Villette

ASHTI.

To wonder sadly, did I say? No: a new influence began to act upon my
life, and sadness, for a certain space, was held at bay. Conceive a
dell, deep-hollowed in forest secresy; it lies in dimness and mist: its
turf is dank, its herbage pale and humid. A storm or an axe makes a
wide gap amongst the oak-trees; the breeze sweeps in; the sun looks
down; the sad, cold dell becomes a deep cup of lustre; high summer
pours her blue glory and her golden light out of that beauteous sky,
which till now the starved hollow never saw.

A new creed became mine—a belief in happiness.

It was three weeks since the adventure of the garret, and I possessed
in that case, box, drawer up-stairs, casketed with that first letter,
four companions like to it, traced by the same firm pen, sealed with
the same clear seal, full of the same vital comfort. Vital comfort it
seemed to me then: I read them in after years; they were kind letters
enough—pleasing letters, because composed by one well pleased; in the
two last there were three or four closing lines half-gay, half-tender,
“by feeling touched, but not subdued.” Time, dear reader, mellowed
them to a beverage of this mild quality; but when I first tasted their
elixir, fresh from the fount so honoured, it seemed juice of a divine
vintage: a draught which Hebe might fill, and the very gods approve.

Does the reader, remembering what was said some pages back, care to ask
how I answered these letters: whether under the dry, stinting check of
Reason, or according to the full, liberal impulse of Feeling?

To speak truth, I compromised matters; I served two masters: I bowed
down in the houses of Rimmon, and lifted the heart at another shrine. I
wrote to these letters two answers—one for my own relief, the other for
Graham’s perusal.

To begin with: Feeling and I turned Reason out of doors, drew against
her bar and bolt, then we sat down, spread our paper, dipped in the ink
an eager pen, and, with deep enjoyment, poured out our sincere heart.
When we had done—when two sheets were covered with the language of a
strongly-adherent affection, a rooted and active gratitude—(once, for
all, in this parenthesis, I disclaim, with the utmost scorn, every
sneaking suspicion of what are called “warmer feelings:” women do not
entertain these “warmer feelings” where, from the commencement, through
the whole progress of an acquaintance, they have never once been
cheated of the conviction that, to do so would be to commit a mortal
absurdity: nobody ever launches into Love unless he has seen or dreamed
the rising of Hope’s star over Love’s troubled waters)—when, then, I
had given expression to a closely-clinging and deeply-honouring
attachment—an attachment that wanted to attract to itself and take to
its own lot all that was painful in the destiny of its object; that
would, if it could, have absorbed and conducted away all storms and
lightnings from an existence viewed with a passion of solicitude—then,
just at that moment, the doors of my heart would shake, bolt and bar
would yield, Reason would leap in vigorous and revengeful, snatch the
full sheets, read, sneer, erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct,
and send a terse, curt missive of a page. She did right.

I did not live on letters only: I was visited, I was looked after; once
a week I was taken out to La Terrasse; always I was made much of. Dr.
Bretton failed not to tell me why he was so kind: “To keep away the
nun,” he said; “he was determined to dispute with her her prey. He had
taken,” he declared, “a thorough dislike to her, chiefly on account of
that white face-cloth, and those cold grey eyes: the moment he heard of
those odious particulars,” he affirmed, “consummate disgust had incited
him to oppose her; he was determined to try whether he or she was the
cleverest, and he only wished she would once more look in upon me when
he was present:” but that she never did. In short, he regarded me
scientifically in the light of a patient, and at once exercised his
professional skill, and gratified his natural benevolence, by a course
of cordial and attentive treatment.

