Mrs. Ogilvie's ball, according to an old-established custom, followed
closely on the race. The proximity of the two events had helped to
gain for the quiet countryside the reputation of a gay neighbourhood.
Country houses were filled with visitors, and the ballroom and the
famous picture-gallery at Bowshott received an even larger number of
guests than usual. There was something impressive in the great space
and width of the ballroom, with its polished floor. The palm-houses
had been emptied to form an avenue of green up the middle of the
picture-gallery, at whose extreme end an altarpiece, representing a
scene from the Book of Revelation, showed a company of the heavenly
host as a background to a buffet-table crowded with refreshments. The
constant movements and the brilliant lights provided a fitting air of
gaiety to the scene. It was Mrs. Ogilvie's whim to have her rooms
illuminated in a manner as nearly as possible to represent the effect
of tempered sunlight. 'No woman cares to see,' she used to say, 'she
wants to be seen.' And so the lights at Bowshott were always arranged
in such a way that the beauty of women should be enhanced by them.
Plain faces softened under the warm glow which had no hard shadows in
it, and beautiful faces were lighted up in a manner that was almost
extravagantly becoming.
'It is only on such an occasion as this,' said Miss Abingdon, 'that one
really seems to think that Bowshott is put to its proper use.'
She was talking to a young man who called old furniture delicious and
Spanish brocade sweetly pretty. 'The modern Englishman,' said Mr.
Lawrence, 'was made to live in barracks or in a stable. Probably he is
only in his right place when he is on a horse. Could any one but he
live at Bowshott and dress in shabby shooting clothes, and smoke
cigarettes in a room where Charles I. made love, and wear hobnailed
boots to go up and down a grand staircase?'
Miss Abingdon sat on a convenient large couch, where a chaperon might
close her eyes for a moment towards the end of a long evening without
being accused of drowsiness. She was the recipient of many wise nods
and hints and questions.
'How well they look together!' said a lady, as Peter Ogilvie and Jane
came down the line of palms, and she left a blank at the end of her
speech, to be filled in, if possible, by Miss Abingdon.
'Jane makes Peter look rather short,' said another.
'She should have chosen some one taller.'
'I suppose it really will be settled some day,' said Mr. Lawrence.
'They went for a ride this morning,' said Miss Abingdon dryly, 'and
they were positively disappointed because Sir Nigel Christopherson
could not go with them. I do not profess to understand love-affairs of
the present day.'
Mr. Lawrence was a portly, red-faced young man, with a high-pitched
voice. He throve on scandal, and gossiped like a housekeeper. Miss
Abingdon liked and thoroughly approved him; his views were sound, his
opinions orthodox, and he always took her in to supper at any dance
where they met.
Mr. Lawrence's manner towards elderly ladies was a mixture of deference
and familiarity which never failed to give satisfaction; he could even
discuss Miss Abingdon's relatives with her without offence, and he gave
advice on domestic matters. People in want of a cook or of a good
housemaid generally wrote to Mr. Lawrence to ask if he knew of any one
suitable for the post, and he recommended houses and health-resorts,
and knew to a fraction what every one's income was. He was a useful
member of society in a neighbourhood like that of Culversham, and was
considered an interesting caller. It was his ambition to be first with
every piece of intelligence, and he enjoyed telling news, even of a
harassing description. Mr. Lawrence believed that Miss Abingdon's
niece was already engaged to Peter Ogilvie, and he began by a series of
deft questions to try to abstract the definite information that he
required from her.
'Young people nowadays,' said Miss Abingdon, ascribing a riper age to
Mr. Lawrence than he altogether approved--'young people nowadays think
that everything that concerns themselves is what they call their own
business. They talk as though they lived in some desert cave instead
of in the midst of the world. I am on thorns sometimes when the
servants are in the room; after all, a man may be only a footman, and
yet is not necessarily a deaf-mute.'
Peter and Jane, meanwhile, had strolled into the picture-gallery, with
its softly shaded lights and long vistas of flowering plants and palms.
There was about them to-night something which seemed to set them apart.
