Slowly she descended step by step, clinging to her mother, who was carrying Constance. Very slowly the procession approached, for the little voluptuary in front was loath as well as eager—avid to enjoy yet hesitating to devour. Suddenly she saw, and into her face flamed an expression of wonder, of awe, of adoration, a look such as a cherub angel might wear while confronting The Great White Throne, a kind of rapture, humble yet exultant.
Silently she crept toward the center of the room, turning her eyes from this and to that unearthly splendor, yet always bringing them back to rest upon the faces of the dollies, sitting so still and so radiant beneath the glittering boughs. At last with a little gasping cry of joy she seized the largest and most splendid of these wondrous beings and clasped it to her breast, while Constance sat silent with her awe.
Their Christmas was complete. Another shining mark had been set in the upward slope of their happy march! Nothing, not even Death himself, can rob me of that precious memory.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Old Homestead Suffers Disaster
The summer of 1912, so stormy in a political sense was singularly serene and happy for us. The old house had been received back into favor. It was beloved by us all but especially was it dear to my children. To Mary Isabel it possessed a value which it could not have to any of us, for it was her birth-place and she knew every stick and stone of it. To her it had all the glamor of a childhood home in summer time.
On Sunday, October 6, we began to plan our return to the city, and as we sat about our fire that night the big room never looked so warm, so homelike, so permanent. The deep fireplace was ablaze with light, and the walls packed with books and hung with pictures spoke of a realized ideal. On the tall settee (which I had built myself), lay a richly-colored balletta Navajo blanket, one that I had bought of a Flathead Indian in St. Ignatius. Others from Zuni and Ganado covered the floor. Over the piano "Apple Blossom Time," a wedding present from John Ennecking glowed like a jewel in the light of the quaint electric candles which had been set in the sockets of hammered brass sconces. In short, the place had the mellow charm of a completed home, and I said to Zulime "There isn't much more to do to it. It is rude and queer, a mixture of Paris, Boston, and the Wild West; but it belongs to us." It was in truth a union of what we both represented, including our poverty, for it was all cheap and humble.
My father, white-haired, eighty-two years of age was living with us again, basking in the light of our fire and smiling at his grandchildren, who with lithe limbs and sweet young voices were singing and circling before him. I was glad to have him back in mother's room, and to him and to those who were to be his care-takers for the winter I gravely repeated, "I want everything kept just as it is. I want to feel that we can come back to it at any time and find every object in place, including the fire."
To which father replied, "I don't want to change it. It suits me."
The children, darting out of the music-room (which was the "dressing-room" of their stage), swung their Japanese lanterns, enacting once again their pretty little play, and then our guests rose two by two and went away. Zulime led the march to bed, the lights were turned out and the clear, crisp, odorous October night closed over our scene.
As I was about to leave the low-ceiled library, I took another look at it saying to myself, "It seems absurd to abandon this roomy, human habitation for a cramped little dwelling on a city lot." But with a sense of what the city offered by way of compensation, I climbed the old-fashioned, crooked, narrow stairway to my bed in the chamber over the music-room, content to say good-by for the winter....
It was dusky dawn when I awoke, with a sense of alarm, unable to tell what had awakened me. For several seconds I lay in confusion and vague suspense. Then a cry, a strange cry—a woman's scream—arose, followed by a rush of feet. Other cries, and the shrieks of children succeeded close, one upon the other.
My first thought was, "Constance has fallen." I sprang from my bed and was standing in the middle of the room when I heard Zulime cross the floor beneath me, and a moment later she called up the stairway, "Hamlin, Fan has set the house on fire!"
My heart was gripped as if by an icy hand for I knew how inflammable the whole building was, and without stopping to put on coat or slippers, I ran swiftly down the stairs. As I entered the sitting-room so silent, so peaceful, so undisturbed, it seemed that my alarm was only a part of a dream till the sobbing of my daughters and my wife's voice at the telephone calling for help, convinced me of the frightful reality. I heard, too, the ominous crackling of flames in the kitchen.
