Mr. Rusper had been at home reading a number of tracts upon Tariff Reform, during the quiet of his wife"s absence in church, and trying to work out the application of the whole question to ironmongery. He heard a clattering in the street and for a time disregarded it, until a cry of Fire! drew him to the window. He pencilled-marked the tract of Chiozza Money"s that he was reading side by side with one by Mr.
Holt Schooling, made a hasty note "Bal. of Trade say 12,000,000" and went to look out. Instantly he opened the window and ceased to believe the Fiscal Question the most urgent of human affairs.
"Good (kik) Gud!" said Mr. Rusper.
For now the rapidly spreading blaze had forced the part.i.tion into Mr.
Rumbold"s premises, swept across his cellar, clambered his garden wall by means of his well-tarred mushroom shed, and a.s.sailed the engine house. It stayed not to consume, but ran as a thing that seeks a quarry. Polly"s shop and upper parts were already a furnace, and black smoke was coming out of Rumbold"s cellar gratings. The fire in the engine house showed only as a sudden rush of smoke from the back, like something suddenly blown up. The fire brigade, still much under strength, were now hard at work in the front of the latter building; they had got the door open all too late, they had rescued the fire escape and some buckets, and were now lugging out their manual, with the hose already a dripping ma.s.s of molten, flaring, stinking rubber.
Boomer was dancing about and swearing and shouting; this direct attack upon his apparatus outraged his sense of chivalry. The rest of the brigade hovered in a disheartened state about the rescued fire escape, and tried to piece Boomer"s comments into some tangible instructions.
"Hi!" said Rusper from the window. "Kik! What"s up?"
Gambell answered him out of his helmet. "Hose!" he cried. "Hose gone!"
"I (kik) got hose!" cried Rusper.
He had. He had a stock of several thousand feet of garden hose, of various qualities and calibres, and now he felt was the time to use it. In another moment his shop door was open and he was hurling pails, garden syringes, and rolls of garden hose out upon the pavement.
"(Kik)," he cried, "undo it!" to the gathering crowd in the roadway.
They did. Presently a hundred ready hands were unrolling and spreading and tangling up and twisting and hopelessly involving Mr. Rusper"s stock of hose, sustained by an unquenchable a.s.surance that presently it would in some manner contain and convey water, and Mr. Rusper, on his knees, (kiking) violently, became incredibly busy with wire and bra.s.s junctions and all sorts of mysteries.
"Fix it to the (kik) bathroom tap!" said Mr. Rusper.
Next door to the fire station was Mantell and Throbson"s, the little Fishbourne branch of that celebrated firm, and Mr. Boomer, seeking in a teeming mind for a plan of action, had determined to save this building. "Someone telephone to the Port Burdock and Hampstead-on-Sea fire brigades," he cried to the crowd and then to his fellows: "Cut away the woodwork of the fire station!" and so led the way into the blaze with a whirling hatchet that effected wonders in no time in ventilation.
But it was not, after all, such a bad idea of his. Mantell and Throbsons was separated from the fire station in front by a covered gla.s.s pa.s.sage, and at the back the roof of a big outhouse sloped down to the fire station leads. The st.u.r.dy "longsh.o.r.emen, who made up the bulk of the fire brigade, a.s.sailed the gla.s.s roof of the pa.s.sage with extraordinary gusto, and made a smashing of gla.s.s that drowned for a time the rising uproar of the flames.
A number of willing volunteers started off to the new telephone office in obedience to Mr. Boomer"s request, only to be told with cold official politeness by the young lady at the exchange that all that had been done on her own initiative ten minutes ago. She parleyed with these heated enthusiasts for a s.p.a.ce, and then returned to the window.
And indeed the spectacle was well worth looking at. The dusk was falling, and the flames were showing brilliantly at half a dozen points. The Royal Fishbourne Hotel Tap, which adjoined Mr. Polly to the west, was being kept wet by the enthusiastic efforts of a string of volunteers with buckets of water, and above at a bathroom window the little German waiter was busy with the garden hose. But Mr.
Polly"s establishment looked more like a house afire than most houses on fire contrive to look from start to finish. Every window showed eager flickering flames, and flames like serpents" tongues were licking out of three large holes in the roof, which was already beginning to fall in. Behind, larger and abundantly spark-shot gusts of fire rose from the fodder that was now getting alight in the Royal Fishbourne Hotel stables. Next door to Mr. Polly, Mr. Rumbold"s house was disgorging black smoke from the gratings that protected its underground windows, and smoke and occasional shivers of flame were also coming out of its first-floor windows. The fire station was better alight at the back than in front, and its woodwork burnt pretty briskly with peculiar greenish flickerings, and a pungent flavour. In the street an inaggressively disorderly crowd clambered over the rescued fire escape and resisted the attempts of the three local constables to get it away from the danger of Mr. Polly"s tottering facade, a cl.u.s.ter of busy forms danced and shouted and advised on the noisy and smashing attempt to cut off Mantell and Throbson"s from the fire station that was still in ineffectual progress. Further a number of people appeared to be destroying interminable red and grey snakes under the heated direction of Mr. Rusper; it was as if the High Street had a plague of worms, and beyond again the more timid and less active crowded in front of an acc.u.mulation of arrested traffic. Most of the men were in Sabbatical black, and this and the white and starched quality of the women and children in their best clothes gave a note of ceremony to the whole affair.
