This was all very well, but Mary Ellen, like most young women in love, would have liked a more forceful demonstration of her idol’s regard. She understood at last why her friends preferred action to conversation. This long-distance courtship might have been fatal to another man than handsome, daredevil Dick; as it was it added a piquancy; but it made trouble, nevertheless, and here’s how that came.
Under the softening influence of Mary Ellen’s eyes, Carter had grown an intimacy with a man of his company by the name of Holtzer. Holtzer was German by parentage and sentimental by nature. Especially did Holtzer deplore the fact that he knew no nice young women—those who liked music and poetry. Dick gave him a “knock-down” to Mary Ellen, and Holtzer also became a constant visitor. The fact that it is bad policy to introduce one’s best friend to one’s best girl can be proved either by cold reasoning or by experience. Carter tried experience. You see, he would acknowledge to no emotional interest in Mary Ellen when questioned by Holtzer—he scouted the idea—so Holtzer wasn’t to blame.
As for Mary Ellen, Cupid had pounded her heart into a jelly. She was tender to Dick’s friend to a degree that put the none too modest German in possession of facts that were not so. All the overflow of regard he received as Dick’s friend he attributed to his own personal charms, and, unlike Carter, he didn’t hesitate to talk about it. It was Carter’s pleasant duty to listen to Holtzer’s joyful expounding of the reasons why the latter felt he had made a hit with Mary Ellen, and not only to listen, but to indorse. It shows the stuff Fireman Carter was made of to tell that he stood this vicious compound of insult and injury with a tranquil face. The serpent had entered Eden, and utilized Adam to support his position, but Adam smiled and took his medicine like a man.
Several times he intended to question Mary Ellen concerning Holtzer, yet, when in her presence, a certain feeling of surety and a very big slice of pride forbade it.
In the meantime he was regaled with Mary Ellen, per Holtzer, until violent thoughts entered his mind.
Dick yearned for the first time in his life to do something heroic. He sweated to stand out the one man of the day; to be held up to the public gaze on the powerful pen of the reporter. He wanted to swagger into Mary Ellen’s little parlor covered and rustling with metaphorical wreaths, and with an actual disk of engraved metal on his broad chest, and thus extinguish Holtzer beyond doubt—not Carter’s doubt, nor Mary Ellen’s doubt, but Holtzer’s doubt.
In this frame of mind he went to sleep one night, to be awakened in the early hours of the morning by a singular prescience born of long experience, which told him the gong was about to ring. For years the alarm had not wakened Dick. No matter how deep his slumber, he was always alert and strained to catch the first note of it.
The metallic cry for help vibrated through the engine-house. It threw each inmate into action, like an electric shock. The dark winter morning was savagely cold, with a wind like an auger. The heroic cord was busted. “Damn the luck!” cried Dick as he took the pole; and it was no solo.
The two most picturesque feats of civilization are the handling of a field-piece and the charge of a fire-engine. Very fine was the old-time chariot race, but what was the driver’s risk on the smooth hippodrome track compared to that of the man who guides a fire-engine through city streets? The chariot driver could, at least, see what was before him; the man who holds the lines on an engine little knows what’s around the corner. But it’s a tale told too often already. A rush, a clamor of hoofs, a roar, and they were rattling over the pavement, the stream of sparks from the engine stack and the constant lightnings from the horses’ shoes making one think of the old adage of fighting fire with fire.
“I suppose,” said Dick, clinging tightly with one hand and waving the other in wild circles as he got into his coat—“I suppose some old lady has left the cat to play with the lamp.”