A CRY IN THE NIGHT
BECAUSE she was tired from her long walk and her conversation and from
other reasons Polly went up-stairs to bed sooner than her sister and
brother-in-law.
As a special privilege the children had begged that Bobbin should be
allowed to sleep in the nursery with them, and rather against her will
Polly had consented. The little girl had previously occupied a small
room connected with her own.
However, she was too weary for argument, and besides Mollie's babies
were cross and unreasonable. They had been playing all afternoon with
the Christmas tree which stood in the big back parlor just under Polly's
room. Anything to get them safely stowed in bed and the house quiet!
For Polly had expected to lie awake for a number of hours, reflecting on
many things, when in point of fact immediately after retiring she sank
into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Moreover, about ten o'clock Mollie and Billy also decided to follow
their sister's example. And it was Billy himself who closed up the
windows and made the house ready for the night. Only he failed to go
into the back parlor where the Christmas tree stood and where the floor
was now littered with discarded toys and games and the walls hung with
dried-out evergreens.
He was under the impression that the windows in this room had been
closed and locked when the children departed to bed. Moreover, locking
up at the farm-house was more of a custom than a necessity. No one had
any real fear of burglars or tramps. Besides, the windows in the back
parlor were locked and no danger was to come from the outside.
But it must have been only about three hours later when Mollie suddenly
awoke with a scream and start. A hand had passed lightly over her face.
The next instant and Billy jumped up and seized hold of the intruder.
Yet his hands clasped only a slight, childish form in a white gown. It
was too dark in the room to see who it could be until Mollie lit the
candle which stood always by their bedside.
Then they both discovered Bobbin, not walking in her sleep as they
supposed, but with her face very white and making queer little movements
with her hands and lips.
"The child is frightened; something must have to disturbed her," Billy
suggested, still only half awake himself.
But Mollie had jumped out of bed and was already on her way to the
nursery. Naturally she presumed that something had happened to one of
the children and that Bobbin had come to call her. Poor little girl, she
had no other way of calling than to touch with her hands!
However, half way down the hall Mollie turned and ran back into her own
bedroom.
"Get up please, Billy, in a hurry, won't you? I do believe I smell smoke
somewhere in the house. Something must be on fire. Of course Bobbin
could detect it before the rest of us; she is sure to have a keener
sense of smell."
A moment later and Billy had jumped almost all the way down the long
flight of old-fashioned country stairs.
"Don't be frightened, dear, but get the children up and put clothes on
them," he shouted back. "It is too cold for you to go out in the snow
undressed and we are miles from a neighbor. I will call the men and we
will fight the fire. Don't forget to waken Polly!"
With this last injunction in her mind Mollie stopped to hammer on her
sister's door before she ran on to the nursery.
She was certain that she heard Polly answer her. Besides, by this time
the house was filled with an excited tumult, Mollie's little boys were
dancing about in the hall, half pleased and half frightened with the
excitement, their nurse was scolding and crying and vainly endeavoring
to dress the small Polly.
So it was plain enough that for the next few minutes Mollie had
difficulty enough in keeping her wits about her and in quieting her
family, especially as every now and then she could hear her husband's
voice from below calling on her to hurry as quickly as possible.
Only Bobbin at once slipped into a heavy, long coat and shoes and rushed
back to Polly's room. The door was locked, but she pounded patiently and
automatically on the outside, unable, of course, to hear the answering
voice from within.
Then there came a sudden hoarse shout from below stairs and in that
instant Mr. Webster, dashing up a flight of steps almost at one bound,
returned with the baby in his arms, while Mollie led one of the small
boys and the nurse the other.
"Come on, you and Polly, at once!" Mollie cried, waving her hands and
pointing toward the great hall to show that there was no time for
further delay.
But this was evident enough to Bobbin without being told, for the smoke
was pouring out of the parlor into the hall and coming up the stairs
like a great advancing army.
However, Bobbin would not leave her post. There was not the faintest
thought in her brain of ever stirring from without that locked door
until the one person whom she loved in the world should come forth from
it. And she was not conscious of feeling particularly afraid, only she
could not understand why Miss O'Neill would not hurry.
A moment later, however, and Bobbin found herself outside standing alone
in the snow.
