A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.
It is sad, in these days of strong-minded girls with nerves of iron, to
have to relate of poor Chris Abercarne that she fainted. No sooner had
she convinced herself that it was really the body of another man that
the living man in the garden below was carrying across his shoulder
than her hands relaxed their hold of the window-sill, and she fell in a
heap on the ottoman.
When she opened her eyes again she knew nothing but that she felt very
cold, so that for the first moment she supposed that she was in bed,
and that the bed-clothes had slid off on to the floor. Raising herself,
and looking about her, she soon remembered what had happened, and with
a cry got on to her feet. So stiff and benumbed was she, that she
staggered on her way back to her own and her mother’s room, and fumbled
with the handle.
While she was thus occupied, another occurrence, almost as startling as
the previous one, attracted her attention. There was a flash of light
at the other end of the corridor, and by it Chris saw, with perfect
distinctness, Mr. Bradfield coming out of the door of the east wing.
Before Chris had had time to make out where the light came from, Mr.
Bradfield reclosed the door softly, and he and the light disappeared at
the same time.
Chris felt as if she was losing her wits. Hastily rousing her mother
from sleep, she told her all that had happened in such an hysterical
fashion, with such wild eyes, and such a pale face, that at first Mrs.
Abercarne was disposed to think that the girl had been dreaming. Chris
herself seemed to incline to the same opinion. Nevertheless, she begged
her mother just to come into the corridor with her for one moment.
“Perhaps,” went on Chris, her teeth chattering with the cold, “perhaps
you’ll see something or hear something to show you that it was really
true. But, oh! how I hope you won’t.”
Mrs. Abercarne drew on her dressing-gown, and mother and daughter went
out into the corridor together. They had scarcely done so before they
began to cough and to choke, as a volume of blinding smoke came rushing
towards them from the east end of the house.
“Fire! fire! The house is on fire!” cried Mrs. Abercarne.
And as she rushed along the corridor, she ran against Mr. Bradfield as
he came out of his room.
“What--what do you say?” cried he, as if in amazement and alarm.
But Chris noticed that he had had time to dress; and as a multitude
of ghastly suspicions forced themselves into her mind, she burst out,
passionately:
“Dick! What have you done to Dick?”
Mr. Bradfield did not turn to look at her, nor did he answer; but she
saw him shiver.
By this time the whole household had taken the alarm. The servants came
running from above and from below, among the latter being Stelfox,
whom Chris detained for a moment as soon as he reached the top of the
stairs.
“Mr. Richard! Mr. Richard!” she cried, in tones of agony. “Save him,
save him--_if he is there_!”
As she uttered these words, prompted thereto by a sudden suspicion
that it was Stelfox himself whom she had seen carrying the lifeless
body, and that the body was that of the unhappy Dick, she saw a look
exchanged between the man-servant and Mr. Bradfield, who had come up to
hear what she was saying. Chris put her hands up to her head, covered
her eyes and shrank back with a great sob. The horror of the situation,
and the fears of her heart, were too much for her. She let her mother
lead her to a seat, where she sat shivering and weeping silently
during the tumult which followed. But unnerved and disorganised as
she was, Chris had sense enough left to notice that Stelfox did not
rush forward and attempt to force an entrance into the burning wing.
He tried the handle of the door indeed, but finding it locked, he did
not even produce his own key. He turned instead towards his master,
and looked at him for a moment steadfastly before suggesting that the
fire-extinguishers, which were kept ready in cupboards all over the
house, should be brought and used at once.
Mr. Bradfield at once gave an order to that effect, and as in the
meantime the stablemen had been at work on the outside with ladders
and with apparatus which was kept in the stable-yard for the purpose,
before very long the fire was got under, and it was possible to enter
the rooms of the east wing.
In the meanwhile Mr. Richard had not been forgotten. The outer door
leading to his apartments had been burst open; but the rush of black,
blinding smoke which followed, made it absolutely impossible to
penetrate further than the passage within. The stablemen, who tried
from outside to rescue the unfortunate man, fared no better. By the
time they had forced the windows the rooms were all alight and they
found it impossible to enter.
Exclamations of pity and distress on account of the unlucky young
fellow passed from lip to lip among the women of the household, whose
sobs and cries added to the tumult. The one woman whom a mixed assembly
generally produces who is the equal of any man, was duly forthcoming
in the person of a young housemaid, who, at the risk of her life,
penetrated as far as Mr. Richard’s sleeping apartment, which was by
that time all in flames. She was rescued herself just in time, being
dragged out in an insensible condition. But as soon as she revived, she
declared that she had been in time to discover that Mr. Richard was not
in the bed at all. This statement, which she made in presence of most
of the household, was little regarded except by Chris, on whose ears
this piece of intelligence fell with sinister import. She fell back
again into her mother’s arms, her eyes closed, in a state bordering
on insensibility. It having been by this time ascertained that the
fire would not spread beyond the wing in which it had originated, Mr.
Bradfield had leisure to think of the girl. He drew near to where she
sat leaning against her mother’s shoulder, and asked if she was better.
But at the first sound of his voice, Chris started up, her eyes wide
open, her face lined with horror.
“I shall never be better, never,” she said, tremulously, “until I am
out of this dreadful house.”
And she would not look at him, she would not listen to him; but
nestling against her mother like a pert and frightened child, she
turned her head away with a shudder.
