In the middle of the night the fire bell rang out wildly. Three minutes
later Mark and Billy were flying down the street, with Tom McMertrie and
Jim Rafferty close after and a host of other tried and true, with the
minister on the other side of the street. The Fire Company of Sabbath
Valley held a proud record, and the minister was an active member of it.
The fire was up in the plush mill and had already spread to a row of
shackley tenements that the owners of the mills had put up to house the
foreign labor that they had put in. They called them “apartment” houses,
but they were so much on the order of the city tenements of several
years back that it made Lynn's heart ache when she went there to see
a little sick child one day. Right in the midst of God's trees and
mountains, a man _for money_ had built a death trap, tall, and grim and
dark, with small rooms and tiny windows, built it with timbers too small
for safety, and windows too few for ventilation, and here an increasing
number of families were herded, in spite of the complaints of the town.
“I ben thenkin' it would coom,” said Tom as he took long strides. “It's
the apartmints fer sure, Jimmy. We better beat it. There'll be only a
meenit er so to get the childer oot, before the whole thing's smoke!”
They were all there, the doctor, the blacksmith, the postmaster, the men
from the mills, and the banks, and the stores. Economy heard the bells
for Marilyn had hurried to the church and added the fire chime to the
call and came over with their little chemical engine. Monopoly heard and
hurried their brand new hook and ladder up the valley road, but the fire
had been eating long in the heart of the plush mill and laughed at their
puny streams of water forced up from the creek below, laughed at the
chemicals flung in its face like drops of rain on a sizzling red hot
stove. It licked its lips over the edge of the cliff on which it was
built, and cracked its jaws as it devoured the mill, window by window,
section by section, leaping across with an angry red tongue to the first
tall building by its side.
The fire had worked cunningly, for it had crept out of sight to the
lower floors all along the row, and unseen, unknown, had bitten a hold
on each of those doomed buildings till when the men arrived it went
roaring ghoulishly up the high narrow stairs cutting off all escape
from above, and making entrance below impossible. Up at the windows the
doomed people stood, crying, praying, wringing their hands, and some
losing their heads and trying to jump out.
The firemen were brave, and worked wonders. They flung up ladders in the
face of the flames. They risked their lives every step they took, and
brought out one after another, working steadily, grimly, rapidly. And
none were braver among them all than Mark Carter and the minister, each
working on the very top of a tall treacherous ladder, in the face of
constant danger, bringing out one after another until the last.
The next house to the mill had caved in, and Mark had come down just
in time with an old woman who was bedridden and had been forgotten. The
workers had paused an instant as the horrible sound of falling timbers
rent through the other noises of that horrible night, and then hurried
to increase their vigilance. There were people in the top floor of the
next house and it would go next. Then the word went forth that no more
must go up the ladder. The roof was about to fall in, and a young mother
shrieked, “My baby! My baby! She's up in the bed. I thought Bob had
her, but he couldn't get up!” Mark Carter looked at her sharply. “Which
window?” he asked, and was up the ladder before detaining hands could
reach him, and Billy, sliding under the arm of the Fire Chief, swung up
just behind.
The crowd watched breathless as they mounted round after round, Aunt
Saxon standing with a shawl over her head and gasping aloud, “Oh
_Willie!_” and then standing still in fear and pride, the tears
streaming down a smiling countenance on which the red glare of the fire
shone. The ladder was set crazily against the flaming window and swayed
with their weight. Every step seemed as if it would topple the building,
yet the ladder held, and Mark sprang through the blazing window out of
sight. It seemed an eternity till he returned bringing a tiny bundle
with him, and handing it out to Billy waiting below.
The boy received as it had been a holy honor, that little bundle of
humanity handed through the fire, and came solemnly down amid the
breathless gaze of the crowd, but when they looked to the top again Mark
had disappeared!
A murmur of horror went round the throng, for the flames were licking
and snapping, and the roof seemed to vibrate and quiver like a human
thing. Then before any one could stop him or even saw what he was going
to do, the minister sprang forward up the ladder like a cat, two rounds
at a time,--three! He dashed through the fire and was gone!
For an instant it seemed that the people would go mad with the horror of
it. _Those two!_ Even the Fire Chief paused and seemed petrified. It was
Billy who sensed the thing to do.
