Men were still calling women “mysterious” because women’s interests were different from men’s. The males, like stupid hounds, found cats occult simply because they said “mew!” instead of “wow!” Patty completely puzzled her husband when she chuckled:
“You are a beast, and an imbecile, and my father hates you and blames me for bringing you into our family, so I’ll have to be a mother to you.”
He winced at being cherished as an idiot child, but anything was better than exile from that fragrant presence, and he clung to her with desperation.
CHAPTER IX
Now that love had bridged another of the abysses that kept opening in the solid ground of their union, they fell a prey to curiosity. They decided simultaneously to go visit the scene of the ruins.
The streets were a-crawl with men, women, and children hurrying to the crater of the volcano. Many of the hasteners were persons who had slept through the night and set out to open their shops at the usual hour, only to find them fuming heaps of refuse. People who dwelt as far out as Bleecker or Houston Street had been generally unaware of the disaster.
Some of the late arrivals were still able to drag from their cellars, or from the jumbled streets in front of them, a certain portion of their stocks. A coffee merchant salvaged cartloads of well-roasted bean; a dealer in chewing tobacco shoveled up wagonloads of dried weed and sold it later; drygoods men rescued scorched bolts of calico and worsted to furnish forth bankrupt sales. Patty wailed aloud to see heaps of fine lace blackening on the ground and bolts of silk still blazing. One china shop was melted into ludicrous clusters, as of grapes from a devil’s vineyard. Zinc and copper roofs had formed cascades that were hardened as if a god had petrified a flood.
From toppling ruins whence the floors were stripped, iron safes hung in their crannies, their warped doors having long since betrayed the guarded records and securities to destruction. Incessant salvos of thunder shook the air, as walls fell in mountain-slides and sent up new flurries of smoke and flame.
Poking about wherever the ashes were cool enough, were beggars and thieves and harrowed owners. Little boys and girls and drunken hags from the slums paraded in lace and silk. Cavalry and infantry and marines went here and there, trying to drive back the dishonest, and to distinguish between the owners of the ruins and those who merely hoped to steal a profit from the disaster.
Caravans of weary cart-horses staggered drunkenly out of the fallen city, dragging forth dripping wains of merchandise. Dog-tired firemen were returning to their engine-houses for rest, and RoBards felt that he was a shirker. Before long he restored Patty to her home and returned to duty, warmed by her farewell embrace and the dewy rose of a perfect kiss.