THE FIRE AT RICHMOND.
A more devoted husband was not in all Richmond than William Crawford.
A more trusting and affectionate wife could not be found in all
England than Ellen, his wife, whom in tones of great tenderness he
always called Nellie. To her first husband, old Thomas Crawford, whom
she had married in the zenith of her maiden beauty twenty-five years
ago, when she was twenty-two, she had ever been Ellen. Her name in his
mouth had always seemed cold and stately; at home she had always been
Nellie. But the dignity of marriage, and of marriage with a man forty
years older than herself, had elevated her into Mrs. Crawford among
outsiders and Ellen among her own relatives and in her own house.
Her husband, father and mother, and only brother had been dead some
time before her present husband came to live next door to her at
Singleton Terrace, Richmond. She was a confirmed invalid, and had been
unable to move about freely for four years. She had always been the
gentlest of the good, and rested quite resigned to her fate. She never
repined, never grumbled, never murmured. Except while in the throes of
pain, her face wore a placid look, which changed into a smile when any
one spoke to her or came near her.
Her doctors had told her all along that her case was not beyond hope.
They spoke of it generally as loss of nerve-power. In hundreds of such
affections there had been complete cures, and in thousands partial and
important improvements. They traced her condition to a carriage
accident, in which the horses ran away, and she had been heavily
thrown, shortly after her marriage. The injury then received lay
dormant until developed by the sudden and horrible death of her
husband.
He was past eighty at the time, but hale and hearty. He ate a good
breakfast on the day of his death, and had gone out to look at some
new machinery a friend of his had got in a sawmill.
An hour after leaving his own door he was carried back over the
threshold, a palpitating, bleeding mass, torn and ground and mangled
out of all human shape. His coat had caught in the machinery, and he
had been drawn in among the ruthless wheels and killed. His wife
happened to be looking out of the dining-room window as the bearers
came along the road and up the front garden. Owing to brutal
thoughtlessness, no one had been sent on to break the awful news to
her. She rushed into the hall as the four men bearing the stretcher
entered.
They had placed a cloak over the body. She knew by the face being
covered that all was over.
"Is he dead?" she shrieked, and raised the cloak before any one could
stay her. She saw the mangled horror which an hour ago had been sound
and hearty and--whole.
Without a sound she sank to the floor in a swoon. When she recovered
consciousness she could not stand without aid. The strength of her
lower limbs was gone. A double blow had fallen on that house, and
although people expressed and felt sorrow for the old man, and horror
at his sudden and terrible death, all the tears were for the lovely
soft-mannered wife, who seemed to think less of herself than another
woman of her own shadow.
After the awful death of her husband followed years of lonely
widowhood, in which she was as helpless to get about as a little child
Then came this suave and low-voiced man to lodge next door. He made no
advances to her whatever. To do anything of the kind would have been
revolting. It would have been plain to the most credulous that he
sought her money, and not herself. He was not even a friend. He did
not affect to be on terms of intimacy with her. He comported himself
as an acquaintance who had great interest in her and sympathised much
with her in the unhappy condition of her health.
Later occurred the fire and the rescue. The cause of the fire had
never been ascertained. It arose in the kitchen under Mrs. Crawford's
room, and in the back of the house. Because of her malady, the widow
occupied a room on the first floor, the kitchen being a sunken story.
At that time Mrs. Crawford had a companion--a widow also--who usually
slept in the same room with the invalid, but who on the night of the
fire was absent from the house. The companion went for a day and a
night every month to visit her brother at Rochester. All the other
nights the lady companion had been away the cook passed in her
mistress's room. But at this time a change of the two servants, cook
and housemaid, had just taken place, and both being strangers, Mrs.
Crawford decided to have neither in her room that night; she resolved
to sleep alone. Mrs. Farraday on her way to the station had met the
next-door lodger and told him these facts, expressing a sincere hope
that Mrs. Crawford would pass a comfortable night, and adding that
though the poor lady often found a great difficulty in going to sleep,
once she went off she never woke till morning, and required no help in
the night, but had some one in her room merely for companionship.
