The fire and the gold (11 page)

Since the night when Cora had waited in her room, Melora had been conscious of a faint restraint between herself and her sister. Cora evidently regretted giving her confidence so trustingly, and Melora was torn between the troubled sense that she had failed her sister, and another feeling that she did not want to look at too closely. A feeling which was tied up with her own interest in Tony Ellis.

Today Van Ness was a startling sight. The buckled pavement still bore witness to the earthquake's wrenching. Nevertheless, the thoroughfare bustled with carts, carriages, wagons and cars, while pedestrians thronged the sidewalks. The very air resounded with pounding and hammering and the squeaking of saws.

Melora paused before a new business establishment made of one green window shutter and several billboards with the gaudy pictures turned out. A smiling young woman was selling sacks of candy to passers-by and behind her hung a sign:

The cow is in the hammock,

The cat is in the lake,

The baby's in the garbage can,

What difference does it make?

There is no water, and still less soap.

We have no city, but lots of hope.

"Nothing left but candied violets," the girl told Melora cheerfully. "Like some? The price is high, but they taste real good."

Melora studied the remaining change in her purse and cautiously bought a small quantity that would give them all a taste. Caviar and candied violets and a city in ruins! But there was no need for anything to make sense. There was an exciting activity in the air that was contagious. Without stopping to draw a deep breath or count her losses, San Francisco was already reaching for the stars.

They all took bits of the violet-colored flowerets and Melora enjoyed the hard, sugary texture and the odd taste that was like the scent of violets.

"Look," Cora said, nudging Melora's arm. "There's Mr. Gower across the street. Let's go over and see if he knows what Tony is up to."

They waited for a cartload of rubble to go past and then hurried after Mr. Gower, Alec and Smokey trotting at their heels. He tugged spasmodically at his gray mustache and peered through gold-rimmed spectacles at the front of a house on the west side of the street.

When Melora spoke he turned and reached for a hat that wasn't there. The futile gesture seemed to return him to the present and he smiled apologetically.

"Good morning," he said. "No—it's afternoon, isn't it? I find it difficult to keep track of the days just now, let alone the hours. I trust all your family are safe. Miss Melora?"

"We're fine," Melora told him. "Did you know that Tony Ellis and his mother are staying with us at the Bonner house for the time being?"

Mr. Gower drew a scrap of paper from an inner pocket and showed it to her. Apparently Tony had left a notice at the remains of the old store, giving both his present address and an announcement of where he was "doing business."

"Do you know what this is all about?" Mr. Gower asked. "What possible business can the boy be engaged in?"

Melora shook her head, but Cora smiled knowingly. "He hinted to me, Mr. Gower. But I'm not supposed to tell. He said we'd have to come see for ourselves."

So Tony had made a point of confiding in Cora, Melora thought, faintly piqued. She offered Mr. Gower a candied violet which he accepted gravely, and they all walked on together. They discovered Tony even before they reached him, two blocks down Van Ness. He stood on a wooden packing case, head and shoulders above the crowd, and he was behaving in a way that Melora was sure would have shocked her mother. Plainly Tony Ellis was hawking some sort of wares and he was doing it with great zest and an engaging charm.

"That one!" said Mr. Gower, quickening his steps. "What will he be up to next? I've told his mother a thousand times that he'll never make a bookman. What he wants to do, of course, is go on the stage, but his mother is terribly against that. She feels that because Tony will inherit her share in the business, he ought to work in it. But he does some very strange things. As his father did before him, I must admit."

They could see as they drew near that an amused group had gathered about Tony's packing case to listen and watch. Melora gasped in recognition as he held up a blackened object. Goodness! He had dug more half-burned books from the shop and was actually selling them!

"Step up, step up, ladies and gentlemen!" his voice beguiled them. "If you're weary of theater parties and rich dinners, why not stay home tonight and read a good book?"

Laughter. Tony bowed and went on.

"Of course you can't be sure of the beginning of the story, which may well be missing, and you can't be sure how it ends. But don't judge a book by its cover. What am I bid, ladies and gentlemen, for this handsome, this truly unique copy of The Virginian? Even if you can't read, or have no time, due to present social engagements, you can take home a fine souvenir of the great San Francisco fire."

