara, or the witch will catch us.”

  “Miss Varady isn’t a witch,” Sara said. “You mustn’t call her that. I think I know where to look for Comstock. Come along.”

  Downstairs she found the way to the kitchen and stepped into the rear garden, overlooked by the balcony above. A nearby door opened upon stairs to the cellar and a volume of chattering sound reached them.

  Allison went down a few steps and called for Comstock. For a second the chatter ceased and the big yellow cat came bounding up to her, leaped into her arms. Sara reached out to scratch him behind the ears and found that he smelled strongly of fish. Apparently he had been well and recently fed.

  “What am I to do?” Allison wailed, carrying him up the steps. “You know I can’t leave him. I just won’t stay in this house if I can’t have Comstock with me.”

  “Where will you go?” Sara asked. “Back to Lafayette Square?”

  They crossed the flagstone path and walked into what had once been a small garden. A few roses still bloomed untended, but no one had cared for the flower beds in years. A stone bench waited beside weed-grown earth and they sat down, while Allison and Comstock purred to each other.

  “I have a friend,” said Allison in answer to Sara’s question. “A girl who lives in a tent up in the park.” Her emphasis on the word “tent” implied palatial quarters. “We had only umbrellas, but she and her mother had a tent. All the children around us were boys, except for a few babies. So Miranda and I are friends. Her mother is very nice too. She says I am a skinny little thing and need feeding up. I ate practically a whole liverwurst while I was in their tent.”

  “What is Miranda like?” Sara asked curiously.

  “Miranda Schultz is her whole name. And she is very beautiful and fat like her mother. Her father is in prison and her mother runs a delicatessen store that got burned out by the fire. But they saved quite a lot of food. Sara, I’ve never known anybody who had a father in prison before. It’s interesting, isn’t it? And Miranda likes me. I gave her all the spare hair ribbons I saved from the fire. She likes my stories too. She’d never heard of King Arthur until I started to tell her about the Round Table. I’ve a lot more stories to go. We haven’t even reached Sir Galahad yet.”

  The implication seemed to be that this friendship would last as long as the Round Table could supply heroes—which was probably a very long while indeed. Somehow Sara could only smile at Allison’s pleasure in her new friend. She was afraid to ask why Mr. Schultz was in prison, but Allison supplied the information without prompting.

  “Miranda says he strangled another man. With his bare hands. But of course the other fellow deserved it, only that isn’t what the judge decided. It was a good thing the man didn’t die. Miranda says the judge was very prejudiced and her father didn’t have a chance. Anyway, what I was going to say was that if the old witch won’t let me keep Comstock, then I can move in with Miranda Schultz. I’m sure she and her mother will be happy to have me. Her mother likes to feed people.”

  Sara reached out and hugged Allison hard, cat and all. Comstock yowled at this indignity, but Allison seemed not to mind too much.

  “Do you think we could possibly get along without you?” Sara asked the little girl. “Nick and your mother and Judith would be terribly unhappy. They always look for you the minute you’re not around. And remember how your mother let you carry those two plates all through our escape from the fire.”

  Allison looked suddenly stricken. “That’s something else I have to tell you. I broke another plate. I don’t know just how it happened last night, but in the dark I sat on them and the top one broke. Mama doesn’t know it yet. She went right to bed and didn’t even look at them. But I know she’ll start counting plates the minute she wakes up. That’s another reason why I need to leave home.”

  “Never mind about the plates,” Sara said firmly. “I need you here, Allison. You’re my best friend. You can’t go off and leave me now.”

  Thus appealed to, Allison agreed to postpone her departure for a day or two at least. Though Sara wondered what would happen when Hilda Renwick found that a second of her precious plates had been broken.

  All went well, however, for the rest of that day. A man from the Citizens’ Patrol came around to let everyone know that the fire was under control in this section and those who still had beds could sleep in them without fear tonight. The remaining flames had nowhere to go except into the water. He said all but a little patch of Russian Hill had burned, and most of Telegraph Hill. The Italians had managed to save some of their homes and it looked strange to see their tropical gardens filled with flowers and parrots in cages, blooming out of the ruins. Still no fires or candles were to be lighted. Not a chimney must be put to use until they had all been repaired and officially inspected. No further chance of fire must be risked.

  Ah Foong, his second cousin and third nephew built an outdoor kitchen on the curb in front of the house, using bricks from a fallen chimney. Nevertheless, linen and silver were laid for the use of guests in the Varady dining room, and the meal, though mainly stew, was served with all the flourish Ah Foong could give it. Only Mrs. Renwick stayed wearily in her room and went right to sleep again when she had finished the bowl of stew Nick took up to her.

  At dinner Judith seemed to be burning with some inner unrest that was entirely unlike her. Once Nick, passing behind her chair, touched her lightly as if to quiet her. She was flushed and animated in a nervous way, as Sara had never seen her. Even Ritchie looked at her, puzzled, though she paid no attention to him.

