by Anya Seton
Charity continued to eat luxuriously of the moist black cake and little green mints, but Hesper watched the young people as they waltzed and one-stepped in the taproom, occasionally collapsing for breath in the parlor. And she heard snatches of their conversation. The Neckers talked of the sailing races they had won that summer, and of the yacht clubs, and they talked of their little boats, the “Brutal Beasts,” the special Marblehead class. They all talked of football games and college, and during an intermission in the dancing they talked a little of the old house. At least Carla started it, and the Neckers, raised in the new selfconscious worship of family lineage and the accompanying craze for antiques, demanded to be taken all over it. The Marbleheaders, most of them possessed of old houses themselves, were not so interested, until Carla to Hesper’s embarrassment told the story of the slave girl and her grandmother’s part in the rescue.
Then everyone begged to be shown the pirate’s hidey-hole.
“Please, Marnie—” cried Carla, her eyes shining. “Just tell me again how to find the pin.”
Hesper hesitated a moment and then complied. There was no longer any reason for secrecy about the hidey-hole, and no reason beyond a sentimental one for a shrinking wish to protect it from curiosity. Besides, the house would be Carla’s some day, and her love and respect for it might be trusted to shield it from any cheapening. It was Carla’s pride in it now that made her want to show it off in all its individual features. And the house, Hesper thought, as she listened to the squeals of laughter and heard the running footsteps of a game of hide and seek, had the strength to be tolerant of all youthful giddiness, looking upon it with the uncritical tenderness with which it had looked at so many human emotions.
When they all tired of dancing and hide and seek, they gathered around the piano and sang carols: “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and the ever beloved “Holy Night” which produced in them all its magic of wondering awe, until Carla dispelled the mood with “snapdragon.” For this traditional Christmas game she had loaded the largest of the pewter platters with candied fruits swimming in blue brandy flames. And the party broke up at last in mock terror and gales of laughter while the guests snatched at the burning sugarplums.
Hesper accompanied Charity to the front entrance and watched her clamber into the livery-stable hack. The two old friends had kissed each other good-bye with unusual warmth. “Thanks, Hessie,” said Charity, “it was charming. A lovely Christmas party,” before she waddled down the path to the hack.
The only person left who calls me Hessie, thought Hesper, and once we despised each other. Dear Amos, she thought, remembering, but he seemed remote as the stars that twinkled in the ink-black sky. The air smelled of coming snow. It was turning cold and the wind was rising. In the darkness across Front Street she heard the suck and splash of the water amongst the rocks; then it was lost in the honking of two motor cars sent by parents over from the Neck to collect their youngsters.
Hesper turned back into the house to stand beside Carla and say good-bye. The Marbleheaders all walked home to their near-by houses.
Tony went last. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Porterman. It was swell. I always was crazy about this place since the night Walt dropped me in here like a drowned rat.”
“And then see what happened!” said Carla. “He never should have done it.” She gave him a naughty and adoring look under her eyelashes, and Hesper smiled, leaving them alone. She walked through the kitchen, on the way to her room, giving it a desultory glance. After-party mess, but could be dealt with tomorrow. All buoyancy had drained out of her, leaving her to a dull exhaustion. She could scarcely drag one foot in front of the other. She undressed, took three of the white pills, and sank thankfully onto the bed. Through the ceiling she could hear the sound of heavy snoring. That was Walt, who had never appeared at the party, but had gone to his room in the afternoon and refused to come out.
She sighed and listened a few minutes to the sound of the wind and water outside. Then she slept.
At four o’clock she was awakened by a confusion of sound and someone yelling. She sat up dazed, clutching at the bedclothes. Then she realized that her room was stifling hot and filled with the acrid smell of smoke. She jumped from the bed and put on her wrapper and slippers; she heard Carla’s voice from outside calling frantically, “Marnie,” and then through the wall in back of the bed she heard the sharply remembered sinister crackling. “No,” she whispered under her breath over and over again. “No. No. No.” But she acted by instinct, without conscious thought. She took Evan’s picture from the wall, and held it tight against her side. She opened her door. The old kitchen was full of smoke. It was behind the chimney and between the old stairwell and the taproom that the fire was burning.
She dashed across the kitchen, slid the bolt on the back door, and ran outside. Carla was there, her horrified face dim in the dawn light; she had been beating at the door with her hands. “Marnie darling—” she cried. “Thank God you’re safe. It’s awful—I ran down the other stairs.... Thank God there are the fire engines!”
People were gathering, neighbors, the engine from the near-by firehouse. There was a tumult of shoutings and orders.
“Where’s Walt?” cried Hesper sharply. “Is he out?” Even as she spoke Walt appeared at the window of his room, someone ran with a ladder, and he wedged himself through the window and descended slowly.
“You all right, Ma?” he said, coming over to her where she stood by the barn. He was in his shirt and pants as he had fallen asleep. He did not look at the burning house.
There came the pound of hooves down Franklin Street, and another fire engine drew up.