A silver coin flew through the air and chimed among others in a battered tin pan at Tony's feet and the "book" changed hands. Before he could reach toward the pile beside him for another, Mr. Gower squirmed his way through the crowd with the girls behind him. His indignation was so great that he could hardly speak for sputtering.

"You—you're not s-selling this—this junk? Get down at once, sir! You are disgracing the name of Gower & Ellis. What is the meaning of this?"

He gestured and Melora saw that Tony had placed a conspicuous and neatly lettered sheet of cardboard against his packing case. She had to choke back a laugh as she read it

TEMPORARY SITE

OF GOWER & ELLIS,

Famed Booksellers of San Francisco

Not at all disconcerted, Tony glanced briefly at his father's partner and then past him to the girls. He gave them all a merry salute, but he did not obey the order to descend from his stand. An open car had just drawn up in the street opposite and some ladies with motoring veils tied over huge hats stood up to see what was going on.

"What have we here?" Tony cried dramatically, and the crowd turned to look. "Rubbemeckers, I do believe. These clean, well dressed ladies and gentlemen are not refugees, I think, but have come to witness our misery. Naturally they will be happy to pay well for such magnificent souvenirs as I have here." He stooped to gather up a half dozen volumes.

The gentleman who was driving the car reached hastily to release the brake, but Tony stopped him.

"Wait, sir! This is for the  Earthquake Fund, you know."

The good-natured crowd took up the cry and the car was quickly surrounded. "Give to the Earthquake Fund!" several voices shouted and the men in the car hastily brought out bills in exchange for half-burned books and the car went on.

Even then Tony did not get down from his packing case to talk to Mr. Gower. "It's for a good cause, sir," he said by way of explanation. "The Fund needs every penny it can raise, and I thought this a good way to dispose of what is otherwise pure waste. But I need some help at this job. Would you young ladies like to step up and assist me?"

Melora shrank from the thought of getting up there in front of the crowd. But Cora presented herself at the foot of Tony's perch.

"I'll help if you can get me up there!" she cried.

Tony leaped down from the case and offered his clasped hands as a step for Cora's small shoe, boosting her onto the box. Then he sprang up beside her and cried, "Let's get going, San Francisco!"

The presence of a pretty girl handing out books and taking the money increased the fun and coins began to chink into the pan at a great rate. Even though such behavior was not for her, Melora rather envied the easy manner so natural to Cora and to Tony too.

Mr. Gower coughed disapprovingly. "This matter seems to be out of my hands. If you'll excuse me. Miss Melora, Til continue my search. I understand a number of businesses are already renting space in these houses along Van Ness. I might as well consider the possibility. When the banks open again and when the insurance companies pay up . . ." He did not finish, but made again the gesture of reaching to tip a nonexistent hat and went back across the street

Melora watched the two on the packing case. There was certainly something of the actor about Tony as he stood high above the crowd, commanding attention. Cora had only to be herself, gay and a little saucy, and the crowd loved her. A red hair ribbon (from the depths of Sam's bottomless carpetbag) now stood out stiffly at the back of her neck, holding the long hair that cascaded down her back. Her sister's eyes did not meet Melora's, but Tony made no attempt to avoid her gaze.

In fact, as she stood there watching, elbowed by the crowd, she had the feeling that Tony was performing mainly for her. Now and then his dark, laughing glance swept her face and she knew that he was as completely aware of her as she was of him. Even some of his jokes seemed to be made for her benefit. There was a reference to a rose blooming in the fire, and another to Stevenson. It was exhilarating to be played to in this fashion, but also faintly disturbing.

After a few moments she turned away and slipped through to the outer rim of the crowd. She was thinking of Tony altogether too much these days. She didn't want to find herself behaving as Cora did. He was such a quicksilver person. Just when she thought she knew him, he changed before her eyes.

What she needed, she told herself firmly, was something to occupy her time. Something that would be of use to San Francisco.

