A GLARE IN THE SKY
The Society for the Maintenance of the Public Decency has a record of
long and distinguished usefulness, but never in its annals has it been
moved to a more determined activity than during the week which followed
this ill-starred run. The Ruling Dames or Past Grand Mistresses--I
don't quite know what their true official title is--of this august body
met and conferred and drank tea continually. Those who were conversant
with the Society's methods made dire prophecy of a public action of an
unparalleled rigour. But beyond the fact that Mrs. Arbuthnot's
china-blue eyes had an inscrutable glint, and that Mrs. Catesby's
Minerva-like front was as lofty and menacing as became the daughter of
Jove, nothing happened during this critical period which really aspires
to the dignity of history.
Three times within that fateful space the noble Master led forth his
hounds; three times was it whispered confidently in my ear by my little
friend Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins with a piquant suggestion in her accent
of her old Kentucky home, which sometimes overtakes her very charmingly
in moments of acute emotion, "that if the tenderfoot from the rotunda
hit the trail, Reg would take the fox-dogs home"[1]; three times did
the lady in the scarlet coat do her best to override the fox-dogs in
question; three times, as the veracious historian is fain to confess,
nothing happened whatever. It is true that more than once the noble
Master looked at the offender "as no gentleman ought to look at a
lady." More than once he cursed her by all his gods, but never within
her hearing. Rumour had it that he also told Fitz that if he didn't
look after his wife he should give the order for the kennels.
Unfortunately, Miss Laura Glendinning was the sole authority for this
melodramatic statement.
However, on the evening of the seventh day the stars in their courses
said their word in the matter. Doubtless the behaviour of the astral
bodies was the outcome of a formally expressed wish of the Society; at
least it is well known that certain of its members carry weight in
heaven. Whether Mrs. Catesby and the Vicar's Wife headed a deputation
to Jupiter I am not in a position to affirm. Be that as it may, on the
evening of the seventh day fate issued a decree against "the circus
rider from Vienna" and all her household.
Let this fell occurrence be recorded with detail. Myself and
co-partner in life's felicities had had a tolerable if somewhat
fatiguing day with the Crackanthorpe Hounds. We had assisted at the
destruction of a couple of fur-coated members of society who had done
us no harm whatever; and having exchanged the soaked, muddy and
generally uncomfortable habiliments of the chase for the garb of peace,
had fared _tête-à-tête_--Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther
regaling his friends at the Hall with the light of his countenance and
his post-prandial skill at snooker--with sumptuous decency upon baked
meats and the good red wine.
We were in the most harmonious stage of all that this chequered
existence has to offer; taking our ease in our inn while our nether
limbs, whose stiffness was a not unpleasing reminiscence of the
strenuous day we had spent in the saddle, toasted luxuriously before a
good sea-coal fire; smoking the pipe of peace together, although this
is by way of being a figure of speech, since Mrs. Arbuthnot affected a
mild Turkish cigarette; comparing notes of our joint adventures by
flood and field, with the natural and inevitable De Vere
Vane-Anstruther note of condescension quite agreeably mitigated by one
tiny liqueur glass of the 1820 brandy--a magic potion which ere now has
caused the Magnificent Youth himself to abate a few feathers of his
plumage. We were conducting an exhaustive inquiry into the respective
merits of Pixie and Daydream, and I had been led with a charm that was
irresistible into a concurrence with the sharer of my bliss that both
were worth every penny of the price that had been paid for them,
although I had not so much as thrown a leg over either of these
quadrupeds of most distinguished ancestry.
"It is rather a lot to pay, but you can't call them dear, can you,
because they _do_ fetch such prices nowadays, don't they? And Laura is
perfectly green with envy."
"I'm glad of that," said I, with undefeated optimism. "If her
greenness approximates to the right shade it will match the Hunt
collar. How green is she?"
"Funny old thing!" Mrs. Arbuthnot's beam was of childlike benignity.
"She is not such a bad sort, really. Besides, plain people are always
the nicest, aren't they, poor dears? Yes, Parkins, what is it?"
Parkins the peerless had entered the drawing-room after a discreet
preliminary knock for which the circumstances really made no demand
whatever. He had sidled up to his mistress, and in his mien natural
reserve and a desire to dispense information were finely mingled.
"Beg pardon, ma'am, but have you seen the glare in the sky?"
"What sort of a glare, Parkins?" A lazy voice emerged from the seventh
heaven of the hedonist. "Do you mean it's a what-do-you-call-it? A
_planet_ I suppose you mean, Parkins?"
"It can hardly be a _comet_, ma'am," said Parkins, with his most
encyclopaedic air. "It is so bright and so fixed, and it seems to be
getting larger."
"So long as it isn't the end of the world," said Mrs. Arbuthnot,
fondling her gold cigarette-case with a little sigh.
"It looks to me like the Castle, ma'am. It is over in that direction.
I remember when the west wing was burnt twelve years ago."
"You think the Castle is on fire?" said I.
I also was in the seventh heaven of the hedonist. But gathering my
faculties as resolutely as I could, I rose from the good sea-coal fire
and assisted Parkins to pull aside the curtains.
"By Jove, you're right. There is a blaze somewhere, But isn't it
rather near for the Castle?"
"It might be the Grange," said Parkins.
I was fain to agree that the Grange it might be. Somehow that seemed a
place excellently laid for disaster. The announcement that the Grange
was on fire brought Mrs. Arbuthnot to the window. Born under Mars, the
star of my destiny is nothing if not a woman of action. In spite of
her present rather lymphatic state she ordered the car round
immediately. Within five minutes we were braving a dark and stormy
December night.
The beacon growing ever brighter as we went, it did not take long to
convince us that the Grange would be our destination. It is to be
feared that we broke the law, for in something considerably under half
an hour we had come to the home of the Fitzwarens.
