“My children! my baby!” she screamed and wailed. “Save them! Oh! save them! Let me go! — let me die with them!”
“Steady, mother!” said one of the pitying firemen, holding her arm in a tight grip. “‘Tain’t no use frettin’. Leave the little ‘uns to God!” Yes, truly to God, and — His “Angel”! For suddenly the crowd parted; a little girl, whitefaced and dark-eyed, with golden-brown hair streaming behind her like a comet, rushed through and made straight for the burning house. There was a horrified pause; then Johnnie Coleman’s shrill voice, rendered shriller by terror, cried out—” It’s Angel! Angel Middleton!”
“Angel Middleton!” roared the crowd, not knowing the name, but catching it up and echoing it forth like a cheer in responsive excitement. “Hooray for Angel! There’s a brave gel for ye! See; she’s got the baby!”
And, sure enough, there at one of the burnt-out windows, with smoke and flame eddying around her, stood Angel, holding a tiny infant in her arms, the while she looked anxiously down into the street below for some further means of rescue. Several people rushed forward, holding an extended sheet which had been hastily procured, and, fearing lest she should be stupefied into inaction by the smoke, they shouted —
“Throw it, Angel! Never fear! Throw it down!”
Whereupon Angel threw the child; it was caught in safety, and she, the rescuer, vanished. Only to reappear again, however, at the same window with two more small children, of about two and four years of age, at sight of which such a thunder of acclamation went up as might have been heard at the furthest holes and corners of degraded Whitechapel. She meanwhile, leaning far out over the charred and smoking window-frame, demanded in clear, ringing tones —
“Are there any more children? Are these all?”
“Yes, yes!” shrieked the frantic mother, running forward with her just-restored baby clasped to her breast— “All! — You’ve saved them all!
God love you, dear!”
Once more the protecting sheet was outspread, and without any haste or alarm for her own safety, Angel let one child after another drop straightly and steadily from her hold; they were caught and saved, uninjured. Then all interest became centred on the girl-heroine herself; and as the wall on which she had her footing tottered to and fro, a great cry went up from the crowd.
“Quick, quick, Angel! Jump!”
A smile crossed her pale face for a moment; she looked to right and left, and was just about to leap from her perilous position, when, with a sickening crash the brickwork beneath her gave way and crumbled to ruins, while up roared a new and fierce pyramid of fire. Quickly and courageously all hands went to the rescue of the rescuer, and in a few minutes, which, to the pitying onlookers seemed long hours, they dragged her forth, cruelly burnt but not disfigured; crushed and dying but not dead. Lifting her tenderly, they carried her out of the reach of the smoke and laid her down — one gentle-hearted fireman supporting her little golden head against his arm, while the mother, whose children she had saved, fell on her knees beside her, weeping and blessing her, and kissing her poor charred hands. She was quite conscious, and very peaceful.
“Don’t ye mind,” she said placidly; “father’s gone, and ’twould ha’ bin no use for me to stay. Why, Johnnie, are you there?” And her wandering eyes rested smilingly on a small doubled-up object close by that looked more like a bundle of rags than a boy. —
“‘Iss,” sobbed Johnnie. “Oh, Angel! I’ve bin waitin’ for ye all the arternoon. I wouldn’t stop in class arter they wouldn’t ‘ave ye no more — an’ I wanted to see ye an’ tell ye as how it wouldn’t make no change in me, an’ now — now—”
Tears prevented the faithful Johnnie’s further utterance; and Angel, with an effort, made a sign that she wished him to come nearer. He came, and she put up her lips to his.
“Kiss me, Johnnie,” she whispered. He obeyed; the great drops rolling fast down his grimy cheeks, while the crowd, reverently conscious of the solemn approach of death, circled round these two young things and watched their parting with more passionate though unspoken sympathy than could ever have been expressed by the noblest poet in the noblest poem.
