The Fire.
Will Somers belonged to the “Cataract,” which was not a “steamer,” but a hand-engine. To belong to the “Cataract” it was necessary to own a red flannel shirt, a good pair of lungs, and a nimble pair of legs. The shirt—did that mean fire? The lungs enabled one to do all the “hollering” that might be necessary. The legs were still more essential, that the engine might move with proper speed to a fire, and this was at a neck-breaking pace. As the engine company had many alarms to answer, some of them purposely raised to enable the company to “show off”—so Simes Badger said—the legs of a Cataract-boy were not the least valuable of his fire-apparatus. And then it did seem as if the company all took a fiendish delight in going “like mad” by the homes of old women and all single ladies like Miss Persnips, tossing their red helmets—I omitted this essential piece of property—directing at the windows defiant glances, and all the while their sharp, cracked engine-bell went up and down, over and over, as if it were an insane acrobat.
“Fire! Fire!” screamed a female voice, one afternoon. The screamer was Miss Persnips.
“Where, where?” shouted Simes Badger.
“O, there, there! I know it must be,” was the answer.
That was all Simes wanted, and especially as Mr. Walton was holding a service at St. John’s. If Simes could excite a neighborhood, and also create a sensation in church, he was happy. He now rushed into the church-vestibule, and then into the bell-tower, and seizing the rope pulled it as if the small-pox had broken out and attacked every other person in the community. Simes being the one to make the bell boom, “Danger!” he gave evidence that this one person certainly was not afflicted with the malady.
In just two minutes from the first rap on the bell, Will Somers, leaving behind him a caldron of boiling herbs, was at the door of the engine-house, and unlocking it, had seized the long rope attached to the engine. There were enough who joined him to rush out into the street the clumsy machine. There they received large re-enforcements.
“Where is the fire?” bawled the foreman.
Nobody knew.
“Where is the fire, Simes?” the bell-ringer was asked as the engine rattled toward the church-door.
“Miss Persnips!”
Simes meant not the place of the fire, but the source of the information.
“Miss Persnips’s house is afire!” shouted the engine-men. It was enough. They rushed for that lady’s place, and seeing a column of smoke above her roof, concluded that its source was directly below, and stopping at a pump this side of her house, ran their hose down into the well. They were working the brakes at a lively rate and preparing for a thorough bombardment of the building, when fortunately she appeared, screaming, “Fire is over there, beyond the woods!”
The smoke had now shifted its coarse, and rolling away from Miss Persnips’s, hung in a dark, sullen cloud above the forest but a little way off.
Away went the engine and its allies, sweeping along men and boys, and also every able-bodied member of the Up-the-Ladder Club whose legs could carry him. Down past shops and houses and farms rushed the crowd, pulling along several fat men who had grasped the rope. By and by they came to a farmer in a red shirt who pointed his spectacles at them across the top-rail of the fence at the right of the road.
“Where’s the’ fire, squire?” excitedly asked the foreman.
“Fire? I don’t know of fire,” replied the farmer, coolly, “at leastways, any fire that is worth puttin’ out. I have got a bonfire in back here, and it was purty big, and its smoke you may have seen in the village. If you want to stretch your muscle and soak your hose—and that is about all you engine-people do—you may come and play on my bonfire.”
“Come and play on you” shouted an angry voice.
“Put out him” screamed another.
“Play away, One,” bawled a third, giving the number of the engine as known at fires.
There was now a half-joking, half-angry comment on the “squire,” and there were enough there desirous of wetting down, not his bonfire, but its builder. The foreman quieted the strife and the “Cataract” started for home. A willingness was expressed to moisten “Miss Persnips’s place” because she had misled them, though it was unintentional on her part.
Some one sang out, “She can’t tell about smoke. She has only one good eye, and t’other one is a glass eye.”
This put them all in a good-natured mood, and the “Cataract” went home.
Soon there was a fire serious enough to satisfy the most ardent of the company. A milder style of weather had been prevailing after the late snow-storm. The sun had put extra coal on its fires and melted all the snow. Then came a wind that blew continuously two days, drying the grounds and the buildings.
