# Munsey's Magazine/Volume 89/Issue 3/Home Fires

Extracted from Munsey's Magazine, Dec 1926, pp. 415–424.
Home Fires
TEMPERAMENTAL HOUSEKEEPING MAY HAVE ITS DISADVANTAGES, ESPECIALLY IN A TWO-FAMILY HOUSE
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
IT was a long way home, and a lonely way, along a road of frozen mud, bordered by empty fields and trees stripped bare in the autumn winds. The short November day was coming to a close, and the fields seemed vast in the gathering dusk. Only at the top of the hill lingered a streak of wild, unearthly yellow light, in a sky of flying clouds.
Bess climbed the hill steadily, her eyes fixed upon that transient glory; and she repeated to herself bits of poems she had learned in school:
    “Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no worthy action done.”
A most characteristic sentiment! The frosty air had brought a fine color into her cheeks, and her hair, in the sunset light, shone like copper where the wind had blown it loose under her tam-o'-shanter. She was a solitary little figure in a desolate world, but invincibly gallant and earnest.
At an early age she had become enamored of Longfellow's “A Psalm of Life,” and her diary was prefaced by the quotation:
    Life is real! Life is earnest!
She had always felt like that. She had been left motherless when she was a very tiny girl, and the chief influence of her childhood had been that of her father, a man whom nobody could accuse of undue frivolity. He believed that life was real, and earnest, and pretty awful—especially now, when he was a ruined man.
Bess, however, being only nineteen, could not see things quite as he did. She was very grave about the situation, and desperately anxious to help him. Just now she was on her way home from the village post office, where she had mailed a letter to an old school friend, politely but firmly refusing an invitation for a week-end. She realized that things were very bad, but she could not help thinking that they might take a better turn at any time.
Her father thought this attitude half-hearted. He was a ruined man, and he wished to do the thing thoroughly—wished to be completely and properly a ruined man. He refused to cherish any illusions, any false hopes. When ruin came, he had sold their old house in Connecticut, and they had moved into the lower half of a two-family building in a New Jersey suburb. Bess suffered quite as much as he did from this uprooting, only she pretended to like it, so that he should not reproach himself so bitterly. Whenever the least thing went wrong, he would say in his most hopeless voice that all this was entirely his fault.
As a matter of fact, it was. He was a professor who had written philosophic essays, pointing out the pitiful follies of the human race, and he should have known better than to trust persons who were enthusiastic about oil wells. He did know better now, but it was too late.
Bess had almost reached the top of the hill now, and a ray of the sun, shining upon a broken bottle, sidetracked her thoughts. It looked like a piece of ice.
“I bet there's skating,” she thought.
She thought of last winter—only last winter—and of all the girls skating on the little lake in the school grounds. In her heart there echoed the sound of their laughing voices, the strange, ringing hum of skates on ice. She could feel again her own quiet content in the companionship of her friends, the satisfaction of an orderly and purposeful life.
“But all that was just—a preparation,” she said to herself, valiantly. “This is the real thing. I'm really useful now.” She repeated her very favorite verse:
“Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”
That was what she intended to do, certainly. The pursuing and laboring part was not so hard, but the waiting—
II
The sound of a car coming along the road made Bess draw to one side. Very few cars came here, and she was a little curious about it. She glanced up as it passed, and then stared after it, amazed.
It was what looked like the wreck of a fine touring car, battered and scarred, but with an engine that took the steep hill superbly. It was piled high with household goods. A man was driving it, on the running board crouched another man, and, perilously balanced upon a table wedged into the tonneau, there sat a woman. She was laughing, and the brightness of her face lingered in the girl's mind.
As they disappeared over the crest of the hill, a lamp shade fell out of the car. Bess was hastening forward to retrieve it, but, before she got there, one of the men appeared. He picked it up, and then something arrested his attention.
“Hi! Just come here!” he called, and the two others joined him.
They all stood there, as if entranced with the view; and Bess, as she passed them, heard the woman say something about “the austere charm of all this.” She was somewhat surprised, and very much impressed, to learn that any one could find charm of any sort in these barren fields, where great billboards stood, declaring them to be highly desirable building lots. She felt that she herself should have discovered this charm in the six weeks she had been here.
