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?”
Not savage Hun, nor “barbarous Vandyke,” nor demon Apache, could wish to dwell upon the state of mind of the Chief of the Rouen Volunteer Fire Department; therefore, let the curtain of mercy descend. Without a word, he turned and dragged the nozzle to the eastern eaves, whence, after a warning gesture to those below, he dropped it to the ground. And, out of compassion, it should be little more than hinted that the gesture of warning was very slight.
When the rescued band reached the foot of the last flight of stairs, they beheld the open doorway as a frame for a great press of intent and con-torted faces, every eye still strained to watch the roof; none of the harrowed spectators comprehending the appearance of the girl's figure there, nor able to see whither she had led the five young men, until Tappingham Marsh raised a shout as he leaped out of the door and danced upon the solid earth again.
Then, indeed, there was a mighty uproar; cheer after cheer ascended to the red vault of heaven; women wept, men whooped, and the people rushed for the heroes with wide-open, welcoming arms. Jefferson Bareaud and Frank Chenoweth and General Trumble dashed at Tom Vanrevel with incoherent cries of thanksgiving, shaking his hands and beating him hysterically upon the back. He greeted them with bitter laughter.
“Help get the water into the next warehouse; this one is beyond control, but we can save the other two. Take the lines in through the door!” He brushed the rejoicing friends off abruptly, and went on in a queer, hollow voice: “There are stairs—and I'm so sorry I didn't think of it until a moment ago, because you could have brought the water up that way!”
A remarkable case of desertion had occurred, the previous instant, under his eyes. As the party emerged from the warehouse into the street, Tom heard Crailey say hurriedly to Miss Carewe: “Let me get you away come quickly!” saw him suddenly seize her band, and, eluding the onrushing crowd, run with her round the corner of the building. And somehow, through what inspiration, or through what knowledge of his partner's “temperament,” heaven knows, the prophetic soul of the chief was unhappily assured that Crailey would offer himself as escort to her home, and find acceptance. But why not? Was it Crailey who had publicly called his fellow-man fool, idiot, imbecile, at the top of his lungs, only to find himself the proven numskull of the universe! Tom stood for a moment staring after the vanishing pair, while over his face stole the strangest expression that ever man saw there; then, with meekly bowed shoulders, he turned again to his work.
At the corner of the warehouse, Miss Carewe detached her hand from Crailey's, yet still followed him as he made a quick detour round the next building. A minute or two later they found themselves, undetected, upon Main Street in the rear of the crowd. There Crailey paused.
“Forgive me,” he said, breathlessly, “for taking your hand. I thought you would like to get away.”
She regarded him gravely, so that he found it difficult to read her look, except that it was seriously questioning; but whether the interrogation was addressed to him or to herself he could not determine. After a silence she said:
“I don't know why I followed you. I believe it must have been because you didn't give me time to think.”
This, of course, made him even quicker with her than before. “It's all over,” he said briskly. “The first warehouse is gone; the second will go, but they'll save the others easily enough, now that you have pointed out that the lines may be utilized otherwise than as adjuncts of performances on the high trapeze!” They were standing by a picket-fence, and he leaned against it, overcome by mirth in which she did not join. Her gravity reacted upon him at once, and his laughter was stopped short. “Will you not accept me as an escort to your home?” he said formally. “I do not know,” she returned simply, the sort of honest trouble in her glance that is seen only in very young eyes.
“'What reason in the world!” he returned, with a crafty sharpness of astonishment.
She continued to gaze upon him thoughtfully, while he tried to look into her eyes, but was baffled because the radiant beams from the lady's orbs (as the elder Chenoweth might have said) rested somewhere dangerously near his chin, which worried him, for, though his chin made no retreat and was far from ill-looking, it was, nevertheless, that feature which he most distrusted. “Won't you tell me why not?” he repeated, uneasily.
“Because,” she answered at last, speaking hesitatingly, “because it isn't so easy a matter for me as you seem to think. You have not been introduced to me, and I know you never will be, and that what you told me was true.”
“Which part of what I told you?” The question escaped from him instantly.
“That the others might come when they liked, but that you could not.”
“Oh yes, yes.” His expression altered to a sincere dejection; his shoulders drooped, and his voice indicated supreme annoyance. “I might have known someone would tell you! Who was it? Did they say why I—”
“On account of your quarrel with my father.”
“My quarrel with your father!” he exclaimed; and his face lit with an elated surprise; his shoulders straightened. He took a step nearer her, and asked, eagerly: “Who told you that?”
“My father himself. He spoke of a Mr. Vanrevel whom he—disliked, and whom I must not meet; and, remembering what you had said, of course I knew that you were he.”
“Oh!” Crailey's lips began to form a smile of such appealing and inimitable sweetness that Voltaire would have trusted him; a smile alto-gether rose-leaves. “Then I lose you,” he said, “for my only chance to know you was in keeping it hidden from you. And now you understand!”
