“It was Arthur Wellington done it! Don’t laugh at him, Joe Hilton. Don’t laugh at him no more, or he’ll throw the stars on to the fire. Where’s a window? Where’s a window?”
The wretched child vanished from sight, and the moment after a ghastly scream announced that she had found a window and flung herself from it into the street.
Letizia’s spaniel came barking down from the room above. Simultaneously there was a frenzied knocking on the front door, flashes and crashes everywhere, smoke, more shrieks of agony, and at last a deafening explosion. It seemed to Caleb that the whole house was falling to pieces on top of him, as indeed when he was dragged out of the ruins he found that it had.
CHAPTER III
THE PROPOSAL
Accidents in firework factories occurred so often in those days, when the law had not yet recognised gunpowder as a means to provide popular diversion and taken steps in the Explosives Act to safeguard its employment, that for six poorhouse children to lose their lives and for two others to be permanently maimed was hardly considered as serious as the destruction of two comparatively new houses in York Street. Madame Oriano’s own escape was voted miraculous, especially when it was borne in mind that both her legs had to be amputated; and while some pointed out that if she had not been sleeping in that florid four-post bed she need not have had her legs crushed by the canopy, others were equally quick to argue that it was precisely that canopy which saved the rest of her body from being crushed as completely as her legs. The bed certainly saved Letizia.
The accident was attributed to the inhuman carelessness of a parish apprentice known as Arthur Wellington, whereby he had placed a composition star on the hob of a lighted fire in order to dry it more expeditiously before being rammed into the casing of a Roman candle. Caleb in his evidence suggested that parish apprentices were inclined to make up for lost time in this abominable way. Everybody shook his head at the wickedness of parish apprentices, but nobody thought of blaming Caleb for the arrangement of a workroom that permitted such a dangerous method of making up for lost time. As for Caleb himself, when he had recovered from the shock of so nearly finding himself in Heaven before he had planned to retire there from the business of existence, he began to realise that the destruction of the factory was the best thing that could have happened for an earthly future that he hoped long to enjoy. He took the first opportunity of laying before Madame Oriano his views about that future. Should his proposal rouse her to anger, he could feel safe, inasmuch as she could certainly not get out of bed to attack him and was unlikely to leave the hospital for many weeks to come.
“Well, I willa always say dissa one ting, my friend, and datta is I have never had no esplosione in alla my life before dissa one. Such fortuna could never last for ever, I am secure. My legs, they makka me a little bad, datta is all.”
Caleb regarded his mistress where she was lying in bed looking like a sharp-eyed bird in tropical vegetation, under the gaudy satin coverlet of her four-poster which she had insisted on having mended and brought to the hospital.
“I’m sure we ought all of us to be very thankful to our Father Who put His loving arms around us and kept us safe,” he oozed.