The picture of my lady--that, at least, I could save!
As I sprang up the steps, I saw, as in a dream--yes, all this was
_really_ dream-like--I saw Mildred leaning out of the first-floor
window, wringing her hands.
"Come back, sir," cried a fireman; "we'll get the young lady out right
enough."
But _my_ lady? I went on up the stairs, cracking, smoking, and as hot
as hell, to the room where her picture was. Strange to say, I only felt
that the picture was a thing we should like to look on through the long
glad wedded life that was to be ours. I never thought of it as being one
with her.
As I reached the first floor I felt arms round my neck. The smoke was
too thick for me to distinguish features.
"Save me!" a voice whispered. I clasped a figure in my arms, and, with a
strange dis-ease, bore it down the shaking stairs and out into safety.
It was Mildred. I knew _that_ directly I clasped her.
"Stand back," cried the crowd.
"Every one's safe," cried a fireman.
The flames leaped from every window. The sky grew redder and redder. I
sprang from the hands that would have held me. I leaped up the steps. I
crawled up the stairs. Suddenly the whole horror of the situation came
on me. "_As long as my picture remains in the ebony frame._" What if
picture and frame perished together?
I fought with the fire, and with my own choking inability to fight with
it. I pushed on. I must save my picture. I reached the drawing-room.
As I sprang in I saw my lady--I swear it--through the smoke and the
flames, hold out her arms to me--to me--who came too late to save her,
and to save my own life's joy. I never saw her again.
Before I could reach her, or cry out to her, I felt the floor yield
beneath my feet, and I fell into the fiery hell below.
* * * * *
How did they save me? What does that matter? They saved me
somehow--curse them. Every stick of my aunt's furniture was destroyed.
My friends pointed out that, as the furniture was heavily insured, the
carelessness of a nightly-studious housemaid had done me no harm.
No harm!
That was how I won and lost my only love.
I deny, with all my soul in the denial, that it was a dream. There are
no such dreams. Dreams of longing and pain there are in plenty, but
dreams of complete, of unspeakable happiness--ah, no--it is the rest of
life that is the dream.
But if I think that, why have I married Mildred, and grown stout and
dull and prosperous?
I tell you it is all _this_ that is the dream; my dear lady only is the
reality. And what does it matter what one does in a dream?