The Oldest Flame (6 page)

Instead of answering him, Mrs. Meade came
straight to the point that had been troubling her. “Mark, what did
you mean the other day by saying it would take a ‘trial by fire’ to
prove yourself to Rose?”

Mark looked startled. He stared for just a
second, and then a look a look of horrified understanding crept
into his wide brown eyes. “Is
that
what they think?”

Mrs. Meade looked gravely and steadily into
his face. “What
did
you mean?”

A rush of hot color had flooded Mark’s face,
up to his forehead. “I don’t know what I meant,” he said. “I
just—said it! I never thought—” He leaned against the wall as if
for support, his hand gripping nervously at the stair-rail. “Does
the sheriff really think that I did it?”

“He—has his suspicions,” said Mrs. Meade as
gently as she could. A pitying, yet still puzzled frown rested on
her brow as she watched the boy.

“Does Rose know?” he said almost in a
whisper.

“No, I think not. I don’t believe Sheriff
Royal shared any of his ideas when he questioned her.”

Mark came forward off the wall with sudden
anxious urgency. “Please don’t tell her, Mrs. Meade! Keep her from
knowing
anything
if you can help it. I’d—I’d be too ashamed
for her to even imagine that about me.”

“Why?” demanded Mrs. Meade unexpectedly. “If
Rose is such a romantic girl, she might think it grand, you doing
it for her sake.”

“No, no,” said Mark, shaking his head
distractedly. “I don’t want her to know. I couldn’t bear it. Can’t
you keep it from her? And then if the sheriff finds out something
else caused the fire, she’d never even have to know they ever
thought that—about me.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Meade, her kind heart
relenting a little before the boy’s distress. “I won’t say anything
to her.”

Mark thanked her, stumbling over his words,
and then went up the staircase at the rate of three stairs a
stride, as if he were afraid someone was after him.

Mrs. Meade went slowly down the stairs and
into the lobby, and walked out into the grounds of the hotel. She
walked along a smooth, well-kept path until she came to a bench by
the side of it, and sat down. How long ago it seemed since she had
sat on another bench in the Lansburys’ garden in such happiness and
contentment, and watched the sun beginning to lower over the
verdant valley. Two days—only two days ago.

She considered what Mark had begged of her
just now. In a way, she could understand it. Leaving aside the
tragedy that had occurred that night, what had happened to him
during the fire was humiliating enough, especially compared to what
might have been. Mrs. Meade’s lips twitched with half-reluctant
humor as she pictured the opportunity for drama as Mark might have
pictured it. To have braved the perils of a burning house to carry
a fainting Rose to safety—to be the first one she saw when her eyes
opened; to care for her and comfort her—and perhaps to open her
eyes to the devotion she had scorned, the devotion of a young man
who would go through flames to save her…

Instead, he had arrived late on the scene,
had failed to save Miss Parrish, had failed even to find Rose, and
in the end he had been the one to be unceremoniously packed out of
the burning house over his rival’s shoulder—insult added to injury.
Perhaps the sting would be worse if Rose were to think he had
planned it himself and still had everything go so awfully awry.

But there was still something wrong with this
image…

Mrs. Meade suddenly wondered why Mrs.
Lansbury had said
“It was my responsibility.”
Had she known
about some plan of her husband’s that endangered her guests? Or was
she blaming herself for having taken her son’s unhappy romance too
lightly?

Mrs. Meade did not put much stock in Andrew
Royal’s suggestion that Mark had conspired with his father. Mark
was far too transparent not to have betrayed some underlying
agitation or anticipation connected with the plot beforehand. On
the contrary, he had been consumed with Rose and Emery that whole
evening, and had barely seemed to notice his father’s existence.
No, if Mark was responsible, he had acted alone.

But something just did not fit…

A step on the path roused Mrs. Meade from her
meditations. She looked up to see Steven Emery approaching.

“Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Emery,” she
said.

“Good afternoon,” said Emery, as he stopped
by the bench. He indicated the seat with a gesture. “May I?”

Mrs. Meade acquiesced at once and he sat
down. He also looked, she observed, as if he had been thinking over
something that puzzled or concerned him. He looked at her for a
moment as if he had a question he was weighing whether or not to
ask her, and then he spoke.

