Part 27 (2/2)

Suddenly somebody, just come, and springing in at the open door, heard his name.

”Harry! Help me with this!” And Harry Goldthwaite pushed aside two men at the foot of the staircase, lifted up a small boy and swung him over the bal.u.s.ter, and ran up to the landing.

”Take hold of it with me,” said Barbara, hurriedly. ”It is valuable.

We must carry it ourselves. Don't let anybody touch it. Over to Mrs.

Hobart's.”

”Hendee!” called out Harry to Mark Hendee, who appeared below. ”Keep those people off, will you? Make way!” And so they two took the big basket steadily by the ears, and went away with it together. The first we knew about it was when, on their way back, they came down upon our line of march toward Elijah's door.

Beyond this, there was no order to chronicle. So far, it seems longer in the telling than it did in the doing. We had to work ”awful quick,”

as Mrs. Hobart said. But the nice and hazardous work was all done.

Even the press that held the table-napery was emptied to the last napkin, and all was safe.

Now the hall doors were thrown open; wagons were driven up to the entrances, and loaded with everything that came first, as things are ordinarily ”saved” at a fire. These were taken over to Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks's. Books and pictures, furniture, bedding, carpets; quant.i.ties were carried away, and quant.i.ties were piled up on the lawn. The men-servants came and looked after these; they had done all they could elsewhere; they left the work to the firemen now, and there was little hope of saving the house. The window-frames were smoking, and the panes were cracking with the heat, and fire was running along the piazza roofs before we left the building. The water was giving out.

After that we had to stand and see it burn. The wells and cisterns were dry, and the engines stood helpless.

The stable roofs fell in with a crash, and the flames reared up as from a great red crater and whirlpool of fire. They lashed forth and seized upon charred walls and timbers that were ready, without their touch, to spring into live combustion. The whole southwest front of the mansion was overswept with almost instant sheets of fire. Fire poured in at the cas.e.m.e.nts; through the wide, airy halls; up and into the rooms where we had stood a little while before; where, a little before that, the children had been safe asleep in their nursery beds.

Mrs. Marchbanks, like any other burnt-out woman, had gone to the home that offered to her,--her sister-in-law's; Olivia and Adelaide were going to the Haddens; the children were at Mrs. Hobart's; the things that, in their rich and beautiful arrangement, had made _home_, as well as enshrined the Marchbanks family in their sacredness of elegance, were only miscellaneous ”loads” now, transported and discharged in haste, or heaped up confusedly to await removal. And the sleek servants, to whom, doubtless, it had seemed that their Rome could never fall, were suddenly, as much as any common Bridgets and Patricks, ”out of a place.”

Not that there would be any permanent difference; it was only the story and att.i.tude of a night. The power was still behind; the ”Tailor” would sew things over again directly. Mrs. Roger Marchbanks would be comparatively composed and in order, at Mrs. Lewis's, in a few days,--receiving her friends, who would hurry to make ”fire-calls,” as they would to make party or engagement or other special occasion visits; the cordons would be stretched again; not one of the crowd of people who went freely in and out of her burning rooms that night, and worked hardest, saving her library and her pictures and her carpets, would come up in cool blood and ring her door-bell now; the sanct.i.ty and the dignity would be as unprofanable as ever.

It was about four in the morning--the fire still burning--when Mrs.

Holabird went round upon the out-skirts of the groups of lookers-on, to find and gather together her own flock. Rosamond and Ruth stood in a safe corner with the Haddens. Where was Barbara?

Down against the close trunks of a cl.u.s.ter of linden-trees had been thrown cus.h.i.+ons and carpets and some bundles of heavy curtains, and the like. Coming up behind, Mrs. Holabird saw, sitting upon this heap, two persons. She knew Barbara's hat, with its white gull's breast; but somebody had wrapped her up in a great crimson table-cover, with a bullion fringe. Somebody was Harry Goldthwaite, sitting there beside her; Barbara, with only her head visible, was behaving, out here in this unconventional place and time, with a tranquillity and composure which of late had been apparently impossible to her in parlors.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

”What will Mrs. Marchbanks do with Mrs. Hobart after this, I wonder?”

Mrs. Holabird heard Harry say.

”She'll give her a sort of brevet,” replied Barbara. ”For gallant and meritorious services. It will be, 'Our friend Mrs. Hobart; a near neighbor of ours; she was with us all that terrible night of the fire, you know.' It will be a great honor; but it won't be a full commission.”

Harry laughed.

”Queer things happen when you are with us,” said Barbara. ”First, there was the whirlwind, last year,--and now the fire.”

”After the whirlwind and the fire--” said Harry.

”I wasn't thinking of the Old Testament,” interrupted Barbara.

”Came a still, small voice,” persisted Harry. ”If I'm wicked, Barbara, I can't help it. You put it into my head.”

”I don't see any wickedness,” answered Barbara, quickly. ”That was the voice of the Lord. I suppose it is always coming.”

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