Chapter 3

But Demming did not move. "Don' you want ter say a prayer, Bishop?" he said in a coaxing tone,--"jes' a little mite o' one fur you an' me? Ye don' need ter min' 'bout sayin' 't loud. I'll unnerstan' th' intention, an' feel jes' so edified. I will, fur a fac'."

"Go, first, Demming. I am afraid for you!"

"I'm a-gwine, Bishop," said Demming, in the same soft, coaxing tone. "Don' min' _me_. I'm all right." He crouched down lower, so that the Bishop could not see him, and the group below saw him rest the muzzle of the pistol on the window-sill and take aim.

A gasp ran through the crowd,--that catching of the breath in which overtaxed feeling relieves itself. "He's doin' the las' kindness he can to him," said the brakeman to the conductor, "and by the Lord, he's giv' his own life to do it!"

The flames had pierced the roof, and streamed up to the sky. Through the sickening, dull roar they heard the Bishop's voice again:

"Demming, are you gone?"

The cracker struck a loose piece of wood, and sent it clattering down. "Yes, Bishop, that wuz me. I'm safe on th' groun'. Good-by, Bishop. I do feel 'bleeged ter you; an', Bishop, them chickens _wuz_ the fust time. They wuz, on my honah. Now, Bishop, shet yo' eyes an' pray, fur it's a-comin!"

The Bishop prayed. They could not hear what he said, below. No one heard save the uncouth being who clung to the window, revolver in hand, steadily dying the creeping red death. But they knew that, out of sight, a man who had smiled on them, full of life and hope, but an hour ago was facing such torture as had tried the martyr's courage, and facing it with as high a faith.

With one accord men and women bent their heads. Jim, the brakeman, alone remained standing, his form erect, his eyes fixed on the two iron lines that made an angle away in the horizon. "Come on!" he yelled, leaping wildly into the air. "Fo' the Lord's sake, hurry! D---- him, but he's the bulliest runner!"

Then they all saw a man flying down the track, axe in hand. He ran up to the car side. He began to climb. A dozen hands caught him. "You're a dead man if you get in there!" was the cry. "Don't you see it's all afire?"

"Try it from the outside, Colonel!" said the conductor.

"Don't you see I haven't time?" cried Talboys. "He'll be dead before we can get to him. Stand back, my men, and, Jim, be ready to pull us both out!"

The steady tones and Talboys's business-like air had an instantaneous effect. The crowd were willing enough to be led; they fell back, and Talboys dropped through the window. To those outside the whole car seemed in a blaze, and over them the smoke hung like a pall; but through the crackling and roaring and the crash of falling timber came the clear ring of axe blows, and Talboys's voice shouting, "I say, my man, don't lose heart! We're bound to get you out!"

"Lordy, he don't know who 'tis," said Demming. "Nobody could see through that thar smoke!"

All at once the uninjured side of the car gave way beneath the flames, falling in with an immense crash. The flame leaped into the air.

"They're gone!" cried the conductor.

"No, they're not!" yelled Demming. "He's got him, safe an' soun'!" And as he spoke, scorched and covered with dust, bleeding from a cut on his cheek, but holding the Bishop in his arms, Talboys appeared at the window. Jim snatched the Bishop, the conductor helped out Talboys, and half a dozen hands laid hold of Demming. He heard the wild cheer that greeted them; he heard another cheer for the men with the water, just in sight; but he heard no more, for as they pulled him down a dozen fiery pincers seemed tearing at his leg, and he fainted away.

* * * * *

The Bishop's daughter sat in her room, making a very pretty picture, with her white hands clasped on her knee and her soft eyes uplifted. She looked sad enough to please a pre-Raphaelite of sentiment. Yet her father, whom this morning she would have declared she loved better than any one in the world, had just been saved from a frightful death. She knew the story of his deliverance. At last she felt that most unexpected thrill of admiration for Talboys; but Talboys had vanished. He was gone, it was all ended, and she owned to herself that she was wretched. Her father was with Demming and the doctors. The poor vagabond must hobble through life on one leg, henceforward. "If he lived," the doctor had said, making even his existence as a cripple problematic. Poor Demming, who had flung away his life to save her father from suffering,--a needless, useless sacrifice, as it proved, but touching Louise the more because of its very failure!

