Highland Fling (18 page)

‘How beautiful he is,’ she thought as she shook him by the shoulder.

‘Wake up, darling, quick! The house is on fire. We’ve no time even to dress; so come with me now to the hall.’

Albert stretched and got out of bed. He was wide awake and perfectly calm.

‘Go back to your room,’ he said, ‘and throw your clothes out of the window, or you’ll have nothing to go home in. I’ll do the same and come along for you when I’ve finished.’

‘What a brilliant idea!’

Jane flew back to her room and in a very short time had thrown all her possessions on to the gravel outside. Presently
Albert came running down the passage and they went, hand in hand, to join the others in the hall.

‘Here they are! That’s everybody, then.’

Mr Buggins was cool and collected; it seemed perfectly natural that he, and not General Murgatroyd, should be taking charge of everything.

‘Now,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘This part of the house is quite safe for the present, so as we are all here I think we might begin to save what we can.

‘I must beg you all not to go upstairs again. The wing in which your bedrooms are situated is in a very dangerous position and will be the next to go. The dining-room must also, of course, be left to its fate, but we can safely collect things from the drawing-room, billiard- and smoking-rooms. I telephoned some time ago for the fire brigade, but I’m afraid it will be at least an hour before they can possibly arrive. When they come they will naturally decide for themselves where they can go; we
must
be on the safe side. The servants are all engaged with a chain of buckets in trying to prevent the garages and outhouses from catching, in which I think they may succeed. It would be useless for amateurs to attempt saving the house, the fire has much too firm a hold.’

The party dispersed into the various sitting-rooms leading out of the hall and began to work with a will.

Albert, at great personal danger, put a damp handkerchief over his mouth and dashed into the dining-room which was dense with smoke. Cutting them out of their frames with some difficulty he managed to save the portraits by Winterhalter of Selina, Lady Craigdalloch and her husband, the fourth Earl.

(The present Lady Craigdalloch was never able to forgive him this when she heard about it afterwards. It became her pet grievance.

‘The dining-room,’ she would say, ‘was full of beautiful
Raeburns, and what must the young idiot do but risk his life to save the two ugliest pictures in the house. It drives me mad.’)

As he ran out of the castle to bestow the Winterhalters in a place of safety, Albert was amused to observe General Murgatroyd carrying with great care an enormous coloured print which had hung in a place of honour over the smoking-room mantelpiece. It was entitled ‘The Grandest View in Europe,’ thus leading one to expect a view of Mont Blanc, the Doge’s Palace, Chartres Cathedral or some such popular beauty-spot, instead of which it depicted the back of a horse’s head as it would appear to the rider, with two large grey ears sticking up in the immediate foreground. Beyond the ears could be seen a stone wall which was being negotiated with success by two horses and with no success at all by a third. Hounds running across an adjacent field gave the clue to the whole thing; a hunt was evidently in progress. ‘The Grandest View in Europe’ having been reverently deposited among the rapidly growing collection of objects on the lawn, its saviour trotted back to the house, bent upon rescuing the head of a moose which hung in the hall.

Admiral Wenceslaus now staggered forth with a load of miscellaneous objects, including a chronometer, a model of the
Victory
in silver, a book entitled
The Triumph of Unarmed Forces
, which he had been trying for some time to lend to various members of the party, and several whisky bottles. Mr Buggins followed him with Prince Charlie’s boot, several old family miniatures and a lock of Bothwell’s hair.

Sally, looking rather green, sat tucked up on a sofa and watched these proceedings with some amusement. Albert stopped for a moment to ask her how she felt.

‘Oh, quite all right, longing to help, but Walter made me promise I’d stay here.’

‘D’you know how the fire started?’

‘No; Haddock, the butler, says he has no idea at all. He
discovered it, you know. The smoke was pouring in at his window and he says he only got some of the maids out just in time.’

When Albert went back to the house he noticed that flames were already beginning to envelop his own bedroom. Meeting Jane in the hall he kissed her hurriedly and said, ‘Take care of yourself, my precious, won’t you?’ She was carrying the Jacob’s Ladder.

