The Carsons rebuilt the east wing of Redstoke that winter. It had
been destroyed by fire in the last owner’s time, and only patched
up, the house being really large enough without it. But to rebuild
it to the original design had always been a fancy of Lady Sibyl’s;
and that year she was able to indulge it, owing to the fact that she
rather unexpectedly inherited money. The actual building went on
while she was wintering in Egypt; but it was done by the time she was
back in the early spring, and ready for her to devote herself to the
considerations of decorations and the choice of furniture. To choose
these satisfactorily was not very easy: the old plans had been followed
accurately, with the result that some of the rooms, by their shape,
style, and lighting, demanded furniture and fittings of a date and sort
not easy to get.
But Lady Sibyl, who had the advantage not possessed by many of knowing
what she wanted, and also being able to pay for it, fortunately found
the right person to help her. In the autumn someone, on behalf of a
Robert Barmister, had written offering to sell her an iron chest of
Dutch workmanship. And when the purchase had been arranged, and the
chest, a rather finer specimen than the one at Redstoke, had been
approved, the same person (by order of Robert Barmister) had offered,
if at any time she wanted a special piece of furniture or similar
article matched, found, or procured, to undertake the work. She
recalled this when she began to go into the decorating and furnishing
of the east wing. Being in town, she wrote and requested Robert
Barmister to call upon her, at the same time giving him an indication
of the nature of her requirements. He replied that he would wait upon
her when and where she wished, but suggested she might possibly find it
more satisfactory to come to him, as there was a likelihood he could at
once show her some of the things she wanted.
She came and spent an interesting hour seeing rare and beautiful things
in an environment which appealed to her sense of fitness, exhibited
under Barmister’s orders by one (Josiah Foregood) not unsuited to the
work and surroundings—so well suited, that she felt it would have
sorted even better with the long, old rooms and his gentle, dignified
courtesy had he been dressed in snuff-coloured coat and knee-breeches.
She appreciated him much, and talked to him a good deal, though the
business of the interview was carried on by his master: each in a
different way pleased her. She would like to have had several things
she saw that day, the dolphin mantelpiece and the dim, painted ceiling
of the office among them. Neither of these two was obtainable; the
one because it was not for sale, the other because it would not move.
But other things that she admired were; and she selected several, and
gave orders for others to be obtained, and for drawings of yet others,
discussed and described, to be made and submitted to her. She was a
customer after Robert Barmister’s heart: a person of means and taste,
able to really appreciate the best of what was good, and ready to pay
for it without cavilling about the price. One to please Josiah too. He
felt things would have a good home with her, and be suitably placed as
background to a grace and elegance which was worthy of them.
Among the articles discussed was a certain oak panelling. The one
room in the old wing at Redstoke which had not been entirely burnt
was panelled in oak. The woodwork had been much damaged by fire: some
entirely destroyed, and the remainder a good deal injured; but what
remained was of such fine workmanship, and so uncommon a design that
Lady Sibyl was anxious to have it repaired and fitted to the new room,
if it were possible to replace the missing panels with anything which
at all matched. Barmister assured her this should be quite possible,
and undertook to go into the matter. Accordingly, the old panelling,
which had been carefully removed at the time of the building, was sent
to him for repair, with exact measurements of the new room, so that he
might know what more would be required; and after examination, he had
the work put in hand.
Michael had a certain amount of drawing to do in connection with the
work. Nan also was called into council. Her father wanted her opinion
as to how far it was desirable to supplement the Redstoke panelling
with other somewhat dissimilar, though of the same date, and how
closely the new, when any was necessary, should copy the old. They both
spent some time planning and piecing out this chief ornament for Lady
Sibyl’s new boudoir. They did not speak of her; they never did, they
had hardly really mentioned her name, even when she came to Soho—when
neither saw her. They did not speak of her now; only of the work. If
one of them mentally saw her in the panelled room when it should be
done, with the low light of a wood fire flickering over her and the
background, he said nothing about it. He would never see it really.
It would be for another that the fire would bring the beauty of her
colouring from the shadows; for another that her voice would thrill
with the remembered note of sympathy as she talked intimately in the
twilight. In the face of such things there is nothing to be said.
And Nan, whatever she thought, said nothing. Merciful people who say
nothing.
But when the supplementary panelling was complete, and the whole ready
to put in place, she was obliged to say something. This was in April,
about the time of Rosalind Annarly’s wedding.
