It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening when there came a ring at the
Maitlands' doorbell. It had not been the easiest waiting in the world,
that of the two women in the half-deserted apartment building through
the long night and longer day. Helen would have preferred to go out of
doors, feeling that there she could see and follow, at a distance at
least, the progress of the conflagration; but Mrs. Maitland in a
strange and unlooked-for obstinacy absolutely declined to leave the
apartment or to permit her daughter to do so.
"I don't know anything about fires, but if this one starts in this
direction I want to be here, and not away somewhere," she repeated to
her daughter's urging; nor could she be induced to take any other
viewpoint. So in their rooms they remained, and their only news from
without was transmitted to them from the servants and visitors to the
building. The telephone was out of commission, and Helen felt as
though she were marooned in full sight of a civilization with which she
could not communicate and which afforded her no benefits.
It had been past one o'clock in the morning when Smith had brought her
home from the fire. Long after that the excitement had kept her awake;
but she had fallen asleep at last, and wakened again only when it was
broad day. It was, however, to be one of the longest days in her
calendar, and by noon she felt as though she had been waiting for years
in expectation of she did not know what. She tried to read, but found
it impossible to fix her attention on the book. She began to run over
some operatic scores on the piano, but the sound seemed to ring so
oddly that she gave up this also. Between her mother and herself
conversation languished--and thus the slow hours wore on. She could
not but think how infinitely more desirable it was to be out in the
streets, even though that might mean a certain amount of physical
danger, than to remain in unsatisfactory helplessness thus. If it be
woman's heritage to wait, that heritage certainly did not appeal to
Helen on this occasion. It is doubtful if it ever appeals to any one.
Only two incidents of relief had marked the passage of the dragging
hours. The first was when Smith had called, in the morning, to leave
his suitcase and to promise to return in case the fire should come
dangerously near; the second was a visit from Mr. Silas Osgood. This
latter call occurred in the middle of the afternoon, when the suspense
of doing nothing at all had become almost intolerable and the nerves of
both women had come almost to the snapping point, and they both
consequently greeted him with even more than their usual affection.
"I'm so glad you've come, Uncle Silas, I can hardly speak!" Helen said;
and her mother's welcome, while somewhat less extreme in expression,
was equally sincere.
"I tried to get you on the telephone, but I couldn't, so I thought I'd
better come and see how you were getting on," Mr. Osgood explained.
"I'm glad you're all right. This is a fearful thing, a terrible
business! Nobody knows where it may end."
"Tell us about it--everything," the girl demanded. "We have really
heard nothing all day. What we have heard has been chiefly what we
could learn from the servants, and they understand so little of what is
actually happening."
"I have been out near the Public Gardens," said her uncle; "and though
I couldn't see much, I probably could see almost as much as though I
had been a good deal nearer. On the whole, things seem very favorable.
I would not go so far as to say that the end is in sight; but in a
certain sense the fire is under control, and I believe that the worst
is over at last."
"How far does it extend now?"
"Well, they have managed to prevent its getting across Tremont Street;
in fact, they have held it on both east and west. You see, most of the
railroad yards below the South Station were cleared in time, and that
left little or no fuel on the east side. The fire now, instead of
having a clean sweep from the Common to the Channel, has a path barely
half that width. It is now as far south as Oak Street, and Hollis
Street west of that."
"Dear me! Has the good old Hollis Theater gone, then?"
"I don't see how it could very well have escaped. But it wasn't a very
attractive theater, though, anyway. Why do you ask about it? They
have needed a new building there for a long time."
"Yes--but some of the happiest evenings I have ever had were there. It
isn't the upholstery of the seats or the mural decorations or what the
theater looks like, but what you hear there. Don't you think that a
theater gets to retain some of its traditions and its greatest
associations? It sounds as though I were an old woman; but every time
I go there, I seem to feel that the theater remembers, just as I do,
the thrills that its walls have known."
"Would you rather it had been left to be torn down, then?" inquired her
uncle, with a smile.
"Well, possibly not. That would be worse than this. Perhaps it is
better to 'give her to the God of Storms,' after all."
"Perhaps," agreed Mr. Osgood, gently.
For a half an hour longer they talked, and he told them as much as he
knew of what already had been destroyed, and what the final reckoning
would unclose. He spoke as cheerfully as he could, but Helen, watching
him closely, saw that back of this there was a profound sadness.