“Getcher canvas man? Are ya' asleep?”
And instantly a great piece of canvas was spread and lifted. But the
building tottered, the flames ate on, and the window seemed entirely
enveloped. The moment lasted too long for the hearts that waited. A
groan rent the air. Then suddenly a breath seemed to part the flames and
they saw the minister coming forward with Mark in his arms!
It was just at this instant that Lynn came flying down the street. She
had kept the bells going till she knew all the help had come from a
distance, and now she was coming to see if there was anything else for
her to do. There before her she saw her father standing in that awful
setting of fire, with Mark limp and lifeless in his arms! Then the
flames licked up and covered the opening once more. _Oh, God!_ Were they
_both gone_?
Only for an instant more the suspense lasted, and then the cateclysm of
fire came. The roof fell carrying with it the floors as it went, down,
down, down, shuddering like a human thing as it went, the rain of fire
pouring up and around in great blistering flakes and scorching the
onlookers and lighting their livid faces as they stood transfixed with
horror at the sight.
The canvas fluttered uselessly down and fire showered thick upon it.
Timbers and beams crumbled like paper things and were no more. The whole
flimsy structure had caved in!
Paralyzed with terror and sorrow the firemen stood gazing, and suddenly
a boy's voice rang out: “Aw Gee! Git to work there! Whatterya doin'?
Playin' dominoes? Turn that hose over there! That's where they fell.
Say, you Jim, get that fire hook and lift that beam--! _Aw Gee_! Ya
ain't gonta let 'em _die,_ are ya,--? _Them two!”_
Billy had seized a heavy hose and was turning it on a central spot and
Jim Rafferty caught the idea and turned his stream that way, and into
the fire went the brave men, one and another, instantly, cheerfully,
devotedly, the men who loved the two men in there. Dead or alive they
should be got out if it killed them all. They would all die together.
The Fire Chief stood close to Billy, and shouted his directions, and
Billy worked with the tallest of them, black, hoarse and weary.
It seemed ages. It was hours. It was a miracle! But they got those two
men out alive! Blackened and bruised and broken, burned almost beyond
recognition, but they were alive. They found them lying close to the
front wall, their faces together, Mark's body covered by the minister's.
Tender hands brought them forth and carried them gently on stretchers
out from the circle of danger and noise and smoke. Eagerly they were
ministered to, with oil and old linen and stimulants. There were doctors
from Economy and one from Monopoly besides the Sabbath Valley doctor,
who was like a brother to the minister and had known Mark since he was
born. They worked as if their lives depended upon it, till all that
loving skill could do was done.
Billy, his eyelashes and brows gone, half his hair singed off, one eye
swollen shut and great blisters on his hands and arms, sat huddled and
shivering on the ground between the two stretchers. The fire was still
going on but he was “all in.” The only thing left he could do was to bow
his bruised face on his trembling knees and pray:
_“Oh God_, Ain't You gonta let 'em live--_please!”_
They carried Mark to the Saxon cottage and laid him on Billy's bed.
There was no lack of nurses. Aunt Saxon and Christie McMertrie, the
Duncannons and Mary Rafferty, Jim too, and Tom. It seemed that everybody
claimed the honors. The minister was across the street in the Little
House. They dared not move him farther. Of the two the case of the
minister was the most hopeless. He had borne the burden of the fall. He
had been struck by the falling timbers, his body had been a cover for
the younger man. In every way the minister had not saved himself.
The days that followed were full of anxiety. There were a few others
more or less injured in the fire, for there had been fearless work, and
no one had spared himself. But the two who hung at the point of death
for so long were laid on the hearts of the people, because they were
dear to almost every one.
Little neighborhood prayer meetings sprang up quietly here and there,
beginning at Duncannons. The neighbor on either side would come in and
they would just drop down and pray for the minister, and for “that other
dear brave brother.” Then the Littles heard of it and called in a few
friends. One night when both sufferers were at the crisis and there
seemed little hope for the minister, Christie McMertrie called in the
Raffertys and they were just on the point of kneeling down when Mrs.
