She paused for a moment to relieve herself of a series of entirely
unexpected chuckles. "_Sich_ goings on!" she said, "I never did!
Where's he going now?" and came along behind the parapet to the front
of the drapery establishment.
Below, the street was now fully alive to their presence, and
encouraged the appearance of their heads by shouts and cheers. A sort
of free fight was going on round the fire escape, order represented by
Mr. Boomer and the very young policeman, and disorder by some
partially intoxicated volunteers with views of their own about the
manipulation of the apparatus. Two or three lengths of Mr. Rusper's
garden hose appeared to have twined themselves round the ladder. Mr.
Polly watched the struggle with a certain impatience, and glanced ever
and again over his shoulder at the increasing volume of smoke and
steam that was pouring up from the burning fire station. He decided to
break an attic window and get in, and so try and get down through the
shop. He found himself in a little bedroom, and returned to fetch his
charge. For some time he could not make her understand his purpose.
"Got to come at once!" he shouted.
"I hain't '_ad_ _sich_ a time for years!" said the old lady.
"We'll have to get down through the house!"
"Can't do no jumpin'," said the old lady. "No!"
She yielded reluctantly to his grasp.
She stared over the parapet. "Runnin' and scurrying about like black
beetles in a kitchin," she said.
"We've got to hurry."
"Mr. Rumbold 'E's a very Quiet man. 'E likes everything Quiet. He'll
be surprised to see me 'ere! Why!--there 'e is!" She fumbled in her
garments mysteriously and at last produced a wrinkled pocket
handkerchief and began to wave it.
"Oh, come ON!" cried Mr. Polly, and seized her.
He got her into the attic, but the staircase, he found, was full of
suffocating smoke, and he dared not venture below the next floor. He
took her into a long dormitory, shut the door on those pungent and
pervasive fumes, and opened the window to discover the fire escape was
now against the house, and all Fishbourne boiling with excitement as
an immensely helmeted and active and resolute little figure ascended.
In another moment the rescuer stared over the windowsill, heroic, but
just a trifle self-conscious and grotesque.
"Lawks a mussy!" said the old lady. "Wonders and Wonders! Why! it's
Mr. Gambell! 'Iding 'is 'ed in that thing! I _never_ did!"
"Can we get her out?" said Mr. Gambell. "There's not much time."
"He might git stuck in it."
"_You'll_ get stuck in it," said Mr. Polly, "come along!"
"Not for jumpin' I don't," said the old lady, understanding his
gestures rather than his words. "Not a bit of it. I bain't no good at
jumping and I _wunt_."
They urged her gently but firmly towards the window.
"You _lemme_ do it my own way," said the old lady at the sill....
"I could do it better if e'd take it off."
"Oh! _carm_ on!"
"It's wuss than Carter's stile," she said, "before they mended it.
With a cow a-looking at you."
Mr. Gambell hovered protectingly below. Mr. Polly steered her aged
limbs from above. An anxious crowd below babbled advice and did its
best to upset the fire escape. Within, streamers of black smoke were
pouring up through the cracks in the floor. For some seconds the world
waited while the old lady gave herself up to reckless mirth again.
"_Sich_ times!" she said, and "_Poor_ Rumbold!"
Slowly they descended, and Mr. Polly remained at the post of danger
steadying the long ladder until the old lady was in safety below and
sheltered by Mr. Rumbold (who was in tears) and the young policeman
from the urgent congratulations of the crowd. The crowd was full of an
impotent passion to participate. Those nearest wanted to shake her
hand, those remoter cheered.
"The fust fire I was ever in and likely to be my last. It's a
scurryin', 'urryin' business, but I'm real glad I haven't missed it,"
said the old lady as she was borne rather than led towards the refuge
of the Temperance Hotel.
Also she was heard to remark: "'E was saying something about 'ot
chestnuts. _I_ 'aven't 'ad no 'ot chestnuts."
Then the crowd became aware of Mr. Polly awkwardly negotiating the top
rungs of the fire escape. "'Ere 'e comes!" cried a voice, and Mr.
