The sympathetic lodger next door was not, of course, then called William Crawford. He took that name when some months later he married the widow. He was not known by the name of John Ainsworth either. For a very simple and sufficient reason he wished to forget John Ainsworth. Philip Ray had sworn never to forget John Ainsworth, and had, moreover, sworn to shoot John Ainsworth if ever they met.
John Ainsworth had as many names as a royal prince. He cared very little for names. He cared a great deal for pretty faces just for a while; or, rather, he cared for pretty faces always, but liked change. Better even than pretty faces, he cared for money. The older he grew the more enamoured he became of money. When a man of spirit cares greatly for pretty faces, and still more greatly for money, what matters how people may call him so long as he may gaze on beauty and rattle guineas in his pocket? One of the most useful qualities of a pretty face is that you can turn your back upon it when you are tired of it. One of the most delightful qualities of money is that you can, if you only know where to seek, always find men willing to gamble with you.
When John Ainsworth left Beechley suddenly and not alone three years ago he and the companions of his flight changed trains at Horsham. At the same time he altered his name. He became of his own free action, unchallenged by any one, Mr. George Hemphill. When he left the train and went on board the steamer for New York he described himself and his party as Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Plunkett and child. When he took steamer back to England he travelled alone as Mr. Walter Greystones.
Mrs. Crawford's sympathetic next-door lodger was known to her and to Richmond as Mr. William Goddard.
In Mrs. Crawford's house the only servants, the cook and housemaid, slept in a front top room.
At about four o'clock in the morning, after Mrs. Farraday's departure for Rochester, Mrs. Crawford was awakened by an awful sense of suffocation. The room was full of smoke. She could see this by the night light. She called out as loudly as she was able, but there were two doors, three floors, and three pair of stairs between her and the maids. She rang the little handbell placed at the side of her bed by Mrs. Farraday before setting out for the train. The voice was very thin and weak, and the bell no better than a toy. The voice could be heard no further off than the next room and hall. The sound of the bell might reach the kitchen and the drawing-room overhead, no farther.
The smoke in the room increased. It had a thick, oppressive, oily taste and smell, something like the smell of paraffin. Mrs. Crawford was not aware of any paraffin being in the house. She had a horror of paraffin, and none could be in the house with her approval.
She lay in her bed perfectly helpless. It was awful to lie here awaiting the approach of death, seeing the great clouds of smoke rise thicker and thicker every minute, and know that soon insensibility would fall upon her, and then death.
If she could but get to the window and fling herself out, she might be maimed for the remainder of her days, still she would be almost certain to escape with life. But she could not move from that bed to save her life. Her arms were as strong and capable as ever; but her lower limbs were as much beyond her control as the limbs of the dead.
She had often pictured to herself the horrors of being buried alive. She had often fancied to herself the soul-distracting awakening in the tomb, the confined space, the damp cerecloths, the cold planks, the stifling air, the maddening certainty that above were space and sunshine and warmth, the songs of birds and the voices of kindly people going blithely to and fro.