Pushing open the swinging door I confronted a wall of smoke. One-half of the floor was already consumed, and along the linoleum a sharply-defined line of fire told that it rose from burning oil—and yet I could not quite believe it, even then. It was like a scene in a motion picture play.
My first thought was to check, to hold back the flames, till help came. The garden hose was lying out under a tree (I had put it there the day before) and with desperate haste I hurried to attach it to the water pipes. I saw father in the yard, but he uttered no word. We were each thinking the same thought—"The old homestead is doomed. Our life here is ended."
The hose was heavy and sanely perverse, and it seemed an age before I had the water turned on. Catching up the nozzle I approached the kitchen door. The thin stream had no effect, and the heat was so intense I could not face it. Throwing down the hose I reëntered the house.
The children, hysterical with fright, were just leaving by the east door and Zulime was upstairs. Opening the front door I stepped out upon the porch to call for help. The beauty of the morning, its stillness, its serenity, its odorous opulence, struck upon my senses with a kind of ironic benignancy, as if to say, "Why agonize over so small a thing?"
I shouted "Fire!" and my voice went ringing far up the street. I cried out again, a third time, a fourth, but no one answered, no one appeared, and behind me the crackling roar of the flames increased. In despair I turned back into the sitting-room.
It had been arranged between Zulime and myself that in case of fire (once the children were safe), she was to secure the silverware and her jewelry whilst I flew to collect my manuscripts.
With this thought in my mind, and believing that I had but a few minutes in which to work, I ran up the stairs to my study and began gathering such of my manuscripts as had no duplicates. As I thought of the hundreds of letters from my literary friends, of the many family records, of the innumerable notes, pictures, keepsakes, souvenirs and mementoes which had been assembling there for a quarter of a century, I became confused, indecisive. It was so hard to choose. At last I caught up a sheaf of unpublished stories which filled one drawer, and beating off the screen of the north window threw the manuscripts out upon the grass.
A neighbor's wife, quick to understand the meaning of my anxiety about these sheets, ran to her home across the way and bringing a valise, began to stuff them into it. Having cleared my desk of its most valuable papers I hurried to my dressing-room to secure shoes and trousers; but by this time the hall was full of the most nauseating smoke. The fire having swept entirely through the library, was burning the front porch. My escape by way of the stairway was cut off. Blinded and gasping I gave up the search for clothes and turned back into my study.
I was not in the least scared; on the contrary, I was filled with a kind of fatalistic rage. In imagination I saw the old house, with all that it meant to me, in ruins. I saw the great elms and maples scorched, dead, the tall black locust burned to a ship's mast. As I peered from the window, a neighbor called earnestly, "You'd better get off there; the whole house is going."
From the window I could see the villagers rapidly assembling, and not knowing how far advanced the flames might be I yielded to the advice of my friend, and swinging myself from the window dropped to the ground.
My next care was for the children. I could hear them crying frantically for "papa!" and I hurried to where they stood
cowering in the door of the barn. "O, papa, put it out. I don't want it to burn. Put it out!" moaned Mary Isabel with passionate intensity.
Her faith in her father had an infinite pathos at the moment. She loved the house. It was a part of her very brain and blood. To have it burn was a kind of outrage. Little Connie, five years old, with chattering teeth, joined her pleading cry, "Can't you put it out, papa?" she asked piteously.
"No," I answered sadly. "Papa can not put it out. Nobody can. You must say good-by to our dear old home."
Wrapping a quilt about her I started across the road toward my neighbor's porch. The yard was full of my fellow-citizens, and young men were heroically dragging out smoking furniture from the lower floor, while over in the Sander's yard piles of books, bedding and furniture were accumulating. It was all curiously familiar and typical.
