Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [58]
Gathering the sleeping boy to him he stood up, watching and waiting. Firemen were running urgently along the street, ordering everyone to leave. They knew they had no hope of saving the houses of the wealthy and their treasures.
Francie felt the heat of the fire on her skin, her eyes burned from the smoke, but she still could not leave. She watched and waited, mesmerized. A few moments later Harry opened the door. He ushered out a stream of frightened servants clutching their bags and baggage, watching as the grooms led away the terrified horses. Finally the butler walked back up the steps with half a dozen of the men and she moved closer, still in the shadows until she could see into the house that had been her home.
“Shall we carry the coffin out, sir?” the butler asked as the men respectfully held their caps.
Harry surveyed them from the top of the steps. He looked back at the silver-handled coffin lying on the massive oaken hall table and then he shook his head. He said bitterly, “This house was built as my father’s home. It is a monument to a great man. And now it will be his tomb.”
Francie shivered as the hot wind soughed along the street. The window of the Fairmont Hotel suddenly exploded and flames shot from the empty sockets.
With one last long look at his father’s coffin Harry closed the door and turned the key. Francie’s eyes followed him as he walked down the steps and along California Street, followed by his retainers.
Lai Tsin watched him go and then walked over to her. She was staring at the house as though waiting for something to happen. “Come with me,” he said in English, but she did not even turn her head. Puzzled, he looked across at the house. The whole street was burning now and there was not much time left.
Francie sighed deeply as the roof began to smoke. There was a hiss and a quick jet of flame and suddenly it was afire.
She turned slowly and looked at the Chinaman.
“Look,” she said in a voice like a sigh. “It’s burning. That terrible house is dying. I swore I would see him in his grave. And now he is.”
And then without another word she fell in step beside him and they walked together down the street, away from the flames and the heat and into the unknown night.
CHAPTER 13
It was a dark April morning and the gray clouds were so heavy with rain they were almost sitting on the roofs. Annie peered outside and thanked the Lord it was not Monday and a washday. Abandoning her plans to scrub the front steps, she slammed the door shut and contemplated what to do with the day.
The red Turkey-carpeted hallway was immaculate; the front-room, where no one ever sat except on high days and holidays, was dust-free; and the kitchen, where they spent all their time, gleamed from endless hours of blacking and polish. Upstairs was cleaned to within an inch of its life. There was not a speck of dirt or an unstarched shirt in the entire house. And it was Thursday, so tonight was shepherd’s pie. Her father had always eaten the same meal on the same day each week, and Thursdays were always shepherd’s pie.
A fire already burned brightly in the kitchen range and she lifted the kettle from the hob, took out the brown pot, spooned in some strong black tea and poured on the boiling water. Then she sank into her usual chair, waiting for the tea to brew.
It was early and her father was still in bed, the warm, shiny room that had been her world for the past ten years closed around her like a cosy trap. It looked the way it always had, the gleaming brass fender surrounding the dark-green tiled hearth, the wooden mantel with its red-velvet cover and the faded sepia family photos in silver frames, the circular brass vase holding the thin wooden spills her father used to