Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Most of the ladies, in their escape or their purpose of rescue, tried each to possess herself of Lemuel, and keep him solely in her interest. “Mr. Barker! Mr. Barker! Mr. Barker!” was called for in various sopranos and contraltos, till an outsider took up the cry and shouted, “Barker! Barker! Speech! Speech!” This made him very popular with the crowd, who in their enjoyment of the fugitives were unable to regard the fire seriously. A momentary diversion was caused by an elderly gentleman who came to the hotel-door, completely dressed except that he was in his stockings, and demanded Jerry. The humourist who had called for a speech from Lemuel volunteered the statement that Jerry had just gone round the corner to see a man. “I want him,” said the old gentleman savagely. “I want my boots; I can’t go about in my stockings.”

  Cries for Jerry followed; but in fact the porter had forgotten all his grudges and enmities; he had reappeared, in perfect temper, and had joined Lemuel and Berry in helping to get the women and children out of the burning house.

  The police had set a guard at the door, in whom Lemuel recognised the friendly old officer who had arrested him. “All out?” asked the policeman.

  The smoke, which had reddened and reddened, was now a thin veil drawn over the volume of flame that burned strongly and steadily up the well of the elevator, and darted its tongues out to lick the framework without. The heat was intense. Mrs. Harmon came panting and weeping from the dining-room with some unimportant pieces of silver, driven forward by Jerry and her nephew.

  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 hell 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 passed 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, b
ut 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.

  The evening after the fire Mrs. Sewell sat talking it over with her husband, in the light of the newspaper reports, which made very much more of Lemuel’s part in it than she liked. The reporters had flattered the popular love of the heroic in using Mrs. Harmon’s version of his exploits, and represented him as having been most efficient and daring throughout, and especially so in regard to the Evanses.

  “Well, that doesn’t differ materially from what they told us themselves,” said Sewell.

  “You know very well, David,” retorted his wife, “that there couldn’t have been the least danger at any time; and when he helped her to get Mr. Evans downstairs, the fire was nearly all out.”

  “Very well, then; he would have saved their lives if it had been necessary. It was a case of potential heroism, that contained all the elements of self-sacrifice.”

  Mrs. Sewell could not deny this, but she was not satisfied. She was silent a moment before she asked, “What do you suppose that wretched creature will do now?”

  “I think very likely he will come to me,” answered Sewell.

  “I dare say.” The bell rang. “And I suppose that’s he now!”

  They listened and heard Miss Vane’s voice at the door, asking for them.

  Mrs. Sewell ran down the stairs and kissed her. “Oh, I’m so glad you came. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ve just come from them, and she’s taking the whole care of him, as if he had always been the sick one, and she strong and well.”

  “What do you mean, Lucy? He isn’t ill!”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About Mr. Evans—”

  “Oh!” said Miss Vane, with cold toleration. She arrived at the study door and gave Sewell her hand. “I scarcely knew him, you know; I only met him casually here. I’ve come to see,” she added nervously, “if you know where Lemuel is, Mr. Sewell. Have you seen anything of him since the fire? How nobly he behaved! But I never saw anything he wasn’t equal to!”

  “Mrs. Sewell objects to his saving human life,” said Sewell, not able to deny himself.

  “I don’t see how you can take the slightest interest in him,” began Mrs. Sewell, saying a little more than she meant.

  “You would, my dear,” returned Miss Vane, “if you had wronged him as I have.”

  “Or as I,” said Sewell.

  “I’m thankful I haven’t, then,” said his wife. “It seems to me that there’s nothing else of him. As to his noble behaviour, it isn’t possible you believe those newspaper accounts? He didn’t save any one’s life; there was no danger!”

  Miss Vane, preoccupied with her own ideal of the facts, stared at her without replying, and then turned to Sewell.

  “I want to find him and ask him to stay with me till he can get something else to do.” Sewell’s eyebrows arched themselves involuntarily. “Sibyl has gone to New York for a fortnight; I shall be quite alone in the house, and I shall be very glad of his company,” she explained to the eyebrows, while ignoring them. Her chin quivered a little, as she added, “I shall be proud of his company. I wish him to understand that he is my guest.”