But now she observed something which the others had not seen. They had their backs turned to the car, which stood half-way down the slope, and they did not know that it had begun to slip. Bess called an anxious warning, but they were talking, and did not hear; and the top-heavy car was slowly gathering momentum.
“Oh, do look out!” she cried. “It's running away!”
It was. Oblivious of brakes, it went careering down the hill, faster and faster, bumping over the ruts, and flinging out all sorts of things as it went. The others had heard her, now, and turned, and they all began rushing after it.
Too late! Going at great speed, the car smashed squarely into the stump of a tree, stood up on its hind feet, and threw a great part of its load over its head. Then it stood still and waited.
Bess was the first to reach the scene of disaster, and she was dismayed. There was a little red lacquer cabinet in splinters; there were books with the pages fluttering away; a china clock was shattered to pieces; the ground was strewn with wreckage.
“Oh, what a pity!” she cried. “I'm so sorry! Such pretty things!”
“Never mind!” said the woman, cheerfully. “Some of them were broken, anyhow; and I don't believe in caring too much about things, do you?”
Struck by this philosophic point of view, Bess turned toward the speaker, and found her still smiling. She was not a pretty woman. She was small and pale and freckled, and her reddish hair was growing gray; but that smile of hers was a thing rarer than youth or beauty.
“I like her!” thought Bess.
The two men had begun to stow the débris into the car in a way that caused anguish to the girl's orderly spirit.
“Have you much farther to go?” she asked anxiously. “Because, if the things are packed like that, I'm afraid they'll fall out.”
“My dear,” said the woman, “I don't know how far it is. I took the place, in blind faith, from an agent. It's No. 9 Edgely Road.”
“Oh, but that's right there!” cried Bess, pointing. “That house, where I live!”
“A two-family house, isn't it? Well, my dear, we're the second family, then!” said the woman, very much pleased, and she called out joyously: “Tom Tench! Alan! I've found the place!”
The two men approached. They also seemed surprised and pleased.
“As if she'd done something very clever,” thought Bess. “Didn't they ever expect to find their house?”
“My dear,” said the woman, “I'm Angelina Smith. This is my brother Alan, and my cousin, Tom Tench. Boys, imagine! This is the young lady who lives in the house!”
Both the men took off their hats and smiled at her.
“Shall we move the things in now?” asked the cousin, a somewhat portly young man, in horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Or will it bother you?” asked Miss Smith.
Bess was disconcerted to see that they regarded her as a sort of hostess.
“Just as you like, of course,” she said. “I—can't I help you?”
“No!” replied the brother, promptly. “We can get along all right.”
Bess glanced at him, but looked away again, hastily. There was something in his steady, smiling gaze that confused her. He did not look much like his sister. She was little, and he was tall. Her hair was reddish, and his was black. He had the same wide, good-humored smile, but somehow it was different.
“It's getting dark,” he said, “and it's cold. You'd better run home.”
Bess might have felt a little annoyed by his rather masterful manner, if she had not noticed, as he moved to pick up a book, that he walked with a limp; but that disarmed her. She liked him; she liked all of them; there was something charming and a little pathetic about them.
“Won't you all come in and have a cup of tea with us first?” she asked, strictly upon impulse.
“My dear!” cried Miss Smith. “How kind of you! We will!”
And they all followed her to the house, leaving the hapless car just where it was.
Bess knocked upon the door, to warn her father. He opened it with the distressed air of a disturbed hermit.
“Father,” said Bess, “these are our new neighbors. Miss Smith, my father, Professor Gayle.”
Miss Smith held out her hand, and the professor took it. She presented her cousin and her brother, and they all shook hands gravely.
“But how cozy!” she exclaimed, looking about her,
“Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes!” said Professor Gayle.
“Cozy” seemed a tactful word for that sitting room. When Bess and her father left their old home, they had brought with them what they had regarded, at the time, as just a few pieces of their old furniture; but in this room the things had become too many and too large.
