The Blue Wall Part 24

"They look so much alike when they come into the world," he said, talking to himself. "So much alike! I thought it was Julianna."

"And yet--" I said.

He wiped his tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses as he looked at me and nodded.

"I shall not go to bed now," said he. "I shall stay down here. Give the child clean clothing. And then to-morrow--"

I felt the warmth of the little body in the curve of my arm and whether for its own sake or its father's, I do not know, but my heart was big for it. In spite of my feeling and the water in my eyes, I shut my teeth.

"To-morrow," I said.

How little we knew.

How little I knew, for after I had washed the child, laid it in the big vacant bed, and blown out the candle, I remember I stood there in the dark beside little Julianna's crib with my thoughts not on the child at all. It was the ghost of Monty Cranch that walked this way and that in front of me, sometimes looking into my eyes and saying, "What are _you_ doing here?" and other times running up through the meadow away from his crime and again standing before a great shining Person and saying, "What I am, I was born; what I am, I must be."

I went downstairs once that night and peeked in through the curtains.

The Judge was at his desk with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes looking out from under his heavy eyebrows, as if he had the puzzle of the world in front of him and was almost afraid. I thought of how tired he must be and of what a day it had been for all of us.

At last a board squeaked on the stairs, reminding me of the late hour and my aching body and burning eyes. So I went up to bed and tossed about until I fell asleep.

I know I could not have slept very soundly. Little matters stick in the memory if they are connected with such affairs. And so I remember half waking to hear the slam of a blind and the howl of a wind that had sprung up. Things were rattling everywhere with every gust of it--the curtains, the papers on my bureau, the leaves on the trees outside, and I pulled the sheet over my head and thought of how my father and mother had gone down at sea, and fell into dreams of oceans of melted lead hissing and steaming and red.

I think it was the shout of some man that woke me, but that is neither here nor there. The house was afire! Yellow, dancing light and smoke poured under the door like something turned out of a pail. With every puff of the wind the trees in the orchard were all lit up and the flames yelled as if they were a thousand men far away and shouting together.

Between the gusts you could hear the gentle snap and crackle and the splitting of sap in wood and a body's own coughing when it tried to breathe in the solid ma.s.s of smoke. There were shouts of people outside, too, and the squeaking and scampering of rats through the walls. Out of my window I could see one great cloud of red sparks. They had burst out after a heat explosion and I heard the rattle and tinkle of a broken window above the roar of the fire.

Of this terrible element I always had an unreasoning terror. Many a sleepless night I spent when I was with Madame Welstoke, and all because our rooms might happen to be high up in the hotel where we had put up.

You can believe that I forgot all and everything when I opened my door and found that the little flames were already licking the wall on the front stairs and smoke was rolling in great biscuit-shaped clouds through the leaping pink light. I could not have told where I was, whether in our house or city or another. And I only knew that I could hear the voice of my old mistress saying, "Remember, if we do have trouble, to cover your face with a wet towel and keep close to the floor." It was senseless advice, because the fire, that must have started in the Judge's study, kept blowing out into the hall through the doorway, and then disappearing again like a waving silk flag. I opened my mouth and screamed until my lungs were as flat as empty sacks.

I might have known that the Judge, if he were still in the library, was not alive, and I might have noticed, as I went through his sleeping-room to climb out on the roof of the front porch, that he had not been to bed at all. But it was all a blank to me. I did not remember that there was a Judge. Fire and its licking tongue was after me and I threw myself off the hot tin roof and landed among the hydrangea bushes below. In a second more I felt the cool gra.s.s of the lawn under my running feet, and the first time that I felt my reasoning power come to me I found myself wondering how I had stopped to b.u.t.ton a skirt and throw a shawl around my shoulders.

There were half a dozen men. Where they had come from I do not know.

They were rushing here and there across the lawn and vaulting the fence.

