LOST
Aunt Ellen always maintained the first shock threw her out of bed, and
then she would amend the statement with a qualifying, "At any rate I was
on the floor when Lorry came and I never knew how I got there." She also
said that she thought it was the end of the world, and pulled to her feet
by Lorry, announced the fact, and heard Lorry's answer, short and sharp,
"No--it's an earthquake. Don't talk. Come quick--run!"
Lorry threw a wrapper about her and ran with her along the hall, almost
dark and full of rending noises, and down the stairs that Aunt Ellen said
afterward she thought "were going to come loose every minute." A long
clattering crash made her scream, "There--it's the house--we're killed!"
And Lorry, wrestling with the front door, answered in that hard,
breathless tone, "No, we're not--we're all right." The door swung open.
"Mind the glass, don't step in it. Down the steps--on the lawn--_quick_!"
They came to a stand by the front gate, were aware of the frantic leaps
of the earth subsiding into a long, rhythmic roll, and stood dumbly, each
staring at the other's face, unfamiliar in a blanched whiteness.
There were people in the street, scatterings, and huddled clusters and
solitary figures. They were standing motionless in attitudes of poised
tension, as if stricken to stone. Holding snatched up garments over their
night clothes, they waited to see what was coming next, not speaking or
daring to move, their eyes set in terrified expectancy. Lorry saw them
like dream figures--the fantastic exaggerations of nightmare--and looked
from them to the garden, the house--the solid realities. The ruins of the
chimney lay sprawled across the flower beds, the splintered trunk of the
fig tree rising from the debris. Stepping nimbly among the bricks, in his
white coat and trousers as if prepared to wait on table, was Fong.
"Oh, Fong!" she cried. "Thank heaven, you're all 're all right!"
Fong, picking his way with cat-like neatness, answered cheerfully:
"I velly well. I see chimley fall out and know you and Missy Ellen all
'ighty. If chimley fall in you be dead."
"Oh, Fong!" Aunt Ellen wailed; "it's like the Day of Judgment."
Fong, having no opinions to offer on this view of the matter, eyed her
costume with disapproval.
"I get you cover. Velly bad stand out here that way. You ketch cold," and
turning went toward the house.
"He'll be killed!" Aunt Ellen cried. "He mustn't go!" Then suddenly she
appeared to relinquish all concern in him as if on this day of doom there
was no use troubling about anything. Her eye shifted to Lorry, and
scanning her became infused with a brisk surprise. "Why, Lorry, you're
all dressed. Did you sleep in your clothes? You certainly never had time
to put them on."
Lorry was spared the necessity of answering. A violent quake rocked the
ground and Aunt Ellen, clasping her hands on her breast, closed her eyes.
"It's beginning again--it's coming back. Oh, God, have mercy--God,
have mercy!"
The figures in the street, emitting strangled cries, made a rush for the
center of the road. Here they stood closely packed in a long line like a
great serpent, stationary in the middle of the thoroughfare. The low
mutter, the quiver under their feet, died away; Aunt Ellen dropped her
hands and opened her eyes.
"Is this going to go on? Isn't one enough?" she wailed. "I'll never enter
a house again, never in this world."
The appearance of Fong, coming down the steps carrying an armchair,
diverted her.
"He's got out alive. Don't you go back into that house, Fong. It isn't
safe, it'll fall at any moment. There's going to be more of this--it
isn't finished."
Fong, without answering, set the chair down beside her, taking from its
seat a cloak and an eiderdown coverlet. He and Lorry wrapped her in the
cloak and disposing her in the chair tucked the coverlet round her knees.
Thus installed, her ancient head decorated with crimping pins, her old
gnarled hands shaking in her lap, she sank against the back murmuring,
"Oh, what a morning, what a morning!"
A lurid light glowed above the trees and sent a coppery luster down the
street. The sun had swum up over the housetops and the people in the
roadway; Lorry, on the lawn, gazed at it aghast, a crowning amazement. It
hung, a scarlet ball, enormously large, like a red seal of vengeance
suspended in the heavens. "Look at the sun, look at the sun!" came in
thin cries from the throng. It shone through a glassy, brownish film in
which its rays were absorbed, leaving it a sharply defined, magnified
sphere. Fong, coming down the steps with another chair, eyed it
curiously.
"Awful big sun," he commented.
"It's shining through something," said Lorry. "It must be dust."
Fong put the chair beside Aunt Ellen's, pressing it into steadiness on
the lawn's yielding turf.
"Maybe smoke," he answered. "After earthquake always fire."
Aunt Ellen gave forth a despairing groan.
"Anything _more_!"