“No,” she answered, gravely, “I don't understand; that is what troubles me. If I did, and believed you had the right of the difference, I could believe it no sin that you should speak to me, should take me home now. I think it is wrong not to act from your own understanding of things.”
The young man set his expression as one indomitably fixed upon the course of honor, cost what it might; and, in the very action, his lurking pleasure in doing it hopped out in the flicker of a twinkle in his eyes, and as instantly sought cover again—the flea in the rose-jar.
“Then you must ask some other,” he said, firmly. “A disinterested person should tell you. The difference was political in the beginning, but became personal afterward; and it is now a quarrel which can never be patched up, though, for my part, I wish that it could be. I can say no more, because a party to it should not speak.”
She met his level look squarely at last; and no man ever had a more truthful pair of eyes than Crailey Gray, for it was his great accomplishment that he could adjust his emotion, his reason, and something that might be called his faith, to fit any situation in any character.
“You may take me home,” she answered. “I may be wrong, and even disloyal; but I do not feel it so, now. You did a very brave thing tonight to save him from loss, and I think that what you have said was just what you should have said.”
So they went down the street, the hubbub and confusion of the fire growing more and more indistinct behind them. They walked slowly, and, for a time, neither spoke; yet the silence was of a kind which the adept rejoiced to have produced thus soon—their second meeting. For he believed there were more strange things in heaven and earth than Horatio wot; and one of the strangest was that whenever he was near an attractive woman during a silence such as this, something not to be defined, but as effective as it was indefinite, always went out from him to her. It was like a word of tenderness, a word too gentle, too compelling, too sweet, to be part of any tongue, spoken or written. And more: this ineffable word had an echo, and came back to him from the woman.
As his partner had in dress, so Crailey had with women, some color of the Beau; but it was not in what experience had given him to recognize as a fact: that they were apt to fall in love with him. (That they were apt to remain in love with him—he understood perfectly—was another matter.) And he knew when they were doing it; could have told them accurately, at each step, what they were feeling, thinking, dreaming, during the process, because he was usually exhibiting the same symptoms to himself at the same time.
Thus, his own breast occupied with that dizzy elation which followed its reception of the insane young god's arrows, and his heart warm with the rise of the old emotion that he knew so well, he was nevertheless able to walk with his finger on the pulse of the exquisite moment, counting her heartbeats and his own.
So, to his fancy, as they walked, the little space between them was hung with brilliant strands, like gossamer chains of gold, already linking them together; every second fixing another slender, precious fetter, binding them closer, drawing her nearer. He waited until they passed into the shadows of the deserted Carewe Street before he spoke. There he stopped abruptly; at which she turned, astonished.
“Now that you have saved my life,” he said, in a low, tremulous tone, “what are you going to do with it?”
Her eyes opened almost as widely as they had at her first sight of him in her garden. There was a long pause before she replied, and when she did, it was to his considerable surprise.
“I have never seen a play, except the funny little ones we acted at the convent,” she said, “but isn't that the way they speak on the stage?”
Crailey realized that his judgment of the silence bad been mistaken, and yet it was with a thrill of delight that he recognized her clear reading of him. He had been too florid again.
“Let us go.” His voice was soft with restrained forgiveness. “You mocked me once before.
“Mocked you?” she repeated, as they went on.
“Mocked me,” he said, firmly. “Mocked me for seeming theatrical, and yet you have learned that what I said was true; as you will again.”
She mused upon this; then, as in whimsical indulgence to an importunate child:
“Well, tell me what you mean when you say I saved your life.”
“You came alone,” he began, hastily, “to stand upon that burning roof—”
“Whence all but him had fled!” Her laughter rang out, interrupting him. “My room was on the fourth floor at St. Mary's, and I didn't mind climbing three flights this evening.”
Crailey's good-nature was always perfect. “You mock me and you mock me!” he cried, and made her laughter but part of a gay duet. “I know I have gone too fast, have said things I should have waited to say; but, ah! remember the small chance I have against the others who can see you when they like. Don't flout me because I try to make the most of a rare, stolen moment with you.”
“Do!” she exclaimed, grave upon the instant. “Do make the most of it! I have nothing but inexperience. Make the most by treating me seriously. Won't you? I know you can, and I—I—” She faltered to a full stop. She was earnest and quiet, and there had been something in her tone, too—as very often there was—that showed how young she was. “Oh!” she began again, turning to him impulsively, “I have thought about you since that evening in the garden, and I have wished I could know you. I can't be quite clear how it happened, but even those few minutes left a number of strong impressions about you. And the strongest was that you were one with whom I could talk of a great many things, if you would only be real with me. I believe—though I'm not sure why I do—that it is very difficult for you to be real; perhaps because you are so different at different times that you aren't sure, yourself, which the real you is. But the person that you are beginning to be for my benefit must be the most trifling of all your selves, lighter and easier to put on than the little mask you carried the other night. If there were nothing better underneath the mask, I might play, too.”
“Did you learn this at the convent?” gasped Crailey.