At this stage in her thoughts, she heard Sam, the waiter, knocking softly, outside. Her first question was about Demming. "The operation's ovah, miss, an' Mr. Demming he's sinkin'," answered Sam, giving the sick man a title he had never accorded him before, "an' he axes if you'd be so kin' 's to step in an' speak to him; he's powerful anxious to see you."

Silently Louise rose and followed the mulatto. They had carried Demming to the hotel; it was the nearest place, and the Bishop wished it. His wife had been sent for, and was with him. Her timid, tear-stained face was the first object that met Louise's eye. She sat in a rocking-chair close to the bed, and, by sheer force of habit, was unconsciously rocking to and fro, while she brushed the tears from her eyes. Demming's white face and tangle of iron-gray hair lay on the pillow near her.

He smiled feebly, seeing Louise. She did not know anything better to do than to take his hand, the tears brightening her soft eyes. "Laws," said Demming, "don' do thet. I ain't wuth it. Look a yere, I got sunthin' ter say ter you. An' you mustn't min', 'cause I mean well. You know 'bout--yes'day mahnin'. Mabbe you done what you done not knowin' yo' own min',--laws, thet's jes' girls,--an' I wants you ter know jes' what kin' o' feller he is. You know he saved yo' pa, but you don' know, mabbe, thet he didn't know 'twas the Bishop till he'd jump down in thet thar flamin' pit o' hell, as 'twere, an' fished him out. He done it jes' 'cause he'd thet pluck in him, an'--don' you go fer ter chippin' in, Cunnel. I'm a dyin' man, an' don' you forget it! Thar he is, miss, hidin' like behin' the bed."

Louise during this speech had grown red to the roots of her hair. She looked up into Talboys's face. He had stepped forward. His usual composure had quite left him, so that he made a pitiful picture of embarrassment, not helped by crumpled linen and a borrowed coat a world too large for him. "It's just a whim of his," he whispered, hurriedly; "he wanted me to stay. I didn't know--I didn't understand! For God's sake, don't suppose I meant to take such an advantage of the situation! I am going directly. I shall leave Aiken to-night."

It was only the strain on her nerves, but Louise felt the oddest desire to laugh. The elegant Martin cut such a very droll figure as a hero. Then her eye fell on Demming's eager face, and a sudden revulsion of feeling, a sudden keen realization of the tragedy that Martin had averted, brought the tears back to her eyes. Her beautiful head dropped. "Why do you go--now?" said she.

"Hev you uns made it up, yet?" murmured Demming's faint voice.

"Yes," Talboys answered, "I think we have, and--I thank you, Demming." The vagabond waved his hand with a feeble assumption of his familiar gesture. "Yo' a square man, Cunnel. I allus set a heap by you, though I didn't let on. An' she's a right peart young lady. I'm glad yo' gwine ter be so happy. Laws, I kind o' wish I wuz to see it, even on a wooden leg--" The woman at his side began to sob. "Thar, thar, Alwynda, don' take on so; cyan't be helped. You mus' 'scuse her, gen'lemen; she so petted on me she jes' cyan't hole in!"

"Demming," said the Bishop, "my poor friend, the time is short; is there anything you want me to do?" Demming's dull eyes sparkled with a glimmer of the old humor.

"Well, Bishop, ef you don' min', I'd like you ter conduc' the fun'al services. Reckon they'll be a genuwide co'pse this yere time, fo' suah. An', Bishop, you'll kind o' look arter Alwynda; see she gits her cyoffee an' terbacco all right. An' I wants ter 'sure you all again thet them thar chickens wuz the fust an' on'y thing I evah laid han's on t' want mine. Thet's the solemn truf; ain't it, Alwynda?"

The poor woman could only rock herself in the chair, and sob, "Yes, 'tis. An', he's been a good husband to me. I've allus hed the bes' uv everything! Oh, Lordy, 'pears 's though I cyan't bear it, nohow!"

