“LAYLOCKS.”
On this same morning Sophy Nestor was early at her post, with her
mended tray filled with the second-hand bouquets she bought from the
florists or market-gardeners. Second-hand in the sense that they had
already been long gathered and were on the point of withering. But
flowers in a city cost much money--much, that is, for a fund so small
as Sophy’s, and fresh ones were wholly beyond her means.
So she shrewdly disposed her posies on her wicker tray, putting the
best blossom forward, freshening them by sprinkling at a convenient
drinking-fountain, and losing no sales for want of insistence on her
own part. Many bought from her because it was the easiest way to be
rid of her petitions, others because they pitied her misfortune; and
still more because she had a deft, tasteful way of arranging her wares
which tempted all flower-lovers. So, in ordinary, she managed each day
to sell all her stock; and this morning, in especial, she hoped for a
brisk trade because--Well, because she was going to be guilty of an
extravagance which seemed almost like stealing.
“This very sweetest, freshest branch of laylock is for my Jessica
Trent, if she goes ridin’ by this way. The market-woman throwed it in
free for nothin’, ’cause she said maybe ’twould bring me good luck.
Seems if I might take it and give it, if I want, since I didn’t have to
pay for it. I always think the flowers belong to Granny and I mustn’t
give away none, bad’s I want. But, to-day, if she _should_ go a-ridin’
by again--Oh! _if she should!_ I’m going to hop right up into the
middle of the street, straight again’ them horses’ feet, and I’ll yell
loud enough this time to make her hear and look. If she looks she’ll
smile, sure; and she’ll stop if that old White Hair ’ll let her. Then
I’ll fling the laylock square into her lap, as she sets there a-ridin’
on them cushions. Oh! my!” murmured Sophy to herself, wanting another
listener.
But the Dalrymple carriage did not appear. Madame was in “privacy” just
then; which might mean that she was in suffering or under the hands
of that person who seemed so mysterious to Jessica--a professional
hair-dresser. As Ephraim had said, Barnes had also retired with her
sick headache, and Tipkins had gone marketing.
To waiting, watching, hoping little Sophy the big mansion looked
strangely quiet and deserted; and the hours dragged by without her
having courage even to molest a passer-by with her shrill;
“Posies! Only five centses a bunch? Please buy my posies!”
Like the little maid behind those barricading iron lions, at that
very moment speculating on the realities of life, Sophy herself fell
pondering; and inquired of a vagrant cur who timidly approached:
“Say, doggie, what makes us all so different? I’ve asked Granny and
all she says is, ‘Injustice.’ I don’t know what that means. I don’t
know why Jessica Trent wears all the time a soft white dress and
I--Well, I wear this one, too, now, only it isn’t quite so white as it
was. But I dassent take it off to let Granny wash it, ’cause she says
it’s none too big now an’ ’twould pucker and shrink all up, ’cause it’s
wool. Why does she live in that big house and I in Aveny A? What makes
her folks so rich and mine so poor? Hey, doggie? Yes, you may smell o’
my posies. Smellin’ ’em won’t hurt any. I wish--Oh! I wish she would
come right out that door and walk up to me and say: ‘Why, Sophy! How
glad I am to see you!’ That’s the way I believe she’d talk if she was
let. If that White Hair--Whew, doggie! What’s that I smell? ’Tisn’t
them posies. It’s more like smoke somewheres. Never mind. I guess that
carriage isn’t a-ridin’ out to-day, so I’ll just go close up to them
iron gates and watch closer. If she should happen to come to the door
to look out--If she should happen!--Why then I’d be right on hand and
ready, and I’d fire that laylock bunch clean into the doorway and the
hall, lickety-cut! Come on! Who’s afraid? That old policeman is out
of sight, anyway, and besides I don’t believe he’s half so mad as he
pretended. I’ll walk right straight along as bold as--as one them lions
and--Queer! Where _is_ that smell of smoke. Oh! I hope it isn’t 221
Aveny A! But, course, it can’t be. That’s too far off to smell.”
Keeping a wary eye for the return of the policeman, Sophy assumed as
nonchalant an air as possible and sauntered slowly up to the closed
gates of the great, old-fashioned mansion, and there forcing her
up-tilted nose between the bars resumed her anxious watch. But only for
a moment longer. Then the awful truth burst on the startled child, wise
in city lore; and, with an agility unlooked for in her poor body, she
leaped the closed gates and pulled at the bell. Forgotten now was the
precious “laylock,” already wilting on the hot sidewalk, forgotten fear
of the policeman and of that more formidable White Hair--Ring, ring,
ring!