“There was a world there in miniature,” she answered, speaking very quickly. “I think all people are made of the same materials, only in such different proportions. I think a little world might hold as much as the largest, if you thought it all out hard enough, and your experience might be just as broad and deep in a small corner of the earth as anywhere else. But I don't know! I want to understand—I want to understand everything! I read books, and there are people—but no one who tells me what I want—I—”
“Stop.” He lifted his hand. “I won't act; I shall never 'play' for you again.” He was breathless; the witching silence was nothing to what stirred him now. A singular exaltation rose in him, together with the reckless impulse to speak from the mood her vehement confidence had in-spired. He gave way to it.
“I know, I know,” he said huskily. “I understand all you mean, all you feel, all you wish. It is all echoing here, and here, and here!” He touched his breast, his eyes, and his forehead with the fingers of his long and slender hand. “We sigh and strain our eyes and stretch out our arms in the dark, groping always for the strange blessing that is just beyond our grasp, seeking for the precious unknown that lies just over the horizon! It's what they meant by the pot of gold where the rainbow ends—only, it may be there, after all!”
They stopped unconsciously, and remained standing at the lower end of the Carewe hedge. The western glow had faded, and she was gazing at him through the darkness, leaning forward, never dreaming that her tight grasp had broken the sticks of the little pink fan.
“Yes,” she whispered, eagerly. “You are right: you understand!”
He went on, the words coming faster and faster: “We are haunted—you and I—by the wish to know all things, and by the question that lies under every thought we have: the agonizing Whither? Isn't it like that? It is really death that makes us think. You are a good Catholic: you go to mass; but you wish to know. Does God reign, or did it all happen? Sometimes it seems so deadly probable that the universe just was, no God to plan it, nothing but things; that we die as sparrows die, and the brain is all the soul we have, a thing that becomes clogged and stops some day. And is that all?”
She shivered slightly, but her steadfast eyes did not shift from him. He threw back his head, and his face, uplifted to the jewelled sky of the moonless night, was beatific in its peacefulness, as he continued in an altered tone, gentle and low:
“I think all questions are answered there. The stars tell it all. When you look at them you know! They have put them on our flag. There are times when this seems but a poor nation: boastful, corrupt, violent, and preparing, as it is now, to steal another country by fraud and war; yet the stars on the flag always make me happy and confident. Do you see the constellations swinging above us, such unimaginable vastnesses, not roving or crashing through the illimitable at haphazard, but moving in more excellent measure, and to a finer rhythm, than the most delicate clockwork man ever made? The great ocean-lines mark our seas with their paths through the water; the fine brains of the earth are behind the ships that sail from port to port, yet how awry the system goes! When does a ship come to her harbor at an hour determined when she sailed? What is a ship beside the smallest moon of the smallest world? But, there above us, moons, worlds, suns, all the infinite cluster of colossi, move into place to the exactness of a hair at the precise instant. That instant has been planned, you see; it is part of a system—and can a system exist that no mind made? Think of the Mind that made this one! Do you believe so inconceivably majestic an Intelligence as that could be anything but good? Ah, when you wonder, look above you; look above you in the night, I say,” he cried, his hand upraised like his transfigured face. “Look above you and you will never fear that a sparrow's fall could go unmarked!”
It was not to the stars that she looked, but to the orator, as long as he held that pose, which lasted until a hard-ridden horse came galloping down the street. As it dashed by, though the rider looked neither to right nor left, Miss Betty unconsciously made a feverish clutch at her companion's sleeve, drawing him closer to the hedge.
“It is my father,” she said hurriedly in a low voice. “He must not see you. You must never come here. Perhaps—” She paused, then quickly whispered: “You have been very kind to me. Good-night.”
He looked at her keenly, and through the dimness saw that her face was shining with excitement. He did not speak again, but, taking a step back-ward, smiled faintly, bent his head in humble acquiescence, and made a slight gesture of his hand for her to leave him. She set her eyes upon his once more, then turned swiftly and almost ran along the hedge to the gate; but there she stopped and looked back. He was standing where she had left him, his face again uplifted to the sky.
She waved him an uncertain farewell, and ran into the garden, both palms against her burning cheeks.
Night is the great necromancer, and strange are the fabrics he weaves; he lays queer spells; breathes so eerie an intoxication through the dusk; he can cast such glamours about a voice! He is the very king of fairyland.
Miss Betty began to walk rapidly up and down the garden paths, her head bent and her bands still pressed to her cheeks; now and then an unconscious exclamation burst from her, incoherent, more like a gasp than a word. A long time she paced the vigil with her stirring heart, her skirts sweeping the dew from the leaning flowers. Her lips moved often, but only the confused, vehement “Oh, oh!” came from them, until at last she paused in the middle of the garden, away from the trees, where all was open to the sparkling firmament, and extended her arms over her head.
“O, strange teacher,” she said aloud, “I take your beautiful stars! I shall know how to learn from them!”
