We Girls: a Home Story Part 26

Olivia Marchbanks's face clouded. She had put forward a little p.a.w.n of compliment toward us, as towards a good point, perhaps, for tempting a break in the game. And behold! Rosamond's knight only leaped right over it, facing honestly and alertly both ways.

"Chess would be good for nothing less than once a week," said Olivia.

"I came to you almost the very first, out of the family," she added, with a little height in her manner. "I hope you won't break it up."

"Break it up! No, indeed! We were all getting just nicely joined together," replied Rosamond, ladylike with perfect temper. "I think last winter was so _really good_," she went on; "I should be sorry to break up what _that_ did; that is all."

"I'm willing enough to help in those ways," said Olivia, condescendingly; "but I think we might have our _own_ things, too."

"I don't know, Olivia," said Rosamond, slowly, "about these 'own things.' They are just what begin to puzzle me."

It was the bravest thing our elegant Rosamond had ever done. Olivia Marchbanks was angry. She all but took back her invitation.

"Never mind," she said, getting up to take leave. "It must be some time yet; I only mentioned it. Perhaps we had better not try to go beyond ourselves, after all. Such things are sure to be stupid unless everybody is really interested."

Rosamond stood in the hall-door, as she went down the steps and away.

At the same moment, Barbara, flushed with an evidently hurried walk, came in. "Why! what makes you so red, Rose?" she said.

"Somebody has been snubbing somebody," replied Rose, holding her royal color, like her namesake, in the midst of a cool repose. "And I don't quite know whether it is Olivia Marchbanks or I."

"A color-question between Rose and Barberry!" said Ruth. "What have _you_ been doing, Barbie? Why didn't you stay to tea?"

"I? I've been walking, of course.--That boy has got home again," she added, half aloud, to Rosamond, as they went up stairs.

We knew _very_ well that she must have been queer to Harry again. He would have been certain to walk home with her, if she would have let him. But--"all through the town, and up the hill, in the daylight!

Or--stay to tea with _him_ there, and make him come, in the dark!--And _if_ he imagined that I knew!" We were as sure as if she had said it, that these were the things that were in her mind, and that these were what she had run away from. How she had done it we did not know; we had no doubt it had been something awful.

The next morning n.o.body called. Father came home to dinner and said Mr. Goldthwaite had told him that Harry was under orders,--to the "Katahdin."

In the afternoon Barbara went out and nailed up the woodbines. Then she put on her hat, and took a great bundle that had been waiting for a week for somebody to carry, and said she would go round to South Hollow with it, to Mrs. Dockery.

"You will be tired to death. You are tired already, hammering at those vines," said mother, anxiously. Mothers cannot help daughters much in these buzzes.

"I want the exercise," said Barbara, turning away her face that was at once red and pale. "Pounding and stamping are good for me." Then she came back in a hurry, and kissed mother, and then she went away.

CHAPTER XII.

EMERGENCIES.

Mrs. Hobart has a "fire-gown." That is what she calls it; she made it for a fire, or for illness, or any night alarm; she never goes to bed without hanging it over a chair-back, within instant reach. It is of double, bright-figured flannel, with a double cape sewed on; and a flannel belt, also sewed on behind, and furnished, for fastening, with a big, reliable, easy-going b.u.t.ton and b.u.t.ton-hole. Up and down the front--not too near together--are more big, reliable, easy-going b.u.t.tons and b.u.t.ton-holes. A pair of quilted slippers with thick soles belong with this gown, and are laid beside it. Then Mrs. Hobart goes to bed in peace, and sleeps like the virgin who knows there is oil in her vessel.

If Mrs. Roger Marchbanks had known of Mrs. Hobart's fire-gown, and what it had been made and waiting for, unconsciously, all these years, she might not have given those quiet orders to her discreet, well-bred parlor-maid, by which she was never to be "disengaged" when Mrs.

Hobart called.

Mrs. Hobart has also a gown of very elegant black silk, with deep, rich border-folds of velvet, and a black camel's-hair shawl whose priceless margin comes up to within three inches of the middle; and in these she has turned meekly away from Mrs. Marchbanks's vestibule, leaving her inconsequential card, many wondering times; never doubting, in her simplicity, that Mrs. Marchbanks was really making pies, or doing up pocket-handkerchiefs; only thinking how queer it was it always happened so with her.

