CHAPTER XLV. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

It wanted yet twenty minutes to eight o'clock, and Jim was sitting alone in the glow of the evening fireside. The warm, red light, flickering and shadowing, made the room seem like a mysterious grotto. Jim, in best party trim, sat gazing dreamily into the fire, turning the magic ring now and then in his vest pocket, and looking at his watch at intervals, while the mysterious rites of the toilet were going on upstairs.

Alice had never made a more elaborate or more careful toilet. Did she want to precipitate that which she said to herself she dreaded? Certainly she did not spare one possible attraction. She evidently saw no reason, under present circumstances, why she should not make herself look as well as she could.

As the result of the whole day's agitations and discussions, she had come to the conclusion that if Jim had anything to say she would listen to it advisedly, and take it into mature consideration. So she braided her long, dark hair, and crowned herself therewith, and then earrings and brooches came twinkling out here and there like stars, and bits of ribbon and velvet fluttered hither and thither, and fell into wonderfully apposite places, and the woman grew and brightened before the glass, as a picture under the hands of the artist.

It wanted yet a quarter of an hour of the time for the carriage, when there came a light fluff of gauzy garments, and the two party goddesses floated in in all misty splendor, and seemed to fill the whole room with the flutter of dresses.

Alice was radiant; her eyes were never more brilliant, and she was full of that subtle brightness which comes from the tremor of fully-awakened feeling. She was gayer than was her usual wont as she swept about the room and courteseyed with much solemnity to Jim, and turned herself round and round after the manner of a revolving figure in the shop windows.

Suddenly—and none of them knew how—there was a quick flash; the gauzy robe had swept into the fire, and, before any of them could speak, the dress was in flames. There was a scream, an utterance of agony from all parties at once, and Eva was just doing the most fatal thing possible in rushing desperately towards her sister, when Jim came between them, caught the woolen cloth from the table, and wrapped it around Alice; then, taking her in his arms, he laid her on the sofa, and crushed out the fire, beating it with his hands, and tearing the burning fragments away and casting them under foot. It all passed in one fearful, awe-struck moment, while Eva stood still, with the very shadow of death upon her, and saw Jim fighting back the fire, which in a moment or two was entirely extinguished. Alice had fainted, and Jim and Eva looked at each other as people do who have just seen death rising up between them.

"She is safe now," said Jim, as he stood there, pale as death and quivering from head to foot, while the floor around was strewed with the blackened remains of the gauzy material which he had torn away. "She is all right," he added; "the cloth has saved her throat and lungs."

It seemed now the most natural thing in the world that Jim should lay Alice's head upon his arm and administer restoratives; and, when she opened her eyes, that he should call her his darling, his life, his love. They had been in the awful valley of the shadow together—that valley where all that is false perishes and drops off, and what is true becomes the only reality. Alice felt that she loved Jim—that she belonged to him, and she did not dispute his right to speak as he did, and to care for her as one had a right to care for his own.

"Well," said Eva, drawing a long breath, when the bell rang and the carriage was announced, "we cannot go to the party, that is certain; and, Jim, tell him to go for Doctor Campbell. Mary, bring down a wrapper; we'll slip it over your torn finery, Alice, for the present," said Eva, endeavoring to be practical and self-possessed, though with a little hysterical sob every now and then betraying the shock to her nerves. "Then there must be a note sent to Aunt Maria, or what will she think?" pursued Eva, when Alice had been made comfortable on the sofa, where Jim was devoting himself to her.

"Don't, pray, tell all about it," said Alice. "One doesn't want to become the talk of all New York."

"I'll tell her that you have met with an accident that will detain you and me, but that you are not dangerous," said Eva, as she wrote her note and sent Mary up with it.

It was not until tranquillity had somewhat settled down on the party that Jim began to feel that his own hands were blistered; for, though a man under strong excitement may handle fire for a while and not feel it, yet nature keeps account and brings in her bill in due season.

"Why, Jim, you brave fellow," said Alice, suddenly raising herself, as she saw an expression of pain on his face, "here I am thinking only of myself, and you are suffering."

"Oh, nothing; nothing at all," said Jim; but Eva and Alice, now thoroughly aroused, were shocked at the state of his hands.

"The doctor will have you to attend to first," said Alice. "You have saved me by sacrificing yourself."

"Thank God for that!" said Jim, fervently.

Well, the upshot of the story is that Eva would not hear of Jim's leaving them that night. Doctor Campbell pronounced that the burns on his hands needed serious attention, and the prospect was that he would be obliged to rest from using them for a day or two.

But these two or three days of hospital care were not on the whole the worst of Jim's life, for Alice insisted on being his amanuensis, and writing his editorials for him, and, as she wrote with the engagement ring sparkling on her finger, Jim thought that he had never seen it appear to so great advantage. It was said that Jim's editorials, that week, had a peculiar vigor and pungency. We should not at all wonder, under the circumstances, if that were the case.