A few men and women were gathered about the Westcott farm-house,
gazing helplessly at the flame that thrust sudden tongues of fierce
yellow through the shattered windows. Mrs. Slater, among them, moved,
a small fluttering-eyed plump woman, back and forth, gesticulating
but saying nothing. Her mouth opened and shut, a round black hole in
the light of conflagration, but no sounds issued forth. In the first
place, she could find nobody with whom to converse. There was Lucinda,
sitting awkwardly in Humphrey Lathrop’s old buggy, holding the somewhat
startled horse tight-reined, as she watched the burning house, but
Lucinda was speechless. She had nothing to say and she conveyed this
to Mrs. Slater by a cold vinegary downward stare whenever the plump
little woman wandered near the buggy. She was there to observe and then
to report to Humphrey Lathrop who sat at home, a helpless mountain,
waiting eagerly for news. As Dreeme and Walden Slater circled the house
and came out on the Leeminster Road below it Mrs. Slater ran toward
them.
“Where in the land’s sake....” she began.
Walden Slater silenced her with a look.
He brushed by her speechless and she followed in his wake, a small
fluttering-eyed creature. Behind them came Dreeme, unshaven,
mud-splashed, soaked, bare-footed. The farmer walked directly to
Humphrey Lathrop’s buggy.
“Get out, Lucinda,” he said.
Lucinda turned her thin face down at him in wrathful amazement. She
opened her mouth to retort and then she saw the senseless form of
Deborah. Without a word she climbed from the buggy and, turning, lifted
a rug to draw over Deborah as the farmer deposited her in the seat.
“I’ll drive her down to Humphrey’s,” said Lathrop’s housekeeper.
“Will she be safe?” interposed Dreeme hastily. He had visions of men
leaping out from the side of the road. “Perhaps I’d ...”
“She’ll be safe,” snapped Lucinda.
Without another word she climbed back into the buggy, picked up the
reins, clucked to the horse, and the revolving wheels grated on the
road. Dreeme stood watching the retreating carriage dubiously until he
felt Walden Slater touch him on the arm. He turned with the farmer and
they walked up the road toward the burning house.
“What time?” said Slater laconically to the group of watchers.
“’Bout two-thirty,” answered one of the men.
“What time is it now?” questioned the farmer.
“’Bout three,” the man returned.
Dreeme turned with Slater and watched the fire.
The flames, darting out of the windows, licked upward against the
walls and the white paint sweated and bubbled in the fierce heat. A
low roaring like the roaring in a wood-furnace reached the ears of
the watchers. It was obviously too late to do anything. The entire
interior of the farm-house was burning. Dreeme could imagine the books
in the library blackening in the smoke, their pages flaming along the
edges and then spurting up furiously as the tomes tumbled forward to
the floor. Small fiends screamed in the heat of those books. The wax
figures were melting, running into mere blobs, then vanishing as the
fire ate them up. The table at which Westcott had studied night after
night was festooned with a dazzling magic. Even the window through
which Martha Westcott had gazed was ringed with a bright frame of
splendor. Low crashes reached the ears of the helpless watchers as
objects within the cauldron of the building fell before the buffets
of victorious flame. The wind blew; the flames darted up to heaven; a
bellying scarlet-hued balloon of heavy smoke seemed attached to the
house by ropes of yellow flame. It tugged at the dwelling, strove
to lift it upward with an enormous strength. The house groaned and
cracked. The rumbling of destruction continued within the white
blistered walls.
It seemed as though any minute the house would be torn from
its foundations and lifted high in the air leaving beneath it a
flickering-tongued bonfire, a bonfire gigantic in size and unbearable
in heat. The long ell of the kitchen was a mass of ochre flame now,
a dancing madness against the darkness of the sky. Showers of sparks
shot upward, dipped, and veered downward again like fire-works. With a
rumbling crash the roof of the kitchen fell in and the detonation of
the collapse was like a discharge of cannon in Dreeme’s ears. These
old houses burned quickly. Time had seasoned the wood for destruction,
dried it out, honeycombed it with the tiny tunnels of wood-borers so
that the bright spirit of destruction might dart along it. It was
all going now, chairs, tables, wax flowers beneath glass, family
portraits. The spirit of things was turning all this into a heap of
smoking débris, of blackened jagged beams and heaps of fuming ashes.
Dreeme stood in the glare of the flame beside Walden Slater and his
face burned with the heat. His few garments smoked and dried. His
skin seemed crawling and parched. He felt as though he were watching
the fires of Tophet. He glanced about him at the group of sober-faced
observers and suddenly caught his breath in his throat. Leaning
sideways he struck his hand against Walden Slater’s arm and when the
farmer turned his slow eyes toward him he indicated an eddying knot
of men some distance from the conflagration. The farmer studied them
with narrowed lids but said nothing. Then, with the utmost calm, he
resumed his attention of the burning house. He seemed to be watching
the second-floor windows, windows through which wisps of curling smoke
projected like lost snakes. Dreeme was faintly astonished at his lack
of interest in the men toward whom he had directed Walden Slater’s
attention. For his own part, he continued to keep a watch on them,
observing them sideways through the corners of his eyes.
