THE SEARCH
There was no interchange of vows, no whispered assurances and shy
confessions, between Lorry and Mark. After that sheltering enfoldment in
his arms, she drew back, her hands on his shoulders, looking into his
face with eyes that showed no consciousness of a lover's first kiss. For
a space their glances held, deep-buried each in each, saying what their
lips had no words for, pledging them one to the other, making the pact
that only death should break. Then her hands slid down and, one caught in
his, they moved across the room.
During the first moments exaltation lifted her above her troubles. His
longed-for presence, the feel of his hand round hers, made her forget the
rest, gave her a temporary respite. Only half heeding, she heard him tell
how her summons had come, how, with two other men who had families in the
city, he had chartered an engine, made part of the journey in that, then
in a motor, given them by a farmer, reached Oakland, and there hired a
tug which had landed him an hour before at the Italian's wharf.
For himself he had found her, after a day of agonized apprehension, at a
time when his hopes were dwindling. To know her safe, to feel her hand
inside his own, was enough. All she told him then was that she had come
back to the house for Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, and found they were gone.
But they might have left a letter, some written message to tell her where
they were. With those words her anxieties came to life again, her step
lost its lingering slowness, her face its rapt tranquillity.
Dropping his hand, she started on a search, through slanting doorways, by
choked passages, across the illumined spaciousness of the wide, still
rooms. Nothing was there, and she turned to the stairs, running up, he at
her heels, two shadows flitting through the red-shot gloom. The upper
floor, more damaged than the lower, was swept with the sinister luster,
shooting in above the trees, revealing perspectives of ruin. Every window
was broken, and the heat and the smell of burning poured in, the drift of
cinders black along the floors.
She darted ahead into her own room, going to the bureau, sending a
lightning look over it. Standing in the doorway he saw her start, wheel
about to glance at the bed, the chair. A pile of dresses lay in a corner,
the closet door was open.
"Someone's been here," she said. "The diamond aigrette, the jewel
box--all my things are gone. Even the dress I wore last night--it was on
the bed. They've all been taken."
He came in and took her arm, drawing her away.
"Everything of value's gone," he said quietly. "I went all through the
house before you came and saw it: the silver downstairs; even a lot of
the pictures are cut out of their frames. Looters have been here, and
they've made a clean sweep. I hoped you wouldn't see it. Come, let's go."
She lingered, moving the ornaments about on the bureau, still hunting for
the letter, and muttering low to herself,
"It doesn't matter. Those things don't matter"--then in a voice suddenly
tremulous--"they've left no letter. They've left nothing to tell me if
Chrystie's back and where they've gone to."
His hand on her arm drew her toward the door.
"Lorry, dear, there's no good doing this. They were probably put out, had
to go in a hurry, hadn't time to do any thinking. When I came in here
there was a soldier patrolling along the street. He may have been there
when they left; and if he was he may know something about them."
She caught at the hope, was all tingling life again, making for
the stairs.
"Of course. I saw him, too, and I dodged behind him. If he was here
then he'd know. They might even have left a message with him. Oh,
there he is!"
The arch of the hall door framed the soldier's figure, standing on the
top of the street steps, a gold-touched statue lifted above the surging
procession of heads. With a swooping rush she was at his side.
"Where are the people who were in this house?" she gasped.
The man started and wheeled on her, saw Burrage behind her, and looked
from one to the other, surprised.
"How'd you get in there?" he demanded. "That house was cleared out this
afternoon."
"Never mind that," said Mark. "We're leaving it now. This lady's looking
for her family that she left here earlier in the day."
"Well, I got 'em off--at least I got the only one here, an old lady. She
was sittin' there on the grass where you see the chairs. We had orders to
put out everyone along this block, and seem' she was old and upset I
commandeered an express wagon that was passin' and made the driver take
her along."
"Only _one_ lady?" Lorry's voice was husky.
"Yes, miss, only one. I asked her if there was anybody in the house, and
she said no, she was alone. There was a Chinaman with her that helped me
pack her in comfortable--a smart, handy old chap. I don't know where he
went; I didn't see him again."
