第185章

Back came the laughing answer. "I shan't keep them long. But they may surely accord a few minutes' grace to a man who has just been converted into an M. P."

Barbara descended to the drawing-room, leaving her, that unhappy lady, to the cement and the broken pieces, and to battle as best she could with her bitter heart. Nothing but stabs; nothing but stabs! Was her punishment ever to end? No. The step she had taken in coming back to East Lynne had precluded that.

The guests arrived; all save Mr. and Mrs. Hare. Barbara received a note from her instead. The justice did not feel well enough to join them.

I should think he did not.

A pleasant party it was at East Lynne, and twelve o'clock struck before the carriage of the last guest drove away. It may have been from one to two hours after that, and the house was steeped in moonlight and quietness, everybody being abed and asleep when a loud summons at the hall bell echoed through the stillness.

The first to put her head out the window was Wilson. "Is it fire?" shrieked she, in the most excessive state of terror conceivable.

Wilson had a natural dread of fire--some people do possess this dread more than others--and had oftentime aroused the house to a commotion by declaring she smelt it. "Is it fire?" shrieked Wilson.

"Yes!" was shouted at the top of a man's voice, who stepped from between the entrance pillars to answer.

Wilson waited for no more. Clutching at the baby with one hand--a fine young gentleman now of near twelve months old, promising fair to be as great a source of trouble to Wilson and the nursery as was his brother Archibald, whom he greatly resembled--and at Archie with the other, out she flew to the corridor screeching "Fire! fire! fire!" never ceasing, down tore Wilson with the four children, and burst unceremoniously into the sleeping apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle.

By this time the children, terrified out of their senses, not at Wilson's cry of alarm, but at the summary propelling downstairs, set up a shrieking, too. Madame Vine, believing that half the house as least was in flames, was the next to appear, throwing on a shawl she had caught up, and then came Joyce.

"Fire! fire! fire!" shouted Wilson; "we are all being burnt up together!"

Poor Mrs. Carlyle, thus wildly aroused from sleep, sprang out of bed and into the corridor in her night-dress. Everybody else was in a night-dress--when folks are flying for dear life, they don't stop to look for their dress-coats and best blonde caps. Out came Mr. Carlyle, who has hastily assumed his pantaloons.

He cast a rapid glance down to the hall, and saw that the stairs were perfectly free for escape; therefore to hurry was not so violent.

Every soul around him was shrieking in concert, making the confusion and din terrific. The bright moonlight streamed in at the corridor windows, but there was no other light; shadowy and indistinct enough looked the white figures.

"Where is the fire?" he exclaimed. "I don't smell any. Who gave the first alarm?"

The bell answered him. The hall-bell, which rang out ten times louder and longer than before. He opened one of the windows and leaned from it. "Who's there?" Madame Vine caught up Archie.

"It's me, sir," responded a voice, which he at once recognized to be that of one of Mr. Hare's men-servants. "Master has been took in a fit, sir, and mistress sent me for you and Miss Barbara. You must please make haste, sir, if you want to see him alive."

Miss Barbara! It was more familiar to Jasper, in a moment of excitement, than the new name.

"You, Jasper! Is the house on fire--this house?"

"Well, I don't know, sir. I can hear a dreadful deal of screeching in it."

Mr. Carlyle closed the window. He began to suspect that the danger lay in fear alone. "Who told you there was fire?" he demanded of Wilson.

"That man ringing at the door," sobbed Wilson. "Thank goodness I have saved the children!"

Mr. Carlyle felt somewhat exasperated at the mistake. His wife was trembling from head to foot, her face of a deadly whiteness, and he knew that she was not in a condition to be alarmed, necessarily or unnecessarily. She clung to him in terror, asking if they /could/ escape.

"My darling, be calm! There's no fire; it's a stupid mistake. You may all go back to bed and sleep in peace," he added to the rest, "and the next time that you alarm the house in the night, Wilson, have the goodness to make yourself sure, first of all, that there's cause for it."

Barbara, frightened still, bewildered and uncertain, escaped to the window and threw it open. But Mr. Carlyle was nearly as quick as she; he caught her to him with one hand, and drew the window down with the other. To have these tidings told to her abruptly would be worse than all. By this time some of the servants had descended the other staircase with a light, being in various stages of costume, and hastened to open the hall-door. Jasper entered. The man had probably waited to help to put out the "fire." Barbara caught sight of him ere Mr. Carlyle could prevent it, and grew sick with fear, believing some ill had happened to her mother.

Drawing her inside their chamber, he broke the news to her soothingly and tenderly, making light of it.

She burst into tears. "You are not deceiving me, Archibald? Papa is not dead?"

"Dead!" cheerfully echoed Mr. Carlyle, in the same tone he might have used had Barbara wondered whether the justice was taking a night airing for pleasure in a balloon. "Wilson has indeed frightened you, love. Dress yourself, and we will go and see him."

At that moment Barbara recollected William. Strange that she should have been the first to do so--before Lady Isabel--before Mr. Carlyle.

She ran out again to the corridors, where the boy stood shivering. "He may have caught his death!" she uttered, snatching him up in her arms.

"Oh, Wilson! What have you done? His night-gown is damp and cold."