Chapter 4

Bulldog John had gone on doggedly courting, and butterfly Lane had taken to seeing too much convivial company in Heydon Hey and Castle Barfield, and there was a fear in Bertha’s mind that if her influence had not been permanent, it had at least started the young man on a track likely to prove disastrous. These emotional people, quick to feel and quick to forget, are hardly to be dealt with without danger.

Lane’s dissipations must have been graver than even rumour gave them discredit for being. His midnight junketings had made a ghost of him, and to see him at any moment when he thought himself unobserved was to wonder how long such a mournful and broken young gentleman could possibly rouse himself to fill the part of King even in a rustic Bohemia.

Autumn was on the land. The corn-shocks were standing in the stubbled fields, and the night air was full of gossamer, which twined itself about the faces of all wayfarers. Rural work had gone on merrily all day, and when the sun set silence fell, and darkness like a warm shroud. Lights flickered a while in the village and the farmhouse, and then went out one by one. The moon stole over the Beacon Hill, and looked mildly across the valley.

There was not a breath of air stirring, and not a sound upon the night except for the placid and continual gurgle of the stream which had no voice at all by day. Yes. One other sound there was, a sound as of some one moving uneasily in a creaking chair. Creak, creak, creak It grew momently. Crackle, crackle, crackle. Still it grew. A tongue like the tongue of a snake--so light and fine and swift was it--flashed out of a crevice, and flew back again, flashed out again, and again withdrew. Then the snake’s body flashed out after it, and melted on the moonlit air. Another, and another, and another. Then a low roaring noise, and all the windows of the basement shone out ruby-coloured, and the moon looked bleared by contrast.

A distant voice from the village called out ‘Fire!’ There was a crash of opening windows, a tumult of clapping doors, a storm of barking dogs, excited voices, hurrying feet.

Old and young, male and female, robed anyhow, ran hard towards the farmhouse, and poured in a thunderous stream across the echoing wooden bridge which spanned the river. The farmhouse was a tower of flame, fantastic turrets springing here and there. The dry timbers, centuries old, made the best of food for fire, and the place flamed like a tar-barrel. The screams of doomed horses came with hideous uproar from the stables in the rear.

The farmer and his wife, the men servants and the maid servants, were in the garden, all pale with fear and helpless; but the mother tore the night with calling on her daughter’s name.

Bulldog John and his rival came last of all, though they ran like hounds, and they crossed the bridge and dashed through the crowd together.

‘Oh, John,’ cried the agonised mother, clutching at him as though he were an ark of safety. ‘You’ll save her--won’t you? God help her! You’ll save her--won’t you, John?’

One figure, black as night against the fierce glow of the flame, dashed across the space between the crowd and the farmhouse. It was hardly seen, and scarce believed in by those who thought they saw.

‘John,’ cried the wretched mother, ‘you’ll save her! You as loved her so! You’ll save her!’

There is no manhood in the world that needs to be ashamed to hang back from an enterprise so hopeless and so terrible. The woman shrieked and prayed--the man stood motionless with white face and staring eyes.

Then came one wild cry from half a dozen throats at once, and next upleapt a roar that struck the noise of the fire out of being for an instant. For the figure, black against the fiery glow, was back again, by some such stupendous chance, or heaven-wrought miracle, as only desperate valour ever wins. A figure huddled in a blanket lay in his arms, and as he came racing towards the crowd they fell together. They were lifted and borne out of the circle of fierce heat and flying sparks.

The house was left to burn, and every thought was centred on the rescuer and the rescued. The fresh air roused Bertha from her swoon, and at the first opening of her eyes and the first words she spoke the mother went as mad with joy as she had been with terror.

‘Alive!--alive! Safe!--safe! And oh, my God! my Christian friends, it was the Butterfly as did it!’

But it was a full month later when Lane Protheroe asked his first question,

‘Where’s Bertha?’

‘Hush! my dear, dear darlin’,’ said Mrs. Fellowes, her eyes brimful of tears. ‘Lie quiet, there’s a dear.’

‘Where’s Bertha?’

‘Safe and well, love; safe and well.’

‘I’m thirsty,’ said the Butterfly.

He was supplied with a cooling drink, and fell to sleep smiling, with unchanged posture. In half a dozen hours he woke again.

‘Where’s Bertha?’

‘Here, dearest.’

And we leave them hand in hand, yearning on each other through their blissful tears.

End of Project Gutenberg’s Bulldog And Butterfly, by David Christie Murray