A Book o' Nine Tales Part 3

"Not that I recall," he answered, putting his hand beside hers upon the rustic table so that their fingers almost touched.

A moment of silence followed, broken only by the chirping of a few belated crickets, that, despite the advancement of the season, had not yet discontinued their autumnal concerts. The two, so quiet outwardly, sat with beating hearts, when suddenly a wandering breeze brought into the summer-house a puff of smoke from the burning salt meadows. It was laden with the fetid odor of consuming animal matter, and so powerful was it that both involuntarily turned away their heads.

"Bah!" Columbine cried. "How horrible! There must be a dead animal of some sort there that the fire has reached."

She stopped speaking and gazed with surprise at Tom, who had buried his face in his hands with a groan.

"What is it? Has it made you ill? It is gone now."

He lifted a face white with emotion.

"No," he said, "it has not made me ill,--physically, that is; but it has done worse, it has made me remember."

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "What is it? is it so terrible?"

She leaned toward him, and to poor Tom she looked the incarnation of enticing loveliness. Sympathy and interest--not unmixed, she being a woman, with curiosity--sparkled in her eyes, yet he nerved himself to tell her all that had come back to him.

"That smell of burning hide," he began, "brought it all up in a flash.

The s.h.i.+p got on fire; Miss Grant clung to me; there was just such an odor leaking out around the hatches from the hold where the flames were at the cargo; she--I--when everything else was right, when the fire was out, I was all wrong."

"I do not understand," Columbine said.

She drew away from him, her cheeks pale, her very lips wan. She did not meet his gaze, but sat with downcast eyes.

"I was engaged to Miss Grant. I did not pretend to love her, but I thought we were all bound for the bottom, and"--

He stopped helplessly; her eyes flashed upon him.

"And if a lie would soothe her last moments," she said, bitterly, "you-- No, no; I beg your pardon."

"I remember more," he went on, wrenching each word out as if by a strong effort of will. "The shock, and, perhaps, previous seeds of disease, were too much for her father; he died the day before we landed. She was alone in the world, she had no protector, and I--I married her at once, to protect her."

A sparrow flew up into the lattice outside the arbor without noticing the pair within, so dead was the stillness which now fell upon them. At length Columbine rose and stood an instant by the table which had been between them. She wavered an instant, then stooped and kissed him upon the forehead. Then without a word she turned from the arbor and fled swiftly to the house.

VI.

Left alone in the summer-house Tom's first feeling was a great throb of joy; but it gave place almost instantly to an aching pang of misery. To be a.s.sured of Columbine's love would have been intense happiness an hour before; now it could only add to his pain. He raged against the toils in which fate had entangled him, yet defiance to helplessness and every paroxysm of rage at destiny ended in a new and humiliating consciousness of his own impotence. He felt like one who walked blindfolded, with light granted him, not to avoid missteps, but merely to see them after they were taken.

One thing at least was clear to Tom,--that he must leave the Dysart mansion. To go on seeing Columbine day after day, with the knowledge at once of their love and of the barrier that stood between them, was a position too painful and too anomalous to be endured. Both for his own sake and for Miss Dysart's it was necessary that he delay no longer. Where he was going he was not at all clear; that he left to circ.u.mstances to decide. He quitted the arbor and walked toward the house, so intent upon his painful thoughts that at a turning of the path he ran plump against old Sarah, who was hurrying along with a face full of anxiety.

"Oh, mercy gracious, Mr. Thomas!" the faithful creature cried; "I'm sure I beg your pardon! But you look as if you'd seen a ghost!"

"So I have," he answered. "Where are you going with that spade?"

"To the salt meadows," she answered. "The fire's sure to come into the lower garden if we don't ditch it, and if it does, there'll be no stopping it from the house."

"What!" exclaimed Tom. "Where are the men?"

"There ain't no men," old Sarah returned, philosophically. "Why should there be?"

"But you are not going down to ditch alone?"

"'D I be likely to stop in-doors and let the house where I've lived fifty years burn over my head?" demanded she, grimly.

"Give me the spade," was his reply. "A little work will do me good."

Old Sarah remonstrated, but it ended in the strangely matched pair going together to the meadows below.

The dry sphagnum was readily cut through with the spade, and it was not a difficult, although a slow task, to dig a wide, shallow trench between the stretch of burning moss and the gardens. Once the ditch was complete, it would be easy to fight the fire on the home side, since there was nothing swift or fierce about the conflagration, it being rather a sullen, relentless smouldering of the moss and gra.s.s-roots, dry from the long drought.

Zealously as the two labored, the fire gained upon them, and as they worked, they could not but cast despairing glances at the long stretch of garden which lay still unprotected.

Meanwhile Columbine from her window had seen the laborers, and, in a moment realizing the danger, she flew to the library.

"Father," she cried, "the salt marshes have been burning all day, and the fire is almost up to the garden."

"Good heavens, Columbine, how impetuous you are! You have quite driven out of my head what became of the second son of--"

"But, father," she interrupted, impatiently, "do you realize that if you sit here pothering about second sons the house may be burned over our heads?"

"Burned!" exclaimed the genealogist, in dismay; "and all my papers scattered about! Oh, help me, Columbine, to pack up my notes; but don't take up anything without asking me where it goes. Do you think that iron-bound trunk will hold them all?"

Fearing to trust herself to reply, Columbine darted from the library, leaving her father to the half-frenzied collection of his papers, and betook herself to the salt meadows, where, grimed with smoke, Tom and the old serving woman were st.u.r.dily laboring. The pungent smoke eddied about them, and already old Sarah's gown showed marks of having been on fire in a dozen places. Columbine stood upon the descending path a moment and regarded them; then, with a step which bespoke determination, she went on and joined them.

"Go back!" shouted Tom, hoa.r.s.ely, as she approached; "don't you see how the sparks are flying about? You'll be a-fire before you know it."

And, indeed, the fire was becoming more active as it crept nearer to the edges of the meadows, where the gra.s.s was taller. The word of warning had hardly left Tom's lips before she found her dress burning, and while, being of wool, it was easily extinguished, Tom found in it an excuse for taking her in his arms to smother the flame.

"Go back to the house," he said, in a voice which was full of feeling, yet which it would have been impossible to disobey. "We shall save the place; but I cannot work while you are in danger."

"And you?" she demanded, clasping her hands upon his arm.

"Nonsense! there is no danger for me," he returned, smiling tenderly.

"Don't think of me."

It was not until late in the night that the contest against the fire was concluded. Tom worked with an energy in which desperation had a large place, while old Sarah, with the pathetic fidelity of an animal, labored by his side, indefatigable and unmurmuring. Faint streaks of light had begun to show in the east when Tom flung down the spade, upon which he had been leaning, for a last close scrutiny.

"It is all right now," he said; "there can't possibly be any fire left on this side of the marshes. It was lucky for us that the tide rose into the lower part of the trench."

Undemonstratively, as she had worked, old Sarah gathered herself together, grimy, stooping, quivering with weariness and hunger, and crept back to the house they had saved; while Tom, with tired step, climbed the path and took his way past the summer-house toward the other side of the mansion. As he pa.s.sed the arbor something stirred within.

"Columbine!" he said, in surprise, recognizing by some instinct that it was she. "Why, Columbine, what are you here for? You will be chilled to death."

"You sent me away," returned the girl, with a trace of dogged protest in her voice. "You wouldn't let me help."

"I should hope not," laughed Tom, nervously, taking off his hat and pa.s.sing his hand through his hair, from which odors of smoke flowed as he stirred it. "You were hardly made to fight fire."

"No," she answered, with sudden and significant vehemence, "I was not made to fight fire."