“Mrs. Meade,” he said, “I heard something
this afternoon which frankly astonished me. Is it true that the
sheriff suspects Mark Lansbury of having set fire to the house the
other night?”

“How did you hear that?” said Mrs. Meade, her
thoughts going at once to Rose.

“I went over to the site of the house this
afternoon, to see if I might be of some use to the men who are
salvaging what they can. Sheriff Royal and his deputy have been
over there nearly all day searching for clues. As I was going up
the walk, I heard the sheriff speaking in a loud voice somewhere
just around the corner of the ruins. From what he said, I
gathered—but I could hardly believe it.” He added, “I also heard
the sheriff mention your name, as if he had discussed it with you,
so I wondered if you might be able to tell me something more.”

“There isn’t much more to tell, I’m
afraid—beyond the fact that he is suspected.”

“But on what grounds?”

“On the grounds of something overheard,
curiously enough,” said Mrs. Meade, and Steven Emery smiled a
little as though accepting a reproof. “It was something one of the
maids heard Mark say, in the midst of the confusion that
night.”

She seemed to hesitate, and then went on in a
lower voice, as if sharing a confidence, “You see, Mr. Emery…Mark
is at a rather difficult time, for him. He’s an impetuous boy, and
he wants to prove himself at something—anything. Only the other day
he was telling me he wished for some opportunity, some ‘trial by
fire’ to pass through so he could prove himself by it.”

Emery looked amazed. “He said
that
?”

“Yes, I’m afraid he did.”

“What an extraordinary coincidence,” said
Emery, slowly. “But Mrs. Meade, if he spoke that plainly—of course
I wouldn’t presume to dictate to you, but—don’t you think that
someone ought to be
told
?”

“Sheriff Royal knows all that there is to
know,” said Mrs. Meade simply.

“It’s really too bad,” said Steven Emery,
shaking his head. He looked over at Mrs. Meade with a regretful
half-smile. “I would have to be a very blind man indeed not to see
that Mark regards me with less than friendly feelings, but I can’t
help liking him in spite of it. I suppose all we can hope is that
they won’t be too hard on him.”

He stood up, and looked toward the hotel. “I
had better be getting back,” he said. “Thank you for telling me all
of this.”

“You’re welcome,” said Mrs. Meade. “And Mr.
Emery—you won’t…say anything about this just yet, will you?”

Their eyes met as she spoke, and Steven Emery
looked as if he understood. “No,” he said. “I won’t speak of it to
anyone.”

When he had gone Mrs. Meade sat alone for a
little longer. But the lengthening afternoon was growing cooler and
she had brought no shawl, so presently she rose and went back to
the hotel.

She met Andrew Royal on the last turn of the
path. The sheriff had a streak of soot on the end of his nose, and
sundry other smudges on his clothes in spite of evident efforts to
brush them off. And from the way he eyed her, and waited a moment
before speaking, she knew he had something to say which he
suspected his listener would not like.

“No luck,” he said at last. “I’ve dug round
that heap of ashes and crawled through that garden all day. I’ve
questioned that confounded butler until we’re both black in the
face, and I’ve even wired to Denver to check up on Lansbury’s
business. No leads. Now that Grey fellow, there’s holes in
his
bank-book you could drop a caboose through, but that’s
no help.”

He paused. “It all points to the kid, Lettie.
I know how you feel about it. But where there’s smoke, there’s
fire, and he’s the only one with any smoke around him.”

“I knew you would come to that conclusion,”
said Mrs. Meade, “and I understand why. But I’ve thought it all
over very carefully myself, Andrew, and there are three things that
do not fit.”

“Such’s what?”

“The books, first of all,” said Mrs.
Meade.

Royal looked blank. “What books?”

“You said the fires in the library were
started with piles of books and sofa-cushions. Now, Mark has been
fond of books his whole life. No one who is really a devoted reader
would start a fire with books, if they could find something else
handy.

“And then there was his shirt. I loosened his
collar when he was unconscious, after Steven Emery brought him out
of the house, and I saw that the whole thing was buttoned
wrongly—all the buttons were in the wrong buttonholes. That looks
like he had dressed hurriedly, at the alarm, rather than having
been up before everyone else to start the fire.”

“It wouldn’t go in court,” said Royal,
shaking his head.