“I was wicked,” said Angel softly, then. “You must tell them all, Johnnie — at class — that I was wicked, and — that I am — sorry I said I hated God; I didn’t understand. It’s all for the best — father’s gone, and I’m goin’ — an’ I’m so glad, Johnnie — so happy! Bury me with father, please; — and tell everybody — everybody — that I love God — now.”
There was a silence. The fireman supporting the girl’s head suddenly raised his hand with suggestive gravity, and those who wore hats in the crowd reverently lifted them. The smothered sobbing of tender-hearted women alone broke the stillness; the stars seemed to tremble in the sky as the Greater Angel descended and bore away the lesser one on wings of light to heaven.
And the East End turned out from every grimy hole and squalid corner all its halt and blind, and maimed and miserable, and bad and good, to attend at Angel’s funeral. The East End has a rough heart of its own, and that heart had been touched by an Angel’s courage, and now ached for an Angel’s loss. She and her father were buried together in the same grave on Christmas Eve; and the Reverend Josiah Snawley, realising perhaps for the first time the meaning of the words— “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” read the Burial Service with more emotion than was usual with him. Poor Johnnie Coleman, wearing a bit of crape in his hat, and carrying three penny bunches of violets, to throw upon his little sweetheart’s coffin, was the most sincerely doleful of all chief mourners; desperately rubbing and doubling his dirty fists into his eyes he sobbed incessantly and refused to be comforted.
“Worn’t she my gal?” he blubbered indignantly to a would-be consoler. “An’ ain’t I to be sorry at losin’ ‘er? I tell ye there ain’t no one left alive as good as she wos!”
Even Miss Powser forgot for the nonce that she was a lonely spinster, whom nobody, not even Mr. Snawley, seemed disposed to marry; and, only remembering simple womanliness, shed tears unaffectedly, and spent quite a little fortune in flowers to strew over the mortal remains of the “mere insolent heathen” — the rebellious child who had said she “hated God.” For in this one thing was the sum and substance of Angel’s wickedness; she hated what seemed to her poor unenlightened mind the wanton cruelty of the inexorable Fate that forced her father to starve and die! Forgive her! — pity her, good Christians all! You who, comfortably fed and clothed, go to church on Christmas Day and try to shut out every suggestion of misery from your thought, forgive her as God forgives — God who knows how often His goodness is mistaken and misrepresented by the human professed exponents of Divine Law; and how He is far more frequently portrayed to His most suffering, ignorant and helpless little ones as a God of Vengeance rather than what He is — a God of Love!
THE DISTANT VOICE.
“AFTER long sleep, to wake up in heaven to the sound of a beautiful voice, singing!...”
The sick man muttered these words aloud, and, turning on his pillows, opened his eyes to meet the cold, grey, passionless ones of his physician who bent over him, watch in hand.
“Delirious, eh?” said the doctor, observing him narrowly. “This won’t do at all. How’s the pulse?” The patient extended his wrist. “H’m! Not so bad! You were talking nonsense just now, Mr. Denver.”
“Was I?” Denver smiled faintly, and sighed. “I was dreaming, I think; a strange dream, about” — he paused a moment, then went on—” about heaven.”
The doctor put his big watch back in its pocket, and looked about for his hat and gloves.
“Ah, indeed!” he murmured abstractedly. “Very pleasant, no doubt! Dreams are often exceedingly agreeable. You must go on with the medicine, Mr. Denver; it will alleviate pain, and it is all I can do for you at present. If you could pick up your strength, we might try an operation; but it’s no use just now.”
Denver’s sad dark eyes rested on him wistfully.
“Stop a moment, doctor,” he said; “I should like to ask you a question. I’m not delirious; I’m quite myself — at least as much as I shall ever be. I know mine is a hopeless case; cancer is bound to kill, sooner or later. Still, you’re only mortal yourself, and the time must come when you will have to go the same way I am going. I’m on the verge of the grave, so it’s not worth while deceiving me. Now, tell me honestly, do you believe in heaven?”
The doctor had found his hat and gloves by this time, and was ready for departure.