  “I suppose I shall see him soon,” said Sewell, “and I will give him your message.”

  “Will you tell him,” persisted Miss Vane, a little hysterically, “that if he is in any way embarrassed, I insist upon his coming to me immediately — at once?”

  Sewell smiled, “Yes.”

  “I know that I’m rather ridiculous,” said Miss Vane, smiling in sympathy, “and I don’t blame Mrs. Sewell for not entering into my feelings. Nobody could, who hadn’t felt the peculiar Lemuel glamour.”

  “I don’t imagine he’s embarrassed in any way,” said Sewell. “He seems to have the gift of lighting on his feet. But I’ll tell him how peremptory you are, Miss Vane.”

  “Well, upon my word,” cried Mrs. Sewell, when Miss Vane had taken leave of them in an exaltation precluding every recurrent attempt to enlighten her as to the true proportions of Lemuel’s part in the fire, “I really believe people like to be made fools of. Why didn’t you tell her, David, that he had done nothing?”

  “What would have been the use? She has her own theory of the affair. Besides, he did do something; he did his duty, and my experience is that it’s no small thing to do. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t do more.”

  He waited some days for Lemuel to come to him, and he inquired each time he went to see the Evanses if they knew where he was. But they had not heard of him since the night of the fire.

  “It’s his shyness,” said Evans; “I can understand how if he thought he had put me under an obligation he wouldn’t come near me — and couldn’t.”

  Evans was to go out of town for a little while; the proprietors of the Saturday Afternoon insisted upon his taking a rest, and they behaved handsomely about his salary. He did not want to go, but his wife got him away finally, after he had failed in two or three attempts at writing.

  Lemuel did not appear to Sewell till the evening of the day when the Evanses left town. It seemed as if he had waited till they were gone, so that he could not be urged to visit them. At first the minister scolded him a little for his neglect; but Lemuel said he had heard about them, and knew they were getting along all right. He looked as if he had not been getting along very well himself; his face was thin, and had an air at once dogged and apprehensive. He abruptly left talking of Evans, and said, “I don’t know as you heard what happened that night before the fire just after I got back from your house?”

  “No, I hadn’t.”

  Lemuel stopped. Then he related briefly and cleanly the whole affair, Sewell interrupting him from time to time with murmurs of sympathy, and “Tchk, tchk, tchk!” and “Shocking, shocking!” At the end he said, “I had hoped somehow that the general calamity had swallowed up your particular trouble in it. Though I don’t know that general calamities ever do that with particular troubles,” he added, more to himself than to Lemuel; and he put the idea away for some future sermon.

  “Mr. Evans stopped and said something to me that night. He said we had to live things down, and not die them down; he wanted I should wait till Saturday before I was sure that I couldn’t get through Tuesday. He said, How did we know that death was the end of trouble?”

  “Yes,” said the minister, with a smile of fondness for his friend; “that was like Evans all over.”

  “I sha’n’t forget those things,” said Lemuel. “They’ve been in my head ever since. If it hadn’t been f
or them, I don’t know what I should have done.”

  He stopped, and after a moment’s inattention Sewell perceived that he wished to be asked something more. “I hope,” he said, “that nothing more has been going wrong with you?” and as he asked this he laid his hand affectionately on the young man’s shoulder, just as Evans had done. Lemuel’s eyes dimmed and his breath thickened. “What has become of the person — the discharged convict?”

  “I guess I had better tell you,” he said; and he told him of the adventure with Berry and Williams.

  Sewell listened in silence, and then seemed quite at a loss what to say; but Lemuel saw that he was deeply afflicted. At last he asked, lifting his eyes anxiously to Sewell’s, “Do you think I did wrong to say the thief was a friend of mine, and get him off that way?”

  “That’s a very difficult question,” sighed Sewell. “You had a duty to society.”

  “Yes, I’ve thought of that since!”

  “If I had been in your place, I’m afraid I should be glad not to have thought of it in time; and I’m afraid I’m glad that, as it is, it’s too late. But doesn’t it involve you with him in the eyes of the other young man?” “Yes, I presume it does,” said Lemuel. “I shall have to go away.”