She gazed steadily upward, enrapt, her eyes resplendent with their own starlight.
“Oh, stars, stars, stars!” she whispered.
In the teeth of all wizardry, Night's spells do pass at sunrise; marvellous poems sink to doggerel, mighty dreams to blown ashes and solids regain weight. Miss Betty, waking at daybreak, saw the motes dancing in the sun at her window, and watched them with a placid, unremembering eye. She began to stare at them in a puzzled way, while a look of wonder slowly spread over her face. Suddenly she sat upright, as though something had startled her. Her fingers clenched tightly.
“Ah, if that was playing!”
Mr. Carewe was already at the breakfast-table, but the light of his countenance, hidden behind the Rouen Journal, was not vouchsafed to his daughter when she took her place opposite him, nor did he see fit to return her morning greeting, from which she generously concluded that the burning of the two warehouses had meant a severe loss to him.
“I am so sorry, father,” she said gently. (She had not called him “papa” since the morning after her ball.) “I hope it isn't to be a great trouble to you.” There was no response, and, after waiting for some time, she spoke again, rather tremulously, yet not timidly: “Father?”
He rose, and upon his brow were marked the blackest lines of anger she had ever seen, so that she leaned back from him, startled; but he threw down the open paper before her on the table, and struck it with his clenched fist.
“Read that!” he said. And he stood over her while she read.
There were some grandiloquent headlines: “Miss Elizabeth Carewe an Angel of Mercy! Charming Belle Saves the Lives of Five Prominent Citizens! Her Presence of Mind Prevents Conflagration from Wiping Out the City!” It may be noted that Will Cummings, editor and proprietor of the Journal, had written these tributes, as well as the whole account of the evening's transactions, and Miss Betty loomed as large in Will's narrative as in his good and lovelorn heart. There was very little concerning the fire in the Journal; it was nearly all about Betty. That is one of the misfortunes which pursue a lady who allows an editor to fall in love with her.
However, there was a scant mention of the arrival of the Volunteers “upon the scene” (though none at all at the cause of their delay) and an elo-quent paragraph was devoted to their handsome appearance, Mr. Cummings having been one of those who insisted that the new uniforms should be worn. “Soon,” said the Journal, “through the daring of the Chief of the Department, and the Captain of the Hook-and-Ladder Company, one of whom placed and mounted the grappling-ladder, over which he was immediately followed by the other carrying the hose, a stream was sent to play upon the devouring element, a feat of derring-do personally witnessed by a majority of our readers. Mr. Vanrevel and Mr. Gray were joined by Eugene Madrillon, Tappingham Marsh, and the editor of this paper, after which occurred the unfortunate accident to the long ladder, leaving the five named gentlemen in their terrible predicament, face to face with death in its most awful form. At this frightful moment “—and all the rest was about Miss Carewe.
As Will himself admitted, he had “laid himself out on that description.” One paragraph was composed of short sentences, each beginning with the word “alone.” “Alone she entered the shattered door! Alone she set foot upon the first flight of stairs! Alone she ascended the second! Alone she mounted the third. Alone she lifted her hand to the trap! Alone she opened it!” She was declared to have made her appearance to the unfortunate prisoners on the roof, even as “the palm-laden dove to the despairing Noah,” and Will also asserted repeatedly that she was the “Heroine of the Hour.”
Miss Betty blushed to see her name so blazoned forth in print; but she lacked one kind of vanity, and failed to find good reason for more than a somewhat troubled laughter, the writer's purpose was so manifestly kind in spite of the bizarre result.
“Oh, I wish Mr. Cummings hadn't!” she exclaimed. “It would have been better not to speak of me at all, of course; but I can't see that there is anything to resent—it is so funny!”
“Funny!” Mr. Carewe repeated the word in a cracked falsetto, with the evident intention of mocking her, and at the same time hideously contorted his face into a grotesque idiocy of expression, pursing his lips so extremely, and setting his brows so awry, that his other features were cartooned out of all familiar likeness, effecting an alteration as shocking to behold, in a man of his severe cast of countenance, as was his falsetto mimicry to hear. She rose in a kind of terror, perceiving that this contortion was produced in burlesque of her own expression, and, as he pressed nearer her, stepped back, overturning her chair. She had little recollection of her father during her childhood; and as long as she could remember, no one had spoken to her angrily, or even roughly.
As she retreated from him, he leaned forward, thrusting the hideous mask closer to her white and horror-stricken face.
“You can't see anything to resent in that!” he gibbered. “It's so funny, is it? Funny! Funny! Funny! I'll show you whether it's funny or not, I'll show you!” His voice rose almost to a shriek. “You hang around fires, do you, on the public streets at night? You're a nice one for me to leave in charge of my house while I'm away, you trollop! What did you mean by going up on that roof? You knew that damned Vanrevel was there! You did, I say, you knew it!”
She ran toward the door with a frightened cry; but he got between it and her, menacing her with his upraised open hands, shaking them over her.
