went wrong, yet they managed, after a fashion, to get themselves
sufficiently protected from the chill of the night air, and found
themselves with their mother, escorted by some of their men neighbours
down the street. The elms stood out against a background of red, from
which tongues of flame occasionally shot up, dulling the red glow on
the sky, and revealing the smallest twigs. It was Cousin Peace's house
which was burning! The girls repeated the words as they ran, trying to
make them real, convey a meaning. Poor blind Cousin Peace! With this
thought Wythie stopped short.
"Where is she? Where is Miss Grey?" she demanded.
It was Lawyer Dinsmore who held her arm; she felt his hand tremble on
it as he answered: "We do not know; we could not find her--" Wythie
groaned, and he hastily added: "It must be that she is safe, Wythie.
There was time to get out, but no one has seen her. Her senses are so
abnormally acute that she must have known of the fire before the alarm
was given, and escaped."
"Unless she slept, and the smoke--" Wythie could not go on. "Hurry!"
she murmured.
Mr. Dinsmore did not attempt to reassure her further; indeed, the
suggestion that Miss Charlotte, alone in the house, might have been
asleep and overcome by smoke had occurred to him before Wythie voiced
it. It was not pleasant to wonder why it was that the alarm had been
given from outside, not from within the doomed building.
Mrs. Grey and her daughters were stationed beyond the reach of danger
where the Rutherford boys soon found and joined them.
There was no question of saving the house; from the first it was
doomed, and it would have been most painful to have stood helplessly
by while the peaceful house that had absorbed so much of its blind
mistress' calm repose was destroyed, had not all other thought been
swallowed up in the absorbing anxiety which left Miss Charlotte's fate
doubtful. For the feeling was growing among the knot of bystanders
around the Greys that, if she were safe, they should have had some
assurance of it, that, by this time, some one should have come forward
who could tell them definitely where Miss Grey had taken refuge.
"It is unbearable," groaned Rob at last, through her set teeth.
"I will go around to the other side and see if I can't find out
something, Rob," said Bruce with a glance at the girl's agonized face.
"Look after them, Basil, Bart, if I can't get back very soon."
His tall form moved through the crowd, elbowing its way until it was
lost to sight, before the Greys fully realized that he was going.
Moments passed, a quarter of an hour, and Mrs. Grey, held fast on
either hand by her girls, watched with them the mounting flames, tense,
silent with the misery that made each second seem an hour. Bruce did
not return, the fire licked and burst its awful way around the eaves,
around Cousin Peace's chamber window! Wythie hid her face, shuddering;
she could not look.
Suddenly a great roar went up from the crowd, and many voices together
shouted words which the onlookers could not catch. They cheered
mightily, and then a deadly stillness settled upon the mass of human
beings.
"What is it?" Rob asked of a man who pushed his way towards them.
"Shut up!" Wythie heard another man mutter to this new-comer, and on
this hint the latter snarled: "I don't know. Nothin', I guess." But Rob
felt sure that the snarl was to conceal something, and that it did not
spring from bad temper.
Suddenly the crowd seemed to go stark mad. Swaying, surging, pushing,
it began to yell, hoarse, loud, frightful, like some sort of a monster.
"Come out, come back! The roof's caving! It's going! Come out!" the
crowd roared, plainly articulate to the group on its edge, which was
most vitally interested.
"Some one's in there, in that horrible fire!" gasped Rob. With one
instinctive movement Basil and Bartlemy turned and looked at each
other, reading each in the other's eyes the same thought. It was so
exactly like Bruce!
Rob caught the look, saw the boys' hands meet in a tight clasp, saw
their faces turn paler than before. Instantly she guessed, and shared
their fear.
"Not he! Not Bruce!" she groaned.
Before the boys could answer a great shout rent the air, a shout that
was triumphant. For an instant Rob forgot Cousin Peace.
"He's out!" she cried, and Basil and Bartlemy dropped each others'
hands to steady her as she swayed.
"I shan't faint," she cried. "I never faint. They're cheering. He's
out, he's out!"
"You must let me go," said Basil, and Bartlemy made no demur, though it
must have been hard to stand at his post on guard with the mother and
girls while Basil pushed his way to the front.
The roof fell in with a great plunge and a fierce up-leaping of flames
which burned rapidly for a brief time. Then the fire began to fade out
as it consumed the last remnants of the pretty old home.
"If we do not hear something soon I think I shall die or go mad!" cried
Wythie. The waiting was getting unbearable.