It had been arranged that Josiah should go to Redstoke to see the
woodwork put up; not to do anything himself—he was no practical
carpenter or cabinet-maker—but to superintend those who did, and see
that they did not damage or remove any of the precious carving. But the
day before he should have gone he was taken ill with influenza. Really
ill, with a bad attack; no mild one would have kept him from work. Nan
knew that when she left home to go to the wedding.
She was obliged to leave Soho before one o’clock so as to reach
Hurstbury in time. Michael had left even earlier, and would return
later. She determined to go to Bayswater as soon as she got back and
hear how Josiah was, and what were the chances of his being able to
travel to Redstoke to-morrow. Owing to Mr. Cordover’s bringing her to
town in his car she was able to do this both more quickly and more
comfortably than she expected, and to return home in fair time.
Michael was already back when she came in. The Annarlys had not
insisted on his staying to dine; the Whartons and one or two others
were coming, and the party was complete without him. No doubt they
would have been pleased if he had stayed, but they had not expected or
said anything about it. So he had come back, and was at work on the
patent drawings when Nan came in with news of Josiah.
“I’m afraid he’s rather bad,” she said, unpinning her hat.
Michael said he was sorry, and inquired details.
She gave what she had learned in a brief interview with Miss Janet;
then went to the window, ruffling her hair, pressed down by the weighty
millinery.
“He won’t be able to go to-morrow,” she said, expressing what they were
both thinking.
“No,” Michael said, without glancing up from his drawing, “I suppose
not.”
She stood looking out a minute, back to him. Someone must go to see
the panelling put up to-morrow; in the absence of Josiah, it should
naturally devolve on Michael. Barmister knew of no reason against it,
and would not easily admit one: none had ever been specifically spoken
of between them either.
“I can do it, if you like,” she offered, rather as if the subject had
been discussed aloud, instead of thought of in silence. “As Josiah
can’t, if you were not here, I probably should; and as it is, I can
induce father to send me in preference to you. I can go, if you
like—but,” she turned half round, “I think almost it would be better
not.”
Michael’s pencil ceased a moment. “No,” he agreed, “of course not,” and
the pencil went on as before.
She watched him a moment. She knew he was not really drawing, only
imperceptibly touching lines already made; and she knew also that,
though he had agreed with her as if it were some unimportant thing, it
was really otherwise. Yet she did not withdraw her words; she had a
feeling it were better he should go. Not because she could not do what
was wanted, and would not have infinitely preferred doing it to sending
him, nor yet because her father could not be induced by her to quite
approve of her doing so; she could not have given her reason, only she
felt in herself that it were better—better for him to go.
“Will you?” she said.
“Of course,” he answered; “there’s nothing else to be done.”
The next day he went to Redstoke.
It was seven months since the evening when he dined there; seven months
since he had come into personal touch with any of the people, or the
interests of that life. Above all things, he hoped not to come into
personal touch with them now. Not that he was ashamed of his present
work and situation; he would as soon have met Carson while among
Barmister’s workmen as any other way; but infinitely sooner not have
met him at all. He did not want to meet anyone belonging to that time,
neither friend nor foe. He had done with that life: he could never
go back to it; even if such an impossibility happened as that he was
reinstated at Galhardy’s, with all cleared up, and everything on the
best of footings; still he could not truly go back. Something had gone
from him in the past months—or come to him—it could never be the same
again; he realised it when he went to Redstoke.
Lady Sibyl was in London. There was only a housekeeper to be consulted
with, should consultation be necessary, which was unlikely. She was
a person Michael had never seen in the old days. The butler, who had
been there when he used to come to and fro, had gone; his place was
filled by another. The gardeners at work among the flower-beds no doubt
were the same, but they probably did not know him by sight then, and
certainly did not recognise him now. No one recognised him; no one
inquired his name. He was merely the furniture people’s man come to see
to the putting up of the panelling; a person who came with the workmen,
and disappeared again when they did.
Things went smoothly on the first day; there was no interruption of any
sort. The workmen did well: there were several of them, experienced
men who understood their work; they would be finished probably by
to-morrow evening. There had been one mistake made: it was remediable,
but, since it might entail delay, it was annoying. The panel which
fitted over the chimney-piece had not been sent. It was part of the
original woodwork, but had been so badly damaged that little beyond the
centre coat of arms remained intact. Its repairing and restoration to
something like the former condition was the work of an artist in the
trade, who had taken his time over it, and, apparently, neglected to
send it back by the stipulated date. At all events, it had not come to
Redstoke with the rest. When, late in the afternoon, Michael discovered
the fact, he telegraphed to Barmister to have it sent by messenger.