One evening, the first in December, I was walking by myself in the
carré; it was six o’clock; the classe-doors were closed; but within,
the pupils, rampant in the licence of evening recreation, were
counterfeiting a miniature chaos. The carré was quite dark, except a
red light shining under and about the stove; the wide glass-doors and
the long windows were frosted over; a crystal sparkle of starlight,
here and there spangling this blanched winter veil, and breaking with
scattered brilliance the paleness of its embroidery, proved it a clear
night, though moonless. That I should dare to remain thus alone in
darkness, showed that my nerves were regaining a healthy tone: I
thought of the nun, but hardly feared her; though the staircase was
behind me, leading up, through blind, black night, from landing to
landing, to the haunted grenier. Yet I own my heart quaked, my pulse
leaped, when I suddenly heard breathing and rustling, and turning, saw
in the deep shadow of the steps a deeper shadow still—a shape that
moved and descended. It paused a while at the classe-door, and then it
glided before me. Simultaneously came a clangor of the distant
door-bell. Life-like sounds bring life-like feelings: this shape was
too round and low for my gaunt nun: it was only Madame Beck on duty.

“Mademoiselle Lucy!” cried Rosine, bursting in, lamp in hand, from the
corridor, “on est là pour vous au salon.”

Madame saw me, I saw Madame, Rosine saw us both: there was no mutual
recognition. I made straight for the salon. There I found what I own I
anticipated I should find—Dr. Bretton; but he was in evening-dress.

“The carriage is at the door,” said he; “my mother has sent it to take
you to the theatre; she was going herself, but an arrival has prevented
her: she immediately said, ‘Take Lucy in my place.’ Will you go?”

“Just now? I am not dressed,” cried I, glancing despairingly at my dark
merino.

“You have half an hour to dress. I should have given you notice, but I
only determined on going since five o’clock, when I heard there was to
be a genuine regale in the presence of a great actress.”

And he mentioned a name that thrilled me—a name that, in those days,
could thrill Europe. It is hushed now: its once restless echoes are all
still; she who bore it went years ago to her rest: night and oblivion
long since closed above her; but then her day—a day of Sirius—stood
at its full height, light and fervour.

“I’ll go; I will be ready in ten minutes,” I vowed. And away I flew,
never once checked, reader, by the thought which perhaps at this moment
checks you: namely, that to go anywhere with Graham and without Mrs.
Bretton could be objectionable. I could not have conceived, much less
have expressed to Graham, such thought—such scruple—without risk of
exciting a tyrannous self-contempt: of kindling an inward fire of shame
so quenchless, and so devouring, that I think it would soon have licked
up the very life in my veins. Besides, my godmother, knowing her son,
and knowing me, would as soon have thought of chaperoning a sister with
a brother, as of keeping anxious guard over our incomings and
outgoings.

The present was no occasion for showy array; my dun mist crape would
suffice, and I sought the same in the great oak-wardrobe in the
dormitory, where hung no less than forty dresses. But there had been
changes and reforms, and some innovating hand had pruned this same
crowded wardrobe, and carried divers garments to the grenier—my crape
amongst the rest. I must fetch it. I got the key, and went aloft
fearless, almost thoughtless. I unlocked the door, I plunged in. The
reader may believe it or not, but when I thus suddenly entered, that
garret was not wholly dark as it should have been: from one point there
shone a solemn light, like a star, but broader. So plainly it shone,
that it revealed the deep alcove with a portion of the tarnished
scarlet curtain drawn over it. Instantly, silently, before my eyes, it
vanished; so did the curtain and alcove: all that end of the garret
became black as night. I ventured no research; I had not time nor will;
snatching my dress, which hung on the wall, happily near the door, I
rushed out, relocked the door with convulsed haste, and darted
downwards to the dormitory.

But I trembled too much to dress myself: impossible to arrange hair or
fasten hooks-and-eyes with such fingers, so I called Rosine and bribed
her to help me. Rosine liked a bribe, so she did her best, smoothed and
plaited my hair as well as a coiffeur would have done, placed the lace
collar mathematically straight, tied the neck-ribbon accurately—in
short, did her work like the neat-handed Phillis she could be when she
chose. Having given me my handkerchief and gloves, she took the candle
and lighted me down-stairs. After all, I had forgotten my shawl; she
ran back to fetch it; and I stood with Dr. John in the vestibule,
waiting.