All this Mrs. Farraday told the sympathetic next-door lodger, who
joined with her in the expression of a hope--nay, a conviction--that
the invalid would pass a peaceful and untroubled night.
The sympathetic lodger next door was not, of course, then called
William Crawford. He took that name when some months later he married
the widow. He was not known by the name of John Ainsworth either. For
a very simple and sufficient reason he wished to forget John
Ainsworth. Philip Ray had sworn never to forget John Ainsworth, and
had, moreover, sworn to shoot John Ainsworth if ever they met.
John Ainsworth had as many names as a royal prince. He cared very
little for names. He cared a great deal for pretty faces just for a
while; or, rather, he cared for pretty faces always, but liked change.
Better even than pretty faces, he cared for money. The older he grew
the more enamoured he became of money. When a man of spirit cares
greatly for pretty faces, and still more greatly for money, what
matters how people may call him so long as he may gaze on beauty and
rattle guineas in his pocket? One of the most useful qualities of a
pretty face is that you can turn your back upon it when you are tired
of it. One of the most delightful qualities of money is that you can,
if you only know where to seek, always find men willing to gamble with
you.
When John Ainsworth left Beechley suddenly and not alone three years
ago he and the companions of his flight changed trains at Horsham. At
the same time he altered his name. He became of his own free action,
unchallenged by any one, Mr. George Hemphill. When he left the train
and went on board the steamer for New York he described himself and
his party as Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Plunkett and child. When he took
steamer back to England he travelled alone as Mr. Walter Greystones.
Mrs. Crawford's sympathetic next-door lodger was known to her and to
Richmond as Mr. William Goddard.
In Mrs. Crawford's house the only servants, the cook and housemaid,
slept in a front top room.
At about four o'clock in the morning, after Mrs. Farraday's departure
for Rochester, Mrs. Crawford was awakened by an awful sense of
suffocation. The room was full of smoke. She could see this by the
night light. She called out as loudly as she was able, but there were
two doors, three floors, and three pair of stairs between her and the
maids. She rang the little handbell placed at the side of her bed by
Mrs. Farraday before setting out for the train. The voice was very
thin and weak, and the bell no better than a toy. The voice could be
heard no further off than the next room and hall. The sound of the
bell might reach the kitchen and the drawing-room overhead, no
farther.
The smoke in the room increased. It had a thick, oppressive, oily
taste and smell, something like the smell of paraffin. Mrs. Crawford
was not aware of any paraffin being in the house. She had a horror of
paraffin, and none could be in the house with her approval.
She lay in her bed perfectly helpless. It was awful to lie here
awaiting the approach of death, seeing the great clouds of smoke rise
thicker and thicker every minute, and know that soon insensibility
would fall upon her, and then death.
If she could but get to the window and fling herself out, she might be
maimed for the remainder of her days, still she would be almost
certain to escape with life. But she could not move from that bed to
save her life. Her arms were as strong and capable as ever; but her
lower limbs were as much beyond her control as the limbs of the dead.
She had often pictured to herself the horrors of being buried alive.
She had often fancied to herself the soul-distracting awakening in the
tomb, the confined space, the damp cerecloths, the cold planks, the
stifling air, the maddening certainty that above were space and
sunshine and warmth, the songs of birds and the voices of kindly
people going blithely to and fro.
Her own situation was as bad, nay worse. In the tomb there would be no
light to show the sombre robes of death gradually closing down upon
her. There would be no danger of the fierce fiery agony of flame
before all was over. There would be from the first no hope of
deliverance.
Here she was helpless, and could see the smoke growing denser and
denser every moment, the weight upon her chest increasing with every
tumultuous inspiration. Around her head, across her brow, a band of
burning hot metal seemed gradually tightening and bursting in upon her
brain.