In her fire-gown she was destined to go in.

Barbara came home dreadfully tired from her walk to Mrs. Dockery's, and went to bed at eight o'clock. When one of us does that, it always breaks up our evening early. Mother discovered that she was sleepy by nine, and by half past we were all in our beds. So we really had a fair half night of rest before the alarm came.

It was about one in the morning when Barbara woke, as people do who go to bed achingly tired, and sleep hungrily for a few eager hours.

"My gracious! what a moon! What ails it?"

The room was full of red light.

Rosamond sat up beside her.

"Moon! It's fire!"

Then they called Ruth and mother. Father and Stephen were up and out of doors in five minutes.

The Roger Marchbanks's stables were blazing. The wind was carrying great red cinders straight over on to the house roofs. The buildings were a little down on our side of the hill, and a thick plantation of evergreens hid them from the town. Everything was still as death but the crackling of the flames. A fire in the country, in the dead of night, to those first awakened to the knowledge of it, is a stealthily fearful, horribly triumphant thing. Not a voice nor a bell smiting the air, where all will soon be outcry and confusion; only the fierce, busy diligence of the blaze, having all its own awful will, and making steadfast headway against the sleeping skill of men.

We all put on some warm things, and went right over.

Father found Mr. Marchbanks, with his gardener, at the back of the house, playing upon the scorching frames of the conservatory building with the garden engine. Up on the house-roof two other men-servants were hanging wet carpets from the eaves, and das.h.i.+ng down buckets of water here and there, from the reservoir inside.

Mr. Marchbanks gave father a small red trunk. "Will you take this to your house and keep it safe?" he asked. And father hastened away with it.

Within the house, women were rus.h.i.+ng, half dressed, through the rooms, and down the pa.s.sages and staircases. We went up through the back piazza, and met Mrs. Hobart in her fire-gown at the unfastened door.

There was no card to leave this time, no servant to say that Mrs.

Marchbanks was "particularly engaged."

Besides her gown, Mrs. Hobart had her theory, all ready for a fire.

Just exactly what she should do, first and next, and straight through, in case of such a thing. She had recited it over to herself and her family till it was so learned by heart that she believed no flurry of the moment would put it wholly out of their heads.

She went straight up Mrs. Marchbanks's great oak staircase, to go up which had been such a privilege for the bidden few. Rough feet would go over it, unbidden, to-night.

She met Mrs. Marchbanks at her bedroom door. In the upper story the cook and house-maids were handing buckets now to the men outside. The fine parlor-maid was down in the kitchen at the force-pump, with Olivia and Adelaide to help and keep her at it. A nursery-girl was trying to wrap up the younger children in all sorts of wrong things, upside down.

"Take these children right over to my house," said Mrs. Hobart.

"Barbara Holabird! Come up here!"

"I don't know what to do first," said Mrs. Marchbanks, excitedly. "Mr.

Marchbanks has taken away his papers; but there's all the silver--and the pictures--and everything! And the house will be full of men directly!" She looked round the room nervously, and went and picked up her braided "chignon" from the dressing-table. Mrs. Marchbanks could "receive" splendidly; she had never thought what she should do at a fire. She knew all the rules of the grammar of life; she had not learned anything about the exceptions.

"Elijah! Come up here!" called Mrs. Hobart again, over the bal.u.s.ters.

And Elijah, Mrs. Hobart's Yankee man-servant, brought up on her father's farm, clattered up stairs in his thick boots, that sounded on the smooth oak as if a horse were coming.

Mrs. Marchbanks looked bewilderedly around her room again. "They'll break everything!" she said, and took down a little Sevres cup from a bracket.

"There, Mrs. Marchbanks! You just go off with the children. I'll see to things. Let me have your keys."

"They're all in my upper bureau-drawer," said Mrs. Marchbanks.

"Besides, there isn't much locked, except the silver. I wish Matilda would come." Matilda is Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks. "The children can go there, of course."