The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 1026, August 26, 1899

A GREAT MYSTERY.

Everybody, not to say every householder, is alive to the acute dangers of escaping gas. Every other thought was suspended for the moment. The hall door was left open, watched over by little Hugh, and everybody, even the stranger, Mrs. Grant, rushed to open some window. The next thing was to find out the peccant burner.

Clementina called from the kitchen that the gas there was properly turned off, save one light still burning. It was the same in hall and dining-room; what was not alight was duly turned off. Miss Latimer, coming downstairs at the moment, reported that there was no odour of escaping gas in the higher regions.

“Well, there’s only my bedroom left,” said Tom, “and I’m certain I turned off mine.”

But as he opened his chamber door his face lengthened. There was no doubt now as to the source of the danger. No light was there, but the cock of the gas-bracket stood “full on.”

The mischief was swiftly remedied, though the room was so saturated with effluvia that it would take a prolonged airing to free it from the fumes. But Tom was terribly perturbed by the discovery.

“I could have made affidavit that I turned off the gas,” he declared. “I had it burning to dress by its light, and if I didn’t turn it off, how came the light to be out?”

“You must have forgotten it wasn’t a candle, and you must have blown it out, Tom,” said Miss Latimer.

“Well, then, I’m getting about as bad as my old landlady’s servant girls,” decided Tom. “I can’t believe it of myself. Henceforth, I’ll never feel sure of having done anything!”

“Perhaps you did turn it out, and then gave it an accidental knock which turned the cock back again,” suggested Miss Latimer; “such things will happen sometimes.”

Tom shook his head.

“The cock is very stiff,” he said.

“You must remember you were in haste. We are all rather put about just now,” Miss Latimer went on. “But you must not dwell on it. All is well that ends well.”

Still Tom remained dissatisfied and unconvinced, and took no part in the eager discussion which had already begun between the two anxious wives seated at the breakfast table.

“I think I know how I’ll manage,” said the Captain’s wife. “I’ll go to the shipping offices myself. No”—she interrupted herself as Lucy made a hasty movement—“you mustn’t think of coming with me. With your face, my dear, you’d never get anything out of them while there was the faintest chance of their being able to hold it back. But perhaps,” she added turning to Tom, “this young gentleman will come with me to show me the way, and to take care of me over those busy City crossings, for I recollect that when I once went with the Captain to the office, there was some clever steering to be done ere we got there!”

Up to this point nobody had remembered that Mrs. Grant did not know Tom. Now Lucy recollected herself and introduced the boy as an employee in Charlie’s office, and at present a member of the Challoner household.

Mrs. Grant beamed on him.

“This is most fortunate,” said she. “For I’m sure your masters will give you an off day to help me find out whether there’s any news of their Mr. Challoner—and of my Captain!”

“I’m sure they will!” cried Tom. “The chiefs are always asking whether we have heard anything. Still I’ll have to go to the office first to tell them why I’m wanting leave of absence.” He suited the action to the word, bustling away, saying, “Wait till I come back—and I’ll be back as fast as I can fly!”

When he was gone, Mrs. Grant and Lucy had time for a little quiet talk. It was very easy for Mrs. Grant to say that on the platform she had recognised Lucy from her old photograph, but she did not add that she was shocked at the change visible in her, the manifold signs of nerve strain and exhaustion.

“If she has much more waiting, she’ll set sail herself for a far-off shore,” thought the good woman. Yet when she found that Lucy had regular duties at the Institute, she would not allow Lucy to dream of absenting herself for her sake.

“No, no,” she said. “I did not come here to upset your regular ways. For one thing, if you begin to change those, people will realise how anxious you are, and then they’ll pull long faces to you, and that will make everything still harder and worse to bear. It’s wise to keep a still sough, as we say in the North. You just go about your usual day’s work, and when you come home, you’ll find me and the young gentleman returned and waiting, and whatever we have heard, you shall hear it all—honour bright, I promise you.”

Lucy had her full share of the sweet womanly instinct of obedience. It is an instinct which is often strong in proportion to the strength of the whole nature. It works so naturally and grows so strong in the fortunate daughter and the happy wife, that it adds terribly to the sense of disaster when the props to which it twines are withdrawn and it is left trailing on the ground. Lucy was quite ready to succumb to the genial domination of this wholesome kindly woman, already her sister in suspense and who might so soon be also her sister in sorrow. She went upstairs before she went away, and came down saying that poor Tom’s mischance with his gas-burner had made her so nervous that she had carefully tested all the upstairs burners.

“Somebody else might have made a similar mistake,” said she, “but they are all right.” So she went off, taking Hugh to the Kindergarten on her way.

“Let her keep regularly to her teaching,” Mrs. Grant confided to Miss Latimer. “Keep her up to that, I beg you. While we wait, and when waiting ends—as it may—there’s nothing helps us as work does. It’s the blessed will of God that what most of us have to do for our bread is exactly what is good for our souls. The wash-tub and the scrubbing brush have done lots for many a poor body who is left behind. I’ve often seen that. It’s not for any widow’s having to work that I’m ever sorry, but because her work is often so ill-paid, that do what she may, she can’t keep her head above water. But, I say,” she added, sniffing, “don’t you smell the gas very strong again?”

“Oh, it is only the remains of the accident in the boy’s bedroom,” answered Miss Latimer. “The breeze through the back windows is driving it more to the front of the house.”

Just at that moment Tom’s key was heard turning in the front door, and directly he entered the house he cried—

“Why, the smell of gas is worse than ever!”

“So I think,” observed Mrs. Grant.

Tom rushed to his own bedroom.

“There’s something at the bottom of all this,” he said. “I’m as positive that I turned it off the first time as we all are that it was turned off afterwards.” He stamped about the chamber, exclaiming, “It’s all right here now, the gas is turned off, and there’s no smell inside here. The mischief is somewhere else.”

“Mrs. Challoner examined all the burners upstairs, and saw that they were right before she went out,” said Miss Latimer. “Perhaps you notice the smell more because you’ve just come in from the fresh air, Tom.”

“But I’ve been in the house all the time,” persisted Mrs. Grant.

Tom sprang upstairs.

“There!” he shouted. “Here’s the staircase burner turned full on, and it’s the same here—and here—and here,” he cried, rushing from chamber to chamber, turning off burners and throwing open windows. “Yes,” he reiterated, as he came downstairs again, “every burner upstairs was started—the only ones turned off are that in my room where the mischief began and in the dining-room where you were sitting.”

“They are all right downstairs,” remarked Clementina from the back of the hall. But Tom went down and made a re-examination before he would be satisfied on that point.

Mrs. Grant and Miss Latimer looked at each other bewildered.

“I’ve not been upstairs to do up the rooms yet,” observed Clementina. “The only room I’ve tidied yet is Mr. Tom’s. I heard the mistress say to you, ma’am, as she went out, that she’d just been over all the burners, and that they were right.”

“Poor dear lady,” said Mrs. Grant; “she has been so flurried and put about that when she tried the handles, she must have turned the gas on and never noticed that she did it!”

“That must have been so, I suppose,” Miss Latimer reluctantly admitted; “but it’s hard to believe. Lucy is so wonderfully careful. However much she suffers herself, none of her duties suffer!”