Nettie and her father, meanwhile, who had gone to bed early at the Sherman House, were not in the absolute security which both Mark and Horace imagined. As early as one o’clock they were up and dressed. The nervous and careful doctor himself carried their trunks downstairs. He had bidden Nettie put on her hat and walking-dress, and she was all ready to follow him. Every one assured the doctor that he was rather rushing into harm’s way than away from it; but he had the feeling that he should surely be safe with some old Greyford friends well up on Lasalle Street. With another gentleman, he secured one of the heavy coaches of the house, and with their own hands they piled on their trunks, and piled in the ladies of their party. So swiftly was the movement carried through, that in ten minutes the whole party were safe at the hospitable house on Lasalle Street, which the doctor had selected as “so much safer than a hotel.”
Alas for poor human foresight! The doctor had run just in the line of the tempest and of danger.
Not his party alone, but perhaps twenty other people, had gathered in the house. A pile of trunks, sheet-bundles of clothes, and other rescued property, encumbered the sidewalk. Everybody was made welcome, but meanwhile everybody was uneasy. The ladies and gentlemen of the house were engaged in bringing out valuables, and their guests in packing them, when, pop! the gas stopped, and every one knew that the gas-workers had gone. Not that they needed such light much. The light in the sky left few houses dark, as that morning crept along from midnight to sunrise. The work went on, and none too fast. One of the gentlemen had just succeeded in securing a furniture-wagon, when the scout at the corner of the square rushed in, crying that it was really the last moment; that every woman must be gone; and under Mrs. Goodhue’s lead, the long cortge, arms heaped full, took up the line of March for a house in Dearborn Street. The gentlemen promised that they would bring the trunks where they would be all right. And so, with less difficulty than might have been expected, all came safe to Dearborn Street, and again all met a cordial welcome, to have just the same experience again as a few hours passed by. Almost the same words describe it. Nettie had long since cast loose from any property of her own. She had gallantly taken charge of a little portrait of Mrs. Goodhue’s mother,-which was itself a large lift for Nettie to grapple with,-and of a travelling-bag of Mr. Fontenelle’s, which, as she knew, contained a hundred and five thousand dollars in five-twenty bonds. Nettie had declared to Mrs. Goodhue, that the portrait should be as safe as the lucre. At the Gracies’ house, she had worked as faithfully as the best. But when the order for flight came again, she embraced the picture, and, by science known to herself, kept the big bag handing on three of those little fingers,-”they were strong, if they were so small,” as Maggie Mitchell says,-and again they started for some place known to Mrs. Gracie, which was “certainly protected.” But the streets were more encumbered here. Nettie got confused, or some one else get confused. She could not cross Clark Street when she would nor where she would; and when she was across, a great torrent of black smoke compelled her to stop a moment; and then she could not see one of the party. What strange creatures New-England girls are! The first thought to Nettie-little laughing first, as you think her, dear reader-was, that on Friday only, she had been sitting in the High school with her friend Miss White, and had heard a bright girl read from the second neid, how creak acted when she found herself in just the same scrape in Troy.
“For while we seek the by-ways as we run,
Careful the more frequented streets to shun,
My wife, Creusa, in the darkness blind,
Torn by some wretched fate, is left behind.
Perhaps she lost the narrow path I found;
Perhaps she fell, exhausted, on the ground.
I looked not back, nor thought to look until
We reached the ancient shrine on Ceres’ Hill.”
But our friend Nettie had no thought, however, of “going under;” her only anxiety was about Mrs. Goodhue’s picture; which, after all she had said, she would have died for. She rushed on bravely with the throng, and was thrown for a moment against the shafts of a wagon, so that the young man at the horse’s head apologized to her. Nettie smiled as she thanked him; and he recognized her, though she did not know him. Her pretty face was black with smoke and dust. The tears, forced by the smoke, were running helplessly in white channels down her rounded cheeks. There was but one attention which, in that crisis, the gentleman could pay her; and he paid it. “Miss Sylva, would you like to have me wipe your eyes?”