Bess knew that the crowded room hurt her father not only esthetically, but physically. He was a big, gaunt man, very near-sighted, and almost every time he moved his shins struck some sharp angle, or something bumped him under the knees. When he made one of his fine, sweeping gestures—sweeping, it truly was—it carried to the floor all sorts of things from near-by tables.
But Miss Smith was entranced.
“Really a home!” said she. “You know, we all suddenly felt the need of a home, ourselves, last week. It was at breakfast in the studio. Alan said, 'Christmas will soon be here.' 'What does Christmas mean to us, who have no home?' Tom Tench inquired. 'Boys,' I said, 'you shall have a home!' So, you see!”
“Ah, yes!” said the professor, vaguely. Bess had gone off to make tea, and he was obliged to entertain the party alone. He scarcely felt equal to it. “You said 'studio'?” he continued. “Am I to understand that you are—er—an artist, Miss Smith?”
“All of us! I paint, and Tom Tench writes, and Alan designs. We're very quiet people,” she assured him. “We shan't disturb you in the least.”
“I'm sure,” said the professor, gallantly.
And he really did feel that, if he must have neighbors, these were remarkably unobjectionable ones—no children, no dogs, and he fancied that they were not the sort to possess a loud speaker.
He was still further encouraged when Tom Tench pulled a book from one of the shelves, and gave a stern and loud opinion upon it. That was the kind of thing the professor was accustomed to, and he immediately pronounced a loud and scholarly contradiction. Then he and Miss Smith and Tom Tench all began to talk about books. No one of them had any use for the books praised by the others, but that made it all the more interesting.
They did not miss the brother. He had followed Bess into the kitchen, and he said he wished to help her. She told him that there was really nothing that he could do, but still he stayed there. He sat on the end of the table, and talked to her.
His conversation was not scholarly. He did not talk about books. He talked about plays, and Bess had never seen anything except a few Shakespearean dramas. He talked about dancing, and Bess had never danced, except at school. Her particular friends had been very serious girls, and her father was invariably serious; she was not accustomed to frivolous conversation, and she could not answer Mr. Smith. After awhile he gave up and fell silent.
That night, after she had gone to bed, Bess lay awake for a time in the dark. She endeavored to think of the future, and to decide whether she could study shorthand by mail; but her thinking was unaccountably disturbed by the memory of that young man, with his steady, smiling glance and his very insignificant conversation. Somehow, it made her unhappy.
III
The new neighbors worked late into the night, with a great deal of noise, and in the morning a van came with more furniture. Bess went upstairs, to ask if she could help, but Miss Smith thanked her warmly, said that moving meant nothing at all to her, and invited Bess and her father to come up and dine with them that evening notwithstanding the unplaced furniture.
The professor, to his daughter's surprise, seemed pleased by the invitation.
“It is something of an experience to meet genuine artists,” he said. “It will do us good. Miss Smith is, I consider, a remarkable woman. I had a talk with her yesterday, and the extent of her information is great.”
“She forgot to tell me what time to come,” said Bess; “but if we go up early—a little before six—perhaps I can help her.”
When they went up, it might have been a little before six in the morning, for any sign of dinner to be seen. Miss Smith, in a smock, was busy drawing; Tom Tench was shut up in his room, writing, and all the other rooms were in darkness.
“You won't mind waiting until I finish this?” she asked. “It's a design for a book jacket. It's not at all what they ordered, and probably they won't take it; but it seems criminal to me to stifle a good idea. Tom Tench won't be long now. He makes a point of writing at least twenty-five hundred words a day. He will do that much, even if he's not in the mood, and has to tear it all up.”
“I see!” said Bess, politely. “But, Miss Smith, you're so busy—please let me go into the kitchen and get things started for you. I'd really love to.”
“My dear, I don't use the kitchen,” Miss Smith replied, calmly.
“Don't use the kitchen!” repeated the dinner guests in unison.