"Is it so very terrible, Uncle Silas?" she asked at last, laying her
hand affectionately on his sleeve.
"Very. It is as bad as it could be, my child," he answered. "Bad for
Boston--bad for us all. I have been through this sort of calamity
before; but that was many years ago. I did not mind it so much when I
was a young man. It is different now."
"But surely the city can survive it, can it not?"
"Yes--the property loss, no doubt; and I am glad to say that very few
lives have been lost. But it is a fearful catastrophe. The city is
crippled--shaken to its very heart! Think of the hundreds of families
driven into the streets, the businesses wrecked, the uncountable number
of men left without employment, even if the fire cease at once!"
A new idea had come to Helen.
"What difference will it make to Silas Osgood and Company?" she asked,
with some hesitation. "It won't injure your firm, will it?"
"Oh, to a certain extent, temporarily, but nothing to be troubled
about. Of course the local agent does not have to pay any part of his
companies' losses. But--" he paused.
"But what?" asked the girl.
"Well, I have been in the business so long, my dear, that I have come
to look at this sort of thing more from the standpoint of my companies
than my own. I am ashamed--yes, sorry and ashamed--to have my city
hurt my companies so sorely."
"But you couldn't have helped it--it isn't your fault," said Mrs.
Maitland, somewhat mystified, but guessing a little of what he felt.
"No," said Mr. Osgood, slowly; "I couldn't have helped it. But if it
had to happen in Boston, I'm sorry it didn't wait until I was through."
"Then I hope it would be never!" Helen said, a little incoherently; but
the point was plain.
"On the business side there is only one feature that cheers me,"
continued Mr. Osgood, "and that is the fact that my old friend James
Wintermuth and his company, the Guardian of New York, are practically
out of it all."
"How do you mean--out of it?" Helen's mother asked.
"You see, the Guardian, when it had to leave my office, lost all its
local business. A good deal of it was naturally in this very part of
the city which is burning. They undoubtedly have some term lines still
in force,--policies written for three or five years,--but not many.
They will escape with a very light loss indeed--whereas two years ago
this conflagration would have involved them for an amount such as not
many companies would care to meet."
"Then there must be other companies now who will lose more in this fire
than they can pay?"
"Without a doubt. There has never been a fire of this magnitude that
has not absolutely ruined many of the smaller companies. It takes
either a very strong or a very conservative insurance company to
weather a great conflagration. After each of our big city fires in
this country many and many a company has found that after it paid its
losses there would be nothing left to carry it to further
existence--capital and surplus were both wiped out. And it must be
said to their credit that most of them, at a time like this, pay every
cent they owe, even if they have to go out of business directly
afterwards."
"But if they haven't enough money to pay their losses? Suppose their
capital and surplus isn't sufficient?"
"Then they either fail, and the receiver pays what he can to each
claimant, or else they call upon their stockholders--assess them. Once
in a while you will find a company refusing to pay, on the ground that
so great a calamity is an act of God, which no indemnity was ever
designed or intended to cover. Quite a few foreign companies took this
stand after the San Francisco earthquake-fire; but the leading
companies, American and foreign, paid dollar for dollar. The smaller
fry tried to compromise a bit; but most of them eventually made pretty
fair settlements, in the main. We'll see what they'll do in Boston."
"After the fire is out."
"Yes; and I really must go now, for I'm very anxious to see how they're
handling it."
"It was very good of you to come."
"I'll come again, if there is anything of consequence to report. I'm
certain you'll be all right here. You haven't worried too much, have
you?"
"Well, the waiting has been pretty bad," the girl confessed.
"Then don't worry any more, either of you, for if there should be the
slightest danger, I'll come back at once."
Helen hesitated a moment.
"Mr. Smith promised to come and 'save us,' if we needed saving," she
said, with the merest trace of a flush.
"Ah," replied her uncle, slowly. "Then I think we may safely leave
your rescue to him. I will come as a reporter only. Good-by."
From the time of his departure there had been no visitor from the
outside world until Smith's ring came as the clock made ready to strike
nine. Helen herself opened the door, as the maid had gone downstairs
for further enlightenment from the authorities below; and Miss Maitland
found herself confronted by a man whom at first she hardly recognized,
so hollow-eyed, so weary, and withal so grimy did he look. Her little
start at seeing him was noted by Smith, and he guessed the reason for
it.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, with a shadow of his old smile. "Under
all the disguises it's really I. I know that I must look like a
dissipated coal heaver, but I flatter myself that you'll be glad to see
me, just the same, for I came to tell you that the danger is over--the
fire is practically out."
