A GLARE IN THE SKY
The Society for the Maintenance of the Public Decency has a record of long and distinguished usefulness, but never in its annals has it been moved to a more determined activity than during the week which followed this ill-starred run. The Ruling Dames or Past Grand Mistresses—I don't quite know what their true official title is—of this august body met and conferred and drank tea continually. Those who were conversant with the Society's methods made dire prophecy of a public action of an unparalleled rigour. But beyond the fact that Mrs. Arbuthnot's china-blue eyes had an inscrutable glint, and that Mrs. Catesby's Minerva-like front was as lofty and menacing as became the daughter of Jove, nothing happened during this critical period which really aspires to the dignity of history.
Three times within that fateful space the noble Master led forth his hounds; three times was it whispered confidently in my ear by my little friend Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins with a piquant suggestion in her accent of her old Kentucky home, which sometimes overtakes her very charmingly in moments of acute emotion, "that if the tenderfoot from the rotunda hit the trail, Reg would take the fox-dogs home"[[1]]; three times did the lady in the scarlet coat do her best to override the fox-dogs in question; three times, as the veracious historian is fain to confess, nothing happened whatever. It is true that more than once the noble Master looked at the offender "as no gentleman ought to look at a lady." More than once he cursed her by all his gods, but never within her hearing. Rumour had it that he also told Fitz that if he didn't look after his wife he should give the order for the kennels. Unfortunately, Miss Laura Glendinning was the sole authority for this melodramatic statement.
However, on the evening of the seventh day the stars in their courses said their word in the matter. Doubtless the behaviour of the astral bodies was the outcome of a formally expressed wish of the Society; at least it is well known that certain of its members carry weight in heaven. Whether Mrs. Catesby and the Vicar's Wife headed a deputation to Jupiter I am not in a position to affirm. Be that as it may, on the evening of the seventh day fate issued a decree against "the circus rider from Vienna" and all her household.
Let this fell occurrence be recorded with detail. Myself and co-partner in life's felicities had had a tolerable if somewhat fatiguing day with the Crackanthorpe Hounds. We had assisted at the destruction of a couple of fur-coated members of society who had done us no harm whatever; and having exchanged the soaked, muddy and generally uncomfortable habiliments of the chase for the garb of peace, had fared tête-à-tête—Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther regaling his friends at the Hall with the light of his countenance and his post-prandial skill at snooker—with sumptuous decency upon baked meats and the good red wine.
We were in the most harmonious stage of all that this chequered existence has to offer; taking our ease in our inn while our nether limbs, whose stiffness was a not unpleasing reminiscence of the strenuous day we had spent in the saddle, toasted luxuriously before a good sea-coal fire; smoking the pipe of peace together, although this is by way of being a figure of speech, since Mrs. Arbuthnot affected a mild Turkish cigarette; comparing notes of our joint adventures by flood and field, with the natural and inevitable De Vere Vane-Anstruther note of condescension quite agreeably mitigated by one tiny liqueur glass of the 1820 brandy—a magic potion which ere now has caused the Magnificent Youth himself to abate a few feathers of his plumage. We were conducting an exhaustive inquiry into the respective merits of Pixie and Daydream, and I had been led with a charm that was irresistible into a concurrence with the sharer of my bliss that both were worth every penny of the price that had been paid for them, although I had not so much as thrown a leg over either of these quadrupeds of most distinguished ancestry.
"It is rather a lot to pay, but you can't call them dear, can you, because they do fetch such prices nowadays, don't they? And Laura is perfectly green with envy."
"I'm glad of that," said I, with undefeated optimism. "If her greenness approximates to the right shade it will match the Hunt collar. How green is she?"
"Funny old thing!" Mrs. Arbuthnot's beam was of childlike benignity. "She is not such a bad sort, really. Besides, plain people are always the nicest, aren't they, poor dears? Yes, Parkins, what is it?"
Parkins the peerless had entered the drawing-room after a discreet preliminary knock for which the circumstances really made no demand whatever. He had sidled up to his mistress, and in his mien natural reserve and a desire to dispense information were finely mingled.
"Beg pardon, ma'am, but have you seen the glare in the sky?"
"What sort of a glare, Parkins?" A lazy voice emerged from the seventh heaven of the hedonist. "Do you mean it's a what-do-you-call-it? A planet I suppose you mean, Parkins?"
"It can hardly be a comet, ma'am," said Parkins, with his most encyclopaedic air. "It is so bright and so fixed, and it seems to be getting larger."
"So long as it isn't the end of the world," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, fondling her gold cigarette-case with a little sigh.
"It looks to me like the Castle, ma'am. It is over in that direction. I remember when the west wing was burnt twelve years ago."
"You think the Castle is on fire?" said I.
I also was in the seventh heaven of the hedonist. But gathering my faculties as resolutely as I could, I rose from the good sea-coal fire and assisted Parkins to pull aside the curtains.
"By Jove, you're right. There is a blaze somewhere, But isn't it rather near for the Castle?"
"It might be the Grange," said Parkins.
I was fain to agree that the Grange it might be. Somehow that seemed a place excellently laid for disaster. The announcement that the Grange was on fire brought Mrs. Arbuthnot to the window. Born under Mars, the star of my destiny is nothing if not a woman of action. In spite of her present rather lymphatic state she ordered the car round immediately. Within five minutes we were braving a dark and stormy December night.
The beacon growing ever brighter as we went, it did not take long to convince us that the Grange would be our destination. It is to be feared that we broke the law, for in something considerably under half an hour we had come to the home of the Fitzwarens.