“I notice, Somers,” said Dr. Tilton, “that you did not have good luck in finding a fire that last alarm, but if one is sounded now, I guess it will amount to something. Fearful dry, it is getting to be.”
The doctor was a true prophet. The next alarm did amount to something. One morning about half past seven, there echoed in the narrow streets of Seamont a cry that plain meant bad news. Will Somers heard, and might be said to have seen, that cry. He had taken down the shutters of his employer’s store, and was hanging in the windows two very gaudily lettered placards, “A balm for all, Jenkins’s Soporific,” “The need of an aching world, Muggins’s Liniment.” Will heard that magic cry, “Fire—re—re!” He turned and saw a man coming down the street. He was not only coming, but running, his hat off, and his mouth open wide enough to take in a ten-cent loaf of brown bread, Will thought.
“Woolen mill on fire!”
“Woolen mill!” gasped Will, and his first thought was, “glory enough for one day.”
The woolen mill was in a pretty little hollow, a nest whose walls were spreading elm-trees. The mill was a relic of the old industries of the place and represented a vain effort to make Seamont a “manufacturing center.”
“Then the fire is down in the hollow,” thought Will. He saw somebody approaching who he thought might be a customer, but he quickly decided the question whether he owed a greater duty to one person or to many—the public—by turning the key in the lock of the door. Then he hurried away. As he rushed to the house of the “Cataract,” he stopped at the door of Dr. Tilton’s home.
“There,” he said to Biddy Flannigan, who answered, “tell the doctor there’s a tremendous alarm in town, and I thought he might want me to go, as he is an owner, and here is the key.”
“What?” said Biddy.
“Woolen mill’s afire, tell him.”
“Woolen Mill Sophia! Who is she?” wondered Biddy, and she went to report to the doctor.
“Faith, sir, yer clerk says there is a tremenjus ’larm in town and it’s about Woolen Mill Sophia, and here is the key, sir.”
“Woolen-mill what?” asked the doctor. “I am an owner up there.”
“Indade! It must be that Sophia works up there.”
“Sophia?” the doctor asked, and then stared at her and exclaimed, “It is ‘woolen mill’s afire!’ My! Where are my boots? Quick! Bertha, bring down my boots, please.”
This last request was shouted up stairs to his niece, Bertha Barry, who was making a brief visit at the doctor’s. Bertha quickly appeared, boots in hand, her blue eyes looking bright and fresh as the spring violets just gathered from the fields.
“Bertha, it’s the old mill that is afire. Will Somers has left the key of the store here and gone to the fire. I can forgive him this morning, though I did think his duties as a fireman began to interfere with his duties as an apothecary. Let me see! I’m all ready, I believe—guess I must go up to the fire. Tell your aunt I have gone to the fire and I’ll be back—when I arrive.”
Off went the doctor. Bertha delivered the message to her aunt and went down stairs. Then she looked out of the window and watched the people on their way to the fire.
“Guess I’ll go to the fire, too,” said Bertha, “if aunt is willing.”
“Och,” said Biddy, as she watched the departing Bertha, “we’ll all be fur goin’ up to see Sophia. The saints defind us!”
The fire had started in the waste room of the old mill. Somebody had once insisted on isolating this quarter as much as possible, and brick partitions had been put up that happily interfered with the spread of the fire and allowed all the operatives a chance to escape. The fire finally reached an elevator. It then darted with startling rapidity to the top of the building, shooting up like an arrow sent by a destructive hand below. The flames were now spreading every-where in the highest story. People gathered from the town, and the engines soon were working.
“Get every body out of the building!” said a commanding voice, owned by a man who had just arrived.
“Of course! That’s what we have just been doing,” said a second.
The cry now arose, “Two boys in the mill!”
Some one said that the boys had made their escape with the other operatives, but had gone back into one of the lower stories after their overcoats.
“Boys in the mill!” rang out the fearful cry.