“Thank you,” said Nettie, as merrily as she had said “Thank you” when he took her down to supper the Wednesday evening before. And this true knight,-whose name will ever be unknown,-with his one disengaged hand, drew a handkerchief chief from his pocket, and wiped the precious tear-drops from the prettiest eyes in Chicago. Who wills may make a sonnet of that tale! Nettie thanked him again, and laughed heartily again. He laughed as well,-offered to take her parcels, but she declined,-and she forged on her way, and he on his.
Where she went, she did not and does not know. Why she went, she hardly knew. Only, at last, she was all wrong. She came into an empty street; that must be wrong! Still she hurried through it, to see that, right and left, as the square ended, she was blocked by fire, or by smoke which she dared not pass. Back by the way she came! “Yes: this is right. This is the broken elm-tree I noticed. But, no! it is not right. I never saw that hogshead in the road. God help me! What is right? That smoke is too thick to charge. Back here? No! that is all too far gone. Could I have crossed back, and found Clark Street? Ought I not to have held by the wagon?” Still, she did not surrender the picture. No! nor did she lose her head. The loneliness was the worst. How she got there, she did not know. And clearly, that street was wholly abandoned. At that instant, one puff of wind revealed to her the retreating line of wagons, on one of the northward avenues. Only a moment; but enough for Nettie. She sprang into the smoke cloud, holding her breath, and, with her eyes shut, plunged on, running as fast as she could run with the picture. She smelt such smoke as she never smelt before, but she tried not to breathe. Nor was this in vain; forty paces of such running was enough. The air cleared; she was within twenty paces now of the wagons; one rush more, and then the picture-frame struck on some corner of a fence, and Nettie fell, helpless, and for one instant senseless on the ground.
Meanwhile, Mark had found the Johnsonian Library in very different plight from what he expected. Some fatal shaft had lighted early on a wheelwright’s shop, just opposite that institution; and, at the moment of Mark’s arrival, this shop was in flames. What a pity he had let Horace leave him! for by this time there were few enough volunteers to be recruited in the work of carrying out MSS., medals, and such other treasures as Mark knew were most valuable of all; or to take them to shelter, if in this storm of fire there were shelter. It was still early in the morning; but the people who were out and at work, were at work too eagerly for their own affairs to pay much heed to medals or to manuscripts. Neither for love nor for money could Mark find wagoner to help him, in the little range through which he dared to try. Ready money, indeed, he had none; having carefully left his watch and pocket-book at home when he and Horace started; and that night credit was worthless. Two or three light handcarts and a wheelbarrow he did impress. He and two of the trustees, white-headed old clergymen, and Miss Baylies, the assistant in the school hard by, did yeoman’s work with these in the little time they had. But this was little enough; for, within an hour after Mark’s appearance, the gutters of the Johnsonian had caught the flames, the little scuttle on the roof was on fire, and, in half an hour more, Mark and his trustees were driven, beaten, from the field. A stately carriage with a span of smooth, high-bred horses, was piled full of the manuscripts and medals; and trustee number one, mounting the box himself, drove it triumphantly from the ruin. Mark and the other trustees, and little Miss Baylies sought other fields of duty.
No question where Mark would go. “Where are the Greyford girls?” had been his qu
estion, even when he lay out on the Johnsonian roof with a hand-hose, when he descended into the Johnsonian crypts with a lantern. Now that he was free, he could find out where they were, and this was his first thought. Of course, the intelligent reader thinks he will go for Jane. Did he not write to Jane those beautiful sonnets? Were not his letters to her, all the summer, so personal? Yes; and yet he did not go for Jane. Perhaps he thought Jane well balanced enough to care for herself. Perhaps he thought that that part of Erie Street was in less danger than the Sherman House; or perhaps he pretended he thought this, and really, in his heart, felt that if any harm came to Nettie Sylva, he should never forgive himself; that if Nettie were lost in this chaos, his life would not be worth living. For my part, I think this storm of fire revealed a great many people to themselves. I think there was a great deal of time, while people were on the roofs of houses, or sitting in the night-air under the sky, when they learned a great deal that nothing else could have taught them. Of this I am sure: that when Mark Hinsdale saw that the Johnsonian was one mass of ruin, he rushed to the Sherman House by the shortest route he could find open. He never once thought of Rachel Holley, whom all Greyford thought he ought to think of; he did not think, more than a moment, of Jane Burgess, who had been kind to him and good to him; he thought of Nettie Sylva, because he knew her life was the other half of his life,-that if he could save her from suffering, that was what God had sent him into this world for; and, unless he could save her, it was not worth while for him to live.