He then saved his portrait of Sally and several albums containing water-colours from the billiard-room. Lady Prague was busy showing two men how to take the billiard-table to pieces. They had been managing far better before she came along.

Albert and Jane made many journeys and succeeded in saving all the plush chairs, bead stools, straw boxes, wax flowers, shell photograph-frames and other nineteenth-century objects which they had collected together from various parts of the house.

(When Lady Craigdalloch, far away in Africa, had recovered from the first shock of hearing that Dalloch Castle was razed to the ground, she said that, at any rate, all the Victorian rubbish there would now have vanished for ever and that this was a slight consolation. Her horror and amazement when, on her return, she was confronted by every scrap of that ‘Victorian rubbish’ which had always been such a thorn in her flesh, knew no bounds.)

At last all the furniture that it was possible to move reposed on the lawn in safety, and there was nothing left to do but sit ‘like Lady Airlie in the ballad,’ as Mr Buggins remarked, and watch the house burn down.

A ghastly early morning light illuminated the faces of Lord Craigdalloch’s unfortunate guests as they sat surrounded by the salvage from his home, which looked like nothing so much as the remains of an auction sale before the buyers have removed their purchases.

Albert and Jane looked round with some amusement at the different varieties of bedroom attire displayed upon other members of the party. Sally looked lovely in crêpe de Chine pyjamas, over which she wore a tweed coat lined with fur. Lady Prague was also wrapped in a tweed coat over a linen nightdress and a Shetland wool cardigan. She wore goloshes over her bedroom slippers. Lord Prague, who had collapsed into an armchair, was shivering in a Jaeger dressing-gown which had a sort of cape elaborately trimmed with pale blue braid, and the general stood near him in khaki pyjamas and a manly overcoat. The admiral wore a mackintosh. His bare, white and skinny legs sticking out from beneath it bore witness to the fact that Admiral Wenceslaus was a devotee of the old-fashioned, but convenient, nightshirt.

Albert went to the other side of the castle and picked up the clothes which he and Jane had thrown out of their bedroom windows. Jane and Sally, on seeing them, gave high cries of delight, and retiring behind an adjacent wardrobe they began to dress. Walter and Albert did likewise, and Albert was also able to lend a jumper and a pair of grey flannel trousers to Mr Buggins. Everybody else secretly wished that they had had sufficient forethought to throw some clothes out of the windows; the morning air was distinctly chilly.

‘I’ve still two pairs of trousers left,’ said Albert, holding in one hand the orange tartan ones he had worn upon the moor, and
in the other his bright blue pair. ‘Won’t somebody wear them? General, can I tempt you? Lady Prague, come now! No?’

‘Will you lend them to me, young man?’

‘Admiral – but, of course, how very kind of you, and how lucky that I have the
matelot
ones. You will feel quite at home in them. Here is a real fisherman’s jersey, too, why, you’ll be thinking you are back on the dear old flagship – with “Yo! ho! ho! and a bottle of rum.” ’

The admiral, who seemed rather overwhelmed by the foregoing events, retired behind a zebra-skin screen to put on the trousers. He stayed there for some time, and when he finally emerged, carried his eye in his hand. Creeping up behind Lady Prague, he suddenly thrust it into her face, yelling out:

‘Peep-uck-bo!’

Lady Prague uttered a piercing scream and ran away as fast as the clinging draperies of her nightdress would allow until, tripping up over her goloshes, she fell heavily on the gravel and grazed her knees rather badly. General Murgatroyd and Mr Buggins assisted her to a chair. After this she became more acid than ever.

Meanwhile the admiral again withdrew behind his screen, where he was found much later by Mr Buggins and Sally, fast asleep on the ground.

‘Poor old boy,’ said Sally kindly, ‘it’s been too much for him.’

‘Humph! I think I can guess what has been too much for him.’ And Mr Buggins produced from under the cast-off nightshirt three empty whisky bottles. ‘Might as well leave him there,’ he said. ‘Got a head like a horse; he’ll be all right soon.’

The whole castle was now enveloped in flames, which rose to almost double its height – a terrifying spectacle. Even more alarming was the noise, a deafening roar like the sound of huge waterfalls, broken every now and then by the crash of falling
masonry. Birds and bats, fascinated by the glare, were to be seen flying to their doom; and two huge beech trees which stood near the house were completely blackened.

