“Let’s try the stable,” John suggested. “There must be somebody alive.”
On their way to the stable they stared curiously at a great unsightly heap of ashes, still smoking and glowing in spots, on the back terrace, as if a miscellaneous lot of things had been gathered hastily together and burned.
“Strange place for a fire,” said Thane, with an unspoken intuition that John shared.
The stable-man was sitting up, smoking, with the look of a man whose eyes have seen more than mind can grasp. He knew Thane and seemed comforted by the advent of human society.
“Nobody in the house. What’s the matter?” Thane asked.
“I ain’t the housekeeper,” said the stable-man. “No, thank God, I ain’t her. She’s on her way.”
“Way where?”
“Wherever,” he said, with the air of a man who for cause has newly resolved not to meddle with things that will be.
“What do you know about her?” John asked.
They had only to listen and piece it together. He was full of it. The woman’s name was Ann Sibthorp and she came from nobody knew where,—most likely from some place where they had ceased to speak well of her. She had been Enoch’s housekeeper for many years and at last his only house servant. She was not a woman you could get acquainted with. You wouldn’t if you could. So it wasn’t that anybody cared, but that she gave herself airs about her station, became oppressive and drove the help away. She did much that Enoch probably knew nothing about. Yet she had her way, even with him, and it got so nobody dared to cross her. For several days she had been going strange. When the old man died she seemed to lose her mind. She looked without seeing. There was no sense in her eyes. A little while before dark she began to carry things from the house and pile them out there on the terrace. He could not say exactly what they were,—some pieces of furniture, a chair, a bed no doubt; yes, and some clothes, a pair of white slippers and little what-not objects. When he saw her pouring oil on them he protested. She didn’t hear him. She wasn’t natural and he was afraid to do anything except to draw a lot of water in case something caught fire. Then she lighted the pile and watched it burn, fairly standing in the flames, poking them with a stick, rubbing her hands in them, taking on like a witch. It made a God-fearing person sick to see her. After that she went in and he didn’t see her again until just now when she rushed out of the house and disappeared among the trees.
“She’s a going to do herself a damage, that woman,” he predicted, calmly. “Found this in the edge of the ashes,” he remembered, drawing from his pocket a small square brown case, badly singed at one corner. “Maybe you would know what it is.”
It was a daguerreotype in a faded leather case. Thane opened it and held it for John to see in the light of the stable lantern.
“I recognize it,” said John. Thane gave it to him.
That was all from the stable-man. And that was all that was ever known about Ann Sibthorp. She was never seen again, dead or alive.
“You know the picture?” Thane asked, as they were parting at the gate.
“It’s a portrait of my mother,” John answered.
“Esther that you just told me about?”
“Yes.”
XXXII
AT daybreak smoke was seen curling out of one of the cold mill stacks. Everybody in New Damascus knew that Enoch’s body was to be burned in a puddling furnace.
“There he goes!” one said. “There goes old Enoch now.”
“Not yet,” said another. “Take a hotter fire than that. Don’t you see it’s just started. That’s his puddler son-in-law getting it ready for him.”
It takes eight or ten hours, starting with it cold, to get the maw of a puddling furnace white hot. In this case it would take even longer since Thane had it all to do alone and would be unable to stoke the fire steadily. There were other duties. Simple obsequies would take place at the mansion in the afternoon. That was all the public was permitted to know. Only Thane and Agnes knew at what hour the cremation would begin. The point of keeping it secret was obvious.
All day long people watched the smoke with fascinated horror. Crowds gathered on the mountainside and at points overlooking the mill to witness this weird translation of the symbol that was Enoch,—symbol of iron, symbol of indestructibility. There were many who believed he would not burn.