"Don't be afraid," Lorry comforted. "We've the best department in the
country. If there should be any fires they'll be put out."
Aunt Ellen took courage from this confident statement and, life running
stronger in her, sat up and felt at her head.
"Oh, I've got my pins in, but how was I to take them out? Lorry, _do_ sit
down. You're as white as a sheet."
"I'm all right, Aunt Ellen. Don't bother about me. I'm going into
the house."
The old lady shrieked and clutched at her skirt.
"No--no, I won't allow it." Then as the girl drew her dress away,
"Lorry Alston, do you want my death on your head as well as your own?
If you want anything let Fong get it. He seems willing and anxious to
risk his life."
"Fong can't do this. I'm going to telephone; I want to find out if
Chrystie's all right. I'm sorry but I must go," and she ran to the house.
From the first clear moment after the shock her thoughts had gone to
Chrystie. As she had tucked Aunt Ellen into the chair, she had been
thinking what she could do and the best her shaken brain had to offer was
a series of telephone messages to those friends where Chrystie might have
gone. The anxiety of last night was as nothing to the anguish of this
unprecedented hour.
That was why her face held its ashen pallor, her eyes their hunted fear.
But there was no relief to be found at the phone--a dead stillness, not
even the whispering hum of the wires met her ear. "It's broken," she said
to herself. "Or the girls have got frightened and gone."
Out on the lawn she paused a moment beside Aunt Ellen.
"Something's the matter with the wires. I'm going to the drugstore on
Sutter Street."
"But what for--what for?" Aunt Ellen wanted to know. "Telephoning when
the city's been smitten by the hand of God!"
"It's Chrystie," she called over her shoulder as she went out of the
gate. "I want to find out how she is."
"Chrystie's at San Mateo," Aunt Ellen quavered. "She's all right there.
She's with the Barlows."
The man in the doorway of his wrecked drugstore laughed sardonically at
her request to use the phone. All the wires were broken--you couldn't
telephone any more than you could fly. Everything was out of commission.
You couldn't telegraph--you couldn't get a message carried--except by
hand--not if you were the president of the country. Even the car lines
were stopped--not a spark of power. The whole machinery of the city was
at a standstill. "Like the clock there," he said, and pointed to the face
of the timepiece hanging shattered from the wall, its hands marking a
quarter to five.
She went back, jostling through the people. Bold ones were going into the
houses to put on their clothes, timid ones commissioning them to throw
theirs out of the windows. She saw Chinese servants, unshaken from their
routine, methodically clearing fallen bricks and cornices from front
steps to which they purported, giving the matutinal sweeping. She
skirted a fallen stone terrace, its copings strewn afar, the garden above
a landslide across the pavement. People spoke to her, some she knew,
others who were strangers. She hardly answered them, hurrying on. Dazed,
poor girl, they said, and small wonder.
If Chrystie was in the city she would certainly come home. It was the
natural, the only, thing for her to do. But it would be impossible to sit
there waiting for her, doing nothing. The best course for Lorry was to go
out and look for her--go to all those places where she might be. Aunt
Ellen would be at the house, waiting, if she came, to tell her they were
all right. And Lorry would return at intervals to see if she had come. If
by midday she hadn't, then there was Mark Burrage. She would go to him.
But Chrystie would be back before then--she might be there even now.
Her rapid walk broke into a run and presently she was flying past the
garden fence, sending her glance ahead under the trees. No--Aunt Ellen
was alone, looking as if she was participating in a solitary picnic. In
front of her stood a small table covered with a white cloth and set with
glass and silver. She was inspecting it closely as if trying to find
flaws in its arrangement and as Lorry came panting up the steps, said
with a relieved air:
"Oh, there you are! Fong's brought out breakfast. He says the kitchen's a
wreck and he had to make the coffee on an alcohol lamp. The range is all
broken and there's something the matter with the gas in the gas stove.
Did you get the Barlows?"
Lorry sank down on the other chair.
"No. the telephone isn't working. We can't get any word to anyone."
"She'll be all right," said Aunt Ellen, lifting the silver coffee pot.
"San Mateo's a long way off."
It was an unfortunate moment for a heavy shock to send its rocking
vibrations along the ground. Aunt Ellen collapsed against the chair back,
the coffee pot swaying from her limp grasp. Lorry snatched it and Aunt
Ellen's hands, liberated, clutched the corners of the table like talons.
"Oh, God have mercy! God have mercy!" she groaned. "If this doesn't stop
I'll die."
Fong came running round the corner of the house.
