"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.