“What is this, Lucy?” said he, looking down at me narrowly. “Here is
the old excitement. Ha! the nun again?”

But I utterly denied the charge: I was vexed to be suspected of a
second illusion. He was sceptical.

“She has been, as sure as I live,” said he; “her figure crossing your
eyes leaves on them a peculiar gleam and expression not to be
mistaken.”

“She has not been,” I persisted: for, indeed, I could deny her
apparition with truth.

“The old symptoms are there,” he affirmed: “a particular pale, and what
the Scotch call a ‘raised’ look.”

He was so obstinate, I thought it better to tell him what I really
had seen. Of course with him it was held to be another effect of the
same cause: it was all optical illusion—nervous malady, and so on. Not
one bit did I believe him; but I dared not contradict: doctors are so
self-opinionated, so immovable in their dry, materialist views.

Rosine brought the shawl, and I was bundled into the carriage.

The theatre was full—crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there:
palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged
and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place
before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard
reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if
she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings
severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study
of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new
planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.

She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come.
She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star
verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos—hollow,
half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing—half lava, half glow.

I had heard this woman termed “plain,” and I expected bony harshness
and grimness—something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the
shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale
now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.

For a while—a long while—I thought it was only a woman, though an
unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude.
By-and-by I recognised my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something
neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These
evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble
strength—for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and
the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the
pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her
voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac
mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.

It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.

It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.

Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand;
bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the
public—a milder condiment for a people’s palate—than Vashti torn by
seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they
haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.

Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her
audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor, in finite measure,
resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She
stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular
like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest
crimson threw her out, white like alabaster—like silver: rather, be it
said, like Death.

Where was the artist of the Cleopatra? Let him come and sit down and
study this different vision. Let him seek here the mighty brawn, the
muscle, the abounding blood, the full-fed flesh he worshipped: let all
materialists draw nigh and look on.

I have said that she does not resent her grief. No; the weakness of
that word would make it a lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately
embodied: she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried
down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to
conflict with abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends
her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain, for her, has no
result in good: tears water no harvest of wisdom: on sickness, on death
itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but
also she is strong; and her strength has conquered Beauty, has overcome
Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile
as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each maenad movement
royally, imperially, incedingly upborne. Her hair, flying loose in
revel or war, is still an angel’s hair, and glorious under a halo.
Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she
rebelled. Heaven’s light, following her exile, pierces its confines,
and discloses their forlorn remoteness.

Place now the Cleopatra, or any other slug, before her as an obstacle,
and see her cut through the pulpy mass as the scimitar of Saladin clove
the down cushion. Let Paul Peter Rubens wake from the dead, let him
rise out of his cerements, and bring into this presence all the army of
his fat women; the magian power or prophet-virtue gifting that slight
rod of Moses, could, at one waft, release and re-mingle a sea
spell-parted, whelming the heavy host with the down-rush of overthrown
sea-ramparts.

Vashti was not good, I was told; and I have said she did not look good:
though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much of
unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred
essence descend one day from above?

What thought Dr. Graham of this being?

For long intervals I forgot to look how he demeaned himself, or to
question what he thought. The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart
out of its wonted orbit; the sunflower turned from the south to a
fierce light, not solar—a rushing, red, cometary light—hot on vision
and to sensation. I had seen acting before, but never anything like
this: never anything which astonished Hope and hushed Desire; which
outstripped Impulse and paled Conception; which, instead of merely
irritating imagination with the thought of what might be done, at the
same time fevering the nerves because it was not done, disclosed
power like a deep, swollen winter river, thundering in cataract, and
bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the steep and steelly sweep of its
descent.

Miss Fanshawe, with her usual ripeness of judgment, pronounced Dr.
Bretton a serious, impassioned man, too grave and too impressible. Not
in such light did I ever see him: no such faults could I lay to his
charge. His natural attitude was not the meditative, nor his natural
mood the sentimental; impressionable he was as dimpling water, but,
almost as water, unimpressible: the breeze, the sun, moved him—metal
could not grave, nor fire brand.