He came to the Sherman House long hours after Nettie had left it. It was standing, though so much else around it was gone. Its white walls were red with the reflected light. Mark could see smoke starting from the roof, but the building seemed unchanged. How little while since he had left Dr. Sylva’s pleasant parlor in the corner of the fourth story! He rushed in. He was ordered back, and had to obey. But orders went for little: the house was well-nigh empty, for its fate was too certain; and Mark was in again, and in the doctor’s parlor. There was the copy of “Bret Harte” on the table, which she had read from last night. Mark seized it, and put it in his pocket. There were the rosebuds Mrs. Hubbard had sent her. Mark seized them. Could it be that any chance had neglected her and the doctor? He tried the doors from the parlor. The doctor’s room was empty. He knocked and knocked at the other door. “Nettie! Nettie!” No answer. He turned the key,-he rushed in, to meet a column of smoke which blinded him. But Mark had tried smoke before, that night. Down on his knees, he crept across the room, and was right; for there was a little space from which the smoke rose. He held his breath till he pulled both pillows from the bed. Certainly no one was there. But could he find his way back to the door? He could not stand. He could turn to the place where he thought it was,-but where it was not. The door was a wash-stand. “I shall be dead in ten seconds,” said Mark to himself. But in five seconds he had crawled to the door, was in the parlor again, was in the draught of a broken window, and was safe.
He was downstairs again. A porter he found declared that Dr. Sylva went north: which was true. Now for a journey north! And how? This bridge is closed, that tunnel closed:-the way is cut here and blocked there. But Mark did it. Southward, westward, northward, eastward, he passed round the fire. And then among seventy-five thousand people, Mark was looking in every blackened face, to see if it were the doctor or Nettie. If he met any man he ever saw before, he asked for Dr. Sylva or for Nettie. He rushed down one square and another, till he met the line of fire. He crossed back and forward through every street which took the line of fugitives. Church after church he tried, where people had sought sanctuary. And so was it, that making a short cut, where he thought no one blocked the way, he saw a woman emerge from the smoke, heavily burdened,-he saw her trip, and fall upon the ground senseless. He ran to her, and lifted her gently, and wiped her hair from her face, and he knew he had Nettie Sylva in his arms!
It is a hard thing to keep up the chronology of such chaos as this, in which few men looked at their watches, and of which the chief time-marks are the moments when the water failed, when the gas-works gave out, and when the sun rose. We have still to tell what became of Horace Vanzandt, whom we left crossing Indiana-street bridge, westward, to look for Jane Burgess; who, as he hoped, was half a mile exactly behind him.
Slow work, indeed, flanking the sea of fire on that morning. But Horace was steady as he was impetuous. Still, long before he had worked round to the south side of the river, every bridge and every tunnel to the north side was impassable, and every man he questioned assured him that the part of Eric Street he was asking for had gone. None the less did Horace persevere. A ditch like that could be crossed, if he had to swim it! Swim it he did not; but he did bribe an Irish boatman to carry him across the mouth of the river,-and so pressed his way up on the lake shore. Nay, he came to the ball ground, had he known it, some two hours after Jane and the children had left it.
He stooped down and picked up a jumping-jack some child had dropped there. Surely he had seen the grimace on that painted face before!
