Lois retired very early. She had a fire in her bedroom. She drew the curtains
and stood holding aside a heavy fold, looking out at the night. She could see
only the nothingness of the fog; not even the glare of the fair was evident,
though the noise clamoured small in the distance. In front of everything she
could see her own faint image. She crossed to the dressing-table, and there
leaned her face to the mirror, and looked at herself. She looked a long time,
then she rose, changed her dress for a dressing-jacket, and took up Sesame
and Lilies.
Late in the night she was roused from sleep by a bustle in the house. She sat
up and heard a hurrying to and fro and the sound of anxious voices. She put on
her dressing-gown and went out to her mother’s room. Seeing her mother at
the head of the stairs, she said in her quick, clean voice:
“Mother, what it it?”
“Oh, child, don’t ask me! Go to bed, dear, do! I shall surely be
worried out of my life.”
“Mother, what is it?” Lois was sharp and emphatic.
“I hope your father won’t go. Now I do hope your father won’t
go. He’s got a cold as it is.”
“Mother, tell me what is it?” Lois took her mother’s arm.
“It’s Selby’s. I should have thought you would have heard the
fire-engine, and Jack isn’t in yet. I hope we’re safe!” Lois
returned to her bedroom and dressed. She coiled her plaited hair, and having
put on a cloak, left the house.
She hurried along under the fog-dripping trees towards the meaner part of the
town. When she got near, she saw a glare in the fog, and closed her lips tight.
She hastened on till she was in the crowd. With peaked, noble face she watched
the fire. Then she looked a little wildly over the fire-reddened faces in the
crowd, and catching sight of her father, hurried to him.
“Oh, Dadda—is he safe? Is Will safe——?”
“Safe, aye, why not? You’ve no business here. Here, here’s
Sampson, he’ll take you home. I’ve enough to bother me;
there’s my own place to watch. Go home now, I can’t do with you
here.”
“Have you seen Will?” she asked.
“Go home—Sampson, just take Miss Lois home—now!”
“You don’t really know where he is—father?”
“Go home now—I don’t want you here——” her
father ordered peremptorily.
The tears sprang to Lois’ eyes. She looked at the fire and the tears were
quickly dried by fear. The flames roared and struggled upward. The great wonder
of the fire made her forget even her indignation at her father’s light
treatment of herself and of her lover. There was a crashing and bursting of
timber, as the first floor fell in a mass into the blazing gulf, splashing the
fire in all directions, to the terror of the crowd. She saw the steel of the
machines growing white-hot and twisting like flaming letters. Piece after piece
of the flooring gave way, and the machines dropped in red ruin as the wooden
framework burned out. The air became unbreathable; the fog was swallowed up;
sparks went rushing up as if they would burn the dark heavens; sometimes cards
of lace went whirling into the gulf of the sky, waving with wings of fire. It
was dangerous to stand near this great cup of roaring destruction.
Sampson, the grey old manager of Buxton and Co’s, led her away as soon as
she would turn her face to listen to him. He was a stout, irritable man. He
elbowed his way roughly through the crowd, and Lois followed him, her head
high, her lips closed. He led her for some distance without speaking, then at
last, unable to contain his garrulous irritability, he broke out:
“What do they expect? What can they expect? They can’t expect to
stand a bad time. They spring up like mushrooms as big as a house-side, but
there’s no stability in ’em. I remember William Selby when
he’d run on my errands. Yes, there’s some as can make much out of
little, and there’s some as can make much out of nothing, but they find
it won’t last. William Selby’s sprung up in a day, and he’ll
vanish in a night. You can’t trust to luck alone. Maybe he thinks
it’s a lucky thing this fire has come when things are looking black. But
you can’t get out of it as easy as that. There’s been a few too
many of ’em. No, indeed, a fire’s the last thing I should hope to
come to—the very last!”
Lois hurried and hurried, so that she brought the old manager panting in
distress up the steps of her home. She could not bear to hear him talking so.
They could get no one to open the door for some time. When at last Lois ran
upstairs, she found her mother dressed, but all unbuttoned again, lying back in
the chair in her daughter’s room, suffering from palpitation of the
heart, with Sesame and Lilies crushed beneath her. Lois administered
brandy, and her decisive words and movements helped largely to bring the good
lady to a state of recovery sufficient to allow of her returning to her own
bedroom.
Then Lois locked the door. She glanced at her fire-darkened face, and taking
the flattened Ruskin out of the chair, sat down and wept. After a while she
calmed herself, rose, and sponged her face. Then once more on that fatal night
she prepared for rest. Instead, however, or retiring, she pulled a silk quilt
from her disordered bed and wrapping it round her, sat miserably to think. It
was two o’clock in the morning.
