 | XVI.
FIGHTING FIRE. Neighbor Jackwood |  |
16. XVI.
FIGHTING FIRE.
It was a new thing for Hector to be closeted with Charlotte.
His mother augured favorably from the circumstance, and waited
with hopeful interest for the termination of the interview.
The hour seemed long: but at length, with a thrill of motherly
solicitude, she heard the sitting-room door open, and Hector come
forth. He was passing through the hall, when she hastened to
intercept him.
“Hector!” — she started with alarm — “are you ill?”
There was a desperate trouble in his pale face; he did not
glance aside, or turn his head, but, putting her off with a feeble
gesture, as she followed him, hurried from the house. Excited
with fresh fears, Mrs. Dunbury made haste to find Charlotte.
She entered the sitting-room. All was still; she saw no one; but
presently a low moan directed her attention to a large arm-chair,
before which lay Charlotte like one dead, with her face upon the
floor, hidden in the scattered masses of her hair.
“My child! what is this?” She lifted her up; she put back
the curls from her temples; she kissed her, and called her endearing
names. But the poor girl only moaned, and strove to prostrate
herself again upon the floor. Then, more than ever alarmed, but
fearing more for Hector than for her, Mrs. Dunbury threw on
hastily her bonnet and shawl, and walked out in the direction he
had been observed to take.
It was another smoky day. The drouth had continued; Autumn
had crept unawares in the dry path of Summer; the hills
were prematurely brown, the forests sere and dead, and the sun
looked like blood in the sky.
A few days before, in the anticipation of rain, Mr. Dunbury
had ventured to set fire to some obstinate stumps on the borders
of a swamp, west of the creek. Again, as usual that summer, all
signs had failed; the rain came not; the earth was dried to tinder;
and the fire spread in every direction. The men fought
against its inroads, with water and spades; drenched it, quenched
it, smothered it in dirt; killed it, cried victory, and left it for
dead a dozen times. But it had the blind mole's instinct for digging
in the earth. It ate off the roots of trees, and brought them
down crashing in the dry swamp. It devoured the soil itself; it
ran in the grass like snakes; and was continually watching its
opportunity to dodge into the fences, or to insinuate itself into the
balsam pump-logs, piled up on the edge of the swamp.
It had shown itself again that afternoon, leaping up, flushed
and exultant, in a spot where least expected. Its fantastic dancing
and clapping of hands had of course been speedily checked,
and it now lay humbled in dust and ashes; but columns of smoke,
arising from the burnt ground, marked the scene of the conflict.
Mrs. Dunbury thought she discerned Hector working with his
father, in the midst of the smoke. In her uncertainty, she spoke
to Corny, who was filling barrels with water, at the creek.
“Yis, that 's him,” drawled Corny. “I d'n' know what we
should done without him; for he beats all creation to work, when
he gits a little grain riled.”
“What do you mean by riled?”
“Wal, he was goin' by, when me an' Mist' Dunbury was runnin'
to put out the fire; and Mist' Dunbury told him to go an'
help, — kinder cross, I thought, an' I guess he thought so too, for
he did n't say nothin'; but the way he put in when he got to the
fire was a caution, you may as well believe! Darned if I could
do anything but stan' an' look on!”
“Well, fill the barrels; they will want the water.”
“I am fillin' 'em. — There! what in thunder was I thinkin'
on? They tumbled off 'm the sled, when I turned the hoss
'round, and I 've been 'n' filled one 'ithout puttin' it on agin!”
“Place the other on the sled, and dip the water from this one
into it,” said Mrs. Dunbury.
“Wal, I did n't think o' that. It 'll take a good while, b'sides.
If Bridget 'u'd come and help, we could lift it on.”
At this moment Mr. Dunbury shouted, “Make haste!”
“An't I makin' haste all I kin!” muttered Corny. — “He 'll
be mad as thunder, now, if he sees me pourin' water from one
barrel into t' other.”
He accordingly exercised his ingenuity in the matter, and
turned the horse partly around, to place him as a screen between
him and his two barrels and Mr. Dunbury and his two eyes.
After that he emptied barrel number one into barrel number two;
and, discovering that the contents of barrel number one did
not much more than half fill barrel number two, paused to philosophize
on the subject; when Mrs. Dunbury advanced the
hypothesis that there was an outlet somewhere. In fact, barrel
number two leaked like a sieve. By this time Mr. Dunbury was
shouting again. “Hurry with what you 've got!”
“Wa-a-al! I won't fuss no longer,” said Corny, taking the
reins. “There an't much of it, so I can ride.”