“You're a lovely daughter, aren't you!” he shouted hoarsely. “You knew perfectly well who was on that roof, and you went! Didn't you go? Answer me that! If I'd had arms about me when I got there, I'd have shot that man dead! He was on my property, giving orders, the black hound! And when I ordered him out, he told me if I interfered with his work before it was finished, he'd have me thrown out—me that owned the whole place; and there wasn't a man that would lend me a pistol! 'Rescue!' You'd better rescue him from me, you palm-laden dove, for I'll shoot him, I will! I'll kill that dog; and he knows it. He can bluster in a crowd, but he'll hide now! He's a coward and—”
“He came home with me; he brought me home last night!” Her voice rang out in the room like that of some other person, and she hardly knew that it was herself who spoke.
“You lie!” he screamed, and fell back from her, his face working as though under the dominance of some physical disorder, the flesh of it plastic beyond conception, so that she cried out and covered her face with her arm. “You lie! I saw you at the hedge with Crailey Gray, though you thought I didn't. What do you want to lie like that for? Vanrevel didn't even speak to you. I asked Madrillon. You lie!”
He choked upon the words; a racking cough shook him from head to foot; he staggered back and dropped upon her overturned chair, his arms beating the table in front of him, his head jerking spasmodically backward and forward as he gasped for breath.
“Ring the bell,” he panted thickly, with an incoherent gesture. “Nelson knows. Ring!”
Nelson evidently knew. He brought brandy and water from the sideboard with no stinting hand, and within ten minutes Mr. Carewe was in his accustomed seat, competent to finish his breakfast. In solitude, however, he sat, and no one guessed his thoughts.
For Miss Betty had fled to her own room, and had bolted the door. She lay upon the bed, shuddering and shivering with nausea and cold, though the day was warm. Then, like a hot pain in her breast, came a homesickness for St. Mary's, and the flood-tide of tears, as she thought of the quiet convent in the sunshine over to the west, the peace of it, and the goodness of everybody there.
“Sister Cecilia!” Her shoulders shook with the great sob that followed this name, dearest to her in the world, convulsively whispered to the pil-low “Dear Sister Cecilia!” She patted the white pillow with her hand, as though it were the cool cheek against which she yearned to lay her own. “Ah, you would know—you would know!” With the thought of the serene face of the good Sister, and of the kind arms that would have gone round her in her trouble, her sobbing grew loud and uncontrollable. But she would not have her father hear it, and buried her face deep in the pillow. After a time, she began to grow quieter, turned, and lay with wet eyes staring unseeingly at the wall, her underlip quivering with the deep intake of each broken sigh.
“Oh, stars, stars, stars!” she whispered.
“Missy?” There came a soft knock upon the door and the clink of silver upon china. “Missy?”
“What is it?”
So quick was Miss Betty that, although she answered almost at once, the tears were washed away, and she was passing a cool, wet towel over her eyes at the moment she spoke.
“Jass me. I brung yo' breakfas', honey.”
Old Nelson's voice was always low and gentle, with a quaver and hesitancy in the utterance; now it was tender and comforting with the comprehension of one in suffering, the extraordinary tact, which the old of his race nearly all come to possess. “Li'l chicken-wing on piece brown toast, honey.”
When she opened the door he came in, bending attentively over his tray, and, without a glance toward his young mistress, made some show of fuss and bustle, as he placed it upon a table near the window and drew up a chair for her so that she could sit with her back to the light.
“Dah now!” he exclaimed softly, removing the white napkin and displaying other dainties besides the chicken wing. “Dass de way! Dat ole Mamie in de kitchen, she got her failin's an' her grievin' sins; but de way she do han'le chicken an' biscuit sutney ain't none on 'em! She plead fo' me to ax you how you like dem biscuit.”
He kept his head bent low over the table, setting a fork closer to Betty's hand; arranging the plates, then rearranging them, but never turning his eyes in her direction.
“Dat ole Mamie mighty vain, yessuh!” He suffered a very quiet chuckle to escape him. “She did most sutney 'sist dat I ax you ain't you like dem biscuit. She de ve'y vaines' woman in dis State, dat ole Mamie, yessuh!” And now he cast one quick glance out of the corner of his eye at Miss Betty, before venturing a louder chuckle. “She reckon dem biscuit goin' git her by Sain' Petuh when she 'proach de hevumly gates! Uhuh! I tell her she got git redemption fo' de aigs she done ruin dese many yeahs; 'cause she as useless wid an ommelick as a two-day calf on de slick ice!” Here he laughed loud and long. “You jass go and talk wid dat Mamie, some day, Missy; you'll see how vain dat woman is.”
“Has father gone out, Nelson?” asked Betty in a low voice.
“Yes'm; he up town.” The old man's tone sank at once to the level of her own; became confidential, as one speaks to another in a room where somebody is ill. “He mekkin' perpetration to go down de rivuh dis aft'noon. He say he done broke de news to you dat he goin' 'way. Dey goin' buil' dem wa'house right up, an' yo' pa he necistate go 'way 'count de contrack. He be gone two week', honey,” Nelson finished, without too much the air of imparting cheery tidings, but with just enough.
