FullReads

VII

I happened about this time to be acting as president of an insurance company on Canal Street. Summer was coming in again. One hot sunny day, when the wind was high and gusty, the secretary was remarking to me what sad ruin it might work if fire should start among the frame tenement cottages which made up so many neighborhoods that were destitute of watermains, when right at our ear the gong sounded for just such a region and presently engine after engine came thundering and smoking by our open windows. Fire had broken out in the street where Manouvrier’s new house stood, four squares from that house, but straight to windward of it.

We knew only too well, without being there to witness, that our firemen would find nothing with which to fight the flames except a few shallow wells of surface water and the wooden rain-water cisterns above ground, and that both these sources were almost worthless owing to a drouth. A man came in and sat telling me of his new device for lessening the risks of fire.

“Where?” asked I, quickly.

“Why, as I was saying, on steamboats loaded with cotton.”

“Oh, yes,” said I, “I understand.” But I did not. For the life of me I couldn’t make sense of what he said. I kept my eyes laboriously in his face, but all I could see was a vision of burning cottages; hook-and- ladder-men pulling down sheds and fences; ruined cisterns letting just enough water into door-yards and street-gutters to make sloppy walking; fire-engines standing idle and dropping cinders into their own puddles in a kind of shame for their little worth; here and there one furiously sucking at an exhausted well while its firemen stood with scorching faces holding the nozzles almost in the flames and cursing the stream of dribbling mud that fell short of their gallant endeavor. I seemed to see streets populous with the sensation-seeking crowd; sidewalks and alleys filled with bedding, chairs, bureaus, baskets of crockery and calico clothing with lamps spilling into them, cheap looking-glasses unexpectedly answering your eye with the boldness of an outcast girl, broken tables, pictures of the Virgin, overturned stoves, and all the dear mantlepiece trash which but an hour before had been the pride of the toiling housewife, and the adornment of the laborer’s home.

“Where can I see this apparatus?” I asked my patient interviewer.

“Well–ahem! it isn’t what you’d call an apparatus, exactly. I have here—-“

“Yes; never mind that just now; I’m satisfied you’ve got a good thing and –I’ll tell you! Can you come in to-morrow at this hour? Good! I wish you would! Well, good-day.”

The secretary was waiting to speak to me. The fire, he said, had entirely burned up one square and was half through a second. “By the way, isn’t that the street where old P.T.B.—-“

“Yes,” I replied, taking my hat; “if anyone wants to see me, you’d better tell him to call to-morrow.”

I found the shop in St. Peter’s Street shut, and went on to the new residence. As I came near it, its beauty seemed to me to have consciously increased under the threatenings of destruction.

In the front gate stood the brother-in-law’s widow, full of gestures and distressful smiles as she leaned out with nervously folded arms and looked up and down the street. “Manouvrier? he is ad the fire since a whole hour. He will break his heart if dat fire ketch to dat ‘ouse here. He cannot know ‘ow ’tis in danger! Ah! sen’ him word? I sen’ him fo’ five time’–he sen’ back I stay righd there an’ not touch nut’n’! Ah! my God! I fine dat varrie te-de-ous, me, yass!”

“Is his wife with him?”

“Assuredly! You see, dey git ‘fraid ’bout dat ‘ouse of de Sister’, you know?”

“No, where is it?”

“No? You dunno dat lill’ ‘ouse where de Sister’ keep dose orphelin’ ba-bee’?-juz big-inning sinse ’bout two week’ ago?-round de corner–one square mo’ down town–‘alf square mo’ nearer de swamp? Well, I thing ‘f you pass yondeh you fine Pastropbon.”