Harricutt came to the door. She had been crying. She said she and her
husband hadn't slept a wink the night before, they were so anxious
for the minister. Christie looked at her severely, but remembering the
commands about loving and forgiving, relented:
“Wull then, come on ben an' pray. Tom, you go call her husband! This is
na time fer holdin' grudges. But mind, wumman, if ye coom heer to pray
ye must pray with as _mooch fervor_ for the healin' o' _Mark Carter_ as
ye do fer the meenister! He's beloved of the Lord too, an' the meenister
nigh give his life for him.”
And Mrs. Harricutt put up her apron to her eyes and entered the little
haircloth parlor, while Tom, with a wry face went after the elder. The
elder proved that underneath all his narrowness and prejudice he had a
grain of the real truth, for he prayed with fervor that the Lord would
cleanse their hearts from all prejudice and open their minds to see with
heavenly vision that they might have power in prayer for the healing of
the two men.
So, through the whole little village breaches were healed, and a more
loving feeling prevailed because the bond of anxiety and love held them
all together and drew them nearer to their God.
At last the day came when Mark, struggling up out of the fiery pit of
pain, was able to remember.
Pain, fire, flame, choking gases, smoke, remorse, despair! It was all
vague at first, but out of it came the memory slowly. There had been
a fire. He had gone back up the ladder after Mrs. Blimm's baby. He
remembered groping for the child in the smoke filled room, and bringing
it blindly through the hall and back to the window where the ladder
was, but that room had all been in flames. He had wished for a wet
cloth across his face. He could feel again the licking of the fire as
he passed the doorway. A great weight had been on his chest. His heart
seemed bursting. His head had reeled, and he had come to the window just
in time. Some one had taken the child--was it Billy?--or he would have
fallen. He _did_ fall. The memory pieced itself out bit by bit. He
remembered thinking that he had entered the City of Fire literally at
last, “the minarets” already he seemed to descry “gleaming vermilion as
if they from the fire had issued.” It was curious how those old words
from Dante had clung in his memory. “Eternal fire that inward burns.” He
thought he was feeling now in his body what his soul had experienced for
long months past. It was the natural ending, the thing he had known he
was coming to all along, the road of remorse and despair. A fire that
goes no more out! And this would last forever now! Then, someone, some
strong arm had lifted him--God's air swept in--and for an instant there
seemed hope. But only that little breath of respite and there came a
cry like myriads of lost souls. They were falling, falling, down through
fire, with fire above, below, around, everywhere. Down, down,--an
abysmal eternity of fire, till his seared soul writhed from his tortured
body, and stood aside looking on at himself.
There, there he lay, the Mark Carter that had started with life so fair,
friends, prospects, so proud that he was a man, that he could conquer
and be brave--so blest with opening life, and heaven's high call! And
then--in one day--he had sinned and lost it all, and there he lay, a
white upturned face. That was himself, lying there with face illumined
by the fire, and men would call him dead! But he would not be dead! He
would be living on with that inward fire, gnawing at his vitals, telling
him continually what he might have been, and showing him what high
heaven was that he had had, and lost. He saw it now. He had deliberately
thrown away that heaven that had been his. He saw that hell was hell
because he made it so, it was not God that put him there, but he had
chosen there to go. And still the fire burned on and scorched his poor
soul back into the body to be tortured more. The long weeks upon that
bed seemed like an infinite space of burning rosy, oily flames poured
upward from a lake of fire, down through which he had been falling in
constant and increasing agony.
And now at last he seemed to be flung upon this peaceful shore where
things were cool and soothing for a brief respite, that he might look
off at where he had been floating on that molten lake of fire, and
understand it all before he was flung back. And it was all so very real.
With his eyes still closed he could hear the rushing of the flames that
still seemed ascending in columns out a little way from shore, he could
see through his eyelids the rosy hue of livid waters--of course it was
all a hallucination, and he was coming to himself, but he had a feeling
that when he was fully awake it would be even more terrible than now.
Two grim figures, Remorse and Despair, seemed waiting at either hand
above his bed to companion him again when he could get more strength
to recognize them. And so he lay thus between life and death, and faced
what he had done. Hours and hours he faced it, when they knew not if he
was conscious yet, going over and over again those sins which he knew
had been the beginning of all his walk away from Hope. On through the
night and into the next morning he lay thus, sometimes drowsing, but
most of the time alert and silent.
