CHAPTER XXIX. 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.