Devil's Garden — Chapter 35

It was the evening of another day; and Dale stood motionless in the ride, close to Kibworth Rocks.

The twilight was fading rapidly; clouds that had crept up from the east filled the sky, and presaged a dark and probably a stormy night.

Every now and then a gust of angry wind shook the tops of the fir trees; then the air was still and heavy again, and then the wind came back a little fiercer than before.

Dale felt sure that there would be rain presently, and he thought: "If his ghost is really lying in there, it'll get as wet as that first night when the showers washed away all the blood."

He stared and listened, but to-night he could not fancy that he heard the dead man calling to him.

He could not invent any appropriate conversation.

It seemed to him that the ugly phantom was refusing to talk, that it had become sulky, or that it was pretending not to be there at all in order to effect a most insidious purpose.

Yes, that must be the explanation.

It wanted to entice and lure him off the ride--to make him venture right in there among the rocks, so that he might be shown the thing that had haunted him in dreams.

"Very well," said Dale, "so be it.

That's the idea.

All right.

I

agree."

He did not, however, move for another minute or so.

He was thinking hard, and listening eagerly.

But he could hear no sound, could imagine no sound, other than that made by the wind.

Then he moved, and, examining the ground, made his way slowly from the ride to the rocks, thinking the while, "It's impossible to follow my exact footsteps, because things have changed--but this was about the line I took with him."

Forcing himself through a tangle of holly and hawthorn, he came out into the open space and his feet struck against stone.

In front of him the rocks rose darkly against the waning light, and he began to clamber about among them, over smooth round surfaces, along narrow gullies, and by cruel jagged ridges, seeking to find the exact spot where he had left the dead body.

"It was about here," he said, after a time.

"It was close by here.

Prob'bly down there, where the foxgloves and the blackberries have taken root.

Anyhow, that's near enough.

I've come as near as I can;" and he sat down upon the ledge just above this hollow, and looked about him, attentively, in all directions.

The wind had ceased to blow; not a leaf stirred; silence reigned over the strewn boulders.

Downward, where the ground fell away to a deep chasm, everything was indistinct; to the west, beneath banked masses of cloud, the last glow of the sunset showed in blood-red bands, and on this side all the intervening trees were black as ink; all about him the shadows filled every hollow, and the rocks were like shoals or reefs above the surface of a stagnant sea.

The place was a wilderness, a solitude, the dead and barren landscape of dreams--quite empty, unoccupied, a place that even ghosts would shun.

He sat thinking, and listening; and soon it occurred to him that, though all seemed so dead and so silent, this place was really full of life.

He heard the faint buzz of belated bees questing in tufts of heather or foxglove bells, a bat flitted over his head, some small furred thing scuttled past his feet; and in the air there were thousands of winged insects, whose tiny voices one could hear by straining one's ears.

Listening intently for such murmurs, he thought: "Perhaps really and truly one has not any right to kill the smallest of these gnats.

All that stuff about self-protection, an' struggle for existence, is just fiddle-de-dee in so far's God's concerned.

He never meant it, an' never will approve of it.

It's just nature's hatefulness and cruelty--not permitted or intended, an' to be put right some day."

It grew darker and darker, and the shadows rose all round him till he was like a man who had climbed out of the gray sea upon the only rock that was not yet submerged.

When he got up presently and looked down at the hollow where he believed the corpse had lain, he could no longer see it.

It was gone, lost in shadow.

Then he knelt upon his rock, and prayed--offered up the last agonized prayer of a despairing human soul.

"O God--have mercy on me just so far's this.

Don't let me die hopeless.

I've submitted myself into Your hands.

I don't complain.

I don't question.

I'm going to do it.

But don't send me out in total darkness.

Give me a blink of light--just one blink o' light before I go."

Was it this that had been wanted, this that had been waited for--the true acknowledgment, the true submission, the cry for mercy of the repentant creature who has already tasted more than the bitterness of death?