For a moment the attention of the telephone clerk was held by the activities of Mr. Tashingford, the chemist, who, regardless of everyone else, was rushing across the road hurling fire grenades into the fire station and running back for more, and then her eyes lifted to the slanting outhouse roof that went up to a ridge behind the parapet of Mantell and Throbson"s. An expression of incredulity came into the telephone operator"s eyes and gave place to hard activity.
She flung up the window and screamed out: "Two people on the roof up there! Two people on the roof!"
IV
Her eyes had not deceived her. Two figures which had emerged from the upper staircase window of Mr. Rumbold"s and had got after a perilous paddle in his cistern, on to the fire station, were now slowly but resolutely clambering up the outhouse roof towards the back of the main premises of Messrs. Mantell and Throbson"s. They clambered slowly and one urged and helped the other, slipping and pausing ever and again, amidst a constant trickle of fragments of broken tile.
One was Mr. Polly, with his hair wildly disordered, his face covered with black smudges and streaked with perspiration, and his trouser legs scorched and blackened; the other was an elderly lady, quietly but becomingly dressed in black, with small white frills at her neck and wrists and a Sunday cap of ecru lace enlivened with a black velvet bow. Her hair was brushed back from her wrinkled brow and plastered down tightly, meeting in a small k.n.o.b behind; her wrinkled mouth bore that expression of supreme resolution common with the toothless aged.
She was shaky, not with fear, but with the vibrations natural to her years, and she spoke with the slow quavering firmness of the very aged.
"I don"t mind scrambling," she said with piping inflexibility, "but I can"t jump and I _wunt_ jump."
"Scramble, old lady, then--scramble!" said Mr. Polly, pulling her arm.
"It"s one up and two down on these blessed tiles."
"It"s not what I"m used to," she said.
"Stick to it!" said Mr. Polly, "live and learn," and got to the ridge and grasped at her arm to pull her after him.
"I can"t jump, mind ye," she repeated, pressing her lips together.
"And old ladies like me mustn"t be hurried."
"Well, let"s get as high as possible anyhow!" said Mr. Polly, urging her gently upward. "Shinning up a water-spout in your line? Near as you"ll get to Heaven."
"I _can"t_ jump," she said. "I can do anything but jump."
"Hold on!" said Mr. Polly, "while I give you a boost.
That"s--wonderful."
"So long as it isn"t jumping...."
The old lady grasped the parapet above, and there was a moment of intense struggle.
"Urup!" said Mr. Polly. "Hold on! Gollys! where"s she gone to?..."
Then an ill-mended, wavering, yet very rea.s.suring spring side boot appeared for an instant.
"Thought perhaps there wasn"t any roof there!" he explained, scrambling up over the parapet beside her.
"I"ve never been out on a roof before," said the old lady. "I"m all disconnected. It"s very b.u.mpy. Especially that last bit. Can"t we sit here for a bit and rest? I"m not the girl I useto be."
"You sit here ten minutes," shouted Mr. Polly, "and you"ll pop like a roast chestnut. Don"t understand me? _Roast chestnut!_ Roast chestnut!
POP! There ought to be a limit to deafness. Come on round to the front and see if we can find an attic window. Look at this smoke!"
"Nasty!" said the old lady, her eyes following his gesture, puckering her face into an expression of great distaste.
"Come on!"
"Can"t hear a word you say."
He pulled her arm. "Come on!"
She paused for a moment to relieve herself of a series of entirely unexpected chuckles. "_Sich_ goings on!" she said, "I never did!
Where"s he going now?" and came along behind the parapet to the front of the drapery establishment.
Below, the street was now fully alive to their presence, and encouraged the appearance of their heads by shouts and cheers. A sort of free fight was going on round the fire escape, order represented by Mr. Boomer and the very young policeman, and disorder by some partially intoxicated volunteers with views of their own about the manipulation of the apparatus. Two or three lengths of Mr. Rusper"s garden hose appeared to have twined themselves round the ladder. Mr.
Polly watched the struggle with a certain impatience, and glanced ever and again over his shoulder at the increasing volume of smoke and steam that was pouring up from the burning fire station. He decided to break an attic window and get in, and so try and get down through the shop. He found himself in a little bedroom, and returned to fetch his charge. For some time he could not make her understand his purpose.
"Got to come at once!" he shouted.
"I hain"t "_ad_ _sich_ a time for years!" said the old lady.
"We"ll have to get down through the house!"
"Can"t do no jumpin"," said the old lady. "No!"
She yielded reluctantly to his grasp.