FIRE!
“I wonder if they _are_ so different!” Pet Sibley found the summer
hotel very pleasant. She was fond of gayety and pretty dresses and
music; and of these she found a plenty at the “Everglades.” The hotel
was within a half-hour’s ride of Boston, but was situated in the very
heart of a beautiful, shadowy grove of pines, whose breath made the
air sweet all through the long hours of the languid summer day. If the
trees were more civilized and conventional in their appearance than the
wide-branching, free-tossing pines in Uncle Percival’s upland pastures
and hundred-acre wood-lot, Pet was not yet enough waked-up to know the
difference; in fact, found it rather nice to be able to stroll about
the well-kept grounds of the “Everglades,” without fear of tearing her
skirts in the underbrush, or losing her way if she left the path. There
was no underbrush here, and it was pretty much all path.
Within a few minutes’ walk, and bordering the grove on the further
side, a river wound pleasantly and peacefully through a bright strip
of meadow-land. On this river the Sibleys kept a boat, with carpet and
cushioned seats--not much like the rough little affair which had tipped
Pet over into Loon Pond.
Life at the Everglades flowed softly and calmly, like the river; and on
the surface floated, like its radiant lilies, the fair ladies, young
and old, who fanned and smiled and danced away the summer, without a
thought of the suffering thousands in the hot city, fifteen miles away.
Without a thought? Yes, there were some who thought, and who brought
poor and ailing children out to a Country Home near by; but these were
few.
Pet Sibley, I am glad to say, was one of those who remembered the
narrow streets of the North End, and the swarms of ragged men, women
and children who panted, dog-like, on curbstone and doorstep, along the
foul streets as the sun went down each night.
The people from the West, Pet learned, were relatives, and though
their views of life hardly agreed with her own--if, indeed, she had any
views--she found the new-comers very pleasant. On the third day after
her return, her cousin Mark, whose home was in Chicago, and with whom
already, in the free intimacy of hotel life, she felt well acquainted,
had taken her out on the river.
A half-hour had slipped by, during which her cousin had instructed her
how to sit safely in a boat, and even how to row a little. Just as they
turned a bend in the stream and floated into a cove where birches and
wild grape-vines afforded a grateful bit of shade, the girl stopped
rowing, and looking up at Mark, who sat indolently in the stern of the
boat, made the remark with which this chapter began:
“I wonder if they are so--_different_!”
Pet’s pretty young forehead had a puzzled little wrinkle as she leaned
forward, with the oar-blades rippling through the water, and the muslin
sleeves falling back from her brown wrists.
“_Are_ they so different, cousin Mark?”
Her companion gave an impatient twitch to his straw hat.
[Illustration: THE PIAZZA AT “THE EVERGLADES.”]
“Why, of course! They are not like you, Pet. They are ignorant and
poor and--and not clean, you know. They were born to it and they like
it.”
“But it doesn’t seem right. I heard a lady on the piazza this morning
say something about ‘those creatures’ in such a way that I thought she
was speaking of rats or snakes. It turned out she meant the convicts
who attacked their keepers at the prison last July.”
Pet spoke warmly, as she was apt to do when she once took up a subject.
If she was yet a gay young creature, very fond of “good times,” and
ready for any sort of fun, she yet was one of those girls with whom
shallow young men at summer hotels are rather shy of entering into
conversation. She was only fifteen, and one by one the terribly real
problems of the day were marshalling themselves before her. She would
not pass them by with a gay laugh, after the prevailing mode of her
merry companions. She felt somehow that it belonged to her to help the
world and make it better, as well as to the missionaries and other good
people upon whose shoulders we so willingly pack responsibilities.
For this childish enthusiasm she was smiled on indulgently by her
friends. Kitty and Bess knew the best there was in her, and loved her
for it.
Pet gave two or three quick strokes, and paused.
“Isn’t there any way to help these poor people, Mark? It must be the
way these people live and are brought up that makes them so rough and
bad. Isn’t there any way to help them?”
“None that amounts to much. Besides, that isn’t our business. There are
men enough who do nothing else--are paid for it--missionaries and the
like. And you can’t make everybody rich, you know. The Bible itself
says, ‘Ye have the poor always with you.’”
“Perhaps that doesn’t mean that we ought to have them,” replied Pet,
slowly.
