Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [108]
Lai Tsin was not there and they missed him, but he said he must work hard so he could repay the five-percent interest to the Elders as soon as possible.
The New Year came and went and still Annie lingered. “I’ll go soon,” she kept saying, but then she told herself that Francie and the baby needed her. In February, Lai Tsin wrote that he had repaid his interest. The Elders had listened to his new proposals and granted him a new loan from the rotating credit. He was sailing the following week for Shanghai and it would be many months before they would see him again. Francie read the letter proudly, knowing how long it must have taken him to write it so beautifully and clearly in English. She picked up Oliver and dressed him warmly in his blue coat and bonnet and wrapped him in a shawl. Then she put him in the baby carriage that Lai Tsin had bought him in San Francisco and pushed him down the grassy paths where she had walked with her mother. She gazed happily at the white clouds scudding across the bright blue sky, and asked nothing more from life than to be Oliver’s mother.
Annie returned to San Francisco in the spring. “I hate to leave you alone,” she said as Zocco piled her baggage into the gig. “But I’ve put all my money into the boardinghouse and I’ve got to make a success of it, for little Oliver’s sake.”
Francie waved until the gig disappeared from sight down the tree-lined drive and she turned back indoors, feeling suddenly lost. She shifted the baby to the other shoulder—he was getting heavier and she smiled, proud that he was growing into such a fine, strong boy.
She wandered around the little house, the dogs trailing at her heels, peeking into empty rooms and lingering in the warm, cheery kitchen. The pies Annie had baked before she left lay cooling on wire racks by the window, the cosy room smelled of vanilla and spices and she could almost imagine Annie was still there. Later that night she sat alone in front of the fire. The baby was asleep in his crib in her room and the dogs sprawled as usual at her feet. The house was still but for the ticking of the clock and the murmur of the fire and it was so quiet she could amost hear her heart beat. But she wasn’t afraid and she wasn’t lonely.
She savored the moment of perfect peace and happiness at her little ranch, just as she would for each of the next four years, when she wanted nothing else but to be who she was and what she was, Francie Harrison, mother of Oliver and friend to Annie Aysgarth and Ke Lai Tsin.
Part III
HARRY
1911–1918
CHAPTER 23
1911
Harry Harrison walked slowly along California Street past the refurbished Fairmont Hotel, savoring the moment. He stopped and looked across the road at his rebuilt house, and it was as though he had stepped back five years in time. It looked exactly the way it had before the earthquake; the cream stone facade, the white marble steps, the Doric columns and the soaring stained-glass dome. It cost him more than twice as much as the million it had cost his grandfather, but it was worth every cent.
Of course, some things were different: the stables were now garages, there was an elaborate gilt elevator in the hall, and the staircase was onyx instead of oak. But it was the Harrison house all right. He had kept his vow and it stood once again as a monument to the family and their powers of endurance.
Lights glowed at every window and a long red carpet stretched down the front steps and across the sidewalk, lined on either side with liveried footmen awaiting the arrival of his guests. It was Harry’s twentieth birthday and everybody who was anybody in San Francisco was coming. Tonight they would know that young Harry was taking over where his father had left off.
He walked across the road and up the steps