Few persons cared to disturb them, even by a greeting, as they sat side
by side in the corridor or walked together down the long gallery. Jane
Erskine had put off that air, which suited her so admirably, of seeming
to be always under an open sky; she had left it behind with her short
skirt and the motor-cap which she loved to pull down over her eyes.
This evening in shimmering white satin, and with a string of pearls
round her throat, she looked what she was--a very beautiful and very
distinguished young woman. The tempered light of the room seemed to
deepen the colour in her cheeks and to bring out the bright tints of
her hair; her lips parted in a smile, and her eyes had radiance in them.
She and Peter mingled with the throng of dancers again, and then, not
waiting until the music had finished, they left the ballroom by the
farther door where Mrs. Ogilvie was standing.
Peter stopped when he saw her, and looked at her a little anxiously.
'You should not be standing, should you?' he said, in his kindly way;
'you look tired.'
Mrs. Ogilvie gave one of her enigmatic smiles. 'Who would not be
tired?' she said. 'Was there ever such an extraordinary way of amusing
oneself as to stand in a draughty doorway in the middle of the night,
shaking hands with some hundreds of people whom one doesn't want to
see!'
She sat down on a sofa and watched the two figures as they passed down
the long corridor. The mechanical smile of welcome with which she had
greeted half the county this evening had not died away from her face;
she sat upright on the satin-covered sofa. There was about her an air
of strength, of eminence almost, which seemed to place her genuine
ugliness above criticism. Her dress was of some heavy purple stuff
which few women would have had the courage to wear, and the diamonds in
her hair, with their sharp points of radiating light, accentuated
something that was magnificent and almost defiant about Mrs. Ogilvie
to-night. Her short-sighted eyes contracted in their usual fashion as
she watched the couple disappear down the vista of the corridor. 'If
only it could be soon! If only their marriage could be soon!' she
murmured to herself, her lips moving in an inward cry that in another
woman might have been a prayer.
'How do you think she is looking?' said Peter, as, without conscious
intention, he and Jane drifted away from the dancers into a more
distant part of the house. 'Surely she gets tired too easily? I wish
she would see a doctor; but she hates being fussed over, and one can
never persuade her to take care of herself.'
'What is one to do with so wilful a woman?' said Jane.
They paused and looked at the dim crowd of dancers through one of the
entrances to the ballroom, and passed down the corridor where misty
figures sat on sofas and chairs enjoying the cool. Every one looked to
them misty and far away to-night, almost as though they had not
sufficiently materialized to be perfectly distinct.
With definite intention Peter led his partner towards a little room,
hung with miniatures and plaques, at the farther end of the long
corridor. Here they found Nigel Christopherson in conversation with
Miss Sherard. Kitty was talking as lightly as usual, deliberately
misunderstanding everything that was said to her, and being as
provoking as she ever was; and Toffy was so much in earnest that he did
not see Peter and Jane, but continued to talk to the girl beside him.
So the two intruders never entered the room at all; but, as they
pursued their way still farther, Peter was thinking about Mrs. Avory,
and wishing to goodness that Toffy had never met her.
The big house seemed too full of people for his taste to-night. Every
room and corridor was occupied, and Peter said, 'Let's go to my
mother's sitting-room. Do you mind, Jane? We can get cool on the
bridge.'
Bowshott is a very old house, so old that, if it had not been for
archaeologists, who came there sometimes and read the grey stones as
though they had been printed paper, no one would ever have known when
the earliest part of it was built. Antiquaries agreed that it dated
from Norman days; but the only portion of the building of that period
which was standing now was a tower at the eastward end of the house.