After the funeral services had taken place at the mansion interest in the smoke became intense. Changes in its color or density or in the way it twisted out of the top of the stack evoked exclamations of horrendous wonder and cries of “Look! Look! That’s the image of him. That’s Enoch going up. Don’t you see him?” Then news would come, seemingly by a telepathic impulse, that that had been only the son-in-law poking up the fire; the body was still at the mansion. Again it would be rumored that a previous rumor was positively true. The remains had been got into the mill unobserved. Everybody had been fooled. Enoch had got the last laugh. He had been burning up for more than an hour and had already very largely vanished into the sky.... So the whole afternoon and the early evening passed.
An hour after sunset the stable-man drove a spring wagon to the Enoch portal of the Gib mansion. He tied the horse to the ring in the hand of the ironboy hitching post and went indoors. Presently the front door swung open. Thane, the gardener and the stableman appeared bearing the coffin. They slid it into the bed of the wagon over the tailboard. Agnes followed with a black drape. Thane covered the coffin with it. Then he helped Agnes up over the high front wheel, took the lines from the stable-man, got up beside her, and they drove away at a walk.
At the entrance to the mill yard Agnes held the lines while Thane got down to unlock the gate. A number of people were idly gathered there in separate knots, pretending to be non-existent. News of the body’s arrival would travel fast. That couldn’t be helped. What Thane had counted on was that darkness would cheat the eye of morbidity. But he had forgotten the moon; it was full and coming up. The whorl of smoke rising from the stack looked even more ghost-like by moonlight than in daytime and the watchers, now sure of their spectacle and of Enoch’s presence in the smoke, were more gruesomely thrilled than they had hoped to be.
The yard and mill were deserted. Even the watchmen had been sent away until midnight. Agnes still holding the lines, Thane leading the horse, they crossed the yard, picking their way around heaps of rusty pig iron, abandoned castings, rails piled up like cord wood, and came to the rear door of the mill.
“You stay here for a minute,” said Thane. “I’ll come and get you.”
He drew the coffin half way out of the wagon, stooped to get his shoulder under, lifted it, and walked slowly into the gloom, treading cautiously. There was no light and there were many pitfalls, but his feet knew every inch of this ground before they wore shoes. He soon returned, tied the horse, helped Agnes down and led her by the hand.
At first she could see nothing and followed him blindly. Then far off in the crêpe interior she saw a sultry glow. As they drew near she heard the roar of the furnace fire, like the sound at the brink of a cataract. A fire is a cataract upward. It grew louder and louder with each step until she could feel its vibrations in the soles of her feet. She never had been in the mill before.
A puddling furnace is a low brick structure somewhat resembling a double tomb. One side is the fire pit; the other side is the oven. The flames from the fire pit are sucked by draught across the roof of the oven. As you face the furnace you see two iron doors—one is to the fire pit, opening on the grate, to receive the fuel. To the right of that on a higher level is the small square door of the oven. Through the first door when it is open you see the fire. Through the other you see heat,—nothing but heat,—blinding incandescence.
Thane led Agnes to a bench facing the furnace, spread his coat upon it and motioned her to sit down. The roar was so great that conversation in normal tones was impossible. She now began to take in the scene.
The fire pit at the last stoking had evidently been gorged to
the teeth. A long iron bar was propped against the door to hold it shut. Gases, smoke and cherry flames were belching through the cracks. The oven door was set in a square halo of exuding white light. And directly in front of this door, pointing toward it head first, was the coffin, resting on a pair of iron horses.
There was no light other than that escaping from the furnace doors, and as it was continually running through unpredictable changes, so perspectives, and the forms, dimensions and relations of objects, were always changing with a very weird effect.