In the full belief that the homestead would soon be a heap of charcoal, we took the children back into our friend's dining-room. "Pull down the curtain," entreated Zulime, "we don't want to see the old place go."
Helpless for lack of street clothing, with my children on my knees, I sat in silence, noting the flickering glare of the light on the walls, and hearing the shouts of the firemen and the sound of their axes.
Huldah, our neighbor's daughter, entered. "They're checking it!" she exclaimed. "It is under control."
This seemed incredible, but it was confirmed by George Dudley, who came in bringing my shoes and a suit of my clothing.
When at last I was fully clothed and could go out into the street I was amazed to find a part of the house standing. Most of the east wing seemed quite untouched, except of smoke and water. The west wing and front porch were in black disarray, but the roof held its place and the trees seemed scarcely scorched. A few firemen, among them the village plumber, the young banker, and a dentist, were on guard, watchfully intent that the flames should not break out again. The sun was rising gloriously over the hills. The fire, my fire, was over.
No doubt this event appeared most trivial to the travelers in a passing train. From the car windows it was only a column of smoke in the edge of a small village. Our disaster offered, indeed, only a mild sensation to the occupants of an early automobile party, but to my father, to Zulime and to the children, it was a desolate and appalling ruin. They had grown to love this old house foolishly, illogically, for it was neither beautiful nor historic, nor spacious. It was only a commonplace frame cottage, inwrought with memories and associations, but it was home—all we had.
The yard was piled with furniture, half-burned, soaked and malodorous, but none of my manuscripts were in sight. I had expected to find them scattered like feathers across the garden or trampled into the muddy sward. In reply to my question my friend Dudley replied, "They're all safe. I had the boys carry them down in blankets. You'll find them in the barn."
As I moved about silently, studying the ruins, the kindliest of my neighbors said, "You'll have to entirely rebuild." And to this a carpenter, a skilled and honest workman, agreed. "The cheapest thing to do is to tear it all down and start from the foundation."
Slowly, minutely, I studied the ruin. Surely here was gruesome change! Black, ill-smelling, smoking debris lay where our pretty dining-room had been. The library with all my best books (many of them autographed) was equally desolate, heaped with steaming, charred masses of tables, chairs, rugs and fallen plaster. I thought of it as it had been the night before, with the soft lights of the candles falling upon my children dancing with swinging lanterns. I recalled Ennecking's radiant spring painting, and Steele's "Bloom of the Grape," which glowed above the mantle, and my heart almost failed me—"Is this the end of my life in Wisconsin?"
For twenty years this little village had been the place of my family altar, not because it was remarkable in any way, but because since 1850 it had been the habitat of my mother's people and because it was filled with my father's pioneer friends. "Is it worth while to rebuild?" I asked myself. For the time I lost direction. I had no plan.
The sight of my white-haired father wandering about the yard, dazed, bewildered, his eyes filled with a look of despair at last decided me. Realizing that this was his true home; that no other roof could have the same appeal, and he could not be transplanted, I resolved to cover his head; to make it possible for him to live out his few remaining years under this roof with his granddaughters. "For his sake and the children's sake," I announced to Zulime, "I shall begin at once to clear away and restore. Before the winter comes you shall all be back in the old House. Perhaps we can eat our Thanksgiving dinner in the restored dining-room."
Whether she fully shared my desire to rebuild or whether she believed in my ability to carry out my plan so quickly I can not say. In such matters she was not decisive—she rested on my stubborn will.
The day came on—glorious, odorous, golden—but we saw little of its beauty. Engaged in digging the family silver out of the embers, and collecting my scattered books and papers I had no time to look at the sky. Occasionally, as I looked up from my work I saw my little daughters playing with childish intentness among the fallen leaves in my neighbor's yard, and in mistaken confidence I remarked what a blessing it is that childhood can so easily forget disaster.
I did not realize then, nor till many months after, how profound the shock had been to them. For years after the event they started at every unusual sound and woke at night screaming of fire.
