Chapter IX

(i)

HARLES, the second footman, was still young enough to appreciate the absence of the family from home and the presence of one or both of the young gentlemen.

All kinds of indulgences were silently permitted. Shirt-sleeves could be largely worn throughout the day; a neat dark suit was full-dress; there was very little bell-answering to be done, very little waiting at meals. To be sure there were certain other dreary jobs to be performed: furniture had occasionally to be moved about, disused silver to be polished; but even these occupations would be interrupted by surprising and interesting errands ordered by the young gentlemen, such as accompanying one of them to beat for wood-pigeons in the pine wood, or to manage the boat while a little coarse fishing was done. There was an air of holiday abroad even if the day was as full as ever.

On both those days, for example, Charles had a sight of sport. On the eighth, after lunch, Master Val went out after wood-pigeons, and Charles was stationed for the greater part of the afternoon, with permission to smoke, on a charming seat in the sunshine at the north end of the pine wood, with no responsibilities except to keep himself in full sight of the open sky, and to tap occasionally with a stick on the trunk of a tree. This acted as a " stop " to pigeons returning homewards from the beech woods and stubbles, and sent them round instead to the south end of the wood, a quarter of a mile away, whence came gun-bangings from Master Val, who was crouched under a little withered shelter. Charles had ultimately to carry no less than eight dead pigeons home at the close of day, and ate two of them himself that night for supper.

On the ninth he had even greater enjoyments, for Master Val informed him, when he came to clear away breakfast, that he was to accompany him and the under-keeper to certain outlying stubble-fields and undergrown copses, in the first of which a few partridges might be got, and in the second, rabbits, and perhaps a strayed pheasant or two. They did get these animals, with some success; returned for lunch, as the house was not far off; and went out again after lunch for the rest of the afternoon. It was true that Mr. Masterman was a little overbearing and strenuous during the evening that followed, but still a day in the open air was a day in the open air.

When Charles had brought coffee in to Val, who dined, as the custom was at such times, in the "morning-room/* he went upstairs to pack the portmanteaux for the journey to Cambridge the next day. Then he went downstairs for supper, at which he ate half a newly killed rabbit, and within an hour was in bed in the men's quarters over the south wing.

Soon after two o'clock he awoke and smelt burning, and, as he sat upright in bed, thought he heard a voice calling.

(n)

At ten minutes to two the same night, Mr John Brent, blacksmith's assistant, was passing the south end of the house, about a hundred yards distant, carrying parts of a very powerful air-gun concealed on his person, a dozen small nets wrapped about his body, and a ferret, with muzzle and line complete, in his huge breast-pocket. He was walking very carefully over the grass in the shadow of the trees, in light tennis-shoes stained black, and was on his way to the coverts over the hill. These were at least a third of a mile from the house, and nearly half a mile from the keeper's cottage.

He kept out a careful look, however, in the direction of the house, since this was the one habitation that he was practically obliged to pass, even though it was almost inconceivable that he should be seen; and it was not unnatural, therefore, that he should notice a peculiar light that came and went oddly in the ground floor of the south wing.... At first he thought the phenomenon might arise from the movement of branches between him and an unshuttered lighted window; so he stopped to observe, himself still in the darkness of the belt of trees he was traversing, since a lighted window might mean danger to himself....

The result of his investigations after two or three minutes' watching was peculiar. First, very quickly he drew out the bones of the air-gun; then he unwrapped a net; then he took out the ferret and wrapped her up in the net; then he took off the other nets, made a bundle of the whole, and put it very carefully down a rabbit-hole with which he was familiar. John Brent was a good fellow; he had nothing but honour, and even affection, for the Great Powers who provided him so abundantly, though unwittingly, with game; and it was not to be thought of that their House should be afire and he not warn the authorities.

Then, in his tennis-shoes, with a fragmentary explanation of his own presence framing itself in his mind as he ran, he went at full speed across the wet grass, right up to the billiard-room window, whence the light and smoke were now bellying out; and presently, with his hands to his mouth, was bawling aloud, careless of his own personal safety. As soon as a window went up he shouted a sentence, tore round to the front, and began pealing at the bell.

It is astonishing how quickly a house can be roused where there is a real necessity. In three minutes windows were being thrown up, and Charles was on his headlong way to the stables. In five minutes the stable bell was pealing and horses were being saddled. In ten minutes riders were gone in three directions after fire-engines; in twelve minutes every soul in the house was assembled in the hall, maids in skirts and shawls, men in shirts and trousers — except those who were circulating vehemently round the south side of the south wing, and beginning to organise a supply of water. All lights were turned full on, except in the bedrooms, and the great house blazed among its trees and lawns as if en fete. Great shadows wheeled across the grass, and a clamour of shouting and bells filled the air.