“Well, they’re here, and we may as well make the best of it.”
“But what is the best? That’s just it.”
“What is the use of your thinking about it? You can’t do anything,
and you don’t even know the kind of people we’re talking of; the
North-Enders, for instance. You have never seen and touched them; and
if you should meet them face to face, I don’t believe you would care
for any further acquaintance. They’re simply disgusting.”
Pet said no more on the subject, and just as the sun dropped into the
arms of the waiting pines on the hill they reached the little wharf on
the river-bank, moored the boat, and walked up to the hotel. She went
straight to her mother’s room, and, after her fashion, as straight to
the point.
“Mother, I want to go into the city right away, and spend the night
with aunt Augusta.”
“But, my child, it’s tea-time already, and there’s a hop this evening.
You had better wait till morning.”
“Mother, I so much want to go now. The train leaves in fifteen minutes.
I don’t care for the hop, anyway; it’s too warm to dance. Please,
mother?”
Of course impulsive little Pet had her way, and was soon whirling along
toward the city, with a strong resolve in her mind.
“I’ll walk up to auntie’s from the depot, and to-morrow I’ll go down to
North Street with uncle.”
The train stopped at all the small stations, and was delayed by various
causes, so that it was quite dark when she started on her walk. She
was glad, after all, to find the streets well-lighted, and filled with
respectable-looking people.
On reaching Washington Street, however, everything appeared weird
and unnatural. The sidewalks along which one could hardly pass in
the daytime, for the crowd, were nearly deserted. All the spots that
were bright by sunlight, were now dark, and all the ordinarily dark
places light. It was exactly like the negative of a photograph, and
gave Pet a sense of looking on the wrong side of everything. Once she
saw something move behind the broad plate-glass windows of a railroad
agency, on a corner that in the daytime was a business centre. She
approached, and was startled to find the object a huge rat, trotting
silently about, over the polished engravings and placards, behind the
glass, a very spirit of solitude and evil. It was all like a nightmare,
and she began most heartily to wish herself back at the Everglades,
dancing the Lancers with cousin Mark.
Coincidences happen; not in stories simply, but in real life. The
vessel is wrecked in sight of port; the day the owner dies; the man we
meet on the steamboat at the headwaters of the Saguenay River, has,
unknown to us until then, ate, drank, and slept in the next house all
winter, within ten feet of us; the dear friend we have known so long,
is at last discovered to be intimate with that other dear friend we
love so well, and finally it comes out that all three of us were born
in the same little town in New Hampshire.
Now the coincidence that happened on this particular evening was as
follows:
While Pet was making her way along Washington Street in the dark,
another girl about thirteen years of age, named Bridget Flanagan, was
standing on the third gallery of the Crystal Palace, in the same good
city of Boston, looking down into Lincoln Street. Like Pet, she was
wondering whether anything could be done to aid the poor. Not that
any such words passed through her mind. Dear me, no! I doubt if she
would have even known what “aid” meant, that word being in her mind
associated solely with lemons of a shrivelled and speckled character.
If she had spoken her thoughts, which she sometimes had a queer way of
doing, she might have said something like this: “Don’t I wish I could
git out o’ this! An’ the rich folks wid all the money they wants, an’
nothin’ to do but buy fans an’ use ’em up. My! ain’t it hot?”
It _was_ hot. There was a man playing on a bag-pipe in the street
below, and not only had a crowd of children and idlers surrounded him
as he stood before a brilliantly lighted (and licensed) liquor store,
but the long rickety galleries which run in front of each floor in the
“Palace” were full of half-dressed, red-faced women and children, who
leaned on the dirty railing and listened to the music, just as the
guests at the “Everglades” at the same time were listening to their
orchestra of a dozen pieces.
In the gallery overhead Bridget heard two women dancing and shouting
noisily. Somewhere in the building a child was crying loudly in a
different key from the bag-pipe. Bridget didn’t notice these things
particularly; she was used to them. Only there came over the young
human girl-heart which was beating beneath the rags and in the midst of
this wretchedness a sick longing for--what? Bridget did not know.
“It’s the hot weather it is,” she said to herself; “it’s usin’ me up
intirely. I’ll jist go an’ have a bit av a walk.”
