Peter and Jane by Sarah Macnaughtan (large screen ebook reader .txt) 📖

men to play water on the bridge; garden and stable hoses were turned full upon it by relays of helpers, and some long ladders were placed against the windows to see if it were possible in that way to effect an entrance and save some of the valuables in the room. The guests—women in light ball dresses and bare shoulders, and men in evening clothes—had surged out on to the terrace, and were watching with that curious mixture of fascination and regret which comes to the eyes of those who see destruction going on and know that they are powerless to prevent it. Every ear was strained to catch the first sound of the fire-engine on the road from Sedgwick, and some twenty or thirty couples, more impatient than the rest, had run to a distant knoll, from whence the road was visible, to peer through the darkness and to see if anything was coming. The stars shone serenely overhead, and the moon was turning the water in the fountains to cascades of silver, while from turret and roof the volumes of grey smoke belched forth, and the ineffectual fire appliances played upon the house.

It was just then that what seemed almost like an apparition appeared upon the bridge. A man, not above medium height, with a cloak hastily thrown about his head to protect him from the smoke, dashed across the bridge, was drenched by the fall of water, and entered the turret room. People asked each other fearfully whose this strange figure could be. Many, strangely enough, had not seen it; the sudden dash through the smoke had not occupied a moment of time, and most eyes were directed towards the roof of the building, while others were turned towards the Sedgwick road. Those who had seen cast amazed eyes upon each other, women clutched the persons nearest them, and Jane Erskine, seeking half wildly for some one in the crowd, found Peter and said to him, 'What is it? Who went in there just now? Oh, Peter, for a moment I thought it was you!'

There was a shout of warning, but it was too late for the man, whoever he was, to turn back. He was inside the tower now, and no shouting could hold him. Some prayed as they stood there, murmuring half mechanically, 'Save him! save him!' as instinctively men and women will pray even when the life for which they plead may carry with it such sorrow as they never dreamed of.

Suddenly some young men who had climbed to the top of the knoll gave a shout, and the fire-engine from Sedgwick turned the corner of the road with a fine dash, for Tom Ellis, a good whip, was driving, and the white horse on the near side knew as well as any Christian how to save an inch of the road. The fire-engine, all gleaming with brass fittings and flaming red paint, clattered to the door, and pulled up with admirable precision on the spot from which a hose could be played. Eight men in helmets leaped from their seats and got their gear in order with the coolness of blue-jackets in a storm. But for its quietness and its controlled, workmanlike effect, the whole scene had distinctly a dramatic touch about it. Possibly the firemen would have shouted louder had they been upon the boards, and fainting women, it is generally assumed, give a realistic touch to well-staged melodrama. No doubt the crowd on the terrace at Bowshott would have disappointed an Adelphi audience. But the old white horse stood to attention like a soldier on a field day; and Tom Ellis, wiping his brow as though he himself had run in the shafts all the way from Sedgwick, lent a touch of stage realism to the scene. Nothing could save the interior of the tower—that was past praying for; but a shout went up that there was a man inside, and the firemen threw their ladders against the walls and prepared their scaling-irons and life-saving apparatus. The smoke rolled out in dense volumes now, and through the gloom a voice shouted, 'It 's all right! He 's crossed the bridge again!'

'Oh, are you sure? are you sure?' said Jane, her fear almost amounting to a panic, and it haunted her for long afterwards that perhaps the man had not actually escaped the fire. For nothing was heard of him again, and it was only after Peter had ordered a fruitless search to be made amongst the debris in the tower that she felt satisfied of the stranger's safety.

A newspaper reporter tried to prove that a gallant attempt had been made to save some valuables in the tower, and went so far as to head one of his paragraphs, 'A Gallant Act.' But there was nothing of value in the tower rooms except the old furniture and books and the tapestry on the walls, and these had all been destroyed.

The ruined interior of the tower smouldered the whole of the next day; though the walls still stood, gaunt and grim, windowless and gutted by the fire. But the building was covered by insurance, and even the loss of the tapestries seemed more than compensated by the fact that an absorbing topic of general interest had been provided in a quiet and uneventful neighbourhood.

CHAPTER VII

It was a matter of necessity with Mrs. Ogilvie to purchase a new dress for the wedding. Wherefore, in the week following the night of the ball, she went to London for the day, while builders and carpenters were already at work repairing the ruined tower.

'It will be inconvenient,' she said, 'to go up and see my dressmaker later when the house is full. Is it absolutely incumbent upon me, as the mother of the bridegroom, to dress in grey satin, or have I sufficiently scandalized my neighbours all my life to be able to wear what I like?'