The owner of the commanding voice rushed forward into the lower entry of the mill, swinging an ax. Will Somers found him at the door trying to cut round the latch.
“What’s that for?” asked Will.
“Want to get ’em out, you fool!”
“Have you tried the door?”
“N—n—o.”
Will seized it, pulled it, and open it came!
Will was brave, and, in such an emergency as the present, generally took his wits with him. The room was full of smoke. He stepped in and shouted, but there was no response. While at the door of the first room, he heard some one behind saying, “Boys in the next story, they say.” Will turned and sprang up stairs. Just ahead was the person who had recently spoken. The proprietor of the commanding voice was now retreating, his ax over his shoulder, stepping proudly out in the consciousness that he had done a memorable thing. Up the stairs went Will and his companion, the smoke thickening about them. Reaching the second floor and pushing open the door of the adjoining room, they saw—was it a boy on the floor? He had evidently striven to gain the door, but when he had almost reached it, had succumbed to the suffocating smoke, falling with arms stretched out toward the goal he desired to secure. And who was it running toward them, boy or man, the smoke parting about him as he advanced, then closing up again? It was a boy rushing for the door, trying to make his way through the smoke which, light as it was, proved too heavy a burden for him, for down he dropped, felling flat upon his face. It was the work of a moment apparently to seize the boys and carry them out into the entry.
“Thank God for strong arms!” said Will Somers, lifting one boy and starting off with him.
“Yes, thank Him for every thing good,” answered his companion, shouldering the other prize. They descended the stairs. How the smoke had increased! They had been absent longer than they thought, and in that time the fire was rapidly advancing toward them. They heard a loud noise without, a shout rising above the crackle and roar of the flames. Then voices were heard at the foot of the stairs: “Come this way! Quick! Hurry!” As Will passed through the lower entry, he chanced to glance into the room whose door had been left open by the knight of the ax. A draft had been created, and Will could see that the flames were springing toward the outer air.
“This way! Hurry!” people were shouting, and through the almost blinding, bewildering, suffocating smoke, Will and his companion bore the trophies they had snatched from the flames.
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” went up heartily from the dense, black crowd below. The rescued boys were laid upon the grass at a safe distance from the burning mill. The people began to gather about them.
“Ah, poor Tim, poor Tim!” said a woman, bending over one of the boys.
“That’s Ann there with Tim Tyler,” said Charlie to Sid Waters, these two enterprising knights having made good use of their legs and quickly reached the spot.
“Who’s Ann?”
“It is Tim’s mother.”
“I recognize the other boy. It’s Bob Landers.”
“Will Somers, this you?” asked Charlie.
“It will be when my face is washed. Dirty work at fires.”
“Why, Mr. Walton, is this you? What a ’ero! Did you save one of them boys?” squeaked Miss Persnips to Will’s companion.
The minister’s face was not very clean after his fight with the sooty enemy, but as Will thought, “Love sees through all disguises.”
“Yes, here I am, and if some of you good people will carry these boys home, the rest of us will soak down those tenement houses opposite the mill and see if we can’t save them.”
“The dear man! So disinterested, and before he had got his face washed,” said Miss Persnips, pressing nearer to gain a better look at the object of her admiration.
“Miss Persnips, excuse me,” said the foreman of the “Torrent,” the great rival of the “Cataract,” “but unless you withdraw, we shall be obliged to wash you out of the way with the hose. Play away, Three!” he roared.
“O, massy!” screamed the shop-keeper, retiring to a safe place.
Will Somers went back to his place at the brakes of the “Cataract.” As he passed the door of the mill he looked into the entry, “What a blaze!” he said.
It was not surprising that the flames had swept forward with such rapidity. Up those old wooden stairs drying for years, greasy with the oil drippings of the mill, the fire leaped and flew even rather than leaped. The flames were reaching out like long, forked arms, vainly clutching after the two boys that had been snatched away. The building was now the plaything of the flames. Through it and over it, now climbing to the highest point of the old-fashioned roof, then searching down into the cellar, scorching, raging, roaring every-where, went the fire. In places unexpected the flames would show themselves, looking out like the faces of firefiends. Then they would retire a moment, only to come again and burst out with a fury that nothing could resist, a fury that raged and rioted till beams, rafters, flooring, and stair-ways were a black, ashy heap, sputtering and hissing toward the sky—a snake heap full of hot fangs.
