Bella got her second wind and ran like Atalanta. They speedily outstripped the crowd, and were almost the first to cross the planks over the boundary channel. Inglis and his policemen were already running up the corn-path. Why they should run, or why the villagers should run, Cyril did not know, as there was no water and no fire brigade, hose, or engine, and no chance of saving the ancient mansion. He and Bella ran because they wished to see the last of the old home.
"Who can have set it on fire?" Cyril kept asking.
"Perhaps a tramp," suggested Bella breathlessly, but in her heart she felt that something more serious was in the wind. A strange dread gripped her heart, and the name of Mrs. Vand was on the tip of her tongue, although she never uttered it.
As the weather was warm and the ground dry--for there had been no rain since the electric storm which raged when Vand and Durgo had gone down into the muddy waters of the boundary channel--the old house flamed furiously. The dry wood caught like tinder, and when Cyril and the girl arrived the whole place was hidden weirdly by dense black smoke, amidst which flashed sinister points of fire. Inglis and his men attempted to enter the house, but were driven back by the fierce flames which burst from the cracking windows; also the great door was closed and could not be forced open. They were forced to retreat, and the inspector nearly tumbled over Miss Faith, as Bella was now called.
"Can"t you get her out?" asked Inglis breathlessly.
"Get her out!" cried the girl, terrified, and half grasping his meaning.
"Mrs. Vand; she is in there," and he pointed to the furnace of flame.
Bella screamed and Cyril turned pale. "You must be mistaken," he said.
"No, no," replied the inspector, who was greatly agitated, for even his official phlegm was not proof against the terror of the position. "The London police wired to me at Pierside that Mrs. Vand had gone down to Marshely. We waited at the station to arrest her, but she got off at a previous station and was seen by your village policeman to run across the marshes. He wired to my Pierside office, and the wire was repeated to the station we waited at. We got a fly and hurried here only to see the smoke. I cried out "Fire!" to you as we pa.s.sed. Great heavens, what a blaze!"
"Can"t you get her out?" cried Bella, who was white with despair. Little as she had liked Mrs. Vand, the position was a dreadful one to contemplate.
"What can we do?" said the officer, with a gesture of despair. "There is no water and no buckets: and if there were, what bucket of water would put out that conflagration. You might as well try and extinguish h.e.l.l with a squirt."
Bella paid no attention to the vehemence of his expression, but turned to Cyril. "What can we do?" she wailed. "Oh, what can we do?"
"Nothing, nothing. Look at the police, look at the villagers. We can do nothing. If Mrs. Vand is in that blazing house G.o.d help her."
There was now a great crowd of men, women and children all gathered some distance away from the burning mansion, trampling down the tall corn in their efforts to see. Bella, with the police and her lover, stood the nearest to the house. "Please G.o.d she is not there!" breathed the girl, clasping her hands in agony.
At that moment, as if to give the lie to her kindly prayer, a window on the first storey was flung open and Mrs. Vand"s head was poked out. Even at this distance Bella could see that her hair was in disorder, her face haggard, and her whole mien wild. Breaking away desperately from Cyril she rushed right up almost under the window, despite the fierce heat.
"Aunt, oh aunt," she cried, stretching up her hands, "come down and save yourself!"
"No! No. They shall not catch me! I shall not be hanged! I am innocent!
I am innocent!" shrieked Mrs. Vand, and Bella could almost see the mad flash in her eyes.
"Bella! Bella! come back," shouted Cyril, and dashing forward he caught the girl in his arms and carried her away as the front door fell outward. A long tongue of flame shot out and licked the gra.s.s where Bella had stood a moment since.
By this time the house was blazing furiously, and every window save that out of which Mrs. Vand"s head was thrust, vomited flame. The sky was now very dark, and the vivid redness of the flame in the gloom made a terrible and lovely spectacle. Bella, in her despair, would have rushed again to implore her aunt to escape, but that Cyril and Inglis held her firmly. "It is useless," they said, and the girl could not but admit that they were right.
