CHAPTER XVII
A HURLY-BURLY FIRE
Although Mr. Harris had expressed himself satisfied with his couch in the music-room, yet as it was hard and narrow, his slumbers were not very profound, and at two o'clock in the morning he awoke from a light doze, and began to sniff in the darkness.
"I believe I smell fire," he said to himself.
He jumped up and ran into the hall, where he found the whole staircase was a charred and smouldering mass ready to break into flame at any moment.
Mr. Harris was a man of quick action, but he paused a moment to consider.
He couldn't go up the stairs, they were ready to give way at a touch. He dared not open the front door, or, indeed, any door that might create a draught which would fan the stairs into a flame.
So he decided he must rouse the sleepers up-stairs, and then jump out of the music-room window and run to the tent to get the assistance of the two boys who were sleeping there.
Being a stranger in the house, he knew of no other stairway, and knew nothing of the servants or where they might be.
"Mr. Barlow,—fire! Mr. Barlow!" he screamed. "Fire! Mr. Carleton, Fanny!" but no one answered.
At last Patty was wakened by his voice and ran out in the upper hall. The draught of her opening door started the flames a little, and when she looked over the banister, it was into a well of fire.
Before she could say a word, Mr. Harris called up to her. "Patty," he said, "keep your senses, and help all you can. I think the fire is only in the staircase, and if so, we can get everybody safely out of their own windows. Tell this to your uncle, and then tell the others. I'm going after Bob."
Mr. Harris disappeared, and Patty bravely resisted her inclination to scream; instead, she ran into her uncle's room and shook him awake, saying, "Uncle Ted, the stairs are all burnt up, but it doesn't matter, you can get out of the windows."
Then she ran back and wakened Bumble and Nan, saying, "Girls, the house is on fire, but let's be real sensible and not get burned up. Put on your dressing-gowns, and then we must go and tell the others."
As she talked Patty was slipping on her dressing-gown, and then she caught up her mother's picture and wrapped it in a bath-towel, and with the little bundle in her hand she ran back to the hall where she met Uncle Ted.
"Which room are the Carletons in, Patty?" She told him, and then Bob shouted up from below, "We've got the old Babcock extinguisher, dad, and we're making it tell on the fire. Can't you throw on some water up there? And tell all the people to go out on the balconies and we'll take 'em down all right. And I say, Patty, get my camera out of my room, will you? I don't want anything to happen to that."
"All right," said Patty, and she ran for the camera. In Bob's room she found Miss Todd just waking up.
"Get up, Miss Todd," she cried; "the house is on fire and your Mr. Harris is putting it out, and he says for you to jump out of the window."
"Oh," screamed Miss Fanny, hopping out of bed and rushing wildly around the room, "which window?"
"Any window," said Patty, who was hunting in the closet for the camera.
So Miss Todd, half unconscious of what she was doing, but with a blind intention of obeying the orders of her fiancé, climbed over a window sill and jumped out.
As a veranda ran all around the second-story of the Hurly-Burly, she found herself standing just outside her window on a very substantial balcony and feeling decidedly chilly in the night air.
"Here are some clothes," said Patty, grabbing up whatever came handy, and putting them out the window to Miss Todd. "Is there anything you want saved particularly?"
For Patty had taken a pillow-case from its pillow, and in it had placed the bundle containing her mother's picture, and Bob's camera.
"Yes," said Miss Todd; "that book of poems,—it was Jim's first gift to me,—oh, and my hat."
All right," said Patty, and she put the book in her pillow-case bag, but the hat, being large and feathery she put on her head.
Then Patty went to Gertrude Carleton's room. She found that fragile bit of humanity sleeping peacefully, and she hated to startle her.
But the excitement was growing greater. People were running about in all directions, and the flames, though still confined to the staircase, were liable to spread further at any moment. So Patty decided to break the news gently to the frail Gertrude, and she touched her softly on the shoulder.
"Gertrude, dear," she said, "if the house should get on fire, what would you want to save most?"
"My shoes," said Gertrude, promptly, awake and alert in an instant. "Here they are."
She reached over the side of the bed, and grasped her dainty little patent-leather boots, which she gave to Patty.
"Very well," said Patty, putting them in her bag, "and now you'd better get up and dress, for the house may get on fire to-night. Come, I'll help you, for I smell smoke now."
"Where are you going with your hat on?" asked Gertrude, much bewildered, but still making an expeditious toilette.
"Nowhere," said Patty. "I'm collecting valuables; this is Miss Todd's hat I must go now. When you're ready, step out of your window on to the balcony, and they'll take you down by ladders or something, I guess."
Patty went out into the hall, and found that the fire was partly under control. Uncle Ted and Mr. Carleton were pouring buckets of water on it, which they brought from the bathroom where Bumble was helping fill the buckets.
Down-stairs, Mr. Harris and the two boys were using hand grenades, an old fire extinguisher, and sundry other patented means of putting out fires. There was much yelling of orders going on, but very little obeying of the same, and each man seemed to be working with a will in his own way.
Patty went into her Aunt Grace's room, and found that lady dressed in her best attire.
"I thought I'd put on this gown," she said. "Ted says we'll all be saved; but then you never can tell how a fire may break out somewhere else and burn up all your wardrobe. So I'll have this, anyway, and it's my best gown. Ted told me to stay in this room and not move until he came after me. Is the fire burning the hall carpet much?"