“I am to stay here alone?”
“Law no, Missy! Dat big Miz Tanberry, dass de bes' frien' we all got, she home ag'in, an' yo' pa goin' invite her visit at de house, whiles he gone, an' to stay a mont' aftuh he git back, too, soze she kin go to all de doin's an' junketin's wid you, and talk wid de young mens dat you don' like whiles you talks wid dem you does like.”
“What time will father come home?”
“Home? He be gone two week', honey!”
“No; I mean to-day.”
“Law! He ain' comin' back. Bid me pack de trunk an' ca'y um down to de boat at noon. Den he bid me say far'-ye-well an' a kine good-bye fo' him, honey. 'Say he think you ain't feelin' too well, soze he won't 'sturb ye, hisself, an' dat he unestly do hope you goin' have splen'id time whiles he trabblin'.” (Nelson's imagination covered many deficits in his master's courtesy.) “Say he reckon you an' ole Miz Tanberry goin' git 'long mighty nice wid one'nurr. An' dass what me an' Mamie reckon 'spechually boun' to take place, 'cause dat a mighty gay lady, dat big Miz Tanberry, an' ole frien' 'er owah fambly. She 'uz a frien' er yo' momma's, honey.”
Miss Betty had begun by making a pretence to eat, only to please the old man, but the vain woman's cookery had been not unduly extolled, and Nelson laughed with pleasure to see the fluffy biscuits and the chicken wing not nibbled at but actually eaten. This was a healthy young lady, he thought, one who would do the household credit and justify the extravagant pride which kitchen and stable already had in her. He was an old house-servant, therefore he had seen many young ladies go through unhappy hours, and he admired Miss Betty the more because she was the first who had indulged in strong weeping and did not snuffle at intervals afterward. He understood perfectly everything that had passed between father and daughter that morning.
When her breakfast was finished, she turned slowly to the window, and, while her eyes did not refill, a slight twitching of the upper lids made him believe that she was going over the whole scene again in her mind; whereupon he began to move briskly about the room with a busy air, picking up her napkin, dusting a chair with his hand, exchanging the position of the andirons in the fireplace; and, apparently discovering that the por-trait of Georges Meilhac was out of line, he set it awry, then straight again, the while he hummed an old “spiritual” of which only the words “Chain de Lion Down” were allowed to be quite audible. They were repeated often, and at each repetition of them he seemed profoundly, though decorously, amused, in a way which might have led to a conjecture that the refrain bore some distant reference to his master's eccentricity of temper. At first be chuckled softly, but at the final iteration of “Chain de Lion Down” burst into outright laughter.
“Honey, my Law!” he exclaimed, “But yo' pa de 'ceivin'dest man! He mighty proud er you!”
“Proud of me!” She turned to him in astonishment.
Nelson's laughter increased. “Hain't be jass de 'ceivin'dest man! Yessuh, he de sot-uppest man in dis town 'count what you done last night. What he say dis mawn', dat jass his way!”
“Ah, no!” said Miss Betty, sadly.
“Yes'm! He proud er you, but he teahbul mad at dat man. He hain't mad at you, but he gotter cuss somebody! Jass reach out fo' de nighes' he kin lay han's on, an' dis mawn' it happen soze it were you, honey. Uhuh! You oughter hearn him ins' night when he come home. Den it were me. Bless God, I ain't keerin'. He weren't mad at me, no mo'n' he were at you. He jass mad!”
Miss Betty looked at the old fellow keenly. He remained, however, apparently unconscious of her scrutiny, and occupied himself with preparations for removing the tray.
“Nelson, what is the quarrel between my father and Mr. Vanrevel?”
He had lifted the tray, but set it down precipitately, bending upon her a surprised and sobered countenance.
“Missy,” he said, gravely, “Dey big trouble 'twix' dem two.”
“I know,” she returned quietly. “What is it?”
“Wha' fo' you ax me, Missy?”
“Because you're the only one I can ask. I don't know anyone here well enough, except you.”
Nelson's lips puckered solemnly. “Mist' Vanrevel vote Whig; but he ag'in Texas.”
“Well, what if he is?”
“Yo' pa mighty strong fo' Texas.”
“No'm, dat ain't hardly de beginnin'. Mist' lanrevel he a Ab'litionist.”
“Well? Won't you tell me?”