It could not arrive until the mid-day train to-morrow; it might not
till late in the afternoon, according as to whether or no the artist
was ready to let it go. Still, even if it did not come until the late
train, there would be time to complete the work. It could be put up
last of all; the rest finished, or nearly, before it came.
Michael stayed at the small inn not far from Redstoke; he chose it as
much because he had never entered it before as because it was near
to the house. He avoided speaking more than was necessary to anyone
there; he shrank from any sort of mental contact with people, as raw
flesh shrinks from touch. One could not speak, hardly look, in this
neighbourhood without coming into some contact, near or remote, with
Galhardy’s, where everyone worked, or their relations worked; from
whence arose the daily bread, the daily occupation, almost in some form
or other the common interests and topics of conversation of two-thirds
of the population. It was from some director of Galhardy’s that the
young hounds in the stables came; it was for the workmen of Galhardy’s
that the line of a new tram ran through an aggrieved suburb; it was
through them really that political changes were felt as affecting
the demand for guns and munitions of war, taxing coal, or helping or
hindering foreign rivalry. One could not get away from sight and sound
of the great firm here, except by shutting the door and thinking of
something else. Michael shut the door, and thought of the joiners
and carpenters, and once, rather late, of how curiously outside this
once-familiar world he seemed. A full, stirring world-in-itself,
whose cross currents and by-plays mattered much, everything, to those
who lived there—as they once had to him, but mattered nothing now. A
thought, this, producing a feeling as of one dead, who, disembodied,
revisits the earth to play no part there.
The disembodied must feel cold revisiting the earth without their
earth-clothes of flesh, and lonely without any share in the matters
of the world. It and its interests may seem remote; yet they, while
perhaps wanting no part, must feel lonely without it, and long to be
away again to the land of shades. Michael longed to be back in the old
house in Soho. He longed more the second day than the first. He felt
then more acutely that he did not belong here; he shrank even more
from any chance of contact with those who did. As the day wore on he
found himself waiting and listening for such: for a familiar face or
a familiar step, in a way which was morbidly ridiculous perhaps, but
almost unendurable.
The panel did not come by the mid-day train. It was not really
surprising that it should not. Yesterday Michael was prepared for such
a contingency; but to-day, though he assured himself and the workmen
that he hardly expected it, its non-arrival worried him. He arranged
and rearranged the scheme of work in his own mind—he had the wisdom
to keep it there, and not to speak of it to the men. He kept his
nerves entirely to himself, with shame recognising them as nerves,
but not getting the better of them on that account. As the time of the
afternoon train approached he made plans as to what should be done if
the panel did not come. Of course, it would come; Barmister would have
telegraphed if, for any reason, he had been unable to send it, unless
he were hoping up to the last minute to get it from the repairer. Such
men, the real artists at their work, were difficult to deal with;
often addicted to drink, or temper, or other failings which interfered
with their carrying out contracts, even when they were inclined to do
so. If the panel did not come, the work could not be finished that
day: it could not, anyhow, be finished in time for him to return to
London to-night; though, if the missing part arrived to-day, it should
be possible to finish late and return first thing to-morrow morning
without coming again to Redstoke. Michael made up his mind to return
then. Panel or no panel, he would leave the house to-night, and come
back no more; the head joiner could wait, if waiting there must be,
and fix it without him. He would not stay longer than this evening—it
seemed too long to wait for that, although the afternoon was far
advanced. He looked at his watch: he had looked at it several times
in the last few minutes, for the messenger, had one come by the later
train, was due now—rather overdue, in fact; either the train was late,
or he was not coming.
The door opened quietly, and Nan, carrying a heavy parcel, came into
the room.
“Father has caught influenza from Josiah,” she explained. “He is not
bad, but he cannot see after things, so, as I knew no one to send, I
fetched the parcel and brought it myself.”
Michael took the parcel, for a moment too relieved for speech, though
not really surprised. It was not surprising that Nan should come;
indeed, now she was here it seemed so much the one thing likely
to happen—and the one satisfactory thing—that he thought no more
about it or any of his previous feelings. He uncovered the panel,
and superintended its placing without any haste, or anxiety, or
recollection of his desire to be finished and gone.