“I wonder how that fire started,” was a frequent exclamation. “Don’t know,” said every body save one poor, old tobacco-ridden man who confessed that he had been smoking in the waste room, the place where the fire started.
“When you see a man shoving a lighted pipe into sich a place.” said Simes Badger to the gossippy circle at Silas Trefethen’s store that night, “send in a bucket of water after him.”
“What for? to put out the fire, or to wash him?” asked a hearer.
“Both,” said Simes, “one to protect the place and the other to purify him.”
The wise men all laughed, and there was some sense in the laugh that applauded the oracle.
Tim Tyler and Bob Landers had both been carried to their homes. Bob escaped serious injury, but it was found that Tim was badly burned.
“I felt it a good deal at the very first,” he told Mr. Walton one day, “when, in going after my coat, I happened to open a door where the fire was, and it darted at me. You see the pain stopped, but now it has started up.”
“Yes, I understand that while the first contact with the fire is painful, then what you might call a paralyzing of the nerves takes place, and feeling is benumbed. When the action of the fire ceases, and the attempt at healing sets in, the nerves try to do their duty and the pain starts up once more. I have thought that the old martyrs who were burned at the stake, while they smarted terribly at first, had an easier time after that. Bad enough to step upon the hot round of such a ladder to heaven, but it was easier climbing after that. You got confused, Tim, didn’t you, in the mill, when trying to find your way back?”
“O yes; and as I said, I opened a door where the fire rushed at me. It was so smoky I wonder I ever got out at all. It seems I had some good friends.”
“Yes, and God was your best friend, and he helped you, and if you are not a martyr, you can try to bear your pain as patiently as you can, and some people in bearing pain stand more than the martyrs even.”
Tim looked up. “Could you—could you—say a small prayer for me? I don’t want to knuckle under, but grin and bear it best I can.”
When Mr. Walton came out into the kitchen where Ann was she said: “I heard Tim ask you to pray. That was a good deal for him to do. Afore, you did it without the asking, but I was glad to have him just speak up for himself. O, he has been a softenin’ since the fire, a comin’ round a good deal.”
“Where is your brother?”
“Mine? Tim, you mean?”
“Yes.”
She only shook her head, and looked sad.
As Mr. Walton was walking home he met Tony, one of his favorites.
“Well, Tony, how is the club? Have they all got the shields Miss Barry gave them?”
“I think so, and you were very kind to promise what you did; but we don’t have any meetings now.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“Won’t you come in and see me?”
Tony followed his friend into the clergyman’s study. Then Mr. Walton found his mother and brought her into the study.
“This little fellow is one of my Sunday-school boys, and his name is Tony.”
“Why,” said the old mother, looking into his face, “I have seen him before.”
And Tony lifted his eyes—large, lustrous, black—to the old lady’s face rimmed with silver hair, and said, ingenuously,
“I don’t think you ever did. I have never been here.”
“But I have seen you, and I want to see you again; and you will come when you can, won’t you? Where do you live?”
“At Mr. Badger’s, and I came from New York with a Mr. Blanco.”
“Where is your father?”
“He is in Italy.”
“And that is over the sea, over the sea!” she murmured, as she returned to her sitting-room. There she stood looking at the picture of a ship, and, glancing up at the church vane, which could be seen from her window, she wondered if the weather would be easterly and rainy that day.
When they were alone, Tony said to Mr. Walton, “Do you see Tim Tyler often?”
“Pretty often.”
“And they are real poor?”
“O yes.”
On his way home Tony met Charlie.
“Mr. Walton says they are real poor at Tim Tyler’s, Charlie. I wish I had some money to give him.”
