Life had defeated RoBards again and again. With the loftiest motives he had been always the loser, and he could not understand things. Chalender was a flippant fencer with life; yet somehow he fought always on the winning side and the worthier side. His mortal offense had been condoned, outlawed, and the offended ones helped to conceal his guilt.
It was bitter for an earnest man like RoBards to go afoot after such a rake as Chalender. Why should he have killed and hidden Jud Lasher in a wall, and let Harry Chalender, who had been as evil, ride by in state showered with the cheers due a hero, a savior of New York?
RoBards would never cease to shudder lest it be found out that he had spared Chalender; and he would never cease to shudder lest it be found out that he had punished Jud Lasher. A jury would probably acquit him for killing Lasher, but only if he exculpated himself by publishing the disaster that had befallen Immy. If he had killed Chalender and published his wife’s frailty, a jury would have acquitted him for that, too. But why should it have befallen him to be compelled to such decisions and such secrecies?
Now his wife, holding his daughter in her lap, would wave salutations to Chalender, and remember—what would she remember? And would she blush with remorse or with recollected ecstasy? RoBards turned so scarlet at the thought that when the Fire Kings halted for a moment, one of his companions told him he looked queer and offered him a nip at his hip-flask of brandy.
RoBards said it was the heat, and then the command to march resounded along the line. The Fire Kings resumed the long trudge round Bowling Green up Broadway all the distance to Union Park, round the Park and down the Bowery, through Grand Street and East Broadway and Chatham to City Hall Park, where they were to form on the surrounding sidewalks during the exercises.
The fire division was led by a band of music from the Neptune Hose Company of Philadelphia. Engines and hose carts from there and other cities followed, all smothered in flowers and ribbons. The New York Fire Department was preceded by its banner, borne on a richly carpeted stage drawn by four white horses elegantly caparisoned, each steed led by a black groom in Turkish dress.
That banner was a masterwork. On one side widows and orphans blessed the Fire Department for its protection, while a “hero of the flames” attended them. Neptune towered above them, “evidently delighted with the victory he had accomplished over his ancient enemy, the Demon of Fire, by the aid of his skillful and intrepid allies, the firemen of New York.”
On the other side of the banner was the Queen of Cities pointing to the Croton Dam. The banner of mazarine blue, with crimson and amber fringe, tassels, and cord, was surmounted by a carved wood trumpet and helmet, ladder and trumpet, and an eagle with extended wings.
Hundreds of firemen followed in glazed caps, red flannel shirts, and pantaloons of various colors. The devices were wonderful, a scene from the tragedy of Metamora, a scene from Romeo and Juliet, a phœnix, many phœnices, Neptunes galore, burning churches, a mother rescuing a child from an eagle’s nest, an Indian maid parting from her lover, Liberties, sea-horses, tritons, Hebes, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Cupids, mottoes like “From our vigilance you derive safety,” “Duty, though in peril,” “We come to conquer and to save,” “Industry and perseverance overcome every obstacle,” “Combined to do good and not to injure,” “Semper paratus,” “We are pledged to abstain from all intoxicating drinks.”
Among the fascinating objects carried in procession were the Bible on which George Washington had taken the first presidential oath; the printing press used by Benjamin Franklin in London, and a modern press, for contrast, striking off an ode written for the occasion; a foundry; a group of millers up to their eyes in meal as they ground corn and bagged it; sections of Croton water pipe of every dimension with examples of all the tools; a display of gold and silverware of several thousand dollars’ value.