It was astonishing too how quickly Val assumed the commandership. He was out of doors and round the corner of the south wing in his pyjamas and evening shoes before Masterman was in the hall, and he was back again issuing orders by the time that Mr. Watson with a troop of stablemen burst round the corner on to the terrace. Val leaped on to the low wall above the steps and began to shout:

" Watson, choose six men and form a line from the well with buckets; throw water from the outside into the windows without stopping.... YouVe sent for engines? That's right.... Masterman, go back into the hall and begin to take down the portraits. The maids must help you: we can't spare any men. Pile all the portraits out here, on the terrace — that side. Then go on with the furniture. Oh! by the way, send someone. No Charles! Charles!..."

" Yes, sir."

Charles thrust up his hand out of the seething crowd. (His face had a smear of black already across it.)

" Charles, go round all the bedrooms — all, like the wind, and see that everyone's out; then come back to me.... Mrs. Markham. Where are you, Mrs. Markham?... Please see that none of the maids go near the fire without leave. Please stand in the hall for the present. James, I want you here. And... and William — " (The footman came obediently out, followed by the groom.) " Stand here: I'll want you in a minute."

" Master Val "

" That you, Masterman?... I can't hear. Oh! hold your row, you maids. Go back into the hall at once — at once, I tell you.... Yes: and shut the door. Shut the door! I can't hear, Masterman.... Go and do as I told you.... William. James. Oh! there you are. Where's Charles?... Never mind. Come in, you chaps."

Val leapt down again from the wall.

He had his plan clear-cut in a moment or two. That is one advantage of an imagination: its possessor can see a number of things all at the same time.

He had been awakened by Charles, had sprung out of bed entirely alert, and had run straight out and round the house to the billiard-room windows. There he had made his diagnosis from outside, to the effect that the fire had broken out in the billiard-room — the last room on the east end of the south wing — and had communicated itself to the smoking-room next door. He supposed this was so, from the fact that the fire, seen through the shutters, was far brighter in the first than in the second room. (Probably, he thought, a fused wire had started it.) Then he had torn back through the hall, had laid his hand on the billiard-room door, and then drawn back, startled by the roar of flames from within. He knew it was dangerous to create any further draught, and had understood that all that could be done for the present was to pelt water into the windows from the outside until the engines came. Then he had locked the door and thrust the key into his jacket-pocket. Then he had run back and issued his orders as the crowd of servants surged out on to the terrace.

Charles came down the stairs into the hall, three stairs at a time, after accomplishing his errand — (he had found all the servants' bedrooms empty, with the exception of one in which the new scullery-maid was putting on her stockings) — just in time to see Master Val followed by the two men vanish through the door into the south wing. He turned and darted after them, as they bolted into the morning-room, where Lady Beatrice had a number of treasures — portraits, silver, furniture. This was next to the smoking-room, and was, obviously, the next room to be threatened. But on the threshold Val turned.

" Charles! Oh! there you are.... Go up the back stairs, and see if you can get into the rooms above these others. If you can, chuck everything you can out of the windows. Don't be an ass and throw the china, now...."

Charles was gone, hearing already from outside the voices of the stablemen, and the crash and hiss of water as the buckets were emptied into the burning windows on his left. By extraordinary good fortune the fire had broken out in the wing not fifty yards distant from the well from which the house tanks were filled.

The rooms looked strangely quiet and peaceful after the rush and confusion below, as he switched on the electric light at the doors. The. smoke 'was already oozing up through the floors, but the atmosphere was still perfectly bearable. He ran to the windows and threw them open, and then began his task — first tearing down the curtains with great common sense as the most inflammable articles, and then setting to work to toss out pictures, chairs, rugs.... They were the bedrooms of the master of the house and his wife.

After a quarter of an hour the heat and the smoke became suddenly intolerable. He snatched at a little inlaid desk which he had overlooked and tried to get to the window. But a great burst of smoke met him, and he staggered back choking, dropped the desk and bolted, forgetting to turn out the lights, that already were shining like street lamps in a fog. He banged the door behind him, and after a long gasp or two ran downstairs.

"Good Lord," cried Val. "Are you all right? Finished?"

" Pretty well, Master Val. But I haven't — "

" Come and help here.... Where are those blasted engines? "

The morning-room was nearly empty. The Persian carpets were gone; the little tables, the cabinets, the pictures, the chairs — all these lay in confusion outside the windows on the trampled grass and the flower-beds — visible in the bright light that streamed out through the open windows. In the same light, growing now a little yellowish and smoky, could be seen the figures of the stable-men outside, passing buckets like fiends. Mr. Watson's voice could be heard shouting directions now and again, but the roar of the fire grew louder and the crackling more insistent.