Louise put her hand gently on the thin shoulder, saying, "I will see that she never wants anything we can give, Demming; and we will try to comfort her."

The cracker looked wistfully from her fresh, young face to the worn face below. "She wuz 's peart an' purty 's you, miss, w'en I fust struck up with 'er," said he, slowly. "Our little gal wuz her very image. Alwynda," in a singularly soft, almost diffident tone, "don' take on so; mabbe I'm gwine fer ter see 'er again. 'Twon't do no harm ter think so, onyhow," he added, with a glance at Talboys, as though sure there of comprehension.

Then the Bishop spoke, solemnly, though with sympathy, urging the dying man, whose worldly affairs were settled, to repent of his sins and prepare for eternity. "Shall I pray for you, Demming?" he said, in conclusion.

"Jes' as you please, Bishop," answered Demming, and he tried to wave his hand. "I ain't noways partickler. I reckon God a'mighty knows I'd be th' same ole Demming ef I could get up, an' I don' mean ter make no purtenses. But mabbe it'll cheer up th' ole 'ooman a bit. So you begin, an' I'll bring in an Amen whenever it's wanted!"

So speaking, Demming closed his eyes wearily, and the Bishop knelt by the bedside. Talboys and Louise left them, thus. After a while, the wife stretched forth her toil-worn hand and took her husband's. She thought she was aware of a weak pressure. But when the prayer ended there came no Amen. Demming was gone where prayer may only faintly follow; nor could the Bishop ever decide how far his vagabond had joined in his petitions. Such doubts, however, did not prevent his cherishing an assured hope that the man who died for him was safe, forever. The Bishop's theology, like that of most of us, yielded, sometimes, to the demands of the occasion.

LOST.

BY EDWARD BELLAMY.

_Scribner's Monthly, December, 1877._

The 25th of May, 1866, was no doubt to many a quite indifferent date, but to two persons it was the saddest day of their lives. Charles Randall that day left Bonn, Germany, to catch the steamer home to America, and Ida Werner was left with a mountain of grief on her gentle bosom, which must be melted away drop by drop, in tears, before she could breathe freely again.

A year before, Randall, hunting for apartments, his last term at the university just begun, had seen the announcement, "_Zimmer zu vermiethen_," in the hall below the flat where the Werners lived. Ida answered his ring, for her father was still at his government office, and her mother had gone out to the market to buy the supper. She would much rather her mother had been at home to show the gentleman the rooms; but knowing that they could not afford to lose a chance to rent them, she plucked up courage, and, candle in hand, showed him through the suite. When he came next day with his baggage he learned for the first time what manner of apartments he had engaged; for although he had protracted the investigation the previous evening to the furthest corner, and had been most exacting as to explanations, he had really rented the rooms entirely on account of a certain light in which a set of Madonna features, in auburn hair, had shown at the first opening of the door.

A year had passed since this, and a week ago a letter from home had stated that his father, indignant at his unexplained stay six months beyond the end of his course, had sent him one last remittance, barely sufficient for a steamer ticket, with the intimation that if he did not return on a set day he must thenceforth attend to his own exchequer. The 25th was the last day on which he could leave Bonn to catch the requisite steamer. Had it been in November, nature at least would have sympathized; it was cruel that their autumn time of separation should fall in the spring, when the sky is full of bounteous promise and the earth of blissful trust.

Love is so improvident that a parting a year away is no more feared than death, and a month's end seems dim and distant. But a week--a week only--that even to love is short, and the beginning of the end. The chilling mist that rose from the gulf of separation so near before them, overshadowed all the brief remnant of their path. They were constantly together. But a silence had come upon them. Never had words seemed idler, they had so much to say. They could say nothing that did not mock the weight on their hearts, and seem trivial and impertinent because it was exclusive of more important matter. The utmost they could do was to lay their hearts open toward each other to receive every least impression of voice, and look, and manner, to be remembered afterward. At evening they went into the minster church, and sitting in the shadows listened to the sweet shrill choir of boys whose music distilled the honey of sorrow, and as the deep bass organ chords gripped their hearts with the tones that underlie all weal and woe, they looked in each other's eyes and did for a space feel so near that all the separation that could come after seemed but a trifling thing.

