Part 23

When his determination had been taken, Van Tassel pushed forward his preparations with all haste, and his restlessness did not quiet until he found himself, in the early evening of the 8th of January, walking down the old familiar home street once more. As he reached the corner, he suddenly observed that clouds of smoke mingled with large red cinders were rolling up from the south.

"Must be a fire in the Fair grounds," he thought. "I wonder if the girls know."

They were coming out of their door, with their outside wraps on, when Van Tassel came up the steps, and they gave him a greeting in which excitement and cordiality mingled.

"There is a fire in the Fair," they all three said at once.

"You will take me down there, Jack," exclaimed Mildred. "Clover was going, but she hasn't been well and she ought not to."

Clover protested faintly, suggesting some of the rites of hospitality for Jack's benefit; but he would hear nothing save carrying out Mildred's wishes, and after taking a moment to deposit his bag in the hall, he set off beside her.

"How is Gorham, I wonder?" murmured Clover with a comical little smile and plaintive raised eyebrows, as she looked after the figures retreating into the dark. "I feel as if I had been in a whirlwind." She looked toward the once gay hotel; now, its many sightless eyes gazed blankly southward. "I will go there," she exclaimed with sudden determination; and reentering the house, she called Jeanie, and made her hurry into her wraps. The housekeeper obeyed, with many a fussy groan over her mistress' caprice, and soon they were walking northward.

They ascended the dark stairway to the piazza of the hotel, and peered through the door at the office, where one dim light showed. Clover was a bit frightened, but she knocked on the glass. A man appeared behind the office desk, and, picking up the lantern which was the vast hotel's single attempt at illumination, advanced through dark spaces, casting strange shadows on the marble floor as he came.

"May we look at the fire from here?" asked Clover, wishing Gorham were with her rather than Jeanie.

"Yes; I see they've got a fire down there," the man remarked imperturbably, but he stood back for them to enter, and then clanged the heavy door behind them. It echoed in the big empty hall, and Jeanie looked so discomfited that Clover smiled, though she herself thought the situation rather eerie.

The last time she had stood here, the place had been ablaze with electric light, and gay with music and guests. She had ascended with her friends to a balcony to view the lighted White City in the zenith of its beauty, and to revel in the fiery marvels which mirrored themselves in the lake. It flashed into her memory how enthusiastic the crowds had been over the rising of a slender cylinder of light which poised itself aloft, then slowly unrolled until the stars and stripes appeared in the heavens. She could hear again the patriotic salutes from a congregation of boats as Old Glory sailed away across the lake.

Now, all was hushed and dark. A second man, who appeared in the office, struck a match and lit another lantern, by whose light he proceeded to pilot the two women upstairs.

Jeanie muttered and grunted to such an extent that Clover relented after the ascent of three flights, and the old man led her to the window of one of the white-sheeted bedrooms, from which she eagerly looked.

"Oh, Jeanie, I am sure it is the Peristyle!" she exclaimed, gazing horror-struck on the volume of fire and smoke visible through the bare ribs of the Spectatorium. "What will--what will Mr. Page say!" Involuntarily she pressed her hand on her beating heart, seeming to hear the roar of those cruel flames.

Meanwhile Mildred and Jack had caught a train, which they left at Sixtieth Street. The young man was glad that the tension of his anticipations had been relieved by the unconventional circumstances of his welcome. To be joined with Mildred in the present excitement was far preferable to the doubtful home evening he had looked forward to. Arm in arm they pressed forward against the cold lake wind toward the shore, and did not pause until they had neared the Music Hall.

Only once Mildred spoke as they hurried on. "I am afraid," she said breathlessly, "that it is the Peristyle."

"It looks like it," said Jack briefly. The hoofs of galloping horses smote the hard ground, and the puffing of fire-engines was borne to their ears before they reached the scene of confusion. There they stood still, Mildred clinging with both hands to Van Tassel's arm, her wide, horrified eyes fixed on the blazing Casino, the building into which the Peristyle merged at the southern end, as it did into Music Hall on the north.

The lagoon was coated with a thin sheet of ice, across which the sparks, after circling around the head of the golden goddess, whirled up the Court of Honor in lines of fire.

Above, the wind bore the glowing brands swirling over the great neighboring buildings. Streams of water fell with no quenching power into the flames.

"Why don't they bend all their energies to saving the Peristyle?" exclaimed Mildred.

"That is what they are doing now. See?"

The dauntless firemen were fighting the flames at close range. A dozen streams of water at once were directed upon the Peristyle; but in vain. The walls of the Casino crashed in; devouring tongues of fire fastened upon the first noble pillar and ate upward.

Van Tassel felt his companion shudder in her furs, and put his hand on hers. The crowd that had gathered in the very spot where they cheered the summer's pyrotechnic display were strangely motionless and silent, watching with fascinated eyes and saddened faces as the fire crept upward, leaping from pillar to pillar, ascending toward the statues which stood serene and fair above smoke and flame long after the watchers expected them to succumb. At last, each white figure in turn, seeming suddenly to become aware of its environment, wavered on its pedestal, hesitated, and with one shrinking look below, plunged downward into the fiery chasm.

"Jack!" gasped Mildred, shivering from head to foot, her dilated eyes never leaving the heart-rending sight.

For an instant, free of smoke and illumined gloriously, shone out for a last time the heavenly promise:--

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

"The Quadriga!" groaned Van Tassel, for the grand arch was seized upon, and swiftly melted away in the furnace. No search-light of the summer ever compared in grandeur with the effect that succeeded to the crumbling of the staff below the famous group, the pride of the noble Peristyle. The iron skeleton supports, laid bare, were invisible in the night. Columbus, his chariot, the outriders with their banners, and the spirited horses led by maidens, stood triumphant in the vivid light. It was a sight of supernatural beauty. In the glare of the leaping flames the snow-white horses seemed to stir restlessly and paw the air, as they arched their necks and gazed proudly down into the glowing chasm.

"Jump, oh, jump!" cried Mildred; then, unable to endure the impending catastrophe, her nerves strained to the utmost, she turned with a wild movement, and sobbing, hid her head on Jack's breast.

He put his arms around her.

"The--the Peristyle has gone!" she exclaimed chokingly,--"gone back--to heaven!"

"Yes, darling," he answered close to her ear. "My rival. Forgive me, but you are making me so happy I can't realize anything except that I have you in my arms. What does it mean? only that you are overwrought?"

Mildred lifted her face slightly, but away from the burning pyre.

"Your rivals are all gone, Jack," she said, as steadily as she could speak. "Even I do not count."

Half an hour afterward, Clover heard them enter the house, and hurried down to the parlor.

When she pushed aside the portiere and entered, she paused in amazement and her heart leaped up, for Jack's arms were about Mildred and his lips were pressed to hers.

They saw her, and in another instant she was beside them, her hands clasped in theirs.

As she gazed at her sister, mute for joy, Mildred regarded her with a tender version of her beautiful smile.

"I believe," she said, "this lifts the last cloud from Clover's horizon."

"Yes," answered the latter rather unsteadily; "the world never looked so bright to me as now. I think, Jack," turning to him, her face aglow, "heaven itself must have grown happier to-night."

Van Tassel's eyes shone wistfully. "I hope he knows," he answered gently.

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