Charlie thought a minute, and then he spoke up, eagerly, “I say, Tony, let’s get up a fair for him.”
“That’s the very thing I wanted to ask you about. Now it’s strange we should both think of it.”
“That’s so.”
“Let’s shake hands on it, Charlie.”
Tony and Charlie, standing on the sidewalk, shook hands cordially. “What next? The shaking of hands would not bring a fair.
“Let’s go and see Miss Barry,” suggested Charlie. This was in accordance with the boys’ custom to refer all their troubles to this sympathetic teacher.
“We want to get up a fair for Tim Tyler,” said Charlie, enthusiastically.
“Yes, yes!” cried Tony. Miss Barry looked down into the boys’ eager faces.
“Tim Tyler, that boy burned at the fire?”
“Yes,” said Charlie.
“That would be splendid.”
“But—but,” said Tony, “we want you to help us. Could—could you?”
“Yes, I’ll help.”
The boys were in raptures.
“Have you asked the other boys?” asked the teacher.
“No,” replied Charlie; “but there go Sid Waters and Rick Grimes down street now. We might ask them.”
“You tell them, please, I want to see them.”
When Sid and Rick arrived, their assent, at first, was readily given to the teacher’s proposition for a fair by the boys in behalf of Tim Tyler.
“Only,” said Rick, “won’t it go to old Tim, his uncle, for rum? I don’t believe in that.”
“O, Tim’s mother wouldn’t allow that.”
“But, you see, Tim had a fuss with Charlie Macomber, and imposed on him,” exclaimed Sid.
“Charlie is willing, for he has said so,” replied Miss Barry. “You are not going to hold on to an old grudge. Your name is ‘Up-the-Ladder Club,’ and not down the ladder. You go down when you hold on to a grudge, boys.”
“We won’t go down!” cried Charlie.
“No, no!” said the boys.
The different members of the club signified their willingness. Will Somers said he would assist.
One other person must be consulted, the older “honorary member” of the club, Aunt Stanshy. Knowing her very just and positive opposition to drinking habits, Miss Barry thought she might refer to old Tim’s, and throw out a sharp opinion that the uncle ought to help the boy, as he lived in the family of the boy’s mother. Charlie, too, thought his aunt might object, but she did not. She only put on that look of sadness Charlie had noticed when old Tim was in the neighborhood that rainy day, and to Will’s remark that old Tim ought to do more, she said, with a sigh,
“I suppose the boy is not responsible for other people’s failings, and they say his face is very white, and his hands are real thin, and he behaves better than he did. Yes, I’ll—help.”
It was easy to decide when to hold this fair, but “where” was a difficult problem.
“Take the barn chamber,” said Sid.
“It’s too cold,” replied Will, “and this is to be quite a grand affair.”
It was like Aunt Stanshy to offer her front room and sitting-room for Tim’s benefit, provided Will could spare his quarters, and spare he did.
“We will scatter some posters,” said Will. “I will see that they are printed.”
“We can do it ourselves with pen and ink, and then people will think more of it, you know. Besides, as we scatter them, we may have a chance to solicit donations, as they call it,” said Sid.
“Splendid!” replied Will.
“And we will call on the apothecary,” shouted Charlie.
“Yes, but if it be candy, I must put an extra string round the package to make sure that it all gets to the right place and is not troubled on the way.”
The members of the club who had met to “consult” were in excellent spirits, especially when Will said, in reply to the governor’s proposition to ask friends to contribute refreshments, “I see you know how to do it. Your experience at your fair fitted you to go right along with this thing in splendid style.”
Tony thought he could bring some pictures that had been forwarded from Italy, and Charlie said, “I guess I can get up a maginary.”
“A maginary?” asked Will.
Charlie only chuckled over his proposition, and made no explanations.
“I propose,” said Will, “I propose, Mr. President”—here he bowed to Sid, which caused that dignitary to stick his thumb into the lowest button hole of his jacket and swell out with pride—“I propose that we call our affair a ‘Helping-Hand Sale.’ You know there is a good deal in a name, and it sets people to thinking, and sets them to helping, too, and I think Miss Barry will like the name.”