A heart-piercing sound of suffering burst from the girl, and her face
sank into her hands. The soldier eyed her sympathetically.
"I'm sorry, lady, I can't tell you where she's gone. But, believe me, it
was no picnic gettin' the people started--some of 'em wantin' to stay,
and others of 'em wantin' to take all the furniture along. We didn't have
time to ask questions. But you'll happen on her all right. She's safe
uptown with friends."
Lorry made no answer, and Mark led her down the steps. He thought her
emotion the expression of overwrought nerves, and consoled her with
assurances of a speedy finding of Aunt Ellen. She dropped her hands,
lifted to his a face that startled him, and cried from the depths of a
despair he had yet to understand.
"It's Chrystie, it's Chrystie! She's gone, she's lost!"
Then, pressed close to him, two units absorbed into the moving mass, she
told him the story of Chrystie's disappearance.
His heart sank as he listened. Disagreeing in words, he saw the truth of
her contention that if Chrystie had been out of town she would have been
able to get word to them and would have done it. It looked as if the girl
was in the city, hidden somewhere by Mayer. Listening to Lorry's account
of the interview in the Argonaut Hotel, he disbelieved what the man had
said, rejected her theory of his innocence. Chrystie nerved to a bold
deception, the charges in the anonymous letter, all stood to him for
signs of Mayer's guilt. He told her none of this, tried to cheer and
reassure her, but he saw with a dark dread what might have happened. An
hour before he had skirted the edges of the fire, seen the hotel district
burning, heard of fallen buildings. Chrystie could have been there
keeping a tryst with Mayer. He let his thoughts go no further, stopped
them in their race toward a tragedy that would shatter the girl beside
him as the city had been shattered.
As they walked her eye ranged over the throng, shot its strained inquiry
along the swaying sea of bodies. Chrystie might be among them, might even
now be somewhere in this endless army. A woman's figure, caught through a
break in the ranks, called her to a running chase; a girl's face,
glimpsed over her shoulder, brought her to a standstill, pitifully
expectant. He tried to get her to Mrs. Kirkham's, but was met with a
refusal he saw there was no use combating. Early night found them in a
plaza on a hilltop, moving from group to group.
He had a memory of her never to be forgotten, walking ahead of him,
copper-bright, as she fronted the blazing light, black against it,
bending to look at a half-hidden face, kneeling beside a covered shape,
outstretched in a stupor of sleep. The night had reached its middle
hours, the dense stillness of universal repose held the crowded spot,
when she finally sank in a helpless exhaustion and slept at his feet. He
could do nothing but cover her with his coat, hold vigil over her, move
so that his body was a shield to keep the glare from her face. He watched
her till the day came, and the noises of the waking life around them
called her back to the consciousness of her anxiety.
The loss of relatives and friends was one of the following features of
the great disaster. With every means of communication cut off, with a
great area flaming, impossible to cross, enormous to circle, with the
exodus in some places so hurried no time was left for plans or the
sending of messages, with the spread of the fire so rapid no one knew
where the houseless thousands would end their march, families were
scattered, individuals lost track of. Groups that at dawn had been a
compact whole, an hour later had broken, been dispersed, members
vanished, disappeared in the inconceivable chaos. To those who suffered
this added horror the earthquake remains less a national calamity than
the memory of a time when they knew an anguish beyond their dreams of
what pain could be.
So it was with Lorry. The wide, encompassing distress touched her no more
than the storm does one sick unto death. The growing demolition, spread
out under her eyes roused no responsive interest. It was like a story
someone was trying to tell her when she was writhing in torment, a
nightmare coming in flashes of recollection through a day full of real,
poignant terrors.