Polly descended into the world again out of the conflagration he had
lit to be his funeral pyre, moist, excited, and tremendously alive,
amidst a tempest of applause. As he got lower and lower the crowd
howled like a pack of dogs at him. Impatient men unable to wait for
him seized and shook his descending boots, and so brought him to earth
with a run. He was rescued with difficulty from an enthusiast who
wished to slake at his own expense and to his own accompaniment a
thirst altogether heroic. He was hauled into the Temperance Hotel and
flung like a sack, breathless and helpless, into the tear-wet embrace
of Miriam.
V
With the dusk and the arrival of some county constabulary, and first
one and presently two other fire engines from Port Burdock and
Hampstead-on-Sea, the local talent of Fishbourne found itself forced
back into a secondary, less responsible and more observant rôle. I
will not pursue the story of the fire to its ashes, nor will I do more
than glance at the unfortunate Mr. Rusper, a modern Laocoon, vainly
trying to retrieve his scattered hose amidst the tramplings and
rushings of the Port Burdock experts.
In a small sitting-room of the Fishbourne Temperance Hotel a little
group of Fishbourne tradesmen sat and conversed in fragments and anon
went to the window and looked out upon the smoking desolation of their
homes across the way, and anon sat down again. They and their families
were the guests of old Lady Bargrave, who had displayed the utmost
sympathy and interest in their misfortunes. She had taken several
people into her own house at Everdean, had engaged the Temperance
Hotel as a temporary refuge, and personally superintended the housing
of Mantell and Throbson's homeless assistants. The Temperance Hotel
became and remained extremely noisy and congested, with people sitting
about anywhere, conversing in fragments and totally unable to get
themselves to bed. The manager was an old soldier, and following the
best traditions of the service saw that everyone had hot cocoa. Hot
cocoa seemed to be about everywhere, and it was no doubt very
heartening and sustaining to everyone. When the manager detected
anyone disposed to be drooping or pensive he exhorted that person at
once to drink further hot cocoa and maintain a stout heart.
The hero of the occasion, the centre of interest, was Mr. Polly. For
he had not only caused the fire by upsetting a lighted lamp, scorching
his trousers and narrowly escaping death, as indeed he had now
explained in detail about twenty times, but he had further thought at
once of that amiable but helpless old lady next door, had shown the
utmost decision in making his way to her over the yard wall of the
Royal Fishbourne Hotel, and had rescued her with persistence and
vigour in spite of the levity natural to her years. Everyone thought
well of him and was anxious to show it, more especially by shaking his
hand painfully and repeatedly. Mr. Rumbold, breaking a silence of
nearly fifteen years, thanked him profusely, said he had never
understood him properly and declared he ought to have a medal. There
seemed to be a widely diffused idea that Mr. Polly ought to have a
medal. Hinks thought so. He declared, moreover, and with the utmost
emphasis, that Mr. Polly had a crowded and richly decorated
interior--or words to that effect. There was something apologetic in
this persistence; it was as if he regretted past intimations that Mr.
Polly was internally defective and hollow. He also said that Mr. Polly
was a "white man," albeit, as he developed it, with a liver of the
deepest chromatic satisfactions.
Mr. Polly wandered centrally through it all, with his face washed and
his hair carefully brushed and parted, looking modest and more than a
little absent-minded, and wearing a pair of black dress trousers
belonging to the manager of the Temperance Hotel,--a larger man than
himself in every way.
He drifted upstairs to his fellow-tradesmen, and stood for a time
staring into the littered street, with its pools of water and
extinguished gas lamps. His companions in misfortune resumed a
fragmentary disconnected conversation. They touched now on one aspect
of the disaster and now on another, and there were intervals of
silence. More or less empty cocoa cups were distributed over the
table, mantelshelf and piano, and in the middle of the table was a tin
of biscuits, into which Mr. Rumbold, sitting round-shoulderedly,
dipped ever and again in an absent-minded way, and munched like a
distant shooting of coals. It added to the solemnity of the affair
that nearly all of them were in their black Sunday clothes; little
Clamp was particularly impressive and dignified in a wide open frock
coat, a Gladstone-shaped paper collar, and a large white and blue tie.
They felt that they were in the presence of a great disaster, the sort
of disaster that gets into the papers, and is even illustrated by
blurred photographs of the crumbling ruins. In the presence of that
sort of disaster all honourable men are lugubrious and sententious.
And yet it is impossible to deny a certain element of elation. Not one
of those excellent men but was already realising that a great door had
opened, as it were, in the opaque fabric of destiny, that they were to
get their money again that had seemed sunken for ever beyond any hope
in the deeps of retail trade. Life was already in their imagination
rising like a Phoenix from the flames.
