Greater Love Hath No Man/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIRE
THE flash and roar of the carbine from the wall, a wild shout from the guard answered Varge's cry; like echoes the alarm flashed around the circuit of the turrets, and the big bell in the central dome of the prison burst into tongue in clamouring, booming, guttural notes.
Varge was already halfway across the lawn. The graceful little figure—all in dainty, spotless white that afternoon—to whom his eyes had strayed so often from his work, still stood by the hammock, the trailing sun-bonnet in one hand, a book in the other, which now she clasped closely to her side in an attitude of startled bewilderment. The blue eyes, full of anxious wonder, were fixed on him as he approached.
"It's in the kitchen, I think," he said hurriedly, but in quiet tones, as he paused beside her. "I am afraid the fire must have got a good deal of headway before it showed itself. See!" A thin, yellow flame-tongue appeared for an instant over the peak of the roof, dissolved into a pufif of blackish-grey smoke which, caught by the breeze, came curling toward them down the slanting roof between the dormer windows. "Martha?" he asked quickly. "Where is Martha?"
"She went to the village an hour ago," Janet answered. Her face had gone suddenly white, belying the brave steadiness of her voice. "Do you think that—"
"Please stay here till your father comes, Miss Rand," Varge interrupted, with a reassuring smile. It will be only a moment. I will see if there is anything I can do."
He turned as he spoke, dashed around the corner of the house and raced on along the driveway to the rear. The sharp, biting, vicious crackle of flame came now with a low, ominous roar. It was the kitchen, low-roofed, one-story high, built out as a sort of adjunct to the house, as he had supposed, and the flames and smoke were bursting now from its windows. The fire must have been gaining grim headway for a long time within before it had flung out its challenge, and, with Martha away and that portion of the house hidden from the penitentiary walls by the barn and shade maples on the driveway, it was not strange that it had not attracted notice.
A rush of smoke drove him back from the kitchen door as he opened it—and mingled with the acrid odour of burning wood came the sharper, more pungent odour of burning oil. The breeze, sweeping through the door, whirled back the smoke and fanned a dancing layer of shimmering white upon the floor, that lapped greedily over and ran up the walls, into whiter, angrier fury. He shut the door again instantly to keep out the air current.
His resources were a bucket and the cistern—the latter twenty yards away at the side of the barn. He smiled grimly—as well a thimble to dip in a hand basin! The kitchen, at least, was already long past the hope that lay in buckets, though if there were only men enough it might—
A horse's hoofs thundered up the driveway and a rider flashed into sight around the corner. It was Kingman, the mounted patrol.
"Good Lord!" he yelled. "The whole place 'll go, it's—"
Varge leaped toward the other through a roll of black smoke that surged suddenly—coincident with the roar of an explosion, a can of superheated kerosene probably—across the space between them.
"Is there any fire apparatus in town?" he asked crisply.
"Yes," said Kingman. "There's a hand-tub in the—"
"Then get it—quick!"
It was not convict and guard—it was man to man—the one dominant, contained, self-possessed; the other flurried and excited—and without hesitation or question Kingman obeyed. He reared his horse to its hind legs, spun around like a top, and, low in the saddle, tore down the driveway toward the road.
Another glance Varge gave around him—the fire was showing through the kitchen roof and spreading across the shingles of the house itself in an ever widening path—then he ran back along the driveway.
A group of guards, the warden at their head, were just turning in from the road. He saw Janet Rand speed across the lawn to meet her father, and then all came on toward him, running at top speed. At the corner of the house Varge halted and waited for them to join him.
"I think, sir," he said quietly, as the warden came up, "that it would be a wise thing to get the furniture out of the house onto the lawn."
"Nonsense," panted the warden; "it can't be as bad as that; it hasn't had a long enough start to—"
"There is smoke in the front rooms now," Janet interposed. "I saw it just a minute ago—it is coming along the hallway from the back."
"Guard Kingman has gone for the fire-tub, sir"—Varge spoke again, in quick, firm tones. "I do not know how long it will take to get it here, but if we had plenty of men we could form a bucket brigade and keep the roof wet down until we got a stream on it."
Warden Rand's eyes swept the roof for an instant; and then, as though to dispossess his mind of any idea of exaggeration on Varge's part, a swirl of smoke came down the driveway, a shower of sparks spurted upward, scattered, and settled, glowing, in a dozen spots on the shingles. He swung sharply upon one of the guards.