Dr. John could think and think well, but he was rather a man of
action than of thought; he could feel, and feel vividly in his way,
but his heart had no chord for enthusiasm: to bright, soft, sweet
influences his eyes and lips gave bright, soft, sweet welcome,
beautiful to see as dyes of rose and silver, pearl and purple, imbuing
summer clouds; for what belonged to storm, what was wild and intense,
dangerous, sudden, and flaming, he had no sympathy, and held with it no
communion. When I took time and regained inclination to glance at him,
it amused and enlightened me to discover that he was watching that
sinister and sovereign Vashti, not with wonder, nor worship, nor yet
dismay, but simply with intense curiosity. Her agony did not pain him,
her wild moan—worse than a shriek—did not much move him; her fury
revolted him somewhat, but not to the point of horror. Cool young
Briton! The pale cliffs of his own England do not look down on the
tides of the Channel more calmly than he watched the Pythian
inspiration of that night.

Looking at his face, I longed to know his exact opinions, and at last I
put a question tending to elicit them. At the sound of my voice he
awoke as if out of a dream; for he had been thinking, and very intently
thinking, his own thoughts, after his own manner. “How did he like
Vashti?” I wished to know.

“Hm-m-m,” was the first scarce articulate but expressive answer; and
then such a strange smile went wandering round his lips, a smile so
critical, so almost callous! I suppose that for natures of that order
his sympathies were callous. In a few terse phrases he told me his
opinion of, and feeling towards, the actress: he judged her as a woman,
not an artist: it was a branding judgment.

That night was already marked in my book of life, not with white, but
with a deep-red cross. But I had not done with it yet; and other
memoranda were destined to be set down in characters of tint indelible.

Towards midnight, when the deepening tragedy blackened to the
death-scene, and all held their breath, and even Graham bit his
under-lip, and knit his brow, and sat still and struck—when the whole
theatre was hushed, when the vision of all eyes centred in one point,
when all ears listened towards one quarter—nothing being seen but the
white form sunk on a seat, quivering in conflict with her last, her
worst-hated, her visibly-conquering foe—nothing heard but her throes,
her gaspings, breathing yet of mutiny, panting still defiance; when, as
it seemed, an inordinate will, convulsing a perishing mortal frame,
bent it to battle with doom and death, fought every inch of ground,
sold every drop of blood, resisted to the latest the rape of every
faculty, would see, would hear, would breathe, would live, up
to, within, well-nigh beyond the moment when death says to all sense
and all being—“Thus far and no farther!”—

Just then a stir, pregnant with omen, rustled behind the scenes—feet
ran, voices spoke. What was it? demanded the whole house. A flame, a
smell of smoke replied.

“Fire!” rang through the gallery. “Fire!” was repeated, re-echoed,
yelled forth: and then, and faster than pen can set it down, came
panic, rushing, crushing—a blind, selfish, cruel chaos.

And Dr. John? Reader, I see him yet, with his look of comely courage
and cordial calm.

“Lucy will sit still, I know,” said he, glancing down at me with the
same serene goodness, the same repose of firmness that I have seen in
him when sitting at his side amid the secure peace of his mother’s
hearth. Yes, thus adjured, I think I would have sat still under a
rocking crag: but, indeed, to sit still in actual circumstances was my
instinct; and at the price of my very life, I would not have moved to
give him trouble, thwart his will, or make demands on his attention. We
were in the stalls, and for a few minutes there was a most terrible,
ruthless pressure about us.

“How terrified are the women!” said he; “but if the men were not almost
equally so, order might be maintained. This is a sorry scene: I see
fifty selfish brutes at this moment, each of whom, if I were near, I
could conscientiously knock down. I see some women braver than some
men. There is one yonder—Good God!”