Mrs. Meade’s voice suddenly grew firmer. “But
that’s not all, Andrew. There’s one question I have been asking
myself over and over:
Why doesn’t Mark show remorse over the
death of Miss Parrish?
We have been so concerned with the
details, I think we’ve been in danger of forgetting at times that a
woman died in that fire.
And that isn’t like Mark
. If he
really started that fire, and because of him a woman was killed, he
ought to be absolutely sick with guilt. Why isn’t he? He knows how
she died. He was outside her door trying to save her when—”

Mrs. Meade suddenly stopped, leaving the
sentence unfinished, her eyes fixed on some indefinable point in
mid-air. There was a strange expression on her face. Her mouth
opened slowly.

“Eh?” said Andrew Royal after a moment, when
it was clear she was not going to speak again immediately.

“Yes—I see it all now,” said Mrs. Meade in a
hushed voice, without looking at him. “That was why it happened so
quickly, when he was there in the hall. And that must mean…” Her
voice trailed off. “Now I understand. And it’s worse—even worse
than what we imagined, Andrew.”

Royal stared at her. Every sign of
belligerence and impatience had left his weathered face, so
impressed was he by the strange, serious way in which she
spoke.

Mrs. Meade took a step toward him and spoke
in a low, hurried voice. “Andrew—will you do just one thing for me?
Don’t do anything more until tomorrow. Don’t arrest or question
anyone. It will only be a few hours’ difference. There is just one
thing I want to find out. But first—” She thought for a minute, and
then finished with decision, “First I must speak to Rose.”

* * *

She found Rose sitting alone in the
window-seat of her hotel room in the near-twilight, her cheek
resting on her hand, gazing pensively out into the softly gathering
gloom. Rose turned slowly to look at Mrs. Meade as the older woman
sat down opposite her, and Mrs. Meade saw that her gray eyes were
dark and almost sad with thought, but in the shadowed corner of the
window-seat her face seemed again very young and childish.

“My dear,” Mrs. Meade began quietly, “there
is something I would like to tell you. You may not understand it
now, or understand why I am saying it, but I do not ask you to
understand—only to take it to heart.”

She smiled suddenly. “You are becoming a
young woman, Rose, and I know you are looking forward to love.
Every girl does. But it is important for you to always ask yourself
whether a man’s professed love for you is something that thinks
only of itself—of himself. There are many people who can love
selfishly, but that kind of love is not always the truest, even
though sometimes it can appear splendid on the outside.”

“You sound so serious!” said Rose, wide-eyed,
her voice half alarm, half wondering.

“I
am
serious. But I am also sure that
you will find a good man. For now, I only want you to remember—”
Mrs. Meade hesitated. “Some young girls might think it romantic, a
man committing a desperate act—a crime, even—for the sake of love.
They might be flattered to think he had done it for their sake. But
at heart it is only selfishness—a sacrifice of righteousness and
honor so that he might have the thing he wanted.”

She smiled again, a reassuring, motherly
smile, and patted Rose’s hand. “I think you will understand—some
time—what I am trying to say. Will you only promise me you will
remember it?”

“I’ll try,” said Rose faintly.

Mrs. Meade rose, and bent to kiss her cheek.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said. Then she moved quietly across the
dim room to the door, went out and closed it behind her.

“And now,” she said to herself, in the hall,
“I must speak to the Lansburys.”

* * *

The clock in the hotel lobby was chiming a
quarter past twelve when Sheriff Andrew Royal labored up two
flights of the broad red-carpeted staircase as if he were scaling a
mountain, and looked about at the doors for the number of the room
he was seeking. When he found it, he knocked, and in a few seconds
the door was opened by Mr. Lansbury, who stepped aside for him to
enter.

In spite of the lateness of the hour, there
were three other people in the room—Mrs. Lansbury, Mrs. Meade, and
George Grey. A lamp was burning on the table by which Mrs. Meade
sat, and near it lay a small pile of papers and envelopes. The
demeanor of everyone in the room, and the very silence with which
they had awaited the coming of the sheriff, made it plain that
something had happened, or was about to happen. It was also evident
that both of the Lansburys already knew what it was, but Grey had
not yet been informed, though from the look on his face as he
waited he guessed that it was something serious.