the third floor down to the ground, became a kind of pilgrimage which could be undertaken without thought. There were exactly the same number of stairs in each flight, and there were two flights, with a turn, between each floor. She sat down, as a baby will, and shifted her seat from stair to stair, clutching hold of the banisters in the darkness to reassure herself, and so that she did not fall.
When she got to the bottom and found there were no more stairs, she began to whimper. Then she remembered what she had-come for, and, striking matches and dropping them, began to look for her mouse. ( 3 )
Mrs. Bradley had given up her room in the guesthouse to Mr. Maslin, for the guest-house had no double rooms. She herself had received accommodation, as before, in the Orphanage, and had gone to bed at eleven, happy in the belief that her responsibilities for the night were over, and that Mary Maslin and Ulrica Doyle were safe at Hiversand Bay.
It was with a feeling of unaccountable anxiety, therefore, that she woke at about midnight, and sat up in bed. She listened, but there was nothing to be heard. She got out of bed and walked to the window, but there was nothing to be seen. She went back to bed again, lay down and tried to go to sleep. It was useless.
She went to the door, which she had locked, and turned the key. Then she knew what had awakened her. Somewhere, lower down in the house, was a muffled crackling and roaring. Mrs. Bradley took George’s revolver from under her pillow, put on her peacock dressing-gown and a pair of stout shoes which she used when she walked on the moors, and descended the stairs to find out the cause of the noises.
Fire! The gust of hot air struck against her as she reached the first-floor landing. Fire! The whole of the ground floor appeared to be in flames. As she arrived at the top of it, the whole of the last flight of stairs collapsed almost under her feet.
She raced for the children’s dormitories, found Mother Ambrose awake, and told her, quickly but quietly, what had happened. Mother Ambrose got up at once, and—interesting reaction, Mrs. Bradley thought —clothed herself fully and then prayed before she began to make the rounds of the various dormitories and wake the children. Mrs. Bradley left her, and made a systematic tour of the two top floors of the house.
She first roused Miss Bonnet, who immediately pulled over her pyjamas the inevitable pair of trousers, shoved her arms into a blazer, and her feet into brogues. She was as calm as Mother Ambrose had been, Mrs. Bradley noted with relief.
Little Mother Jude knelt and prayed, then put on her habit—perhaps this was part of the rule, Mrs. Bradley thought—and also began to go the round of the beds. Mother Benedict and old Mother Bartholomew, the two nuns who happened to be on duty at the Orphanage that night, placed themselves under the direction of Mother Ambrose.
All this was accomplished with the greatest rapidity and quietness, but, by the time all the children had been roused, the fire had gained ground, and the bottom floor of the house was an inferno. The children were kept in the rooms whilst Mrs. Bradley and Mother Jude went to survey the chances of escape by the staircase. The position, as Mrs. Bradley had known it must be, was hopeless.
“Never mind,” said Mother Ambrose, who had lined up the orphans and put each section in charge of one of the eldest, “there’s a fire escape from the top storey. Let us all go up there.”
So up the stairs they mounted to the Infirmary, and found Sister Bridget, the cause of all the mischief, asleep in her bed. She had run away from the fire, and, by the time she was back in the Infirmary, had forgotten both the danger and her mouse.
They left her asleep for the moment, whilst Miss Bonnet took it upon herself to investigate the chances of escape down the outside ladder.
She opened the Infirmary window, which ended in a broad, perforated iron platform, the top of the fire escape, and lowered herself into the darkness. Suddenly a great tongue of flame leapt out of a window, and in a minute Miss Bonnet came back into view at the top of the ladder.
“No go,” she muttered in Mrs. Bradley’s ear.
“Smoke?”
“Flames, too. The blinking thing’s red hot on the floor below the upper dormitory. I blistered my hands on the metal.
“Tell the others,” said Mrs. Bradley. “The decision, I suppose, must rest with Mother Saint Ambrose.”
“Right. You tell ’em. I’ll stay here with the kids and quell any riot,” Miss Bonnet officiously observed.
Mrs. Bradley drew back from the window to let Miss Bonnet climb in. The girl was trembling, but her voice was steady and her eyes were clear and brave. Mrs. Bradley walked towards the door and gave the nuns a glance to get them to follow. There, away from the children, she told them Miss Bonnet’s opinion.
“I’ll go down myself, just to confirm what she says, but I’m certain she’s right,” she added. So, with a jest as she passed the children, who were all assembled in straight, mute lines behind their leaders, she opened the window and crawled out. The dressing-gown was a nuisance, so she shed it, and pushed it back over the sill. Then she began to climb backwards down the ladder.
The air got hotter and hotter. She could hear the roaring of the fire. Soon she was coughing, her lungs full of acrid smoke. Then the metal became hot to the touch, and she imagined that she could feel the heat through her shoes. She tried to get farther down the ladder, but felt herself being suffocated by the smoke which now was billowing in great thick clouds about her. The heat against the palms of her hands was unbearable, and another tongue of flame shot out of a window, this time above her head, and singed her hair.
As quickly as she could she mounted again, pulled herself over the sill, walked, smoke-grimed, to the door, and went outside on the landing to clear her lungs. She leaned against the stair-head, eyes streaming and throat like a rasp, coughing from effects of the smoke.
The children, by this time, could hear the roaring of the fire, and see the smoke drifting past the window, and had become terrified. Some were crying, others were whimpering pathetically for the mothers who had either died or deserted them. One began to scream, and Mother Ambrose, to prevent a general panic, seized the child quickly, muffled her head in her habit, and almost suffocated her into silence.
“Now all of you children sit down on the beds,” she said calmly, “and Mother Saint Bartholomew will tell you a nice, quiet story whilst we are waiting. Not a long story, please, Mother. We shall not have to stay here very long.”