It was madness to ask each fugitive if he had seen a party of ladies, with three small children. Madness or not, Horace asked and asked again, and received answers, now wild and now coherent. They sent him hither, sent him thither; but there was no Sophy Bardles and no Jane Burgess to be found by this questioning. Back he was beaten to the river-shore and the lake, by failure and by fire; and at last, unwillingly, after trying this scow and that schooner, was fain to take shelter himself on a little tug that was putting out to sea. Nor was he relieved here from the wretchedness that had surrounded him on the shore. Children without their mothers, mothers without their children, were piled together on the little deck. Water, of course, the lake provided them; but a little hard-tack, which was gone before night, was all the edible provision. And such a night! She lay at anchor in sight of the lurid, cruel fire. And how she rose and pitched in the gale. How would these wretched, half-clothed children live till morning? Still, we do live till morning. And then such wretchedness! “I am so hungry! Oh, dear; I am so hungry!” The captain at last pulled up his anchor, and ran down under the lee of one of the larger steamers. “For the love of Christ, can you give these babies something to eat?” And Jane Burgess threw down into the tug one of the four loaves which Mike’s fore-thought had packed in the big basket which he never abandoned. And Horace Vanzandt, little guessing what angel answered his prayer, caught the loaf, and, in a minute was dividing it among these twenty starving little ones. A minute more, and he had scrambled up the steamer’s side. No! It was not Jane he found. It was a sort of mate, who could provide some blankets for the women who seemed dying in the engineer’s room of the little tug below. Up and down, back and forth, Horace passed on his work of mercy. And it was not till he had seen everybody decently comfortable there, that he scrambled back upon the steamer. He passed aft, where he saw a group of children lying listlessly. He offered a little boy the grinning jumping-jack. “Why, it is Carl’s jumping-jack! See here, mamma; here is Carl’s jumping-jack!”
And Horace turned, and Jane turned.
“Dear Horace!”
“My dearest Jane, is it you?”
Where are the Greyford girls?
For Jane and Nettie we have accounted. Let us go back to Rachel, at good Mrs. Worboise’s boarding-house.
Rachel soon understood that she was on the very edge of one of the greatest events in history, and was seeing it almost as little as if it had been in Moscow. She could, and did, run to the top of the house, and see a lurid canopy of smoke. She could and did make her way up, with Mr. Fay’s assistance, against the current of fugitives, as far almost as Harrison Street, and saw something of the methods of the fight. But she saw the flight more than the fight; and Mrs. Worboise and Rachel, and all that household, instantly understood the emergency, and the duty next their hands.
“My dear child, this is sure: they will need something to eat, whatever else they need, or whatever else they save.”
&nbs
p; This was Mrs. Worboise’s simple statement, founded on a profound philosophy. By “they,” the good soul meant the human family in general.
Her washing-boilers were scalded out,-as if they needed it!-and as many hams put in as they would hold. With white arms and sturdy, she mixed self-raised biscuits, and plied that day her ovens. Open doors in that house that day long; no sign of flight. No man nor woman stopped to ask a question, but was asked to eat, and ate to the full. The water had given way; but Mrs. Worboise had a little “nigger boy,”-as, in face of better light, she obstinately called him,-whom, by threats, bribes, and promises, she kept plying to the lake-shore for water; and her old New York filters did the rest. When she got a little ahead with her bread and ham, she devoted her attention to bedding. I dare not tell how many “shake-downs” she and Rachel and Mrs. Plinlimmon constructed on landings and floors. Mrs. Worboise could have hauled a steamer into action if she had been bidden; she could have sculled a scow, had she been bidden; she could have wiped a maiden’s smoky tears, had she been bidden; she could have lain out on the roof of the Johnsonian, with a hand-hose, had she been bidden; she would have added emphasis to a battering-ram, driving in a prison-door, had she been bidden. As it happened, she was bidden to provide for a stream of faint and roving fugitives; and reverently and faithfully, hopefully and lovingly, she did that duty. Of course she did it well.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 430