The man was absolutely speechless. He said not one syllable, either of corroboration or denial, but left the room as quickly as possible, looking scared, and certainly left the impression upon my mind that my vision represented what had actually taken place an hour or two previously.
To my great surprise, however, our respectable and dependable courier, Küntze, gave quite a different version of the affair.
He came as usual to my room to take his orders for the day—Miss Greenlow being present—and at once referred to the terrible tragedy.
"Ah, poor lady! you remember my telling you about her the other day, and how her manager had run away with all that money? Now this frightful misfortune has happened to her, and no one knows if she will survive it. She is still alive, however, and is to be taken to the hospital at one p.m."
"But what has happened, Küntze?" I said impatiently, rather irritated, if the truth must be told, by his mysterious allusions and Miss Greenlow's assumption of profound indifference. Of course, no self-respecting person, having calmly slept through such a tragedy, could be otherwise than indifferent next morning! Küntze's story was far more artistic than that of the waiter, and was skilfully interwoven with shreds of truth, as I discovered later.
He said that "the poor lady" was in the habit of making herself a cup of tea in the middle of the night when wakeful; also that she wore wide, hanging muslin sleeves with her night attire. She had risen as usual from a sleepless bed to make tea with her little Etna. Unfortunately, she had set fire to a sleeve, which at once burned up, and in a few moments she was enveloped in flames, owing to the flimsy material she wore. Then the shrieks began which had so thrilled our nerves. A Russian gentleman, sleeping near her, was awakened by the noise, and knowing that she was a rich woman, and had brought many valuables with her, he concluded she was being murdered; so he rushed to the rescue with a revolver, found the burning woman, and he and the musjig at length succeeded in putting out the flames.
The story was well told, and perfectly credible. Miss Greenlow could not resist pointing out how entirely it annihilated my vision. No suicide!—no knife!—no rush up the staircase!—nothing, in fact, that might not have been, and, of course, must have been a mere freak of imagination during my troubled sleep. In the face of Küntze's quiet and detailed statement I could only agree with her, and so the matter rested for some months. The poor woman meanwhile remained in the hospital, and her son and daughter were telegraphed for from Paris. We found them at the hotel on our return there, three weeks later, from Moscow. There was then some slight hope of ultimate recovery, but within six or seven weeks from the "accident" the unfortunate woman died from shock and exhaustion.
From Russia we returned to Stockholm and Christiania, where Miss Greenlow took the steamer for Hull, and I went up into the Dovre Feld Mountains to join a Swedish friend, already mentioned in my chapter on India.
I told her my story of the poor French modiste and her sad and painful accident, also about my curiously vivid and yet inaccurate vision, and we discussed the latter in quite an S.P.R. spirit! We were then in a very remote part of the Dovre Feld, where foreign papers were practically inaccessible.
I had left my friend in Norway, and returned to England a week or two before receiving a very interesting letter from her.