"Then you must come in and let me get you something to eat," said the
girl.
"Thank you very much, but I don't think I will. Somehow I don't seem
to feel very hungry. But I'm horribly sleepy. I don't believe I was
ever so sleepy in my life. So good-night."
But she stood with her back to the door.
"Where did you intend to go?" she demanded. "The hotels that are not
burned are probably filled to the brim. Besides, your clothes are
here. You can't go away. You must stay here."
"That's awfully kind of you, to offer to take me in," the other
rejoined; "but you cannot house a disreputable chimney sweep.
Besides--"
But she did not give him any opportunity to complete the sentence.
"Don't be absurd; you're usually quite sensible. Mother and I had it
all decided hours ago. You're to stay with us. Your room is all ready
for you--and your bath," she added.
He acknowledged the touch with an appreciative but weary smile.
"Well, then, if you really don't mind, I'll take you up," he said.
"Will you have supper first?"
"Thanks, no--nothing but sleep. I'm ashamed of being so fearfully
tired--you must excuse me. But I don't believe any man can stay awake
indefinitely."
"No, I don't believe any man can," Helen agreed.
It was ten o'clock the next day when Smith opened his eyes once more
upon a normal world. The sun was shining brightly, but it was some
moments before he could assure himself that he was actually awake
again. The twelve hours' sleep, during which apparently not one muscle
had he stirred, had gone far to repair the ravages of thirty-six hours'
steady wakefulness, and a cold bath did the rest. The two ladies were
found to be in the dining room, still absorbed in the morning edition
of a newspaper whose building had escaped the sweep of the
conflagration.
"Why, it's only half-past ten!" was Helen's greeting. "I didn't expect
you so early. Mother suggested that we wait breakfast for you; but I
said it would be much closer your wishes if we waited lunch instead."
"Well, I think I must have condensed an enormous amount of sleep into
the last twelve hours," said Smith; "for I feel as well as ever. Tell
me what has happened--I see you have the papers."
"What is going to happen is also important--your breakfast," the girl
responded. "Go over there, where you see that napkin sitting
expectantly on its haunches, and Marie will be in directly."
"Thank you. I hope you won't be scandalized at my appetite. Is the
fire entirely out?"
"Yes--practically. Here's the paper."
"That's very good of you. You'll pardon me if I just look at the
headlines?"
"Of course." And for a few moments there was little conversation in
the sunny dining room.
"And now will you do me a favor?" said Miss Maitland.
Smith looked at her; a long moment.
"I will do anything in the world for you," he said, "except one thing."
The girl flushed a little.
"I want you to take me out to the fire," she responded.
The other looked at her in surprise.
"Why, of course," he said. "I never thought of doing anything else.
If my calculations are correct, it will take me exactly as long to
finish those three pieces of toast as for you to get ready. Better
wear old clothes--it may be pretty dirty."
Five minutes later they descended to the street.
"Why, it's been snowing!" said Smith, in surprise.
A light fall of snow covered sidewalk and lawns; there were few men
this day with sufficient leisure to sweep away snow. As the two went
northward through the bright morning, they walked for the most part in
silence. All seemed very still, for there were no street cars moving,
and most of the customary confusion of a city's streets was oddly
hushed. Few people were abroad, at least along where their path lay;
it was almost as though they were passing through a deserted city.
"Look at that," Smith said once. "I don't believe you were ever on
this corner when you couldn't see a single person."
"Where do you suppose every one is?" asked Helen, curiously.
"At the ruins. Do you know, this reminds me of one of the strangest
things I ever saw."
"What was that?" the girl inquired, turning toward him.
"The only absolutely deserted town in America--at least I think it must
be the only one. I never heard any one speak of another. But I know
this one exists, for I saw it myself."
"Where is it? I never heard of such a thing. It sounds like
Herculaneum or some of those Assyrian cities where they are always
digging up statues and tablets and things."
"But this isn't a buried town. It's a real town, built perhaps twenty
or thirty years ago; and it's located out in northern Indiana. And a
perfectly nice little town, with brick stores and a couple of paved
streets and other advantages. Everything--except inhabitants. No one
lives there."
"Why not? Is this really true?"
"True as gospel. I saw it myself. I walked through the deserted
streets. And a rather uncanny feeling it gave me, too."
"Was it unhealthy? Why did the people leave?"
