They ran down the train away from the fire. They struggled up to doors and got them open, dragging men, women and children out, shouting to them to run clear of the train.
At last, the wooden carriages, combined with gaslight, went up one after the other in explosions of flame.
Harry and Becket struggled clear and watched in horror as the flaming train lying on its side began to slide down the embankment. With a great crashing roar, it tumbled down onto the houses beneath.
Harry sat down and buried his face in his hands. His leg, injured in the Boer War, was throbbing but he hardly felt the pain.
And then the rain began to pour down, streaking their sooty faces with white lines, running down like tears.
Still they sat there, master and servant, numb with shock.
At last Harry struggled to his feet and helped Becket up. The air was full of the sound of the bells of fire engines. And then there was silence.
They walked to where the head of the train had been. It had collided full on with the up train, and despite the rain, the up train was burning from end to end.
Rose, dressed as Columbine, descended the stairs. “How pretty you look!” exclaimed Lady Polly.
“Thank you. Where is Captain Cathcart?”
“Nowhere, as usual,” snapped her mother. “We will need to go without him.”
The earl and countess were attired in eighteenth-century dress.
Rose’s heart sank. She knew she looked well in her costume and had been looking forward to seeing Harry admire it.
She felt a ball of hurt somewhere in her stomach. He did not care for her, not even a little bit. He had snubbed her again. How the débutantes would titter and gossip behind their fans when she arrived alone.
As they were about to leave, Peter called. “I wanted to show you my costume,” he said, swinging a black coat from his shoulders. Despite her hurt, Rose began to laugh. He was dressed as harlequin.
“As my fiancé has not put in an appearance and we match, I would be honoured if you would escort me.”
“Delighted and honoured,” said Peter.
The earl and countess exchanged little smiles. Peter was eligible and very suitable. The captain was not. Surely Rose would break the engagement now.
∨ Sick of Shadows ∧
Six
For talk six times with the same single lady,
And you may get the wedding dresses ready.
– LORD BYRON
A stonemason who had been rescued from a third-class carriage along with his wife and two children had demanded at the time to know the name of his rescuer. Harry had simply smiled and run off to try to rescue someone else. But Becket had shouted back, “Captain Harry Cathcart.”
One of the stonemason’s sons had a broken arm. Reporters haunting the nearby hospitals began to hear of some hero who had gone from carriage to carriage rescuing people. They came upon the stonemason as he was leaving the hospital with his family, his son’s arm in a splint. He told them that the lives of himself and his family had been saved by a Captain Harry Cathcart.
Daisy slipped out the following day for a walk. She was very troubled. Peter and Rose had won first prize for their costumes. Everyone was talking about what a handsome pair they made.
She walked until she reached Piccadilly. Outside the new Ritz Hotel, a news-vendor was shouting, “Read all abaht it! Hero of train crash.”
Daisy was about to walk on when she recognized Harry’s face on the front page. She fumbled in her reticule for her change purse and bought a copy and went into Green Park where she could read it in peace.
The photograph of Harry had been taken a year before at a charity fund-raising garden party. Daisy read in growing horror about the train crash. Becket was referred to only as Harry’s manservant. He could have been killed, she thought, the newspaper trembling in her hands, oblivious to the black ink that was soiling her gloves.
Various friends telephoned the earl to exclaim over Harry’s bravery. He told his wife.
“Perhaps we will say nothing of this to Rose,” said Lady Polly. “It is better at the moment that she should think he did not care enough about her to attend last night.”
At that moment, Rose entered the drawing-room carrying a letter and a little jeweller’s box.
“I am returning Captain’s Cathcart’s ring,” she said. “I have written him a letter asking him to release me from the engagement.”
“It’s all for the best,” said Lady Polly. “I’ll get John footman to take it straight to him. Matthew shall send an announcement to the newspapers straight away.”
Harry had told Becket to take the day off. Phil, proud of his temporary position as butler, was answering the door and telling the press in strangulated tones of refinement that the captain was “not at home.”
Phil was unrecognizable as the wreck that Harry had first brought home. His skin was clear and healthy and his figure erect. He loved his room and his books. He wished he’d been on that train with the guv’nor and maybe had a chance to rescue him.
He answered the door again, prepared to send another reporter away, but it was the earl’s footman who stood there. He handed Phil the letter and the little jeweller’s box. “My Lady Rose requested me to give these to Captain Cathcart.”
Phil took the letter and box in to where Harry was sitting at his desk in the parlour.
“From Lady Rose,” said Phil.
Harry looked bleakly at the letter and then at the jeweller’s box. “Thank you, Phil, that will be all.”
“Right, guv.” Phil backed out of the room as if before royalty.
Harry opened the jeweller’s box. The ring he had given Rose sparkled up at him.
He broke open the seal on the letter. He read: “Dear Captain Cathcart, As you have once again shown your indifference to me by failing to escort me last night or even to send an apology, I am terminating our engagement. This will be best for both of us. Yours sincerely, Rose Summer.”
“The hell with her,” said Harry out loud. “Now I need never be hurt again!”
Daisy hurried upstairs, clutching the Evening News. She erupted into Rose’s sitting-room, crying, “You’ll never believe it!”
“What is it, Daisy?” Rose was slumped in an armchair by the fire.
“It’s about the captain. He’s a hero. Oh, if only they had got Becket’s name!”
“Let me see that newspaper.”
Daisy handed it over. Rose read the story of Harry’s bravery with increasing horror.
She turned a white face up to Daisy. “I have just written to him sending his ring back and Matthew has sent a notice to the Times cancelling our engagement.”
“Why?” shrieked Daisy.
“Because he did not attend me last night. I thought he was snubbing me.”
“Cancel the notice!”
“I can’t,” said Rose dismally. “It’s done. It’s for the best.”
“You fool,” said Daisy bitterly. “You bloody little fool.” She burst into tears and fled from the room.
Rose was in more disgrace than she had been when her photograph had appeared once on the front page of the Daily Mail showing her attending a suffragette rally. She had jilted England’s latest hero. The announcement had appeared in the Times and the gossipy papers had recognized a story. All the facts of Dolly’s murder were dragged up again. A nasty bit of speculation began to run through society that someone as unstable as Lady Rose Summer might have killed Dolly herself in a fit of jealous rage.
Daisy was angry with her, wondering if she would ever see Becket again. Three days after the announcement Daisy felt she could not bear it any longer and slipped out of the house and took a hansom to Chelsea.