The Two Vanrevels
CHAPTER VI
The Ever Unpractical Feminine
It was an investigating negro child of tender years, who, possessed of a
petty sense of cause and effect, brought an illuminative simplicity to bear upon
the problem of the force-pump; and a multitudinous agitation greeted his
discovery that the engineers had forgotten to connect their pipes with the
river.
This naive omission was fatal to the second warehouse; the wall burst into
flame below Crailey Gray, who clung to the top of the ladder, choking, stifled,
and dizzily fighting the sparks that covered him, yet still clutching the nozzle
of the hose-line they had passed to him. When the stream at last leaped forth,
making the nozzle fight in his grasp, he sent it straight up into the air and
let the cataract fall back upon himself and upon the two men beneath him on the
ladder.
There came a moment of blessed relief; and he looked out over the broad rosy
blur of faces in the street, where no one wondered more than he how the water
was to reach the roof. Suddenly he started, wiped his eyes with his wet sleeve,
and peered intently down from under the shading arm. His roving glance crossed
the smoke and flame to rest upon a tall, white figure that stood, full-length
above the heads of the people, upon a pedestal wrought with the grotesque images
of boys: a girl's figure, still as noon, enrapt, like the statue of some young
goddess for whom were made these sacrificial pyres. Mr. Gray recognized his
opportunity.
A blackened and unrecognizable face peered down from the eaves, and the voice
belonging to it said, angrily: "Why didn't they send up that line before they
put the water through it?"
"Never mind, Tom," answered Crailey cheerfully, "I'll bring it up." "You
can't; I'll come down for it. Don't be every kind of a fool!"
"You want a monopoly, do you?" And Crailey, calling to Tappingham Marsh, next
below him, to come higher, left the writhing nozzle in the latter's possession,
swung himself out upon the grappling-ladder, imitating the chief's gymnastics,
and immediately, one hand grasping the second rung, one knee crooked over the
lowest, leaned head down and took the nozzle from Marsh. It was a heavy weight,
and though Marsh supported the line beneath it, the great stream hurtling forth
made it a difficult thing to manage, for it wriggled, recoiled and struggled as
if it had been alive. Crailey made three attempts to draw himself up; but the
strain was too much for his grip, and on the third attempt his fingers melted
from the rung, and he swung down fearfully, hanging by his knee, but still
clinging to the nozzle.
"Give it up, Crailey; it isn't worth it," Vanrevel called from overhead, not
daring the weight of both on the light grappling-ladder.
But though Crailey cared no more for the saving of Robert Carewe's property
than for a butterfly's wing in China, he could not give up now, any more than as
a lad he could have forborne to turn somersaults when the prettiest little girl
looked out of the school-house window. He passed the nozzle to Tappingham,
caught the second rung with his left hand, and, once more hanging head downward,
seized the nozzle; then, with his knee hooked tight, as the gushing water
described a huge semicircle upon the smoke and hot vapor, he made a mad lurch
through the air, while women shrieked; but he landed upright, half-sitting on
the lowest rung. He climbed the grappling-ladder swiftly, in spite of the weight
and contortions of the unmanageable beast he carried with him; Tom leaned far
down and took it from him; and Crailey, passing the eaves, fell, exhausted, upon
the roof. Just as he reached this temporary security, a lady was borne,
fainting, out of the acclaiming crowd. Fanchon was there.
Word had been passed to the gentlemen of the "Engine Company" to shut off the
water in order to allow the line to be carried up the ladder, and they received
the command at the moment Tom lifted the nozzle, so that the stream dried up in
his hands. This was the last straw, and the blackened, singed and scarred chief,
setting the trumpet to his lips, gave himself entirely to wrath.
It struck Crailey, even as he lay, coughing and weeping with smoke, that
there was something splendid and large in the other's rage. Vanrevel was
ordinarily so steady and cool that this was worth seeing, this berserker
gesture; worth hearing, this wonderful profanity, like Washington's one fit of
cursing; and Crailey, knowing Tom, knew, too, that it had not come upon him
because Carewe had a daughter into whose eyes Tom had looked; nor did he rage
because he believed that Crailey's life and his were in the greater hazard for
the lack of every drop of water that should have issued from the empty nozzle.