  When she had eaten her dessert—stale pound cake which Ah Foong had baked the day before the fire—she suddenly put both hands on the table and pushed herself away, as if she could not sit still for a moment longer. Her voice reached a pitch when she spoke, as if she were on the verge of hysteria.

  “Do you realize that San Francisco is gone?” she cried. “Here we sit at this meal as if nothing had happened. Already we’re taking it for granted. Every bit of Nob Hill has been wiped out. Every bit of the life we’re used to is gone.”

  Nick said, “Judith,” quietly, but she rose and went to the door. There she turned for an instant.

  “It’s done and it will never come back. Not as it was before. And I am glad! I hated it all. I’m glad it’s burned out for good!”

  They sat in astonished silence while her footsteps echoed sharply in the hall. A moment later they heard the sound of her hands on the keys of the grand piano in the drawing room. She was playing great crashing chords that fairly shook the house. Chords that were like sobs. This was not the insipid, emotionless music she had always played before. There was both suffering and elation in the sounds that poured from the pia
no. Only three nights ago great voices had sung Carmen at the Opera House, and now Judith played the Habañera with an excitement running through the music. Without pause she went into Chopin’s Polonaise, and it was no tinkling finger exercise this time, but music with a stormy spirit behind it, ringing through the house.

  Those in the dining room sat as if frozen. Only Sara, drawn by a magnet she could not resist, left her place and stole into the hall to be closer to the music. She had felt these things too—the storm and turmoil was in her blood as well.

  The drawing-room door stood open and Sara slipped through it. The woman at the piano sat shrouded in evening gloom. Her flashing hands were a blur of white against white keys, her face hidden in shadow. Sara went to the piano and leaned upon it, listening. If Judith saw her she gave no sign. Before the Polonaise had come to a stormy end, her fingers crashed into discord on the keys and she suddenly put her head down upon her arms and began to cry.

  This was more alarming than the transformation in Judith’s music. Sara could not touch her comfortingly as she might have done with Allison, or her mother. There had never been any liking lost between them and Judith would not welcome comfort offered by Sara Jerome. But something must be done to stop what might become hysteria.

  “If you’re glad San Francisco has burned, why are you crying?” Sara asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact and calm.

  Judith raised her head from the keys, her pale hair luminous in the dusk. She gave no sign that she found it strange to see Sara standing beside the piano.

  “I suppose it’s natural to mourn when something comes to a cruel end. Something you’ve lived with all your life. Even though I’m glad I need live with it no longer.”

  More had come to an end for Judith the night of the fire than a manner of living, Sara thought. She waited and after a moment Judith went on, her voice steadying.

  “Sara, I was wrong about Ritchie. That’s gone too, along with San Francisco. Perhaps it has been lost before this, but I’ve only just faced it.”

  Sara said nothing, filled with unexpected pity for Judith, but helpless to offer comfort.

  “Do you know what sort of woman Ritchie wants, Sara? He wants a doting mother who will always think he is wonderful. Who will see him as he wants to see himself. Then he can go on dreaming and playing, doing nothing. He can be happy loving only himself, providing someone else gives him confidence by loving him that way too. But he can’t stand a woman who expects him to prove himself. He wants to be thought perfect as he is, without lifting a finger in effort.”

  Sara spoke gently. “Yes—that’s the way it is with Ritchie. It’s the way he has always been.”

  A sound near the door made Sara turn. If Judith heard she did not look around. Nick and Ritchie were there and Sara wondered how much Ritchie had heard. All of this, she hoped. It might be good for him.

  Judith pushed back the piano stool and stood up. Emotion had been drained from her in the playing. She walked toward the doorway as if she did not see the two men who waited there. Ritchie put his hand on her arm, but she went past him as if he did not exist. When she had gone upstairs Ritchie swung about without a word and went out the front door, out of the house.

  Sara did not look at Nick. She returned to the dining room where the women still sat at the table.

  Miss Varady wore an expression of displeasure. She did not like other people’s storms.

  “I trust the crisis is over?” she asked Sara coldly.

  Sara nodded, but there was nothing she wished to explain to Hester Varady. Geneva was bewildered and uncertain, with no notion at all as to what Judith’s stormy playing signified. Only Mrs. Jerome looked as if she had understood.

  San Francisco kept new hours these days. Tomorrow would mean not only a new day, but the beginning of a new life. So many pieces to pick up—pieces of a shattered city and transformed lives. When they left the table, the women went straight to their rooms and to bed.

  Mrs. Jerome might face the room, but nothing could bring her to sleep in the big mahogany bed she had once shared with her husband. In spite of Sara’s pleading, she went to sleep on the chaise longue and left the big bed to Sara.