“Never!” said she. “For busy people like ourselves, housekeeping has to be reduced to the utmost simplicity. I've worked it all out. You'll see! The dinner will be prepared here, in this room, before your very eyes. It won't take me any time at all.”
She continued to work, and to entertain them with pleasant conversation until half past six. Then she rose, and, with a calm and efficient air, went to a cupboard and brought out a number of electric appliances—grill, percolator, toaster, and so on—which she placed upon her cleared work table, and began to attach to the chandelier outlets.
“Pray let me assist you,” said the professor, greatly distressed by what he saw, for the plugs were screwed in askew, the cords wildly tangled, and the chandelier rocking dangerously.
She smilingly declined assistance, but when her back was turned, he did what he could for the safety and welfare of the party.
“But why,” he whispered to his daughter, “does she keep the window open? It's a cold night, and I find the draft is becoming most unpleasant.”
Bess crossed the room to Miss Smith, who was leaning out of the open window, and once more asked if she couldn't help her.
“It's a l-little imp-provised ice box,” said the hostess, with chattering teeth. “I nailed it up this morning.”
To Bess it seemed extraordinary to improvise an ice box outside the window when there was a genuine one in the kitchen; but she was beginning to understand Miss Smith, and could not help admiring her adventurous spirit, which wished to live like Robinson Crusoe, always improvising, if not improving.
“The meat!” whispered Miss Smith. “It's frozen fast! I can't get it off the plate, or the plate off the shelf!”
But, alas, she did get her ice box off the nails, and down it went into the garden below.
“Never mind, my dear!” she said. “Don't say anything about it; I'm always prepared for emergencies.”
So she closed the window, retired into another room, and came back with a number of tins.
“Tom Tench!” she called. “Get ready! Dinner in ten minutes!”
It was, however, nearly nine o'clock before they dined. Miss Smith had trouble with her forest of electric cords, and never knew which things were turned on and which off, so that the concoctions which she believed to be cooling began to burn directly her back was turned, and the pots which she was anxiously expecting to boil would be found, after a long wait, to have been standing upon stoves absolutely cold.
Young Smith was a model of cheerful patience. He came in cold and hungry, and uncomplainingly remained cold and hungry for a long time. The professor was courteously serene through everything, and Bess and Angelina were unfailingly good-tempered; but Tom Tench was otherwise. He was silent all through the meal; and, after it had been eaten, and the ruins hidden behind a screen, he made himself felt. It was then that the bitter Tench-Gayle feud began.
“It's darned cold!” he muttered, in a surly fashion.
“Bitter weather,” the professor agreed.
“I mean the house is cold,” said Tench, with a frown. “There's not enough heat. The furnace needs looking after. Doesn't somebody stoke it up in the evening?”
Now that furnace was the professor's bête noire. He had not been able to get a man to look after it, and he had said that he believed he could do it himself. He was not so sure about it now, though, and this humiliating knowledge, combined with just resentment at the other's tone, caused him to reply with considerable asperity:
“It might be advisable to put on more coal. Perhaps we might so arrange that I should attend to it in the morning, and you should see to it—”
“I?” said Tom Tench. “Not much! I'm a writer. My business is to write, and I have no time for anything else.”
“Mr. Tench—” the professor began sternly, but young Smith rose.
“I'll have a go at it,” he said, cheerfully, and off he went.
But it was too late. The harm was done; the feud had started. Tom Tench strode off and shut himself into his own room, and Miss Smith interested the professor in a discussion of Hindu myths. She was, Bess thought, the kindest, the jolliest, the most utterly honest, and unaffected soul who ever lived, but she could not dispel the sinister cloud that had come over them. There was tension in the air.
Mr. Smith did not come back. Bess watched the door and listened for a footstep, but none came. At last she slipped out, without disturbing the other two, and went downstairs—not exactly to look for Mr. Smith, of course; but something might have happened to him. He might have fallen down the cellar stairs, he might have been overcome by coal gas.
The lower floor was very quiet. She listened, hesitated for a moment, and then opened the cellar door. A light was burning down there, but there was not a sound to be heard. Cautiously she began to descend the steep stairs—and there she saw the young man, sitting on a box, smoking a pipe, and reading a very frivolous comic magazine.