Master Val and the two men were struggling now with a great black cabinet, certainly not too large to be passed through the wide-flung windows, but apparently too heavy to be moved across the slippery floors. Charles plunged into the group and added his weight.

And then suddenly Charles heard Master Val swear distinctly.

" Good God! I've left the muniment-room."

" Charles! take charge here. When you've got this out, do the best you can "

" Master Val...."

But Val was gone.

Five seconds later Masterman, still toiling at the portraits, of which ten or twelve were already down from the walls and piled on the terrace outside, saw him running and dodging the bewildered maids, between the disordered tables and chairs, and disappearing in the direction of the library. He called feebly after him, but there was no answer. The white-clad figure was gone. And then back he came a minute later, and a little bunch of keys clinked from his finger as he ran.

" Master Val -

But Val was gone again; and a moment later Charles, emerging from the morning-room, saw him through the thin smoke flash into sight from the direction of the hall, and dash up the first steps of the back staircase that led to the floor above.

He was after him in a second, and had him by the arm at the top of the first flight.

" Master Val.... You can't; it's impossible. It's all —

" Bosh! let go.... You don't understand."

" Master Val, sir."

" Let go, will you."

There was a scuffle. Then the boy tore himself free.

" It's all right, I tell you," he shouted straight in the man's face, and was gone.

" Master Val, you can't. It'll be afire by now."

But there was no answer. Already from overhead came a great gust of smoke, and Charles, staring up with blinded eyes, saw that the ceiling above the top of the stairs had vanished in clouds. But no flame was visible; it did not look particularly dangerous, after all, just yet.

(v)

Mr Watson had worked like a Trojan. He was naturally both stout and agitated; but he had his men in excellent disciplinary order, and for the first half-hour or so had, with his own hands, thrown into the billiard-room windows the water that was passed to him, bucket by bucket, by the six men' behind. One pumped, the rest passed from hand to hand. Then Mr. Watson, exhausted, had taken his place second in the line, and watched the muscular stable-keeper do the work of the actual throwing.

It was, of course, still pitch dark so far as daylight was concerned, but the light from the windows blazed out in all directions on to lawns and trees and black agitated figures. Charles had finished throwing valuables out of the first floor by now, and under Mr. Watson's directions a water-carrier had been dispensed from his business to remove these out of harm's way, aa well as those from the morning-room. When the great black cabinet emerged at last and crashed down among the autumn flowers, Mr. Watson himself lent a hand to remove it some twenty yards across the grass.

It was as he let go of this at last, panting and sweating, that he heard his name called vehemently, without any prefix.

"Watson! Watson!" shrieked a young man's voice across the din of the voices, the rumble of furniture, and the roar of the fire.

He looked up, and there, perfectly visible in the clearly lighted room overhead, where just now had been shuttered darkness, was Master Val in his pyjamas, dancing with excitement. His hands were full, it seemed; the heavy bars of the window-frame showed like a network against his figure.

The coachman ran up.

" I'm going to chuck things out," cried the voice. " I want you to watch and guard them."

" Master Val, come down: it isn't safe: the next room "

" It's all right here. Here, catch."

A heavy parcel that crackled as with paper as it fell, crashed through the man's hands and fell.

" Pick 'em up. Don't lose them, for God's sake."

And the figure was gone again.

Then parcel after parcel flew out. The window was some twenty-five to thirty feet high, as the rooms below were built up on a half -sunken basement; and the bundles, each wrapped in a rug or curtain, descended with considerable impetus, now and again accompanied by the crash of glass. While Mr. Watson stooped to pick each up, the white figure vanished again, and was ready once more by the time that the last bundle had been added to the heap.

Then there was a pause.

" Come down, Master Val, for God's sake. The next "

Then once more the figure appeared empty-handed, gesticulating.

For a moment the man did not understand. Behind him, in a momentary stillness, he could hear the sobbing of the men's breath as bucket after bucket still passed up the diminished line; then the roar of flame bellowed out again, and drowned the words screamed from overhead. From the bedroom windows, left open by Charles, next to that single heavily barred window where the white figure shook the iron and screamed inaudible words, great tongues of red and orange flame pierced, like crooked swords, the huge volume of smoke that poured up now into the dark sky, alight with sparks and burning tinder. From beyond the house, as each new burst of flame died into comparative quiet, came the sound of the stable bell still pealing desperately, and the voices of shouting men.... Then the terrified, bewildered man understood, and with a loud cry and a grotesque gesture, set off, shouting vague directions to the crowd in general, full speed for the front of the house and the only open door by which he could gain access to the interior of the south wing.

