The Minister's Charge Part 39

They met the firemen, come at last, and pulling in their hose, who began to play upon the flames; the steam filled the place with a dense mist.

Lemuel heard Berry ask him through the fog, "Barker, where's old Evans?"

"Oh, I don't know!" he lamented back.

"He must have gone up to get Mrs. Evans."

He made a dash towards the stairs. A fireman caught him and pulled him back. "You can't go up; smoke's thick as h.e.l.l up there." But Lemuel pulled away, and shot up the stairs. He heard the firemen stop Berry.

"You can't go, I tell you! Who's runnin' this fire anyway, I'd like to know?"

He ran along the corridor which Evans's apartment opened upon. There was not much smoke there; it had drawn up the elevator-well, as if in a chimney.

He burst into the apartment and ran to the inner room, where he had once caught a glimpse of Mrs. Evans sitting by the window.

Evans stood leaning against the wall, with his hand at his breast. He panted, "Help her--help--"

"Where _is_ she? Where _is_ she?" demanded Lemuel.

She came from an alcove in the room, holding a handkerchief drenched with cologne in her hand, which she pa.s.sed to her husband's face. "Are you better now? Can you come, dear? Rest on me!"

"I'm--I'm all right! Go--go! I can get along--"

"I'll go when _you_ go," said Mrs. Evans. She turned to Lemuel. "Mr.

Evans fainted; but he is better now." She took his hand with a tender tranquillity that ignored all danger or even excitement, and gently chafed it.

"But come--come!" cried Lemuel. "Don't you know the house is on fire?"

"Yes, I know it," she replied. "We must get Mr. Evans down. You must help me." Lemuel had seldom seen her before; but he had so long heard and talked of her hopeless invalidism that she was like one risen from the dead, in her sudden strength and courage, and he stared at the miracle of her restoration. It was she who claimed and bore the greater share of the burden in getting her husband away. He was helpless; but in the open air he caught his breath more fully, and at last could tremulously find his way out of the sympathetic crowd. "Get a carriage,"

she said to Lemuel; and then she added, as it drove up and she gave an address, "I can manage him now."

Evans weakly pressed Lemuel's hand from the seat to which he had helped him, and the hack drove away. Lemuel looked crazily after it a moment, and then returned to the burning house.

Berry called to him from the top of the outside steps, "Barker, have you seen that partner of yours?"

Lemuel ran up to him. "No!"

"Well, come in here. The elevator's dropped, and they're afraid he went down with it."

"I know he didn't! He wouldn't be such a fool!"

"Well, we'll know when they get the fire under."

"I thought I saw something in the elevator, and as long as you don't know where he is--" said a fireman.

"Well," said Berry, "if you've got the upper hands of this thing, I'm going to my room a minute."

Lemuel followed him upstairs, to see if he could find Williams. The steam had ascended and filled the upper halls; little cascades of water poured down the stairs, falling from step to step; the long strips of carpeting in the corridors swam in the deluge which the hose had poured into the building, and a rain of heavy drops burst through the ceilings.

Most of the room-doors stood open, as the people had flung them wide in their rush for life. At the door of Berry's room a figure appeared which he promptly seized by the throat.

"Don't be in a hurry!" he said, as he pushed it into the room. "I want to see you."

It was Williams.

"I want to see what you've got in your pockets. Hold on to him, Barker."

Lemuel had no choice. He held Williams by the arms while Berry went through him, as he called the search. He found upon him whatever small articles of value there had been in his room.

The thief submitted without a struggle, without a murmur.

Berry turned scornfully to Lemuel. "This a friend of yours, Mr. Barker?"

Still the thief did not speak, but he looked at Lemuel.

"Yes," he dryly gasped.

"Well!" said Berry, staring fiercely at him for a moment. "If it wasn't for something old Evans said to me about you, a little while ago, I'd hand you both over to the police."

Williams seemed to bear the threat with philosophic resignation, but Lemuel shrank back in terror. Berry laughed.

"Why, you are his pal. Go along! I'll get Jerry to attend to you."

Lemuel slunk downstairs with Williams. "Look here, mate," said the rogue; "I guess I ha'n't used you just right."

Lemuel expected himself to cast the thief off with bitter rejection.

But he heard himself saying hopelessly, "Go away, and try to behave yourself," and then he saw the thief make the most of the favour of heaven and vanish through the crowd.

He would have liked to steal away too; but he remained, and began mechanically helping again wherever he saw help needed. By and by Berry came out; Lemuel thought that he would tell some policeman to arrest him; but he went away without speaking to any one.

In an hour the firemen had finished their share of the havoc, and had saved the building. They had kept the fire to the elevator-shaft and the adjoining wood-work, and but for the water they had poured into the place the ladies might have returned to their rooms, which were quite untouched by the flames. As it was, Lemuel joined with Jerry in fetching such things to them as their needs or fancies suggested; the refugees across the way were finally clothed by their efforts, and were able to quit their covert indistinguishable in dress from any of the other boarders.

The crowd began to go about its business. The engines had disappeared from the little street with exultant shrieks; in the morning the insurance companies would send their workmen to sweep out the extinct volcano, and mop up the shrunken deluge, preparatory to ascertaining the extent of the damage done; in the meantime the police kept the boys and loafers out of the building, and the order that begins to establish itself as soon as chaos is confessed took possession of the ruin.

But it was all the same a ruin and a calamitous conclusion for the time being. The place that had been in its grotesque and insufficient fashion a home for so many homeless people was uninhabitable; even the Harmons could not go back to it. The boarders had all scattered, but Mrs. Harmon lingered, dwelling volubly upon the scene of disaster. She did not do much else; she was not without a just pride in it, but she was not puffed up by all the sympathy and consolation that had been offered her.

She thought of others in the midst of her own troubles, and she said to Lemuel, who had remained working with Jerry under her direction in putting together such things as she felt she must take away with her--

"Well, I don't know as I feel much worse about myself than I do about poor Mr. Evans. Why, I've got the ticket in my pocket now that he gave me for the Wednesday matinee! I do wonder how he's gettin' along! I guess they've got you to thank, if they're alive to tell the tale. What _did_ you do to get that woman out alive?" Lemuel looked blankly at her, and did not answer. "And Mr. Evans too! You must have had your hands full, and that's what I told the reporters; but I told 'em I guessed you'd be equal to it if any one would. Why, I don't suppose Mrs. Evans has been out of her room for a month, or hardly stepped her foot to the floor. Well, I don't want to see many people look as he did when you first got him out of the house."

"Well, I don't know as I want to see many more fires where I live," said her nephew, as if with the wish to be a little more accurate.

Jerry asked Lemuel to watch Mrs. Harmon's goods while he went for a carriage, and said sir to him. It seemed to Lemuel that this respect, and Mrs. Harmon's unmerited praises, together with the doom that was secretly upon him, would drive him wild.

XXIV.