“How could it have happened? I don’t see how it happened,” Carla moaned. “I was so careful with the candles. Tony and I put everything out.”
“It was the brick oven, I guess,” said Walt; his heavy face looked stupid and vacant.
“Didn’t you make it tight?” cried Hesper, watching the hissing streams of water and the running firemen.
He shook his head. “I didn’t think it mattered. I was fuddled. One of the embers must have fallen through to the wood and smouldered a while.” Suddenly he sat down on the ground and buried his face in his hands. Hesper stood frozen beside him. Then the paralysis of shock released her. She leaned down grabbing Walt’s shoulder, shaking it savagely. “Go and help!” she shouted. “What’s the matter with you!”
He muttered something, staring up at the tall, thin figure in the flannel wrapper, the terrifying eyes beneath the straight black brows and disordered gray hair. He jumped to his feet and ran toward the house. Carla and Hesper ran after him.
They reached the path by the open taproom door through which the hoses writhed. He plunged through the clouds of smoke where the two women would have followed him, but a fireman held them back. The women stood silent just beyond the bare horse-chestnut tree, watching. Carla was crying softly though she did not know it. In Hesper there were no tears; her soul was filled with a stony hatred. This I will not stand! she cried to the senseless blindfolded god. There was then no pity or indulgence in the universe if the shelter of ten generations might be consumed in an hour by simple carelessness. Fool, she cried into the relentless void, fool to have ever believed in soft, tender things, in help or comfort.
Once through the stony hatred she tried to pray, but she saw a little tongue of flame dart up through the roof and lick at the side of the great chimney, and the prayer froze hard within her. For what was there to pray to ? The little lick of flame disappeared. She watched the spot on the roof where it had been. The minutes passed and they heard shouts from within the house. Carla crept closer to her grandmother. "It’s spreading,” she whispered. “Marnie, I can’t stand it—I can’t.”
Hesper said nothing. Neighbors pressed near them, murmuring and sympathizing. She did not hear. Suddenly Walt stumbled out of the house; coughing and holding a handkerchief to his face. He ran toward them. “It’s okay now, Ma!”
he shouted. “We’ve got it out! It just burned up the stairwell, and along the back of the chimney to the roof. The old shack’s tough all right!”
Hesper saw his eyes shining with a fierce exultation in his soot-blackened face, and she heard the ring in his voice. She gave a soft sigh, and Walt’s face and the murmuring voices and the lanterns and the pressure of Carla’s arm about her all merged into darkness.
When she opened her eyes again, she knew at once that she was lying in her own bed, in the borning room. She knew because her gaze rested on the beam above her head and the little knot in the wood that was shaped like an anchor. She knew too that there were people around her bed, but she did not look to see who they were. She turned her head to the right wall and saw that Evan’s picture again hung there as it always did. The picture she had clutched all during that dreadful hour in the night. I saved that, she thought—the only thing I tried to save. How strange. But as she gazed up at the picture, she knew that it was not strange. For if the house itself had been destroyed, she would still have had this—the symbol of the ideal that could never be destroyed. She looked at the mute, ageless figure in the doorway—its arms outstretched in welcome. She looked beyond the jeweled and living house and saw that they were still all there inside, the people who had built it into an enduring pattern, and that behind the house there lay, forever incarnated—the image of the eternal sea.
She turned her head at last and saw the anxious faces of those by her bedside. Her doctor was bending over her, and next to him Carla knelt by the bed. Behind them, she saw Walt and Henry, and Tony and Eleanor, all crowded together in the narrow doorway.
Yes, she thought, as she tried to smile to them all, it’s coming now, very soon. But she felt no fear. Her eyes wandered past them to the window. She saw that snow was falling against the distant line of black trees along Peach’s Point. She heard the quiet lapping of water on the shingle of the Little Harbor.
And then she heard another sound near her; and after a moment she knew what it was. The sound of Carla’s muffled sobbing.
And this roused her from the clinging gray peace that was falling around her as softly as the snow fell against the window panes.
“Don’t, dear—” she whispered, though she thought she spoke loud. She felt the girl take her hand and press it against a wet cheek.
“There is comfort—” she whispered to Carla. “There is pity. I thought there wasn’t. But there is.”
But she saw that the girl, deep in grief, could not understand that, and she groped for words to express the new security in her own heart. “The andirons—” she whispered urgently. “Phebe’s andirons. They mean home, and even if the house had burned, they couldn’t have burned. Because they’re strong. Do you understand that, Carla? ‘A most sturdy courage to endure.’ That’s what really matters. Do you see, dear?”
She did not hear the girl’s answer, but she did not need to, for it seemed to her that the little room became illumined with a golden light. She knew the light came from the house, and from the sea outside, and from beyond the sky that covered them all. But it seemed to her that the light flowed brightest of all from the ever-replenished lantern that is passed down from hand to hand and shines upon the symbols of the enduring hearth.
THE END