The White Lady (25 page)

Straight out to the road she fled, through the snowy path. The light from the glaring flames fell on her and made her look like some fleeing angel in her rosy white. There was much noise and confusion, and a crowd had gathered, black against the rose-lit white of the snow crust. The whole front of the store was in flames, and sheets of fire bursting from all the windows. Across the road stood the old brick church. The moss-grown roof, which Constance had admired so often during the summer and which for fear of a leak had been carefully cleaned from snow that would have protected it somewhat now, had caught fire in several places.

High on its precipitous slope, clearly seen against the star-studded sky, stood the minister, working with all his might to save the church. He was hatless and coatless and was drenched with water. He was spreading out wet carpets and soaking the old shingles with water.

Soon a stream from the inadequate engine was turned on the church, and there began to be a little hope for it.

Then came a great cry of horror.

It was a woman’s voice, above even the
chug-chug
of the little country fire engine. It was Jennie’s voice, and it rose high and clear above all others.

“Si is in there! Save him, somebody! Save my brother! He’s upstairs in the back room!”

“What does she say?” asked John Endicott, pausing to brush back his hair from his wet forehead. “Her brother? What! Silas Barton in the building yet? Where? Where did you say?”

The minister was going down the ladder as fast as he could while they answered his questions. They did not realize what he meant to do, else perhaps they would not have answered them so readily.

The fire in the store had been going on for some time before Silas Barton aroused from his absorption in his work enough to realize it.

Holly had been idle all the afternoon, and with Holly, to be idle meant to drink. He was usually good-natured when he was drunk, and the boys of the village liked to tease him and hear what he would say. It was a frequent amusement on holidays. But tonight some little word dropped by Si had been handed about by some of the drinkers, a slight forerunner of the serpent that was meant to uncoil itself upon the morrow. It had reached the ears of Holly, and drunk as he was, he was fired with anger. He came at once to the defense of the one woman and the one man in the whole town whom he looked upon as saints.

“Who—who—who d-d-dares t-s-a-y th-th-th-at?” he stuttered, reeling into the middle of the room and rolling up his sleeves until his huge arms were bare to the muscular shoulders.

No one cared to go very near, but no one was really afraid of Holly, for he was always jolly when he was drunk. They went on with the talk, adding to the original story and exciting him still more; and when they would not tell him who had said the vile words first, Holly suddenly surprised them all by seizing a bottle that stood on the counter and hurling it across the room at them. They dodged and cried out, but the bottle, whirling on its furious way, struck first, not them, but the great hanging reflector lamp that was suspended from the ceiling. It fell to the floor, where it exploded with a loud noise.

Before anyone in the room was sober enough to know what to do, the room itself was in flames. There was liquor enough to feed it, and it burned up rapidly. Silas, roused at last by the uproar, came to the door, and seeing the certain destruction of the whole building, remembered a large sum of money and some valuable papers that he had left in his bedroom that morning. Stealthily, lest someone should try to stop him, he slid up the stairs and began gathering his valuables together and securing them about his person. But when he tried to go down again, the staircase was in flames, and suffocating smoke almost choked him. For an instant he staggered and almost lost consciousness. Then a draught of air from the back hall sent the smoke away for an instant, and he blindly beat his way back to his bedroom. Blackened and disoriented, he appeared for a second at the side window, and Jennie, who had been standing in horror on the sidewalk, saw him and cried out. Then he fell back out of sight.

They helped the minister drag the ladder, for they did not understand what he meant to do until they saw it placed against the burning building; then they tried to stop him. But he was too quick for them, and they were used to obeying him. With a commanding voice, he said, “Hands off! No,
I
must go,
not
you! You have a wife and children. I have no one!”

There was almost a satisfaction in the minister’s tone as he said that. Here, at least, was one reason why he might be thankful for his lonely condition. He might try to save this wretched man who was not ready to die. There was no question of any duty to anyone else.