While Graham was speaking, a young girl who had been very quietly and
steadily clinging to a gentleman before us, was suddenly struck from
her protector’s arms by a big, butcherly intruder, and hurled under the
feet of the crowd. Scarce two seconds lasted her disappearance. Graham
rushed forwards; he and the gentleman, a powerful man though
grey-haired, united their strength to thrust back the throng; her head
and long hair fell back over his shoulder: she seemed unconscious.

“Trust her with me; I am a medical man,” said Dr. John.

“If you have no lady with you, be it so,” was the answer. “Hold her,
and I will force a passage: we must get her to the air.”

“I have a lady,” said Graham; “but she will be neither hindrance nor
incumbrance.”

He summoned me with his eye: we were separated. Resolute, however, to
rejoin him, I penetrated the living barrier, creeping under where I
could not get between or over.

“Fasten on me, and don’t leave go,” he said; and I obeyed him.

Our pioneer proved strong and adroit; he opened the dense mass like a
wedge; with patience and toil he at last bored through the
flesh-and-blood rock—so solid, hot, and suffocating—and brought us to
the fresh, freezing night.

“You are an Englishman!” said he, turning shortly on Dr. Bretton, when
we got into the street.

“An Englishman. And I speak to a countryman?” was the reply.

“Right. Be good enough to stand here two minutes, whilst I find my
carriage.”

“Papa, I am not hurt,” said a girlish voice; “am I with papa?”

“You are with a friend, and your father is close at hand.”

“Tell him I am not hurt, except just in my shoulder. Oh, my shoulder!
They trod just here.”

“Dislocation, perhaps!” muttered the Doctor: “let us hope there is no
worse injury done. Lucy, lend a hand one instant.”

And I assisted while he made some arrangement of drapery and position
for the ease of his suffering burden. She suppressed a moan, and lay in
his arms quietly and patiently.

“She is very light,” said Graham, “like a child!” and he asked in my
ear, “Is she a child, Lucy? Did you notice her age?”

“I am not a child—I am a person of seventeen,” responded the patient,
demurely and with dignity. Then, directly after: “Tell papa to come; I
get anxious.”

The carriage drove up; her father relieved Graham; but in the exchange
from one bearer to another she was hurt, and moaned again.

“My darling!” said the father, tenderly; then turning to Graham, “You
said, sir, you are a medical man?”

“I am: Dr. Bretton, of La Terrasse.”

“Good. Will you step into my carriage?”

“My own carriage is here: I will seek it, and accompany you.”

“Be pleased, then, to follow us.” And he named his address: “The Hôtel
Crécy, in the Rue Crécy.”

We followed; the carriage drove fast; myself and Graham were silent.
This seemed like an adventure.

Some little time being lost in seeking our own equipage, we reached the
hotel perhaps about ten minutes after these strangers. It was an hotel
in the foreign sense: a collection of dwelling-houses, not an inn—a
vast, lofty pile, with a huge arch to its street-door, leading through
a vaulted covered way, into a square all built round.

We alighted, passed up a wide, handsome public staircase, and stopped
at Numéro 2 on the second landing; the first floor comprising the abode
of I know not what “prince Russe,” as Graham informed me. On ringing
the bell at a second great door, we were admitted to a suite of very
handsome apartments. Announced by a servant in livery, we entered a
drawing-room whose hearth glowed with an English fire, and whose walls
gleamed with foreign mirrors. Near the hearth appeared a little group:
a slight form sunk in a deep arm-chair, one or two women busy about it,
the iron-grey gentleman anxiously looking on.

“Where is Harriet? I wish Harriet would come to me,” said the girlish
voice, faintly.

“Where is Mrs. Hurst?” demanded the gentleman impatiently and somewhat
sternly of the man-servant who had admitted us.

“I am sorry to say she is gone out of town, sir; my young lady gave her
leave till to-morrow.”

“Yes—I did—I did. She is gone to see her sister; I said she might go: I
remember now,” interposed the young lady; “but I am so sorry, for Manon
and Louison cannot understand a word I say, and they hurt me without
meaning to do so.”

