'It may be someone calling upon me,' said Louise to the servant.
'Let me know the name before you show anyone in.'
'Of course, miss,' replied the domestic, with pert familiarity, and
took her time in arranging the shade of the lamp. When she returned
from the door it was to announce, smilingly, that Mr. Cobb wished to
see Miss Derrick.
'Please to show him in.'
Louise stood in an attitude of joyous excitement, her eyes
sparkling. But at the first glance she perceived that her lover's
mood was by no means correspondingly gay. Cobb stalked forward and
kept a stern gaze upon her, but said nothing.
'Well? You got my letter, I suppose?'
'What letter?'
He had not been home since breakfast-time, so Louise's appeal to him
for advice lay waiting his arrival. Impatiently, she described the
course of events. As soon as she had finished, Cobb threw his hat
aside and addressed her harshly.
'I want to know what you mean by writing to your sister that you are
going to marry Bowling. I saw your mother this morning, and that's
what she told me. It must have been only a day or two ago that you
said that. Just explain, if you please. I'm about sick of this kind
of thing, and I'll have the truth out of you.'
His anger had never taken such a form as this; for the first time
Louise did in truth feel afraid of him. She shrank away, her heart
throbbed, and her tongue refused its office.
'Say what you mean by it!' Cobb repeated, in a voice that was all
the more alarming because he kept it low.
'Did you write that to your sister?'
'Yes--but I never meant it--it was just to make her angry--'
'You expect me to believe that? And, if it's true, doesn't it make
you out a nice sort of girl? But I don't believe it You've been
thinking of him in that way all along; and you've been writing to
him, or meeting him, since you came here. What sort of behaviour do
you call this?'
Louise was recovering self-possession; the irritability of her own
temper began to support her courage.
'What if I have? I'd never given _you_ any promise till last night,
had I? I was free to marry anyone I liked, wasn't I? What do _you_
mean by coming here and going on like this? I've told you the truth
about that letter, and I've always told you the truth about
everything. If you don't like it, say so and go.'
Cobb was impressed by the energy of her defence. He looked her
straight in the eyes, and paused a moment; then spoke less
violently.
'You haven't told me the _whole_ truth. I want to know when you saw
Bowling last.'
'I haven't seen him since I left home.'
'When did you write to him last?'
'The same day I wrote to Cissy. And I shall answer no more
questions.'
'Of course not. But that's quite enough. You've been playing a
double game; if you haven't told lies, you've acted them. What sort
of a wife would you make? How could I ever believe a word you said?
I shall have no more to do with you.'
He turned away, and, in the violence of the movement, knocked over a
little toy chair, one of those perfectly useless, and no less ugly,
impediments which stand about the floor of a well-furnished
drawing-room. Too angry to stoop and set the object on its legs
again, he strode towards the door. Louise followed him.
'You are going?' she asked, in a struggling voice.
Cobb paid no attention, and all but reached the door. She laid a
hand upon him.
'You are going?'
The touch and the voice checked him. Again he turned abruptly and
seized the hand that rested upon his arm.
'Why are you stopping me? What do you want with me? I'm to help you
out of the fix you've got into, is that it? I'm to find you a
lodging, and take no end of trouble, and then in a week's time get a
letter to say that you want nothing more to do with me.'
Louise was pale with anger and fear, and as many other emotions as
her little heart and brain could well hold. She did not look her
best--far from it but the man saw something in her eyes which threw
a fresh spell upon him. Still grasping her one hand, he caught her
by the other arm, held her as far off as he could, and glared
passionately as he spoke.
'What do you want?'
'You know--I've told you the truth--'
His grasp hurt her; she tried to release herself, and moved
backwards. For a moment Cobb left her free; she moved backward
again, her eyes drawing him on. She felt her power, and could not be
content with thus much exercise of it.
'You may go if you like. But you understand, if you do--'
Cobb, inflamed with desire and jealousy, made an effort to recapture
her. Louise sprang away from him; but immediately behind her lay the
foolish little chair which he had kicked over, and just beyond
_that_ stood the scarcely less foolish little table which supported
the heavy lamp, with its bowl of coloured glass and its spreading
yellow shade. She tottered back, fell with all her weight against
the table, and brought the lamp crashing to the floor. A shriek of
terror from Louise, from her lover a shout of alarm, blended with
the sound of breaking glass. In an instant a great flame shot up
half way to the ceiling. The lamp-shade was ablaze; the
much-embroidered screen, Mrs. Mumford's wedding present, forthwith
caught fire from a burning tongue that ran along the carpet; and
Louise's dress, well sprinkled with paraffin, aided the
conflagration. Cobb, of course, saw only the danger to the girl. He
seized the woollen hearthrug and tried to wrap it about her; but
with screams of pain and frantic struggles, Louise did her best to
thwart his purpose.