It was all arranged between them. He was to earn money, or get a position in business, and return in a year or two at most and bring her to America.

"Oh," she said once, "if I could but sleep till thou comest again to wake me, how blessed I should be; but, alas, I must wake all through the desolate time!"

Although for the most part she comforted him rather than he her, yet at times she gave way, and once suddenly turned to him and hid her face on his breast, and said, trembling with tearless sobs:

"I know I shall never see thee more, Karl. Thou wilt forget me in thy great far land and wilt love another. My heart tells me so."

And then she raised her head and her streaming eyes blazed with anger.

"I will hover about thee, and if thou lovest another I will kill her as she sleeps by thy side."

And the woman must have loved him much, who, after seeing that look of hers, would have married him. But a moment after she was listening with abject ear to his promises.

The day came at last. He was to leave at three o'clock. After the noontide meal Ida's mother sat with them and they talked a little about America, Frau Werner exerting herself to give a cheerful tone to the conversation, and Randall answering her questions absently and without taking his eyes off Ida, who felt herself beginning to be seized with a nervous trembling. At last Frau Werner rose and silently left the room, looking back at them as she closed the door with eyes full of tears. Then as if by a common impulse they rose and put their arms about each other's necks, and their lips met in a long shuddering kiss. The breath came quicker and quicker; sobs broke the kisses; tears poured down and made them salt and bitter as parting kisses should be in which sweetness is mockery. Hitherto they had controlled their feelings, or rather she had controlled him; but it was no use any longer, for the time had come, and they abandoned themselves to the terrible voluptuousness of unrestrained grief, in which there is a strange meaningless suggestion of power, as though it might possibly be a force that could affect or remove its own cause if but wild and strong enough.

"Herr Randall, the carriage waits and you will lose the train," said Frau Werner from the door, in a husky voice.

"I will not go, by God!" he swore, as he felt her clasp convulsively strengthen at the summons. The lesser must yield to the greater, and no loss or gain on earth was worth the grief upon her face. His father might disinherit him; America might sink, but she must smile again. And she did--brave, true girl and lover. The devotion his resolute words proved was like a strong nervine to restore her self-control. She smiled as well as her trembling lips would let her, and said, as she loosed him from her arms:

"No, thou must go, Karl. But thou wilt return, _nicht wahr_?"

I would not venture to say how many times he rushed to the door, and glancing back at her as she stood there desolate, followed his glance once more to her side. Finally, Frau Werner led him as one dazed to the carriage, and the impatient driver drove off at full speed.

* * * * *

It is seven years later, and Randall is pacing the deck of an ocean steamer, outward bound from New York. It is the evening of the first day out. Here and there passengers are leaning over the bulwarks pensively regarding the sinking sun as it sets for the first time between them and their native land, or may be taking in with awed faces the wonder of the deep, which has haunted their imaginations from childhood. Others are already busily striking up acquaintances with fellow-passengers, and a bridal pair over yonder sit thrilling with the sense of isolation from the world that so emphasizes their mutual dependence and all-importance to each other. And other groups are talking business and referring to money and markets in New York, London, and Frankfort as glibly as if they were on land, much to the secret shock of certain raw tourists, who marvel at the insensitiveness of men who, thus speeding between two worlds, and freshly in the presence of the most august and awful form of nature, can keep their minds so steadily fixed upon cash-books and ledgers.

But Randall, as, with the habit of an old voyager, he already falls to pacing the deck, is too much engrossed with his own thoughts to pay much heed to these things. Only, as he passes a group of Germans, and the familiar accents of the sweet, homely tongue fall on his ear, he pauses, and lingers near.

The darkness gathers, the breeze freshens, the waves come tumbling out of the east, and the motion of the ship increases as she rears upward to meet them. The groups on deck are thinning out fast as the passengers go below to enjoy the fearsome novelty of the first night at sea, and to compose themselves to sleep as it were in the hollow of God's hand. But long into the night Randall's cigar still marks his pacing up and down as he ponders, with alternations of tender, hopeful glow and sad foreboding the chances of his quest. Will he find her?