Their lungs were burdened with smoke, while the intolerable smarting of throat,
eyes, and nostrils was like the incision of a thousand needles in the membranes;
their clothes were luminous with glowing circles where the sparks were eating;
the blaze widened on the wall beneath them, and Marsh was shouting hoarsely that
he could no longer hold his position on the ladder; yet Crailey knew that none
of this was in Tom's mind as he stood, scorched, blistered, and haggard, on the
edge of the roof, shaking his fist at the world. It was because his chance of
saving the property of a man he despised was being endangered.
Crailey stretched forth a hand and touched his friend's knee. "Your side of
the conversation is a trifle loud, Tom," he said. "Miss Carewe is down there,
across the street, on a pile of boxes."
Tom stopped in the middle of a word, for which he may have received but half
a black stroke from the recording angel. He wheeled toward the street, and,
shielding his inflamed eyes with his hand, gazed downward in a stricken silence.
From that moment Mr. Vanrevel's instructions to his followers were of a decorum
at which not the meekest Sunday-school scholar dare have cavilled.
The three men now on the long ladder, Marsh, Eugene Madrillon, and Will
Cummings, found their position untenable; for the flames, reaching all along the
wall, were licking at the ladder itself, between Marsh and Eugene. "I can't
stand this any longer," gasped Tappingham, "but I can't leave those two up
there, either."
"Not alone," shouted Cummings from beneath Madrillon. "Let's go up."
Thus it happened, that when the water came again, and Vanrevel let it fall in
a grateful cascade upon Crailey and himself, three manly voices were heard
singing, as three men toiled through the billows of rosy gray, below the
beleaguered pair:
"Oh the noble Duke of York, He had Ten thousand men; He marched them up the
side of a house, And marched them down again!"
A head appeared above the eaves, and Marsh, then Eugene, then Cummings, came
crawling over the cornice in turn, to join their comrades. They were a gallant
band, those young gentlemen of Rouen, and they came with the ironical song on
their lips, and, looking at one another, ragged and scarified, burst into hoarse
but indomitable laughter.
Two others made an attempt to follow, and would not be restrained. It was
noticed that parts of the lower ladder had been charring; and the ladder-men
were preparing to remove it to a less dangerous point, when old General Trumble
and young Jefferson Bareaud made a rush to mount it, and were well upon their
upward way before the ladder, weakened at the middle, sagged, splintered, and
broke, Trumble and Bareaud falling with it. And there was the grappling-ladder,
dangling forty feet above the ground; and there were the five upon the roof.
The Department had no other ladder of more than half the length of the
shattered one. Not only the Department, but every soul in Rouen, knew that; and
there rose the thick, low sigh of a multitude, a sound frightful to hear. It
became a groan, then swelled into a deep cry of alarm and lamentation.
And now, almost simultaneously, the west wall of the building, and the south
wall, and all the southwestern portions of the roof, covered them-selves with
voluminous mantles of flame, which increased so hugely and with such savage
rapidity that the one stream on the roof was seen to be but a ridiculous and
useless opposition.
Everybody began to shout advice to his neighbor; and nobody listened even to
himself. The firemen were in as great a turmoil as was the crowd, while women
covered their eyes. Young Frank Chenoweth was sobbing curses upon the bruised
and shaking Trumble and Jefferson Bareaud, who could only stand remorseful,
impotently groaning, and made no answer.
The walls of the southernmost warehouse followed the roof, crashing inward
one after the other, a sacrificial pyre with its purpose consummated; and in the
seeth and flare of its passing, Tom Vanrevel again shaded his eyes with his
hand, and looked down across the upturned faces. The pedestal with the grotesque
carvings was still there; but the crowning figure had disappeared—the young
goddess was gone. For she, of all that throng, had an idea in her head, and,
after screaming it to every man within reach, only to discover the impossibility
of making herself understood in that Babel, she was struggling to make her way
toward the second warehouse, through the swaying jam of people. It was a
difficult task, as the farther in she managed to go, the denser became the press
and the more tightly she found the people wedged, until she received involuntary
aid from the firemen. In turning their second stream to play ineffectually upon
the lower strata of flame, they accidentally deflected it toward the crowd, who
separated wildly, leaving a big gap, of which Miss Betty took instant advantage.