Nan stayed some time, making a few comments and suggestions, and
examining the work critically. She left when it was nearly done to go
and make arrangements for staying at the inn, as it was impossible
for her to return to town that evening. There was really no need she
should, Mrs. Bidden was well able to look after her father; she and
Michael would go back together first thing to-morrow morning. She left
him now to see the last of the work done, and then to follow her to the
inn.
But as it happened he did not follow. Just before he was ready to go a
car stopped before the house. He hardly noticed it, he was absorbed in
the work in hand, and, since Nan’s coming, had lost the sense of watch
for someone which had grown on him during the day. He heard the noise
of the engine, the car stop, turn and go away again, but only vaguely,
and without thinking of them in connection with himself. He certainly
did not think of them in connection with the Carsons; he did not think
of them at all until, looking round at some new sound, he saw Carson
himself standing in the doorway.
“Hullo!” Carson exclaimed in surprise. “You here! Where on earth have
you dropped from?”
He spoke much as he had spoken when Michael last saw him seven months
ago, except, perhaps, that there was something of greater geniality in
the tone; more of the camaraderie he had for men of his own sort, and
never had quite had for Galhardy’s genius.
“I came to see the panelling put up,” Michael answered. “It’s my
uncle’s affair; I mean, he’s the man that supplied the pieces that were
missing, and all that.”
“Did he, by Jove?” Carson said, coming into the room and looking
interestedly round. “He must be a bit of a conjurer! I told Sibyl I
didn’t believe she’d ever get the old tinder put together. Looks jolly
well, doesn’t it?”
Michael said he thought it was satisfactory on the whole, then went
round the room with Carson, answering any questions he asked.
“What an extraordinary fellow you are!” Carson exclaimed. “I had no
idea you knew anything about this sort of thing.”
“I don’t,” Michael answered, “I’m merely here as a kind of foreman on
behalf of the man who supplied it; I really know nothing about it.”
Carson laughed. “Oh, I know what it means when you know nothing of a
subject,” he said. “I was once let in for holding forth on one in the
innocent belief that you wouldn’t be able to catch me tripping. Never
again, not on panels nor piston-rods either. By the way, have you
deserted them for this, chucked engineering for good and all?”
“Not altogether,” Michael answered, “I occasionally do a little
consulting work, nothing to speak of; usually I am at the furniture
place, clerk and that sort of thing.”
He spoke casually, as if there were nothing in the admission. Carson
made no remark upon it—no doubt partly from delicacy, though it is also
possible that, to one entirely without personal acquaintance with work
in any of its grades, the contrast did not stand out in all its crudity.
“Sibyl did not tell me you were in that furniture concern,” he said;
“she might have let me know you were coming here.”
“Lady Sibyl did not know herself,” Michael said. “She does not know I
have anything to do with this; I did not see her when she came to my
uncle’s about the furniture and panelling; she knows nothing about me.”
“No,” Carson said, “now you come to mention it, I don’t know how she
should. Nor how anyone should either; you didn’t bother to leave an
address when you departed in fire and brimstone last autumn. I believe
Sibyl was a good deal affronted at the time; she said you had made some
arrangement to come and see her, and neither turned up nor wrote; and
when she wrote to you she got no answer, only, after a time, her letter
returned through the post office.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I did not think she would expect me; I
thought she would understand. Of course, she did understand, I know
that. It’s very good of you——”
“Oh, bosh!” Carson said. “That’s rot! Where are you staying? At the
pub? What on earth for? It’s a beastly little hole; I’ll send for your
belongings.”
But Michael declined. He keenly appreciated the suggestion and Carson’s
whole attitude. He understood, as only could one who knew the inner
workings of the great corporation, how rare it must be to find one in
any way connected with Galhardy’s, who either could or would so treat
him. Carson might be a man who would allow no one to dictate to him as
to friends, acquaintances, or proceedings; but he was also one who,
by the very class peculiarities which gave that quality, was liable
to have little sympathy with Michael and an enormous contempt for
that of which he was accused. Michael realised enough of this to much
appreciate the invitation, but he refused it none the less; to do
anything else would have been an effort beyond him, he felt he could
not face it.
“Well, stay and dine,” Carson urged, “you might do that, anyway. You’ll
have to, you won’t be able to dine there. Why, it killed one of the
pups last year, nothing but the feed down there.”