He rose from his knees, and without once looking back left the rocks and came through the thicket to the ride.

It grew darker, the clouds dropped still lower, and the wind again blew fierce and strong.

He left the broad ride and sauntered along one of the narrow tracks.

He could hear the wind as it tore through slender branches high above his head, but down here it did not touch him; and he strolled on slowly, feeling extraordinarily calm, full of a great reverence and wonder, not noticing external things because he wished to maintain this strange inward peace.

Then soon the voluminous but indefinite sensations of mental tranquillity concentrated their soothing messages to make the comfort of one definite thought, and Dale said to himself: "Christ has returned to me."

And then he saw Him--not for an instant believing that he really saw Him, that he had passed from the order of common facts into the realm of miracles, that the usual laws of heaven had been broken by a special material manifestation, or anything of that sort; but that he saw Him with the beautifully clear visualization for which he had longed and prayed.

And it seemed to him that the power of his thoughts took a splendid leap, and that he could now understand everything that hitherto had been unintelligible and inexplicable.

Very God, and very man.

Yes, this was the man--a man after his own heart--the comrade with whom one could work shoulder to shoulder and never know fatigue--the unfailing friend whom one dared not flatter or slobber over, but the grip of whose hand gave self-respect and the glance of whose eyes swept the evil out of one's breast.

And this was God too--the only God that men can worship without fear; Whose power is so great that it makes one's head split to think of, and Whose love is greater than His power.

And the voice of Christ seemed to speak to him, not by the channel of crudely imagined words, but in a transcendent joy that was sent thrilling through and through him.

"Then I need not despair," he said to himself.

"That was the voice of Christ telling me to hope."

He strolled on with bowed head, and remembered the night when he sat in Mr. Osborn's little room, staring at the carpenter's bench, and struggling between belief and doubt.

He had said: "I want to be saved.

I want the day when you can tell me I have gained everlasting salvation."

And Mr. Osborn had answered him: "The day will come; but it will not be my voice that tells you."

It was dark, but he did not mind the darkness.

He walked on, not knowing where he was going, and time passed without his thinking Of the lateness of the hour.

He had forgotten his wife and his home; he had forgotten Norah; he had forgotten all his pain.

Then the odd and unexpected character of an external object made an impression sufficiently strong to rouse him from his reverie, and he thought dreamily: "What is that?

Why, yes, it is what I was asking for--a blink of light."

Suddenly, straight in front of him, he saw the gleam again.

What could it be?

Then something right ahead, in the darkness of the trees, a bright flicker--as might be made by a man waving a lantern.

There it was again, but brighter than before, quite a long way off.

And he walked on faster.

Then, looking up, he saw a red glow in the sky, and he thought: "The heath is on fire."

He walked faster, saw a column of crimson smoke and a great tongue of flame above the pine trees, and thought: "It is much nearer than the heath.

It must be right on the edge of the wood."

He ran now, and soon the track was brightly lighted and confused sounds grew plain--shouting of voices, the galloping of a horse, the clamorous ringing of a bell.

The trees opened out and he was running along the high ground above those broken fences, looking down at the Orphanage gardens, at men clustered like black ants, at solid buildings that seemed to send forth sheets, lakes, and seas of flame.

He rushed down the slope, burst through wooden barriers and leafy screens, shouting as he came.

In the glare on the upper terraces there were many people--men, women, children; some of the men vainly endeavoring to fix and work unused hose-pipes; others dragging away furniture, curtains, carpets that lay in heaps near the central hall;

the greatest number of them struggling with ladders, advancing and recoiling in front of the low block at the further end of the building.

"Are they all out?"

shouted Dale.

"Have they all been got out?"

Terror-stricken voices answered as he passed.

"There's seven they can't get at....

Seven have been left....

They're the little ones."

And running in the fiery glare, he thought: "Yes, mercy has been vouchsafed me.