“Dear me, no!” he answered; “certainly not! That is, if you mean a supernatural heaven. The only heaven possible to the human being is the enjoyment of a certain set of brain sensations which elevate him into a particular mood of happiness; hence the saying that ‘heaven is not a place but a state of mind.’”
“Then,” went on Denver slowly, “you do not think there is any sort of conscious or individual life after death?”
“My dear sir,” replied the doctor, somewhat testily — he was a great man in his profession and had a number of distinguished patients waiting for him that morning—” these are questions for the clergyman of the parish, not for me. I really have no ability to argue on such abstruse matters. I can only say, as a man who has studied science to some extent, that I personally am convinced that death is the natural and fitting end of the diseased or superannuated human being, and that when he dies, he is beyond all doubt absolutely dead and done for.”
John Denver still looked at him earnestly.
“Thank you!” he said at last, after a pause. “You are a clever man, doctor, and you ought to know. I am an ignorant fellow, always was ignorant, I’m afraid. But when I worked for my living as a lad down in the mines, and looked up from the darkness of that deep earth, to the round bit of blue sky that shone in thick with stars above me, I used to believe heaven was there and God in the midst of it. It was nonsense, I suppose, but I wish I had the old faiths now. I think I should be able to bear my trouble better.”
The doctor was slightly embarrassed and perplexed. It was the old story; he had no drug wherewith to “minister to a mind diseased.” Patients often bored him in this way with troublesome questions. If John Denver had been a poor man instead of a rich one, he might not have even answered him; but millionaires are not met with every day, and Denver was a millionaire.
“Why do you not see your clergyman?” he asked. “It is possible he might reinstate you in your beliefs—”
Denver’s brows clouded.
“My clergyman?” he echoed, a trifle sorrowfully. “My clergyman is far too much occupied with the comforts of earth to think over deeply concerning the joys of heaven. The last time I saw him, he urgently begged me to leave something to the church in my will. ‘I am sorry to hear your disease is hopeless,’ he said, ‘but I am sure you would wish a part of your wealth to be of some benefit to the Almighty.’ As if any man’s money could really ‘benefit’ the Creator of all things! No, doctor! My clergyman has no support to give me in the trial I am passing through. I must bear it quite alone. Don’t let me detain you any longer. Good-morning, and again thank you!”
The physician muttered a hasty response, and made his exit, glad to escape from what he considered the “fads” of a fanciful invalid.
Left to himself, John Denver stared wearily into the vacancy of the great room in which he lay. It was furnished simply, yet richly, and through the large bay window set half open, he could see the verdant stretches of park and meadow land of which he was the owner. He thought of the years of patient toil he had endured to amass his present wealth, of his life out in the “far West,” of the sudden discovery of silver ore which had made him one of the richest men in the world, and of all the glamour and glitter of slavish society which had attended him ever since his attainment to fortune. He thought of the pretty woman he had married — a fresh, lively girl when he had first met her, and one whom he had fondly fancied loved him for himself alone; but who was now no more than a frivolous mondaine, for whom nothing was sacred but social conventionalism, and whose heart had steadily hardened under the influence of boundless wealth till she was as soulless as a fashion-plate. He thought of his children who had never loved him with really disinterested affection, of his son, who only looked upon him as the necessary provider of his yearly allowance, of his daughter, who was running the rounds of society in search of some titled noodle for a husband, almost, if not utterly indifferent to the fact that her father was dying of an incurable disease, and as memory after memory chased itself through his tired brain, a sudden rush of tears blinded him, and he groaned aloud, “O God! what has my life been worth! What worth has any life if death must be the end?”
At that moment a slight tap came at his door, and before he had time to say “Come in!” the intending visitor abruptly entered.
“I thought I should find you at home, John Denver,” he said, in singularly slow, musical tones; “I met your wife in the garden, and she told me the doctor had just left you.”