"Be care, be care, Missy Ellen," he cried warningly. "You keep hold on
him coffee pot. I not got much alcohol." He saw the treasure in Lorry's
hand and was calmed. "Oh, all 'ight! Miss Lolly got him. You dlink him
up, Miss Lolly. He make you good nerve."
But Lorry could not drink much. It seemed to Aunt Ellen she hardly
touched the cup to her lips when she was up and moving toward the house
again--this time for her hat.
"Hat!" muttered the old lady, picking at a bunch of grapes. "The girl's
gone mad. Wanting a hat in the middle of an earthquake."
Then her attention was attracted by a man stopping at the gate and
bidding her good-morning. He was the fishman from Polk Street, extremely
excited, his greeting followed by a voluble description of how he had
escaped from a collapsing building in his undershirt. Aunt Ellen swapped
experiences with him, and pointed to the chimney, which if it had fallen
inward would have killed her. The fishman was not particularly interested
in that and went on to tell how he had been down to Union Square and seen
thousands of people there--and had she heard that fires had started in
the Mission--a good many fires? Lorry, emerging from the house, drew
near and said, as she had said to Fong:
"But there's no danger of fires getting any headway. You can't beat our
firemen in the country."
The fishman, moving to go, looked dubious.
"Yes, we got a grand department, no one denies that. But the Mission's
mostly wood and there's quite some wind. It looks pretty serious to me."
He passed on and Lorry went to the gate.
"Where are you going _now_?"' Aunt Ellen cried.
"Out," said Lorry, clicking up the hasp. "I want to see what's going on.
I'll be back in an hour or two. If Chrystie comes, stay here with
her-right here on this spot."
Afterward Lorry said she thought she walked twenty miles that day. Her
first point of call was Crowley's livery stable where she asked for a
carriage. There were only two men in the place; one, owl-eyed and
speechless, in what appeared to be a state of drunken stupefaction,
waved her to the other, who, putting a horse into the shafts of a cart,
shook his head. He couldn't give her a carriage for love or money. Every
vehicle in the place was already gone--the rich customers had grabbed
them all, some come right in and taken them, others bought them
outright. He swung his hand to the empty depths of the building; not an
animal left but the one he had and he was taking it to go after his wife
and children; they were down in the Mission and the Mission was on fire.
He had the animal harnessed and was climbing to the seat as Lorry left
the stable.
After that she gave up all hope of getting a carriage and started to
walk. She went to every house in that part of the city where Chrystie had
friends, and in none of them found trace or word of her sister. She saw
people so stunned that they could hardly remember who Chrystie was,
others who treated the catastrophe lightly--not any worse than the quake
of '68, nothing to make a fuss about--a good shake-up, that was all. She
found families sitting down to cold breakfasts, last night's coffee
heated on the flicker of gas left in the pipes; others gathered in pallid
groups on the doorsteps, afraid to go into the house, undaunted Chinamen
bringing down their clothes.
As she moved her ears were greeted with a growing narrative of disaster.
There had been great loss of life in the poorer sections; the injured
were being taken to the Mechanics' Pavilion; the Mission was on fire and
the wind was with it. In this, the residential part, there was no water.
Thrifty housekeepers were filling their bathtubs with the little dribble
that came from the faucets, and cautioning those who adhered to the
habits of every day to forego the morning wash. It was not till she was
near home again that, meeting a man she knew, she learned the full
measure of ill-tidings. The mains had been torn to pieces, there was no
water in San Francisco, and the fire, with a strong wind behind it, was
eating its way across the Mission, triumphant and unchecked.
It gave her pause for a wide-seeing, aghast moment, then her eye caught
the roof of her home and she forgot--Chrystie might be there, ought to be
there, _must_ be there. She broke into a run, sending that questing
glance ahead to the green sweep of the lawn. It met, as it had done
before, the figure of Aunt Ellen in front of the little table, the empty
chair at her side. Even then she did not give up hope. Chrystie might be
in the house; all Aunt Ellen's pleadings could not restrain her if it
suited her purpose to dare a danger.
Before she reached the gate she called, hoarse and breathless.
"Is Chrystie there?"
Aunt Ellen started and looked at her.
"Oh, dear, here you are at last! I've been in such a state about you. No,
of course Chrystie's not here. I knew she wouldn't be. They say all the
trains are stopped--the rails are twisted. How could she get back?"
Lorry dropped on to the steps. She did not know till then how much she
had hoped. Her head fell forward in the hollow of her chest, her hands
clenched together in her lap. Aunt Ellen addressed the nape of her neck:
"I don't know what's going to happen to us. I've just sat here all
morning and heard one awful thing after another. Do you know that the
whole Mission's burning and there's not a drop of water to put it out
with? And if it crosses Market Street this side of the city'll burn too."