This is my chance."

All things were plain to him; there was nothing that he could not understand.

This fire must have broken out in the low block he had passed, and at first it seemed insignificant; as a precautionary measure the girls were fetched out of that block; the bell had been rung, and a messenger was sent galloping to summon the engine and brigade which would not arrive for an hour; and the stupid guardians of the place had wasted precious minutes in what they considered another precaution only, carrying furniture from the big hall.

Nothing was done at the further block, because that appeared to be in no danger.

They hadn't reckoned with the wind.

The wind had sent the fire licking up the woodwork, dancing over slates and tiles, springing at the roof of the hall; and all at once the far block was involved.

A

furnace blast of flame leaped at it, billowing waves of smoke rolled through it; and it crackled and screamed and blazed.

The bigger girls had just time to escape; but the children, seven of the smallest, were left on the upper floor.

"It's Mr. Dale.

Oh, Mr. Dale, 'tis pitiful.

You can hear 'em squealin' up theer.

Oh, Mr. Dale, sir, what can us do?"

The heat was tremendous, and as the men came staggering back they pushed him away.

Then they clustered round him, each face like a fiery mask, and yelled to make themselves heard above the noise of the wind and the flames, the clatter of failing stone, and the cries of hysterical women.

He broke free from them, stood alone near the burning shell of the veranda, and hoarsely shouted from there.

"Come on, ma lads.

Give me the ladder.

Don't shrink or skulk.

Come on.

If I can stan' it--so can you.

Fetch those floor-rugs."

He was almost breathless, but joy seemed to give force to his laboring lungs.

He was thinking: "Mercy has been shown.

I have been reserved for this.

Instead of destroying that one child, I am to save these other children."

He had no doubt; he knew that he would do it.

Nothing could stop the man who was doing his appointed work.

To all others the thing seemed impossible.

He had taken off his jacket and put it over his head, and the women became silent when they saw him climb high on the ladder and spring blindfold through the flames.

The ladder fell with half its length on fire and then smoldered like a shattered torch.

Then they saw clouds of smoke pouring outward from a window; and the flames on the balcony lessened and grew dim, as if choked by the smoke.

Then there came a shout, and the men with the stretched rug moved stanchly to his call.

He was out again on the balcony, with a child in his arms.

"That's one," he shouted, as he dropped her to the men below.

"I b'lieve they're all alive."

So he came and went, rapid and sure, carrying his burdens.

"That's two....

That's three....

That's four.

They're well-nigh suffocated--but they're alive."

He crawled on the floor to find them, snatched the blankets and sheets off the beds, wrapped them from head to foot.

"That's five....

That's six.

She has fainted--but she's alive."

On the balcony the red-hot metal had burned his feet nearly to the bone, his blistered hands were big and soft as boxing gloves, even the air in his lungs was on fire.

While he crawled and groped between the beds for the last of the children, the floor began to bulge and sag, and fragments of the plaster ceiling rained upon his head and back.

"That's seven.

Fainted.

Wants air....

Still alive."

They all shouted to him.

"Don't go back, sir.

There's no more.

You've got 'em all out now.

Oh, sir, don't go back."

But he went, gasping for breath, and muttering, "May be another.

P'raps there's another.

Better see."

He had got to the middle of the room when the floor gave way under him; and almost at the same moment there was a crash and the whole roof fell in.

He went down amid the sudden wreck, down to a narrow couch of wood and stone, where he lay and still could think.

He was pinned with an iron beam across his chest, in darkness, with the roar of the flames just above his head; smashed, mangled, roasting; but still full of a joy and hope that obliterated pain.

He whispered faintly: "O God the Father and God the Holy Ghost, accept this my expiation."

And he whispered again.

"This fire has cleansed me.

O Christ, take me to Thy bosom, white and spotless as the driven snow."

That was his last thought.

There came another crash, a rending pang, and peace.

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