"Bring the good-conduct men over here with buckets, Laidley," he ordered tersely. "And bring them on the double! I'll have a closer look at this—the rest of you can start getting the things out of the house; it's as well to be on the safe side. And a ladder, Laidley"—he called after the guard. "Bring a ladder!"
"There is one in the barn that is long enough, sir," said Varge. "I'll have it up by the time the men are back."
Distant shouts and cries, growing ever nearer, sounded from the direction of the little village; the great prison bell still clamoured its alarm; along the road came scurrying women, some dragging children by the hand, some carrying a babe in arms, others talking, gesticulating, crying excitedly to one another; while, leading them, passing them, the younger element, boys and girls, came scrambling through the hedges and poured onto the lawn—and high now in air, ominously high, shot a wicked, lurid fang of flame.
From the barn Varge dragged out a ladder; and, as the warden helped him to place it, a burst of cheers and yells went up from the front of the house.
Into the driveway they came, two long parallel files of them, like fast travelling snakes, their striped bodies wriggling this way and that, the right-angled turn from the road like a fold in the monster's tails. On they came, the convicts, thirty to the file, their white faces flushed now with their run from the prison gates, their eyes bright with eagerness and excitement; on they came, the tramp of their feet, the clatter of the swinging buckets sounding dominantly over the cries that hailed them.
Varge sprang upon the ladder and began to climb. They had placed it in the driveway, its top resting against the eaves at the peak of the roof. A clattering file swung by below him, heading for the cistern at the warden's direction. As Varge reached the top, others were already on the ladder behind him, following him up.
He pulled himself to the roof, and, straddling the peak, edged his way along past the chimney to a position near the centre. A dry, blighting breath swept his face; a cloud of smoke, full of eddying sparks, closed down upon him and left him for an instant choked and gasping—then it cleared away, leaving only the blazing patches of shingles around him and the airless, furnace heat of the solid flame from the kitchen roof and the rear side of the house itself, now in fierce conflagration.
A striped form took its place behind him on the roof, another and another, back to where the head and shoulders of a man standing on the ladder protruded over the eaves—then he lost the line until it appeared again close by the cistern's edge beside the conservatory. Below, on the other side, on the lawn, was a sea of upturned, staring faces, women's and girls' and boys', that were constantly being augmented by others who were racing along the road to the fire—the men were still in the village; he could see a black knot of them down by the creek gathered around the little fireball.
Varge's eyes came back to the lawn. A detail of convicts had evidently been told off to do the work that the guards, who had arrived with the warden, had begun. Back and forth they went, some singly, carrying chairs and lighter articles, others in groups of two and three staggering under heavier pieces of furniture—all piling their loads well down the lawn out of reach of even the most ambitious sparks. And now, amongst them, directing them, he caught a glimpse of golden hair, a little form in fluttering white—she turned suddenly, looking upward, her face raised toward him—and then a heavy, curling wave of smoke engulfed him again and settled between them.
A cheer, more a stifled gurgle, echoed, along the line behind him—a dripping bucket was thrust into his hand.
He raised himself to his feet now, bracing himself as best he could on the precarious footing, and shot the contents of the bucket over a glowing patch of shingle. The one chance was to keep the fire from creeping any further up the roof of the house than it had already come—and that chance looked slim enough—even with a stream from the fire-tub when it came, it seemed as though everything, would go, for the fire, fed by the blazing kitchen, must already have worked its way into the lower rooms at the rear.
They came fast now, at barely half-minute intervals, the buckets—a full one pushed into his hand almost as rapidly as he could place its contents most effectively without wasting one of the precious drops, and swing it back again empty to the man behind.
The minutes passed, five of them, but with each one the position on the roof had grown more and more untenable—they were choking, gasping for breath—the heat was blistering, scorching them, though they kept their faces turned away—the smoke, a continuous cloud now, settled upon them, dense, suffocating.
Faintly to Varge's ears came a roar of voices, then the beat of hoofs, a clatter and clang in the driveway below—the fire-tub had come. A minute more and he heard the sound of many running steps, the bump and rattle of a light vehicle—it was the two-wheeled hose cart, men straining at the long draw-ropes, flanking the two men at the end of the guiding-tongue. He could not see it, but he could picture it well enough—many a "muster" and "play-out" of Veteran Firemen he had seen in Berley Falls. Presently they would man the long brakes on either side of the fire-tub, twelve men to a side—it would have a name, of course, the fire-tub, like Excelsior or Eureka—and then clang-clang-clank, clang-clang-clank would go the brakes, up on one side, down on the other, then—he swept his hand quickly across his smarting eyes; he was dizzy and his mind seemed to be wavering. Strange that the other men did not feel—
A full bucket dropped from the nerveless hand of the man behind him, rolled splashing, ricochetting down the roof and plumped into the fire below.
