Lisa stood in the empty window-frame, a trembling figure on a background of flame. Her post was not at the moment in absolute danger. There was hope yet, though to the onlookers there seemed none.

'Throw him!' 'Drop him!' 'Le' go of him!' shouted the crowd.

'Hold your jaws, and let me do the talking!' roared the policeman.

'Stop your noise, if you don't want two dead children on your consciences! Keep back, you brutes, keep back o' the rope, or I'll club you!'

It was not so much the officer's threats as simple, honest awe that caused a sudden hush to fall. There were whisperings, sighs, tears, murmurings, but all so subdued that it seemed like silence in the midst of the fierce crackling of the flames.

'Drop him! We'll ketch him in the quilt!' called the policeman, standing as near as he dared.

Lisa looked shudderingly at the desperate means of salvation so far below, and, turning her face away as much as she could, unclasped her arms despairingly, and Atlantic came swooping down from their shelter, down, down into the counterpane; stunned, stifled, choked by smoke, but uninjured, as Lisa knew by the cheers that greeted his safe descent.

A tongue of fire curled round the corner of the building and ran up to the roof towards another that was licking its way along the top of the window.

'Jump now yourself!' called the policeman, while two more men silently joined the four holding the corners of the quilt. Every eye was fixed on the motionless figure of Marm Lisa, who had drawn her shawl over her head, as if just conscious of nearer heat.

The wind changed, and blew the smoke away from her figure. The men on the roof stopped work, not caring for the moment whether they saved the tenement house or not, since a human life was hanging in the balance. The intoxicated woman threw a beer-bottle into the street, and her son ran up from the crowd and locked her safely in her kitchen at the back of the house.

'Jump this minute, or you're a dead girl!' shouted the officer, hoa.r.s.e with emotion. 'G.o.d A'mighty, she ain't goin' to jump--she's terror-struck! She'll burn right there before our eyes, when we could climb up and drag her down if we had a long enough ladder!'

'They've found another ladder and are tying two together,' somebody said.

'The fire company's comin'! I hear 'em!' cried somebody else.

'They'll be too late,' moaned Rhoda, 'too late! Oh, Mary, make her jump!'

Lisa had felt no fear while she darted through smoke and over charred floors in pursuit of Atlantic--no fear, nothing but joy when she dragged him out from under bench and climbed to the window-sill with him,--but now that he was saved she seemed paralysed. So still she was, she might have been a carven statue save for the fluttering of the garments about her thin childish legs. The distance to the ground looked impa.s.sable, and she could not collect her thoughts for the hissing of the flame as it ate up the floor in the room behind her. Horrible as it was, she thought it would be easier to let it steal behind her and wrap her in its burning embrace than to drop from these dizzy heights down through that terrible distance, to hear her own bones snap as she touched the quilt, and to see her own blood staining the ground.

'She'll burn, sure,' said a man. 'Well, she's half-witted--that's one comfort!'

Mary started as if she were stung, and forced her way still nearer to the window; hoping to gain a position where she could be more plainly seen.

Everybody thought something was going to happen. Mary had dozens of friends and more acquaintances in that motley a.s.semblage, and they somehow felt that there were dramatic possibilities in the situation.

Unless she could think of something, Marm Lisa's last chance was gone: that was the sentiment of the crowd, and Mary agreed in it.

Her cape had long since dropped from her shoulders, her hat was trampled under foot, the fair coil of hair had loosened and was falling on her neck, and the steel fillet blazed in the firelight.

She stepped to the quilt and made a despairing movement to attract Lisa's attention.

'Li-sa!' she called, in that sweet, carrying woman's voice that goes so much further than a man's.

The child started, and, pushing back the shawl, looked out from under its cover, her head raised, her eyes brightening.

Mary chanced all on that one electrical moment of recognition, and, with a mien half commanding and half appealing, she stretched out both her arms and called again, while the crowd held its breath:

'Come to me, darling! Jump, little sister! NOW!'

Not one second did Marm Lisa hesitate. She would have sprung into the fire at that dear mandate, and, closing her eyes, she leaped into the air as the roof above her head fell in with a crash.

Just then the beating of hoofs and jangling of bells in the distance announced the coming of the belated firemen; not so long belated actually, for all the emotions, heart-beats, terrors, and despairs that go to make up tragedy can be lived through m a few brief moments.

In that sudden plunge from window to earth Marm Lisa seemed to die consciously. The grey world, the sad world, vanished, 'and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million- coloured,' beamed on her darkness. She kept on falling, falling, falling, till she reached the abysmal depths of s.p.a.ce--then she knew no more: and Mary, though p.r.o.ne on the earth, kept falling, falling, falling with her into so deep a swoon that she woke only to find herself on a friendly bed, with Rhoda and Lisa herself, weeping over her.

At five o'clock, Mrs. Grubb, forcibly torn from a meeting and acquainted with the afternoon's proceedings, hurried into a lower room in the tenement house, where Mary, Rhoda, and the three children were gathered for a time. There were still a hundred people in the street, but they showed their respect by keeping four or five feet away from the windows.

The twins sat on a sofa, more quiet than anything save death itself.

They had been rocked to the very centre of their being, and looked like nothing so much as a couple of faded photographs of themselves.

Lisa lay on a cot, sleeping restlessly; Mary looked pale and wan, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

As Mrs. Grubb opened the door softly, Mary rose to meet her.

'Have you heard all?' she asked.

'Yes, everything!' faltered Mrs. Grubb with quivering lips and downcast eyelids.

Mary turned towards Lisa's bed. 'Mrs. Grubb,' she said, looking straight into that lady's clear, shallow eyes, 'I think Lisa has earned her freedom, and the right to ask a Christmas gift of you.

Stand on the other side of the cot and put your hand in mine. I ask you for the last time, will you give this unfinished, imperfect life into my keeping, if I promise to be faithful to it unto the end, whatever it may be?'

I suppose that every human creature, be he ever so paltry, has his hour of effulgence, an hour when the mortal veil grows thin and the divine image stands revealed, endowing him, for a brief s.p.a.ce at least with a kind of awful beauty and majesty.

It was Mistress Mary's hour. Her pure, unswerving spirit shone with a white and steady radiance that illuminated Mrs. Grubb's soul to its very depths, showing her in a flash the feeble flickerings and waverings of her own trivial purposes. At that moment her eye was fitted with a new lens, through which the road to the summit of the Tehachapi Mountains and Mahatmadom suddenly looked long, weary, and profitless, and by means of which the twins were transferred from the comfortable middle distance they had previously occupied to the immediate foreground of duty. The lens might slip, but while it was in place she saw as clearly as another woman.

'Will you?' repeated Mistress Mary, wondering at her silence.

Mrs. Grubb gave one last glance at the still reproach of Lisa's face, and one more at the twins, who seemed to loom more formidably each time she regarded them; then drawing a deep breath she said, 'Yes, I will; I WILL, no matter what happens; but it isn't enough to give up, and you needn't suppose I think it is.' And taking a pa.s.sive twin by either hand, she pa.s.sed out of the door into the crowded thoroughfare, and disappeared in the narrow streets that led to Eden Place.