Part 12 (1/2)

'It's a bad job, Mr. Mumford. My name is Cobb: I daresay you've heard of me. I came to see Miss Derrick, and I was clumsy enough to knock the lamp over.'

'Knock the lamp over! How could you do that? Were you drunk?'

'No, but you may well ask the question. I stumbled over something--a little chair, I think--and fell against the table with the lamp on it.'

'Where's Miss Derrick?'

'Upstairs. She got rather badly burnt, I'm afraid. We've sent for a doctor.'

'And here I am,' spoke a voice behind them. 'Sorry to see this, Mr.

Mumford.'

The two went upstairs together, and on the first landing encountered Emmeline, sobbing and wailing hysterically with the child in her arms. Her husband spoke soothingly.

'Don't, don't, Emmy. Here's Dr. Billings come to see Miss Derrick.

She's the only one that has been hurt. Go down, there's a good girl, and send somebody to help in Miss Derrick's room; you can't be any use yourself just now.'

'But how did it happen? Oh, _how_ did it happen?'

'I'll come and tell you all about it. Better put the boy to bed again, hadn't you?'

When she had recovered her senses Emmeline took this advice, and, leaving the nurse by the child's cot, went down to survey the ruin of her property. It was a sorry sight. Where she had left a reception-room such as any suburban lady in moderate circ.u.mstances might be proud of; she now beheld a mere ma.s.s of unrecognisable furniture, heaped on what had once been a carpet, amid dripping walls and under a grimed ceiling.

'Oh! Oh!' She all but sank before the horror of the spectacle. Then, in a voice of fierce conviction, 'She did it! _She_ did it! It was because I told her to leave. I _know_ she did it on purpose!'

Mumford closed the door of the room, shutting out Cobb and the cook and the housemaid. He repeated the story Cobb had told him, and quietly urged the improbability of his wife's explanation. Miss Derrick, he pointed out, was lying prostrate from severe burns; the fire must have been accidental, but the accident, to be sure, was extraordinary enough. Thereupon Mrs. Mumford's wrath turned against Cobb. What business had such a man--a low-cla.s.s savage--in _her_ drawing-room? He must have come knowing that she and her husband were away for the evening.

'You can question him, if you like,' said Mumford. 'He's out there.'

Emmeline opened the door, and at once heard a cry of pain from upstairs. Mumford, also hearing it, and seeing Cobb's misery-stricken face by the light of the hall lamp, whispered to his wife:

'Hadn't you better go up, dear? Dr. Billings may think it strange.'

It was much wiser to urge this consideration than to make a direct plea for mercy. Emmeline did not care to have it reported that selfish distress made her indifferent to the sufferings of a friend staying in her house. But she could not pa.s.s Cobb without addressing him severely.

'So _you_ are the cause of this!'

'I am, Mrs. Mumford, and I can only say that I'll do my best to make good the damage to your house.'

'Make good I fancy you have strange ideas of the value of the property destroyed.'

Insolence was no characteristic of Mrs. Mumford. But calamity had put her beside herself; she spoke, not in her own person, but as a woman whose carpets, curtains and bric-a-brac have ignominiously perished.

'I'll make it good,' Cobb repeated humbly, 'however long it takes me. And don't be angry with that poor girl, Mrs. Mumford. It wasn't her fault, not in any way. She didn't know I was coming; she hadn't asked me to come. I'm entirely to blame.'

'You mean to say you knocked over the table by accident?'

'I did indeed. And I wish I'd been burnt myself instead of her.'

He had suffered, by the way, no inconsiderable scorching, to which his hands would testify for many a week; but of this he was still hardly aware. Emmeline, with a glance of uttermost scorn, left him, and ascended to the room where the doctor was busy. Free to behave as he thought fit, Mumford beckoned Cobb to follow him into the front garden, where they conversed with masculine calm.