"What is it?" I asked.
"Please, ma'am, I've seen the red-haired girl again, and I did as you
recommended. I went at her rattling the pill-box, and she turned and ran
downstairs. Did you see her, ma'am, as you came up?"
"How inexplicable!" I said. I would not admit to Jane that I had seen
the apparition.
The situation remained unaltered for a week. The mystery was unsolved.
No fresh light had been thrown on it. I did not again see or hear
anything out of the way; nor did my husband, I presume, for he made no
further remarks relative to the extra servant who had caused him so much
annoyance. I presume he supposed that I had summarily dismissed her.
This I conjectured from a smugness assumed by his face, such as it
always acquired when he had carried a point against me--which was not
often.
However, one evening, abruptly, we had a new sensation. My husband,
Bessie, and I were at dinner, and we were partaking of the soup, Jane
standing by, waiting to change our plates and to remove the tureen, when
we dropped our spoons, alarmed by fearful screams issuing from the
kitchen. By the way, characteristically, my husband finished his soup
before he laid down the spoon and said--
"Good gracious! What is that?"
Bessie, Jane, and I were by this time at the door, and we rushed
together to the kitchen stairs, and one after the other ran down them. I
was the first to enter, and I saw cook wrapped in flames, and a paraffin
lamp on the floor broken, and the blazing oil flowing over it.
I had sufficient presence of mind to catch up the cocoanut matting which
was not impregnated with the oil, and to throw it round cook, wrap her
tightly in it, and force her down on the floor where not overflowed by
the oil. I held her thus, and Bessie succoured me. Jane was too
frightened to do other than scream. The cries of the burnt woman were
terrible. Presently my husband appeared.
"Dear me! Bless me! Good gracious!" he said.
"You go away and fetch a doctor," I called to him; "you can be of no
possible service here--you only get in our way."
"But the dinner?"
"Bother the dinner! Run for a surgeon."
In a little while we had removed the poor woman to her room, she
shrieking the whole way upstairs; and, when there, we laid her on the
bed, and kept her folded in the cocoanut matting till a medical man
arrived, in spite of her struggles to be free. My husband, on this
occasion, acted with commendable promptness; but whether because he was
impatient for the completion of his meal, or whether his sluggish nature
was for once touched with human sympathy, it is not for me to say.
All I know is that, so soon as the surgeon was there, I dismissed Jane
with "There, go and get your master the rest of his dinner, and leave us
with cook."
The poor creature was frightfully burnt. She was attended to devotedly
by Bessie and myself, till a nurse was obtained from the hospital. For
hours she was as one mad with terror as much as with pain.
Next day she was quieter and sent for me. I hastened to her, and she
begged the nurse to leave the room. I took a chair and seated myself by
her bedside, and expressed my profound commiseration, and told her that
I should like to know how the accident had taken place.
"Ma'am, it was the red-haired girl did it."
"The red-haired girl!"
"Yes, ma'am. I took a lamp to look how the fish was getting on, and all
at once I saw her rush straight at me, and I--I backed, thinking she
would knock me down, and the lamp fell over and smashed, and my clothes
caught, and----"
"Oh, cook! you should not have taken the lamp."
"It's done. And she would never leave me alone till she had burnt or
scalded me. You needn't be afraid--she don't haunt the house. It is _me_
she has haunted, because of what I did to her."
"Then you know her?"
"She was in service with me, as kitchenmaid, at my last place, near
Cambridge. I took a sort of hate against her, she was such a slattern
and so inquisitive. She peeped into my letters, and turned out my box
and drawers, she was ever prying; and when I spoke to her, she was that
saucy! I reg'lar hated her. And one day she was kneeling by the stove,
and I was there, too, and I suppose the devil possessed me, for I upset
the boiler as was on the hot-plate right upon her, just as she looked
up, and it poured over her face and bosom, and arms, and scalded her
that dreadful, she died. And since then she has haunted me. But she'll
do so no more. She won't trouble you further. She has done for me, as
she has always minded to do, since I scalded her to death."
The unhappy woman did not recover.
"Dear me! no hope?" said my husband, when informed that the surgeon
despaired of her. "And good cooks are so scarce. By the way, that
red-haired girl?"
"Gone--gone for ever," I said.