In a flash, concentrating, gathering mental and physical faculties alike, Varge whirled around, his hand shot out and locked in the other's collar just as the man pitched forward, head down, upon the slant of the roof. Varge dragged him back, supporting the limp figure with one hand while he reached for the next oncoming bucket with the other.
"Quick!" he shouted. "Water!"
It was three men behind, and it came with painful slowness—the man he held was but little further gone than those who still fought gamely on.
At last the bucket reached him, and he dashed the contents over the man's head and shoulders and into his face.
A shout came ringing up from below. It was the warden's voice, and he had evidently drawn his own conclusions from the tumbling bucket, or perhaps had seen what was happening through a lifting layer of smoke.
"Come down from the roof!" he ordered peremptorily. "Come down at once!"
"Clang-clang-clank—spit!"—a stream of water lashed the roof, broke and spattered like great tumbling drops of rain. The tub was at work.
The man, revived a little by the douche, moaned; but still hung inert on Varge's arm. The men close to the ladder began to back off the roof and descend; the one next to Varge and his charge edged a little nearer to help—he was shaky and weak, and Varge motioned him away.
"Get down yourself; it's all you'll be able to do," he said quickly. "I'll manage all right—send some fresh men to the top of the ladder to get this chap."
With a hoarse gasp of assent, the other moved away.
A moment Varge supported the semi-unconscious man against his knee while he rapidly unlaced his boots, removed them, tied the strings together and slung them around his neck—his stockinged feet would cling where his boots would give him no chance at all. Then, as though it were a baby, he raised the other in his arms and began carefully to make his way along the peak of the roof.
Once, twice and again he slipped, recovered himself and went on. The smoke blew clear for an instant and left him outlined against space, a grim, gaunt figure, moving slowly on his perilous footing, his burden in his arms—and from below in a mad roar, bursting from the full hearts of men, came cheer on cheer. Varge heard it, attributed it to the fire-tub at last in play—and kept steadily, doggedly on. Like a fly crawling around a wall, his burden shifted to one arm and shoulder, leaving the other hand free to cling to the brick, he passed the chimney. A moment more, and the top of the ladder was gained. Here, others took the man from him; and then, putting on his boots again, Varge swung himself onto the rungs.
As he reached the ground, a hand fell upon his shoulder. He turned—and his eyes met Doctor Kreelmar's.
"Hum!" grunted the little doctor. "Come out here in front where you can get some fresh air into your lungs."
"I'm all right," said Varge, with a glance toward the barn where they were changing gangs on the fire-tub. "I—"
"You do what you're told," snapped the doctor, "or I'll see that you get a day of solitary—what? Now, march!"
With a smile at the gruff, big-hearted little man, Varge obeyed. The doctor led him along the driveway and onto the lawn to where the convict who had been overcome with the smoke was stretched out on the grass, and there made him sit down.
For a few minutes Varge lay back, his hands behind his head, inhaling deep breaths. Two convicts reeled out from the front door with a piece of furniture. They carried it to a spot near him, and he heard a guard order them to go back to the rear and help the men at the fire-tub—it was evidently too bad in the house now to continue further the work of salvage, even if there were any more to do—flame and smoke were bursting from one of the upper windows, the one by the big elm.
He sat up, and his eyes travelled slowly over the crowd upon the lawn—and back again over the little knots and groups, still slowly. Then, suddenly, he jumped to his feet, and his glance now was quick, searching, critical.
Close by him stood Martha, a heavy, stupid creature, to whose carelessness probably the fire owed its origin. She was alternately twisting her apron into a knot and unfolding it again, as she stared, wild-faced, at the house. Varge stepped toward her.
"Where is Miss Rand?" he demanded quickly.
Martha started—and the apron dropped from her hands. Then she shook her head.
"I don't know," she said. "I heard her say a little while ago there was something of her mother's in her room that she had forgotten, and that she was going to get it. I haven't seen her since and—"
"What's that?" interposed a voice sharply—and the little doctor was between them. "She's gone in there? You let her go in there—h'm?—h'm?—h'm?" he jerked out. "My God, my God"—he turned and began to run for the veranda.
Varge's face was set and white as chiselled marble.