"I suppose there'll be a public subscription," said Mr. Clamp.
"Not for those who're insured," said Mr. Wintershed.
"I was thinking of them assistants from Mantell and Throbson's. They
must have lost nearly everything."
"They'll be looked after all right," said Mr. Rumbold. "Never fear."
Pause.
"_I'm_ insured," said Mr. Clamp, with unconcealed satisfaction. "Royal
Salamander."
"Same here," said Mr. Wintershed.
"Mine's the Glasgow Sun," Mr. Hinks remarked. "Very good company."
"You insured, Mr. Polly?"
"He deserves to be," said Rumbold.
"Ra-ther," said Hinks. "Blowed if he don't. Hard lines it _would_
be--if there wasn't something for him."
"Commercial and General," answered Mr. Polly over his shoulder, still
staring out of the window. "Oh! I'm all right."
The topic dropped for a time, though manifestly it continued to
exercise their minds.
"It's cleared me out of a lot of old stock," said Mr. Wintershed;
"that's one good thing."
The remark was felt to be in rather questionable taste, and still more
so was his next comment.
"Rusper's a bit sick it didn't reach '_im_."
Everyone looked uncomfortable, and no one was willing to point the
reason why Rusper should be a bit sick.
"Rusper's been playing a game of his own," said Hinks. "Wonder what he
thought he was up to! Sittin' in the middle of the road with a pair of
tweezers he was, and about a yard of wire--mending somethin'. Wonder
he warn't run over by the Port Burdock engine."
Presently a little chat sprang up upon the causes of fires, and Mr.
Polly was moved to tell how it had happened for the one and twentieth
time. His story had now become as circumstantial and exact as the
evidence of a police witness. "Upset the lamp," he said. "I'd just
lighted it, I was going upstairs, and my foot slipped against where
one of the treads was a bit rotten, and down I went. Thing was aflare
in a moment!..."
He yawned at the end of the discussion, and moved doorward.
"So long," said Mr. Polly.
"Good night," said Mr. Rumbold. "You played a brave man's part! If you
don't get a medal--"
He left an eloquent pause.
"'Ear, 'ear!" said Mr. Wintershed and Mr. Clamp. "Goo'night, O' Man,"
said Mr. Hinks.
"Goo'night All," said Mr. Polly ...
He went slowly upstairs. The vague perplexity common to popular heroes
pervaded his mind. He entered the bedroom and turned up the electric
light. It was quite a pleasant room, one of the best in the Temperance
Hotel, with a nice clean flowered wallpaper, and a very large
looking-glass. Miriam appeared to be asleep, and her shoulders were
humped up under the clothes in a shapeless, forbidding lump that Mr.
Polly had found utterly loathsome for fifteen years. He went softly
over to the dressing-table and surveyed himself thoughtfully.
Presently he hitched up the trousers. "Miles too big for me," he
remarked. "Funny not to have a pair of breeches of one's own.... Like
being born again. Naked came I into the world...."
Miriam stirred and rolled over, and stared at him.
"Hello!" she said.
"Hello."
"Come to bed?"
"It's three."
Pause, while Mr. Polly disrobed slowly.
"I been thinking," said Miriam, "It isn't going to be so bad after
all. We shall get your insurance. We can easy begin all over again."
"H'm," said Mr. Polly.
She turned her face away from him and reflected.
"Get a better house," said Miriam, regarding the wallpaper pattern.
"I've always 'ated them stairs."
Mr. Polly removed a boot.
"Choose a better position where there's more doing," murmured
Miriam....
"Not half so bad," she whispered....
"You _wanted_ stirring up," she said, half asleep....
It dawned upon Mr. Polly for the first time that he had forgotten
something.
He ought to have cut his throat!
The fact struck him as remarkable, but as now no longer of any
particular urgency. It seemed a thing far off in the past, and he
wondered why he had not thought of it before. Odd thing life is! If he
had done it he would never have seen this clean and agreeable
apartment with the electric light.... His thoughts wandered into a
question of detail. Where could he have put the razor down? Somewhere
in the little room behind the shop, he supposed, but he could not
think where more precisely. Anyhow it didn't matter now.
He undressed himself calmly, got into bed, and fell asleep almost
immediately.