They did not seem to notice me at all. I heard one of them shout, "The fire alarm won't work! You can't save the house!" Everything seemed confused. Other people were coming down the street, running and shouting, sparks burst out somewhere and whirled around and around in a cloud, as if they were going up into the black sky on a spiral staircase. The walls of the grocery and the Fidelity Building and the Danforths' residence across the street were all lit up with the red light, and a dash of flames, coming out our library window, shriveled up a shrub that grew there as if it was made of dry tissue paper.

"How did it start?" yelled a man, shaking me.

I only opened my mouth and looked at him. He was the grocer. I had ordered things from him every morning.

"Well, who was in the house?" he said.

"The Judge," I said.

"The Judge is in the house!" he began to roar. "The Judge is in the house!"

It sounded exactly like the telephone when it says, "The line is busy, please ring off," and it seemed to make the people run together in little cl.u.s.ters and point and move across the lawn to where the sparks were showering down, and then back, like a dog that wants to get a chop-bone out of a hot grate.

Suddenly every one seemed to turn toward me, and in a minute all those faces, pink and shiny, were around me.

"She got out!" they screamed and shouted. "Where's the Judge? Any one else?"

"The Judge and the baby!" I cried and sat down on the gra.s.s.

"No!" shouted the depot master. "The Judge is all right. I just met him walking over the bridge after the freight had gone through. It wasn't twenty minutes ago. But you can't save a thing--not a stick of furniture. The whole thing is gone from front to back on the ground floor already!"

"Here's the Judge now! That's him running with the straw hat in his hand," a woman shrieked, and ran out toward him with her hair flying behind. I could see his tall figure, with its long legs, come hurdling across the street. I could see his white face with the jaw square and the lips pressed tight together.

"You!" he said, bending down. "Yes! Where's Julianna? Where's my baby?"

My head seemed to twist around like the clouds of pink smoke and the whirl of hot air that tossed the hanging boughs of the trees. The crackle and roar of the fire seemed to be going on in my skull. But I managed to throw my head back and my hands out to show they were empty.

"G.o.d!" he cried.

The world went all black for me then, but I heard voices.

"Stop, Judge! Don't go! You'd never get out."

"Let go of me!"

"He's going into a furnace! Somebody stop him!"

"Look! Look! You'll never see _him_ again."

I opened my eyes. Judge Colfax's long lean body, with its sloping shoulders, was in the doorway, as black as a tree against a sunset. I saw him duck his head down as if he meant to plough a path through the fire, and then a fat roll of smoke shut off all view of him.

"They're both gone--him and the baby!" roared the depot master. "Lost!

Both lost!"

The woman with the flying hair heard this and ran off again, screaming.

I listened to the piercing voice of her and the roar and the clanging of bells. Horses came running up behind me, with heavy thuds of hoofs, and voices in chorus went up with every leap of the fire. It was like a delirium with the fever; and the gra.s.s, under my hands where I sat, felt moist and cool.

Then all of a sudden the shouting and noise all seemed to stop at once, so there was nothing but the snapping and crackle and hiss of the flames, and a voice of a little boy cried out:--

"The Judge is climbing down the porch! He's got something in his arms!"

"It's the baby!" yelled the depot master, throwing his hat on the ground. "He's saved the baby!"

I began to cry again, and wondered why the people did not cheer. There was only a sort of mumble of little shouts and cries and oaths, and the people fell to one side and the other, as the Judge came toward me.

"Come, Margaret," he said.

I looked up and saw he was all blackened with smoke and soot, except where the sweat had run down in white streaks. His face was close to mine.

"Come! Do you hear?" he said. "I don't believe she's hurt, but we must see. We'll go across to the Danforths'. There is nothing to do here.

I've got Julianna!"

Just as if the fire was answering him, there came a great ripping and roaring, as if something had given away and collapsed. A tower of flames shot up out of the roof--a sort of bud of flame that opened into a great flower with petals. It was horrible to see the shingles curl and fall in a blazing stream down onto the ground, as if they were drops of hot metal.

It stupefied me, perhaps; I cannot remember how we went to the neighbor's house or who welcomed us or how we got into the room on the second floor, with a candle burning on the bureau. I noticed how small and ridiculous the flame was and laughed. Indeed, I think when I laughed, I woke up--really woke from my sleep for the first time.