Dr. John and the gentleman now interchanged greetings; and while they
passed a few minutes in consultation, I approached the easy-chair, and
seeing what the faint and sinking girl wished to have done, I did it
for her.

I was still occupied in the arrangement, when Graham drew near; he was
no less skilled in surgery than medicine, and, on examination, found
that no further advice than his own was necessary to the treatment of
the present case. He ordered her to be carried to her chamber, and
whispered to me:—“Go with the women, Lucy; they seem but dull; you can
at least direct their movements, and thus spare her some pain. She must
be touched very tenderly.”

The chamber was a room shadowy with pale-blue hangings, vaporous with
curtainings and veilings of muslin; the bed seemed to me like
snow-drift and mist—spotless, soft, and gauzy. Making the women stand
apart, I undressed their mistress, without their well-meaning but
clumsy aid. I was not in a sufficiently collected mood to note with
separate distinctness every detail of the attire I removed, but I
received a general impression of refinement, delicacy, and perfect
personal cultivation; which, in a period of after-thought, offered in
my reflections a singular contrast to notes retained of Miss Ginevra
Fanshawe’s appointments.

The girl was herself a small, delicate creature, but made like a model.
As I folded back her plentiful yet fine hair, so shining and soft, and
so exquisitely tended, I had under my observation a young, pale, weary,
but high-bred face. The brow was smooth and clear; the eyebrows were
distinct, but soft, and melting to a mere trace at the temples; the
eyes were a rich gift of nature—fine and full, large, deep, seeming to
hold dominion over the slighter subordinate features—capable, probably,
of much significance at another hour and under other circumstances than
the present, but now languid and suffering. Her skin was perfectly
fair, the neck and hands veined finely like the petals of a flower; a
thin glazing of the ice of pride polished this delicate exterior, and
her lip wore a curl—I doubt not inherent and unconscious, but which, if
I had seen it first with the accompaniments of health and state, would
have struck me as unwarranted, and proving in the little lady a quite
mistaken view of life and her own consequence.

Her demeanour under the Doctor’s hands at first excited a smile; it was
not puerile—rather, on the whole, patient and firm—but yet, once or
twice she addressed him with suddenness and sharpness, saying that he
hurt her, and must contrive to give her less pain; I saw her large
eyes, too, settle on his face like the solemn eyes of some pretty,
wondering child. I know not whether Graham felt this examination: if he
did, he was cautious not to check or discomfort it by any retaliatory
look. I think he performed his work with extreme care and gentleness,
sparing her what pain he could; and she acknowledged as much, when he
had done, by the words:—“Thank you, Doctor, and good-night,” very
gratefully pronounced as she uttered them, however, it was with a
repetition of the serious, direct gaze, I thought, peculiar in its
gravity and intentness.

The injuries, it seems, were not dangerous: an assurance which her
father received with a smile that almost made one his friend—it was so
glad and gratified. He now expressed his obligations to Graham with as
much earnestness as was befitting an Englishman addressing one who has
served him, but is yet a stranger; he also begged him to call the next
day.

“Papa,” said a voice from the veiled couch, “thank the lady, too; is
she there?”

I opened the curtain with a smile, and looked in at her. She lay now at
comparative ease; she looked pretty, though pale; her face was
delicately designed, and if at first sight it appeared proud, I believe
custom might prove it to be soft.

“I thank the lady very sincerely,” said her father: “I fancy she has
been very good to my child. I think we scarcely dare tell Mrs. Hurst
who has been her substitute and done her work; she will feel at once
ashamed and jealous.”

And thus, in the most friendly spirit, parting greetings were
interchanged; and refreshment having been hospitably offered, but by
us, as it was late, refused, we withdrew from the Hôtel Crécy.

On our way back we repassed the theatre. All was silence and darkness:
the roaring, rushing crowd all vanished and gone—the damps, as well as
the incipient fire, extinct and forgotten. Next morning’s papers
explained that it was but some loose drapery on which a spark had
fallen, and which had blazed up and been quenched in a moment.