The Minister's Charge Part 38

"And what will the poor thing do?"

"Goodness knows."

"I'm afraid Badness knows. It will drive him to despair."

"Well, perhaps not--perhaps not," sighed the minister. "At any rate, we must not _let_ him be driven to despair. You must help me, Lucy."

"Of course."

Mrs. Sewell was a good woman, and she liked to make her husband feel it keenly.

"I knew that it must come to that," she said.

"Of course, we must not let him be ruined. If Mrs. Harmon insists upon his going at once--as I've no doubt she will--you must bring him here, and we must keep him till he can find some other home." She waited, and added, for a final stroke of merciless beneficence, "He can have Alfred's room, and Alf can take the front attic."

Sewell only sighed again. He knew she did not mean this.

Barker went back to the St. Albans, and shrunk into as small s.p.a.ce in the office as he could. He pulled a book before him and pretended to read, hiding the side of his face toward the door with the hand that supported his head. His hand was cold as ice, and it seemed to him as if his head were in a flame. Williams came and looked in at him once, and then went back to the stool which he occupied just outside the elevator-shaft when not running it. He whistled softly between his teeth, with intervals of respectful silence, and then went on whistling in absence of any whom it might offend.

Suddenly a m.u.f.fled clamour made itself heard from the depths of the dining-room, like that noise of voices which is heard behind the scenes at the theatre when an armed mob is about to burst upon the stage. Irish tones, high, windy, and angry, yells, and oaths defined themselves, and Mrs. Harmon came obesely hurrying from the dining-room toward the office, closely followed by Jerry, the porter. When upon duty, or, as some of the boarders contended, when in the right humour, he blacked the boots, and made the hard-coal fires, and carried the trunks up and down stairs. When in the wrong humour, he had sometimes been heard to swear at Mrs. Harmon, but she had excused him in this eccentricity because, she said, he had been with her so long. Those who excused it with her on these grounds conjectured arrears of wages as another reason for her patience. His outbreaks of bad temper had the Celtic uncertainty; the most innocent touch excited them, as sometimes the broadest snub failed to do so; and no one could foretell what direction his zigzag fury would take. He had disliked Lemuel from the first, and had chafed at the subordination into which he had necessarily fallen. He was now yelling after Mrs. Harmon, to know if she was not satisfied with _wan_ gutther-snoipe, that she must nades go and pick up another, and whether the new wan was going to be too good to take prisints of money for his worruk from the boarthers, and put all the rest of the help under the caumpliment of refusin' ut, or else demanin' themselves by takin' ut?

If this was the case, he'd have her to know that she couldn't kape anny other help; and the quicker she found it out the betther. Mrs. Harmon was trying to appease him by promising to see Lemuel at once, and ask him about it.

The porter raised his voice an octave. "D' ye think I'm a loyar, domn ye? Don't ye think I'm tellin' the thruth?"

He followed her to the little office, whither she had retreated on a purely mechanical fulfilment of her promise to speak to Lemuel, and crowded in upon them there.

"Here he is now!" he roared in his frenzy. "He's too good to take the money that's offered to 'um! He's too good to be waither! He wannts to play the gintleman! He thinks 'umself too good to do what the other servants do, that's been tin times as lahng in the house!"

At the noise some of the ladies came hurrying out of the public parlour to see what the trouble was. The street-door opened, and Berry entered with the two art-students. They involuntarily joined the group of terrified ladies.

"What's the row?" demanded Berry. "Is Jerry on the kick?"

No one answered. Lemuel stood pale and silent, fronting the porter, who was shaking his fist in his face. He had not heard anything definite in the outrage that a.s.sailed him. He only conjectured that it was exposure of Williams's character, and the story of his own career in Boston.

"Why don't you fire him out of there, Barker?" called the law-student.

"Don't be afraid of him!"

Lemuel remained motionless; but his glance sought the pitying eyes of the a.s.sembled women, and then dropped before the amaze that looked at him from those of Miss Carver. The porter kept roaring out his infamies.

Berry spoke again.

"Mrs. Harmon, do you want that fellow in there?"

"No, goodness knows I don't, Mr. Berry."

"All right." Berry swung the street-door open with his left hand, and seemed with the same gesture to lay his clutch upon the porter's collar.