It had been almost in ruins at one time, but Colonel Ogilvie's father
had restored it, and, with a considerable amount of skill, had
connected it with the more modern part of the house by a stone bridge
on a single arch. The whole thing was excellently contrived; the
archway lent a frame to one of the most beautiful parts of the garden;
and the tower, which was entered by a strong oak door from the bridge,
now contained three curious, romantic-looking rooms, with quaint,
uneven walls six feet thick, deep, narrow windows, and heavy oak
ceilings. The largest of the rooms to which admittance was gained by
the oak door was Mrs. Ogilvie's sitting-room. She had a curious love
of being alone for hours at a time, and she enjoyed the sense of
isolation which was afforded her by being cut off from the rest of the
building by the stone bridge on its high arch. Here she would spend
whole days by herself, reading or writing. Above this room, which was
full of her own particular possessions, was a smaller apartment
containing a valuable library of philosophical works. Here were
muniment-chests, and the large writing-table where she wrote all the
business letters relating to the estate; and here it was that she was
wont to see her steward and her agent from time to time. No one but
Mrs. Ogilvie and her son ever entered the room without some special
reason, and it was too far away from the rest of the house for casual
visitors to intrude themselves. The short passage, within the more
modern house, which led to the bridge was reached by a door hung with a
leather curtain securely arranged to prevent draughts, and no one ever
lifted this curtain except those who had a right to the rooms beyond.
To-night, however, the house was open to all comers, and it afforded no
surprise to Captain Ogilvie and his companion, when they had quitted
the corridor and the reception-rooms, and had left the guests and
servants behind them, to find a man's figure before them in the short
passage leading to the leather-covered door.
'Who 's that, do you know?' said Peter, when they had passed under the
curtain and were crossing the bridge.
'I have no idea,' said Jane; 'some stranger, I suppose, whom some one
has brought.'
'They don't seem to be looking after him very well,' said Peter,
'leaving him to prowl about alone and get lost in a great barrack like
this. I don't suppose I ought to have asked him if he wanted partners,
or anything of that sort? Some one is sure to look after him.'
'Oh, sure to!' said Jane, and they passed over the bridge together and
went into Mrs. Ogilvie's morning-room.
Having arrived there and secured two comfortable chairs, the power of
speech seemed suddenly to have deserted two persons whose conversation
was never brilliant, but who at least were seldom at a loss for
anything to say. It appeared as though Peter Ogilvie had brought Miss
Erskine to this distant room for no other purpose than to say to her,
in an absent-minded way, 'Is every one enjoying themselves, do you
think?'
'I think every one is quite happy,' said Jane, and added, with
characteristic frankness, 'I know I am!'
Peter gave her a quick glance, turning his eyes full upon her for a
moment as though to read something in the face beside him; then he
began with absorbed attention to twist the silk string of his ball
programme round and round his finger. The room where they sat was
singularly unlike those rose-shaded bowers which are considered
suitable to the needs of dancers who pause and rest in them. Its
austere furnishing had something almost solemn and mysterious about it;
and the stone walls hung with tapestry, on which quaint figures moved
restlessly with the draught from an open window, would have given an
eerie feeling to a man, for instance, sitting alone there at twelve
o'clock at night. But in the gloom and austerity of the still and
distant chamber sat Jane in white satin with pearls about her neck, and
the room was illumined by her.
'So you are enjoying yourself,' said Peter at last--Peter who never
made fatuous conversational remarks of this sort. The words, for no
reason in themselves, fell oddly, and were followed by a silence which
was disturbing and made for sudden self-consciousness wholly to be
condemned, and to be banished, if possible, directly. Jane, who did
not fidget aimlessly with things, began diligently to pluck a long
white feather out of her fan, and said in a voice that was deliberately
commonplace, 'We ought to go back now, oughtn't we? Let me see who
your next partner is, Peter, that I may send you back to dance with
her.' She stretched out her hand for the young man's programme.
But Peter sat absorbed, twisting its silk cord round his finger.
'Don't let's go yet,' he said, and the constrained silence fell between
them again. 'I want to ask you something, Jane.'
'Yes,' said Jane. Her hands lay idle now in her lap, and she no longer
tried to extract the white ostrich feather from her fan.
'I want to know if you think you can care for me a little?'
Probably when a man feels most deeply his utterances are the most
commonplace, and an Englishman is proverbially incapable of expressing
his feelings. In the supreme moments of their lives, it is true, a few
men, and those not always the most sincere, may speak eloquently; but
for the most part a proposal of marriage from an Englishman is--as it
should be--a clumsy thing. Peter Ogilvie could only speak in such
limited language as he always used. Yet the world seemed to stand
still for him just then, for he knew that everything in his heaven or
upon earth depended on what Jane's answer would be.