“Oh!” said she.
He sprang to his feet and came toward her, quickly enough, in spite of his limp.
“I'm waiting to see what will happen,” he explained. “I've done things to that furnace!”
He stood there, smiling up at her, and she felt obliged to smile back at him, but it was not easy.
“If he'd rather stay in the cellar,” she thought, “there's no reason why he shouldn't—absolutely no reason. I'm sure—”
“Look here!” said Mr. Smith, suddenly. “Couldn't we go into the city to dinner some evening?”
A great indignation came over Bess, and a sort of alarm. Young Smith was not smiling now; he seemed earnest enough—too earnest. Nobody had ever looked at her like that before. He had preferred to hide in the cellar, rather than talk to her upstairs; and now, when she had come, merely out of humanity, to see if he were dead or alive, he misunderstood her. He thought she was one of those girls who would jump at any invitation, however casual. He thought she was running after him.
“Thank you,” she said, frigidly; “but I don't care for things like that.”
Then she turned and went up the stairs. She went into the kitchen and made a cup of cocoa for her father to drink before he went to bed.
“I hope I've made him see!” she thought.
Suddenly she was overwhelmed by a recollection of Mr. Smith's face, after she had spoken. She remembered him standing there at the foot of the cellar stairs, with a smudge on his cheek, and such a contrite, miserable look in his blue eyes.
“Oh!” she cried. “I'm nothing but a n-nasty little prig!”
IV
The feud over the furnace developed with alarming rapidity.
“In a house of this sort,” the professor observed severely to his child, a week later, “which is not adapted to the complete independence of two families, if the arrangement is to be tolerable, there must be a ready and harmonious adjustment of the responsibilities. Now this Tench—the other young man is away most of the time, and it is the natural, just, and proper thing for this Tench to do his share in taking care of the furnace.”
But “this Tench” steadily refused to do anything but write. He never went near the furnace. Miss Smith pluckily attempted to do his part. Three or four times a day she descended into the cellar, crammed the grate with coal, turned on or off whatever little turnable things she saw, and opened and closed all the doors, with great good will. Not only was this repugnant to Professor Gayle's innate chivalry, but it was dangerous, and he implored so earnestly that finally she desisted, and the professor did it all. Alone he carried up the ashes, alone he intrigued with coal dealers.
When Miss Smith's reckless management of her electric devices caused a fuse to blow out—which happened often—Tench simply lighted a lamp. He didn't care.
Then there was the daily battle about the mail. The postman left all letters for the house with whatever person opened the door, and the professor, being on the ground floor, was usually that person. Now Tom Tench had all an author's morbid attitude about mail. Whenever he thought a letter should have come, and it had not, he made general accusations of criminal carelessness. At last he took to walking out to meet the postman, and then the professor accused him of willful delay in the transmission of highly important documents.
But it was in the matter of waste paper that Tom Tench was most insufferable. He was always bringing down heaps of paper, and stuffing it into the ash can. On windy days it blew out all over the garden; but this there was a still more serious aspect to offense.
“Mr. Tench, sir!” protested the professor. “As you have persistently shirked your duty in helping me to carry up those ashes, you may not be aware that sometimes they are hot, and liable to set fire to any inflammable material placed upon them. Tie your—rubbish—into bundles, if you please, ready for the collector.”
“No time for that sort of nonsense,” said Tench, and kept on.
No attempt was made to gloss over this hostility. The professor had not had a quarrel for years, and it seemed to Bess that he actually enjoyed this one. He would not make the least effort to avoid Tench. Almost every evening he went upstairs for a chat with Miss Smith, and his manner of ignoring Tench was not soothing.
“Oh, Lord!” Tom Tench would rudely ejaculate.
Then he would go into his room and bang the door; but he would not stay there. He would come in and out of the sitting room, with an obnoxious smile.
