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?”