"I haven't the vaguest idea," said Smith; and as he answered he raised
his arm to point eastward along the street they had that moment
reached. Following the direction in which he was pointing, Helen saw a
thin line of smoke rising feebly from a pile of débris upon the ground.
Near by were similar piles, sullenly smoldering.
"There's where they stopped it," said Smith.
They walked quickly along until they came to the very corner on which
the last ebbing wave of the sea of fire had turned. This corner was at
the intersection of Shawmut Avenue with the railroad's right of way.
Over the tracks at this point was a raised steel bridge, and to this
they now directed their steps. At the end of the bridge they stopped.
The bridge was elevated sufficiently so that they could see a
considerable distance northward, and for some moments they stood and
looked in silence at the sight which lay beyond them.
It was something which is only to be seen once in the course of an
ordinary lifetime--the complete ruin of the integral part of a great
city. With something too remote yet too bitterly real for any words
gripping at her heart, Helen stood looking out over a scene such as she
never could have imagined. Here was ruin incarnate, desolation
supreme; this was the bitter tragedy of that which once was great
turned suddenly into pitiful nothingness before her very eyes.
In the foreground, at their feet, lay the heaped débris of the bricks,
timbers, and contents of a whole row of dynamited buildings--the
sacrificed buildings which by their own destruction had checked the
conflagration at the last. There they lay, still smoldering or blazing
in some places, utterly still and lifeless in others, with stray beams
and bits of cornice or of tin roofing, twisted into weird shapes,
sticking out at odd angles. Here and there unconsumed and hardly
damaged articles that had been contained in these buildings lay
unheeded; for here where the flames had died, they had not destroyed
everything combustible, as they had seemed to do almost everywhere
else. On the west side of Shawmut Avenue, where the houses still stood
intact, a few men were to be seen; these were the state militiamen in
their fatigue uniforms, patrolling the ruins. Smith called Helen's
attention to them.
"Why are they there?" she asked.
"To watch the vultures gathering for the feast. See! There goes one
of them now--over there to the left."
Helen looked; skulking along in the shadow of a ruined wall was a
shabby, rough-looking man who stole swiftly out of sight behind a pile
of rubbish.
"One of the scavengers. They come almost automatically after every
great disaster--fire, flood, battle, or pestilence. Ghouls, you
understand, from heaven knows where. That man's great-grandfather
probably robbed the dead grenadiers of the Legion of Honor at Waterloo."
"Thieves?" said the girl, in horror.
"Worse than thieves. Vandals, body-snatchers, murderers, if it came to
that. The kind of man who'd cut the finger off a dying woman to get
her wedding ring. Unpleasant, isn't it? Well, the militia are under
orders to shoot them on sight, if caught in the act. But let's go a
little farther on; I think we can get a better view from farther north."
"Wait," said his companion. "I am not ready to go--yet."
Smith heeded her voice, and for another unnoted interval they stood
agaze upon their little eminence.
Far to the northward the scene of ruin stretched away. Almost as far
as the eye could reach was only the shadow, the terrible and disfigured
skeleton of what had been the city. Everywhere were smoldering piles
with occasional tongues of sullen, orange flame and their myriad
threads of smoke trailing upward in the still air like Indians' signal
fires. Here was a brick building, apparently hardly touched or harmed,
lifting its lonely height over its prostrate neighbors. Here a partly
burned structure, gutted but still erect, stood like a grim,
articulated skeleton, a gaunt scarecrow against the skyline.
Everywhere were mounds and hollows, hills and valleys, so that the
natural contour of the earth, unseen now these hundred years, once more
appeared. And over it all, everywhere that the fire had wholly burned
out, lay the heart-breaking beauty and whiteness of the snow, and of
the ashes under the snow.
"How terribly white it is!" said Helen, in a low voice.
Smith only nodded. Feeling her mood, he left her to speak when she was
ready, and presently she did so.
"Shall we go now?" she asked.
"Suppose we do. I want to show you, if I can--and to see myself--what
is left of the shopping and hotel and theater district. There can't be
much left."
They turned back in the way they had come, for Tremont Street above
this point was no thoroughfare. By a somewhat circuitous route at last
they reached the corner of the Common; and here, at the edge of the
great throng of curious onlookers, they paused.
"There's where I didn't sleep last night," said Smith.