"Don't you think you all ought to go home and wait there?" suggested
Bartlemy. "You are shivering, and we shall hear about Miss Charlotte
there as soon as here."
"I couldn't go, dear Bartlemy," Mrs. Grey said, and Bartlemy did not
insist.
It was taking all the force the boy possessed to keep himself to his
present duty when every muscle twitched to follow his brothers, and
anxiety for Bruce was added to his previous fear for Miss Charlotte.
At last the strained watchers saw a movement in the crowd; it seemed
to be falling away, and a path was opening towards them. Through this
path they soon saw Basil's head towering above his surroundings, and
behind him another even taller than he--Bruce? Ah, thank God, thank
God! The relief of seeing him was so great that both Rob and Bartlemy
groaned with the pain of it. Mrs. Grey and Wythie looked at them in new
terror; they had not known the fear for Bruce shared by the other three.
Bruce was being helped along by Basil; he was hurt. Behind them
came--yes, Dr. Fairbairn, and he was carrying something in his arms.
A woman? It certainly was. The Greys clasped each other close, their
throats tightening.
It was Miss Charlotte.
"You mustn't look like that," called Dr. Fairbairn in his booming voice
as soon as he could make it reach the group that he was approaching. "I
forbid it! Charlotte is safe; not a hair harmed. Mary, don't you dare
to faint away! Wythie, pull yourself together! Rob, be sensible."
Scolding them as he came the big doctor set his burden on her feet, and
Miss Charlotte smiled feebly, as Mrs. Grey gathered her in her arms.
"Not a word; not a word here, you womankind!" said the big doctor.
"I've sent for a carriage. When you get home you may cry and faint,
or do whatever you will, but not here. Charlotte was in no danger; she
walked off--most sensibly." The old man nodded significantly, scowling
over his shoulder at Mrs. Grey who was totally in the dark as to how to
interpret his meaning.
"Here is my patient," Dr. Fairbairn continued turning to Bruce who had
been trying to answer Bartlemy's questions and reassure Rob, though his
lips twisted with pain.
"Bruce is burned. Wanted to get his name in the papers, so rushed into
the burning house to rescue Charlotte. It served him quite right; she
was quietly out walking all the time. She defeated his purpose of
having his picture in the papers, bearing a limp woman out through
curling flames! No one in the house, you understand, yet in he went,
risking his life, and getting badly burned for nothing in this world!
And he to be my partner as soon as he has finished his medical course!
A pretty partner he will be, a sensational scamp like him! Here is the
carriage. Let me put you in, Bruce, dear boy. Look out there, Bart;
don't touch him--he isn't in a state to be handled." And the old doctor
helped Bruce tenderly into the carriage, for he loved the boy as a son.
"Now, Charlotte, you next. Come, Mary; come children. Basil and
Bartlemy, you and I are going to crowd up outside. It has been a
horrible night; I don't believe any of us are up to walking," he said,
as he closed the carriage door. "I've got to attend Bruce's wounds, and
I'm going to take him to the little grey house where there will be some
one besides a housekeeper to nurse him, Mary."
"Yes, of course," said Mrs. Grey, not fully understanding what was
happening, and still clinging thankfully to Miss Charlotte.
Rob sat opposite to Bruce staring at him with big, frightened eyes. He
had been in that horrible danger, and he was hurt!
Bruce looked at her, then at his two brothers, whose faces were
ghastly, and at Wythie crying quietly in the corner.
He smiled, in spite of his pain. "I'm all right, boys and girls--and
Rob," he said. "I thought we had Rutherfords to burn, while there was
only one Miss Charlotte."
CHAPTER FIVE
ITS HERO
The crowded carriage bringing its exhausted occupants the short
distance which lay between what had been Miss Charlotte's home and the
little grey house, revealed the latter bright with lights as it drew
near. The sight cheered every one; it seemed as though nothing could be
seriously wrong as long as the lights of home gleamed forth unchanged.
Prue had the front door open before the carriage stopped, and ran down
the flagged walk to meet it. She caught Cousin Peace in her arms with
a depth of feeling that delighted her mother--a girl could not be in
great danger from worldliness who thus appreciated one who was the
embodiment of unworldliness.
Basil and the doctor, with Bartlemy tenderly aiding, led Bruce into the
house, and got him on the ample couch in the dining-room which the Grey
girls still called "their nurse," in remembrance of babyhood days when
it faithfully tended them.
