“The back staircase is impracticable, but if we keep our senses, there is no real danger to fear. I have rung the alarm bell, and the men will soon be round with ropes and ladders. The best thing you can do is to go back to your rooms, dress rapidly, and collect a few valuables which can be lowered from the window. You can have five minutes—no longer. I will ring a bell at the end of that time, and we will all meet in my room, which is the centre position, and therefore the farthest from the fire. Now, girls, quick! There is no time to lose!”
We ran. Some time—in a long, long time to come—we shall laugh to think what curious costumes we made! It was just the first thing that came to hand. I was decently clothed in two minutes, seized a dressing-bag, put in my pearl necklace, a few odd trinkets, this diary, and the old Bible I have had since I was ten years old, and rushed along to mother’s room to see if I could help.
She was putting on a long dark coat, and had a lace scarf tied over her hair. Even then, in the middle of the night, she looked dignified and beautiful, and her eyes melted in the tender way they have at great moments as she saw me.
“Ready, daughter?” she said smiling, and then came up and took me into her arms. “Good girl! Brave girl! We must help the others, Una. You and I have no time to be afraid.”
“Thank you, mother darling!” I said, gratefully, for I had been, oh, terribly afraid, and it was just the best thing she could have said to calm me and give me courage; and, while we clung together, father came hurrying in. He hardly seemed to notice me, Babs, his pet daughter!—He looked only at mother, and spoke to her.
“Are you warm, Carina? Are you suitably dressed? You must have no train—nothing to make movement difficult. That’s all right. Don’t trust yourself to anyone but me, sweet-heart! I’ll come to you in good time!”
“Yes, Boy, yes! I’ll come with you,” said mother softly.
They went out of the room arm-in-arm, never once looking at me. It seemed as if at the first touch of danger they had gone back to the old days when they were lovers, and no difference of interest had arisen to draw them apart. It made the tears come to my eyes to see them, and I was glad to be forgotten.
The women servants were all awake by now, and, finding their own staircase in flames, came swarming down the corridor to escape by the main way; when they found this also was impracticable, they began to shriek and moan, and to implore us to save them, and it was hard work to get them into one room and keep them quiet. The men crowded at the window, looking for help, and shouting directions to the coachmen and gardeners when at last they came running towards the house. They flew off, some to get ropes and ladders, some to alarm the neighbourhood, and bring help from the nearest fire office. It was three miles off, and in the country firemen are scattered about in outlying cottages, and there would be all the way to come back. It made one sick to think how long it might be before the engine arrived; and meantime the fire was steadily spreading on the ground floor. When father bent forward to shout to the men, the light on his face was dreadful to see. I had a horrible longing to scream, and I think I should have done it if I hadn’t been so occupied with Annie, the kitchen-maid, who was literally almost mad with fright. It seemed to soothe her to hold my arm, poor little soul. Respect for “the gentry” had been so instilled into her from her earliest years that I honestly believe she imagined the very flames would hesitate to touch the Squire’s “darter!”
It seemed ages before William and James came back—without the ladders! They were kept locked up by father’s special orders, as so many jewel burglaries had taken place in the neighbourhood, the thieves using ladders to get into a bedroom while dinner was going on downstairs. Now, in the usual contrary way of things, the man who had the key had ridden away, forgetting all about it in his haste to bring help. Father stamped with impatience while the men were reporting their failure and asking further instructions. It was getting more and more difficult to hear, with that horrid roar coming up from below, and Mr Carstairs said suddenly—