"Fire him out myself!" he exclaimed, and with a few swiftly successive jerks and b.u.mps the burly shape of the porter was shot into the night.

"I want you to get me an officer, Jerry," he said, putting his head out after him. "There's been a blackguard makin' a row here. Never mind your hat! Go!"

"Oh, my good gracious, Mr. Berry!" gasped Mrs. Harmon, "what have you done?" "If it's back pay, Mrs. Harmon, we'll pa.s.s round the hat. Don't you be troubled. That fellow wasn't fit to be in a decent house."

Berry stopped a moment and looked at Lemuel. The art-students did not look at him at all; they pa.s.sed on upstairs with Berry.

The other ladies remained to question and to comment. Mrs. Harmon's nephew, to whom the uproar seemed to have penetrated in his bas.e.m.e.nt, came up and heard the story from them. He was quite decided. He said that Mr. Berry had done right. He said that he was tired of having folks d.a.m.n his aunt up hill and down dale; and that if Jerry had kept on a great deal longer, he would have said something to him himself about it.

The ladies justified him in the stand he took; they returned to the parlour to talk it all over, and he went back to his bas.e.m.e.nt. Mrs.

Harmon, in tears, retired to her room, and Lemuel was left standing alone in his office. The mate stole softly to him from the background of the elevator, where he had kept himself in safety during the outbreak.

"Look here, mate. This thing been about your ringin' me in here?"

"Oh, go away, go away!" Lemuel huskily entreated.

"Well, that's what I intend to do. I don't want to stay here and git you into no more trouble, and I know that's what's been done. You never done me no harm, and I don't want to do you none. I'm goin' right up to your room to git my clo'es, and then I'll skip."

"It won't do any good now. It'll only make it worse. You'd better stay now. You must."

"Well, if you say so, mate."

He went back to his elevator, and Lemuel sat down at his desk, and dropped his face upon his arms there. Toward eleven o'clock Evans came in and looked at him, but without speaking; he must have concluded that he was asleep; he went upstairs, but after a while he came down again and stopped again at the office door, and looked in on the haggard boy, hesitating as if for the best words. "Barker, Mr. Berry has been telling me about your difficulty here. I know all about you--from Mr. Sewell."

Lemuel stared at him. "And I will stand your friend, whatever people think. And I don't blame you for not wanting to be beaten by that ruffian; you could have stood no chance against him; and if you had thrashed him it wouldn't have been a great triumph."

"I wish he had killed me," said Lemuel from his dust-dry throat.

"Oh no; that's foolish," said the elder, with patient, sad kindness.

"Who knows whether death is the end of trouble? We must live things down, not die them down." He put his arm caressingly across the boy's shoulder.

"I can never live this down," said Lemuel. He added pa.s.sionately, "I wish I could die!"

"No," said Evans. "You must cheer up. Think of next Sat.u.r.day. It will soon be here, and then you'll be astonished that you felt so bad on Tuesday."

He gave Lemuel a parting pressure with his arm, and turned to go upstairs.

At the same moment the figure of Mrs. Harmon's nephew, distracted, violent, burst up through the door leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the editor, "is Mr. Harmon going to kick?"

"The house is on fire!" yelled the apparition.

A thick cloud of smoke gushed out of the elevator-shaft, and poured into the hall, which it seemed to fill instantly. It grew denser, and in another instant a wild hubbub began. The people appeared from every quarter and ran into the street, where some of the ladies began calling up at the windows to those who were still in their rooms. A stout little old lady came to an open window, and paid out hand over hand a small cable on which she meant to descend to the pavement; she had carried this rope about with her many years against the exigency to which she was now applying it. Within, the halls and the stairway became the scene of frantic encounter between wives and husbands rus.h.i.+ng down to save themselves, and then rus.h.i.+ng back to save their forgotten friends. Many appeared in the simple white in which they had left their beds, with the addition of such shawls or rugs as chance suggested. A house was opened to the fugitives on the other side of the street, and the crowd that had collected could not repress its applause when one of them escaped from the hotel-door and shot across. It applauded impartially men, women, and children, and, absorbed in the spectacle, no one sounded the fire-alarm; the department began to be severely condemned among the bystanders before the engines appeared.

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.