The window was open, and now a servant, rushing in to see what the
uproar meant, gave the blaze every benefit of draught.
'Bring water!' roared Cobb, who had just succeeded in extinguishing
Louise's dress, and was carrying her, still despite her struggles,
out of the room. 'Here, one of you take Miss Derrick to the next
house. Bring water, you!'
All three servants were scampering and screeching about the hall.
Cobb caught hold of one of them and all but twisted her arm out of
its socket. At his fierce command, the woman supported Louise into
the garden, and thence, after a minute or two of faintness on the
sufferer's part, led her to the gate of the neighbouring house. The
people who lived there chanced to be taking the air on their front
lawn. Without delay, Louise was conveyed beneath the roof, and her
host, a man of energy, sped towards the fire to be of what
assistance he could.
The lamp-shade, the screen, the little table and the diminutive
chair blazed gallantly, and with such a volleying of poisonous fumes
that Cobb could scarce hold his ground to do battle. Louise out of
the way, he at once became cool and resourceful. Before a flame
could reach the window he had rent down the flimsy curtains and
flung them outside. Bellowing for the water which was so long in
coming, he used the hearthrug to some purpose on the outskirts of
the bonfire, but had to keep falling back for fresh air. Then
appeared a pail and a can, which he emptied effectively, and next
moment sounded the voice of the gentleman from next door.
'Have you a garden hose? Set it on to the tap, and bring it in
here.'
The hose was brought into play, and in no great time the last flame
had flickered out amid a deluge. When all danger was at an end, one
of the servants, the nurse-girl, uttered a sudden shriek; it merely
signified that she had now thought for the first time of the little
child asleep upstairs. Aided by the housemaid, she rushed to the
nursery, snatched her charge from bed, and carried the unhappy
youngster into the breezes of the night, where he screamed at the
top of his gamut.
Cobb, when he no longer feared that the house would be burnt down,
hurried to inquire after Louise. She lay on a couch, wrapped in a
dressing-gown; for the side and one sleeve of her dress had been
burnt away. Her moaning never ceased; there was a fire-mark on the
lower part of her face, and she stared with eyes of terror and
anguish at whoever approached her. Already a doctor had been sent
for, and Cobb, reporting that all was safe at 'Runnymede,' wished to
remove her at once to her own bed room, and the strangers were eager
to assist.
'What will the Mumfords say?' Louise asked of a sudden, trying to
raise herself.
'Leave all that to me,' Cobb replied reassuringly. 'I'll make it all
right; don't trouble yourself.'
The nervous shock had made her powerless; they carried her in a
chair back to 'Runnymede,' and upstairs to her bedroom. Scarcely was
this done when Mr. and Mrs. Mumford, after a leisurely walk from the
station, approached their garden gate. The sight of a little crowd
of people in the quiet road, the smell of burning, loud voices of
excited servants, caused them to run forward in alarm. Emmeline,
frenzied by the certainty that her own house was on fire, began to
cry aloud for her child, and Mumford rushed like a madman through
the garden.
'It's all right,' said a man who stood in the doorway. 'You Mr.
Mumford? It's all right. There's been a fire, but we've got it out.'
Emmeline learnt at the same moment that her child had suffered no
harm, but she would not pause until she saw the little one and held
him in her embrace. Meanwhile, Cobb and Mumford talked in the
devastated drawing-room, which was illumined with candles.
'It's a bad job, Mr. Mumford. My name is Cobb: I daresay you've
heard of me. I came to see Miss Derrick, and I was clumsy enough to
knock the lamp over.'
'Knock the lamp over! How could you do that? Were you drunk?'
'No, but you may well ask the question. I stumbled over something--a
little chair, I think--and fell against the table with the lamp on
it.'
'Where's Miss Derrick?'
'Upstairs. She got rather badly burnt, I'm afraid. We've sent for a
doctor.'
'And here I am,' spoke a voice behind them. 'Sorry to see this, Mr.
Mumford.'
The two went upstairs together, and on the first landing encountered
Emmeline, sobbing and wailing hysterically with the child in her
arms. Her husband spoke soothingly.
'Don't, don't, Emmy. Here's Dr. Billings come to see Miss Derrick.