Lorry did not answer and she went on:
"The people are coming out of there by hundreds. A man told me--no, it
was a woman. I didn't know her from Adam, but she hung over the gate like
an old friend and talked and talked. They're coming out like rats;
soldiers are poking them out with bayonets. All the soldiers are down
there from the Presidio and Black Point. And lots of people are
killed--the houses fell on them and caught them. It was a man told me
that. He'd been down there and he was all black with smoke. I thought it
was the end of the world and it might just as well have been. Thank
goodness your father and mother aren't here to see it. And, _thank God_,
Chrystie's safe in San Mateo!"
Lorry raised her head in intolerable pain.
"_Don't_, Aunt Ellen!" she groaned, and got up from the step.
The old lady, seeing her face, cast aside the eiderdown, and rose in
tottering consternation.
"Oh, Lorry dear, you're faint. It's too much for you. Let's get a
carriage and go--somewhere, anywhere, away from here."
Lorry pushed away her helpless, shaking hands.
"I'm all right, I'm all right," she said. "Sit down, Aunt Ellen. Leave me
alone. I'm tired, I've walked a long way, that's all."
Aunt Ellen could only drop back, feebly protesting, into her chair. If
Lorry wanted to walk herself to death _she_ couldn't stop her--nobody
minded what she said anyway. She sat hunched up in her wraps, murmurously
grumbling, and when Fong brought out lunch on a tray, ordered a glass of
wine for her niece.
"I suppose she won't drink it," she said aggrievedly to Fong; "but
whether she does or not I want the satisfaction of having you bring it."
Lorry did drink it and ate a little of the lunch. When it was over she
rose again and made ready to go. She said she wanted to look at the fire
from some high place, see how near it was to Market Street. If it
continued to make headway they might have to go further up town, and
she'd be back and get them off.
She went straight to Mark Burrage's lodgings. She knew the business
quarter was burning and thought the likeliest place to find him was his
own rooms, where he would probably be getting ready to move out. It was
nearer the center of town than her own home and as she swung down the
hills she felt, for the first time, the dry, hot breath of the fire.
Cinders were falling, bits of blackened paper circling slowly down. Below
her, beyond the packed roofs and chimneys, the smoke rose in a thick,
curling rampart. It loomed in mounded masses, swelled into lowering
spheres, dissolved into long, soaring puffs, looked solid and yet was
perpetually taking new forms. In places it suddenly heaved upward, a
gigantic billow shot with red, at others lay a dense, churning wall, here
and there broken by tongues of flame.
On this side of town the residence section was as yet untouched, but the
business houses were ablaze, and she met the long string of vehicles
loaded deep with furniture, office fixtures, crates, books, ledgers,
safes. Here, also, for the first time, she heard that sound forever to be
associated with the catastrophe--the scraping of trunks dragged along the
pavement. There were hundreds of them, drawn by men, by women, drawn to
safety with, dogged endurance, drawn a few blocks and despairingly
abandoned. She saw the soldiers charging in mounted files to the fire
line, had a vision of them caught in the streets' congestion, plunging
horses and cursing men fighting their way through the tangled traffic.
The door and windows of Mark's dwelling were flung wide and a pile of
household goods lay by the steps. As she opened the gate a boy came from
the house, stooped under the weight of a sofa, a woman behind him carding
a large crayon portrait in a gilt frame. The boy, dropping the sofa to
the ground, righted himself, wiping his dripping face on his sleeve. The
woman, holding the picture across her middle like a shield, saw Lorry and
shouted at her in excited friendliness:
"We're movin' out. Goin' to save our things while we got time."
"Where's Mr. Burrage?" said Lorry.
"Mr. Burrage?" The woman looked at her, surprised. "He ain't here; he's
in the country."
"The country?" Too many faces were smitten by a blank consternation, too
many people already vainly sought, for Lorry's expression to challenge
attention.
"Yes, he went--lemme see, I don't seem to remember anything--I guess it
was nearly a week ago. His mother was took sick. He's lucky to be out of
this." Her glance shifted to the boy who was looking ruefully at the pile
of furniture. "That'll do, Jack, we can't handle any more."
As Lorry turned away she heard his desperate rejoinder:
"Yes, we got it out here, but how in hell are we goin' to get it
any farther?"
After that she went to Mrs. Kirkham's. There was no reason to expect
news of Chrystie there, except that the old lady was a friend, had been
a support and help on occasions less tragic than this. Also she knew
many people and might have heard something. Lorry was catching at any
straw now.