She could hear the sound of the flames flapping and beating in muffled
distant riot below, and yet she could not move.
She had read once of a man buried up to the head in the sand of the
seashore for scurvy, powerless to stir, and so left by his companions
while they went away for an hour. Towards this miserable man presently
glides a serpent out of some sedges above high-water mark. That
situation had filled her mind with ineffable horror. Her case now was
still more terrible, for there was no companion who might chance to
return in time. Besides, until the last moment the man in the sand
might hope the serpent would not strike, that the reptile was not
hungry. Here the fire would strike infallibly; flames were always
hungry, voracious, in satiable.
The oppression grew more suffocating. She was lying on her back, and
she felt as though an intolerable mass of lead were crushing in her
chest. The band across her forehead tightened, and she could not
persuade herself that the bone of her skull had not been driven in
upon her beating brain. Her hands seemed as though they were swollen
to ten times their size. She could no longer move her arms with ease.
At length she felt as if the inexorable hand of death had seized her
throat and was squeezing and closing up her windpipe.
She kept her eyes fixed on the light. This was the only thing that
told of life. She could see nothing else.
It was not a light now, but a blue blur upon the darkness. It faded to
a patch of faintly luminous smoke. She closed her eyes for a moment to
clear her sight. The motion of the lids pained her exquisitely, and
made the redhot band across her beating forehead burn more fiercely,
more crushingly than ever into her brain.
With a groan she opened her eyes.
All was dark! The light had gone out, extinguished by the smoke.
She knew that where lights went out life soon followed This light had
illumined dimly the way to the tomb. This bed was her grave.
She summoned all her courage, and drew a long breath. She summoned all
her strength, and uttered one cry:
"Help!"
There was a loud crash, a sound of breaking glass, a rush of fresh
cool air. She fainted.
When she recovered consciousness she was out of the burning house, in
her own garden, and standing by her was William Goddard, who had
rescued her from the burning house.
That was the beginning of close acquaintance between the man and the
widow. She regarded him as one who had delivered her from death, and
all Richmond and all the world who read an account of the fire looked
upon him in the same way. There was no doubt in the mind of any one
that had not this William Goddard crept along the ledge running round
both houses and taken the helpless woman out of the burning house that
night, she would never have seen the dawn of another day.
Before the fire had time to spread beyond the kitchen and Mrs.
Crawford's room, help had arrived, and the maids were roused and taken
to a place of safety.
When Mrs. Farraday came back she received nearly as great a shock as
if she too had been in that threatened room the night before. She
loved the gentle, kindly Mrs. Crawford as she loved no other living
woman. Her first impulse was to fall on her knees and give thanks that
her life had been spared. She kissed and embraced the invalid, and
vowed that not to see all the relatives in the world would she ever
leave her dear friend alone again.
"Every one is too good to me," said Mrs. Crawford, kissing the other
woman, with tears in her eyes; "and, for all we know to the contrary,
the terror of last night may have been designed by Heaven for my good
only."
"Your good only! How could such an awful fright and such awful
suffering have been only for your good? You are not one who needs to
be made pious by terror. You are a saint!"
"Hush! Do not say such a foolish thing, Mrs. Farraday. I am nothing of
the kind. I am only weak clay. But I was not speaking of spiritual
benefits, but of bodily."
"Bodily benefits! Why, I wonder you did not die. If I had gone through
what you suffered last night I do believe I should lose the use of my
reason."
"And, owing to the fright I got last night, I have recovered the use
of my limbs. Look!"
And she rose and walked across the room.
"Merciful Heavens!" cried the other. "This is indeed a miracle!"
