A Tale of a Political Difference Mr. Carewe was already at the breakfast-table, but the light of his countenance, hidden behind the Rouen Journal, was not vouchsafed to his daughter when she took her place opposite him, nor did he see fit to return her morning greeting, from which she generously concluded that the burning of the two warehouses had meant a severe loss to him.
"I am so sorry, father," she said gently. (She had not called him "papa" since the morning after her ball.) "I hope it isn't to be a great trouble to you." There was no response, and, after waiting for some time, she spoke again, rather tremulously, yet not timidly: "Father?"
He rose, and upon his brow were marked the blackest lines of anger she had ever seen, so that she leaned back from him, startled; but he threw down the open paper before her on the table, and struck it with his clenched fist.
"Read that!" he said. And he stood over her while she read.
There were some grandiloquent headlines: "Miss Elizabeth Carewe an Angel of Mercy! Charming Belle Saves the Lives of Five Prominent Citizens! Her Presence of Mind Prevents Conflagration from Wiping Out the City!" It may be noted that Will Cummings, editor and proprietor of the Journal, had written these tributes, as well as the whole account of the evening's transactions, and Miss Betty loomed as large in Will's narrative as in his good and lovelorn heart. There was very little concerning the fire in the Journal; it was nearly all about Betty. That is one of the misfortunes which pursue a lady who allows an editor to fall in love with her.
However, there was a scant mention of the arrival of the Volunteers "upon the scene" (though none at all at the cause of their delay) and an elo- quent paragraph was devoted to their handsome appearance, Mr. Cummings having been one of those who insisted that the new uniforms should be worn. "Soon," said the Journal, "through the daring of the Chief of the Department, and the Captain of the Hook-and-Ladder Company, one of whom placed and mounted the grappling-ladder, over which he was immediately followed by the other carrying the hose, a stream was sent to play upon the devouring element, a feat of derring-do personally witnessed by a majority of our readers. Mr. Vanrevel and Mr. Gray were joined by Eugene Madrillon, Tappingham Marsh, and the editor of this paper, after which occurred the unfortunate accident to the long ladder, leaving the five named gentlemen in their terrible predicament, face to face with death in its most awful form. At this frightful moment "--and all the rest was about Miss Carewe.
As Will himself admitted, he had "laid himself out on that description."
One paragraph was composed of short sentences, each beginning with the word "alone." "Alone she entered the shattered door! Alone she set foot upon the first flight of stairs! Alone she ascended the second! Alone she mounted the third. Alone she lifted her hand to the trap! Alone she opened it!" She was declared to have made her appearance to the unfortunate prisoners on the roof, even as "the palm-laden dove to the despairing Noah," and Will also asserted repeatedly that she was the "Heroine of the Hour."
Miss Betty blushed to see her name so blazoned forth in print; but she lacked one kind of vanity, and failed to find good reason for more than a somewhat troubled laughter, the writer's purpose was so manifestly kind in spite of the bizarre result.
"Oh, I wish Mr. Cummings hadn't!" she exclaimed. "It would have been better not to speak of me at all, of course; but I can't see that there is anything to resent--it is so funny!"
"Funny!" Mr. Carewe repeated the word in a cracked falsetto, with the evident intention of mocking her, and at the same time hideously contorted his face into a grotesque idiocy of expression, pursing his lips so extremely, and setting his brows so awry, that his other features were cartooned out of all familiar likeness, effecting an alteration as shocking to behold, in a man of his severe cast of countenance, as was his falsetto mimicry to hear. She rose in a kind of terror, perceiving that this contortion was produced in burlesque of her own expression, and, as he pressed nearer her, stepped back, overturning her chair. She had little recollection of her father during her childhood; and as long as she could remember, no one had spoken to her angrily, or even roughly.
As she retreated from him, he leaned forward, thrusting the hideous mask closer to her white and horror-stricken face.
"You can't see anything to resent in that!" he gibbered. "It's so funny, is it? Funny! Funny! Funny! I'll show you whether it's funny or not, I'll show you!" His voice rose almost to a shriek. "You hang around fires, do you, on the public streets at night? You're a nice one for me to leave in charge of my house while I'm away, you trollop! What did you mean by going up on that roof? You knew that damned Vanrevel was there! You did, I say, you knew it!"
She ran toward the door with a frightened cry; but he got between it and her, menacing her with his upraised open hands, shaking them over her.
"You're a lovely daughter, aren't you!" he shouted hoarsely. "You knew perfectly well who was on that roof, and you went! Didn't you go? Answer me that! If I'd had arms about me when I got there, I'd have shot that man dead! He was on my property, giving orders, the black hound! And when I ordered him out, he told me if I interfered with his work before it was finished, he'd have me thrown out--me that owned the whole place; and there wasn't a man that would lend me a pistol! `Rescue!' You'd better rescue him from me, you palm-laden dove, for I'll shoot him, I will! I'll kill that dog; and he knows it. He can bluster in a crowd, but he'll hide now! He's a coward and--"
"He came home with me; he brought me home last night!" Her voice rang out in the room like that of some other person, and she hardly knew that it was herself who spoke.