(VI)

It must have been almost immediately after this that the men, still desperately passing buckets from hand to hand, caught a sight of that solitary screaming figure, and understood too.

One at the inquest said that he ran for ladders; but they were all gone from their place in the stable-yard — taken, no doubt, to help in the removal of the portraits; and that when he came back it was all over.

Another said that he made an attempt to fling water — it was the only thing he thought of — but that the window was too high to reach.

A third said that he ran round too, to try to get up by the back staircase to the muniment-room, but found it already ablaze. He then tried the front staircase, and here too, beyond the baize doors that led through into the south wing on the level of the first floor, there was just one furnace *of flame. Mr. Watson was here, he said, screaming like a madman.... He had' to hold him back.

It is plain, however, how the end came; and what those saw who stood helpless and watched - the men who dropped their buckets and stared; the crowd of half-dressed men and women from the village, who had been surging up for the last half-hour and now formed a ring of terrified spectators thirty yards away, on the edge of the south lawn.

Val had stayed too long in the muniment-room, and on opening the door to escape must have been met by an outburst of fire. It is probable that even then he might have escaped, if he had dashed for it instantly; but he must have lost his head, and run back, hopelessly and instinctively locking the door, from a possible to a certain death. For the bars of the muniment-room windows cut off the last possibility of life.

There then he stood screaming and crying, shaking at the bars like a savage, in full view of the crowd. Now and again his figure and his distorted face disappeared in gusts of smoke from beneath.... But the horror of it all was that he lost all control over himself.... Phrases, fragments of sentences, the names of God and Christ — these were heard again and again by the helpless watchers. Once he disappeared; and all thought that the floor had fallen, for the windows of the morning-room beneath were now merely squares of flame. But he must have run once more to shake the door and scream for the help that could not come.... For he was there again at the window a moment later, mad with fear, dashing himself at the bars, wrenching at them....

And then the end came, mercifully swift.

A great crash sounded out above the roar of the flames. A vast explosion of smoke, lit house-high by a torrent of sparks and fire, burst out of all the windows at once. And when it cleared the figure was gone; and the noise of a clanging bell grew louder and louder behind as the first engine from Blakiston came at a gallop up the drive.

EPILOGUE

HAVE come to ask your reasons for writing as you did," said Lady Beatrice; "I must thank you very much for writing at all. It was kind of you, at any rate."

The priest sat down again in the chair he had left when she was shown in.

She was as pathetic as crape and genuine grief could make her. She had pushed her black veil up, on coming in; and her beautiful, aging face was white and a little thin.

It was three weeks now since the funeral. Up there at the house all still looked desolate. The south wing was now altogether demolished, and a temporary wall of brick was built across the charred end of the great hall and across the passages above. The family was to leave for Egypt in a few days' time, until the work of restoration was complete. It would probably be finished by the early summer. It was known that Austin was to go with them.

" I wrote," said the priest as quietly and naturally as he could, " because I had had three or four long talks with your son Valentine; and I think I may say he gave me his confidence. I understood that it was what you yourself wished him to do."

"Certainly I suggested it to him."

" Just so.... So I did not communicate with you.... Well, you will forgive my saying this; but you know people will talk; and the explanation given of... of various things that have happened — at the funeral, for instance — is that General Medd is ashamed of his son. If I am wrong in that, I have nothing but apologies. But I was informed that this was so; and I thought it better not to shelter behind the plea of gossip, but to tell you outright that there is nothing to be ashamed of."

In spite of the heaviness that lay on her, she was conscious once again of surprise that he was so simple and direct. There was no conventional tenderness in his voice or manner. And she was surprised too that she did not find herself in the least resenting it. She hesitated before answering.

"That is perfectly true," she said; "though I do not know how such things have come to be said. But it is perfectly true that our chief grief lies in our knowledge of how... how he behaved in the face of danger. You see it was not the first time. There was that affair in Rome only this Easter... there was his behaviour in Switzerland. Perhaps he did not tell of that?"

" He told me everything," said the priest.

Her beautiful eyes filled suddenly with tears.

" I am glad," she said. " But that makes no real difference.... It must seem terrible to you that I can speak of him like this, poor boy!... But it is more terrible to us that he... that he..."

" That he seems to you to have behaved like a coward? "

" Yes.... You see everyone saw it. He he behaved dreadfully at the window. He... he lost his life through it too."