All that day and all the days of the week which followed they played with the same singular insect-like absorption and at last I began to get some notion of their horror. They refused to enter the yard. "I don't want to see it," Mary Isabel wailed. Then she asked, "Will it ever be home for us again?"
"Yes," I answered with final determination. "I'll put it back just as it was before the fire came. It shall be nicer than ever when I am done."
Before night I had engaged a crew of men to clear away. Thereafter I lived like a man in a tunnel. I saw almost nothing of the opulent, golden sunshine, nothing of the exquisite foliage, nothing of the far hills, purple with Indian summer haze. Busily sorting my burned books or spreading out my treasured rugs, I toiled as long as light lasted. There were a few pleasant surprises. From one charred frame the face of Frank Norris, miraculously fresh and handsome and smiling, looked out through smoked and broken glass. In one corner of the sideboard (decorated by Thompson-Seton), a part of the silver bearing my mother's initials lay quite unharmed, though all of the pieces on the top were melted into a flat mass of bullion. Autographed books from Howells, Riley, Gilbert Parker, Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, fell to pieces in my hand, or showed so deep a stain of smoke as to make their rebinding impossible. My best Navajo rug, a fine example of the ancient weaving, was a frail cinder on the back of the charred settee, and a Hopi ceremonial dress which hung upon the wall was a blackened shred.
All these things had small money value, and to many men, would have represented no interest whatsoever, but to me they were precious. They were a part of my life. To burn them was to char a section of my brain. Pitiful possessions! Worthless rags! And yet they were the best I could show after thirty years of labor with the pen!
My father's condition troubled me most. To have him rendered homeless at eighty-two with winter coming on seemed to me an intolerable cruelty, and so with a driving haste I set to work with my own hands to clear away and restore. Wielding the wrecking bar and the spade each day, I toiled like a hired man—even after the carpenters were gone at night I scraped paint and shoveled rubbish.
Let no one pity me! A curious pleasure came with all this, for it seemed to advance the reconstruction with double swiftness.
At the end of the week I sent my wife and the children back to their city home, and thereafter I had but one interest, one diversion—to plan and execute my rebuilding. To close the walls, to make the rooms secure against wind and rain was imperative.
The insurance inspector came pleasantly to the rescue, and with a small balance in the bank I hired roofers, plu
mbers, carpenters, masons, till the street resounded with their clamor. In a week I had the rooms cleared, the doors and windows closed, and my father living in one corner of the house, whilst I camped down in my study. Water-soaked, ill-smelling, but inhabitable, the old house again possessed a light and a hearth.
"The children and their grandsire shall eat Thanksgiving dinner in the rebuilt dining-room," was my secret sentimental resolution. "To do that will turn a wail into a song—a disaster into a poem."
All very foolish, you say. No doubt, but it interested me and I was of an age when very few things interested me vitally. With clothing black as soot, with hands brown with stain and skinned and swollen and feverish, I kept to my job without regard to Sundays or the ordinary hours of labor. I was not seeking sympathy,—I was renewing my youth. I was both artist and workman. My muscles hardened, my palms broadened, my appetite became prodigious. I lost all fear of indigestion and ate anything which my friend Dudley was good enough to provide. I even drank coffee at every opportunity, and went so far as to eat doughnuts and pancakes at breakfast! To be deliciously hungry as of old was heartening.
The weather continued merciful. Each day the sun rose red and genial, and at noon the warm haze of Indian summer trailed along the hills—though I had little time in which to enjoy it. Each sunset marked a new stanza in my poem, a completed phrase, a recovered figure. "Our small affairs have shut out the light of the sun," I said to father, "the political situation has lost all interest for me."
Bare, clean and sweet, the library and music-room at last were ready for furniture. All these must be replaced. A hurried trip to the city, three days of determined shopping with Zulime, and a stream of new goods (necessary to refurnish), began to set toward the threshold. The draymen plied busily between the station and the gate.
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