  With darkness which could not be dispelled shadowing the old house, Sara would have felt more comfortable with their door locked. There was, however, no key and none to be found in any of the drawers of the room. She was not frightened, nor had she any impending sense that her nightmare would come again when she went to sleep. But she could not help wondering what would happen in this house if it did. Would she rise in her sleep and follow the course of the dream to some terrible ending? A key in the lock would make her less uneasy.

  Wondering if she dared tap on her aunt’s door and ask for a key, she went into the gloomy hall. Hester Varady’s room was a corner one at the front of the house. When Sara fumbled her way toward it in the dark, she struck against some low object in the hall near the door. It seemed to be a cot with bedding upon it, and at once a shadowy figure sat up and peered at her questioningly.

  “You Missy Sala?” said Ah Foong.

  Sara was relieved to hear his voice. “Yes. Do you have a key to our room, Ah Foong? With all the lights out, there’s no telling who may be prowling around tonight.”

  In pidgin English that Sara sometimes found it difficult to follow, Ah Foong explained. There were keys, yes, but Miss Varady kept them locked in a drawer in her room. She never permitted anyone in the house to lock a door. The front door and back door were locked and that was enough, she said. Besides, as Ah Foong assured Sara, he himself slept every night on this cot near Miss Varady’s door. If anything was wrong he would know at once. And he seemed to imply that he could deal with whatever emergency might arise.

  Sara went back to bed, somewhat reassured, but curious as well. How odd that the invincible Miss Varady, who allowed no one else a key, should feel the necessity of a bodyguard when she went to sleep at night.

  In spite of the room and its memories, her mother fell asleep first. Sara lay awake, lost in the huge bed, thoughts whirling through her head.

  Events had come so quickly since the earthquake that she had scarcely taken time to think. With anxiety and stumbling weariness engulfing her, there had been no energy left for facing the problems of the future. One lived from one moment to the next, and if there had been occasions when her eyes rested on Nick more tenderly than before, she still had not faced what had happened to her.

  Now, with her body at rest, and the immediate danger of the fire past, her mind turned of its own accord to thoughts of Nick and what he meant to her. Her feeling was no sudden thing, as it had seemed in her first moment of recognition. Just as the taut thread which had held her to Ritchie and a childhood love had stretched unnoticed to the snapping point, so the heavier cord that drew her to Nick had been gradually strengthening without awareness on her part.

  Perhaps her feeling for him had begun that night in the library when he had surrounded her with his strength and kindness. Or perhaps even before when she had stood at an upstairs window beside him and watched lights move across the sleeping city. It had increased in a flash that day when Ritchie had kissed her at the office and she had been suddenly aware of the contrast between the two men. She had wanted to hate Nick that day, but only because of her own hurt pride when he had looked at her in contempt.

  The feeling in her had grown constantly deeper, though she turned instinctively away from it and would not accept its portent. Now she could escape recognition no longer. She loved Nick and he felt only scorn and distaste for her. The fact that what he believed was not true gave her little comfort, since there seemed no way to make him know the truth. And there was something else which stood between herself and Nick. Someone she could not overlook or ignore. There was Geneva.

  Sara moved restlessly on her pillow, seeking release from the torment of her own thoughts. Now she began to listen to the sta
rtling stillness of the night. At first she did not realize what she listened for, though something was missing. Then she knew it was the sound of fire and the fighting of fire. Tonight the dynamiting had ceased, there was no roaring of flames, no constant flicker of red light, no blistering heat, no shouting, no sounds of refugees in the streets. The city of St. Francis lay hushed and still.

  How strange silence seemed by contrast. How quickly one became accustomed to the impossible. Would she as quickly grow used to a new love that might hurt her even more than the old?

  She slept at last, but at dawn that Saturday morning everyone was startled awake by the wild shrieking of fire whistles and the sound of triumphant bugles from the camps. San Franciscans heard and understood. The puny men who had stood up against the enemy had held their line and bested the flames. The fire was over.

  But the city was too weary to savor its triumph. Along the water front where the last stand had been made, men fell in their tracks and slept where they lay.

  19

  There was no bread left for breakfast, not even a piece of stale pound cake. But Ah Foong managed scrambled eggs in his outdoor kitchen, with bits of bacon sprinkled through, and there was still coffee. Everyone came down for breakfast except Mrs. Renwick and Ritchie. Ritchie had not come home at all last night and Sara wondered about him.

  Her old blinders were, she knew, gone forever. Both the blinders she had worn toward him and toward her own heedless conduct. She could never love him again, but she could pity him, as she might have pitied an unfortunate child who managed always to hurt himself. No one else in this house seemed concerned about him and Sara was not sure what loneliness would do to Ritchie. What Judith had said was true. He needed someone who believed in him as he could not fully believe in himself.

  Judith came down looking pale, but with the change in her still evident. There was resolve in her manner now. Judith was no longer a bystander.

  “Nick,” she said, “you’ll find out what’s happening, won’t you? So we’ll know what there is we can do?”