The house in which the fire had occurred was Mrs. Crawford's own
property, so she did not leave it, but had the requisite repairs done
while continuing to occupy it. The widow now no longer required a room
on the first floor. She was able to go up and down stairs. She could
not walk so fast or so far as before the day her husband was carried
in dead, but for all the purposes of her household she was as
efficient as ever. The very fact that she was obliged to walk more
slowly than other women added a new gentleness, a new charm to her
graciousness. Her gratitude for deliverance from the fire and the
thraldom of her wearying disease added a fresh softness to her smile
and manner. It seemed as though youth had been restored to her. The
whole world was beautiful to her, because it had been given back to
her after she had made up her mind she should see it no more. All the
people she met were her friends; for had not one of them snatched her
from death, and restored her to the holy brotherhood of mankind?
And what more natural than that among all the brotherhood of mankind
she should look with most favour and gratitude on the man who had
risked his life for hers, and restored her again to intimacies with
the sunshine and the birds and the flowers?
That surely was enough for one man to do for any mortal.
But this man had done more for her. He had performed a miracle,
wrought a charm. Doctors might say it was the shock which had cured
her. All she knew was that when she lay there in the throes of death
she had been helpless, that she had been helpless for years; that he
came and snatched her from the choking deadly vapour, and that when
she awoke to consciousness she was healed.
She had no more thought of love or marriage then than she had of
wearing the Queen of England's crown.
But William Goddard had thoughts of marriage, and although he fancied
he managed very skilfully to hide his designs, they were plain enough
to Mrs. Farraday long before he did more than offer what might pass
for considerate courtesies to Mrs. Crawford.
It was not without pain that Mrs. Crawford found she had no longer any
need of Mrs. Farraday. But the pain was more than compensated for by
the invigorating knowledge that she who had been a helpless invalid
was now able to look after her own house. It is doubtful if she would
ever have been able to suggest the idea of her companion's leaving.
But the other woman began by seeing that she was not wanted, and ended
by feeling that she was in the way. Accordingly, she anticipated what
she perceived to be inevitable, and dismissed herself. She was
sincerely attached to the amiable woman with whom she had lived so
long, and whom no one could know well without loving dearly. But she
felt it would be an injustice for her to tarry longer; and besides,
she had duties of her own to look after in Rochester, for her brother
living there had just lost his wife, and had asked her to come to him
and keep house for him and look after his little children.
"If ever you have any need of me, you know where to send; and although
I suppose I must consider myself as belonging to my brother, I will
come to you for all the time I can. I hope and trust and pray that
your health may never make you want any one in the house such as I
have been. Who knows but you may soon find a more suitable _companion_
than I could ever make."
The other blushed like a girl, and said:
"You are very, very kind, and you must come to see me often. Rochester
is not so far away."
"No, not so far. I will come, you may be sure."
They embraced and kissed and wept; and so these two good women parted
with mutual love and respect.
By this time William Goddard's attentions had become unmistakable.
Mrs. Crawford could not deny that something was going on between
her and her hero, her rescuer, the quiet-mannered, low-voiced,
kind-hearted man who lived next door.
Mrs. Crawford was as simple as a child. She had not married her first
husband for love. She married him because he had asked her and had
treated her with respectful admiration and with a kind of rough
gallantry, and, above all, because her father had told her that if she
did marry Thomas Crawford it would relieve him of dire distress and
put him on the high road to fortune. But, alas! for him, although he
was somewhat relieved by Crawford on his marriage with Ellen, he never
touched fortune. There was nothing like buying the girl on Crawford's
side or compulsion on the father's. The girl was heart-whole and
fancy-free, and would have laid down her life for her father.
She had never, in the romantic sense of the phrase, loved her husband;
but from the day she was married until he died he was the first of all
men in her consideration and esteem. She did her duty by him to the
utmost of her power without having any irksome feeling of duty. He was
a good, kind, indulgent husband--a man who, although hard in business,
was amiable and good-natured at home, and who had aroused her
enthusiastic gratitude, not by what he gave her, but by the services
he had willingly rendered her father.
We read little of such lives in books. No doubt the beauty and
sacredness that inhabit them make writers loth to invade their holy
peace.