“Honey, folks roun' heah mos' on 'em like Mist' Vanrevel so well dey ain't hole it up ag'in' him—but, Missy, ef dey one thing topper God's worl' yo' pa do desp'itly and contestably despise, hate, cuss, an' outrageously 'bominate wuss'n' a yaller August spiduh it are a Ab'litionist! He want stomple 'em eve'y las' one under he boot-heel, 'cep'n dat one Mist' Crailey Gray. Dey's a considabul sprinklin' er dem Ab'litionists 'bout de kentry, honey; dey's mo' dat don' know w'ich dey is; an' dey's mo' still dat don' keer. Soze dat why dey go git up a quo'l twix' yo' pa an' dat man; an' 'range to have 'er on a platfawm, de yeah 'fo' de las' campaign; an', suh, dey call de quo'l a de-bate; an' all de folks come in f'um de kentry, an' all de folks in town come, too. De whole possetucky on 'em sit an' listen.
“Fus' yo' pa talk; den Mist' Vanrevel, bofe on 'em mighty cole an' civilized. Den yo' pa git wo'm up, Missy, like he do, 'case he so useter have his own way; 'tain't his fault, he jass cain't help hollerin' an' cussin' if anybody 'pose him; but Mist' Vanrevel he jass as suvvige, but he stay cole, w'ich make yo' pa all de hotter. He holler mighty strong, Missy, an' some de back ranks 'gun snickerin' at him. Uhuh! He fa'r jump, he did; an' den bimeby Mist' Vanrevel he say dat no man oughter be given de pilverige to sell another, ner to wollop him wid a blacksnake, whether he 'buse dat pilverige er not. 'My honabul 'ponent,' s's he, 'Mist' Carewe, rep'sent in hisseif de 'ristocratic slave-ownin' class er de Souf, do' he live in de Nawf an' 'ploy free labor; yit it sca'sely to be b'lieve dat any er you would willin'ly trus' him wid de powah er life an' death ovah yo' own chillun, w'ich is virchously what de slave-ownah p'sess.'
“Missy, you jass oughter see yo' pa den! He blue in de face an' dance de quadrille on de boa'ds. He leave his cha'h, git up, an' run 'cross to de odder side de platfawm, an' shake be fis' ovah dat man's head, an' screech out how it all lies dat de slaves evah 'ceive sich a treatments. 'Dat all lies, you pu'juh!' he holler. 'All lies, you misabul thief,' he holler. 'All lies, an' you know it, you low-bawn slandah' an' scoun'le!'
“An' wid dat Mist' Vanrevel, be laff in yo' pa face, an' tuhn to de crowd, he did, an' say: 'You reckon dat if dish yuh man a slave-ownah, an' a slave had anguhed him as I have anguhed him tonight, does any er you b'lieve dat dat slave wouldn' be tied up an' whipped tell de blood run, an' den sole down de rivuh to-morrer?'
“Well, suh, 'co'se mos' on 'em b'lieve same as yo' pa; but dat sutney fotch 'em, an' win de de-bate, 'case dey jass natchully lay back an' roah, dey did, Missy; dey laff an' stomp an' holler tell you could a hearn 'em a mild away. An' honey, yo' pa'd a millyum times druther Mist' Vanrevel'd a kilt him dan tuhn de laff on him. He'd shoot a man, honey, ef he jass s'picion him to grin out de cornder his eye at him; an' to stan' up dah wid de whole county fa'r roahin' at him—it's de God's mussy be did'n have no ahms wid him, dat night! Ole Mist' Chen'eth done brung him home, an' yo' pa reach out an' kick me squah' out'n' de liberry winder soon's he ketch sight er me!” The old man's gravity gave way to his enjoyment of the recollection, and he threw back his head to laugh. “He sho' did, honey! Uhuh! Ho, ho, ho! He sho' did, honey, he sho' did!”
Nevertheless, as he lifted the tray again and crossed the room to go, his solemnity returned. “Missy,” he said earnestly, “ef dat young gelmun fall in love wid you, w'ich I knows he will ef he ketch sight er you, lemme say dis, an' please fo' to ba'h in mine: better have nuttin' do wid him fo' he own sake; an' 'bove all, keep him fur sway f'um dese p'emises. Don' let him come in a mild er dis house.”
“Nelson, was that all the quarrel between them?”
“Blessed Mussy! ain' dat 'nough? Ef dey's any mo' I ain' hearn what dat part were,” he answered quickly, but with a dogged tightening of the lips which convinced Miss Betty that he knew very well.
“Nelson, what was the rest of it?”
“Please, Missy, I got pack yo' pa trunk; an' it time, long ago, fer me to be at my wu'k.” He was half out of the door.
“What was the rest of it?” she repeated quietly.
“Now, honey,” he returned with a deprecatory shake of his head, “I got my own wu'k 'tend to; an' I ain't nevah ax nobody what 'twas, an' I ain't goin' ax 'em. An' lemme jass beg you f oiler de ole man's advice: you do de same, 'case nobody ain't goin' tell you. All I know is dat it come later and were somep'n 'bout dat riprarin Crailey Gray. Yo' pa he sent a channelge to Mist' Vanrevel, an' Mist' Vanrevel 'fuse to fight him 'cause he say he don' b'lieve shootin' yo' pa goin' do yo' pa any good, an' he still got hope mekkin' good citizen outer him. Dat brung de laff on yo' pa ag'in; an' he 'clare to God ef he ketch Vanrevel on any groun' er hisn he shoot him like a mad dog. 'Pon my livin' soul he mean dem wuds, Missy! Dey had hard 'nough time las' night keepin' him fum teahin' dat man to pieces at de fiah. You mus' keep dat young gelmun 'way fum heah!”