"Which is her room?"—Martha, terrified, was whimpering now, and he spoke quietly, laying a hand on her arm.
She pointed to the blazing dormer window by the elm—and burst into tears.
It was a hundred yards to the house from where Varge stood, and the doctor was already two-thirds of the way there—Varge's hands closed down on the other's shoulders, halting him, as he sprang up the steps onto the veranda.
"I will go," he said, with quiet finality.
"You will do nothing of the sort!" snorted the little man, stamping and wriggling to free himself. "You're not fit to go into that again and—"
"I will go," repeated Varge evenly.
For the fraction of a second their eyes met—then he pushed the doctor gently away from him, and sprang through the open door.
Smoke, a thin, hazy, wavering, light-grey veil of it, shut down around him and stabbed at his eyes. A single glance he gave into the dismantled rooms on either side of the hallway—then dashed for the stairs. Heavier, denser here, as though accepting his challenge, a gust of strangling fumes rushed down to meet him, and for an instant checked him, stopped him, drove him back a step.
He tore his jacket from his back, held it over his nose and mouth—and leaped grimly forward. Above, angry red, a sheet of flame spurted across the head of the stairway—the upper rear of the house was a seething furnace—and somewhere, somewhere above him she—he moaned like a man in delirium, his head and lungs seemed to be bursting. He had not thought that the fire had gained such headway within—was he to be forced back, unable to gain the hall above that ran to the front of the house where she must be? Would he, after all, be forced back to make the attempt all over again by a ladder through the window on the side still untouched by the fire? He had thought of that in the first place, but where every second counted he had not dared to risk the time it would have taken to bring a ladder around from the rear. Where every second counted—as the thought seared again into his brain, his heart seemed to stop its beat.
"Janet!"—her name burst from his lips spontaneously in a fierce, anguished cry; and, as though it were the magic word that rent asunder the flood-gates of his soul, there surged upon him a mighty wave of passion—all that was primal, elemental in him rose in liberation as to some wild, stupendous revelry, full of exquisite torture, of infinite joy, and all of happiness, all of sorrow that a world of life could ever know.
The head of the stairs was impassable—across it, in a very wall now, was that fiery barrier. But there was another way. He was far enough up now, and he measured the distance to the top of the hall bannister with a quick glance, dropped his jacket—and sprang. There was a split, a crack of rending woodwork as his hands closed around and gripped the railing—eaten into, weakened by the fire at the stairway head, it could not stand the strain—he felt it giving away, and with all his strength he flung his weight forward. For an instant he hung there in the balance; and then, with the bannister crashing down around him, he landed on hands and knees on the hall floor. He was on his feet in a second—something white through the smoke caught his eye ahead of him down the passage at the front of the house.
In another moment he had reached her and was on his knees beside her. Half across the threshold of a door she lay, motionless, unconscious, her face bloodless white, one hand out-flung, and tightly clasped in it a tiny ivory miniature—her mother's picture. She had rushed from her own room across the hall, probably, just as the fire burst through from the rear, had tried to make for the window of this other room where it was almost free from smoke, and had been overcome upon its threshold.
"Janet! Janet!"—his words were a strong man's sobs now, as he snatched her from the floor and lifted her in his arms.
The golden hair brushed his cheek. It thrilled him, whipped his veins into fiery streams, dominated him, overpowered him, mastered him. He knew now, knew for all time to come, forever more he knew—he loved her. He swept her closer, tighter to him; and then, with reverently lowered head, as he rushed forward toward the window, his lips pressed the fair, white brow in a long, lingering kiss—the hungry, hopeless, silent cry of his heart, his soul, his being. No; she was not dead. Presently he would give her back to her own world in which he had no part, no place, in which he was an outcast, where between them would lie a gulf in length and breadth and depth unutterable, where no crossing was—but this one instant, snatched from all eternity, was his. That kiss, a symbol of the holiest, purest thing he had ever known, could never wrong her, never do her hurt.
He reached the window and held her where the air would strike her face. They saw him from below—he heard them shout. Her gold-spun hair, loosened, lay in waving masses across his shoulder and his arm. He buried his face in it, touching it with his lips, as he stood there waiting. It was the one moment he was to have in all his life. Gently, tenderly he held her, his head bowed—it was this he was to look back upon, to dwell upon through all the years to come—his moment, that he should remember when he came to die.
They were coming now. He heard a ladder thump against the window sill. He raised his head—and upon the parched lips, the scorched face, came the old, brave, quiet smile, as he reached out and laid her in her father's arms.