GYPSIES’ FIRE.
Like a flash the situation dawned on Mauney. It dawned so flashingly that
he tried to hide from it all afternoon. Her impetuous nature! His own
tardiness and his own misinterpreted duty to Maxwell Lee. While he had
maintained loyalty to Lee, this woman, this Freda, whose very likeness
had been burned into his soul, had been slipping from his fingers. And
now, torn between self-blame and an effort to excuse her most recent
fault, he began to recognize just how ultimate and hopeless the whole
matter was.
He met Mr. Fitch, of Lantern Marsh, on the street and accepted a ride to
the farm with him. Perhaps he would never have thought of going home had
Fitch not suggested it. There was nothing at Lantern Marsh to go for,
either. But he craved solitude, and at least his old home would afford
him that. The old swamp would somehow understand him, he felt. There
would be a queer kind of sympathy in that old swamp.
When he reached home he found a visitor, one he had almost forgotten and
one whom he was not overjoyed at meeting in his present chaotic mood.
David McBratney had been in Merlton for eight years and was only now,
after so long an absence, refreshing his acquaintance with the people
of his youth. It was fortunate, according to Dave, that Mauney had just
happened in when he was there. But Mauney felt that the most unfortunate
fact in the world was that he should have to converse politely with
any one to-night. They were all just ready to sit down at the supper
table—William with his shirt sleeves rolled up on his sun-burned arms,
Evelyn placing her two red-faced little boys on stools, and McBratney
being shown a place beside Mauney on the opposite side. When they were
seated, William, carving knife in one hand and a long, serving fork in
the other, looked up lazily from the crisply-browned roast on the platter
toward his wife and made an awkward, snuffling sound. Mrs. Bard caught
the hint.
“Mr. McBratney,” she announced, “will ask the blessing. Bow your heads,
you kids!”
“Bless, O Lord, we beseech Thee, this food, forgive our sins, and guide
us ever in the light of thy countenance. This we ask in the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.”
An amused smile flickered over William’s face as he winked unnoticed
to Evelyn, his wife. Then, plunging his fork into the juicy meat, he
proceeded to slice it.
“Dave,” he asked. “How’s your appetite?”
“Pretty good, Bill,” responded McBratney. “It’s a long time since I had a
meal off o’ this old table, isn’t it?”
Evelyn Bard, opposite her husband, was busy spreading butter on thick
slices of bread for her boys. They stared in silence at the visitor,
interrupting their occupation only long enough to accept the buttered
bread and to begin chewing it.
McBratney had lost nothing of his swarthy complexion. His dark eyes
were just as sharp, but more serious, than formerly. He wore a
threadbare, yet neat, grey suit and a plain, blue four-in-hand necktie.
Broad of shoulder, he lounged against the edge of the table, gazing
half-meditatively at the children.
“Well, Dave,” remarked William, as they all fell to eating, “you hain’t
never been back since you went away have you?”
“This is the first time, Bill. I got kind of lonesome to see the old
folks; so I thought I’d come down for a few days. My mother tells me that
dad has never been satisfied since he sold the farm. She says he drives
down here about once a week, just to see how things are going.”
“Yep,” nodded William, “at _least_ once a week, don’t he, Evelyn?”
She nodded. “The poor old chap can’t stay away,” she explained. “He never
should have sold out, I always think. When a man gets attached to a place
it’s foolish to leave, at his age, anyway.”
William was chewing his food thoughtfully, with an expression of
narrow-eyed meditation.
“Dave,” he ventured, at length. “I always thought your old man never
forgave you for leavin’ home. Course, I never said a word to him,
understand. It takes all kinds of people to make up the world, and I’m
not sayin’ you didn’t do the right thing, neither. Maybe some people
might say you was wrong, but I got enough to do without tendin’ to other
people’s business.” William’s eye quickly took in McBratney’s business
suit, while a look of curiosity came over his face. “Of course,” he said,
in a tone that challenged explanation, “I always had an idea as you had
gone into preachin’.”
“I studied at it awhile,” McBratney admitted, good-naturedly, “and then I
suddenly quit it.”
“What made you quit it, Dave?” persisted William. “Was it costin’ too
much?”
“No, it don’t cost too much, but I couldn’t see much head nor tail to
it,” confessed McBratney. “I went on with it till they started talking
about the Trinity, and—”
“Trinity, eh, Dave?”
“Yes, and a lot of other theories that don’t count. When they began
splitting hairs about baptism and sacraments, I said to myself, ‘This
isn’t pitching hay!’”
“That’s a fact, too, Dave,” nodded William, sagely.
“’Twasn’t what _I_ was cut out for anyway,” said McBratney. “I couldn’t
see how baptism nor sacraments, nor any such like, was going to save
the world. I saw people every day in Merlton, who were so deep in sin
that they were pretty near hopeless, and, although I don’t know much, I
reckoned that these fine points of doctrine were all twaddle.”
“That’s what I always thought, Dave. You didn’t make no mistake there, I
tell yuh.”