Accordingly she issued forth, shortly afterward, with a broken-nosed
pitcher in her hand, and made her way to one of the shops across the
street. There were plenty to choose from--the city had looked out for
that. Their licenses were as strong as the Municipal Seal, stamped on
one corner, with its picture of church steeples and clouds, and heavens
above and pure, broad sea beneath, could make them. Nearly every second
house in the street beckoned with flaring lights to its pile of whiskey
barrels and shining counters; the dark intervals along the street,
between these shops, were the ruined homes of those who went in at the
lighted doors.
Opposite, the Crystal Palace, then at its filthiest and worst, reared
its ugly shape like a fat weed, watered day and night by whiskey and
gin.
[Within the last twelvemonth this building has been torn down, and
Lincoln Street largely reclaimed from the squalor and wretchedness
which marked it on the evening of which I am speaking; but within a
stone’s throw of the same spot, the same sights may be witnessed any
night in the week. The district is popularly known as the “South Cove.”]
As Bridget pattered along the sidewalk with her bare feet, a
coarse-looking woman in front of her threw something down on the
bricks and laughed hoarsely. The “something” resolved itself into a
kitten, which picked itself up and walked painfully over to a burly,
broad-shouldered man who was sitting on the steps of a basement alley,
so that his arms rested on the sidewalk. The kitten curled up beside
him. The man put out his big, red hand and stroked it once, then went
on with his smoking. The kitten was purring and licking its aching
feet as Bridget, who had paused a moment from some dull feeling of
compassion, went on her way.
Leaving her pitcher at the bar, with the injunction that it should be
filled and ready for her return, she passed out of the store and walked
slowly down Lincoln Street toward the Albany Station. The street was
full of children running to and fro with shouts and screams of laughter
or pain; some of them going in and out of the shops with pitchers and
mugs, some lying stupidly in the gutter. The air was stifling, and
as Bridget reached the corner she saw the groups of belated people
hurrying out to the Newtons and Wellesley, where they might cool
themselves in the pure air, with whatever means of comfort money could
purchase.
Pet Sibley and Bridget Flanagan both reflected upon this as they
unconsciously drew nearer and nearer together. Pet was tired, and was
beginning to look for a horse-car to take her to her aunt’s house. The
little Irish princess had turned and left her “Palace” until she was
now near the head of Summer Street.
Ten steps further, and they met upon the corner, with the great gilded
eagle’s wings outstretched above their heads. Both paused for a moment.
Pet was dressed as she had been in the boat--all in white, with a
pretty fluffy ostrich feather curving around her broad straw hat, and a
fleecy shawl thrown over her shoulders. Bridget’s shawl was not fleecy,
and her dress was not white. Nor did she wear lawn shoes.
What either would have said I do not know. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps
their lives, just touching at this point, would have glided farther and
farther apart, until there was no room in this earth for them to meet
again. But at that moment something happened.
“Look o’ that!” cried Bridget.
“See!” cried Pet at the same moment; and they both pointed to the
third story of a high granite block across the street. One of the
windows was slightly open, and through this narrow space a delicate
curl of blue smoke floated softly out, laughed noiselessly to itself,
and disappeared. They could hardly have seen it at all, but for the
powerful electric light upon the corner. Another puff of smoke, and
another; then a steady stream, growing blacker and larger every moment.
A faint glow, reflected from somewhere inside, shone upon the window
panes.
“What shall we do?” cried Pet; “it’s all on fire, and nobody knows!”
Instinctively she looked at Bridget for an answer. Somehow the
difference between herself and the ragged little Irish girl did not
seem so great just then.
The fire had broken out near the place where the great fire of 1872
started. Each of the girls could remember dimly that awful night of red
skies and glittering steeples. The massive blocks had been rebuilt,
business had rolled through the streets once more, property of value
untold lay piled away in those great warehouses on every side, and only
these two slender, wide-eyed girls knew of that ugly black smoke, with
its gleaming tongues of flame, gliding about over counter and shelf, as
Pet had seen the rat, a few minutes before.
“Sure we must give the alar-r-m,” said Bridget, hurriedly, gathering
the faded shawl about her neck.
“But I don’t know how. Do you?”
“Don’t I? You jist come along wid me--run, now!”
