第84章 THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA(4)

Lurida turned deadly pale,and sank fainting to the ground.She was the first,but not the only one,of her sex that fainted as Euthymia disappeared in the smoke of the burning building.Even the rector grew very white in the face,--so white that one of his vestry-men begged him to sit down at once,and sprinkled a few drops of water on his forehead,to his great disgust and manifest advantage.The old landlady was crying and moaning,and her husband was wiping his eyes and shaking his head sadly.

"She will nevar come out alive,"he said solemnly.

"Nor dead,neither,"added the carpenter."Ther'won't be nothing left of neither of 'em but ashes."And the carpenter hid his face in his hands.

The fresh-water fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a "hangkercher,"--it had served to carry bait that morning,--and was making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running down his cheeks.The whole village was proud of Euthymia,and with these more quiet signs of grief were mingled loud lamentations,coming alike from old and young.

All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a tableau.The lookers-on were stunned with its suddenness,and before they had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost,or seemed lost.They felt that they should never look again on either of those young faces.

The rector,not unfeeling by nature,but inveterately professional by habit,had already recovered enough to be thinking of a text for the funeral sermon.The first that occurred to him was this,--vaguely,of course,in the background of consciousness:

"Then Shadrach,Meshach,and Abed-nego came forth of the midst of the fire."The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective disposition.He had always been opposed to cremation,and here was a funeral pile blazing before his eyes.He,too,had his human sympathies,but in the distance his imagination pictured the final ceremony,and how he himself should figure in a spectacle where the usual centre piece of attraction would be wanting,--perhaps his own services uncalled for.

Blame him not,you whose garden-patch is not watered with the tears of mourners.The string of self-interest answers with its chord to every sound;it vibrates with the funeral-bell,it finds itself trembling to the wail of the De Profundis.Not always,--not always;let us not be cynical in our judgments,but common human nature,we may safely say,is subject to those secondary vibrations under the most solemn and soul-subduing influences.

It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are contemplating in delaying it by the description of little circumstances and individual thoughts and feelings.But linger as we may,we cannot compress into a chapter--we could not crowd into a volume--all that passed through the minds and stirred the emotions of the awe-struck company which was gathered about the scene of danger and of terror.We are dealing with an impossibility:consciousness is a surface;narrative is a line.

Maurice had given himself up for lost.His breathing was becoming every moment more difficult,and he felt that his strength could hold out but a few minutes longer.

"Robert!"he called in faint accents.But the attendant was not there to answer.

"Paolo!Paolo!"But the faithful servant,who would have given his life for his master,had not yet reached the place where the crowd was gathered.

"Oh,for a breath of air!Oh,for an arm to lift me from this bed!

Too late!Too late!"he gasped,with what might have seemed his dying expiration.

"Not too late!"The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as if it had come down to him from heaven.

In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the arms of--a woman!