For two days she and Mark searched. There were periods when she sought
the shelter of Mrs. Kirkham's flat, dropped on a bed and slept till the
drained reservoir of her strength was refilled, then was up and out
again. Mark and the old lady had no power to stay her. He went with her,
and Mrs. Kirkham kept a fire in the little oven of bricks in the gutter
so that food might be ready when they came back. Returning from their
fruitless wanderings, they found the old lady seated in a rocking-chair
on the sidewalk, a parasol over her head to keep the cinders off, the
coffeepot on the curb and the brick oven hot and ready.
It was Mrs. Kirkham who found Aunt Ellen--safe with friends near the
Presidio. Lorry would not go to her, unable to bear her questions. So,
Mrs. Kirkham, who had not walked more than three blocks for years,
toiled up there, sinking on doorsteps to get back her wind, helping where
she could--a baby carried, a woman told to come round to the flat and get
"a bite of dinner." She quieted Aunt Ellen, explained that Lorry was with
her, said nothing of Chrystie, and toiled home, dropping with groans into
her chair by the gutter. When she had got her breath she built up the
fire and brewed a fragrant potful of coffee, which she offered to the
worn and weary outcasts as they plodded past.
There was not a plaza or square in that part of the city to which Lorry
and Mark did not go. They hunted among the countless hoards that spread
over the lawns in Golden Gate Park, and covered the hillsides of the
Presidio. They went through the temporary hospitals--wards given to the
sick and injured in the military barracks, tent villages on the parade
ground. They saw strange sights, terrible sights; birth and death under
the trees in the open; saw a heroism, undaunted and undismayed; saw men
and women, ruined and homeless, offering aid, succoring distress,
gallant, selfless, forever memorable.
Night came upon them in these teeming camping grounds. Along the road's
edges the lights of tiny fires--allowed for cooking--broke out in a line
of jeweled sparks. Women bent over them; men lighted their pipes and lay
or squatted round these rude hearths, all that they had of home. The
smell of supper rose appetizingly, coffee simmering, bacon frying. Calls
went back and forth for that most valued of possessions, a can opener.
There was laughter, jokes passed over exchanges of food, an excess of tea
here swapped for a loaf of bread there, a bottle of Zinfandel for a box
of sardines. It was like a great, democratic picnic to which everybody
had been invited--the rich, the poor, the foreign elements, white, black
and yellow, the old and the young, the good and bad, virtue from Pacific
Avenue, vice from Dupont Street, the prominent citizen and the derelict
from the Barbary Coast.
The fire flung its banners across the sky, a vast lighting up for them,
under which they went about the business of living. At intervals, booming
through the sounds of their habitation, came the dynamite explosions
blowing up the city in blocks. When the muffled roar was over, the
gathering quiet was pierced by the thin, high notes of gramophones. From
the shadow of trees Caruso's voice rose in the swaggering lilt of "_La
Donna e Mobile_," to be answered by Melba's, crystal-sweet, from a
machine stored in a crowded cart. There were ragtime melodies, and
someone had a record of "Marching Through Georgia" that always drew forth
applause. Then, as the night advanced, a gradual hush fell, a slow
sinking down into silence, broken by a child's querulous cry, a groan of
pain, the smothered mutterings of a dreamer. Like the slain on a
battlefield, they lay on the roadside, dotted over the slopes, thick as
fallen leaves under the trees, their faces buried in arms or wrappings
against the fall of cinders and the hot glare.
In all these places Lorry and Mark sent out that call for the lost which
park and reservation soon grew to know and echo. Standing on a rise of
ground Mark would cry with the full force of his lungs, "Is Chrystie
Alston there?" The shout spread like a ring on water, and at the limits
of its carrying power, was taken up and repeated. They could hear it
fainter in a strange voice--"Is Chrystie Alston there?"--then fainter
still as voice after voice took it up, sent it on, threw it like a ball
from hand to hand, till, a winged question, it had traversed the place.
But there was no answer, no jubilant response to be relayed back, no
Chrystie running toward them with welcoming face.