This was agreeable to the club, whose members now separated to their homes.
“Aunt Stanshy,” said Charlie, that night, “do you know where my rabbit is?”
“I don’t know. Now I told you, when Miss Persnips came down here, that thing in her arms, and she smilin’ and blinkin’, as if she had an armful of gold, that she was givin’ you an elephant rather than a rabbit. Nobody knows where the critter is or what it is up to.”
Charlie found the white pet, and asked Will what he thought the rabbit looked like.
“Looks more like a rabbit than any thing else, Charlie.”
“Aunt Stanshy called it an elephant.”
“Well, you might say elephant, the white elephant of Siam—sort of a distant cousin. Why, what do you ask the question for?”
Charlie grinned, but made no reply.
Every thing was made ready for the sale. Aunt Stanshy’s two rooms were the scene of much bustle, and while the boys were at their tables, Miss Barry in a tastily-draped corner was ready for a reasonable sum to serve out refreshments to every applicant.
The Helping-Hand Sale had various attractions. Among them was Charlie’s “maginary.” It was a box covered with white cloth, a piece of workmanship at which Charlie had been secretly tinkering for two days. It was labeled “A Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam. Price to see, three cents, and don’t tell when you’ve seen it.”
This attracted great attention.
“Miss Persnips,” said Charlie to the shopkeeper, who came to patronize the sale, “do you want to see my maginary? Only three cents, and don’t tell.”
“Your menagerie? Yes. What have you got there? Some dreadful animal! I’m afraid to.”
Charlie lifted the cover of the box, and there, fat and sleepy, was—Miss Persnips told the rest.
“Did you ever! That darling, sweet pet I gave you. Quite an idea, really, and here’s another cent.”
The white elephant’s relative was a conspicuous character—after the lifting of the cover—that evening.
The next morning Charlie appeared before Will, hanging out a long, dismal face, and speaking with difficulty.
“She’s gone!”
“Who, Aunt Stanshy?”
“No, Bunny!”
“Your rabbit? How?”
“I don’t know. I left her all right in the maginary, last night.”
“Let me go out and look round. But where did you put your box?”
“Well, Aunt Stanshy thought it would do just as well if I put the box out into the wood-shed—and—”
“Was the door left open?”
“I saw it open this morning.”
“I will look about.”
Will went into the wood-shed, and there before the door he saw two cats licking their chops, and their guilty eyes seemed to him to say, “Rabbit stew for breakfast! Keep dark!”
“Charlie,” said Will, entering the house again, “I think two cats out there took your rabbit, and we will catch them and box them and exhibit them.”
“As my maginary?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you how to label them.”
The cats were caught and boxed, and this was the label their cage bore on the second and last evening of the “Helping Hand Sale:” “Destroyers of the Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam.” This device took, and many pennies were put by the neighbors into Charlie’s hands. When the boys summed up the profits of the sale, they had for Tim Tyler’s benefit the sum of thirty dollars, which Mr. Walton promised should be judiciously expended.
“It all shows,” remarked Miss Barry to the club, “what we can do when we work in earnest, and also how much small sums amount to.”
Simes Badger’s comment on the affair was that Aunt Stanshy had shown herself a Christian, “knowin’ as I do,” said Simes, “the story of the Tyler affair way back.”
Mr. Walton and his old mother had something also to say about the sale, and it was in connection with one of Tony’s Italian pictures that Mr. Walton bought.
“A house, mother, in Naples, not far from the water, you see.”
The old lady was silent awhile. Then she murmured, “I have seen it, haven’t you, somewhere?”
“Why, yes—no. What is it?”
But the old lady herself was confused about it. She looked at the fair home by the sea, and then looked again, but she could not seem to positively identify it.
“And still I have seen it before,” she affirmed.
To identify the spot was like trying to get hold of the exact form of a ship that partially breaks through the fog and then recedes, ever coming yet ever vanishing.