In the midst of her wrecked flat, her servant fled, Mrs. Kirkham was
occupied in sweeping out the mortar and glass and "straightening things
up." She was the first woman Lorry had seen who seemed to realize the
magnitude of the catastrophe and meet it with stoical fortitude. Under
her calm courage the girl's strained reserve broke and she poured out her
story. Mrs. Kirkham, resting on the sofa, broom in hand, was disturbed,
did not attempt to hide it. Chrystie might have gone out of town, was her
suggestion, gone to people in the country. To that Lorry had the answer
that had been haunting her all day:
"But she would have come in. They all--everybody she could have gone
to--have motors or horses. Even if she couldn't come herself she would
have sent someone to tell where she was. She wouldn't have left us this
way, hour after hour, without a word from her."
It was dark when Mrs. Kirkham let her go, claiming a promise to bring
Aunt Ellen back to the flat. They couldn't stay in the Pine Street
house. Only an hour earlier the grandnephew had been up to say that the
fire had crossed Market Street that afternoon. No one knew now where it
would stop.
With the coming of the dark the size of the conflagration was apparent.
Night withdrew to the eastern edges of the heavens; the sky to the zenith
was a glistening orange, blurred with shadowy up-rollings of smoke, along
the city's crest the torn flame ribbons playing like northern lights.
Figures that faced it were glazed by its glare as if a red-dipped paint
brush had been slapped across them; those seen against it were black
silhouettes moving on fiery distances and gleaming walls. The smell of it
was strong, and the showers of cinders so thick Lorry bent down the brim
of her hat to keep them out of her eyes. As she came toward the house she
felt its heat, dry and baking, on her face.
In front of her, walking in, the same direction, was a man, pacing the
pavement with an even, thudding foot-fall. The gun over his shoulder
proclaimed him a soldier, and having already heard tales of householders
stopped on their own doorsteps and not allowed to enter, she curbed her
eager speed and slunk furtively behind him, skirting the fence. Through
the trees she could see the lawn, lighted up as if by fireworks, and then
the two chairs--empty--the eiderdown lying crumpled on the grass. In the
shade of branches that hung over the sidewalk, she scaled the fence and
flew, her feet noiseless on the turf. She passed the empty chairs, and
sent a searching glance up toward the windows, all unshuttered, the glass
gone from the sashes. Were they in there? Had Aunt Ellen dared to enter?
Had Fong overcome her terrors and forced her to take shelter? If he had
she would be no farther than the hall.
Like a shadow she mounted the steps and stole in, the front door
yawning on darkness. The stillness of complete desolation and
abandonment met her ears.
She stood motionless, looking down the hall's shattered length and up the
stairs. The noises from without, the continuous, dragging shuffle of
passing feet, calls, crying of children, the soldier's directing voice,
came sharply through the larger, encircling sounds of the city fighting
for its life. They flowed round the house like a tide, leaving it
isolated in the silence of a place doomed and deserted. She suddenly felt
herself alone, bereft of human companionship, a lost particle in a world
terribly strange, echoing with an ominous, hollow emptiness. A length of
plaster fell with a dry thud, calling out small whisperings and
cracklings from the hall's darkened depths. It roused her and she turned,
pushed open the door and went into the drawing-room.
The long side windows let in the glare, a fierce illumination showing a
vista of demolishment. Through broken bits of mortar the parquet
reflected it; it struck rich gleams from the fragments of a mirror, ran
up the walls, playing on the gilt of picture frames. She moved forward,
trying to think they might be there, that someone might flit ghost-like
toward her through that eerie barring of shadow and ruddy light. But the
place was a dry, dead shell; no pulse of life seemed ever to have beaten
within those ravaged walls. She summoned her energies to call, send out
her voice in a cry for them, then stood--the quavering sound
unuttered--hearing a step outside.
It was a quick, firm step, heavier than a woman's, and was coming down
the stairs. She stood suddenly stricken to a waiting tension, dark
against a long sweep of curtain, possessed by an immense expectancy, a
gathering and condensing of all feeling into a wild hope. The steps
gained the hall and came toward the doorway. Her hands, clasped, went out
toward them, like hands extended in prayer, her eyes riveted on the
opening. Through it--for a moment pausing on the sill to sweep the room's
length--came Mark Burrage.
He did not see her, made a step forward and then heard her whisper, no
word, only a formless breath, the shadow of a sound.
"Lorry!" he cried as he had cried the night before, and stood staring
this way and that, feeling her presence, knowing her near.
Then he saw her, coming out of the darkness with her outstretched hands,
not clasped now, but extended, the arms spread wide to him as he had
dreamed of some day seeing them.