CHAPTER X
THE FIRE
"That was Roselle Upman that hollered," remarked Janey Wilcox, breakingthe agitated silence which had fallen upon the supper table. "You cantell it's him because he's had all his front teeth pulled out."
"I wasn't born in the woods to be skeert by an owl!" replied Abner,with a great show of tranquillity, helping himself to another slice ofbread. "Miss, you ain't half makin' out a supper!"
But this bravado could not maintain itself. In another minute therecame a loud chorus of angry yells, heightened at its finish by two orthree pistol shots. Then Abner pushed back his chair and rose slowly tohis feet, and the rest sprang up all around the table.
"Hurley," said the farmer, speaking as deliberately as he knew how,doubtless with the idea of reassuring the others, "you go out into thekitchen with the women folks, an' bar the woodshed door, an' bring inthe axe with you to stan' guard over the kitchen door. I'll look outfor this part o' the house myself."
"I want to stay in here with you, Abner," said M'rye.
"No, you go out with the others!" commanded the master with firmness,and so they all filed out with no hint whatever of me. The shadow ofthe lamp-shade had cut me off altogether from their thoughts.
Perhaps it is not surprising that my recollections of what now ensuedshould lack definiteness and sequence. The truth is, that my terrorat my own predicament, sitting there with no covering for my feet andcalves but the burdock leaves and that absurd shawl, swamped everythingelse in my mind. Still, I do remember some of it.
Abner strode across to the bookcase and took up the gun, his big thumbresting determinedly on the hammers. Then he marched to the door, threwit wide open, and planted himself on the threshold, looking out intothe darkness.
"What's your business here, whoever you are?" he called out, in deepdefiant tones.
"We've come to take you an' Paddy out for a little ride on a rail!"answered the same shrill, mocking voice we had heard at first. Thenothers took up the hostile chorus. "We've got some pitch a-heatin'round in the back yard!" "You won't catch cold; there's plenty o'feathers!" "Tell the Irishman here's some more ears for him to chawon!" "Come out an' take your Copperhead medicine!"
There were yet other cries which the howling wind tore up intoinarticulate fragments, and then a scattering volley of cheers, againemphasized by pistol-shots. While the crack of these still chilled myblood, a more than usually violent gust swooped round Abner's burlyfigure, and blew out the lamp.
Terrifying as the first instant of utter darkness was, the second wasrecognizable as a relief. I at once threw myself out of the chair, andcrept along back of the stove to where my stockings and boots had beenput to dry. These I hastened, with much trembling awkwardness, to pullon, taking pains to keep the big square old stove between me and thatopen veranda door.
"Guess we won't take no ride to-night!" I heard Abner roar out, afterthe shouting had for the moment died away.
"You got to have one!" came back the original voice. "It's needful foryour complaint!"
"I've got somethin' here that'll fit _your_ complaint!" bellowed thefarmer, raising his gun. "Take warnin'--the first cuss that sets footon this stoop, I'll bore a four-inch hole clean through him. I'vegot squirrel shot, an' I've got buck-shot, an' there's plenty morebehind--so take your choice!"
There were a good many derisive answering yells and hoots, and someoneagain fired a pistol in the air, but nobody offered to come up on theveranda.
Emboldened by this, I stole across the room now to one of the windows,and lifting a corner of the shade, strove to look out. At first therewas nothing whatever to be seen in the utter blackness. Then I madeout some faint reddish sort of diffused light in the upper air, whichbarely sufficed to indicate the presence of some score or more darkfigures out in the direction of the pump. Evidently they _had_ built afire around in the back yard, as they said--probably starting it thereso that its light might not disclose their identity.
This looked as if they really meant to tar-and-feather Abner andHurley. The expression was familiar enough to my ears, and, frompictures in stray illustrated weeklies that found their way to theCorners, I had gathered some general notion of the procedure involved.The victim was stripped, I knew, and daubed over with hot melted pitch;then a pillow-case of feathers was emptied over him, and he was forcedastride a fence-rail, which the rabble hoisted on their shouldersand ran about with. But my fancy balked at and refused the task ofimagining Abner Beech in this humiliating posture. At least it wasclear to my mind that a good many fierce and bloody things would happenfirst.
Apparently this had become clear to the throng outside as well. Wholeminutes had gone by, and still no one mounted the veranda to seek closequarters with the farmer--who stood braced with his legs wide apart,bare-headed and erect, the wind blowing his huge beard sidewise overhis shoulder.
"Well! ain't none o' you a-comin'?" he called out at last, withimpatient sarcasm. "Thought you was so sot on takin' me out an' havin'some fun with me!" After a brief pause, another taunt occurred to him."Why, even the niggers you're so in love with," he shouted, "they ain'tsuch dod-rotted cowards as you be!"
A general movement was discernible among the shadowy forms outside.I thought for the instant that it meant a swarming attack upon theveranda. But no! suddenly it had grown much lighter, and the mob wasmoving away toward the rear of the house. The men were shouting thingsto one another, but the wind for the moment was at such a turbulentpitch that all their words were drowned. The reddened light waxedbrighter still--and now there was nobody to be seen at all from thewindow.
"Hurry here! Mr. Beech! _We're all afire!_" cried a frightened voice inthe room behind me.
It may be guessed how I turned.
The kitchen door was open, and the figure of a woman stood on thethreshold, indefinitely black against a strange yellowish-drab halflight which framed it. This woman--one knew from the voice that it wasEsther Hagadorn--seemed to be wringing her hands.
"Hurry! Hurry!" she cried again, and I could see now that the littlepassage was full of gray luminous smoke, which was drifting past herinto the living-room. Even as I looked, it had half obscured her form,and was rolling in, in waves.
