At the Gate of Samaria. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ had been catholic enough, and her independent acquaintance with life sufficiently broad, to render the fact familiar to her that kings and beggar maidens if they fall in love with each other usually dispense with the ceremony of marriage. But then love pardons all—a formula in Clytie's new theory of social statics, perhaps wisely not accepted in Durdleham—and all the sorrow in lawlessness that had come within Clytie's small experience had been in her eyes sanctified by love. Yet who could have loved this woman? She was not more than three-and-thirty now—young enough to show that she had never possessed the mere attraction of comeliness. The boy remained, however, a living proof.

      She thought of Winifred, and sighed a little. Why should she be forever craving after this strange hidden knowledge, after the taste of things bitter, when there was so much sweetness in life? The thought of Winifred's pure, gentle touch in flowers and delicate bloom of fruit and calm, transparent glass came over her like a rebuke. And then she smiled again, remembering how Winifred had coaxed her once to try and paint a bunch of roses, and how dismayed she had been at the egregious failure. No; the cobbler must not go beyond his last.

      “I don't suppose I am very wicked after all,” she said to herself.

      She rested her chin upon her hand and let her thoughts wander idly, building up a romance for Jack. He was a foundling, of noble parents, and Mrs. Burmester was only his foster mother. Then she roused herself with a little exclamation of disgust:

      “What a perfectly Durdleham solution!”

      The next moment, with an instinct common to folks whether at Durdleham or London, she sprang from her chair and cried:

      “There's something burning!”

      The room in fact was full of thin smoke, and, as Clytie rose, a snake of red flame ran up the curtains by the writing-desk. She rushed to them, but as soon as she had touched them, the folds being shaken out, the whole burst into a blaze. She fled to the door about to scream “Fire!” at the top of her voice.

      What happened next neither she nor John Kent could afterwards exactly explain. He was on his way downstairs when the door was suddenly thrown open and a stream of light burst on to the gloomy landing. Clytie ran almost into his arms crying, “My room is on fire!” and then he was tearing down blazing, fiery curtains, smothering them with rugs, and stamping out glowing masses of drapery amid much smoke and confusion. It did not take very long to extinguish the flames, but the struggle while it lasted was fierce and exciting. Clytie stood by watching him, her hand at her throat. It was a new sensation to her to have a man acting for her in an emergency. She had failed. She saw by the man's energy, his fearless dealing with the blazing mass, his strength, his violence, that she never could have succeeded. She admired him, was angry at it; felt herself a helpless woman, was angry at that too; wished that the danger had been a little greater, at which she was more angry than ever.

      However, when the last traces of the fire were extinguished, and the man stood before her, somewhat out of breath, wiping his forehead, this little train of emotions came to an end. She gazed piteously at her curtainless windows and scorched wainscoting. He turned and opened the window, whence the damp, gusty wind whirled the smoke in billowing drifts about the room.

      “There!” he said, with a breath of relief.

      “Oh, how can I thank you?” said Clytie. + “Don't,” he replied with cheerful laconism. “I am glad I was handy—for your sake as well as my own. I live upstairs.”

      “I know; I have seen you come in and out. In fact, you passed us to-day. But still you have saved the whole house, and I thank you very, very much!”

      “How did it all happen?” he asked, removing for the first time his white slouch hat and disclosing a shock of brown curly hair.

      “The candle-shade on the desk; do you see? It must have caught fire and toppled over on to the curtains. I was sitting here and forgot I had left the candles alight; and then I smelled something burning and saw the curtains in a blaze. Then I ran out to call somebody.”

      “That was very stupid,” said Kent, pushing back the desk from the middle of the room, where he had wheeled it; “by opening the door you made the things burn quicker. All you had to do was to drag down the curtains and cover them with the hearthrug. And then it is very silly to use paper candle-shades. They are no good, and they are always causing accidents. I hope you are not going to get any more.”

      The assured paternal air with which Kent delivered himself of this little speech did away with its apparent rudeness. Clytie, who at first looked rather resentfully at her rebuker, laughed.

      They bent down together to restore order among the singed rugs. Beneath them was Kent's waterproof, on to which he had thrown the blazing curtains. It was very badly burned and of course rendered useless.

      “It is utterly ruined!” exclaimed Clytie, examining the holes with a helpless expression of regret on her face.

      And then her eyes suddenly fell upon a great ugly red splash upon his hand. He withdrew it hastily, but she caught the sleeve of his coat. The stuff came away between her fingers.

      “You have burned yourself horribly. Oh, what can I do?”

      “It's nothing,” said Kent. “It doesn't hurt. I'll go and put something on it. Please don't trouble. Goodnight.”

      He moved towards the door, with his hat and burned waterproof in his hand. But Clytie could not let him leave in this way. The woman in her was moved.

      “Oh, please don't go until I have seen what harm you have got. I should feel so unhappy about it. I may be able to dress it for you—until you can see a doctor.”

      She spoke so sincerely, so frankly, and looked at him with such genuine concern, that he surrendered with a good grace. He came forward to the table where the big lamp was burning and put out his arm for her inspection. It was really injured, and was beginning to be exceedingly painful.

      “What can I do for it?” she asked rather helplessly.

      “Oh, some olive oil and a bit of rag will be the best.”

      Clytie produced some cotton wool and some oil from a cruet in the sideboard and then sought after some linen to bandage with. Kent noticed that she did not ask him for his handkerchief, nor did she use her own, but went rather impulsively to a workbasket and tore off a strip of soft material that was lying on the top. It was very expensive stuff, and the whole piece of work of which it was to form a part was spoiled. It was characteristic of her. Another woman would have remembered where she had stored some odds and ends of old linen.

      Kent watched her curiously as she was bending over his hand. He had often seen her before, but his life went on so far outside the sphere of women that he had scarcely given her a thought as he had passed her by. He had never even inquired her name. From the mere fact of her renting the studio it had come involuntarily to his knowledge that she followed pursuits more or less artistic; but his curiosity had never been aroused. Now that he had been suddenly thrown into close contact with her he was interested. He smiled at himself for the unwonted pleasure he found in watching the lights dancing through her hair, the brows contracted ever so little in the absorption of her occupation, the long nervous fingers, set on the broad palm, deftly arranging the cotton wool, the scrap of old lace at her throat and wrists. She was pretty, striking, to look upon, but he had not formed a very high impression of her otherwise. It was just the sort of thing a woman would do, to run out of the room when it was on fire, to give up thinking for herself in any emergency and trust blindly in Providence—or a СКАЧАТЬ