So up he went, in long strong strides, and did not know that at the foot of the ladder in the darkness, there stood a girl in white, with anxious face and agonized eyes, watching him while her lips unconsciously moved in prayer for his safety.

The crowd on the street surged around to the side, quick to scent new tragedy, and a sudden awful quiet swept over them, with a quick drawing of breath as the minister disappeared within the blazing window. And the whisper went around from one awed observer to another that it was
Si Barton
for whom he was risking his life.

Si’s boon companions were there, who had spread the hideous stories that he had concocted against the minister; Holly was there, sobered, with a red gash across his forehead and another on his arm. Jimmy was there, breathless, agonizing, adoring, wishing he might have gone along. He would have readily gone now to save both of the men, only the firemen interfered whenever he came near.

Lanky was there, who had said the minister was a coward, and Mrs. Bartlett was there. She reflected with uneasiness that she had given the minister no pumpkin pie that winter, and he liked it so. If he came out alive, she would bake some tomorrow.

They were all there, and they strained their eyes and prayed silently with one united breath, while the flames rolled on nearer and nearer to the spot where the ladder stood, and it began to be feared that the wall would fall.

Then, as if a mighty hope had risen, a murmur went over the crowd; for the smoke in the window began to take form and darken, and there appeared something clumsy and blackened, and someone went up to help. It was all indistinct at first, and the crowd scarcely dared move or breathe, in spite of the fact that they were dangerously near the wall and it might fall at any moment. They watched the two men drag their heavy, sodden burden, step by step, cautiously, down the ladder, until they were low enough for waiting hands to receive him from them; and then, the minister suddenly sank and dropped silently among them like one dead.

They carried him quickly away from the wall, and the crowd melted out of danger none too soon as the horrible flame-enveloped structure shivered, leaned, and collapsed. Mrs. Bartlett turned back, marked where the minister had lain but the moment before, and shuddered to think what might have been.

Constance, with heart beating wildly, scarcely realizing where she stood or what people would think of her, followed the men who were carrying the minister and commanded them to bring him to the Cedars. They looked at her respectfully, glanced at the house, seemed to realize that it was the most convenient place, and obeyed her. Afterward, the men who carried Silas followed and laid him on a hastily improvised couch in the library, across the hall from the tearoom. But the minister they laid in Constance’s room, among the snowy pillows.

Morris Thayer, standing upon the doorstep, saw them coming, put on his monocle, as he always did when anything disturbed him, and said, “Why, they ought not to bring those creatures in here. This is an imposition. Somebody ought to do something!”

I
t was Dr. Randall who stood beside the minister, working skillfully, grave and silent. Jimmy had searched him out among the crowd and brought him at once. Any doctor would do for Si Barton, Jimmy thought, but Dr. Randall must come to his beloved minister.

Jimmy himself stood near and flew to the doctor’s house with messages for his wife to send rolls of antiseptic bandages and ointments, for there was no more drugstore now to run to. He flew here and there silently in incredibly short spaces of time, carrying out all directions given him, and no one challenged his right to be in the sickroom. He shed his shoes and went about with noiseless tread, his little soul filled with anguish. He had brought the minister to Constance when she was in trouble; he would have liked to bring Constance to the minister in his need, but he had no need, for she was there, softly giving directions, pulling down draperies of costly material that were in the way, ruthlessly sweeping the contents of her beautiful dressing table into a basket, that the doctor might spread out his various instruments and liniments and arrange his bandages.

Unconscious there, amid the beauty of the room that it would have been a joy to him to look into, John Endicott lay, his face blackened almost beyond recognition, his hair and eyebrows burnt, his hands seared, his clothing smoky and torn, and even burned in places. Constance hovered near, her presence like a troubled angel’s. The doctor looked on her once and tried to smile comfortingly. It sat hard upon his grim old face, that smile, for he did not know how to comfort grown people. It was only kittens and little ones toward whom his heart could break forth in its naturalness.

Constance could see sympathy in his face, for each knew that the other loved the man upon the bed. How they knew they could not tell, but they knew.