A heartrending scene it was. The beautiful but always rather desolate old house, which dates from John o' Gaunt, seemed already doomed. A portion of it was even now in ruins and on all sides the flames were leaping up fiercely to the sky. Engines had not yet had time to come from Middleham, and the progress of the fire was appalling.
A number of servants and villagers had devoted themselves to the task of retrieving the furniture. On a lawn at some distance from the house an incongruous collection of articles had been laid out: a picture by Rubens side by side with a trouser-press; a piece of Sèvres cheek by jowl with a kitchen saucepan. Standing in their midst in the charge of a nurse was the small elf of four. Her eyes were sparkling and she was dancing and clapping her hands in delight at the spectacle. The nurse was in tears.
Mrs. Arbuthnot had not seen the creature before. But her instincts are swift and they are sure.
"Come with me," she said to the nurse. "Saunders will take you in the car to Dympsfield House. They will make up a bed for you in the day nursery and see that you get some warm food."
Hardly had the little girl suffered herself to be led away by the prospect of a new adventure before two men came towards the spot where I stood. They were grimy and dishevelled, and the upper part of their persons seemed to be enveloped in folds of wet blanket. They were staggering under a very large and unwieldy burden which was swathed in a material similar to that which they wore themselves.
With much care this object was deposited upon a Sheraton table, and then I found myself greeted by a familiar voice.
"Hullo, Arbuthnot! Didn't expect to see you here. Very good of you to come."
It was the voice of Fitz speaking with the almost uncanny insouciance of the wonderful night at Portland Place. He cast off the curious wrappings which encumbered his head, and said to his companion, who was in similar guise, "I'm afraid it has us beat. The sooner we get out of this kit the better."
There came an incoherent growl out of the folds of wet blanket.
"Why, Coverdale!" I said in astonishment.
"I think we ought to make a sporting dash for that Holbein," said the growl, becoming coherent. "That is, if you are quite sure it isn't a forgery."
"Personally I think it is," said Fitz, in his voice of unnatural calm. "But my father always believed it to be genuine."
"Better take the word of your father. Let us get at it."
It was the work of a moment to strip the wrappings off the retrieved masterpiece upon the Sheraton table.
"Can I help?" said I.
"If you want to be of use," said Fitz, "go and give the Missus a hand with the horses."
Leaving Fitz and Coverdale to make yet another entry into what seemed hardly less than a furnace of living fire, I made my way round to the stables. To approach them one had to be careful. The heat was intense; sparks and burning fragments were being flung a considerable distance by the gusts of wind, and masonry was crashing continually. The out-buildings had not yet caught, but with the wind in its present quarter it would only be the work of a few moments before they did so.
My recollection is of plunging, rearing and frightened animals, and of a commanding, all-pervading presence in their midst. Amid the throng of stable-hands, villagers, firemen and policemen who had now come upon the scene, it rose supreme, directing their energies and sustaining them with that imperious magnetism which she possessed beyond any creature I have ever seen. I heard it said afterwards that she alone had the power to induce the twelve horses to quit their loose boxes; that one by one she led them out, soothing and caressing them; and that so long as she was with them they showed comparatively little fear of the roaring furnace that was so near to them, but that no sooner were they handed over to others than they became unmanageable.
Certainly it was due to a consummate exhibition of her power that the horses were got out of their stalls without harm to themselves or to others. They were confided to the care of the friendly farmers of the neighbourhood, who, assembled in force, were working heroically to combat the flames. All night long the work of salvage went on, but in spite of all that could be done, even with the aid of numerous fire-engines from Middleham, nothing could save the old house. It burnt like tinder. By three o'clock that December morning it was a smouldering ruin, with only a few fragments of stone wall remaining.
At intervals during the night some of the Grange servants had been dispatched to Dympsfield House, with as many of the personal belongings of their master and mistress as they could collect. Our establishment is a modest one, but not for a moment did it occur to Mrs. Arbuthnot that it would be unable to offer sanctuary to those who needed it so sorely.
The fire had run its course and all were resigned to the inevitable when Mrs. Arbuthnot, without deigning to consult the nominal head of our household, made the offer of our hospitality to Fitz and his wife. At her own request she had previously forgone an introduction to "the circus rider from Vienna"; and now in these tragic December small hours she deemed such a formality to be unnecessary. Verily misfortune makes strange bedfellows!
If I must tell the truth, it surprised me to learn that the Fitzwarens had been prevailed upon to accept the hospitality of Dymspfield House. True, they were homeless; but, looking at the case impartially, it seemed to me that they had not been very generously treated by their neighbours. The foibles of "the circus rider from Vienna" had aroused a measure of covert hostility to which the most obtuse people could not have been insensible. Had the average ordinary married couple been in the case of Fitz and his wife, I do not think they would have yielded to Mrs. Arbuthnot's impulsive generosity.
The Fitzwarens, however, were far from being ordinary average people. Therefore, by a quarter to five that morning they had crossed our threshold; and as some recompense for the privations of that tragic night they were promptly regaled with a scratch meal of coffee and sandwiches.
One other individual, at his own suggestion, accompanied our guests to Dympsfield House. He was of a sinister omen, being no less a person than the Chief Constable of the county. His presence at the fire had been a matter for surprise. And when, as we were about to quit the unhappy scene, he came to me privately and said that if we could squeeze a corner for him in the car he should be glad to come with us, that surprise was not made less.
[[1]] In the opinion of Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins this passage fully guarantees the author's total ignorance of a very great proposition.