Constance gave her a startled glance. “You oughtn’t to go out— she began doubtfully.
“But I feel wonderful. In fact, I—”
Elizabeth broke off short, her hands motionless on the ice tray. Behind her in the pantry, Constance said, “I still don’t think . . .” and then urgently, at the quality of the silence, “Elizabeth! What is it?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer. She stood without moving, head tilted a little, staring through the window at darkness that should have been absolute—and wasn’t. She went on staring, until a hopeless trembling began and she stopped it fiercely, brushing past Constance, running blindly for the telephone.
Sixteen
SHE HAD THOUGHT in surprise, when she first saw the flaw of gold against the darkness of hill and sky, I left a light on in the studio after all.
And then she thought, But lamplight wouldn’t—rush and ebb like that. It looks like . . . flames, it looks almost as if—
The studio’s on fire.
It was like the plunge after a slow, icy, unwilling wade. Elizabeth lost a moment in sheer disbelief. Then she was on the telephone and giving the address to an alert voice at the wire, running into the darkness to watch the distant yellow leaping, not heeding Constance’s wail: “Elizabeth! You mustn’t, not without your coat, you’ll catch pneumonia and there’s nothing you can . . . oh, Oliver, thank God you’re here.”
Oliver was a warm hard shape in the windy cold, holding her shoulders briefly, saying against her temple, “Thank God you’re all right. When I heard the sirens heading this way—” The engines, arriving, blotted out his voice. A spotlight struck through the dark, there was a sudden noisy tangle of running men and fire hose.
“Put this on.” Oliver was holding her coat; Elizabeth felt numbly for the sleeves. “And stay here, I’ll be right back.”
Elizabeth stayed, and watched the flicker on the hill as it slowed and dimmed. Her mind kept playing back her own cheerful voice, saying to Steven Brent not even an hour ago, “Well, let’s see—I’ve roughly a third. Say about the end of March . . .”
But the weeks of work were all wiped out now, unless by some miracle the flames hadn’t reached her typewriter. And the studio itself, the place of refuge, the only place in the world now where she was whole and intact. . . . Elizabeth dug her hands fiercely into her pockets and went on watching.
Beside her, although she hadn’t heard her cousin come out of the house, Constance hesitantly, “I can hardly believe it, Elizabeth, it’s frightful. How do you suppose it started?”
“I don’t know.” Elizabeth had been too stunned to think about that yet; she turned her head and looked wonderingly up at the hilltop.
“They seem to have it under control,” Constance said after a pause. “That’s a mercy, anyway. You keep a carbon of your manuscript, don’t you, Elizabeth?”
“No,” said Elizabeth between her teeth. “Like a fool, I do not.” The hose was being wound back down the hillside now The second engine departed with a roar. Elizabeth said, lifting her voice over it, “I’m going up to find Oliver, and see if they know . . .”
Oliver was standing just outside the studio, talking to one of the firemen. There were two others just inside the doorway, playing their flashlights over the soaked huddle of furniture inside. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of bare windows and blackened woodwork, couch cushions flung soddenly into a corner, the couch itself with a gaping hole in its center.
The fireman, acknowledging introductions, said, “Too bad, ma’am. Nice little place here,” and turned back to Oliver, apparently answering an earlier question. “Looks like it started from a cigarette between the couch cushions. You can see for yourself,” he swept an arm back, “how the worst of the damage is right around that area. It might have smouldered out by itself, but with that pile of papers to catch on to . . .” He shrugged and, calling to the other men, departed.
With the lights and the voices gone, the studio was a forlorn, bitter-smelling little shell under the leafless trees. Oliver said, fumbling for the right tone, “Well, that’s that. I’m afraid there’s no doubt what the pile of papers was. Of all the lousy, villainous luck . . .”
Elizabeth shook off the light circle of his arm; with it went her own dazed, unquestioning acceptance. She ran into the studio, sure of her way among the damp acrid shadows, hearing Oliver call something about coming back later with a flashlight.
She didn’t need lights, only her hands, carrying their own physical memory. And the cover of her typewriter, warm under her fingers but untouched by the fire and still fitted securely over the machine itself, told her everything she needed to know.
She was back at the house again, and the warmth and the cruelly mocking surface of safety, as though it were one of a million contented homes, and not—and not . . .
“You’re cold,” Oliver said, watching her. “Come over to the fire and finish that drink before we even think about this . . . My God, what next?”
Cold, Elizabeth thought, lifting her glass docilely to her lips, not tasting what they touched; yes, but not a cold that bourbon or flaming driftwood could touch. She had just witnessed the beginning of violence. She had known it would come, because hatred was a thing that must be fed, but she had never faced it in such concrete terms as an approach after darkness, a match held to carefully-placed paper, a silent withdrawal—to watch? Or merely to listen in triumph to the fire signal, the sirens?
Her outpost, the studio, was gone. Oliver had said, “What next?”— but how could you build barricades against a thing as sly and seeking as a mist, that permeated your very day-to-day existence under the name of deference, or loyalty, or