'Don't let me bother you,' he said at last, 'or rush you into giving an
answer now if you would rather wait.'
Perhaps a declaration of love from an old comrade is the most dear as
well as the most embarrassing of all such avowals. A heart which has
already given itself in loyalty and affection to another finds that it
is not a deepening of this loyalty and affection that is asked, but a
complete re-ordering of things. The lover's petition, therefore,
either comes to the woman as a revelation, betraying to her in a flash
that she has loved always, and has merely been calling the thing by
another name, or else it finds her impatient at the disturbance of an
old comradeship, a cherished friendship, which nothing but this
foolish, exacting thing called love could ever shake.
Peter was not versed in introspective questions or hair-splittings; he
loved with his whole heart, and he had tried to say so without very
much success. Just then he would have given anything he possessed to
be endowed with a little more eloquence, though deep down in his heart
he had a lingering hope that perhaps Jane would understand. 'It's neck
or nothing,' he was saying to himself, in the homely jargon in which he
usually formed his thoughts. 'God knows I may have been a fool to
speak.'
'Peter,' began Jane shyly. And Peter ceased twisting the silk cord of
the programme round his finger, and they turned and looked at each
other.
'Is it true?' he said at last, with a queer kind of wonder in his voice.
'Let us go into the garden,' he said. His instincts remained
primitive, and just then this room was too narrow for all he felt, and
it seemed to him that the large things of the night and the distant
glory of the stars were the only environment that he could bear.
Passers-by, had they been mean enough to pause and listen outside the
sheltering yew-hedge near which they sat, might have questioned the
poetry of their love-making, and have condemned an avowal of devotion
punctuated by barbarous slang; but the silence that fell between them
was full of tenderness and more easily understood than speech, and
perhaps the moon--an inquisitive person at the best of times--as she
peeped over the grey turrets of the house saw the dawn of a love as
single-hearted and as genuine as many sentiments which have been more
carefully analysed and described.
These were two happy, light-hearted persons, without very much to
recommend them except a certain straightforwardness of vision which
abhorred, as by a natural instinct, circuitous or crooked things, a
transparent honesty, and a simple acceptance of those obligations which
race and good-breeding demand.
At the present moment, out in the garden on the stone seat set in the
embrasure of the high yew-hedge, they were oblivious of everything in
the world except each other and the absorbing discovery of love.
They were the last to hear the cry of 'Fire!' which rang out from the
house, and they were still sitting undisturbed while men ran with hose
and buckets, and a clamour arose in the stable-yard for more water, and
a clatter of horses' hoofs could be heard as a groom galloped off for
the nearest fire-engine. The yew-hedged garden where they sat was
distant a long way from the house, and it was not until a heavy cloud
of smoke rose up against the sky that Peter's attention was attracted,
and he realized that the Norman tower was on fire.
He started up and ran to the place where grooms and helpers, gardeners
and strangers' coachmen, and waiters and guests were standing, with
hose and buckets, pouring a ridiculous little stream of water against
the burning pile. The fire had begun in the roof, and the smoke was
pouring from the narrow windows in the tower. No flames had shot up
yet, and the fire-engine from Sedgwick, prompt and well-served as it
always was, might be here any minute. The oak roof would burn slowly
and the walls were secure, but the tapestry in the lower room was dry
and old, and would fire like a bundle of shavings. An effort was made
by a body of men to force an entrance into the lower room and save what
they could; but they were beaten back by the smoke which came in
volumes down the turret staircase and by the flames which now began to
shoot up here and there against the darkness of the night. There was
nothing for it but to safeguard the main building. The wind was
setting towards it from the tower, and a party of men were up on the
roof treading out burning sparks and playing water where slates were
hottest or ashes might burst into flames.
Mrs. Ogilvie stood on the terrace in her magnificent purple gown, her
red hair with flashing diamonds in it, and her long-handled glasses
held up to her near-sighted eyes.
'So that goes!' she said, shrugging her shoulders. 'Well, it will give
me a good deal of trouble. Or is it fate, I wonder?'