These men were not so far away but what he could recognize them.
They were muddy and distracted in demeanor, uncertain of themselves,
self-conscious of their presence in the light of the burning building.
They clung together as though for common strength. In the center of the
small group Dreeme could see the lanky figure of Bidwell and beside
him was the white-haired Corey. Threading the clustered group, talking
first to one man and then to another, was Lacy, his carbuncular nose
glowing in the fierce light of the flames. How they had emerged on
the road, whether they had followed along the narrow path from Nigger
Swamp or found some secret passage directly across the sunken marsh
were mysteries to Dreeme. He did not care greatly how they had reached
this spot. The main thing was that they were here, that they dared
show themselves in public. He wondered if others in that mad group
had followed Lathrop’s buggy to town and this conjecture aroused an
angry fear in him. He stared boldly at the group and scowled. These
men were equally aware of him and Walden Slater for they persisted
in glancing toward them as they continued their nervous conversation.
Once Bidwell gesticulated openly toward the young doctor. They were
strong men, broad-shouldered, browned by changing seasons, hard-sinewed
and tight-lipped. Still Dreeme felt no fear, nothing but a righteous
fury. A loud crash before him diverted his attention to the farm-house.
The right wall of the kitchen had fallen in. When, after observing
the shower of flame and sparks, he resumed his observation of the
self-conscious knot of men the white-haired Corey was walking slowly
toward him. The grave old man continued his approach until he was
within a yard of Dreeme and then he turned and surveyed the fire. The
young doctor, trembling at the nearness of this man whom he had seen
so shortly before in the grasp of a mystic delirium, said nothing
although a flood of recriminatory words rose in his throat and quivered
on his lips. He thought it peculiar that Walden Slater made no gesture
of recognition, that he stood so easily with his attention apparently
confined to the blazing building before him. Corey moved a single step
sideways toward Dreeme and still keeping his eyes directed before him
began to speak. He said:
“Doctor Dreeme, after a great madness comes a great sanity.”
Walden Slater, beside the young doctor, was listening, too, although
his expressionless face did not shift from its steadfast inspection of
the burning farm-house. Dreeme made no answer to Corey. The old farmer
spoke again. He said:
“You have evidently seen what you have seen. You can never see it
again.”
He extended one hand as though he were discussing the fire. At a
distance the little knot of farmers observed them fixedly. Corey said:
“There are no explanations. The chain is broken. I am an old man,
Doctor Dreeme, and I know what I am talking about. I am speaking for a
score of men who were lost and who, through a great shock, have found
themselves. I cannot tell you what dominated us but the domination has
ceased. The valley is cleansed. We are cleansed. We ask for silence.”
There was something behind his words that impressed Dreeme. He opened
his mouth to speak but Walden Slater forestalled him. The farmer said:
“We lost our tongues in Nigger Swamp.”
Corey observed the fire fiercely.
“What’s done is done,” added Slater mildly.
“Let what’s done rot with the body by the stone,” said Corey softly.
After a moment he withdrew quietly and a second later Dreeme saw
him back among the little knot of perturbed men. There was a brief
conversation and then calm blank faces resumed their observation of the
flame-wreathed Westcott farm-house.
“What does this mean?” inquired Dreeme of Walden Slater.
The farmer shifted his feet.
“It means what it means,” he said. “Let that be enough for you, Doctor.”
Dreeme wondered if it meant no retribution for these men who were
willing to connive at the destruction of a human being. He opened his
mouth to say something to this effect when the farmer snatched at him.
At the same time an exclamation of mingled surprise and horror rose
from the group of people in the road. Dreeme turned hastily toward the
burning house.
In one of the upper windows through which the thin snakes of curling
smoke had crept stood a man. There was flame in that window now and he
was silhouetted against the bright flare. He seemed just about to leap
for one foot was on the sill of the window and one heavy arm was raised
against the side of the house. Dreeme saw the fierce light play over a
cloven skull and lowered forehead. He saw, in the man’s other hand, a
black book clutched tightly. All this he saw in an instant for even as
he looked the window-sill seemed to cave inward to crumbling fire and
the figure, black against the light, fell backward, one hand snatching
desperately at the air. The next instant a great puff of flame
surged through the vacant window. There was nothing there, nothing
but a roaring cauldron that devoured its own. The destroyed building
seemed to emit a great sigh of relief, a hoarse gasp that soared
upward and spread out over Marlborough. Dreeme imagined that sigh of
relief permeating the air as far as Leeminster, sweeping through the
moonlit heavens and driving the intangible mists of mystery before it,
cleansing the valley of an old horror. He even pictured a calmness and
relief on the attentive and wide-eyed faces that watched, as he did,
this instantaneous tragedy. There seemed to be nothing left to say,
nothing to do but watch or go home. Walden Slater, after his first
instinctive grasp at the young doctor, had said nothing. He stood with
his great shoulders bowed, his long lip dangling loose, his coat gaping
and, through its opening, the revolver glistening. Dreeme suddenly felt
exhausted, a complete exhaustion that was flesh-weariness and great
relief mingled.