“He came home with me last night, Nelson; I told father so.”
“Yes'm. Yo' pa tole me you say dat, but he reckon you done it to mek him madder, 'cause you mad, too. He say he done see dat Crailey Gray comin' 'long de hedge wid you.”
“He was mistaken, it was Mr. Vanrevel.”
Nelson rolled his eyes fervently to heaven. “Den dat young man run pintedly on he death! Ef you want keep us all dis side er de Jawdan Rivuh, don' let him set foot in dis neighbo'hood when yo' pa come back! An', honey—” his voice sank to a penetrating whisper—“'fo' I do a lick er wu'k I goin' out in de stable an' git down on my knees an' retu'n thanksgiving to de good God 'case he hole Carewe Street in de dahkness las' night!”
This was the speech he chose for his exit, but, after closing the door behind him, he opened it again, and said, cheerfully:
“Soon's I git de trunk fix f' yo' pa, I bring 'roun' dat bay colt wid de side saddle. You better set 'bout gittin' on yo' ridin'-habit, Missy. De roads is mighty good dis sunshiny wedduh.”
“Nelson?”
“Do you think such an attack as father had this morning—is—dangerous?”
He had hoped for another chance to laugh violently before he left her, and this completely fitted his desire. “Ho, ho, he!” he shouted. “No'm, no, no, honey! He jass git so mad it mek him sick. You couldn' kill dat man wid a broad-ax, Missy!”
And he went down the hail leaving the reverberations of his hilarity behind him. The purpose of his visit had been effected, for, when Miss Betty appeared upon the horse-block in her green habit and gauntlets, she was smiling; so that only a woman—or a wise old man—could have guessed that she had wept bitterly that morning.
She cantered out to the flat, open country to the east, where she found soft dirt-roads that were good for the bay colt's feet, and she reached a cross-road several miles from town before she was overcome by the conviction that she was a wicked and ungrateful girl. She could not place the exact spot of her guilt, but she knew it was there, somewhere, since she felt herself a guilty thing.
For the picture which Nelson had drawn rose before her: the one man standing alone in his rage on the platform, overwhelmed by his calm young adversary, beaten and made the butt of laughter for a thousand. Her father had been in the wrong in that quarrel, and somehow she was sure, too, he must have been wrong in the “personal” one, as well: the mysterious difficulty over Fanchon's Mr. Gray, who had looked so ashamed last night. What feud could they make over him, of all people in the world? He looked strong enough to take care of his own quarrels, even if he was so rigorously bound by Fanchon's apron-string when it came to a word with another girl!
But the conclusion that her father had been in error did not lessen the pathetic appeal of the solitary figure facing the ridicule of the crowd. She felt that he always honestly believed himself in the right; she knew that he was vain; that he had an almost monstrous conception of his dignity; and, realizing the bitterness of that public humiliation which he had undergone, she understood the wrath, the unspeakable pain and sense of outrage, which must have possessed him.
And now she was letting him go forth upon a journey—his way beset with the chances of illness and accident—whence he might never return; she was letting him go without seeing him again; letting him go with no word of farewell from his daughter. In brief: she was a wicked girl. She turned the colt's head abruptly to the west and touched his flanks with her whip.
So it fell out that as the packet foamed its passage backward from Carewe's wharf into the current, the owner of the boat, standing upon the hurricane deck, heard a cry from the shore, and turned to behold his daughter dash down to the very end of the wharf on the well-lathered colt. Miss Betty's hair was blown about her face; her cheeks were rosy, her eager eyes sparkling from more than the hard riding.
“Papa!” she cried, “I'm sorry!”
She leaned forward out of the saddle, extending her arms to him appealingly in a charming gesture, and, absolutely ignoring the idlers on the wharf and the passengers on the steamer, was singly intent upon the tall figure on the hurricane-deck. “Papa—good-by. Please forgive me!”
“By the Almighty, but that's a fine woman!” said the captain of the boat to a passenger from Rouen. “Is she his daughter?”
“Please forgive me!” the clear voice came again, with its quaver of entreaty, across the widening water; and then, as Mr. Carewe made no sign, by word or movement, of hearing her, and stood without the slightest alteration of his attitude, she cried to him once more:
“Good-by!”
The paddle-wheels reversed; the boat swung down the river, Mr. Carewe still standing immovable on the hurricane-deck, while, to the gaze of those on the steamer, the figure on the bay colt at the end of the wharf began to grow smaller and smaller. She was waving her handkerchief in farewell, and they could see the little white speck in the distance, dimmer and dimmer, yet fluttering still as they passed out of sight round the bend nearly three-quarters of a mile below.