Fenton's Quest Part 62

While Ellen Whitelaw was looking on at the work of ruin, with a sense of utter helplessness, hearing the selfish lamentations of Mrs. Tadman and Sarah Batts like voices in a dream, she was suddenly aroused from this state of torpor by a loud groan, which sounded from not very far off. It came from behind her, from the direction of the poplars. She flew to the spot, and on the ground beneath one of them she found a helpless figure lying prostrate, with an awful smoke-blackened face--a figure and face which for some moments she did not recognize as her husband's.

She knew him at last, however, and knelt down beside him. He was groaning in an agonized manner, and had evidently been fearfully burnt before he made his escape.

"Stephen!" she cried. "O, thank G.o.d you are here! I thought you were shut up in that burning house. I called with all my might, and the men searched for you."

"It isn't much to be thankful for," gasped the farmer. "I don't suppose there's an hour's life in me; I'm scorched from head to foot, and one arm's helpless. I woke up all of a sudden, and found the room in a blaze.

The flames had burst out of the great beam that goes across the chimney-piece. The place was all on fire, so that I couldn't reach the door anyhow; and before I could get out of the window, I was burnt like this. You'd have been burnt alive in your bed but for me. I threw up a handful of gravel at your window. It must have woke you, didn't it?"

"Yes, yes, that was the sound that woke me; it seemed like a pistol going off. You saved my life, Stephen. It was very good of you to remember me."

"Yes; there's men in my place who wouldn't have thought of anybody but themselves."

"Can I do anything to ease you, Stephen?" asked his wife.

She had seated herself on the gra.s.s beside him, and had taken his head on her lap, supporting him gently. She was shocked to see the change the fire had made in his face, which was all blistered and distorted.

"No, nothing; till they come to carry me away somewhere. I'm all one burning pain."

His eyes closed, and he seemed to sink into a kind of stupor. Ellen called to one of the men. They might carry him to some place of shelter surely, at once, where a doctor could be summoned, and something done for his relief. There was a humble pract.i.tioner resident at Crosber, that is to say, about two miles from Wyncomb. One of the farm-servants might take a horse and gallop across the fields to fetch this man.

Robert Dunn, the bailiff, heard her cries presently and came to her. He was very much shocked by his master's condition, and at once agreed to the necessity of summoning a surgeon. He proposed that they should carry Stephen Whitelaw to some stables, which lay at a safe distance from the burning house, and make up some kind of bed for him there. He ran back to dispatch one of the men to Crosber, and returned immediately with another to remove his master.

But when they tried to raise the injured man between them, he cried out to them to let him alone, they were murdering him. Let him lie where he was; he would not be moved. So he was allowed to lie there, with his head on his wife's lap, and his tortured body covered by a coat, which one of the men brought him. His eyes closed again, and for some time he lay without the slightest motion.

The fire was gaining ground every instant, and there was yet no sign of the engine from Malsham; but Ellen Whitelaw scarcely heeded the work of destruction. She was thinking only of the helpless stricken creature lying with his head upon her lap; thinking of him perhaps in this hour of his extremity with all the more compa.s.sion, because he had always been obnoxious to her. She prayed for the rapid arrival of the surgeon, who must surely be able to give some relief to her husband's sufferings, she thought. It seemed dreadful for him to be lying like this, with no attempt made to lessen his agony. After a long interval he lifted his scorched eyelids slowly, and looked at her with a strange dim gaze.

"The west wing," he muttered; "is that burnt?"

"No, Stephen, not yet; but there's little hope they'll save any part of the house."

"They must save that; the rest don't matter--I'm insured heavily; but they must save the west wing."

His wife concluded from this that he had kept some of his money in one of those western rooms. The seed-room perhaps, that mysterious padlocked chamber, where she had heard the footstep. And yet she had heard him say again and again that he never kept an unnecessary shilling in the house, and that every pound he had was out at interest. But such falsehoods and contradictions are common enough amongst men of miserly habits; and Stephen Whitelaw would hardly be so anxious about those western rooms unless something of value were hidden away there. He closed his eyes again, and lay groaning faintly for some time; then opened them suddenly with a frightened look and asked, in the same tone,

"The west wing--is the west wing afire yet?"

"The wind blows that way, Stephen, and the flames are spreading. I don't think they could save it--not if the engine was to come this minute."

"But I tell you they must!" cried Stephen Whitelaw. "If they don't, it'll be murder--cold-blooded murder. O, my G.o.d, I never thought there was much harm in the business--and it paid me well--but it's weighed me down like a load of lead, and made me drink more to drown thought. But if it should come to this--don't you understand? Don't sit staring at me like that. If the fire gets to the west wing, it will be murder. There's some one there--some one locked up--that won't be able to stir unless they get her out."

"Some one locked up in the west wing! Are you mad, Stephen?"

"It's the truth. I wouldn't do it again--no, not for twice the money. Let them get her out somehow. They can do it, if they look sharp."