There had been no possible outcry on her part, no explanation and no
argument, of course. Only when one of the farm laborers rushing
up-stairs had seen the little girl loitering in the hall, without saying
by your leave, he had seized her in his arms and borne her struggling
through the now stifling smoke.
Outside in the yard Bobbin for a moment felt weak and confused. For all
at once the place seemed to be swarming with excited people.
There were a dozen men and their families living on the big farm with
houses of their own. And now the ringing of a great bell had brought
them all out with their wives and children as well.
The women were swarming about Mollie with their children, crying,
gesticulating, talking. It was a clear, white night and Bobbin could
see them easily. The men were engaged in rushing back and forth with
pails of water, fearing that the water might freeze on the way.
But there was nowhere any sign of Polly!
Bobbin did not try to attract attention. In the instant it did not even
occur to her that she might not have been able to make any one
understand. Simply and without being seen she slipped into one of the
big front windows, opened by the men as a passage-way, and started
fighting her way again up the black, smoke-laden steps.
There seemed to be no more air, it was all a thick, foggy substance that
got into your throat and made you unable to breathe and into your eyes
so that you could not see. But Bobbin went resolutely on.
She clung to the banisters and dragged herself upward, either too stupid
or too intent on her errand to suffer fear. Nevertheless, through the
smoke she could see that long tongues of flame were bursting out of the
doors of the back parlor into the hall beneath her.
Only, once more at Polly's bedroom door Bobbin lost heart and the only
real terror she ever remembered enduring seized hold on her. For Polly's
door was still locked and she had no means of making her hear.
All that she could accomplish by hammering and kicking she had done
before. Of course, she tried this again, yet the door did not open and
so far as Bobbin could know there was no movement from the inside.
Yet next Miss O'Neill's room there was her own room and the door of this
was unfastened. With a kind of half-blind impulse Bobbin staggered into
it. She had no clear or definite idea of what she intended doing, yet
fortunately this room was only partially filled with smoke so that she
could in a measure see her way about.
There in the corner stood an old-fashioned, heavy wooden chair. Almost
instinctively Bobbin seized hold on it. She was curiously strong, doubly
so to any other girl of her age, since she had lived outdoors always
like a little barbarian. Besides, there was nothing else that could be
done. She must break down Miss O'Neill's door.
With all her force the girl hurled the heavy chair against the oak door.
There were a few marks on its surface, yet the door remained absolutely
firm, for the Webster house had been built in the days when wood had
been plentiful in the New Hampshire hills and homes had been expected to
endure.
Nevertheless Bobbin pounded again and again, almost automatically her
thin arms seemed to work, and yet all her effort was without avail.
During these moments no one can guess exactly what emotions tore at the
girl's heart. If only she could have cried out her alarm and her desire,
surely she would have been answered!
Bobbin's face worked strangely, there was a kind of throbbing in her
ears and her lips moved. "Polly!" she called in a hoarse little whisper,
and this was the first word she had ever spoken in her life.
Inside in her smoke-filled room Polly O'Neill could not possibly have
heard her. For the past fifteen minutes, during all the excitement due
to the fire, she had been lying upon her bed in a stifled condition. For
no one had realized that as Polly's room was immediately above the back
parlor, where the fire had been smouldering ever since the children had
gone up-stairs to bed, her room had been first to be filled with smoke.
Yet the smoke had come so slowly, so gradually as she lay in a kind of
exhausted sleep, that she had been stupefied rather than awakened by it.
Now was it the miracle rather than the sound of Bobbin's speaking her
name that penetrated slowly to Polly's consciousness, or was it the
noise of the repeated pounding of the heavy chair against her door?
Whatever the cause, she came back to the world, choking, blinded,
fighting with her hands to keep off the black substance that was
crowding into her lungs.
Then somehow she managed to crawl across her room, remembering that the
smoke would be denser higher up in the atmosphere. Unlocking the door,
she turned the handle and Bobbin caught her as she half fell into the
hall.
With a quick movement the girl put her arm about the older woman's waist
and started for the stairway, for the hall was dense with smoke and now
and then a tongue of flame leaped up from below and seemed to dance for
a moment in the air about them.
It was overpowering, unendurable. Polly was already dazed and exhausted
and her lungs were always delicate. At the top of the stairs she became
a dead weight on her companion's arms. Besides, by this time Bobbin too
was very weary.