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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 43 |
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_ CHAPTER XLIII Archie was voluble about this non-essential in face of the personal tragedy, anxious to state his theory of the disaster, because he had more than an uncomfortable consciousness of what the servants and the men on the place were saying about it. And that was that the master himself had set the house on fire. It had started in the large, empty drawing-room, in which the decorators had been still working with paints, oils, and inflammable stuff. The workmen, however, had not been in the room for hours before the fire started. The only person who had entered it during the evening was Archie himself, for it was on his way from his library to his suite of rooms in the other wing. He had sat up late as usual after the guests had gone, smoking and drinking by himself, then had stumbled drowsily through the house to his bedroom, and on the way doubtless had dropped a match or lighted cigar in the drawing-room, and in his fuddled condition had failed to notice what he had done. The first person to discover the fire had happened to be Tom Clark, who had been returning late from the village to his shack on the hill, and had seen an unnatural glow through the long French windows of the drawing-room. By the time he had roused the house servants in their remote quarters and set off for the garage to summon help, the drawing-room and the adjoining hall were a mass of flame. When he returned with the new hose-cart and helpers the servants had already opened the large front door, admitting the wind, which blew the fire through the stairway like a bellows and completed the destruction of the house. Clark knew as well as Ferguson, the superintendent, and a half-dozen others, that when Archie emerged from his rooms on the ground floor, he was not fully undressed: though it was past one in the morning, he had not yet gone to bed. And although no one said anything, habitually cautious as such people usually are when indiscretion may involve them with their masters, they had easily made the correct deductions about the cause of the fire.... When Archie came from the orangery, he saw Clark standing on the terrace beside the ruins, examining the scene of his already famous exploit of the night before. He may well have been wondering how he had ever succeeded in keeping his balance and in crawling like a fly over the surface of the wall he had helped to put up. There were a number of other people loitering about the ruins, some of them from neighboring estates, who had motored over to offer help and lingered to discuss the disaster. Archie joined a group of these, among whom was the stone mason. He was feeling unhappy about many things, especially about his responsibility for the fire. He began to talk out his theory, turning first to Clark. "You didn't happen to see any of the men hanging about the place when you came up last night?" he asked. "No," the mason replied shortly. "I thought maybe those Italians might have been sneaking about here. They're ugly fellows," Archie remarked. "I didn't see nobody around." "Some of those fellows are regular anarchists," Archie persisted. "They wouldn't stop at firing a house to get even with a man they're down on." The mason stared at him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing. He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason's soul. The others had instinctively drawn away from them, and Clark himself looked as if he wanted to turn on his heel. But he listened. "I shouldn't be surprised if the house had been set on fire," Archie continued confidentially. "I'm going to have detectives look into it. It must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the drawing-room." The mason's lips twitched ominously. "But I think it was set on purpose!" Archie asserted. "Oh, go to hell!" the mason groaned, his emotions getting the better of him. "Set, nothing!... Spontaneous combustion! You know how it got on fire better than anybody." "What do you mean?" Archie demanded. But the mason strode away from him around the corner of the wall and disappeared. Archie followed him with his eyes, dazed and scowling. He had never liked the fellow, and resented the fact that he had been the hero of the disaster, while he himself, as he was well enough aware, had presented a sorry figure. Now this common workman had insulted him a second time, treated him as though he were dirt, dared even to make dastardly insinuations. Across Archie's miserable mind came Adelle's confused words about her property belonging to the stone mason--a half of it. He had explained this at the time as due to the shock and a woman's sentimental feeling of gratitude, but now he began to give it another and more sinister interpretation. What had she been doing up at this fellow's shack that afternoon? It hardly seemed possible, but unfortunately in Archie's set, even among the very best people socially of Bellevue, almost anything in the way of sex aberration was possible. He started back for the orangery, but before he got there he realized that it would be just as well not to approach his wife at this time with what he had in mind. Lying there with her dead child in her arms she had the air of a wounded wild animal that might be aroused to a dangerous fury. He had the sense to see that even if his worst suspicions were justified, it was hardly the moment to exact his social rights. So he wandered back to the ruin of Highcourt, where he found condoling friends, who took him off to the country club and kept him there, and it is to be feared provided him with his usual consolation for the manifold contrarieties of life, even for the very rich. _ |
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