I
Gora went up to the large attic which, soon, after her mother's death,
she had furnished for her personal use. The walls were hung with a thin
bluish green material and there were several pieces of good furniture
that she had picked up at auctions. One side of the room was covered
with book shelves which Mortimer had made for her on rainy winter
nights and they were filled with the books she had found in second-hand
shops. A number of them bore the autographs of men once prosilient in
the city's history but long since gone down to disaster. There were a
few prints that she had found in the same way, but no oils or water
colors or ornaments. She despised the second-rate, and the best of
these was rarely to be bought for a song even at auction.
She sighed as she reflected that if obliged to flee to the hills there
was practically nothing she could save beyond the contents of her bags;
but at least she could remain with her treasures until the last minute,
and she pinned the curtains across the small windows and lit several
candles.
Between the blasts of dynamite the street was very quiet. She could
hear the measured tread of the sentry as he passed, a member of the
Citizens' Patrol, like her brother. Suddenly she heard a shot, and
extinguishing the candles hastily she peered out of a window from
behind the curtains. The sentry was pounding on a door opposite with
the butt of his rifle. It was the home of an eccentric old bachelor who
possessed a fine collection of ceramics and a cellar of vintage wine.
The door opened with obvious reluctance and the head of Mr. Andrew
Bennett appeared.
"What you doin' here?" shouted the sentry. "Haven't all youse been told
three hours ago to light out for the hills? Git out--"
"But the fire hasn't crossed Van Ness Avenue. I prefer--"
"Your opinion ain't asked. Git out."
"I call that abominable tyranny."
"Git out or I'll shoot. We ain't standin' no nonsense."
Gora recognized the voice as that of a young man, clerk in a butcher
shop in Polk Street, and appreciated the intense satisfaction he took
in his brief period of authority.
Mr. Bennett emerged in a moment with two large bags and walked
haughtily up the street at the point of the bayonet. Gora stood
expectantly behind her curtain, and some ten minutes later saw him
sneak round the eastern end of his block, dart back as the sentry
turned suddenly, and when the footsteps once more receded run up the
street and into his house. She laughed sympathetically and hoped he
would not be caught a second time.
II
Suddenly another man, carrying a woman in his arms, turned the same
corner. He was staggering as if he had borne a heavy burden a long
distance.
Gora ran down to the first floor and glanced out of the window of the
front room. The sentry had crossed the far end of the street and was
holding converse with another member of the patrol. As the refugee
staggered past the house she opened the front door and called softly.
"Come up quickly. Don't let them see you."
The man stumbled up the steps and into the house.
"You can put her on the sofa in this room." Gora led the way into what
had once been the front parlor and was now the chamber of her star
lodger. "Is she hurt?"
The man did not answer. He followed her and laid down his burden. Gora
flashed her electric torch on the face of the girl and drew back in
horror.
"Dead?"
"Yes, she is dead." The young man, who looked a mere boy in spite of
his unshaven chin and haggard eyes, threw himself into a chair and
dropping his face on his arms burst into heavy sobs.
Gora stared, fascinated, at the sharp white face of the girl, the rope
of fair hair wound round her neck like something malign and muscular
that had strangled her, the half-open eyes, whose white maleficent
gleam deprived the poor corpse of its last right, the aloofness and the
majesty of death. She may have been an innocent and lovely young
creature when alive, but dead, and lacking the usual amiable
beneficencies of the undertaker, she looked like a macabre wax work of
corrupt and evil youth.
And she was horribly stiff.
III
Gora went into the kitchen and made him a cup of coffee over a spirit
lamp. He drank it gratefully, then followed her up to the attic as she
feared their voices might be overheard from the lower room. There he
took the easy chair and the cigarette she offered him and told his
story.
The young girl was his sister and they were English. She had been
visiting a relative in Santa Barbara when a sudden illness revealed the
fact that she had a serious heart affection. He had come out to take
her home and they had been staying at the Palace Hotel waiting for
suitable accommodations before crossing the continent.