Thane threw off his collar, tie, waistcoat and hat, and seemed to take the furnace by the jaws with his bare hands. First he opened the oven door and was immersed in scalding light. He slammed it to, shaking his head. Kicking away the iron bar, he opened the fire door and immediately banged it shut, still shaking his head. The fire was not hot enough. Rolling up his sleeves he seized a great poker, pulled the fire door open again, and made several passes; then he stopped, slammed the door, and stood for a moment in apparent dilemma. No wonder. Who in a white shirt could bring a fire to its zenith? He disappeared into the gloom and was lost for five minutes. When he reappeared he was in the puddler’s rig he had worn earlier in the day,—naked to the middle, trousers rolled at the waist, cowhide shoes, gloves and skullcap. Now be could talk to the fire. As he thrust the javelin into its throat it roared back at him like an angry beast. He made it turn over, lie down, turn over again and rear on its legs. For moments he was swallowed up in smoke and Agnes could scarce restrain a shriek of thrill and terror. Each time he miraculously emerged unsinged. Then he cast in more fuel, working swiftly, with heroic ease and grace, and banged the door shut just in time, for the monster was on the point of lunging headlong forth. With another look at the inside of the oven he came and sat on the end of the bench. She noticed that his chest rose and fell slowly. All that exertion had not forced his breathing. Ten minutes passed. He rowelled the fire again. This time instead of returning to sit on the bench he walked to and fro in front of the furnace.
In Agnes a mysterious excitement was rising. It seemed incongruous with what they were doing; therefore she ceased to be aware of that. The emotion comprehended Thane, centered in him, excluded everything else save the fact of herself in relation to him. As she watched him his figure became splendid, fabulous! Her own ego’s importance collapsed. In his power with ideas man is dimly admirable to woman; in his power over circumstances he inspires her with trust; in his power over people he satisfies her taste for grandeur; but in his power over elements,—in that aspect he wrecks her completely, for she is herself an element. In that moment he is god-like; she cannot comprehend him.
She was in love with him. That fact had long been desperate and apparently hopeless, since he had closed the door. But now, in addition to the potential of her love, she felt that sweet, fierce longing for the thing of life, that headlong impulse to perpetuation, with which we are mysteriously seized in the presence of death. This nameless elemental forethought will pierce through grief, affliction and terror. Sir John Everett Millais caught its gesture in the most poignant pencil sketch in the world—“Marrying and Giving in Marriage at the Deluge.”
Thane’s emotions were parallel. He loved that woman. And the stark enigma moved him in the same way to answer death with life. Being a man he thought himself abominable. Yet the impulse overthrew him.
Breaking his walk before the furnace he strode to the bench where she sat, lifted her free, pressed her to him and kissed her once hotly on the mouth.
Instantly overcome at what he had done, humiliated, chagrined, horribly ashamed of the desire that possessed him, he put her down as suddenly as he had picked her up, roughly, leaving her stunned and limp.
She had been overwhelmed in all her senses. The impact was catastrophic. There had not been time for her to react as her nature listed. For a moment she could scarcely believe it had happened. It might almost have been an episode of phantasy. She rose to run after him.
At that instant he opened the furnace door and the glare blinded her. When he closed it and turned she was at one end of the coffin and he at the other. So they faced each other.
“It is ready,” he said. Though she could not hear she knew what he meant. The fire at last was hot enough. As she neither moved nor made a sign, he asked: “Is there anything to say?” That also she understood.
She crossed her arms and dropped her head on the foot of the coffin. Thane looked away.... She raised her head and stood back. Thane flung the door wide open, quickly lifted the coffin by the middle, rested the head of it on the lip of the oven, then took it by the foot and pushed it in. It made a grating sound above the roar of the fire and was instantly wrapped in a flame of burning wood. Seizing an iron bar he pushed it far in and slammed the door.
Hours passed. No word was spoken. Thane gave the fire no peace. He made it rage and bellow. The door of the oven was not opened again. From time to time he unstopped the little round eye through which a puddler kneads the waxing iron and peered in.
It was nearly two o’clock when he gorged the pit once more with fuel, propped the fire door shut, and stood in front of Agnes, saying: “We could go now.”
She rose slowly and he took her by the hand to lead her out.