The girl sank down in a low chair at the foot of the bed and, covering her face with her hands, prayed as she had never prayed before. She prayed for John Endicott’s life, and she knew as she prayed that she loved him and that she had never loved anyone else in this way.

Jimmy glanced reverently at her when he came in, lowered his head, and tiptoed out again. He stood outside the door in the hall with closed eyes, as if someone were uttering an audible prayer, and then his lips stirred softly, and he grumbled so that it could be heard only in heaven, “O God, save our minister. Amen.”

By and by the doctor touched Constance on the shoulder and said in a low professional tone, “He may pull through. His burns are not so bad as I feared.”

Then Constance rose and took heart of hope. She slipped out into the hall, comforted the forlorn Jimmy, and sent him to bed. She went to the kitchen and calmed Norah, who had been working far beyond any girl’s strength, and she sent to see how the other poor creature who was under her roof was doing. Then it occurred to her that Morris Thayer must be somewhere. It was mortifying to have forgotten him, and by this token she knew that he never could have occupied a very large place in her heart. How far away it all seemed! How strange that she had ever cared what he, or that little world of giddy people in which she had moved so long, would think. She knew now that she had never cared for Morris Thayer.

But Morris Thayer was still in the flesh, and at present in Rushville. He was yet to be dealt with, and what should she do with him? She had provided no guest room in the house, for she had expected no guests. The minister was occupying her own room, and Miss Stokes had the only other available spot. There were rooms on the third story where Norah slept, but excepting Norah’s, these had never been put in order. She did not like to put him to sleep on a couch in the parlor; she felt that alone in such a spot he would be as helpless as a baby in a barnyard. There was no boardinghouse in the town, save the place where Mr. Endicott boarded. Wait! Why would that not do? Norah said something about somebody’s waiting now to ask her about the minister. Perhaps it was opportune.

She went downstairs at once and there found Mrs. Bartlett seated on the edge of a chair in the tearoom, and Hiram, her husband, standing uncertainly behind her, glancing furtively up the stairs and again wistfully out the front door. Hiram was sleepy. He had risen at five that morning and had worked hard all day. He had a natural interest in the minister’s welfare, but he could wait until morning to find out about it. They couldn’t do anything, anyway. But he did not like to say this to his wife. There were tears in Mrs. Bartlett’s eyes. She was thinking of the pumpkin pies and that now it might be too late ever to make them for the minister. She was thinking, too, of how carefully the minister always wiped his feet before coming into the hall. And he always was so polite, too! She rose disapprovingly, as if the minister’s plight were somehow the fault of the young woman who was coming down the hall to meet her.

Constance greeted them quietly and won old Hiram’s heart at once. She told them what the doctor had said, and promised to let them know in the morning how he seemed. Then she made her request. Would it be possible for them to give one of the Wetherills’s old friends a room for the night?

Mrs. Bartlett would have declined the honor at once as impossible. Her remorse did not reach to friends of the friends of her minister. She preferred to go home and make a large batch of pumpkin pies and send one to the minister, though she knew he would not be allowed to eat it. Strange how sacrifice is always pleasanter than obedience to some people!

But Mrs. Bartlett was left no choice in the matter. Hiram was pleased with Constance, and he did a thing that he dared not often do. He took the initiative himself.

“Yes,” he said at once, “we’ll put him up. No reason why he shouldn’t hev the preacher’s bed. ’Tain’t okkepied tonight. Wisht it was. Just bring him right ’long, an’ he kin go home with us.”

Constance thanked him and went in search of Morris Thayer, while Mrs. Bartlett turned on her spouse an ominous look and murmured something about clean sheets and a fine breakfast to get. However, Hiram was suddenly absorbed in a study of the palms on the tearoom walls and seemed not to hear. Constance soon came back with the much-bewildered Morris Thayer in her wake. He was carrying his suitcase and bag.

“Evenin’,” said Hiram, putting out a horny hand toward the city gentleman, which under the circumstances it was impossible for him to take even if he had been willing to do so.