They almost flew down the street, dainty shoes and bare brown feet side
by side.
“Here’s the box,” panted Bridget, pausing suddenly before an iron box
attached to a telegraph pole. “Can yer read where it says the key is?”
Pet read: “Key at Faxon’s Building, corner of Bedford and Summer
Streets.”
To reach the corner, rouse the watchman, snatch the key from his sleepy
hands, rush back again, and whisk open the iron box was the work of two
minutes.
Perfect silence everywhere.
“Look a-here, now,” said Bridget, breathlessly, standing on tiptoe.
“I’ve seen ’em do it.”
She pulled the handle once, twice. Then they waited, their hearts
beating fiercely. They were off the travelled ways, and no one passed
by them. All this time the smoke was creeping up the stairways of the
lofty building, and the red fire was quietly devouring yard after yard
of wood-work.
Bridget raised her hand to pull the lever for the third and last
time--when they both started.
All over the broad, restless, wakeful city, the heavy bells rang out,
one following another like echoes. Sick people turned wearily in their
beds; babies awoke to bewail their broken naps; men and women stopped
at the corners of streets to count the number, and shook their heads.
“Bad place, down by Summer and Chauncey Streets--let’s go!” said one to
another.
ONE--TWO--THREE--FOUR--FIVE----ONE--TWO.
Miss Augusta Vernon consulted her fire-alarm card, which always hung by
the sitting-room mantel-piece; then she went to the front window and
threw open the blinds. There was a faint flush on the sky, like the
coming dawn.
“Dear me!” exclaimed aunt Augusta. “It’s a real fire. And this hot
night, too! I do hope they’ll have it out soon, poor fellows!”
As she took her seat by the window, and watched the light growing
broader and redder every moment, her strong, kind features showed much
more anxiety than one would expect, considering that it was not her
store that was burning, nor her firemen fighting the fire. But aunt
Augusta, in the city, had a curious way like that of aunt Puss up in
the Maine woods, of concerning herself with other people’s troubles
and trying to lighten them, with loving-kindness or with money. As she
had a plentiful supply of both, her sympathy in such cases was apt to
be a substantial affair, really worth counting upon--as many a poor
creature, sick and in prison, could testify.
As soon as the bells rang out, a great awe fell upon the two girls.
What mighty host of giants had they roused from sleep, calling hoarsely
to one another over the housetops?
Pet drew closer to Bridget, and grasped her hand. Even Bridget seemed
dismayed at first, but quickly recovering herself, she half pushed,
half drew Pet up a flight of high stone steps near by.
“Yer’ll git yer dress all kivered wid mud, if yer don’t kape out o’ the
strate,” she said, as she turned away. “I’m a-goin’ ter stay down an’
tell ’em where the fire is. It says so on them little cards.”
“But the crowd! When they come you will get hurt.”
“Hm! I’m used to worse crowds nor ever you saw. There! I hear ’em now!”
As Pet listened there rose a faint, far-off rattle of wheels upon the
pavement, mingled with a jangling sound of gongs and horns.
“It’s the ingine!” cried Bridget, in great excitement. “It’s comin’!”
But other things were coming too. Bridget had taken her stand directly
in front of the alarm-box, and a stream of men and boys who poured
around the corner jostled her roughly and pushed her to and fro.
“Come!--come quick!” called Pet, just able to make herself heard above
the noise of the crowd. But Bridget shook her head, and pointed down
the street.
It was a grand sight--the engine, with its scarlet wheels, and its
polished stack sending out a long trail of brilliant sparks like
shooting stars, the two powerful black horses tearing furiously over
the pavements, yet subject to the slightest word or touch of their
driver, who sat behind them firmly braced against the foot-board, the
reins taut as steel, and the gong sounding beneath without pause.
“Get out of the way here!” shouted a burly policeman, forcing his way
through the crowd.
The men surged back, and nobody noticed the little barefooted figure
who was hurled violently against the building. She uttered a faint
cry, and held up one foot, as a lame spaniel might do. A young man
with delicate clothes and a light cane, who had stopped on his way to
the station to “see the fun,” had set his heavy boot on the little,
shrinking foot. She might have got out of the way more quickly, but she
_must_ keep to the front to tell the firemen.