She's the only one that has been hurt. Go down, there's a good girl,
and send somebody to help in Miss Derrick's room; you can't be any
use yourself just now.'
'But how did it happen? Oh, _how_ did it happen?'
'I'll come and tell you all about it. Better put the boy to bed
again, hadn't you?'
When she had recovered her senses Emmeline took this advice, and,
leaving the nurse by the child's cot, went down to survey the ruin
of her property. It was a sorry sight. Where she had left a
reception-room such as any suburban lady in moderate circumstances
might be proud of; she now beheld a mere mass of unrecognisable
furniture, heaped on what had once been a carpet, amid dripping
walls and under a grimed ceiling.
'Oh! Oh!' She all but sank before the horror of the spectacle. Then,
in a voice of fierce conviction, 'She did it! _She_ did it! It was
because I told her to leave. I _know_ she did it on purpose!'
Mumford closed the door of the room, shutting out Cobb and the cook
and the housemaid. He repeated the story Cobb had told him, and
quietly urged the improbability of his wife's explanation. Miss
Derrick, he pointed out, was lying prostrate from severe burns; the
fire must have been accidental, but the accident, to be sure, was
extraordinary enough. Thereupon Mrs. Mumford's wrath turned against
Cobb. What business had such a man--a low-class savage--in _her_
drawing-room? He must have come knowing that she and her husband
were away for the evening.
'You can question him, if you like,' said Mumford. 'He's out there.'
Emmeline opened the door, and at once heard a cry of pain from
upstairs. Mumford, also hearing it, and seeing Cobb's
misery-stricken face by the light of the hall lamp, whispered to his
wife:
'Hadn't you better go up, dear? Dr. Billings may think it strange.'
It was much wiser to urge this consideration than to make a direct
plea for mercy. Emmeline did not care to have it reported that
selfish distress made her indifferent to the sufferings of a friend
staying in her house. But she could not pass Cobb without addressing
him severely.
'So _you_ are the cause of this!'
'I am, Mrs. Mumford, and I can only say that I'll do my best to make
good the damage to your house.'
'Make good I fancy you have strange ideas of the value of the
property destroyed.'
Insolence was no characteristic of Mrs. Mumford. But calamity had
put her beside herself; she spoke, not in her own person, but as a
woman whose carpets, curtains and bric-a-brac have
ignominiously perished.
'I'll make it good,' Cobb repeated humbly, 'however long it takes
me. And don't be angry with that poor girl, Mrs. Mumford. It wasn't
her fault, not in any way. She didn't know I was coming; she hadn't
asked me to come. I'm entirely to blame.'
'You mean to say you knocked over the table by accident?'
'I did indeed. And I wish I'd been burnt myself instead of her.'
He had suffered, by the way, no inconsiderable scorching, to which
his hands would testify for many a week; but of this he was still
hardly aware. Emmeline, with a glance of uttermost scorn, left him,
and ascended to the room where the doctor was busy. Free to behave
as he thought fit, Mumford beckoned Cobb to follow him into the
front garden, where they conversed with masculine calm.
'I shall put up at Sutton for the night,' said Cobb, 'and perhaps
you'll let me call the first thing in the morning to ask how she
gets on.'
'Of course. We'll see the doctor when he comes down. But I wish I
could understand how you managed to throw the lamp down.'
'The truth is,' Cobb replied, 'we were quarrelling. I'd heard
something about her that made me wild, and I came and behaved like a
fool. I feel just now as if I could go and cut my throat, that's the
fact. If anything happens to her, I believe I shall. I might as
well, in any case; she'll never look at me again.'
'Oh, don't take such a dark view of it.'
The doctor came out, on his way to fetch certain requirements, and
the two men walked with him to his house in the next road. They
learned that Louise was not dangerously injured; her recovery would
be merely a matter of time and care. Cobb gave a description of the
fire, and his hearers marvelled that the results were no worse.
'You must have some burns too?' said the doctor, whose curiosity was
piqued by everything he saw and heard of the strange occurrence. 'I
thought so; those hands must be attended to.'
Meanwhile, Emmeline sat by the bedside and listened to the
hysterical lamentation in which Louise gave her own--the
true--account of the catastrophe. It was all her fault, and upon her
let all the blame fall. She would humble herself to Mr. Higgins and
get him to pay for the furniture destroyed. If Mrs. Mumford would
but forgive her! And so on, as her poor body agonised, and the blood
grew feverish in her veins.