Part 43 (1/2)
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
THE FIERY TEST.
Arthur was not at home. From the first he had intended making Edith a bridal present--a life-sized portrait of Nina, which he knew she would value more than gifts of gold and silver. He had in his possession a daguerreotype taken when she was just eighteen, and sent to him by her father among other things, of which Charlie Hudson was the bearer. From this he would have a picture painted, employing the best artist in Boston, and it was upon this business that he left Gra.s.sy Spring the previous day, saying he should probably be home upon the next evening's train.
Just before Richard arrived at Gra.s.sy Spring, however, a telegram had been received to the effect that Arthur was detained and would not return until midnight. This Phillis repeated to Richard, who for an instant stood thinking, and then said to Victor, ”I shall stay. I cannot go back to Collingwood till I have talked with Arthur. But you may go, I would rather be left alone, and, Victor, you will undoubtedly think it a foolish fancy, but I must sleep in Nina's room. There will be something soothing to me in a place so hallowed by her former presence. Ask old Phillis if I may. Tell her it is a whim, if you like, but get her consent at all hazards.”
Phillis' consent was easily won, and after Victor was gone, Richard sat alone in the parlor until nearly eleven, when, feeling weary, he consented to retire, and Ike led him up the two flights of stairs into the Den, where he had never been before.
”I do not need your services,” he said to the negro, who departed, having first lighted the gas and turned it on to its fullest extent out of compliment to the blind man.
Gas was a luxury not quite two years old in Shannondale, and had been put in Arthur's house just before he left for Florida.
Collingwood being further from the village could not boast of it yet and consequently Richard was not as much accustomed to it as he would otherwise have been. On this occasion he did not know that it was lighted until, as he stood by the dressing bureau, he felt the hot air in his face. Thinking to extinguish the light by turning the arm of the fixture just as he remembered having done some years before, he pushed it back within an inch of the heavy damask curtain which now shaded the window, and too much absorbed in his own painful reflections to think of ascertaining whether the light was out or not, he groped his way to the single bed, and threw himself upon it, giving way to a paroxysm of grief.
It was strange that one in his frame of mind should sleep, but nature was at last exhausted, and yielding to the influence of the peculiar atmosphere slowly pervading the room, he fell away into a kind of lethargic slumber, while the work of destruction his own hand had prepared, went silently on around him. First the crimson curtain turned a yellowish hue, than the scorched threads dropped apart and the flame crept into the inner lining of cotton, running swiftly through it until the whole was in a blaze, and the wood- work of the window, charred and blackened, and bore the deadly element still onward, but away from the unconscious Richard, leaving that portion of the room unscathed, and for the present safe. Along the cornice under the lathing, beneath the eaves they crept--those little fiery tongues--lapping at each other in wanton, playfulness, and whispering to the dry old s.h.i.+ngles on the roof above of the mischief they meant to do.
Half an hour went by, and from the three towers of Shannondale the deep toned bells rang out the watchword of alarm, which the awakened inhabitants caught up, echoing it from lip to lip until every street resounded with the fearful cry, ”Fire, fire, Gra.s.sy Spring is all on fire.”
Then the two engines were brought, from their shelter, and went rattling through the town and out into the country, a quarter of a mile away, to where the little forked tongues had grown to a mammoth size, darting their vicious heads from beneath the rafters, reaching down to touch the heated panes, hissing defiance at the people below, and rolling over the doomed building until billow of flame leaped billow, both licking up in their mad chase the streams of water poured continually upon them.
Away to the eastward the night express came thundering on, and one of its pa.s.sengers, looking from his window, saw the lurid blaze, just as once before he had seen the bonfire crazy Nina kindled, and as he watched, a horrible fear grow strong within him, manifesting itself at last in the wild outcry, ”'Tis Gra.s.sy Spring, 'tis Gra.s.sy Spring.”
Long before the train reached the depot, Arthur St. Claire, had jumped from the rear car, and was flying across the meadow toward his burning home, knowing ere he reached it that all was lost.
Timbers were falling, gla.s.s was melting, windows were blazing, while at every step the sparks and cinders whirled in showers around his head.
And where all this time was Richard? Victor was asking that question--Victor, just arrived, and followed by the whole household of Collingwood. They were the last to waken, and they came with headlong haste; but Victor's longer strides outran them all, and when Arthur appeared, he was asking frantically for his master. The negroes in their fright had forgotten him entirely, and the first words which greeted Arthur were, ”Mr. Harrington is in the building!”
”Where? where?” he shrieked, darting away, and dragging Victor with him.
”In Nina's room. He would sleep there,” Victor answered, and with another cry of horror, Arthur sprang to the rear of the building, discovering that the stairs leading to the Den were comparatively unharmed as yet.
”Who will save him?” he screamed, and he turned toward Victor, who intuitively drew back from incurring the great peril.
There was no one to volunteer, and Arthur said,
”I will do it myself.”
Instantly a hundred voices were raised against it. It were worse than madness, they said. The fire must have caught in the vicinity of that room, and Richard was a.s.suredly dead.
”He may not be, and if he is not, I will save him or perish too,”
was Arthur's heroic reply, as he sprang up the long winding stairs, near which the flames were roaring like some long pent up volcano.
He reached the door of the Den. It was bolted, but with superhuman strength he shook it down, staggering backward as the dense cloud of yellowish smoke rolled over and around him, warning him not to advance. But Arthur heeded no warning then. By the light which illumined the entire front of the house, he saw that two sides of the room were not yet touched; the bed in the recess was unharmed, but Richard was not there, and a terrible fear crept over Arthur lest he had perished in his attempt to escape. Suddenly he remembered Nina's cell, and groping his way through fire and smoke, he opened the oaken door, involuntarily breathing a prayer of thanksgiving when he saw the tall form stretched upon the empty bedstead. He had probably mistaken the way out, and by entering here, had prolonged his life, for save through the gla.s.s ventilator the smoke could not find entrance to that spot. Arthur knew that he was living, for the lips moved once and whispered, ”Edith,” causing Arthur's brain to reel, and the cold sweat to start from every pore as he thought for what and for whom he was saving his rival. Surely in that terrible hour, in Nina's cell, with death staring him in the face on every side, Arthur St.
Claire atoned for all the past, and by his n.o.ble unselfishness proved how true and brave he was.