" Have you considered that he did a brave thing in going up to the room at all? "

" Yes," she said. " But it did not seem to him dangerous at the time. (I am just saying what my husband has said to me. ) He thought that the way was clear.... Oh! it seems cruel to speak like this; but you understand, don't you, Father Maple, that it is just our love for him and our pride in him — ( She broke off. ) " And then when he saw the danger he... he... Ah! I couldn't say this to anyone else.... I haven't said a word. But you do understand how... how all this hurts us. I..."

She covered her face suddenly with her hands.

The priest waited, motionless and silent, till she got her grief and misery under control. Then she looked up again at him, hopelessly.

" Will you listen to me carefully, Lady Beatrice? I wrote that letter to you with full knowledge of what I was doing — that letter in which I said that I considered your son to have been markedly courageous. Will you hear my reasons? "

She nodded. But there was no hope in her face. It was the look of one who felt herself bound in justice to hear the other side.

" Well, I must begin by repeating what I said to your son that first time he came to see me.

" There are two kinds of courage — the physical courage of the brute, and the moral courage of the man. Your son had not the first. He had a very sensitive and imaginative temperament — a very highly strung nervous system. Now at least twice or three times this temperament of his overcame him — in Switzerland and in Rome — to take two instances only."

She looked at him swiftly, with a question in her eyes.

" Yes, and there were other instances. But take those two.... Now he was horribly ashamed of it. And the first really morally brave thing he did was to come and tell me. He need not have told me. It required a very high degree of courage indeed to come. He had never been taught to confide in anyone. And he made no excuses. He told me that he had found out he was a coward; and he wanted to know what he was to do...

"Just think over that quietly, Lady Beatrice. There is more in it than appears to you now. The real coward goes on making excuses to the end. He made none — at the end."

The priest paused a moment to let that sink in. Then he went on.

"Well, I told him then about the will. He seems never to have heard of it. For instance, I said that a man who did a thing he was afraid to do was a far finer creature than the man who was not afraid to do it. That is very obvious, if you think of it. But the conventional view is exactly the opposite. And the conventional view ruins more lives than all fanaticism put together....

'' Well, I gave him a little advice about the training of the will. And then — now we're coming to the point....

c< The last time he came to see me he said something that seems to me now very nearly prophetic. I think I can remember his exact words. He said, ' I wish something would happen that I knew was dangerous, but which didn't look dangerous. I think I could do that. Or a thing that I knew really was dangerous, but which I hadn't time to think about.' I asked him why. He said, ' Because I should do that; and then I shouldn't feel so hopeless/

" Then we went on talking... and at the end he said something like this: ' Suppose, after all, when the thing was done — done deliberately, knowing the danger — I collapsed and behaved like a cur again — would that be cowardly? ' I told him certainly not. I said that any number of people collapsed when the thing was done; and that the fact that they did showed what a tremendous strain they must have been under, and how splendidly they must have been controlling themselves....

" Lady Beatrice, do you see my point of view at all now?" (The priest leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair. Underneath his quiet voice and face he was intensely moved. ) "I don't think that either you or his father — if you will forgive me for saying so — understood the boy in the slightest. You do not understand how terribly he felt things, how his sensitive nature gave him the most acute pain, how his imagination dressed things up. If he had yielded to all this and given in-even then I could not have blamed him very greatly. But this was exactly what he did not do. He fought tooth and nail against it. And... and then God gave him exactly the opportunity he was asking for. He knew the danger perfectly. Why, he said to one of the men, ' You don't understand/ as he ran up. And then, when he had done his work he collapsed. Do you blame him for that? I don't. He had his opportunity at last, and he took it."

She sat still, looking at the priest. Outside the cold November sunshine lay on the garden where Val and the priest had talked together for the last time scarcely more than a month ago; the chairs they had sat in were now locked up in the little brick summer-house at the end. And across the way, over the low churchyard wall, was the long mound, in the shadow of the high-shouldered Norman tower, beneath which lay the body of her son who had disgraced his name. And she did not understand, even now. She saw only a minister of religion whose business it was to console and to say soothing things, not a priest whose business in life it is to understand motive and intention and to interpret events by those things.

She got up, painfully, with the help of her stick.

'* Thank you very much, Father Maple. It is very kind of you to have seen me. Our old nurse, you know, said the same " She broke off, and then continued, " I will think over what you have said.... The poor boy!" (Her eyes filled again with tears.)

But he saw she had not understood. She remembered the external facts only; she had seen nothing of that other realm which he had tried to describe, and not even a glimpse of that blind, lovable charity by which it seemed that even the old nurse had seen so deep.

"You are going to Egypt, I think?" he said at the hall door.

" Yes.... We shall be back, we hope, in the spring. They will have finished the building by then.... Thank you so much, once more."

THE END