"Let's get going, San Francisco!" Tony had said, and quite plainly that was already the watchword on all sides. There was an enormous amount of work to be done, yet here she was still a mere sight-seer. She couldn't pick up a shovel and help to dig out the ruins, but there ought to be something—

"Miss." A man touched her elbow and she turned. "Is that your little brother over there? That wall don't look so steady to me."

She had forgotten Alec was there. She did not wait for the man to finish, but flew toward the wreckage of a dynamited house where Alec was balanced precariously atop a crumbling wall. Smokey yapped excitedly at its foot.

"Come down from that wall!" she cried to Alec, her heart in her mouth.

He turned his freckled face in her direction, looking a mischievous as Cora. "Aw, Sis, I'm all right! Everything's just as solid up here as—as—" A brick slipped from beneath his foot and he had to wave his arms wildly to keep his balance. But he lost neither his grin nor his confidence.

Melora stepped into the rubble beneath the leaning wall. Alec must be made to come down, if she had to go after him herself.

But rescue came from an unexpected quarter. Tony jumped down from the packing case and ran toward them. He caught Melora unceremoniously by the arm and pulled her away from the wall, shouting to Alec.

"Jump out toward the grass! That whole wall's going to topple over in about two minutes. Jump away from it, boy!"

Tony wasn't fooling and Alec, first calling to Smokey to get away, jumped onto the scorched remains of a lawn on the far side. He stumbled and fell, then got up and ran toward the street. A moment later the tottering mass of bricks gave way and the whole thing crashed inward, raising a great cloud of brick and lime dust.

Melora felt her knees go limp and she began to tremble. Tony looked at her in concern.

"Are you all right?"

She braced herself. "It was my fault. I forgot to watch him. If anything had happened—"

"Don't think about that," Tony said. "Suppose I take the money over to the Fund place—then I'll see you all home."

She tried to tell him it wasn't necessary, but he hurried off to get the money.

Cora had watched the whole swift incident from the packing case and now she joined her sister and brother.

"Oh, Alec, why don't you be careful?" she wailed.

Alec looked sheepish and pulled at Smokey's ear.

When Tony rejoined them and they started for home, Cora almost skipped as she walked. She was still excited and gay and it seemed as though she were almost driven by a need to attract Tony's attention. But Tony walked at Melora's side and only now and then did he turn a glance her sister's way.

At the Bonner place there was fresh activity around the laundry stove kitchen on the curb. Quong Sam had given way to Mrs. Ellis and was being indoctrinated into the mysteries of cooking Italian spaghetti. When Carlotta Ellis saw the young people coming down the sidewalk she waved a long-handled spoon at them. Papa Lombardi, who was Tony's grandfather, and Uncle Vito Lombardi, had come down earlier from the restaurant on Telegraph Hill, and brought with them all the makings for spaghetti. She put the spoon down to show them a length of crusty Italian bread. It was slightly stale, she said—but no matter. The young had good teeth.

"Too bad you missed them," she told Tony. "Uncle Vito has not been out to fish since the fire, but he goes tomorrow. And then perhaps we will have fish too."

"That's wonderful," Melora said warmly and glanced at Tony. He looked neither pleased nor interested, but ignored the bubbling pan of spaghetti sauce and turned to a car which stood at the curb beyond the kitchen.

"Whose car is that?" he asked.

Sam answered him. "Blingee tlunk. Him inside alleady."

"A trunk?" said Cora blankly.

"It must be my trunk from Oakland!" Melora cried and ran up the steps and into the house.

Sure enough, her trunk and suitcase were standing in the dim hall at the foot of the stairs. So Mrs. Forrest had apparently been able to recover them. Mama was in the parlor talking to Mrs. Forrest, and she sighed as the girls appeared.

"I never know what they're doing any more. This whole experience has been so disrupting to any sort of routine."

"Disrupting is a good word for it," Mrs. Forrest said dryly. "Good afternoon, girls. I thought you'd like to have your things as soon as possible, Melora. My son Howard brought them over today in his car. He's in the drawing room now, talking to Mr. Seymour and your grandmother. About some business venture, I'm sure."

Melora had met Mrs. Forrest's son only a few times and remembered him with respect. As editor of one of California's more important magazines, he knew all sorts of famous and successful people, and was quite well-known himself.