“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, barefooted. 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 farmhouse 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 fireworks. 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 woodborers 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 debris, 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
