As Patty turned aside, Keith seized Immy’s foot and warned her to “keep still for heavem’s sakes.” She understood; her eyes widened and she pleaded with her father to forgive her. He was as afraid of her penitence as of her terror; but somehow in the flurry of leaving the house, Patty forgot her curiosity, and the incident passed over.
The loyalty of Keith and his quick rally to his father’s protection from Immy’s indiscretion touched RoBards deeply. The boy had evidently inherited the family love of secrecy for the family’s sake.
But RoBards was sick with fear, realizing on what slender threads the secret hung. He dreaded to leave the children with their mother, lest they let slip some new clue to the agony he loved Patty too well to share with her. But he had to take his place with his fire company, though the sky fell in his absence.
CHAPTER XXIV
That procession was seven miles long, and everyone who marched or rode, and each of the massed spectators had his or her terror of life at the back of the heart. But RoBards knew only his own anxiety.
The Fire Kings had left their engine house by the time he reached the place and he had to search for them in the welter of humanity. The Battery was the point from which the parade was to start and every street within two miles of it was filled with men and horses and mobs of impatient people already footsore with standing about on the sharp cobblestones.
At last the serpent began to move its glittering head. The Grand Marshal, General Hopkins, set forth with a retinue of generals and aids, guards and riflemen. The horse artillery and various guard regiments followed with seven brass bands. The second division under Major General Stryker consisted of the Governor and his staff, the state artillery, State Fencibles and cadets, councilmen from various cities, foreign consuls, and members of the Society of the Cincinnati, escorting the water commissioners and engineers, all in barouches. The third division included officers of the army and navy and militia, “reverend the clergy,” judges, lawyers, professors, and students; the chamber of commerce and the board of trade. The firemen made up the fourth division. Four other divisions tailed after.
It seemed that there could be nobody left to watch when so many marched. But the walks and windows, porches and roofs were a living plaster of heads and bodies. New York had more than doubled its numbers since the Erie Canal festival and had now nearly three hundred and fifty thousand souls within its bounds, as well as thousands on thousands of visitors.
It gave RoBards’ heart another twinge to stand an obscure member of a fire-gang and watch Harry Chalender go by in a carriage as one of the victorious engineers.
RoBards had fought him and his ambitions and must haul on a rope now like a harnessed Roman captive, while his victor triumphed past him in a chariot, or, worse, a barouche.