That unforgotten footstep and equally unforgotten scream flashed into Mrs. Whitelaw's mind with these words of her husband's. Some one shut up there; yes, that was the solution of the mystery that had puzzled and tormented her so long. That cry of anguish was no supernatural echo of past suffering, but the despairing shriek of some victim of modern cruelty. A poor relation of Stephen's perhaps--a helpless, mindless creature, whose infirmities had been thus hidden from the world. Such things have been too cruelly common in our fair free country.

Ellen laid her husband's head gently down upon the gra.s.s and sprang to her feet.

"In which room?" she cried. But there was no answer. The man lay with closed eyes--dying perhaps--but she could do nothing for him till medical help came. The rescue of that unknown captive was a more urgent duty.

She was running towards the burning house, when she heard a horse galloping on the road leading from the gate. She stopped, hoping that this was the arrival of the doctor; but a familiar voice called to her, and in another minute her father had dismounted and was close at her side.

"Thank G.o.d you're safe, la.s.s!" he exclaimed, with some warmer touch of paternal feeling than he was accustomed to exhibit. "Our men saw the fire when they were going to their work, and I came across directly. Where's Steph?"

"Under the trees yonder, very much hurt; I'm afraid fatally. But there's nothing we can do for him till the doctor comes. There's someone in still greater danger, father. For G.o.d's sake, help us to save her--some one shut up yonder, in a room at that end of the house."

"Some one shut up! One of the servants, do you mean?"

"No, no, no. Some one who has been kept shut up there--hidden--ever so long. Stephen told me just now. O, father, for pity's sake, try to save her!"

"Nonsense, la.s.s. Your husband's brain must have been wandering. Who should be shut up there, and you live in the house and not know it? Why should Stephen hide any one in his house? What motive could he have for such a thing? It isn't possible."

"I tell you, father, it is true. There was no mistaking Stephen's words just now, and, besides that, I've heard noises that might have told me as much, only I thought the house was haunted. I tell you there is some one--some one who'll be burnt alive if we're not quick--and every moment's precious. Won't you try to save her?"

"Of course I will. Only I don't want to risk my life for a fancy. Is there a ladder anywhere?"

"Yes, yes. The men have ladders."

"And where's this room where you say the woman is shut up?"

"At that corner of the house," answered Ellen, pointing.

"There's a door at the end of the pa.s.sage, but no window looking this way. There's only one, and that's over the wood-yard."

"Then it would be easiest to get in that way?"

"No, no, father. The wood's all piled up above the window. It would take such a time to move it."

"Never mind that. Anything's better than the risk of going into yonder house. Besides, the room's locked, you say. Have you got the key?"

"No; but I could get it from Stephen, I daresay."

"We won't wait for you to try. We'll begin at the wood-yard."

"Take Robert Dunn with you, father. He's a good brave fellow."

"Yes, I'll take Dunn."

The bailiff hurried away to the wood-yard, accompanied by Dunn and another man carrying a tall ladder. The farm-servants had ceased from their futile efforts at quenching the fire by this time. It was a labour too hopeless to continue. The flames had spread to the west wing. The ivy was already crackling, as the blaze crept over it. Happily that shut-up room was at the extreme end of the building, the point to which the flames must come last. And here, just at the moment when the work of devastation was almost accomplished, came the Malsham fire-engine rattling along gaily through the dewy morning, and the Malsham amateur fire-brigade, a very juvenile corps as yet, eager to cover itself with laurels, but more careful in the adjustment of its costume than was quite consistent with the desperate nature of its duty. Here came the brigade, in time to do something at any rate, and the engine soon began to play briskly upon the western wing.

Ellen Whitelaw was in the wood-yard, watching the work going on there with intense anxiety. The removal of the wood pile seemed a slow business, well as the three men performed their work, flinging down great crushing piles of wood one after another without a moment's pause. They were now joined by the Malsham fire-escape men, who had got wind of some one to be rescued from this part of the house, and were eager to exhibit the capabilities of a new fire-escape, started with much hubbub and glorification, after an awful fire had ravaged Malsham High-street, and half-a-dozen lives had been wasted because the old fire-escape was out of order and useless.

"We don't want the fire-escape," cried Mr. Carley as the tall machine was wheeled into the yard. "The room we want to get at isn't ten feet from the ground. You can give us a hand with this wood if you like. That's all we want."

The men clambered on to the wood-pile. It was getting visibly lower by this time, and the top of the window was to be seen. Ellen watched with breathless anxiety, forgetting that her husband might be dying under the poplars. He was not alone there; she had sent Mrs. Tadman to watch him.

Only a few minutes more and the window was cleared. A pale face could be dimly seen peering out through the dusty gla.s.s. William Carley tried to open the lattice, but it was secured tightly within. One of the firemen leapt forward upon his failure, and shattered every pane of gla.s.s and every inch of the leaden frame with a couple of blows from his axe, and then the bailiff clambered into the room.

He was hidden from those below about five minutes, and then emerged from the window, somehow or other, carrying a burden, and came struggling across the wood to the ladder by which he and the rest had mounted. The burden which he carried was a woman's figure, with the face hidden by his large woollen neckerchief. Ellen gave a cry of horror. The woman must surely be dead, or why should he have taken such pains to cover her face?