Isabel was alone but a moment. Stone burst in upon her. He had approached from behind, and came running down the hill.
"Isabel," he cried. "Get a bottle of champagne."
"Champagne?"
"Yes. It may be six months before I see another—but that is a mere detail. I want to drink to the old city."
Isabel, who liked him best in his dramatic moments, found a bottle of champagne. He knocked the head off, and filling the glass, went down to the first landing of the long narrow flight of steps. He held the glass high, pointing it first towards the middle of what had been Market Street, and was now a river of fire, then slowly shifting it along towards Kearney and Montgomery, as he named the restaurants that had given San Francisco no mean part of her fame.
"Here's to Zinkand's, Tait's, The Palace Grill! The Poodle Dog! Marchand's! The Pup! Delmonico's! Coppa's! The Fashion! The Hotel de France! And here's to the Cocktail Route, the Tenderloin, and the Bohemian Club! And here's—" By this time his voice was dissolving, and the glass was describing eccentric curves. "Here's to the old city, whose like will never be seen this side of hell again. Pretty good imitation of heaven in spots, and everything you chose to look for, anyway. And the prettiest women, the best fellows, the greatest all-night life, the finest cooking, the wickedest climate. Here's to San Francisco—and damn the bounder that calls her 'Frisco!"
Then he drank what was left of the contents of his glass and hastily refilled it. After he had finished the bottle luxuriously, he held out his hand to Isabel. "Come along?" he asked. Then, as she shook her head: "I must go back to Paula and the kids. The mattresses are out in the Park already. You are in no danger, what with the neighbors above and the patrol. Good luck to you," and he vanished.
Isabel was alone at last, a state she had unconsciously wished for all day—it seemed a month since the morning. She sat down and leaned her elbows on the railing. Now that the sun was gone, the heavens, or the smoke obscuring them, were as red as that sea beneath which seemed to devour a house a minute as it rolled out towards the Mission and worked with all its might among the great business blocks between Market Street and Telegraph Hill. Some one had estimated that the columns of fire were seven miles high, and they certainly looked as if they had melted the very stars. Here and there was a play of blue flames, doubtless from some explosive substance, and when the dynamite shot the entrails from a house there was a gorgeous display of fireworks—the golden showers of sparks symbolizing the treasure that blackened and crumbled in dropping back to earth.
Before sitting down she had swept the distant hills with her field-glass and seen thousands of people lying not ten feet apart, like an exhausted army after battle. In that intense glare she could even study the eccentric positions of the fallen headstones and monuments in the old deserted cemeteries—Lone Mountain and Calvary. The cross on the lofty point of the bare hill behind the Catholic cemetery was red against the blackness of the west; and hundreds of weary mortals were huddled about its base. She tried to pity all those terrified uncomfortable creatures out there, but again the part they played in the greatest natural drama of modern times occurred to her, and she thought that should console them.
She wondered at her lack of sentimental regret at the destruction of her beloved city. But sentiment seemed a mere drop of insult to be cast into that ocean of calamity. Moreover, she was pricked by a sense that it was a living sentient thing, that city, and was getting its just dues for the hearts it had devoured, the lives it had ruined, the merciless clutch it had kept upon so many that were made for better things. To its vice she gave little thought; she fancied it was not worse than other cities, if the truth were known; it was the picturesqueness of its methods that had held it in the limelight. But that it was one of the world's juggernauts, and the more cruel for its ever laughing beguiling face—of that there was no manner of doubt.