Faith Gartney's Girlhood Part 35

At this moment, Roger Armstrong, also, woke from out a dream.

In this strange, second life of ours, that replaces the life of day, do we not meet interiorly? Do not thoughts and knowledges cross, from spirit to spirit, over the abyss, that lip, and eye, and ear, in waking moments, neither send nor receive? That even mind itself is scarcely conscious of? Is not the great deep of being, wherein we rest, electric with a sympathetic life--and do not warnings and promises and cheer pulse in upon us, mysteriously, in these pa.s.sive hours of the flesh, when soul only is awake and keen?

Do not two thoughts, two consciousnesses, call and answer to each other, mutely, in twin dreams of night?

Roger Armstrong came in, late, that evening, from a visit to a distant sick parishioner. Then he sat, writing, for an hour or two longer.

By and by, he threw down his pen--pushed back his armchair before his window--stretched his feet, wearily, into the deep, old-fashioned window seat--leaned his head back, and let the cool breeze stir his hair.

So it soothed him into sleep.

He dreamed of Faith. He dreamed he saw her stand, afar off, in some solitary place, and beckon, as it were, visibly, from a wide, invisible distance. He dreamed he struggled to obey her summons. He battled with the strange inertia of sleep. He strove--he gasped--he broke the spell and hastened on. He plunged--he climbed--he stood in a great din that bewildered and threatened; there was a lurid light that glowed intense about him as he went; in the midst of all--beyond--she beckoned still.

"Faith! Faith! What danger is about you, child?"

These words broke forth from him aloud, as he started to his feet, and stretched his hands, impulsively, out before him, toward the open window.

His eyes flashed wide upon that crimson glare that flooded sky and field and river.

There was fire at the mills!

Not a sound, yet, from the sleeping village.

The heavy, close-fitting double doors between the countingroom and the great mill chamber were shut. Only by opening these and venturing forth, could Faith gain certain knowledge of her situation.

Once more she pulled them open and pa.s.sed through.

A blinding smoke rushed thick about her, and made her gasp for breath.

Up through the belt holes in the floor, toward the farther end of the long room, sprang little tongues of flame that leaped higher and higher, even while she strove for sight, that single, horrified, suffocating instant, and gleamed, mockingly, upon the burnished shafts of silent looms.

In at the windows on the left, came the vengeful shine of those other windows, at right angles, in the adjacent building. The carding rooms, and the whole front of the mill, below, were all in flames!

In frantic affright, in choking agony, Faith dashed herself back through the heavy doors, that swung on springs, and closed tightly once more after her.

Here, at the open window, she took breath. Must she wait here, helpless, for the fiery death?

Down below her, the narrow brink--the rushing river. No foothold--no chance for a descent. Behind her, only those two doors, barring out flame and smoke!

And the little footbridge, lying in the light across the water, and the green fields stretching away, cool and safe beyond. A little farther--her home!

"Fire!"

She cried the fearful word out upon the night, uselessly. There was no one near. The village slumbered on, away there to the left. The strong, deep shout of a man might reach it, but no tone of hers. There were no completed or occupied dwelling houses, as yet, about the new mills. Mr.

Rushleigh was putting up some blocks; but, for the present, there was nothing nearer than the village proper of Kinnicutt on the one hand, and as far, or farther, on the other the houses at Lakeside.

The flames themselves, alone, could signal her danger, and summon help.

How long would it be first?

Thoughts of father, mother, and little brother--thoughts of the kind friends at Lakeside, parted from but a few hours before--thoughts of the young lover to whom the answer he waited for should be given, perhaps, so awfully; through all, lighting, as it were, suddenly and searchingly, the deep places of her own soul, the thought--the feeling, rather, of that presence in her dream; of him who had led her, taught her, lifted her so, to high things; brought her nearer, by his ministry, to G.o.d! Of all human influence or love, his was nearest and strongest, spiritually, to her, now!

All at once, across these surging, crowding, agonizing feelings, rushed an inspiration for the present moment.

The water gate! The force pump!

The apparatus for working these lay at this end of the building. She had been shown the method of its operation; they had explained to her its purpose. It was perfectly simple. Only the drawing of a rope over a pulley--the turning of a faucet. She could do it, if she could only reach the spot.

Instantly and strangely, the cloud of terror seemed to roll away. Her faculties cleared. Her mind was all alert and quickened. She thought of things she had heard of years before, and long forgotten. That a wet cloth about the face would defend from smoke. That down low, close to the floor, was always a current of fresher air.

She turned a faucet that supplied a basin in the countingroom, held her handkerchief to it, and saturated it with water. Then she tied it across her forehead, letting it hang before her face like a veil. She caught a fold of it between her teeth.

And so, opening the doors between whose cracks the pent-up smoke was curling, she pa.s.sed through, crouching down, and crawled along the end of the chamber, toward the great rope in the opposite corner.

The fire was creeping thitherward, also, to meet her. Along from the front, down the chamber on the opposite side, the quick flames sprang and flashed, momently higher, catching already, here and there, from point to point, where an oiled belt or an unfinished web of cloth attracted their hungry tongues.

As yet, they were like separate skirmishers, sent out in advance; their mighty force not yet gathered and rolled together in such terrible sheet and volume as raged beneath.

She reached the corner where hung the rope.

Close by, was the faucet in the main pipe fed by the force pump.

Underneath it, lay a coil of hose, attached and ready.

She turned the faucet, and laid hold of the long rope. A few pulls, and she heard the dashing of the water far below. The wheel was turning.

The pipes filled. She lifted the end of the coiled hose, and directed it toward the forward part of the chamber, where flames were wreathing, climbing, flashing. An impetuous column of water rushed, eager, hissing, upon blazing wood and heated iron.

Still keeping the hose in her grasp, she crawled back again, half stifled, yet a new hope of life aroused within her, to the double doors.

Before these, with the little countingroom behind her, as her last refuge, she took her stand.

How long could she fight off death? Till help came?

All this had been done and thought quickly. There had been less time than she would have believed, since she first woke to the knowledge of this, her horrible peril.

The flames were already repulsed. The mill was being flooded. Down the belt holes the water poured upon the fiercer blaze below, that swept across the forward and central part of the great spinning room, from side to side.

At this moment, a cry, close at hand.

"Fire!"

A man was swaying by a rope, down from a third-story window.

"Fire!" came again, instantly, from without, upon another side.

It was a voice hoa.r.s.e, excited, strained. A tone Faith had never heard before; yet she knew, by a mysterious intuition, from whom it came. She dropped the hose, still pouring out its torrent, to the floor, and sprang back, through the doors, to the countingroom window. The voice came from the riverside.

A man was dashing down the green slope, upon the footbridge.