She darted across, and the next moment, unnoticed, had entered the building
through the door which Crailey Gray had opened.
The five young men on the roof were well aware that there was little to do
but to wait, and soon they would see which was to win, they or the fire; so they
shifted their line of hose to the eastern front of the building—out of harm's
way, for a little time, at least—and held the muzzle steady, watching its work.
And in truth it was not long before they understood which would conquer. The
southern and western portions of the building had flung out great flames that
fluttered and flared on the breeze like Titanic flags; and steadily, slowly, at
first, then faster as the seconds flew, the five were driven backward, up the
low slope of the roof toward the gable-ridge. Tom Vanrevel held the first joint
of the nozzle, and he retreated with a sulky face, lifting his foot grudgingly
at each step. They were all silent, now, and no one spoke until Will Cummings
faltered:
"Surely they'll get a rope up to us some way?"
Will knew as well as did the others that there was no way; but his speech
struck the sullen heart of the chief with remorse. He turned. "I hope you'll all
forgive me for getting you up here."
A sound, half sob, half giggle, came from the parched lips of Eugene
Madrillon, as he patted Tom on the shoulder without speaking, and Crailey nodded
quietly, then left the group and went to the eastern edge of the roof and looked
out upon the crowd. Cummings dropped the line and sat down, burying his hot face
in his arms, for they all saw that Vanrevel thought "it was no use," but a
question of a few minutes, and they would retreat across the gable and either
jump or go down with the roof.
Since the world began, idle and industrious philosophers have speculated much
upon the thoughts of men about to die; yet it cannot be too ingenuous to believe
that such thoughts vary as the men, their characters, and conditions of life
vary. Nevertheless, pursuant with the traditions of minstrelsy and romance, it
is conceivable that young, unmarried men, called upon to face desperate
situations, might, at the crucial moment, rush to a common experience of
summoning the vision, each of his heart's desire, and to meet, each his doom,
with her name upon his lips.
An extraordinary thing occurred in the present instance, for, by means of
some fragmentary remarks let fall at the time, and afterward recalled such as
Tappingham Marsh's gasping: "At least it will be on her father's roof!" and from
other things later overheard, an inevitable deduction has been reached that four
of the five gentlemen in the perilous case herein described were occupied with
the vision of the same person, to wit: Miss Elizabeth Carewe, "the last—the
prettiest—to come to town!"
Crailey Gray, alone, spoke not at all; but why did he strain and strain his
eyes toward that empty' pedestal with the grotesque carvings? Did he seek
Fanchon there, or was Miss Carewe the last sweet apparition in the fancies of
all five of the unhappy young men?
The coincidence of the actual appearance of the lady among them, therefore
seemed the more miraculous, when, wan and hopeless, staggering desperately
backward to the gable-ridge, they heard a clear contralto voice behind them:
"Hadn't you better all come down now?" it said.—"The stairway will be on fire
before long."
Only one thing could have been more shockingly unexpected to the five than
that there should be a sixth person on the roof, and this was that the sixth
person should be Miss Betty Carewe.
They turned, aghast, agape, chopfallen with astonishment, stunned, and
incredulous.
She stood just behind the gable-ridge, smiling amiably, a most incongruous
little pink fan in her hand, the smoke-wreaths partly obscuring her and curling
between the five and her white dress, like mists floating across the new moon.
Was it but a kindly phantasm of the brain? Was it the incarnation of the last
vision of the lost Volunteers? Was it a Valkyrie assuming that lovely likeness
to perch upon this eyrie, waiting to bear their heroic souls to Valhalla, or—was
it Miss Betty Carewe?
To the chief she spoke—all of them agreed to that afterward—but it was
Crailey who answered, while Tom could only stare, and stand wagging his head at
the lovely phantom, like a Mandarin on a shelf.
"My mother in heaven!" gasped Crailey. "How did you come up here?"
"There's a trap in the roof on the other side of the ridge," she said, and
she began to fan herself with the pink fan. "A stairway runs all the way
down—old Nelson showed me through these buildings yesterday—and that side isn't
on fire yet. I'm so sorry I didn't think of it until a moment ago, because you
could have brought the water up that way. But don't you think you'd better come
down now?"