If the two men enjoyed this, however, Bess and Angelina Smith did not. They had grown very fond of each other, and they said that this distressing situation did not and should not make the least difference in their friendship. Angelina held that it was all the fault of her temperamental cousin, Tom Tench, and that poor Professor Gayle was an innocent victim; while Bess thought secretly that her father, being older and wiser, should have avoided such an antagonism.
“But it does seem a pity,” she said once, “that—your brother has to suffer for it. He seems to work so hard, and he comes home late, and half the time the house is freezing cold, or the lights are out, because they're squabbling about whose place it is to do things.”
“Oh, Alan doesn't mind,” Miss Smith assured her. “He's the most good-natured, darling creature! He doesn't need to work so hard, either. My dear, he stays late at his office simply because he doesn't like to come home. He told me so.”
Bess decided then that it would be more sensible not to bother about Mr. Smith, especially if he stayed late in his office simply because he didn't want to come home. That meant, of course, that there was no one in the two-family house he wished to talk to, no one he cared to see. She had scarcely exchanged a word with him since that brief conversation on the cellar stairs. Sometimes she saw him from her window, going off in that dreadful old car, early, before any one else was stirring upstairs, probably without having had a proper breakfast. At night she often heard him come in late, to be greeted brightly by his sister, who never seemed to go to bed.
To be sure, she had meant to discourage him, and apparently she had succeeded. Very well—what of it? She had made up her mind to be a little nicer the next time she talked to him, but evidently there wasn't going to be any next time. Again very well—what of it?
He was Angelina's brother, and a neighbor, and as such she was obliged, was she not, to take a human interest in him? She learned that he was a naval architect, and that he had hurt his foot by falling down a ship's hold during a visit of inspection. She also learned that he was the best brother in the world. She was pleased to hear this, and pleased to think that that pathetic limp would soon be gone, so that it would no longer be necessary to feel sorry for him; but she was not going to bother about him.
V
The week before Christmas was one of terrific activity for Bess and Angelina, and of unusually bitter hostility between Professor Gayle and Tom Tench. They were shamefully immune from any sort of Christmas spirit.
Indeed, it seemed impossible to arrange any sort of neighborly celebration. Bess had made mince pies and a plum pudding; Angelina had painted place cards to be used on the dinner table. They had both planned all sorts of jolly little Christmas presents, and a Christmas tree; but where was the gathering to be? Tom Tench refused to set foot in Professor Gayle's domain; and though the professor could probably be induced to go upstairs, who could foresee the consequences?
Nevertheless, the two dauntless women refused to despair.
“At the very last instant we'll find some way to reconcile them,” said Angelina. “We'll have a wonderful Christmas—I know it! Let's walk into the village this afternoon, and get quantities of holly and mistletoe. Why, my dear, it's Christmas Eve! They can't quarrel to-day. Nobody could!”
“They can, though,” said Bess, sadly. “I hear them now, out on the stairs.”
“It's a shame!” said Angelina. “Of course, Tom Tench is very temperamental, but—my dear, I'm going to have one more talk with him this evening. Alan talked to him, but he only made it worse.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, my dear, that any one who could be boorish and ill tempered under the same roof as you was a—well, all sorts of things.”
“Oh! Did he?” said Bess, after a long silence.
“And he. wants us to move away,” Angelina continued. “He says he simply can't stand this.”
“Oh!” said Bess again.
Something in her voice touched the warm-hearted Angelina. She crossed the room and put her arm about the younger girl.
“My dear,” she said, “I'm not going to leave you. I'm much too fond of you. And—if you don't mind my saying so—I really do think you need somebody cheerful here. Alan said it was absolutely my duty to teach you to laugh. He thinks—”
“It's getting late, Angelina,” said Bess. “Let's start!”
It was getting late, because Angelina had been suddenly inspired to finish a drawing after lunch, and it was after three before they set off for the village. When they had bought all the holly they could carry, and turned toward home, it was beginning to grow dark.
It was a bleak and bitter day. The wind was against them now—a savage wind that brought tears to their eyes. With their heads down against it, they went along the desolate road, their numb hands clasping the prickly holly, their numb feet suffering cruelly from the ruts frozen as hard as iron.