A heartrending scene it was. The beautiful but always rather desolate
old house, which dates from John o' Gaunt, seemed already doomed. A
portion of it was even now in ruins and on all sides the flames were
leaping up fiercely to the sky. Engines had not yet had time to come
from Middleham, and the progress of the fire was appalling.
A number of servants and villagers had devoted themselves to the task
of retrieving the furniture. On a lawn at some distance from the house
an incongruous collection of articles had been laid out: a picture by
Rubens side by side with a trouser-press; a piece of Sèvres cheek by
jowl with a kitchen saucepan. Standing in their midst in the charge of
a nurse was the small elf of four. Her eyes were sparkling and she was
dancing and clapping her hands in delight at the spectacle. The nurse
was in tears.
Mrs. Arbuthnot had not seen the creature before. But her instincts are
swift and they are sure.
"Come with me," she said to the nurse. "Saunders will take you in the
car to Dympsfield House. They will make up a bed for you in the day
nursery and see that you get some warm food."
Hardly had the little girl suffered herself to be led away by the
prospect of a new adventure before two men came towards the spot where
I stood. They were grimy and dishevelled, and the upper part of their
persons seemed to be enveloped in folds of wet blanket. They were
staggering under a very large and unwieldy burden which was swathed in
a material similar to that which they wore themselves.
With much care this object was deposited upon a Sheraton table, and
then I found myself greeted by a familiar voice.
"Hullo, Arbuthnot! Didn't expect to see you here. Very good of you to
come."
It was the voice of Fitz speaking with the almost uncanny _insouciance_
of the wonderful night at Portland Place. He cast off the curious
wrappings which encumbered his head, and said to his companion, who was
in similar guise, "I'm afraid it has us beat. The sooner we get out of
this kit the better."
There came an incoherent growl out of the folds of wet blanket.
"Why, Coverdale!" I said in astonishment.
"I think we ought to make a sporting dash for that Holbein," said the
growl, becoming coherent. "That is, if you are quite sure it isn't a
forgery."
"Personally I think it is," said Fitz, in his voice of unnatural calm.
"But my father always believed it to be genuine."
"Better take the word of your father. Let us get at it."
It was the work of a moment to strip the wrappings off the retrieved
masterpiece upon the Sheraton table.
"Can I help?" said I.
"If you want to be of use," said Fitz, "go and give the Missus a hand
with the horses."
Leaving Fitz and Coverdale to make yet another entry into what seemed
hardly less than a furnace of living fire, I made my way round to the
stables. To approach them one had to be careful. The heat was
intense; sparks and burning fragments were being flung a considerable
distance by the gusts of wind, and masonry was crashing continually.
The out-buildings had not yet caught, but with the wind in its present
quarter it would only be the work of a few moments before they did so.
My recollection is of plunging, rearing and frightened animals, and of
a commanding, all-pervading presence in their midst. Amid the throng
of stable-hands, villagers, firemen and policemen who had now come upon
the scene, it rose supreme, directing their energies and sustaining
them with that imperious magnetism which she possessed beyond any
creature I have ever seen. I heard it said afterwards that she alone
had the power to induce the twelve horses to quit their loose boxes;
that one by one she led them out, soothing and caressing them; and that
so long as she was with them they showed comparatively little fear of
the roaring furnace that was so near to them, but that no sooner were
they handed over to others than they became unmanageable.
Certainly it was due to a consummate exhibition of her power that the
horses were got out of their stalls without harm to themselves or to
others. They were confided to the care of the friendly farmers of the
neighbourhood, who, assembled in force, were working heroically to
combat the flames. All night long the work of salvage went on, but in
spite of all that could be done, even with the aid of numerous
fire-engines from Middleham, nothing could save the old house. It
burnt like tinder. By three o'clock that December morning it was a
smouldering ruin, with only a few fragments of stone wall remaining.
At intervals during the night some of the Grange servants had been
dispatched to Dympsfield House, with as many of the personal belongings
of their master and mistress as they could collect. Our establishment
is a modest one, but not for a moment did it occur to Mrs. Arbuthnot
that it would be unable to offer sanctuary to those who needed it so
sorely.
The fire had run its course and all were resigned to the inevitable
when Mrs. Arbuthnot, without deigning to consult the nominal head of
our household, made the offer of our hospitality to Fitz and his wife.
At her own request she had previously forgone an introduction to "the
circus rider from Vienna"; and now in these tragic December small hours
she deemed such a formality to be unnecessary. Verily misfortune makes
strange bedfellows!
If I must tell the truth, it surprised me to learn that the Fitzwarens
had been prevailed upon to accept the hospitality of Dymspfield House.
True, they were homeless; but, looking at the case impartially, it
seemed to me that they had not been very generously treated by their
neighbours. The foibles of "the circus rider from Vienna" had aroused
a measure of covert hostility to which the most obtuse people could not
have been insensible. Had the average ordinary married couple been in
the case of Fitz and his wife, I do not think they would have yielded
to Mrs. Arbuthnot's impulsive generosity.
The Fitzwarens, however, were far from being ordinary average people.
Therefore, by a quarter to five that morning they had crossed our
threshold; and as some recompense for the privations of that tragic
night they were promptly regaled with a scratch meal of coffee and
sandwiches.
One other individual, at his own suggestion, accompanied our guests to
Dympsfield House. He was of a sinister omen, being no less a person
than the Chief Constable of the county. His presence at the fire had
been a matter for surprise. And when, as we were about to quit the
unhappy scene, he came to me privately and said that if we could
squeeze a corner for him in the car he should be glad to come with us,
that surprise was not made less.
[1] In the opinion of Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins this passage fully
guarantees the author's total ignorance of a very great proposition.