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Page 66
He was just as much set up by his landlady--a comfortable, middle-aged
woman, who fostered true Yorkshire notions about breakfast, and knew how
to cook a good dinner at night. With her Collingwood had soon come to
terms, and to his new abode had transferred a quantity of books and
pictures from London. He soon became acquainted with the domestic
menage. There was the landlady herself, Mrs. Cobcroft, who, having no
children of her own, had adopted a niece, now grown up, and a teacher in
an adjacent elementary school: there was a strapping, rosy-cheeked
servant-maid, whose dialect was too broad for the lodger to understand
more than a few words of it; finally there was Mr. Cobcroft, a
mild-mannered, quiet man who disappeared early in the morning, and was
sometimes seen by Collingwood returning home in the evening.
Lately, with the advancing spring, this unobtrusive individual was seen
about the garden at the end of the day: Collingwood had so seen him on
the evening before the talk with Eldrick and Byner, busied in setting
seeds in the flower-beds. And he had asked Mrs. Cobcroft, just then in
his sitting-room, if her husband was fond of gardening.
"It's a nice change for him, sir," answered the landlady. "He's kept
pretty close at it all day in the office yonder at Mallathorpe's Mill,
and it does him good to get a bit o' fresh air at nights, now that the
fine weather's coming on. That was one reason why we took this old
place--it's a deal better air here nor what it is in the town."
"So your husband is at Mallathorpe's Mill, eh?" asked Collingwood.
"Been there--in the counting-house--boy and man, over thirty years,
sir," replied Mrs. Cobcroft.
"Did he see that terrible affair then--was it two years ago?"
The landlady shook her head and let out a weighty sigh.
"Aye, I should think he did!" she answered. "And a nice shock it gave
him, too!--he actually saw that chimney fall--him and another clerk were
looking out o' the counting-house window when it gave way."
Collingwood said no more then--except to remark that such a sight must
indeed have been trying to the nerves. But for purposes of his own he
determined to have a talk with Cobcroft, and the next evening, seeing
him in his garden again, he went out to him and got into conversation,
and eventually led up to the subject of Mallathorpe's Mill, the new
chimney of which could be seen from a corner of the garden.
"Your wife tells me," observed Collingwood, "that you were present when
the old chimney fell at the mill yonder?"
Cobcroft, a quiet, unassuming man, usually of few words, looked along
the hillside at the new chimney, and nodded his head. A curious,
far-away look came into his eyes.
"I was, sir!" he said. "And I hope I may never see aught o' that sort
again, as long as ever I live. It was one o' those things a man can
never forget!"
"Don't talk about it if you don't want to," remarked Collingwood. "But
I've heard so much about that affair that----"
"Oh, I don't mind talking about it," replied Cobcroft. He leaned over
the fence of his garden, still gazing at the mill in the distance.
"There were others that saw it, of course: lots of 'em. But I was close
at hand--our office was filled with the dust in a few seconds."
"It was a sudden affair?" asked Collingwood.
"It was one of those affairs," answered Cobcroft slowly, "that some folk
had been expecting for a long time--only nobody had the sense to see
that it might happen at some unexpected minute. It was a very old
chimney. It looked all right--stood plumb, and all that. But Mr.
Mallathorpe--my old master, Mr. John Mallathorpe, I'm talking of--he got
an idea from two or three little things, d'ye see, that it wasn't as
safe as it ought to be. And he got a couple of these professional
steeplejacks to examine it. They made a thorough examination, too--so
far as one could tell by what they did. They'd been at the job several
days when the accident happened. One of 'em had only just come down when
the chimney fell. Mr. Mallathorpe, himself, and his manager, and his
cashier, had just stepped out of the counting-house and crossed the yard
to hear what this man had got to say when--down it came! Not the
slightest warning at the time. It just--collapsed!"
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