When Ephraim rushed to answer that frenzied appeal, still clinging to
the handle of the old-fashioned bell Sophy fell headlong at his feet;
but was up and dashing onward again with the mad cry:
“This house is afire! This house is burnin’ up! Where’s Jessica Trent?
O Jessica, Jessica, _Jes-si-ca_!!”
At that moment the “Little Captain” was in the garden. It was the most
attractive spot to her in that establishment, and she, with Ephraim’s
help, had already reduced some of its disorder to a semblance of
neatness. Now, as if guided by instinct, Sophy made her way thither,
still screaming her warning cry:
“The house is afire! Where are you, Jessica Trent?”
An instant later she had her arms about her “angel” as if to protect
that beloved one at the risk of her own life. Already, other voices
than hers had taken up her cry of “fire!” than which there is none
more terrifying, and already the door which had been opened to her had
admitted many more.
Uproar followed. Clanging engines filled that side of the square.
Firemen spread themselves throughout the house, already doomed.
“Must have been burning a long time. Why, this upper floor is but a
shell, already!” cried one, and began to pound on the unopened doors to
learn if anybody was within the great, shut chambers.
“Madam? yes, she’s somewhere on this second floor. The front room,”
stammered Ephraim, too bewildered to be of much use; and for the
first time in his life, since he had known her, utterly forgetting
his “Little Captain.” Even had he remembered her he would not have
feared, knowing her activity and common sense. To get away, out of the
endangered structure, would have been Jessica’s natural impulse.
Then a man in a helmet came out of the “privacy” so rudely invaded,
bringing in his arms a frail, slender old woman, pale as death and
almost as unconscious. After her came, shrieking down from a higher
floor, poor Barnes; herself in unseemly deshabille and announcing to
everybody:
“It’s my fault! It’s all my fault! I was cleaning--a gown--benzine--a
candle--Oh! what have I done, what have I done!”
“Destroyed one of the city’s priceless landmarks, you old fool, you!”
roughly returned a struggling fireman, whose labor she interrupted.
“Get down those stairs--never mind the flames--they’ll hold you yet, if
you go now. Get out--_instantly_!”
Barnes went. More nimbly than she would have dreamed possible and
followed where she saw her mistress was being carried, into the nearest
drug store amid a crowd of curious strangers. There beside the dazed,
half-comprehending Madam she flung herself to earth and bewailed the
day that ever she was born; till, suddenly recovering from her own
confusion, Mrs. Dalrymple said sternly:
“Barnes, get up. Cover my head with the corner of this blanket and--and
behave yourself. It’s not your house is burning. You are not a Waldron!”
“No, but it’s my fault. I done it. Cleaning that lavender silk, to sell
it for a better price. Oh! what shall I do, what shall I do! How can I
see it burn?”
“Do? Repent in dust and ashes and never let me see your face again!”
cried the tortured Madam, who felt as if the hearts of all her
ancestors were being consumed in that blazing pile, where so many
Waldrons had lived and died and which she had not left, even on her own
marriage.
Barnes crept away; nor was it known that ever afterward she did present
herself before the mistress she had served for half a century.
There was no saving anything. From the beginning the old house, that
was what the firemen called a “tinder box,” burned swiftly; and when
Tipkins came back from market, with his well-filled basket on his arm,
he found but a heap of smoldering ruins where had been his lifelong
home. It seemed to the faithful old man that his heart broke then and
there. But was ever a broken heart known to interfere with what an
English butler considered his “duty?” In a moment he had found his
mistress and stood before her awaiting her orders, almost as quietly
as if it had been the giving of a dinner order, merely. There was none
of the frantic remorse of poor Barnes and his quietude helped Madam
infinitely, though now, to outward appearance, she, too, was calm
enough.
“Well, Tipkins, we must get under shelter at once. Find Jessica, order
a carriage--I don’t suppose our own is available--and take me to the
Fifth Avenue hotel. Ask the druggist, please, if he has a private room
where I can remain until the hack arrives.”