Denver nodded a faint assent. He was weary and exhausted; and in the presence of this particular friend of his, was always strangely disinclined to speak. Truth to tell, Paul Valitsky, known to many as a great painter, and suspected by some of being a dangerous Russian Nihilist, was a rather remarkable-looking man, possessed, too, of a certain fascination which attracted some people and distinctly intimidated others. Though small of stature and somewhat bent, he was not old; his face, pale and rather angular, was beautified by a pair of fine eyes, greenish-grey in hue, with an occasional changeful light in them like that which plays on opals. These eyes were his chief feature; they at once captivated and held all who met their fiery iridescent glances, and as he turned them now on Denver, a great kindness softened them — an expression of infinite tenderness and regard, which was not lost upon the invalid, though he lay still and apparently unmoved to any responsive feeling by that gentle and searching scrutiny.
“So the fiat has gone forth, and we must die!” said Valitsky presently, in almost caressing accents. “Well, there are worse things in life than death.”
Denver was silent.
“You dislike the idea?” resumed his visitor after a slight pause. “The quiet of the tomb is not an agreeable prospect? You seem discomposed; but you are a brave man — you surely cannot be afraid!”
“No, I am not afraid,” replied Denver steadily. “I am only — sorry!”
“Sorry! And why?”
“Well, in the first place I am sorry to have made so little good use of my time. All I have done has been to amass money, and what is that! — a delusive quest and an unsatisfactory gain, for I profit nothing by my life’s work — my gold cannot cure sickness or keep back death. In some unfortunate way, too,” he paused and sighed, “I have missed love out of all my fortunes, and now, here at the last, I am left alone to, meet my fate as best I can, and my ‘best’ is a bad attempt. Yes; I am sorry to die; I am sorry to leave the world, for it is beautiful; sorry to lose the sight of the sun and the blue sky—” he broke off for a moment, then went on, “But I tell you, Paul, if I could believe in another life after this one, as you do, and if the dream I had an hour ago were a truth, then I should not be sorry; I should be glad!”
“Ay, ay!” and Valitsky nodded sympathetically. “And what was this dream?”
“I dreamed I was in heaven,” said Denver, his troubled face lighting up with an inward rapture. “But not such a heaven as the parsons preach of; it was a world somewhat resembling this one, only vaster and more beautiful. I seemed to myself to have wakened suddenly out of a deep sleep, and as I woke I heard a voice — the loveliest and tenderest voice imaginable! — singing a sweet song; and I swear to you, Paul, I thought I knew and loved the unseen singer!”
Valitsky rose from the chair he had occupied near the window, and, approaching the bed, laid his fine, nervous hand on Denver’s wrist, fixing him at the same time wit
h his strange iridescent eyes.
“So you have heard a voice from the other world, my friend!” he said. “And yet you doubt! You know what I am — you know that for me, at times, the portals of the Unseen are set open. Men call me artist, idealist, madman, judging me thus because I know the touch of higher things than are common to ordinary eating, drinking, breeding, perishing clay; but let them call me what they will, at death my faith will bridge the tomb, where their materialism shrinks away in fear and horror. That voice you heard — listen and tell me — was it at all like this?”
He held up his hand with a warning gesture — and, through the silence, a faint, delicious sound of song came floating distinctly — clear, yet far off, as though it fell from the regions of the upper air, “My God!” cried Denver, starting up in his bed. “It is the same — the very same! Paul, Paul! What does it mean?”
“It means,” answered Valitsky steadily, “that you are on the verge of the Eternal, my friend; and that I, a poor unworthy medium of communication, am bidden to assure you of the fact. The heaven you dreamed of is a real heaven; the voice you hear is a real voice; and the One who sings awaits your coming with all the love you have missed in your life till now. Believe me or not as you will, I speak the truth. Death, or what mortals call death, will bestow upon you such joy as is incapable of human comprehension or expression, but at the same time it is but fair to you to say that you can have your choice; knowing what I have told you, you yet have the privilege given to you to decide whether you will die or live on.” Denver stared amazedly. “You talk in riddles, Paul! Live on? I? My doom is sealed; I know that well enough. You can do nothing, spiritualist and idealist though you are, to hinder it.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 900
