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."

"Pretty bad," said Rob, raising her voice slightly to be sure it reached Bruce on the dining-room couch. "We have Bruce here, being nursed by Basil, and bothering the Greys,--tended by everybody. Cousin Peace is here, of course. And we have adopted a child, more or less--more or less adopted, I mean; not more or less a child. Altogether this has been an eventful week for us."

"It certainly sounds so!" cried Hester, looking at Rob hard, not knowing whether to take her seriously.

"You go into the dining-room; Basil and Wythie and Prue and France are there, burning incense around our martyred Bruce--as though he hadn't had enough of burning! I'll open the door for the doctor, who is tying his horse, and follow you," said Rob. She came in, bringing Dr. Fairbairn, whose six feet two of height, and proportionate bulk always seemed to fill up the little grey house in every crevice.

"Is this a bee?" demanded the doctor as he entered, pulling off his driving-gloves with a light chafing of each hand as he stripped it, and glancing around at the five girls.

"Two B's, doctor; two thirds of Battalion B, but there's no chance for anything but the busiest sort of idleness in this house, since Bruce took possession of it, with his wounded hands,--to drop into a poetical strain," said Rob.

"Dr. Fairbairn is going to let me decamp on Monday, aren't you, doctor?" hinted Bruce.

"If you will promise to take proper care of yourself. One would suppose he might be reasonably contented here, now wouldn't he?" added the doctor, looking around the pleasant room.

"Oh, well, I may be a B, but I don't want to be a drone," said Bruce. "I can take lectures with my bandages on. A little too long of this halcyon weather and I'd be good for nothing, smothered in honey, like an unworthy B." And Bruce's eyes rested lovingly on the Grey mother that moment entering.

Hester had been looking so preoccupied all this time that Wythie noticed it.

"Hester has something to tell us," she said.

"I'll take Bruce up-stairs and bandage him afresh, and Miss Hester can disburden her mind while we are gone," said Dr. Fairbairn.

"If you wouldn't mind listening, you are the very ones whom I most want to hear what I have to say--if I have courage," added Hester, with a sudden unusual shyness.

Dr. Fairbairn settled back into his chair with a surprised look at the girl.

"I can sit here exactly fifteen minutes," he said, consulting his candid looking watch.

"I told you, Rob, about that crippled child that I saw in the tenement," Hester began. Rob nodded. "And I told the others Greys and Bruce," Rob said.

"I have been thinking hard ever since, and wondering how to help him," said Hester. "It seemed to be impossible till I suddenly remembered to find out how much it cost to support a child, and then I found it a simple matter, after all. I hate society, I--oh, Rob knows; I didn't mean to talk about that. But I got mother and father to say that I might drop certain things which I never wanted to do in the first place, and use the money they would cost for that boy. I couldn't get him into a hospital, because he was incurable, so I put him somewhere to board--in the country--till I could do better. Then it struck me that it wouldn't cost very much to support a house for such children, and I talked to father. He was respectful to my plans at last. He had always laughed me aside, because he thought I was full of notions, just a dissatisfied young girl. But he told me in this talk I had with him that if I would go slowly and sanely he would help me every step of the way; that he couldn't possibly object if I wanted to lead a useful life, instead of a merely pleasant one--not that this life wouldn't be pleasanter than playing all the time! I have a little money that is all my own, and father will help me. I should like to hire a house and a housekeeper, and put into that house as many incurably crippled children as we could afford. And I'd like them to have a good doctor's care, so that, though they were incurable, they might be helped as much as they could be. And I should like this home to be in Fayre, where the Greys could help me, and watch over it. Besides, this is where I learned so much that I should like to have the Home where the atmosphere of the little grey house could flow over and around it."

Hester paused, quivering with excited eagerness, embarrassed that she had revealed her innermost self to such a circle of listeners. But it was a circle of the right sort. Dr. Fairbairn arose, with a mist on his spectacles. He walked over to Hester and took both her hands. "My dear, good, earnest child," he said, "I admire you and respect you. You have thought of a beautiful thing, beautifully conceived and it seems to me simple and practical. Everything can not be done in a day; let me turn over in my mind what you have said, and we shall see, we shall see."

"We will do all we can to help you, Hessie," said Mrs. Grey, her eyes beaming with longing to begin that instant to mother all the maimed waifs whom Hester could offer her.

"Father will help; I know he will," cried Frances, eagerly.

"Our father, too," said Basil quietly. "Some day he is coming to Fayre, not too long hence, I hope."

"It is lovely!" cried Prue, her imagination picturing vividly the attractive rôle of Lady Bountiful to forlorn and grateful childish hearts.

"I'll begin telling stories again, at once, to earn money for the support of one little incurable. I could earn enough to support one, if it were a small one, with not too big a hump, or whatever ailed her," said Rob, talking nonsense as usual to hide her deeper feeling. "And, Hessie, I am proud to call you my friend!"

"I will be a specialist on little children's incurable diseases, and I will give my services to the Home!" cried Bruce, sitting erect with tumbled hair and his face glowing with genuine enthusiasm. "I have always been afraid that I might be a failure in my profession because I had income enough to live on without practising, but this will save me."

He followed Dr. Fairbairn up-stairs to have his wounds dressed, and Hester looked from one to the other left behind.

"They were in earnest? They really did approve?" she implored.

"In entire earnest, and they approved profoundly," affirmed Rob. "This may be the birthday of good that shall outlast our day."

Hester caught her breath. "If only I can do something!" she murmured.