Late on the second night he induced her to go back to Mrs. Kirkham's. She
was heavy on his arm, stumbling as she walked, not answering his attempts
at cheer. He delivered her over to the old lady, who had to help her to
bed, then sat and waited in the dining room. No lights were allowed in
any house, and this room was chosen as the place of their night counsels
because of the illumination that came in through the open hole of the
fireplace, wrenched out when the chimney fell. When Mrs. Kirkham came
back he and she exchanged a somber look, and the old lady voiced both
their thoughts:
"She can't stand this. She can't go on. She's hardly able to move now.
What shall we do?"
Their consultation brought them nowhere. As things stood there was no
way of instituting a more extended search. The police could be of no
assistance, overwhelmed with their labors; individuals who might have
helped were lost in the melee; money was as useless as strings of
cowrie shells.
At dawn Mrs. Kirkham stole away to come back presently saying the girl
was sleeping.
"She looks like the dead," she whispered. "She hasn't strength enough to
go out again. I can keep her here now."
Mark got up.
"Then I'll go; it's what I've been waiting for. Without her I can cover a
big area; move quick. I want to try the other side of town. In my opinion
Mayer had Chrystie somewhere. She was prepared for a journey--the trunk
and the money show that--and the journey was to be with him. If he got
her off we'll hear from her in a day or two. If he didn't she's in the
city, and it's just possible she drifted or was caught in the Mission
crowd. Anyway, I'm going to try that section. Tell Lorry I've gone there.
Keep up her hope, and for heaven's sake try to keep her quiet. I'll be
back by evening."
So he went forth. It seemed a blind errand--to find a woman gone without
leaving a trace, in a city where two hundred thousand people were
homeless and wandering. But it was a time when the common sense of every
day was overleaped, when men attempted and achieved beyond the limits of
reason and probability.
Half an hour after he had left the flat he met with a piece of luck that
gave his spirit a brace. On the steps of a large house, deserted for two
days, he came upon one of his companion clerks. This youth, son of the
rich, had procured a horse and delivery wagon and had come back to carry
away silver and valuables left piled in the front hall. Also he had a
bicycle, an article just then of inestimable value, and hearing Mark's
intention of crossing the city, loaned it to him.
People who live in the Mission are still wont, when the great quake is
spoken of, to remember the man on the bicycle. So many of them saw him,
so many of them were stopped and questioned by him. Looking for a lady,
he told them, and that he looked far and wide they could testify. He was
seen close to the fire line, up along the streets that stretched back
from it, in among the crowds camped on the vacant lots, through the
plazas and the tents that were starting up like mushrooms in every clear
space. In the little shack where the _Despatch_ was getting out its
first paper, full of advertisements for the lost and offers of shelter
to the outcast, he turned up at midday. He saw Crowder there, told him
the situation, and left with him an advertisement "for any news of
Chrystie Alston."
Late afternoon saw him back on the edges of the Mission Hills. The great
human wave here had reached the limit of its wash. The throng was
thinner, dwindling to isolated groups. Wheeling his bicycle he threaded a
way among them, looking, scrutinizing, asking his questions. But no one
had any comfort for him, heads were shaken, hands uplifted and dropped in
silent sign of ignorance.
He followed a road that ascended by houses, steps and porches crowded
with refugees, to the higher slopes where the buildings were small and
far apart. The road shriveled to a dusty track, and leaning his bicycle
against the fence he sat down. He felt an exhaustion, bodily and
spiritual, and propping his elbows on his knees, let his forehead sink on
his hands. For a space he thought of nothing but Lorry waiting for news
and his return to her that night.
A woman's voice, coming from the hill above roused him,
"Say, mister, have you got a bicycle?"
He started and turning saw a girl running down the slope toward him. She
came with a breathless speed--a grotesque figure, thin and dark, loose
cotton garments eddying back from her body, her feet in beaded,
high-heeled slippers sure and light among the rolling stones.
"Yes," he said, rising, "I've got a bicycle."
She came on, panting, her hair in the swiftness of her progress blown out
in a black mist from her brow. Her face, dirty and smoke-smeared, struck
him as vaguely familiar.
