Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner (top e book reader .txt) 📕

from a cottage down the slope brought them coffee, bread and fruit, and sitting side by side they ate, looking out over the sea of roofs to where the ragged flame tongues leaped and dropped, and the smoke mountains rolled sullenly over the faint, obscured stars. They spoke little, aware for the first time of a great exhaustion, hearing strangely the sounds of a life that went on as if unchanged and uninterrupted--the clinking of china, the fitful cries of children sinking to sleep, the barking of dogs, a voice crooning a song, and laughter, low-voiced and sweet.

Presently they drew closer together and began to talk; at first of immediate interests--food to be procured, the injured woman, how to care for her, find her shelter, discover who she was. Then of themselves--how the quake had come to each, that mad, upward rush of Pancha's, Garland's race along the street. That done, she suddenly dropped down and lying with her head against his knee, her face turned from the firelight, she told him how Boye Mayer had come to her in the dawn, and how he lay buried in the ruins of the Vallejo Hotel.


CHAPTER XXXVI


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