Usually her maid accompanied her when Mrs. Ogilvie went up to London; but, in her wilful way, she had decided to-day that maids were useless, and that her present maid had round eyes that stared at her from the opposite side of the carriage when they travelled together. In short, Mrs. Ogilvie intended to go to London alone.

She departed with some sort of idea of enjoying the expedition; the purchase of clothes was a real aesthetic pleasure to her, and even the feel of the pavements in the world-forsaken London of September had something friendly about it that spoke to her with an intimacy and a kindliness such as she never experienced among country sights and sounds. A morning at Paquin's revived her as sea breezes revive other women. Lunch followed in a room pleasantly shaded from the sun and decorated with a fair amount of taste. But the food was uneatable, of course; Mrs. Ogilvie could never get a thing to eat that she liked.

It was nearly four o'clock before the brougham which had met her at the station in the morning drew up before a door in deserted Harley Street. An elderly man-servant showed her into the doctor's waiting-room, and Mrs. Ogilvie sat down and began turning over with interest the pages of a fashion magazine.

'I think I know the worst,' she said to the famous surgeon whom she had come to consult, when he led her into his room. 'What I want to know is, can you put off this tiresome business until after my son's wedding?'

He asked her quietly her reason for the delay. Few people argued with Mrs. Ogilvie; there was an inflexibility about her which made protest impossible. He knew that the case was a hopeless one, but life might certainly be prolonged if she would submit to treatment without delay.

'Why should you put it off?' he said; 'even five or six weeks may make an enormous difference.'

'I always put off disagreeable things,' said Mrs. Ogilvie lightly.

A London doctor probably knows many cases of delicate and sensitive women who will fret over a crumpled rose-leaf and die with the calm courage of a martyr; but the woman who would deliberately throw away her chances of life was unfamiliar to the famous specialist. He looked keenly at his patient for a moment out of his deep eyes.

'I have never known a case of this sort in which there was not an immediate effort at concealment,' he said to himself; 'and women conceal most of their sicknesses as if they were crimes.' Aloud he asked her what was the earliest date at which she could put herself into his hands.

'It is a great bore coming at all,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, with that sort of superb impertinence which distinguished her and was hardly ever offensive; 'but let us say in a month's time. The wedding was not to have been till late in November; but my son and Miss Erskine are quite absurdly in love with each other, and it will not be difficult to persuade them to alter that date for an earlier one.'

'If you have positively decided to postpone treatment,' said the surgeon, 'I can say nothing more except to tell you that you are minimizing your chances of recovery.'

'I don't feel in the least like dying yet,' she said.

'Were you to put yourself into my hands at once,' he urged, 'it is possible that you might be sufficiently recovered to go to the wedding in November.'

'No one is to know anything about it,' said Mrs. Ogilvie quickly and decisively. 'If my son is married in October I can come up to town, as I always do in November, and go into one of your nursing-homes. Probably the wall-papers will offend me, but at least I shall not have the whole of a countryside discussing my helplessness and the various stages of my illness. Ye gods! they would like to ask for details from one's very footman at the hall door!'

It was useless to say more. The surgeon recommended diet, and made out a prescription.

'Everything is talked about in these days, I admit,' he said, 'and I think no one regrets the decline of reserve more than we doctors do; but you are carrying a desire for concealment too far.'

Mrs. Ogilvie was drawing on her gloves and buttoning them with an air much more grave and intent than she had bestowed upon her doctor during the discussion of her health. 'Even an animal,' she said lightly, 'is allowed to creep away into the denseness of a thicket and nurse its wounds unseen; but we superior human beings are like the beggars who expose a mutilated arm to the pitiful, and would fain show their wounds to every passer-by.'

'Perhaps you will allow me to write to your son?' said the surgeon.

Mrs. Ogilvie replied by a quick and unequivocal answer in the negative; then, relaxing a little, she said more lightly, but with intent, 'I have always triumphed over difficulties all my life—I have always overcome.'

'That is quite possible,' said the physician gravely.

Mrs. Ogilvie stood up and began to arrange her veil before the mirror which hung above the mantel-piece; and, as she did so, she glanced critically at her face under her large, fashionable-looking hat, with its bizarre trimmings.

'I am very plain,' she said, with a sort of sensuous enjoyment in her frankness, 'and yet I have passed successfully for a beautiful woman most of my life. I am also what is ridiculously called a power in society, and I owe everything to my own will. I detest unsuccess!'

'You are talking of the success which lies in the hands of every clever woman,' said the doctor, 'but your health is another matter.'

'I believe in my good luck; it has never failed me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, as she shook hands and said good-bye.

When she reached home she dressed in one of her sumptuous gowns, for a score of country neighbours were coming to meet Jane Erskine as the fiancée of her son. Her maid bore