VIII.

In the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum for Devon there was one quiet

impassive patient, who was always pointed out to horror-loving visitors,

because he had once been a gentleman, and had a strange romance hanging

to him still, even in that dreary refuge of the destitute insane. The

lady whom he had loved and robbed--all for her own good--had followed

him down from London to Devonshire; and she and her aunt kept a small

school, after some struggling fashion, in the town close by, where many

kind-hearted squires of the neighbourhood sent their little girls, while

they were still very little, for the sake of charity, and for pity of

the sad, sad story. One day a week there was a whole holiday--Wednesday

it was--for that was visiting day at the County Asylum; and then Ethel

Sutherland, dressed in deep mourning, walked round with her aunt to the

gloomy gateway at ten o'clock, and sat as long as she was allowed with

the faded image of Cecil Mitford, holding his listless hand clasped hard

in her pale white fingers, and looking with sad eager anxious eyes for

any gleam of passing recognition in his. Alas, the gleam never came

(perhaps it was better so), Cecil Mitford looked always straight before

him at the blank whitewashed walls, and saw nothing, heard nothing,

thought of nothing, from week's end to week's end.

Ethel had forgiven him all; what will not a loving woman forgive? Nay,

more, had found excuses and palliations for him, which quite glossed

over his crime and his folly. He must have been losing his reason long

before he ever went to Jamaica, she said; for in his right mind he would

never have tried to deceive her or himself in the way he had done. Did

he not fancy he was sent out by the Colonial Office, when he had really

gone without leave or mission? And did he not persuade her to give up

her money to him for investment, and after all never invest it? What

greater proofs of insanity could you have than those? And then that

dreadful fever at Spanish Town, and the shock of losing his kind

entertainer, worn out with nursing him, had quite completed the downfall

of his reason. So Ethel Sutherland, in her pure beautiful woman's soul,

went on believing, as steadfastly as ever, in the faith and the goodness

of that Cecil Mitford that had never been. _His_ ideal had faded out

before the first touch of disillusioning fact; _hers_ persisted still,

in spite of all the rudest assaults that the plainest facts could make

upon it. Thank heaven for that wonderful idealising power of a good

woman, which enables her to walk unsullied through this sordid world,

unknowing and unseeing.

At last one night, one terrible windy night in December, Ethel

Sutherland was wakened from her sleep in the quiet little school-house

by a fearful glare falling fiercely upon her bedroom window. She jumped

up hastily and rushed to the little casement to look out towards the

place whence the glare came. One thought alone rose instinctively in her

white little mind--Could it be at Cecil's Asylum? Oh, horror, yes; the

whole building was in flames, and if Cecil were taken--even poor mad

imbecile Cecil--what, what on earth would then be left her?

Huddling on a few things hastily, anyhow, Ethel rushed out wildly into

the street, and ran with incredible speed where all the crowd of the

town was running together, towards the blazing Asylum. The mob knew her

at once, and recognized her sad claim; they made a little lane down the

surging mass for her to pass through, till she stood beside the very

firemen at the base of the gateway. It was an awful sight--poor mad

wretches raving and imploring at the windows, while the firemen plied

their hose and brought their escapes to bear as best they were able on

one menaced tier after another. But Ethel saw or heard nothing, save in

one third floor window of the right wing, where Cecil Mitford stood, no

longer speechless and imbecile, but calling loudly for help, and

flinging his eager arms wildly about him. The shock had brought him back

his reason, for the moment at least: oh, thank God, thank God, he saw

her, he saw her!

With a sudden wild cry Ethel burst from the firemen who tried to hold

her back, leaped into the burning building and tore up the blazing

stairs, blinded and scorched, but by some miracle not quite suffocated,

till she reached the stone landing on the third story. Turning along the

well-known corridor, now filled with black wreaths of stifling smoke,

she reached at last Cecil's ward, and flung herself madly, wildly into

his circling arms. For a moment they both forgot the awful death that

girt them round on every side, and Cecil, rising one second superior to

himself, cried only "Ethel, Ethel, Ethel, I love you; forgive me!" Ethel

pressed his hand in hers gently, and answered in an agony of joy, "There

is nothing to forgive, Cecil; I can die happy now, now that I have once

more heard you say you love me, you love me."

Hand in hand they turned back towards the blazing staircase, and reached

the window at the end where the firemen were now bringing their

escape-ladder to bear on the third story. The men below beckoned them to

come near and climb out on to the ladder, but just at that moment

something behind seemed incomprehensibly to fascinate and delay Cecil,

so that he would not move a step nearer, though Ethel led him on with

all her might. She looked back to see what could be the reason, and

beheld the floor behind them rent by the flames, and a great gap

spreading downward to the treasurer's room. On the tiled floor a few

dozen pence and shillings and other coins lay, white with heat, among

the glowing rubbish; and the whole mass, glittering like gold in the

fierce glare, seemed some fiery cave filled to the brim with fabulous

wealth. Cecil's eye was riveted upon the yawning gap, and the corners of

his mouth twitched horribly as he gazed with intense interest upon the

red cinders and white hot coin beneath him. Instinctively Ethel felt at

once that all was lost, and that the old mania was once more upon him.

Clasping her arm tight round his waist, while the firemen below shouted

to her to leave him and come down as she valued her life, she made one

desperate effort to drag him by main force to the head of the ladder.

But Cecil, strong man that he was, threw her weak little arm impetuously

away, as he might have thrown a two-year-old baby's, and cried to her in

a voice trembling with excitement, "See, see, Ethel, at last, at last;

there it is, there it is in good earnest. JOHN CANN'S TREASURE!"

Ethel seized his arm imploringly once more. "This way, darling," she

cried, in a voice choked by sobs and half stifled with the smoke. "This

way to the ladder."

But Cecil broke from her fiercely, with a wild light in his big blue

eyes, and shouting aloud, "The treasure, the treasure!" leaped with

awful energy into the very centre of the seething fiery abyss. Ethel

fell, fainting with terror and choked by the flames, on to the burning

floor of the third story. The firemen, watching from below, declared

next day that that crazy madman must have died stifled before he touched

the heap of white hot ruins in the central shell, and the poor lady was

insensible or dead with asphyxia full ten minutes before the flames

swept past the spot where her lifeless body was lying immovable.

_ISALINE AND I._