It was a bright and sparkling morning. There was a tang of winter in
the air. The leaves were gone from the apple trees at the window and the
bare branches tapped against the water spout like children playing with
a rattle. A dog barked joyously, and a boy on the street shouted out to
another--_Oh, to be a boy once more!_ And suddenly Mark knew Billy was
sitting there. He opened his eyes and smiled: There were bandages around
his face, but he smiled stiffly, and Billy knew he was smiling.
“Kid,” he said hoarsely from out the bandages, “This is God's world.”
It seemed to be a great thought that he had been all this time grasping,
and had to utter.
“Sure!” said Billy in a low happy growl.
A long time after this, it might have been the next day, he wasn't sure,
or perhaps only a few minutes, he came at another truth:
“Kid, you can't get away from God--even when you try.”
“I'll say not,” said Billy.
“But--when you've sinned--!” speculatively.
“You gotta get it off yer chest.”
“You mean--confess?”
“Sure thing. Miss Lynn tells us in Sunday School about a fella in the
Bible got downta eatin' with the pigs in a far country, an' when he come
to himself he thought about his father's servants, an' he said 'I'll get
up and beat it home an' say I'm sorry!'”
“I know,” said Mark, and was still the rest of the day. But the next
morning he asked the doctor how soon he might get up. This was the first
real indication that Mark was on the mend, and the doctor smiled with
satisfaction. He meant to take off some of the bandages that morning.
That afternoon with his head unswathed, Mark began to ask questions.
Before that he had seemed to take everything for granted:
“Billy, where's the minister?” For Billy have never left his idol's side
except when Aunt Saxon needed him to help.
“Oh, he's up to tha parsonage,” responded Billy carelessly.
“But why hasn't he been to see me, Kid?”
“Why--he--hasn't been feelin' very good.” Billy's voice was brisk as if
it wasn't a matter of much moment.
Mark turned his thoughtful gray eyes steadily on Billy:
“Now, look here, Kid, I'm well, and there's no further need to
camouflage. Billy, is the minister dead?”
“Not on yer tin type, he ain't dead!”
“Well, is he hurt?”
“Well, _some_,” Billy admitted cheerfully.
“Kid, look me in the eye.”
Billy raised a saucy eye as well masked as Mark's own could be on
occasion.
“Kid, how much is he hurt! _Tell me the truth!_ If you don't I'll get
right up and go and see.”
“I'll tell the world, you won't!” said Billy rising lazily and taking a
gentle menacing step toward the bed.
“Kid!”
“Well--he's some hurt--but he's getting along fine now. He'll be
aw'wright.”
“How'd he get hurt?”
“Oh, the fire, same's you.”
“How?” insisted Mark.
“Oh, he went up again after a fella when it was too late--”
“Billy, was it me?”
“Ugh huh!” nodded Billy.
Mark was so still that Billy was frightened. When he looked up worried
he saw that a great tear had escaped out from under the lashes which
were growing nicely now, and had rolled down Mark's cheek. _Mark
crying!_
In consternation Billy knelt beside the bed:
“Aw Gee! Mark, now don't you feel like that. He's gettin' all right now
they hope, an' Gee! He was _great!_ You oughtta seen him!”
“Tell me about it,” said Mark huskily.
“He just ran up that there ladder when it was shaking like a leaf,
an' the wall beginning to buckle under it, an' he picked you up. Fer a
minute there the flames kinda blew back, and we seen ya both, and then
the roof caved, an' you all went down. But when we gotcha out he was
layin' right atop of ya, 'ith his arms spread out, trying t'cover
ya! Gee, it was _great!_ Everybody was just as still, like he was
preachin'!”
After a long time Mark said:
“Billy, did you ever hear the words, 'Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friend?'”
“Yep,” said Billy, “That's in the Bible I think, if 'taint in
Shakespeare. Miss Lynn said it over last Sunday. She says a lot of
things from Shakespeare sometimes, and I kinda get'em mixed.”
But Mark did not talk any more that day. He had a great deal to think
about.
But so did Billy, for looking out the window in the direction of the
parsonage he had sighted the big Shafton car stopping before the door
that morning. “Aw Gee!” he said. “That sissy-guy again? Now, how'm I
gonta get rid of him this time? Gee! Just when Mark's gettin' well too!
If life ain't just _one thing after another!”_