"I saw you from the barn up there," she jerked her hand backward to a
barn on the summit, "and I just made a dash down to catch you." She
landed against the fence with a violent jolt. "This morning a man who'd
come up from below told me the _Despatch_ was going to be published with
advertisements in it."
"It is," he said. "By tomorrow probably."
"Are you going down there again?" She swept the city with a grimed,
brown hand.
"I'm going down sometime, not right now."
"Any time'll do--only the sooner the better. I've got an advertisement to
put in. Will you take it?"
He nodded. He would be able to do it tomorrow.
She smiled, and with the flash of her teeth and something of gamin
roguishness in her expression, the feeling that he had seen her
before--knew her--grew stronger. He eyed her, puzzled, and seeing the
look, she grinned in gay amusement.
"I guess you know _me_, a good many people do. But my make-up's
new--dirt. Water's too valuable to use for washing."
He was not quite sure yet, and his expression showed it. That made her
laugh, a mischievous note.
"Ain't you ever been to the Albion, young man?"
"Oh!" he breathed. "Why, of course--Pancha Lopez!"
"Come on then," she cried; "now we're introduced. Come up while I
write the ad."
She drew away from the fence while he wheeled his bicycle in through a
break in the pickets. As she moved along the path in front of him, she
called back:
"We're up here in the barn, our castle on the hill. It mayn't look much
from the outside, but it's roomy and the view's fine. Better than being
crowded into the houses with the people sleeping on the floors. They'd
have taken us in, any of 'em, but we chose the barn--quieter and more
air. My pa's with me." She turned and threw a challenging glance at him.
"You didn't know I had a pa? Well, I have and a good one." Then she
raised her voice and called: "Pa, hello! I've corralled a man who'll
take that ad."
From the open door of the barn a man of burly figure appeared. He nodded
to Mark, bluffly friendly.
"That's good. We didn't know how we was to get in from this far, and we
bin lookin' out for someone." Then turning to the girl, "You get busy?
honey, and write it. We don't want to waste this young feller's time."
They entered the barn, a wide, shadowy place, cool and quiet, with hay
piled in the back. Depressions in it showed where they had been sleeping,
a horse blanket folded neatly beside each nest. To the left an open door
led into what seemed a room for tools and farm supplies. Mark could see
one corner where below a line of pegs gunny sacks, stacked and bulging,
leaned against the wall.
"Now if you'll further oblige me with a pencil and paper," said the girl,
"I'll tackle it, though writing's not my strong suit."
He pulled out a letter--offering a clean back--and a fountain pen. The
girl took them, then stood in dubious irresolution, looking at them with
uneasy eyes.
"I don't know as I can," she said. "I don't know how to put it. I guess
you'd do it better. I'll tell you and you write."
"Very well." She handed the things back, and going to the wall he
placed the letter against it and, the pen lifted, turned to her. "Go
ahead, I'm ready."
The girl, baffled and uncertain, looked for help to her father.
"How'll I begin?"
"Tell him what it's about," he suggested. "You give him the facts, and
he'll put 'em into shape."
"Well, we've got a sick woman here, and we don't know who she is. We
found her in a hotel, hit on the head, and she's not spoken much yet--not
anything that'll give any clew to where she comes from or who she belongs
to. That's what the ad's for. She's a lady, young, and she's tall--nearly
as tall as you. Blonde, blue eyes and golden hair, and she's got three
rings--" She stopped, the words dying before the expression of the young
man's face.
"Where is she?" he said.
Pancha pointed to the room on the left, saw the letter drop to the floor
as he turned and ran for the doorway, saw him enter and heard his loud
ejaculation.
For a moment she and her father stared, open-mouthed, at one another,
then she went to the door. In the room, swept with pure airs from the
open window, the light subdued by a curtain of gunny sacks, the young man
was kneeling by the side of the mattress, his hand on the sick woman's.
She was looking at him intently, a slow intelligence gathering in her
eyes. The ghost of a smile touched her lips, and they parted to emit in
the small voice of a child,
"Marquis de Lafayette."