Peter was directing a body of men to play water on the bridge; garden
and stable hoses were turned full upon it by relays of helpers, and
some long ladders were placed against the windows to see if it were
possible in that way to effect an entrance and save some of the
valuables in the room. The guests--women in light ball dresses and
bare shoulders, and men in evening clothes--had surged out on to the
terrace, and were watching with that curious mixture of fascination and
regret which comes to the eyes of those who see destruction going on
and know that they are powerless to prevent it. Every ear was strained
to catch the first sound of the fire-engine on the road from Sedgwick,
and some twenty or thirty couples, more impatient than the rest, had
run to a distant knoll, from whence the road was visible, to peer
through the darkness and to see if anything was coming. The stars
shone serenely overhead, and the moon was turning the water in the
fountains to cascades of silver, while from turret and roof the volumes
of grey smoke belched forth, and the ineffectual fire appliances played
upon the house.
It was just then that what seemed almost like an apparition appeared
upon the bridge. A man, not above medium height, with a cloak hastily
thrown about his head to protect him from the smoke, dashed across the
bridge, was drenched by the fall of water, and entered the turret room.
People asked each other fearfully whose this strange figure could be.
Many, strangely enough, had not seen it; the sudden dash through the
smoke had not occupied a moment of time, and most eyes were directed
towards the roof of the building, while others were turned towards the
Sedgwick road. Those who had seen cast amazed eyes upon each other,
women clutched the persons nearest them, and Jane Erskine, seeking half
wildly for some one in the crowd, found Peter and said to him, 'What is
it? Who went in there just now? Oh, Peter, for a moment I thought it
was you!'
There was a shout of warning, but it was too late for the man, whoever
he was, to turn back. He was inside the tower now, and no shouting
could hold him. Some prayed as they stood there, murmuring half
mechanically, 'Save him! save him!' as instinctively men and women will
pray even when the life for which they plead may carry with it such
sorrow as they never dreamed of.
Suddenly some young men who had climbed to the top of the knoll gave a
shout, and the fire-engine from Sedgwick turned the corner of the road
with a fine dash, for Tom Ellis, a good whip, was driving, and the
white horse on the near side knew as well as any Christian how to save
an inch of the road. The fire-engine, all gleaming with brass fittings
and flaming red paint, clattered to the door, and pulled up with
admirable precision on the spot from which a hose could be played.
Eight men in helmets leaped from their seats and got their gear in
order with the coolness of blue-jackets in a storm. But for its
quietness and its controlled, workmanlike effect, the whole scene had
distinctly a dramatic touch about it. Possibly the firemen would have
shouted louder had they been upon the boards, and fainting women, it is
generally assumed, give a realistic touch to well-staged melodrama. No
doubt the crowd on the terrace at Bowshott would have disappointed an
Adelphi audience. But the old white horse stood to attention like a
soldier on a field day; and Tom Ellis, wiping his brow as though he
himself had run in the shafts all the way from Sedgwick, lent a touch
of stage realism to the scene. Nothing could save the interior of the
tower--that was past praying for; but a shout went up that there was a
man inside, and the firemen threw their ladders against the walls and
prepared their scaling-irons and life-saving apparatus. The smoke
rolled out in dense volumes now, and through the gloom a voice shouted,
'It 's all right! He 's crossed the bridge again!'
'Oh, are you sure? are you sure?' said Jane, her fear almost amounting
to a panic, and it haunted her for long afterwards that perhaps the man
had not actually escaped the fire. For nothing was heard of him again,
and it was only after Peter had ordered a fruitless search to be made
amongst the debris in the tower that she felt satisfied of the
stranger's safety.
A newspaper reporter tried to prove that a gallant attempt had been
made to save some valuables in the tower, and went so far as to head
one of his paragraphs, 'A Gallant Act.' But there was nothing of value
in the tower rooms except the old furniture and books and the tapestry
on the walls, and these had all been destroyed.
The ruined interior of the tower smouldered the whole of the next day;
though the walls still stood, gaunt and grim, windowless and gutted by
the fire. But the building was covered by insurance, and even the loss
of the tapestries seemed more than compensated by the fact that an
absorbing topic of general interest had been provided in a quiet and
uneventful neighbourhood.