The little party on the lawn sat in a dazed silence, overawed by the sight of this catastrophe.

When the firemen arrived they were far too late to save anything but some outhouses. Not to be deprived of their fun, however, they were soon playing the hose indiscriminately upon the huge flames, the beech trees and the general, who unobserved had strolled up towards the house in order to have a better view. Dripping wet and speechless with rage he rushed back to the others, and was obliged to swallow his pride and borrow Albert’s tartan trousers and orange sweater. The sight of him thus attired was too much for Sally and Walter, who became perfectly hysterical with laughter which they were unable to control, and finally they had to go for a long walk in order to regain their composure.

‘I wonder what the effect of all this will be on Morris-Minerva?’ said Sally.

‘Are you feeling all right, my own?’

‘Yes, quite now, thank you, darling. Will the poor angel have red hair and a fiery nature as the result of it?’

When they got back to the others they found that quite a little crowd was collected on the lawn, constantly augmented by people from neighbouring villages, who straggled by twos and threes up the drive.

Those members of the house-party who were not clothed were beginning to feel rather self-conscious. The sightseers all followed the same procedure. They stood for some time gazing at the fire, saying: ‘Hoots!’ – ‘Wisha!’ – ‘Mon it’s gran’!’ and other unintelligible phrases of the kind, after which they had a good look at the survivors, coming up quite close and breathing heavily. They then inspected the
Lares
and
Penates
on the lawn, piece by piece, admiring or criticizing. Having taken their time
and seen everything of interest, they sat about the place in little scattered groups and ate.

‘Oh! I’m so hungry,’ said Sally, breaking a long silence.

The others agreed miserably. Although it was in fact only seven o’clock they all felt as though it must at least be luncheon time. It never occurred to any of them to wonder what the next step would be, but they felt instinctively that they must now see the thing through and wait there until the last beam had fallen.

Sally asked the butler, who was busy counting silver, whether any food had been saved, but he replied that both kitchen and larder had been in flames by the time that he had discovered the fire. Lord Craigdalloch’s factor came and spoke to Sally. He was in his shirt-sleeves, having been hard at work nearly from the beginning.

‘Good morning, Mrs Monteath. This is a very sad business, is it not? His lordship will be most terribly upset, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh! it’s too dreadful. Of course, one can hardly realize yet what it means, one is only so thankful that nobody was hurt. Is the house properly insured?’

‘It is insured, but I doubt whether the policy will anything like cover the loss. And then, you see, for sentimental reasons it is such a terrible tragedy. We hoped at first to be able to save Lady Muscatel’s tower, but we were too late. I think, if I may say so, that you all did wonders in rescuing so much furniture. I have sent to the home farm for wagons, it must be put in safety as soon as may be. I don’t like the looks of all these people: I’m sure they would think nothing of removing a few souvenirs here and there.’

Soon after half-past eight the house was a blackened ruin and the fire practically over. Walter and Mr Buggins were just discussing what they should do next, when a large old-fashioned Daimler drove up, and a middle-aged man in a very long kilt got out of it. Mr Buggins greeted him warmly and introduced him as Sir Ronald McFea.

‘Should McFea show the knee?’ whispered Albert to Jane. ‘You see, he doesn’t show it at all. Isn’t it too fascinating?’

‘This is a fearful thing,’ said Sir Ronald. ‘A fearful thing. My gillie came in just now and said Dalloch Castle had been burnt to the ground, he said. I couldn’t believe it – couldn’t believe it. Well, there it is. Poor old Craig. It will be a most terrible blow for him when he hears it; shouldn’t wonder if it kills him – shouldn’t wonder at all. He worshipped the place, every stick and stone of it. Poor old boy.

‘Now, my wife says you must all come over to Castle Fea and have some breakfast. She says you must be simply starving so she’s getting it ready.

‘Dear, dear! it must have been a near thing, too, for hardly any of you to have saved your clothes even – and the general in fancy dress. Never mind, we shall be able to fix you up all right, I don’t wonder. Hadn’t you better come along now?’