He jumped upon the sled, and, to save the wasting contents of
the barrel, struck the horse with the reins. The animal failed,
however, to keep pace with the leak: while he only walked, the
water was running: and by the time the scene of excitement was
reached, barrel number two was empty.
“I done jest as ye told me to!” screamed Corny.
Out of respect for Mr. Dunbury's length of arm, he dodged
behind the barrel, which was overturned between them, and
stepped back into a bed of hot ashes, up to his knees.
Made aware of her husband's excitement by the united witness
of her eyes and ears, but feeling it still more in her wounded
spirit, Mrs. Dunbury's heart failed her, and, giving a last anxious
look at Hector, as he disappeared in the smoke, she returned
slowly to the house.
An hour later, Bridget blew the horn, and Mr. Dunbury and
Corny came up to supper. They were covered with sweat and
soot; and the brow of the farmer was dark and angry.
“Where is Hector?” asked the invalid, anxiously.
“He is in the swamp.”
“Is n't he coming to supper?”
“It was necessary for some one to watch the fire.”
“I offered to,” said Corny, blacking a towel with his half-washed
face, “but he said he 'd stay; so I tho't I 'd let him, if he
could see any fun in 't.”
After supper, Corny was sent to take Hector's place; but he
returned, not long after, and made his appearance, whittling.
“Where is Hector?” asked Mrs. Dunbury again.
“He 's out there.”
“But you were told to watch the fire!”
“Wal, he said he 'd watch it. B'sides, the fire 's all under now,
and he could leave it 's well as not, if he was a mind to.”
Mrs. Dunbury then went to the garden where her husband
was at work, and expressed to him something of her fears for
Hector. “Would it not be well to speak to him yourself?” she
ventured to say.
“And go down on my knees to him?” added her husband,
with a lurid look.
“O, no, not that, but you know his spirit; he cannot forget a
wrong; an unjust or unworthy word corrodes his very heart.”
Mr. Dunbury made no reply, but kept on husking the garden
corn, and throwing the ears into the basket. His face was red and
angry; and, with her knowledge of his moods, she judged it wise
to leave him. It was now fast growing dark, and as a last resort
she sent Bridget with a message to her son.
But the evening dragged on, and still Hector did not appear.
Under the wide canopy of smoke that burdened the night air and
hid the stars, he sat upon a fallen trunk, in the midst of the black
field. The subtle element was “under,” as Corny had declared;
but, though crushed, it was not killed: angry eyes starting out now
and then, and winking redly in the dark, betrayed its lurking
life. No other object was visible on any side, far or near, save
the darker shadows of the swamp, contrasting dimly with the
misty gloom of the fields.
There was something deeply solemn in the scene. To Hector,
it seemed typical of his own soul.
In the night of despair by which he was encompassed, he
of a deep-burning passion, which he had trampled beneath his
feet. Nor was the correspondence destroyed, when, looking to the
eastward, he beheld a startling apparition in the sky. It was of
two blood-red spectres, flickering and glowing like fragments of
the moon in flames. He knew that the phenomenon was caused
by fires on the high mountain-top; but his distempered fancy
could see only two grotesque and awful eyes gazing upon him out
of heaven, and symbolizing the still more awful eyes of conscience
in his soul.
The night wore on. The giant eyes blinked sleepily. The
embers in the ground twinkled, and shifted from place to place,
like electric sparks. The leaves rustled in the swamp, the nightwind
moaned in the trees. Then came a snapping and crackling
of roots, a stir in the air, a murmur and a whisper overhead, followed
by a deep, hoarse whistle, swelling to a roar, and a resounding
crash in the blind woods. The earth shuddered, and dull
echoes smote the hills. A tree had fallen. Still Hector sat and
watched; and now, while his limbs became chilled with the cold,
his thoughts grew wild and hideous. He imagined himself surrounded
by vast pits of smouldering fire. Then it seemed that
the world had been destroyed, and that he was the sole survivor
of his race, brooding upon the ruins. All the people he had ever
known moved past him in grimacing and solemn procession.
They were but as phantoms, that had never had a real existence.
The life he had lately lived was something vague and visionary,
and far-off in the past; his own bodily form seemed strange to
him; and he wondered at the gigantic proportions of the being
that seemed himself. Suddenly, all this passed, and he saw one
sole, clear image, as of purest amber, exquisitely soft and glorious,
falling, falling forever, in a chaotic sky. It was the image
of Charlotte.
He knew not whether these fancies ended in sleep; but when
his mind aroused to consciousness again, the mountain fires had
faded, and the dawn was faintly struggling through the dim smoke
that shrouded the world.
| XVI.
FIGHTING FIRE. Neighbor Jackwood | |