Abner had heard her, and strode across the room now, gun still inhand, into the thick of the smoke, pushing Esther before him andshutting the kitchen door with a bang as he passed through. I put ina terrified minute or two alone in the dark, amazed and half-benumbedby the confused sounds that at first came from the kitchen, and by thehorrible suspense, when a still more sinister silence ensued. Thenthere rose a loud crackling noise, like the incessant popping of somegiant variety of corn. The door burst open again, and M'rye's tall formseemed literally flung into the room by the sweeping volume of densesmoke which poured in. She pulled the door to behind her--then gave asnarl of excited emotion at seeing me by the dusky reddened radiancewhich began forcing its way from outside through the holland windowshades.
"Light the lamp, you gump!" she commanded, breathlessly, and fell withfierce concentration upon the task of dragging furniture out from thebed-room. I helped her in a frantic, bewildered fashion, after I hadlighted the lamp, which flared and smoked without its shade, as wetoiled. M'rye seemed all at once to have the strength of a dozen men.She swung the ponderous chest of drawers out end on end; she fairlylifted the still bigger bookcase, after I had hustled the books outon to the table; she swept off the bedding, slashed the cords, andjerked the bed-posts and side-pieces out of their connecting socketswith furious energy, till it seemed as if both rooms must have beendismantled in less time than I have taken to tell of it.
The crackling overhead had swollen now to a wrathful roar, rising abovethe gusty voices of the wind. The noise, the heat, the smoke, andterror of it all made me sick and faint. I grew dizzy, and did foolishthings in an aimless way, fumbling about among the stuff M'rye washurling forth. Then all at once her darkling, smoke-wrapped figure shotup to an enormous height, the lamp began to go round, and I felt
myselfwith nothing but space under my feet, plunging downward with awfulvelocity, surrounded by whirling skies full of stars.
* * * * *
There was a black night-sky overhead when I came to my senses again,with flecks of snow in the cold air on my face. The wind had fallen,everything was as still as death, and someone was carrying me in hisarms. I tried to lift my head.
"Aisy now!" came Hurley's admonitory voice, close to my ear. "We'll bethere in a minyut."
"No--I'm all right--let me down," I urged. He set me on my feet, and Ilooked amazedly about me.
The red-brown front of our larger hay-barn loomed in a faint unnaturallight, at close quarters, upon my first inquiring gaze. The big slidingdoors were open, and the slanting wagon-bridge running down from theirthreshold was piled high with chairs, bedding, crockery, milk-pans,clothing--the jumbled remnants of our household gods. Turning, I lookedacross the yard upon what was left of the Beech homestead--a glare ofcherry light glowing above a fiery hole in the ground.
Strangely enough this glare seemed to perpetuate in its outlines theshape and dimensions of the vanished house. It was as if the house werestill there, but transmuted from joists and clap-boards and shingles,into an illuminated and impalpable ghost of itself. There was a weirdeffect of transparency about it. Through the spectral bulk of red lightI could see the naked and gnarled apple-trees in the home-orchard onthe further side; and I remembered at once that painful and strikingparallel of Scrooge gazing through the re-edified body of Jacob Marley,and beholding the buttons at the back of his coat. It all seemed somemonstrous dream.
But no, here the others were. Janey Wilcox and the Underwood girl hadcome out from the barn, and were carrying in more things. I perceivednow that there was a candle burning inside, and presently EstherHagadorn was to be seen. Hurley had disappeared, and so I went up thesloping platform to join the women--noting with weak surprise thatmy knees seemed to have acquired new double joints and behaved as ifthey were going in the other direction. I stumbled clumsily once I wasinside the barn, and sat down with great abruptness on a milking-stool,leaning my head back against the hay-mow, and conscious of entireindifference as to whether school kept or not.
Again it was like some half-waking vision--the feeble light of thecandle losing itself upon the broad high walls of new hay; the hugeshadows in the rafters overhead; the women-folk silently moving about,fixing up on the barn floor some pitiful imitation, poor souls, ofthe home that had been swept off the face of the earth, and outside,through the wide sprawling doors, the dying away effulgence of theembers of our roof-tree lingering in the air of the winter night.
Abner Beech came in presently, with the gun in one hand, and ablackened and outlandish-looking object in the other, which turned outto be the big pink sea-shell that used to decorate the parlor mantel.He held it up for M'rye to see, with a grave, tired smile on his face.
"We got it out, after all--just by the skin of our teeth," he said, andHurley, behind him, confirmed this by an eloquent grimace.
M'rye's black eyes snapped and sparkled as she lifted the candle andsaw what this something was. Then she boldly put up her face and kissedher husband with a resounding smack. Truly it was a night of surprises.
"That's about the only thing I had to call my own when I was married,"she offered in explanation of her fervor, speaking to the company atlarge. Then she added in a lower tone, to Esther: "_He_ used to playwith it for hours at a stretch--when he was a baby."
"'Member how he used to hold it up to his ear, eh, mother?" askedAbner, softly.
M'rye nodded her head, and then put her apron up to her eyes fora brief moment. When she lowered it, we saw an unaccustomed smilemellowing her hard-set, swarthy face.
The candle light flashed upon a tear on her cheek that the apron hadmissed.
"I guess I _do_ remember!" she said, with a voice full of tenderness.
Then Esther's hand stole into M'rye's and the two women stood togetherbefore Abner, erect and with beaming countenances, and he smiled uponthem both.
It seemed that we were all much happier in our minds, now that ourhouse had been burned down over our heads.