"Yes, quite a gcod deal; but they've spilled so much water on it that it's all wet, and I reckon that will spoil it more than the fire. But, Aunt Grace, what do you want to save? The house may all burn up, you know, and I'm trying to save the most valuable things. I've this pillow-case nearly full, now."
"Oh, what a good idea! Well, I wish you'd put in that photograph album, and my set of coral jewelry, and my eye-glasses; and please get the box of old letters that's on the highest shelf in that cupboard. Oh, and there's Uncle Ted's bank-book, we must save that."
"Now, Grace," said Uncle Ted, himself, appearing in the doorway, "the fire is pretty well under control; that Harris is a good fellow, and no mistake. But as the flames may break out again, I mean to put you out of harm's way at once. Come out on the balcony."
Uncle Ted had a great coil of rope in his arms, and he stepped through the long French window onto the balcony, and Aunt Grace and Patty followed. There they discovered quite a party already assembled, and such costumes as they wore!
Mrs. Carleton had on Turkish bedroom slippers, and she wore a black veil tied over her face for fear of smoke. She had wrapped herself in a large eider-down quilt and somebody had tied it round with a wide sash, so that she looked like a queer foreign personage of some sort.
Nan, in her hurry, had fastened her wig on insecurely, and had since lost it. Her attire was an old ulster of Uncle Ted's, which she had found in the third story hall when she ran up to alarm the Carleton children and their nurse.
The nurse in great fright had pulled down portières, and wrapped them round herself and the children, while old Hopalong had shuffled down from her room in a mackintosh and sun-bonnet.
To this motley crowd came Aunt Grace in her handsome party gown, and Patty with her bag of treasures.
"Hello, there," cried Uncle Ted, cheerily, "the danger is over, I think, but we have no stairs left to descend upon. The boys are bringing ladders, however, and I think, with care, we can all get down safely. But as my wife's sprained ankle is scarcely sound enough as yet to trust her on a ladder, I am going to try to swing her down in this hammock. Patty, I think I'll send you down first, for practice."
"All right, Uncle Ted," said Patty, and still clasping her bag of valuables, and wearing Miss Todd's Paris hat, she seated herself in the hammock, exactly according to Uncle Ted's directions, and he and Mr. Carleton carefully let her down by the long ropes which had been fastened at each end of the novel elevator.
Mr. Harris was waiting for her, and he landed her safely on the steps of the lower veranda.
Next Aunt Grace was lowered, and after that another hammock was rigged, and all of the ladies were taken down that way, as they preferred it to the ladders.
The men came down the ladders and brought the little children in their arms, and then the queer-looking crowd gathered in the sitting-room to discuss the situation. The men excluded that the fire was occasioned by a mouse having nibbled at some matches which were kept in the closet under the stairs.
As the shelves and walls and most of the contents of the closet were charred, it was assumed that the fire had been smouldering for some hours, and if Mr. Harris had not discovered it as soon as he did, it would doubtless have been followed by more disastrous consequences.
The stairs from the first to the second floor were entirely burned away, and except that the walls and carpets of both halls were smoked and discolored, no other harm was done.
But as that staircase was the only one connecting the first and second floors, the victims of the fire found themselves in the peculiar position of not being able to go up-stairs.
"How perfectly ridiculous," exclaimed Aunt Grace, "to build a house with no back stairs. I always said that was the greatest flaw about this house. What can we do?"
"As it is nearly five o'clock," said Uncle Ted, "I propose that we have breakfast, and consider that the day has begun. Then perhaps I can get somebody to build stairs or steps of some kind by night."
"But we must go up-stairs," said Nan, who had covered her wigless head with a bandanna kerchief, bound round like a turban; "we want to dress properly before we breakfast."
"And we want to finish our sleep," said Gertrude Carleton. "I'm not going to get up at five o'clock and stay up."
So the ladders were brought in from outside and put up in the stair-well, and with some difficulty everybody was brought safely up-stairs again.
With the procrastination which was characteristic of the Barlow household, the new stairs failed to get built that day or the next either; indeed it was nearly a week before a staircase was put in place, and as it was meant to be only temporary it was made of plain unpainted wood.
But you will not be surprised to learn that it was not replaced by a more sightly affair until after the Barlows had returned to their city home.
As the end of her visit at the Hurly-Burly drew near, Patty felt great regret at the thought of leaving the merry, careless crowd. She invited them, one and all, to visit her when she should be established in her own home, and she promised to correspond regularly with both Bumble and Nan.
"Where is it you're going?" said Bumble, "I never can remember."
"To Vernondale," answered Patty, "a town in New Jersey. But it's nowhere near Elmbridge, where I visited the St. Clairs. I believe it is on another railroad. I've had a lovely letter from Aunt Alice Elliott, and she wants me to come the first week in September. She says Uncle Charlie will meet me in New York, or come over here after me, whichever I say. But I think I'd better meet him in New York."
So when the day came Uncle Ted took Patty over to New York, and Bob and Bumble and Nan went too, and it was a group of very long-faced young people who met Mr. Elliott at the appointed time and place. But Bob said:
"Brace up, girls, we're not losing our Patty forever. She'll spend next summer with us at the Hurly-Burly, and by that time we'll have beautiful new fire-proof stairs."
"Yes," said Bumble, "and she can visit us in Philadelphia in the winter too."
Then after many fond good-byes, the Barlows went away, and Patty was left with her Uncle Charlie.