Chapter XXIII.
Edwin Brothertoft came galloping up to the flames. Had he won this race, with a life for its prize?
The maddened mare tore forward, as if she would leap in among the loud riot there.
Fire everywhere! A mob of arrogant, roaring, frenzied flames possessed the cellar and the ground-floor. Each window, so long a peaceful entrance for sunbeams, now glowed with light within, or thrust out great cruel blades of fire, striking at darkness. Fire sheathed the base of the turret. Agile flames were climbing up its sides, and little playful flashes seized the creepers that overhung Lucy’s window, and, clinging to these, peered in through the panes, looking for such diet as they craved.
The husband turned the corner of the house, and galloped up to the window, — that window where an hour ago he had stood gazing at the proud, hateful face of the woman he loved so bitterly.
The white horse and its rider looked in at the window. And this is what the one quick, comprehensive glance of horror showed them, as a draught of air dragged the smoke away.
Opposite, on the wall, the two heads of the picture were just yielding to the flames around them. Little buds of flame were sprouting through the floor, little tendrils wreathing the doors, and drawing a closer circle about the figure at their centre. There she sat, as if this scene was prepared to illuminate her beauty. A gush of air lifted the smoke like a curtain, and there she was sitting, her black hair towering above her pale forehead, her white arms bound to the chair, and the red light of her diamond resting upon her white bosom.
The smoke had half suffocated her. But she was revived by the sudden flood of air, as a burned door gave way. She turned her head toward the window, — did her spirit tell her that the heart she had wounded was there? She lifted her feeble head as her husband dashed forward, and it seemed to him that, amid all the snarling and roaring of the flames, he could hear her moan, “Help, Edwin! Help!”
The bulbs of flame through the floor shot up and grew rank, the wreaths of flame reached out and spread fast as the beautiful tendrils of a magic vine, the smoke drifted together again, and hid the room and the figure sitting there. Over the carpet of flame, through the bower of flame, where long streamers redder than autumn hung and climbed, through the thick, blinding, suffocating, baffling smoke, Edwin Brothertoft sprang in to save his wife.
God help him, for his love is strong!
By this time, from the Tartar frigate and her consorts, boats’-crews were making for the burning house. They hoped to handle and furl the flames, as they would a flapping maintopsail in a gale. By this time the Manor people were also hurrying up, with neighborly intent to fling looking-glasses and crockery from the windows, and save them.
The Tartars were exhilarated by the splendid spectacle of fire in revolt. It was indeed a wild and passionate scene. From every window fingers of flame beckoned the world to behold it. And now on Lucy’s turret Fire had hoisted its banner, as in a castle the flag goes up when the master comes to hold holiday.
The sailors gained the foot of the lawn. This pageant burst upon them. They sprang forward with a hurrah. Suddenly the foremost, paused and huddled together. What is it?
A dark figure, bearing some heavy burden, appeared at the only window of the front where the flames were not overflowing in full streams and fountaining upward.
The figure came fighting forward. Fire shouted, and clutched at it. Smoke poured around, to bewilder it. The figure — a man’s form — staggered and fell. Inward or outward — inward into that fiery furnace, or outward toward the quiet, frosty air of night — the sailors could not see.
They rushed on more eagerly, but this time without the cheer.
Only the bravest, with Commodore Hotham himself at their head, dared face the flames, and touch the scorching heat to seek for that escaping figure they had seen.
They found him lying without, under the great window, — a man, and in his arms a burned and blackened thing. It might be, they thought, a woman.
They carried them away where the air was cool, and the crisp frost was unmelted on the grass. The man breathed, and moaned. No one knew his face, masked with black smoke.
With the neighbors, Mrs. Dewitt now came running up, and joined the group.
“See!” said she, with a shudder. “This was my mistress. She always wore this diamond on her neck in the evening. She is dead. No? she breathes!”
Yes; there was the gem, showing red reflections of the flames. An hour ago the woman had been a beauty, and the diamond a point of admiration, saying, “Mark this white neck and this fair bosom!” Now it made the utter ruin there more pitiful.
Some one led forward Volante, drooping and all in a foam. There was evidently some mystery in this disaster. “Take these burned creatures to the nearest house,” said Hotham. “And now, boys, some of you try to save the stables. Some come with me at the house. There were more people in it.”
The sailors fought fire. The others carried the two bodies to Bilsby’s farm-house. The flames showed them their path under the red-leaved trees of October.
The same ruddy light was guiding Lucy Brothertoft on her way to what a little while ago was home.
Long before she reached the spot, the roar and frenzy of the flames had subsided.
Nothing was left but the ragged walls and the red ruins of the Manor-House. It had been punished by fire for the misery and sin it had sheltered.
A guard of sailors, under a lieutenant, protected what little property had been saved. Lucy learned from them how an unknown man had rescued her mother to die away from the flames.
She left Voltaire to make some plausible story of the kidnapping, and to invent a release of hers from the captors’ hands, when the fire they had accidentally kindled was discovered.
She hastened to help the father she loved and the mother she pitied so deeply.
Jierck Dewitt followed her to Bilsby’s door.
“Go, Jierck!” she said. “It makes me shudder to see you, and think of this dreadful harm you have done. Go and tell the whole to Major Skerrett.”
“Will you speak to my wife, Miss Lucy, and show her how she is to blame, — how her wrong sent me wrong? Tell her how she and I are linked in with ruin here. Perhaps it will help you to forgive me if you can better her.”
Lucy promised.
She entered the farm-house to encounter her holy duties with her parents.
Jierck hurried off to meet Major Skerrett, give him the sorrowful history of the night, and warn him away from a region that would be alive by daylight, and bayonetting haystacks and hollow trees for kidnappers.
The penitent fellow could get no farther on his return than Cedar Ridge. There he saw the red embers of the Manor-House watching him from the edge of the horizon, like the eye of a Cyclops. He was fascinated, and sank down at the foot of the uncanny old cedar, sick with horror and fatigue.
Skerrett and Canady, pressing anxiously on, found Jierck there at sunrise, asleep and half dead with cold. They roused him, and heard his story.
A little wreath of smoke alone marked the site of the Manor-House. Here was the starting-point, there was the goal of Edwin Brothertoft’s night gallop. It thrilled the Major to hear of that wild ride, and to fancy he saw the white horse dashing through the darkness on that noble errand of mercy.
“Some men would have said, ‘Curse her! let her burn! She’s hurt me worse than fire’ll hurt her,’” says Hendrecus. “Some would have took the turns of the road, and got to the house when it was nothing but chimbleys. Some would have been afeard of being known, and shot for a rebel. I’ve heard say that the Patroon wasn’t one of the strong kind; but he’s done a splendid thing here, and I’m proud of myself that I was born on the same soil, and stand a chance to have some of the same natural grit into me.”
Nothing further could be done, and it was not safe to loiter. The three returned over the Highlands to Putnam’s army. And that day, and for many days, Peter Skerrett meditated on this terrible end of the sorrow and sin at Brothertoft Manor. He traced with ghastly interest the different paths by which vengeance converged upon the guilty woman, and saw with what careful method her crime had prepared its own punishment. “God grant,” said he, “that she may live to know what love and pity did to save her from the horror of her penalty!”