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Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner

G >> Geraldine Bonner >> Treasure and Trouble Therewith




For months afterward Pancha dreamed of that day--woke at night to a sense
of toiling, onward effort, a struggling slow progress, accomplished amid
a sea of faces all turned one way. The dream vision was not more
prodigiously improbable than the waking fact--life, comfortable and
secure, suddenly stripped of its garnishings, cut down to a single
obsessing issue, narrowed to the point where the mind held but one
desire--to be safe.

Before the advancing wall of flame the Mission was pouring out,
retreating like an army in defeat. Every avenue was congested with the
moving multitude, small streets emptying into larger ones, houses
ejecting their inmates. At each corner the tide was swollen by new
streams, rolling into the wider current, swaying to adjustment, then
pressing on. Looking forward Pancha could see the ranks dark to the limit
of her vision; looking back, the faces, smoke-blackened, sweat-streaked,
marked with fierce tension, with fear, with dogged endurance, with cool
courage, with blank incomprehension. The hot breath of the fire swept
about them, the sound of its triumphant march was in their ears, a
backward glance showed its first high flame crests. Soldiers drove them
on, shouted at them, thrust stupefied figures in amongst them, pushed
others, dazedly cowering in their homes, out through doors and
ground-floor windows. At intervals the earth stirred and heaved, and then
with a simultaneous cry, rising in one long wail of terror, they jammed
together in the middle of the street, so close-packed a man could have
walked on their heads.

To make way through them Garland was forced to lead the horse. Women
clung to the shafts and trailed at the tailboard; the cart stopped by an
influx of traffic, men stood on the hubs of the wheels staring back at
the swelling smoke clouds. Mutual experiences flashed back and forth,
someone's death dully recounted, a miraculous escape, tales of falling
chimneys and desperate chances boldly taken. Some were bent under heavy
loads, which they cast down despairingly by the way; some carried
nothing. Those who had had time and clearness of head had packed baby
carriages edge full of their dearest treasures; others pulled clothes
baskets after them into which anything their hand had lighted on had been
hurled pell-mell. There were sick dragged on sofas, wounded upheld by
the arms of good Samaritans, old people in barrows, in children's carts,
sometimes carried in a "chair" made by the linked hands of two men.

And everywhere trunks, their monotonous scraping rising above the shuffle
of the myriad feet. Men pulled them by ropes taut about their chests, by
the handles, pushed them from behind. Then as the day progressed and the
smoke wall threw out long wings to the right and left, they began to
leave them. The sidewalk was littered with them, they stood square in the
path, tilted over into the gutter, end up against the fence. Other
possessions were dropped beside them, pictures, sewing machines, furs,
china ornaments, pieces of furniture, clocks, even the packed baby
carriages and the clothes baskets. Only two things the houseless
thousands refused to leave--their children and their pets. It seemed to
Pancha there was not a family that did not lead a dog, or carry a cat, or
a bird in a cage.

By midday the cart had made an uptown plaza, and there come to a halt for
rest. The grass was covered thick with people, stretched beside their
shorn belongings, many asleep as they had dropped. A few of them had
brought food; others, with money, went out to buy what they could at the
nearby shops, already depleted of their stores. All but the children were
very still, looking at the flames that licked along the sky line. They
had heard now the story of the broken mains, and somberly, without lament
or rebellion, recognized the full extent of the calamity.

A young girl, standing on a wall, a line of pails beside her, offered
cupfuls of water to those who drooped or fainted. Thirsty hoards besieged
her, and Pancha, edging in among them, made her demand, not for herself,
but for a sick woman. The girl dipped a small cut-glass pitcher in one of
the pails and handed it to her.

"That's a double supply," she said. "But you look as if you needed some
for yourself. We've a little water running in our house, and I'm going to
stand here and dole it out till the fire comes. They say that'll be in a
few hours, so don't bring back the pitcher. There's only my mother and
myself, and we can't carry anything away."

Pancha squeezed out with her treasure, and going to the cart climbed into
the front, sliding over the seat to a space at the head of the mattress.
She bent over the still figure, looking into the face. Its youth and
comeliness smote her, seemed to knock at her heart and soften something
there that had been hard. An uprush of intense feeling, pity for this
blighted creature, this maimed and helpless thing, rescued by chance from
a horrible death, rose and flooded her. She moistened the temples and dry
lips, lifted the bound head to her lap, striving for some expression of
her desire to heal, to care for, to restore to life the broken sister
that fate had cast into her hands. Mrs. Meeker came and peered over the
side of the cart, shaking her head dubiously.

"Looks like to me she'd never open her eyes again."

Pancha was pierced with an angry resentment.

"Don't say that. She's going to get well. I'm going to make her."

"I hope you can," said the elder woman. "Poor thing, what a time she must
have had! Your pa says it seemed as if there was no one there with her.
I'd like to know who she is."

"She's somebody rich. Look at her hands."

She touched, with a caressing lightness, Chrystie's hand, milk-white,
satin-fine, a diamond and sapphire ring on one finger.

Mrs. Meeker nodded.

"Oh, yes, she's no poor girl. Anyone can see that. You'd get it from the
wrapper, let alone the rings. I've been wondering if maybe she wasn't
straight."

"She is. I know it."

"How could you know that?"

"By her face."

Mrs. Meeker considered it, and murmured:

"I guess you're right. It has got an innocent look. It'll be up to you,
whether she lives or dies, to find out who she is and if she's got any
relations."

"Oh, that'll be all right," said Pancha confidently, "I'm going to take
care of her and cure her, and when she's good and ready she'll tell me."

They moved on for quieter surroundings and to find a doctor. This was a
hopeless quest. Every house that bore a sign was tried, and at each one
the answer was the same: the doctor was out; went right after the quake
to be back no one knew when. Some were at the Mechanics' Pavilion,
where the injured had been gathered, and which had to be vacated later
in the day; others at work in the hospitals being cleared before the
fire's advance.

Late in the afternoon Mrs. Meeker left them to go to her cousin's, who
had a cottage up beyond Van Ness Avenue. Prince and the cart she gave
over to them; they'd need it to get the woman away out of all this noise
and excitement. Tears were in her eyes as she bade farewell to the old
horse, giving Garland an address that would find her later--"unless it
goes with the rest of the town"--she added resignedly. In the first
shadowing of twilight, illumined with the fire's high glow, they watched
her trudge off, the bird cage in one hand, the portrait in the other, the
teapot tucked under her arm.

It was night when they came to a final halt--a night horribly bright, the
sky a blazing splendor defying the darkness. The place was an open space
on the first rise of the Mission Hills. There were houses about, here
and there ascending the slope in an abortive attempt at a street which,
halfway up, abandoned the effort and lapsed into a sprinkling of
one-story cottages. Above them, on the naked hillside, the first wave of
refugees had broken and scattered. Under the fiery radiance they sat,
dumb with fatigue, some sleeping curled up among their bundles, some
clustered about little cores of fire over which they cooked food brought
out to them from the houses. A large tree stretched its limbs over a
plateau in the hill's flank and here the cart was brought to a stop.
Prince, loosed from the shafts, cropped a supper from the grass, and the
unknown woman lay on her mattress under the red-laced shade.

A girl 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 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.

Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

The barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.

Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.

A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."

The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

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Would you have your ashes scattered in Jane Austen's garden?
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight

The royal family doesn't need a poet

The power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)

Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.

(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)

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