The room was found, and the lady conveyed thither; but when Jessica
was sought she was not to be discovered. The knowledge of this came to
“Forty-niner” first by Tipkins saying, in his most impassive voice yet
with quivering lips:
“Just speak to your little lady, Marsh, and tell her the Madam is
waiting. We’re to go to a hotel for the present.”
“Eh? Who? What?” demanded Ephraim, still standing a bit apart from the
waning crowd, with arms folded and gaze fixed contemplatively upon the
smoking walls. “What a pity! What a horrible pity!”
“Yes. Don’t mention it, not yet, please, man. Tell Miss Jessica, right
away. I must get Madam to her shelter.”
“Jes-si-ca! My ‘Little Captain,’ you mean? Man alive, isn’t she with
Madam?”
“No. She hasn’t seen her, I fancy. Leastwise, she bade me find the
child and fetch her. Hurry up. Madam Dalrymple isn’t one to mix with
a crowd like this, even under such circumstances. Hurry, now. I’m
signalling that hack.”
Ephraim’s weather-beaten face went ghastly white. For a moment his
senses whirled. The next he was rushing madly into the very midst of
the heated ruins, shrieking like one bereft:
“Jessica! Jessica! ‘Little Captain!’ Where are you? Oh! where are you?”
Strong hands forced him back.
“Old man have you lost your wits? Are you seeking death?”
“I shall be--in a minute--if--if--Oh! Has anybody, anybody, seen a
little girl? A golden--haired, curly-headed little girl with the face
of an angel? Has anybody--seen--my ‘Lady Jess’?”
“Take it calm, old man. Tell it again. A little girl? Is there a child
missing? Was there a little girl in that old house? and where?”
“Oh! yes, yes! There was--there is--there must be! _Where?_ How can I
tell? We--we were sitting--talking--just as if--as if--Oh! my God! as
if there was never any danger in the world, when that bell rang and
that other child, that hump-backed flower one--Oh! Jessica, Jessica!”
He broke from his captors with the strength of frenzy and would have
dashed headlong again to his own ruin, over that heap of flame and
broken foundations, but again more hands and stronger held him back.
Then somebody found voice to break again into that pregnant silence
with the suggestion:
“Try the rear! The alley way! The stables! They haven’t gone yet--We
may find--” But even that would-be hopeful voice did not say what they
might find.
To the rear they rushed, where an engine and hose carriage still
blocked the way, playing upon the scorched but yet standing stables,
whence some thoughtful man had already led the blindfolded, frightened
horses. Past these rushed Ephraim, a dozen at his heels. Through the
singed alley gate into that ruined garden where the fallen beams and
timbers lay thick and smoking.
Then peering frantically here and there, hopefully remembering now
how fond his darling had been of that neglected spot, “our only bit
of outdoors” here in this great city, Ephraim came at last upon a
point whence gleamed something white and soft. But the white gleam
was a motionless one, and tottering like a man in a palsy the old
sharpshooter raised his shaking hand and pointed toward that distant
corner, then covered his eyes with his trembling arm.
Reverently, those grimed firemen lifted the scorched bush from what lay
beneath. By the irony of fate it was a “laylock,” and had once borne
blossoms such as Sophy had that morning cherished. It was she they
found first. She was lying with outspread arms, prone on the larger,
stronger body of Jessica beneath, as if stretching her own limbs to
the utmost, that they might wholly cover the other girl she adored.
She had evidently forced the “Little Captain” downward, and, with the
instinct of love, broken many branches from everywhere about and heaped
them first on the other child. Then she had thrown herself upon these
branches and so awaited--What?
A thought of what those children, that little heroine, had suffered in
their time of terror blanched strong faces even now; but it was a glad
cry that went up:
“This one isn’t dead! She’s only half-suffocated with the smoke!”
“Nor this! Nor this! This yellow-headed one is opening her eyes! Thank
God! They are alive!”
Five minutes later the clang of a hospital ambulance came into that
alley, whence the engine had swiftly been removed, and upon a stretcher
therein were most tenderly placed the two small forms of the rescued
children, then--Clang! and away again.
But there stood on the step in the rear a bareheaded, wild old man who
would not be gainsaid, whose eyes were blind with tears, and whose
constant moan was:
“Oh! my ‘Little Captain!’ ‘Little Captain!’”
Meanwhile, in a rear room of a plebeian drug store a haughty,
astonished old lady sat and ignominiously waited; enduring as best she
could the peeps and stares of the “common” people.