When they came to the air by the door at which they went in he said: “Wait here by the wagon. I want to wash a bit.” She caught a white gleam of him in the moonlight as he got out of the puddler’s rig and heard him splashing under the tap at the water tank. He was not long, and returned carrying his coat on his arm, otherwise dressed as when he came, except that his collar was missing and the front of his shirt lay open. He offered to help her up.
“I’d like to walk,” she said.
One of the watchmen who had returned took charge of the horse and they departed on foot. Although dense smoke still issued from the stack there was very little of Enoch left in it, perhaps not a trace. When Thane last looked there was nothing on the incandescent bed of the oven but an ashy outline fainter than a shadow. The fire as it was would continue to burn for hours.
“Thought you might rather go to the hotel,” he said, when they were through the gate, and he had locked it again. “We’ve got rooms there.”
“I would,” she answered, “only I’ve no sleep in me and I’d like to walk.”
She was looking toward the mountain and they walked that way. Thane was stirred by an intuition, which he disbelieved, that if he were passive and let her choose they would come to a certain path. And they did. He had a further intuition, most unbelievable, that of her own accord she would stop at a certain place, turn in a certain way, and stand looking into the valley. And she did.
It was the spot at which they first met, the night of his battle with the Cornishman,—a night very like this one.
All the way she had been silent. If they touched, walking side by side, he made it clear without words that the contact was accidental. When they came to the path he stood aside and she went ahead. When at this spot she stopped and turned her face to the valley he went a few paces away, not to disturb her reverie, and stood with his face averted.
The summer night was cool; but the air he breathed was hot, tasteless and suffocating. Memory reconstructed the episode of their original meeting. It went on from there. He saw as in one picture the whole of his life with Agnes and feelings extremely inconsistent assailed him. There was one,—the one he thought he had got control of,—that rose higher and higher, for a reason he seemed painfully aware of and yet for a moment could not recall. Then he remembered. It referred to that moment in the mill when he kissed her for the first time in his life, and by force. He had forgotten it as one might momentarily forget having just committed a murder. He loathed himself for having done it. He wondered that she could tolerate him afterward, could walk with him alone, could speak to him with no sign of disgust. He wondered what she was thinking, so still in the moonlight. Probably thinking of that.
He became aware that she moved. She was c
oming toward him. He did not turn round. He detested himself so much that he could not bear to look at her, or to be looked at, and stepped out of the path to let her pass. She did not pass.
He felt her standing close to him,—near enough to have touched him. Still he did not turn. She raised her arms, slowly, with a wistfulness he could not have imagined or believed. He knew her hands were stealing around his neck and he could not realize it. Then she clasped him fiercely, hung her weight against him, adhered to him like a vine, saying, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Turning in her embrace he tried to kiss her. She buried her face in his neck, sobbing deeply, all the time clinging to him frantically as if she expected him to put her off. Lifting her head she leaned far back against the encircling chain of his arms and lay there looking at him, moonbeams in her eyes. Clasping him again she kissed his face, his mouth, his eyes, stopping only to whisper in his ear the most stupendous three words a woman can say.
For a long time he did not let the ground touch her feet. He carried her to and fro in the path, then up the mountain, higher and higher, and at last to the very top.
XXXIII
JOHN, unable to sleep, had risen from his bed and gone walking. He let his feet drift, having nothing consciously in view, and presently found himself in the path where on just such a night six years before he had raced up and down in a panic calling the name of Agnes. It occurred to him to look for the spot at which he had found her things. Unable to make sure of it he idly gave up the effort. The view of the valley impressed him and he sat on a stone at some distance below the path to sense it. He was there when Agnes and Thane arrived. They could not see him; shrubbery above his seat concealed him. He could see them distinctly. His first impulse naturally was to disclose himself. Hesitation arose on the thought that their coming to this place must have been by romantic impulse; and then as the scene between them developed he could only sit still. They should never know he had witnessed it. Long after they were gone he sat there. And when he departed he stumbled straight down the mountain side to the highway lest they should still be near and see him if he went by the path.
The Cinder Buggy Page 21