The Hotel Aquitaine, such as it was, stood gauntly staring at them from
its dozens of empty windows. The building itself was intact, but every
piece of inflammable material in its contents seemed to have been wiped
out of existence as utterly as though made of tissue paper. With a
little shudder Helen turned away, and they moved onward.
For all Smith's fire-line badge, they were not permitted to enter the
patrolled district, and they could only join the throng which was
circling about the outskirts. This was not a very inspiring nor even a
very interesting thing, although the people for the most part were
oddly silent, seeming to have been numbed by the extent of the
disaster. Helen found before very long that she had seen enough.
"What a fearful crowd! I think I'd rather go where there aren't quite
so many people," she told Smith.
"All right--wait until I see what happened to Jordan's store; then
we'll go."
Five minutes later they were heading back southward in the direction of
their bridge.
"It is beyond words, isn't it?" observed Smith. "There is nothing at
all adequate that a man can say when he is confronted by such a thing
as this, and almost nothing that he can do."
"Isn't there something, though?" the girl asked. "There must be
hundreds of people homeless, without food or money or anything! Cannot
we do anything to help them?"
"No doubt," said the man. "Individually we could scarcely be of much
assistance; but I fancy that the local charity organizations or the Red
Cross would see that any contribution went where it would do the most
good."
Only a few minutes later they found where one of these institutions had
opened temporary headquarters in an old church.
"Let us go in," said Miss Maitland.
As they entered they saw that the church was filled with refugees, come
in to escape the cold. They were most of them sitting in groups,
talking eagerly to one another. Some were lying asleep, stretched out
full length on the pews. A woman was going about, serving hot coffee
and soup and bread. The refugees ate hungrily, but on the faces of
almost all of them rested the same dispirited look of dazed wonder.
Apparently they were chiefly foreigners, the majority Italians, and it
was evident that they had lost everything they had possessed. Helen
stood watching them with a sad heart from the back of the church, and
Smith, looking at her, saw that her eyes were full of tears. He laid
his hand gently on her arm. "Please don't," he said gravely. But he
understood.
"But it seems so unfair for them to have lost everything," the girl
said. "They had so little to lose."
She turned her face to his.
"There is no answer to that," he said; "but we can help them a little."
To the woman in charge they gave what they could afford to give, and
turned toward home. It was nearly four o'clock, and Mrs. Maitland
might be growing anxious about their safety. They walked forward in a
silence which neither wished to break.
It was soon broken, however, by a chance occurrence. They were passing
by an open street on the edge of the burned district. Across the
street, under a none too steady wall, a woman whose distress had
evidently touched the good nature of the militiaman patrolling the
other end of the block was hunting about among heaps of débris,
searching for things which might perhaps have been spared by the
flames. On top of the house wall was a battered stone coping, which,
as Smith and Helen paused, gave a sudden lurch and seemed about to
fall. The woman, her head bent, saw nothing; but Smith, with a
startled exclamation, started quickly forward.
"Look out there!" he called sharply. "Come away from that wall!"
The woman, with her back turned, paid no attention to the
warning--probably did not even hear him. The coping, poised on the
wall's edge, swayed perilously. If it fell, there would be one less of
the indigent and helpless for the relief committees to support. With a
half angry exclamation Smith sprang forward.
On his sleeve he felt the quick pressure of a hand. At the same moment
the crouching woman, having finished her search, or perhaps moved by an
instinct of danger, walked slowly on, and out from under the wall. The
coping did not fall.
Smith turned to find the girl's fingers closed tight upon his arm, and
in her eyes something he had never seen before. She stood still a
moment, and when at last she withdrew her hand, she spoke in a voice so
low that he could barely catch the words.
"Why did you do that?"
"She didn't see the coping," he said, as naturally as he could.
"It might have fallen--on you!"
"Yes," he said; "I suppose it might. But you see, it didn't."
"It might have killed you," she said, still in a low voice.
Smith turned abruptly, and looked at her.
"How much would you have cared, Helen?" he asked.
Even at this moment the trammels of her ancestry were on her; she made
no answer.
"How much would you have cared, dear?" he asked again, gently.
Then at last she raised her eyes, and met his fairly.
"More than anything--more than everything in the world," she said.
The early gray February twilight was closing in upon them when they
left the lifted bridge. They had been there long, yet as they turned
to go, Helen gave one backward look. There, spread away across the
stricken plain, she saw for the last time the prostrate thing which
yesterday had been the living city; and over it, like the winding linen
of a shroud, lay the white ashes in the snow.