Michael stayed to dine; but it was not the thought of the dinner which
induced him, it was steel. Some chance words Carson spoke caught his
attention; only a few words, spoken inadvertently, not finished and
only not recalled because they could not be, but enough for Michael.
The old watchful observation by which in the time at Galhardy’s he had
come to divine what most men meant by what they did not say, sprang
to life again and helped him here. It was his steel that Carson had
referred to thus by accident, the new steel he had worked out for the
great firm some time ago, and which he thought he had left ready for
manufacture on a large scale seven months back. More than once he had
wondered if they were manufacturing, and, when careful inquiries in
likely places tended to show that they were not, why they were not.
But they were now he knew, not from Carson’s words, rather in spite of
them, as women know things when they love, a subtle instinct hardly
possible except to love. Galhardy’s were making his steel, and there
was something curious about it, or about their not having done so
earlier. He stayed to dine with Carson. For love a man will do harder
things than dine where he would much rather not, though perhaps it is
not every man who can love a new process for making oil-cooled steel,
the child of his brain.
* * * * *
One of the carpenters brought a message to Nan at the inn. It was
written on a scrap of paper, and ran, “_Am dining with Carson; don’t
wait._” Nan accordingly had supper alone, and afterwards read by the
fire, until she fell asleep. She was aroused by Michael’s return.
Directly he entered she saw that something was the matter, but she did
not remark on it, and he came to the fire, saying something about the
night having turned colder.
She agreed, though she fancied the cold must be in himself and the
lowered vitality which comes to some in utter depression, for the night
was warm with a strong south wind blowing.
“I did not know Mr. Carson was expected back,” she said casually.
“He was not,” Michael answered, “he turned up unexpectedly, soon after
you left.”
He stirred the fire and sat staring into it for a while. “Carson’s a
good sort,” he said at length, the gloom in his eyes lightening for a
moment. “There’s not another man connected with Galhardy’s, from Sir
Joseph to the least of the greasers, who would have behaved to me as he
did to-day.”
“I’m glad!” Nan said. There were not very many people who had gone out
of their way to be pleasant to him. “You always liked him, didn’t you?”
“I hardly knew him really; I knew Lady Sibyl better. She was not there
this evening, he was alone.”
Nan nodded. Lady Sibyl, she perceived, was not the cause of the
depression, he spoke her name too carelessly, hardly aware of it; the
trouble must be in connection with work and the loved invention.
“Are Galhardy’s making your torpedo?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I have not heard. Of course, they must be; the thing was
all worked out when I left, all on paper, anyway; they could not fail
to get it. They would not have kicked me out till they were sure; I
told you that before.”
He had, over and over again. “Still,” she suggested, “they don’t seem
to be making it; surely if they were some news of it would have leaked
out and reached you? Even if there were no little paragraphs in the
papers, saying that Messrs. Galhardy had successfully overcome the
great difficulty of modern warfare and that sort of thing, you would
have heard something of it somewhere.”
“I don’t know, I might; though quite likely not. How should I unless by
chance at some society’s meeting? I don’t have much to do with those
sort of people and things now. I have given up scientific work, or,
rather, it has given me up, I think we may take it, for good and all.”
She did not reply; she did not believe it was for good and all, though
she could not deny that it almost began to look like it.
“I wonder,” she speculated, “why they are not making the torpedo, if
they are really not making it?”
“Perhaps they cannot agree as to who’s to have the honour of
‘inventing’ it,” he said.
“Inventing it?” she asked.
But he did not explain, and she pressed for no information, coming to
sit on the hearthrug in silence.
For a little neither spoke; at length he said abruptly, “You know my
steel?”
She nodded; but he did not go on, the mention of the steel had recalled
the process to the momentary exclusion of other thoughts.
“It was a process for oil-hardened steel,” he said, forgetting he had
told her this before. “A good thing; the elongation was extraordinary
for so high a tensile strength. I imagined when I left Galhardy’s they
would apply it on a large scale almost at once.”
“Didn’t they?”
“No—I don’t know why. The first big lot is being made now; in fact,
they are going to quench some thirty tons to-night.”
“Are they? How I should like to see it!”
“There’s not much to see; it is only lowering a hot ingot of steel into
a big tank of oil, and leaving it there till it is cold, the ordinary
oil-hardened process. The improvement I made is before that, in the
steel itself, not the hardening.”