It was on occasions like this--no, there had never been an occasion
in the least like this, but in emergencies, that Lydia's gravely
responsible mind scored heavily. That venerable young woman had a brisk
fire burning in the kitchen when the family and its guests came back,
and the tea-kettle was steaming to the boiling point. Lydia had early
been trained in all emergencies to have hot water in the tea-kettle,
and she now faithfully lived up to the traditions of her forebears.
Dr. Fairbairn rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he glanced into the
kitchen to see what were the prospects there.
"Lydia," he said, "your common sense would do credit to seven older
women, if it were subdivided among them. Will you make coffee in
abundance and rather strong and as quick as you can? Your tea-kettle is
ready, I see."
"My grandmother always said that to have your kettle always full of
hot water, and your Bible thumbed was a sign that you were the woman
of Proverbs, and a comfort to your family," said Lydia with a sort of
solemn self-satisfaction. "I'd ought to be commonsensed; _she_ was."
It did not take long to make the coffee, and its fumes put courage into
the chilled and tired group waiting it even before the invigorating
beverage had been tasted.
Dr. Fairbairn set down his empty cup with a satisfied smack of the
lips. "Now, Bruce," he said, "we are both fortified to bind up your
wounds, pouring in oil like true Samaritans."
The other boys helped remove Bruce's coat, a painful process, and the
doctor's scissors bared his arms to the shoulders. They were badly
burned, and Dr. Fairbairn's big, deft hands moved over them with
extreme gentleness, anointing them and covering them with absorbent
cotton which he bound into place with the linen bandages produced from
the capacious depths of his inexhaustible pockets.
Bruce's hands had fared worse than his arms; they were ministered to
in turn, and the poor lad found some respite from his pain when the
ointment was bound on and the air excluded.
Wythie and Rob in the meantime had been helping Miss Charlotte to bed
in their mother's room. She scarcely spoke; there was no need of Dr.
Fairbairn's injunction to the girls to make her keep silence. She
seemed utterly dazed, and there was a look in her face that made her
cousins fear that the fright of the night had affected her mind. They
gave her the sedative which Dr. Fairbairn had prepared, and Rob ran
down-stairs, leaving Wythie on guard at Miss Charlotte's side.
"Do you think she can be injured--mentally I mean?" Rob asked, ending
her account of Miss Charlotte's docile, silent and lost manner of
behaving.
"Not a bit, I am certain," said Dr. Fairbairn cheerfully, though he
could not help realizing that cases where a shock had permanently
affected the mind were by no means rare.
"Charlotte is too well-balanced to be unhinged. We must expect her to
suffer from a shock like this, and from the grief of losing a home
to which she was deeply attached. You must keep her perfectly quiet,
and we must make her sleep and sleep, until her quivering nerves are
restored. She must not be allowed to talk of to-night more than just
enough to prevent her dwelling on it in secret and magnifying its
events. Bruce, do you feel able to tell us in a few words just what did
happen to you--What made you go into that house when Charlotte and her
maid were both out, and where did you find her at last?"
"It doesn't take long to tell how I happened to go in," said Bruce.
"There seemed to be a growing conviction in the crowd that Miss
Charlotte must be in the house, or some one would be able to account
for her. So I went in to see."
"Perfectly simple, and a natural thing to do," observed Dr. Fairbairn
dryly. "Well?"
"There were rooms which I couldn't get into--indeed they were no
longer rooms; the fire had started there. But they were in the rear of
the house, and I felt sure Miss Charlotte would not have been there.
Indeed, the only possible explanation of her being in the house at all
was that she had been smothered by the smoke, and had not wakened. This
could only have happened in her bedroom, or on the way to the door, so
I managed to get up-stairs----"
"Were they burning?" demanded Rob, leaning forward, her face pale, her
hands tensely clasped.
"A little," said Bruce, smiling at her reassuringly. "Don't have a
Looking-Glass Land scare, Rob; it's all over, and you see I did not
perish on that burning stairway." Rob shuddered, and Prue dropped the
cup she held; it fell in fragments to the floor.
"Hold on, Prudy! This story seems to be hard on the china," cried
Bruce. "There isn't any use in dwelling on details, aside from the
effect on tea-cups. 'Suffice it to say,' as I suppose Basil will say
when he writes novels, I got into Miss Charlotte's room, and she wasn't
there. Then the crowd began to shout at me to come out, and I took its
advice. Not much too soon; the roof fell--" Bruce stopped short. He
could not carry off his story with the lightness of touch with which he
had begun it. The recollection of that crashing roof, falling just as
his feet crossed the threshold, sickened him. Life seemed very precious
as he recalled it, and the death he had so narrowly escaped unspeakably
dreadful.