The engine thundered up to the box and stopped, hissing and smoking
furiously. The black horses quivered and pawed the pavement, shaking
white flecks of foam over their sleek bodies.
“Where’s the fire?” called the driver sharply.
“Blest if I know--” began one of the men addressed, but he was
interrupted.
“Sure it’s on Summer Street, sir, ’most up to Washington, on the other
side.”
It was a surprisingly small, shrill voice for such an important piece
of information, but it sounded reliable. The driver knew that every
moment now might mean the loss of thousands of dollars, and, giving
his horses the rein, was galloping off up the street again, almost
before Bridget’s words were out of her mouth. A few moments after, the
panting engine and the distant shouts of the firemen told of the work
they were doing.
Well, the block was saved. A few thousand dollars’ damage on goods
fully insured was all. Next morning the papers, being somewhat hard
pressed for news, gave “full particulars” of the fire.
“It was fortunate,” said the eloquent reporter, in closing his account,
“that the fire was discovered by some passer-by, who promptly pulled in
an alarm from box fifty-two. Five minutes later, and the loss must have
been almost incalculable.”
“Full particulars?” Perhaps not quite full.
When the engine rattled away, with the crowd after it, Pet had come
timidly down the steps. Bridget had been borne away by the crowd, and
was not to be found.
“Where are you?” she called. “I do not know your name--oh-h!” She
stopped with a pitiful little cry.
Bridget was crouched in a miserable heap just around the corner. She
was stroking her bruised foot with trembling hands, and crying softly
to herself. Somehow she felt like the kitten, only she had no one to go
to; and her head was so dizzy!
Then she looked up, and saw the white shawl and the ostrich feather and
Pet’s eyes. And once more Pet forgot the difference.
A policeman found them there a few minutes later. Pet had her arms
around the faded shawl, and Bridget’s tously little head was lying
wearily against her shoulder. The poor trampled foot was bound up in
somebody’s embroidered handkerchief.
Pet did not give the officer time to speak. She was on her own ground
now.
“Will you call a hack or a herdic, please? This girl is sick.”
The tone was quiet, but plainly said it was accustomed to giving
directions, and having them obeyed, too.
The policeman had approached with a rough joke on his tongue’s end, but
it turned into a respectful “Yes’m, certainly.”
Of course they went straight to aunt Augusta, who was still sitting by
the window, and who was so used to emergencies that she took the whole
affair quite as a matter of course.
“I’ve told the Lord I’m not worth it,” she had been heard to say, once,
“but such as I am, I want to help. So I’m always expecting Him to give
me something of the sort, just as my father used to let me hold the
tacks when he was at work on pictures or carpets.”
Bridget was promptly put to bed and her foot dressed by Miss Augusta’s
own deft hands. Before long she was fast asleep, which probably didn’t
make much difference with her state of mind, as the whole scene, with
Pet and the motherly woman hovering about her, was the best kind of a
dream.
Meanwhile Pet told the story to her aunt; she had learned from the
Irish girl, on the way to the house, that she had no father or mother
living, but made her home with a dissipated uncle and brother, who
took turns in the prisoner’s dock of the criminal court; where, likely
enough, Bridget would have taken her own turn, before long.
“I know what I’m going to do,” said Miss Augusta, decisively. “I’m
going to send her up to Mrs. Percival. When are you going back, Pet?”
“Day after to-morrow, I think.”
“Well, you can take her along as well as not.”
“But her family--”
“I’ll see Mr. Waldron--he’s the City Missionary--and he’ll fix it all
right. We’ve often arranged matters like this.”
“But do you suppose Mrs. Percival will take her?” asked Pet rather
doubtfully.
“I don’t see’s she can help it,” said Miss Augusta, with a short laugh.
“Don’t you fear. I know ‘aunt Puss’ better than you do, though I never
’ve seen her. Kittie and Bess told me all about her, last spring.” So
it came about that when Pet took her seat in the Northern train, a few
days later, a neatly dressed little Irish girl sat beside her, awed
into silence by the furniture of the car and, shortly afterward, by its
rapid motion.
When the conductor came round for the tickets, her hand furtively stole
over and clutched a fold of Pet’s rich dress, for protection from the
man in uniform. And Pet had to reassure her, and point out interesting
bits of landscape as they flew northward toward The Pines, side by
side.