“Will they call it after you?”
He said not. “Processes are numbered, not named, in a firm like
Galhardy’s, nothing else is practical.”
“Still,” she said, “I imagine they all know it’s yours? It’ll be good
for them to think of that and to remember what you could do when they
get stuck with other things.”
A curious expression came over his face. “The steel is not mine; it is
Brett’s,” he said.
“What!”
“Brett’s. Yes, that is it; he has taken it.”
“But how could he? How could he! They all know it’s yours, all the
directors, some of the workmen even must know it. How could it ever
pass for his?”
“He will have made some slight alteration in my process; he would have
had the going over of my papers, and so could have done so; something
small, enough to give appearance to his claim, but not enough to spoil
the process. I hope to Heaven it is small! There is no room for messing
about in that! A little might be done without spoiling to any great
extent, but not much; if he has done anything much he will have ruined
it. I’ve half a mind to write and tell him the only change they can
make without detriment to the result.”
He rose as he spoke, the passion for the perfection of work, and the
fear that it should be spoiled, eclipsing for the moment everything
else. But he did not write, Nan advised him against it; though
afterwards, when she realised, as he never did, what sentiments such a
letter would arouse in the recipient, she was almost sorry she did. The
argument she used was consideration for Carson who, no doubt, ought not
to have given the information.
Michael was obliged to admit this. “Though,” he explained, “he didn’t
exactly give it, I found it out. I don’t suppose he knows how much he
did let me know.”
“Does he know this is your steel?”
“He knows it was: it is Brett’s now. The man who makes the last
alteration has the final claim; he has made it; no one can say anything
against that.”
“It is stealing!”
“It is not illegal; if the alteration were a real improvement, not a
thing of straw, it would be fair.”
“But it is not!” she protested. “You know it is not, they know it is
not. Why are they doing it? Why is Brett doing it? He must know no one
will really think it his. It can’t be for the credit of invention.”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I gather he is to have a commission on
the steel turned out.”
“Is he?” Nan said, and sat thinking.
So the directors of Galhardy’s, or at least some of them, were paying
Brett? That was what it amounted to; the “improvement” to the process
was no blind to them, they would know all about that; but the improver
was to be given commission none the less. And since it was not
Galhardy’s way to give anything for nothing, it was given for something
which was not steel. Hush money? Nan wondered about it, and wondered
what Brett had done to oblige in the affair of last September; and what
some other bigger man had done that he thought it advisable to pay
for. She glanced across at Michael; he had risen and was standing by
the table absently fingering the lamp. He roused himself, and suggested
going to bed.
She acquiesced, and watched while, as he lowered the light, the last
glow momentarily lit his face. He was thinking of his steel again, she
knew, and again fearing lest it should have been spoiled to make some
cover of decency for the theft. A sudden wave of anger swept over her,
anger and pity too. They might have left him that! They had taken so
much and he, now at least, asked so little! He would have ignored the
theft, he would not have given the lie to any who said in his presence
that the process was another’s, could he have been sure that way,
or any other, of keeping it unspoiled. She could have wept for the
injustice of it all.
“Oh!” she said suddenly. “I hope they will fail! I hope they will fail
horribly!”
He turned at the words; she was kneeling upright on the rug now, her
face towards the dying fire, her eyes gleaming in the glow.
“I would like them to fail when they try to make the steel!” she said.
“I would like their oil-tank to fire. It would be the justice of God!”
She stretched clenched hands out suddenly. “I would like it to fire
to-night!”
On the words, almost as they were spoken, there came a light. No spurt
from the dying embers, no chance rekindling of the extinguished lamp,
but a great light; bright almost as a suddenly come dawn, but redder,
a fierce orange glow which revealed everything in the room with a
terrible plainness and the faces of the two to one another grimly.
Michael jerked the curtain back from the window, and Nan, rising
swiftly, came to look out. Away eastward a sheet of flame lit the
heavens, a tongue full a hundred and fifty feet high which leapt
skywards, turning the night to a new and terrifying day; a great
orange-red flame which lit luridly the whole dark landscape and the
volume of smoke that, even here, could be seen to roll about it.
For a second they stood looking, then their eyes met.
“Galhardy’s,” he said. “The oil-tank.”
She nodded, her breath coming a little short. “Yes,” she said, “the
justice of God.”