Bruce felt his audience tighten, as it were, under the strain of his
own feeling and a sudden, full realization of their close reprieve from
an unbearable tragedy.
He turned to smile into Basil's blanched face. "I lost my overcoat," he
said quickly. "I had wrapped it around my head to keep off the heat and
smoke. It was an unusually satisfactory coat."
"Where did you find Charlotte?" asked Dr. Fairbairn.
Bruce turned to him, grateful for being helped over and away from the
remembrance of that frightful exit with the crash of the infalling
roof in his ears.
"Some one said that Annie had been taken over to St. Chad's rectory,"
said Bruce. "But I heard people around me saying when I came out
without Miss Charlotte and without having found any trace of her that
she must have perished, or she would have gone with her maid. There
was a moment as I heard them talking that my heart sank within me,
remembering those rooms in the rear, burned out before I got there.
And then, like an inspiration, there flashed upon me a picture of Miss
Charlotte's favourite spot down by the river, and I started for it on
the run. There she was, walking up and down, back and forth, her hands
clasped straight in front of her, her head hanging, and a strange,
bewildered look on her gentle face. Not a hair was harmed, but it was
most pathetic."
Bruce paused for an instant, and Dr. Fairbairn frowned dreadfully, as
Mrs. Grey caught her breath in a half sob.
"Very fortunate she was there, and nothing whatever pathetic in her
being sensible enough to get out of the way of the rabble, when she
could do no good," the doctor said gruffly. The Rutherford boys smiled
at one another, well used to Dr. Fairbairn's ways, and Bruce resumed:
"Miss Charlotte knew me at once, and came with me willingly when I told
her that the Greys were waiting for her anxiously. The doctor and Basil
met me coming back with her, and brought us to you. After that you know
what happened--no one better, since you brought me here to the little
grey house, and comforted me with coffee and affection, as the Greys
best know how."
"And I intend that they shall continue their ministrations," said Dr.
Fairbairn promptly. "Mary Grey, you can keep this boy here until he is
able to be about, can't you?"
"Of course I can," said Mrs. Grey quickly, though she hadn't the least
idea how she was to manage it.
"Oh, wait a minute, Doctor," expostulated Bruce. "I shall do very well
at home, and I can't add to the burdens in this house; the Greys are
rather heavily weighted just now."
"You wouldn't do in the least well up at that big Caldwell place,
Bruce boy," said the doctor, like the autocrat that he was. "You are
going to have a hard time for a few days, harder than you realize now
when you are freshly made comfortable. You will be feverish and in
pain, and there isn't any one up there to nurse you--not even these
amiable young giraffe brothers of yours, who would know as much about
nursing as a cat, if they were there! You didn't accomplish much by
your folly--rushing into a burning house when it was empty on the
chance of saving a life, but it wasn't the meanest form of folly, after
all, and I'm not sure that you don't deserve some reward, if only in
consolation for missing the medal for life-saving which you hoped to
earn. Certainly the Greys will keep you--I order it!"
"There's the lean-to room in which I used to plan my stories when I was
a public entertainer," said Rob. "Wythie and I will turn in there--it's
perfectly comfortable, so don't remonstrate, Bruce! Cousin Peace will
share Mardy's room, Polly is already established in Prue's, so there
you are! This is the most blessedly elastic little house! I've no doubt
we could tuck away Basil and Bartlemy if they insisted."
"Nobody need desire a better bed than is this old nurse," said
Bruce stretching one hand into the curves of the ancient couch, and
immediately bringing it back with an involuntary moan.
"Now, Mary," said the doctor, viewing with experienced eye the mounting
colour in Bruce's cheek and the dilating brightness of his eyes, "if
you and your girls can get ready these various nests which Rob has just
planned, I think our foolhardy young hero here had better be put to bed
with a quieting draught, and allowed to sleep. He is more overwrought
than he realizes."
"Certainly, doctor," said Mrs. Grey rising immediately, restored to
herself by the necessity of action. "Come, Rob and Prue. We will
improvise a bed for Wythie and Rob that will answer for to-night,
and settle Bruce in the girls' room, then by the morning we can make
everybody more comfortable."
"Oh, please--Mrs. Grey--Rob, I can't turn you and Wythie out of your
room, you know!" remonstrated Bruce distressed at the thought.
"That's all right, Bruce," cried Rob. "I'd do more than give my room to
one who tried to save Cousin Peaceful, even if he were not my chum."