They came to the foot of the long hill—and how long it looked, that treeless road, going steeply up to meet the wild, dark sky!
“It 'll be—better—going down!” Bess shouted against the gale.
“Much!” cried Angelina. “And—I love Christmas!” :
Bess could have kissed her for those gallant words. The good will she felt for her companion actually seemed to warm her, and she began the ascent doggedly. Shoulder to shoulder, on they went, nearer and nearer to home. They reached the top of the hill, where the wind was incredibly fierce, and—
Angelina dropped her load of holly and seized Bess's arm.
“Look!” she cried. “Oh, look! Fire!”
And there was the two-family house in a horrible, reddish glare!
Of one accord they started running, battling against the wind. For a time Bess clung to her armful of holly, because she so hated throwing things away, but in the end it had to go. Their footsteps rang sharply on the frozen road. They were breathless and panting, but the world about them seemed strangely still—no shouts, no hurrying engines, no audible excitement. The two-family house was burning in solitary and awful splendor.
Angelina stumbled to her knees at the foot of the hill, and Bess helped her up. They heard the soft, rustling sound of flames, mounting unhindered.
“Where—is—everybody?” gasped Angelina. “Oh, Bess!”
They struggled on, and turned in at the gate. The front of the building was still untouched, and no one was there. They flew along the path to the back of the house. Two figures were standing there, motionless, sharply outlined against the red light—Professor Gayle and Tom Tench.
“Father!” cried Bess, with all the breath she had left. “Can't you do anything?”
He answered in a voice that was positively ferocious:
“No! This is Mr. Tench's fire. He is responsible, and he alone. His papers thrown upon the hot ashes—”
“Tom Tench!” cried Angelina, catching her cousin's arm and shaking him. “Do something! This instant!”
“I won't!” said he. “The fire started downstairs, on Gayle's premises, and it was his business to check it.”
“It has spread to your premises. Put it out there, and—”
“You'll begin,” said Tom Tench.
“I shall not!” said the professor. “I'll be—I won't!”
And they kept on doing nothing, in spite of the desperate appeals and entreaties, the wrath and despair, of Angelina and Bess.
“Then we will!” cried Angelina.
Followed by Bess, she ran around to the front of the house and up the steps of the veranda. She was just opening the door when she was seized by the arm and spun around.
“I'm here,” said her brother. “Don't worry!”
To the surprise and indignation of Bess, the mere fact of her brother's being there seemed to reassure Angelina entirely. She sat down on the rail of the veranda with a sigh of relief.
“Alan's very practical!” she observed, with satisfaction.
But that did not suit Bess. She was not going to leave the fate of all their household goods in the hands of Mr. Smith. She opened the door and went in.
“Come back!” shouted Alan, but she closed the door behind her.
It was very much worse in there than she had expected. The hall was thick with smoke that stifled and blinded her. She groped her way toward the sitting room, with the desperate idea of saving at least an armful of her father's precious books; but a few steps were enough. There was death for her there. Tears were streaming from her smarting eyes, and every breath was a fiery torment.
In a panic, she turned back. All she wanted now was to get out, to draw the breath of cold, clear air; but the room was a trap, overcrowded as it was with massive furniture. Stumbling and panic-stricken, she turned this way and that. She could not find the door. She could not get out. She tripped over something and fell.
Alan Smith lifted her up. She clung to him in that dreadful, choking darkness. She felt his strong arm about her, and heard his voice, cheerful and steady.
“All right! Don't worry!”
“Father's books!” she whispered.
And then the smoke came down and shut out all the world.
VI
The village fire apparatus had done its best, and departed, and the tenants of the two-family house were assembled in the Gayles's sitting room, dejected, weary, and silent. Bess lay on the sofa, still weak and shaken. Angelina was looking over a mass of sodden papers which had once been a portfolio of drawings, and the professor was helping her. Tom Tench sat hunched in an armchair, staring gloomily before him.