His sister--Marian--had been terrified into unconsciousness by the
earthquake and he had carried her down the stairs and out into Market
Street, where she had revived. She had even seemed to be better than
usual, for the people in their extraordinary costumes, particularly the
opera singers, had amused her, and she had returned to the court of the
hotel and listened with interest to the various "experiences." Finally
they had climbed the four flights of stairs to their rooms and he had
helped her to dress--her maid had disappeared. They had remained until
the afternoon when the uncontrolled fires in the region behind the
hotel alarmed them, and with what belongings they could carry they had
gone up to the St. Francis Hotel, where they engaged rooms and left
their portmanteaux, intending to climb to the top of the hill, if
Marian were able, and watch the fire.
Half way up the hill she had fainted and he had carried her into a
house whose door stood open. There was no one in the house, and after a
futile attempt to revive her, he had run back to the hotel to find a
doctor. But among the few people that had the courage to remain so
close to the fire there was no doctor. The hotel clerk gave him an
address but told him not to be too sure of finding his man at home as
all the physicians were probably attending the injured, helping to
clear the threatened hospitals, or at work among the refugees, any
number of women having embraced the inopportune occasion to become
mothers.
The doctor whose address was given him not only was out but his house
was deserted; and, distracted, he returned to his sister.
He knew at once that she was dead.
He sat beside her for hours, too stunned to think.... It was some time
during the night that the roar of the fire seemed to grow louder, the
smoke in the street denser. Then it occurred to him that the
inhabitants of this house as well as of the doctor's, which was close
by, would not have abandoned their homes if they had not believed that
some time during the night they would be in the path of the flames. And
he had heard that the pipes of the one water system had been broken by
the earthquake.
He had caught up the body of his sister and walked westward until, worn
out, he had entered the basement of another empty house, and there he
had fallen asleep. When he awakened he was under the impression for a
moment that he was in the crater of a volcano in eruption. Dynamite was
going off in all directions, he could hear the loud crackling of flames
behind his refuge; and as he took the body in his arms once more and
ran out, the fire was sweeping up the hill not a block below.
In spite of the smoke he inferred that the way was clear to the west,
and he had run on and on, once narrowly escaping a dynamiting area
where he saw men like dark shadows prowling and then rushing off madly
in an automobile ... dodging the fire, losing his way, once finding
himself confronting a wall of flames, finally crossing a wide avenue
... stumbling on ... and on....
IV
Gora decided that blunt callousness would help him more than sympathy.
He had recovered his self-control, but his eyes were still wide with
pain and horror.
"Cremation is a clean honest finish for any one," she remarked,
lighting another cigarette and offering him her match. "I should have
left her if she had been my sister in that first house...."
"I might have done it--in London. But ... perhaps I was not quite
myself.... I couldn't leave her to be burned alone in a strange
country. Besides, the horror of it would have killed my mother. Marian
was the youngest. I felt bound to do my best.... Perhaps I didn't think
at all.... If this house is threatened I shall take her out to the
Presidio, where I happen to know a man--Colonel Norris. Thanks to your
hospitality I can make it."
"But naturally you cannot go very fast ... and these sentries ... I am
not sure.... I don't see how you escaped others ... the smoke and
excitement, I suppose.... I think if you are determined to take her it
would be better if I helped you to carry her out to the cemetery. We
can put her on a narrow wire mattress and cover her, so that it will
look as if we were rescuing an invalid. Out there you can put her in
one of the stone vaults. Some of the doors are sure to have been broken
by the earthquake."
The young man, who had given his name as Richard Gathbroke, gratefully
rested in her brother's room while she kept watch on the roof. It was
night but the very atmosphere seemed ablaze and the dynamiting as well
as the approaching wall of fire looked very close. Finally when sparks
fell on the roof she descended hastily and awakened her guest, making
him welcome to her brother's linen as well as to a basin of precious
water. When he joined her in the kitchen he had even shaved himself and
she saw that he looked both older and younger than Americans of his
age; which, he had told her, was twenty-three. His fair well-modeled
face was now composed and his hazel eyes were brilliant and steady. He
had a tall trim military body, and very straight bright brown hair; a
rather conventional figure of a well-bred Englishman, Gora assumed;
intelligent, and both more naif and more worldly-wise than young
Americans of his class: but whose potentialities had hardly been
apprehended even by himself.
They ate as substantial a breakfast as could be prepared hastily over a
spirit lamp, filled their pockets with stale bread, cake, and small
tins of food, and then carried a narrow wire mattress from one of the
smaller bedrooms to the front room on the first floor.