“No, Bill,” he replied. “All I knew was that something big and strong had
taken hold of me. I knew that I had the love of God in my heart and that
every ounce of muscle in my body was going to be used up helping some of
these poor beggars on to their feet.”
“That’s right, Dave—that’s the only religion there is,” commented
William. “You didn’t make no mistake there.”
“And so I just pitched those Hebrew books about as far as I could heave,
and settled down into steady work at the settlement.”
“Good for you, Dave. What kind of settlement do you mean?”
“A settlement, Bill, is a kind of organization supported by various
people for reclaiming bums and no-goods,” said McBratney. “We take in the
riff-raff, without a word, give ’em clothes and grub, and get ’em work to
do. We start them off in life again and give them a second chance to go
straight. Our idea is to reclaim damaged goods, Bill, we try to—”
“Um-hum!” interjected William, “I can see the sense in that, Dave. What’s
your work?”
“I’m on the employment department. I keep a list of jobs, and fit these
bums into them. After they get started I go around and see how they’re
doing. If they’re falling down on the job I brace them up a little or
change their job for them.”
“Do you get much salary, Dave?”
“No. It isn’t the money I’m after, Bill. What I like about it is the
game. Some of these bums have to be handled pretty carefully, and that’s
my work. I never was afraid of anybody, and I’ve got to meet the man yet
that can handle me.”
McBratney’s eyes sparkled with keen pleasure, and he squared his
shoulders unconsciously as he spoke. Fighting the worst in men was his
occupation. It was an energetic business of consecrated brawn. It was
muscular Christianity of the most earnest and pugnacious type. Mauney
felt that here beside him at the table sat a kind of modern crusader. One
_had_ to be good if McBratney was about, or otherwise be able to defeat
him in a pugilistic contest.
For two or three hours Mauney found no alternative, but to sit and talk
with him. At any other time the occupation would have been bearable or
even pleasant, for he discovered many admirable, and almost lovable,
qualities—if one could dare to feel so tenderly toward a modern Sir
Galahad. But Mauney was too full of his own troubles to-night to be
otherwise than indifferent to McBratney. His heart seemed to be breaking
beneath these troubles. He wanted to leave his brother and the others,
and walk alone by himself by that old swamp in front of the house.
McBratney had changed, William and Evelyn had changed, he himself was
changing in some indefinite way, while all the universe seemed in flux.
What existed without change?
Some one came walking up the lane and opened the kitchen door. It was the
Englishman who rented the old McBratney farm. His face was mildly excited.
“Did you see the fire?” he asked.
“Where, Joe?” asked William, uneasily.
He stepped back on the verandah and looked towards the road, and Mauney
saw a dull, red reflection on his face. In a moment they were all walking
toward the road. By some means a fire had started among the dried grasses
of the swamp, and was spreading rapidly, with nervous little flashes of
flame shooting up through heavy, grey clouds of smoke. There was no wind
to fan the fire, but the light grass carried it swiftly along in a curve
like an enlarging wave.
“It’s going to get into them cedars, too,” said William.
“Well, let ’em go,” said McBratney. “The barn’s safe as long as there’s
no wind. There’s nothing you can do, anyway.”
“I wonder how it got started?” queried William. “I seen some gypsies in
that end o’ the field over there last night. Maybe they left some live
coals.”
“That may be,” admitted Joe, the Englishman. “But I’ve heard as how
a bog like this here sometimes generates its own fire by spontaneous
combustion, I have.”
Their faces were all well lit up now by the reflection. Mauney glanced
at the house. Its red bricks were illuminated by a ghastly, unnatural
glow, while the window-panes began flashing spasmodically, one after
the other, as if some one inside the house were going with a light from
room to room. The fire ran swiftly toward the edge of the swamp, and
the cedar boughs burst quickly into flame as if they were composed of
explosive substance. Among a dozen trees the flame spread savagely until
the appearance was that of huge, black torches, perched together to give
a warning to the sky.
Held by the fascination which fire always possesses, they stood for two
hours watching its ravages. From shore to shore the crimson, liquid wave
crossed and rebounded until at last the cedars and hemlocks were all
ablaze, forming a wide and brilliant fringe for a central, smoke-obscured
space. It was not like the same place. It was not like the Lantern Marsh.
Later, when the yellow flames had all gone out and the rising moon showed
only the constant clouds of smudgy smoke rising and disappearing,
Mauney sat alone on the front steps of the farmhouse, watching it with
mute fascination. At last his marsh was completely defeated, ruined and
blotted out. But a whimsical comfort possessed him. It was not defeated.
Winter and then spring—and the unfailing reservoirs of the deep earth
would pour water into the scorched basin again. Grass and trees would
eventually grow up where now there was only ashes, to proclaim that life
had gained the victory over death—that there was no death, but only life.
THIS BOOK IS A PRODUCTION OF THE RYERSON PRESS
TORONTO, CANADA
[Illustration: The Ryerson Press
Founded 1829]