Part 116 (1/2)

Madame Vine glanced up through her spectacles.

”Would you believe,” continued Barbara, dropping her voice, ”that while West Lynne, and I fear ourselves also, gave that miserable Afy credit for having gone away with Richard, she was all the time with Levison?

Ball, the lawyer got her to confess to-day. I am unacquainted with the details; Mr. Carlyle would not give them to me. He said the bare fact was quite enough, and considering the a.s.sociations it involved, would not do to talk of.”

Mr. Carlyle was right.

”Out it seems to come, little by little, one wickedness after another!”

resumed Barbara. ”I do not like Mr. Carlyle to hear it. No, I don't. Of course there is no help for it; but he must feel it terribly, as must also Lord Mount Severn. She was his wife, you know, and the children are hers; and to think that she--I mean he--must feel it for her,” went on Barbara after her sudden pause, and there was some hauteur in her tone lest she should be misunderstood. ”Mr. Carlyle is one of the very few men, so entirely n.o.ble, whom the sort of disgrace reflected from Lady Isabel's conduct cannot touch.”

The carriage of the first guest. Barbara ran across the room, and rattled at Mr. Carlyle's door. ”Archibald do you hear?”

Back came the laughing answer. ”I shan't keep them long. But they may surely accord a few minutes' grace to a man who has just been converted into an M. P.”

Barbara descended to the drawing-room, leaving her, that unhappy lady, to the cement and the broken pieces, and to battle as best she could with her bitter heart. Nothing but stabs; nothing but stabs! Was her punishment ever to end? No. The step she had taken in coming back to East Lynne had precluded that.

The guests arrived; all save Mr. and Mrs. Hare. Barbara received a note from her instead. The justice did not feel well enough to join them.

I should think he did not.

A pleasant party it was at East Lynne, and twelve o'clock struck before the carriage of the last guest drove away. It may have been from one to two hours after that, and the house was steeped in moonlight and quietness, everybody being abed and asleep when a loud summons at the hall bell echoed through the stillness.

The first to put her head out the window was Wilson. ”Is it fire?”

shrieked she, in the most excessive state of terror conceivable. Wilson had a natural dread of fire--some people do possess this dread more than others--and had oftentime aroused the house to a commotion by declaring she smelt it. ”Is it fire?” shrieked Wilson.

”Yes!” was shouted at the top of a man's voice, who stepped from between the entrance pillars to answer.

Wilson waited for no more. Clutching at the baby with one hand--a fine young gentleman now of near twelve months old, promising fair to be as great a source of trouble to Wilson and the nursery as was his brother Archibald, whom he greatly resembled--and at Archie with the other, out she flew to the corridor screeching ”Fire! fire! fire!” never ceasing, down tore Wilson with the four children, and burst unceremoniously into the sleeping apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. By this time the children, terrified out of their senses, not at Wilson's cry of alarm, but at the summary propelling downstairs, set up a shrieking, too.

Madame Vine, believing that half the house as least was in flames, was the next to appear, throwing on a shawl she had caught up, and then came Joyce.

”Fire! fire! fire!” shouted Wilson; ”we are all being burnt up together!”

Poor Mrs. Carlyle, thus wildly aroused from sleep, sprang out of bed and into the corridor in her night-dress. Everybody else was in a night- dress--when folks are flying for dear life, they don't stop to look for their dress-coats and best blonde caps. Out came Mr. Carlyle, who had hastily a.s.sumed his pantaloons.

He cast a rapid glance down to the hall, and saw that the stairs were perfectly free for escape; therefore to hurry was not so violent. Every soul around him was shrieking in concert, making the confusion and din terrific. The bright moonlight streamed in at the corridor windows, but there was no other light; shadowy and indistinct enough looked the white figures.

”Where is the fire?” he exclaimed. ”I don't smell any. Who gave the first alarm?”

The bell answered him. The hall-bell, which rang out ten times louder and longer than before. He opened one of the windows and leaned from it.

”Who's there?” Madame Vine caught up Archie.

”It's me, sir,” responded a voice, which he at once recognized to be that of one of Mr. Hare's men-servants. ”Master has been took in a fit, sir, and mistress sent me for you and Miss Barbara. You must please make haste, sir, if you want to see him alive.”

Miss Barbara! It was more familiar to Jasper, in a moment of excitement, than the new name.

”You, Jasper! Is the house on fire--this house?”

”Well, I don't know, sir. I can hear a dreadful deal of screeching in it.”

Mr. Carlyle closed the window. He began to suspect that the danger lay in fear alone. ”Who told you there was fire?” he demanded of Wilson.