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 stable-man 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
he 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 coming 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.