The curtains were scorched rags. Through a hole chopped in the ceiling water was still dripping, and the room was devastated; but the worst damage had occurred upstairs. The flames from Tom Tench's papers heaped upon the ash can had mounted upward, and had caught the curtains at a window that happened to be open. It was bad enough down here, but upstairs there was stark ruin.
“I wonder where Alan is,” said Angelina. “He drove down to the village—to buy something, I suppose; but it's so late!”
“As a matter of fact,” Tom Tench told her curtly, “he went to find a doctor. He was hurt.”
“Hurt!” cried Angelina and Bess together. “Hurt!” they repeated.
“That's what I said. He hurt himself. He came back in here—in this jungle—this old curiosity shop—”
“Mr. Tench!” said the professor.
“Oh, it's your room,” said Tench. “If you like it this way—but Alan fell over one of these antique doodads and cut his head.”
“Boys!” cried Miss Smith, greatly distressed. “Boys!”
The professor glanced up. It was a long time since he had been classified as a boy, and it was pleasing.
“Miss Smith!” he said.
Bess sat up straight. Was it possible? The way her father and Miss Smith were looking at each other!
“I didn't mean—” Angelina began, somewhat confused, and then: “But it's true!” she said. “You really are—both of you—but there's Alan!”
The front door opened, and just at that moment there came from upstairs the most pathetic, tired little voice. It was the cuckoo clock.
“Midnight!” cried Alan. “Look here! Merry Christmas, you people!”
The words might have been a charm, striking every one speechless. They could only look at him, as he stood in the doorway, a bandage around his head, his collar a wet and dirty rag, his face white with fatigue and pain, and a wide grin on it.
“Oh, Alan!” cried his sister. “My dear, dear boy! Your new set of plans—for that yacht—they're burned up!”
It seemed to Bess that he winced a little, but it was almost imperceptible.
“Then we may starve yet,” he said; “but, anyhow, we're all right for the present. Look at this!”
He held out a package that he was carrying. Bess took it from him, and opened it gingerly.
“But—” she said.
“It's the best sort of plum pudding there is,” he said. “I only wish I could have got a bigger one. You'll like it, all right!”
She stood looking at the round tin in her hands.
“But I'm afraid,” she said, “it—it must be a mistake. You see, it says—” She looked up at him, and her eyes filled with tears. It was too pathetic! His head bandaged, his plans destroyed, his home in ruins, and now this! “It says 'corned beef'!” she faltered.
Then she could bear no more. Taking the corned beef, she ran into the kitchen, and began to cry there.
Alan came after her. He put his arm about her shoulders, but, this being the second time, she did not seem to notice it very much.
“I am s-so s-sorry!” she wailed.
“Please don't be!” he entreated. “Two-family houses are a mistake, anyhow. I've been staying late at the office, trying my hand at designing a house, for a change. I wish you'd look at the plans!”
“I think I'll make some coffee,” said Bess, hastily, moving away. Then her glance fell again upon the tin of corned beef.
She looked at him, and their eyes met, and she began to laugh.
“You little angel!” he cried. “I've never seen you do that before!”
“I've just learned,” said Bess, still laughing.
They had a good deal more to say. They took a very long time in getting a very simple supper; but nobody tried to hurry them. Nobody seemed at all impatient. Indeed, when Bess came in with a tray, they all smiled at her in a new sort of way, as if they, too, had been somehow touched by her gay young laughter.
Nothing could have been more festive than that supper of coffee and corned beef, eaten under a ceiling that still dripped, in a room with a broken windowpane stuffed with rags, and heaps of charred débris from upstairs piled in the corners. The wind howled outside, but nobody cared.
The professor rose to his feet.
“This,” he said, “is Christmas Day; and in some respects I may say that it is a—for me, personally—a merry one. I should like to take this occasion to say—Mr. Tom Tench, sir, your cousin, Miss Smith, has—er—shown me an example of—of—” He hesitated for a moment. “Mr. Tench, sir!” he said. “Your hand!”
Tom Tench sprang up and took the proffered hand in a vigorous clasp.
“Gayle!” he said. “Gayle! I—I think I'll run down and take a look at that furnace!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1955, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 68 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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