She laughed as she spoke, but the laugh was tremulous, and Bruce and
Dr. Fairbairn looked after her and then looked at each other with eyes
so full of meaning that in that glance they exchanged confidences.
"You will go back to college on Monday, boys, and tell the heads what
has happened, and get permission to take notes of the lectures for me,
won't you?" said Bruce after a moment's silence.
"Aren't you together in lectures?" asked the doctor.
"I'm taking the scientific, but Bas and Bart take the _belles lettres_
course," said Bruce. "I shall be able to go back in a few days?"
"If you don't catch cold, and can go back with one of the boys to
attend to you. You can't use those arms under ten days," answered the
doctor. "It seems to me at your age I should not have been so impatient
of coddling in the little grey house, by the three nicest and prettiest
girls between Maine and California."
"It would be a hero, doctor, that could turn from it, if it did not
postpone greater happiness," said Bruce. "I want to graduate."
"Oh, you want to graduate! And you are in a tremendous hurry to read
medicine with me--I see!" said the doctor. "I have always been a meek
and humble man, my boy, but you will make me conceited of my charms."
The kind old doctor, whose sixty years made his rest at night important
after a busy day, helped Basil and Bartlemy get Bruce to bed, and drove
away only when morning's nearness made going to bed an absurdity.
Basil stayed with Bruce, and Bartlemy decided to nap on the broad old
"nurse" for the few remaining hours of darkness.
For several days Bruce suffered more keenly than he had expected to,
just as Dr. Fairbairn prophesied. Bartlemy went back to Yale on Monday,
as usual, but Basil stayed behind to help nurse and serve his brother,
who was helpless for nearly a week.
Miss Charlotte slept for three days, only waking to take nourishment,
and then she drifted back to oblivion of her loss. She had loved her
home, the home of her birth and entire life, so dearly that Mrs. Grey
was grateful for every hour that spared her consciousness of that loss.
That courageous woman found even her competent hands overfull for
those seven days of nursing and a crowded house. But Wythie and Rob
pervaded every corner with their helpfulness, and between school hours
Prue uncomplainingly shouldered the hardest tasks that she could find
undone. The thought that the little grey house had so nearly lost big,
noble Bruce, and that he had risked his life only on the chance of
saving Cousin Peace, who was dearer than any one outside its immediate
circle, awoke in Prue such a depth of gratitude that nothing was too
hard for her to do to prove that gratitude.
When Miss Charlotte came back from her voyaging in unknown waters the
Grey family rejoiced anew, for she came back her old, calm, sweet self;
sorrowful in the loss of her house, but not harmed by the shock of
the fire, and far too deeply good to brood over the holocaust of all
the memorials and associations of her life. Nothing was said by Miss
Charlotte of Bruce's daring plunge, at that last moment of special
danger, into the burning house in search of her. But once Rob, coming
into the dining-room, saw Cousin Peace bending over the boy's couch
with both her delicate hands lightly enfolding his bandaged ones, and
she knew that Bruce was receiving his thanks.
Bruce's back was towards the door, which was fortunate, for he would
have been greatly embarrassed to meet Rob's eyes, and Cousin Peace,
of course, could not see her. Rob slipped away quietly, and when she
came singing along the hall a little later Bruce was relating college
tales to Miss Charlotte, smiling over by the window, in Mrs. Grey's low
sewing chair.
"Fayre is ringing with your heroism, Bruce," cried a voice from the
other direction, and Rob turned to see Frances coming in the front
door. "And what is more, Rob," Frances added as she and Rob met in the
doorway of the dining-room, "I see Hester Baldwin coming up the street
as fast as she can come."
"Hester!" cried Rob, setting down her bowl of blancmange. Bruce
ungratefully called all the food prepared for him during these days of
feverish tendencies by one generic name--"softness."
"It is Hester, actually," she cried. "And Dr. Fairbairn is driving down
the street; I wonder he didn't overtake you."
"Not while he continues to drive Reliable," laughed Frances. "Reliable
makes his daily visits in time, but he doesn't overtake many people."
"Well, Hester, it's very nice to see you coming up the hill
unexpectedly, as if you were a Fayre maiden, and not a daughter of
Gotham!" said Rob welcoming her friend.
"I had to come out--I'm going back early, so don't be frightened," said
Hester. "I saw in the paper an account of Bruce Rutherford's splendid
act, and that your cousin was burned out, and I couldn't rest one more
day without finding out for myself how bad everything was."