Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/424

12, 1859.] “You will grow stronger here,” she said, nestling closer to his side, and clasping his arm.

She looked up at him, and he looked at the fair evening sky with a face of worship. She watched him: her eyes dwelling on his face, all her strong woman’s love in that smiling contemplation. It was evident that they were all things to each other. Would he have been made happier by the sight of her marvellous beauty? I thought not. He felt it — lived in it; had the vision of it for ever present to that mysterious interior sense which still he called seeing.

I walked home thoughtful. They were standing on the short sweet turf when I last looked back. He was stooping towards her now, she still looking up to him. I recollect the fondness of the face that freely poured forth its love upon his blindness, and felt that this woman had taught me much.

The week passed. My sister had spent several days with me, bringing my nephews, two frolicsome, handsome schoolboys. She and Mrs. Barrington had talked over many things. Our friendship had grown rapidly. We had shown her many of my uncle’s letters, in which he hod talked to our father of her mother. We had together destroyed what other eyes were not to see. Leslie Barrington was always present at these meetings, and we had learnt to love him. There was a peculiar elevation about his thoughts, and a singular tenderness in all his feelings. It was impossible not to rejoice in his wife’s devotion to him, neither could we think her beauty thrown away.

It was at the close of the Becond week that I returned from a visit to my sister. When I reached my lodgings my landlady told me that Mr. and Mrs. Barrington had called in the afternoon to ask if I was at home, as they wished me to dine with them. She said they had looked quite disappointed on being told that I was not expected until late. Pleased with this little attention I determined to call on them early the following morning, and so went to bed.

I was waked from a sound sleep by a horrible noise — sound of loud voices and wailings and violent blows at my door. The first words that came to me with a full consciousness of their meaning were, “Fire! fire! O, sir, the blind gentleman! — fire! fire!“ Afterwards, on looking back as calmly as I could through the events as they had followed each other, I could never tell how I got to the house— with whom, or by what way. But I was there, in that front between the enclosing walls, and I can see myself now standing — just come I suppose — standing where the Virginia creeper clung to the masonry, and hung its luxuriant green above my head.

I can see now, as I think of it, masses of flame and smoke issuing with a strange sound from the windows of the lower part of the house. I do not know how long it took me to be in the throng that half filled the hall. But I know that I was foremost among them, crying, “Mr. Barrington in the blue chamber to the right — a hundred pounds to the man who brings out Mr. Barrington!“ Alas! the clumsy attempts to assist them that had been made before I got to the spot had only increased their danger. The case was already desperate. The heated atmosphere forced people back — again and again I was thrust with that close mass of persons back from the house to the green in front.

Again all memory fails; but I know that I was at the back of the house, and in it. I never thought of Terese. Her husband — perhaps because I had learnt how truly he was her life, how utterly he was its all-absorbing joy — her husband was in my thoughts: it was her husband that I was going to save. I was up the staircase, the sea-breeze coming across that open land fed the flames, but sent them forward towards the front that I had left. I got into the passage, opened a red baize door, and saw Leslie standing, pale as a statue, by himself. At that moment the floor split just beyond where he stood with the sound of an explosion. I seized him. He knew me. The flames burst up — he knew that too. He was praying aloud. “Thy gift, O God!“ I heard him say, his sightless eyes fixed as upon something far away. “Thy gift — Thy best, greatest, purest gift — token of immeasurable bounty — mark of immutable love —“ He was speaking of Terese. I lifted him from the ground, got him on my back, and turned round — turned round to see the staircase I had come up in a cloud of smoke, striped by bright flashes of flame.

There was but one thing to be done. Death was by us, and must be fled from. Death was before us, but with speed, courage, a rapid foot, and a strong will, the resolution was scarcely formed before it was acted on, the danger was breasted — I rushed down upon my foe. It was not more than a minute’s work, but the flames licked our faces, and took the skin off at each stroke; we were both of us on fire, but both safe, welcomed by hundreds of extended arms.

That square at the back of the house was full of men all looking to one point, all breathless with one fear. I saw that some great emotion swayed them. As if impelled by a common instinct they parted down the centre of the space; that dense body of living men seemed to dissolve away till, rapidly, almost a clearance was made in the immediate neighbourhood of the house. I saw this, and I heard a voice, “She was at the window a moment ago.“ Then I perceived that every eye was turned upward among the watchers, and that some one idea animated a busy knot of men, to give space to whose operations the crowd had receded to the open down, and fenced round the scene as with a dark wall of life.

I knew no more about Leslie Barrington: I was among those men in an instant. No one told me — words were not wanted — everything, as if by magnetism, was instantaneously comprehended. No one told me, but I knew that the only way to get Terese from the burning house was to raise supports high enough to enable a way to be made from the upstanding gable of the ruined house to the window where, time after time, she appeared. It was already impossible to reach her from below. Beneath her was a gulf of flame. The fire-escapes had only just come, and only now had the engines been got into efficient