Mrs. Vand apparently was quite mad. She kept flinging up her arms, and shouting out taunts to the police for having failed to catch her. Then she was seized with a fit of frenzy and began to throw things out of the window. Chairs, and looking-gla.s.ses, and rugs, and table ornaments did she fling out. Suddenly a devilish thought occurred to her crazed brain.
She noted that a tongue of uncut corn stretched from the main body of wheat almost under the window. Darting back she plucked a flaming brand from the crackling door, and, regardless how it burnt the flesh of her hand, she ran to the window. "Off! off! off with you!" cried Mrs. Vand, and carefully dropping the brand on to the tongue of corn.
In one moment, as it seemed, the thread of fire ran along to the main body of the corn, and in an inconceivably short s.p.a.ce of time, the acres of golden grain were a sheet of flame. The villagers, the police, both Cyril and Bella, ran for their lives, and it took them all their speed to escape the eager flames which licked their very heels. Pell-mell down to the boundary channel ran everyone. The plank bridge was broken, and many tumbled into the muddy water. Mrs. Vand stood at the window yelling, and clapping her hands like a fiend, and the whole vast fields of wheat flared like a gigantic bonfire.
Half swimming, half holding on to the broken bridge planks, Cyril, with Bella on his other arm, managed to scramble through that muddy ditch.
Beside him shrieked women and cursed men and screamed children. The police having safely reached the other side stretched out arms to those in the water. Cyril and Bella were soon on dry land, and shortly everyone else was saved. Not a single life was lost, either by fire or water. And when safe on the hither side of this Jordan, the excited, smoke-begrimed throng looked at the flaming fields and the roaring furnace of the Manor house. The smoke and flame of the burning ascended to heaven and reddened the evening sky. Mrs. Vand, in setting fire to her last refuge, had indeed provided herself with a n.o.ble pyre and a dramatic end. Before those who watched could draw breath after their last exertions, the roof of the mansion fell in with a crash. Mrs. Vand gave one wild cry and fell backward. Then fierce, red flames enwrapped the whole structure, while far and wide the raging fire swept over the fields of the Solitary Farm.
"May G.o.d have mercy on her soul!" said Cyril removing his cap.
"Ah!" said Inglis, "if I had caught her, I wonder if the judge would have said as much."
"No," replied Bella, "she is dead, and she was innocent. G.o.d help her poor soul!" and everyone around echoed the wish.
Bella and Cyril did not go to London the next morning as they had arranged, but three days later. In the meanwhile search had been made amongst the ruins of the Manor-house for the body of Mrs. Vand. But nothing could be found. In that fierce furnace of flame she had been burnt to a cinder, and not even calcined bones could be gathered together. In a whirlwind of flame the unhappy woman had vanished, and her end affected Bella deeply. Indeed, Cyril feared lest the much-tried girl should fall ill, and on the third day he brought round the motor-car to Miss Ankers" cottage, to insist that she should come with him to London.
"But if we marry so soon it seems like a disrespect to Mrs. Vand,"
argued Bella, "and she has left me her money, remember."
"My dear, don"t be morbid," advised Dora; "you will be ill if you stay.
Get married, and go to Paris, and try to forget all these terrible things."
"What do you say, Pence?" asked Cyril, who in the meantime had carried out Bella"s boxes.
Pence, looking lean and haggard after his recent illness, but with a much calmer light in his eyes, nodded. "I say, go, Miss Faith, and get married as soon as you can."
"You wouldn"t have given that advice once," said Bella, with a faint smile, as Dora a.s.sisted her to adjust her cloak.
"No. But I have grown wiser."
"What a compliment!"
"You have forgiven me, have you not?"
"Yes, I have." She held out her hand, "and the best thing I can wish you is the best wife in the world."
As if by chance, her eyes rested on Dora, who blushed, and then on Pence, who grew red. Afterwards, with half a smile and half a sigh, she got into the car beside Cyril. Dora hopped like a bird on to the step to kiss her.
Lister raised his cap, and the car went humming down the road on the way to peace and happiness.
"That"s the end of her solitary life," said Pence, thankfully.
"On the Solitary Farm," rejoined Dora; "come and have some breakfast."
THE END.
THE BEST NOVELS BY FERGUS HUME
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
The Sealed Message