“Don’t speak to her now,” said Mrs. Abercarne, anxiously. “I am afraid
the poor child is going to be ill.”
She led her daughter back to her room, but, even as they went along the
corridor, there came to their ears a rumour, a cry which had passed
from one to the other of the servants until it reached them.
Mr. Richard could not be found; this was the burden of the cry. Chris
stopped short.
“No,” she said, in a low voice, staring in front of her. “He was
murdered first, and the place was set on fire as a blind.”
And then she laughed hysterically, so that her mother began to tremble
for her sanity.
When the morning came, Chris was too ill to get up, and a doctor was
sent for, who ordered her to remain in bed, and keep very quiet. Before
night she had become worse, and on hearing that she had been suffering
from worry and shock, the doctor gave it as his opinion that she was
suffering from brain fever. It was either that or typhoid, although at
the present stage he could not definitely pronounce which it was.
In the meantime rumour was busy, and it said, starting from the
gossip among the servants of the household, that the fire had not
been an accident. The place was not insured, so there was no official
investigation into its origin. But gossip spoke of the smell of
paraffin, and the story was soon current that Mr. Richard had conceived
a hopeless passion for Miss Abercarne, that he had set fire to the
place in order to effect his escape, and that he had then committed
suicide by throwing himself into the sea.
Chris knew nothing of all this. She lay for many days unconscious,
hanging at one time between life and death. Mr. Bradfield’s despair at
any apparent change for the worse in her condition was quite as great
as that of her own mother. His haggard face, his anxious eyes, the
change from brusque abruptness to an almost timorous vacillation in his
manner, excited the comment of the entire neighbourhood. Some put the
change in him down to anxiety as to the fate of his ward, of whom no
inquiries could find a trace; some to his despair on the young lady’s
account. When Chris began to get better, her mother’s anxieties about
the girl were as deep as ever. For the melancholy in the girl’s eyes
was touching in the extreme; a shadow seemed to have been cast upon her
whole nature. Her frivolity had gone, but it seemed to have taken the
freshness of her youth with it. Mrs. Abercarne longed for, at the same
time that she dreaded, an explanation.
It came one day when Chris had been carried, for the first time, into
the Chinese-room, and laid upon the sofa. Mrs. Abercarne was watching
her daughter anxiously, when Chris said:
“Mother, has anything been found out--about the fire?”
Mrs. Abercarne flushed slightly; she had heard a good many rumours, but
had shut her ears as much as possible.
“Found out!” she echoed, as if surprised by the question. “Why, no, of
course not.”
“I mean--doesn’t anybody think it strange?”
“That there should be a fire? No. It is always dangerous to use lamps.
And Mr. Richard, poor young man, was evidently not to be trusted with
one.”
Chris moved impatiently. But she only asked:
“Do they think he was burnt alive, then?”
Mrs. Abercarne hesitated. She wished with all her heart, poor dear
lady, that she could honestly say “yes.” But truth (and the certainty
that she would be found out if she told a falsehood) prevailed.
“It is impossible to say,” she answered, shortly. “But--but I believe
they did not succeed in finding any traces of the body.”
“Ah!” said Chris, as if this had been just what she expected.
She asked no more questions, but sat for a long time looking
thoughtfully out at the sea. At last her mother ventured to say:
“Mr. Bradfield wants to know, my darling, what flowers you would like
best for him to send you. He is very anxious for the time to come when
he may see you, though he does not wish to intrude too soon.”
Mrs. Abercarne had thought it wiser not to look at her daughter while
she said this, so she did not see the cloud which darkened on the
girl’s face at the mention of the name.
When Chris next spoke, however, there was a difference in her tone.
“Mother, I want to speak to Stelfox.”
Mrs. Abercarne flushed again, and frowned slightly with perplexity.
She wished her daughter would not make such awkward requests. After a
moment’s hesitation she asked:
“Why, my dear? What have you got to say to him? I am quite sure,” she
went on, hurriedly, “that the doctor would not allow you to see anybody
just yet.”
Chris turned slowly and looked at her mother.
“Has he been sent away?” she asked abruptly.
“Well, my dear, I don’t know whether he has been sent away for good or
not, but he is certainly away at present.”
The girl’s face fell again, and her mother in vain tried to rouse her
from the depression into which she had sunk.
The hopelessness which had fallen upon the girl like a pall retarded
her convalescence. She took no interest in anything; the only way in
which her mother could rouse any emotion in her was by an allusion to
Mr. Bradfield; and then the feeling shown by the girl was one of the
utmost abhorrence.
Poor Mrs. Abercarne, therefore, soon began to find herself in a very
awkward position between her employer on the one hand, eagerly anxious
to see the girl, or even to minister to her pleasure, unseen, in any
way that might be suggested; and her daughter on the other, who had
conceived such a strong aversion for the man that she would not even
look at the books and papers her mother brought her, because she knew
that they were supplied by him. Her dislike, indeed, to the very sound
of his name was becoming almost a mania, so that Mrs. Abercarne feared
she would have to leave Wyngham on account of it.
It need scarcely be said that Mrs. Abercarne, who had been completely
won by John Bradfield’s passion for her daughter, not only acquitted
him of the crime her daughter chose to suggest in the matter of the
fire, but looked upon the disappearance of the lunatic, either by
suicide or by misadventure, as a very fortunate circumstance.