CHAPTER IX.

“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.