It is necessary to go back a little. When Randall reached America on his return from Germany, he immediately began to sow his wild oats, and gave his whole mind to it. Answering Ida's letters got to be a bore, and he gradually ceased doing it. Then came a few sad reproaches from her, and their correspondence ceased. Meanwhile, having had his youthful fling, he settled down as a steady young man of business. One day he was surprised to observe that he had of late insensibly fallen into the habit of thinking a good deal in a pensive sort of way about Ida and those German days. The notion occurred to him that he would hunt up her picture, which he hadn't thought of in five years. With misty eyes and crowding memories he pored over it, and a wave of regretful, yearning tenderness filled his breast.

Late one night after long search he found among his papers a bundle of her old letters already growing yellow. Being exceedingly rusty in his German, he had to study them out word by word. That night, till the sky grew gray in the east, he sat there turning the pages of the dictionary with wet eyes and glowing face, and selecting definitions by the test of the heart. He found that some of these letters he had never before taken the pains to read through. In the bitterness of his indignation he cursed the fool who had thrown away a love so loyal and priceless.

All this time he had been thinking of Ida as if dead, so far off in another world did those days seem. It was with extraordinary effect that the idea finally flashed upon him that she was probably alive and now in the prime of her beauty. After a period of feverish and impassioned excitement he wrote a letter full of wild regret and beseeching, and an ineffable tenderness. Then he waited. After a long time it came back from the German dead-letter office. There was no person of the name at the address. She had left Bonn, then. Hastily setting his affairs in order, he sailed for Germany on the next steamer.

The incidents of the voyage were a blank in his mind. On reaching Bonn he went straight from the station to the old house in ---- strasse. As he turned into it from the scarcely less familiar streets leading thither, and noted each accustomed landmark, he seemed to have just returned to tea from an afternoon lecture at the university. In every feature of the street some memory lurked, and as he passed threw out delaying tendrils, clutching at his heart. Rudely he broke away, hastening on to that house near the end of the street, in each of whose quaint windows fancy framed the longed-for face. She was not there, he knew, but for a while he stood on the other side of the street, unmindful of the stares and jostling of the passers-by, gazing at the house-front, and letting himself imagine from moment to moment that her figure might flit across some window, or issue from the door, basket in hand, for the evening marketing, on which journey he had so often accompanied her. At length, crossing the street, he inquired for the Werner family. The present tenants had never heard the name. Perhaps the tenants from whom they had received the house might be better informed. Where were they? They had moved to Cologne. He next went to the Bonn police-office, and from the records kept there, in which pretty much everything about every citizen is set down, ascertained that several years previous Herr Werner had died of apoplexy, and that no one of the name was now resident in the city. Next day he went to Cologne, hunted up the former tenants of the house, and found that they remembered quite distinctly the Werner family, and the death of the father, and only bread-winner. It had left the mother and daughter quite without resources, as Randall had known must probably have been the case. His informants had heard that they had gone to Düsseldorf.

His search had become a fever. After waiting seven years, a delay of ten minutes was unendurable. The trains seemed to creep. And yet, on reaching Düsseldorf, he did not at once go about his search, but said to himself:

"Let me not risk the killing of my last hope till I have warmed myself with it one more night, for to-morrow there may be no more warmth in it."

He went to a hotel, ordered a room and a bottle of wine, and sat over it all night, indulging the belief that he would find her the next day. He denied his imagination nothing, but conjured up before his mind's eye the lovely vision of her fairest hour, complete even to the turn of the neck, the ribbon in the hair, and the light in the blue eyes. So he would turn into the street. Yes, here was the number. Then he rings the bell. She comes to the door. She regards him a moment indifferently. Then amazed recognition, love, happiness, transfigure her face. "Ida!" "Karl!" and he clasps her sobbing to his bosom, from which she shall never be sundered again.

The result of his search next day was the discovery that mother and daughter had been at Düsseldorf until about four years previous, where the mother had died of consumption, and the daughter had removed, leaving no address. The lodgings occupied by them were of a wretched character, showing that their circumstances must have been very much reduced.