Authors: Garet Garrett
The yard and mill were deserted. Even the watchmen had been sent away until midnight. Agnes still holding the lines, Thane leading the horse, they crossed the yard, picking their way around heaps of rusty pig iron, abandoned castings, rails piled up like cord wood, and came to the rear door of the mill.
“You stay here for a minute,” said Thane. “I’ll come and get you.”
He drew the coffin half way out of the wagon, stooped to get his shoulder under, lifted it, and walked slowly into the gloom, treading cautiously. There was no light and there were many pitfalls, but his feet knew every inch of this ground before they wore shoes. He soon returned, tied the horse, helped Agnes down and led her by the hand.
At first she could see nothing and followed him blindly. Then far off in the crêpe interior she saw a sultry glow. As they drew near she heard the roar of the furnace fire, like the sound at the brink of a cataract. A fire is a cataract upward. It grew louder and louder with each step until she could feel its vibrations in the soles of her feet. She never had been in the mill before.
A puddling furnace is a low brick structure somewhat resembling a double tomb. One side is the fire pit; the other side is the oven. The flames from the fire pit are sucked by draught across the roof of the oven. As you face the furnace you see two iron doors—one is to the fire pit, opening on the grate, to receive the fuel. To the right of that on a higher level is the small square door of the oven. Through the first door when it is open you see the fire. Through the other you see heat,—nothing but heat,—blinding incandescence.
Thane led Agnes to a bench facing the furnace, spread his coat upon it and motioned her to sit down. The roar was so great that conversation in normal tones was impossible. She now began to take in the scene.
The fire pit at the last stoking had evidently been gorged to the teeth. A long iron bar was propped against the door to hold it shut. Gases, smoke and cherry flames were belching through the cracks. The oven door was set in a square halo of exuding white light. And directly in front of this door, pointing toward it head first, was the coffin, resting on a pair of iron horses.
There was no light other than that escaping from the furnace doors, and as it was continually running through unpredictable changes, so perspectives, and the forms, dimensions and relations of objects, were always changing with a very weird effect.
Thane threw off his collar, tie, waistcoat and hat, and seemed to take the furnace by the jaws with his bare hands. First he opened the oven door and was immersed in scalding light. He slammed it to, shaking his head. Kicking away the iron bar, he opened the fire door and immediately banged it shut, still shaking his head. The fire was not hot enough. Rolling up his sleeves he seized a great poker, pulled the fire door open again, and made several passes; then he stopped, slammed the door, and stood for a moment in apparent dilemma. No wonder. Who in a white shirt could bring a fire to its zenith? He disappeared into the gloom and was lost for five minutes. When he reappeared he was in the puddler’s rig he had worn earlier in the day,—naked to the middle, trousers rolled at the waist, cowhide shoes, gloves and skullcap. Now be could talk to the fire. As he thrust the javelin into its throat it roared back at him like an angry beast. He made it turn over, lie down, turn over again and rear on its legs. For moments he was swallowed up in smoke and Agnes could scarce restrain a shriek of thrill and terror. Each time he miraculously emerged unsinged. Then he cast in more fuel, working swiftly, with heroic ease and grace, and banged the door shut just in time, for the monster was on the point of lunging headlong forth. With another look at the inside of the oven he came and sat on the end of the bench. She noticed that his chest rose and fell slowly. All that exertion had not forced his breathing. Ten minutes passed. He rowelled the fire again. This time instead of returning to sit on the bench he walked to and fro in front of the furnace.
In Agnes a mysterious excitement was rising. It seemed incongruous with what they were doing; therefore she ceased to be aware of that. The emotion comprehended Thane, centered in him, excluded everything else save the fact of herself in relation to him. As she watched him his figure became splendid, fabulous! Her own ego’s importance collapsed. In his power with ideas man is dimly admirable to woman; in his power over circumstances he inspires her with trust; in his power over people he satisfies her taste for grandeur; but in his power over elements,—in that aspect he wrecks her completely, for she is herself an element. In that moment he is god-like; she cannot comprehend him.
She was in love with him. That fact had long been desperate and apparently hopeless, since he had closed the door. But now, in addition to the potential of her love, she felt that sweet, fierce longing for the thing of life, that headlong impulse to perpetuation, with which we are mysteriously seized in the presence of death. This nameless elemental forethought will pierce through grief, affliction and terror. Sir John Everett Millais caught its gesture in the most poignant pencil sketch in the world—“Marrying and Giving in Marriage at the Deluge.”
Thane’s emotions were parallel. He loved that woman. And the stark enigma moved him in the same way to answer death with life. Being a man he thought himself abominable. Yet the impulse overthrew him.
Breaking his walk before the furnace he strode to the bench where she sat, lifted her free, pressed her to him and kissed her once hotly on the mouth.
Instantly overcome at what he had done, humiliated, chagrined, horribly ashamed of the desire that possessed him, he put her down as suddenly as he had picked her up, roughly, leaving her stunned and limp.
She had been overwhelmed in all her senses. The impact was catastrophic. There had not been time for her to react as her nature listed. For a moment she could scarcely believe it had happened. It might almost have been an episode of phantasy. She rose to run after him.
At that instant he opened the furnace door and the glare blinded her. When he closed it and turned she was at one end of the coffin and he at the other. So they faced each other.
“It is ready,” he said. Though she could not hear she knew what he meant. The fire at last was hot enough. As she neither moved nor made a sign, he asked: “Is there anything to say?” That also she understood.
She crossed her arms and dropped her head on the foot of the coffin. Thane looked away.... She raised her head and stood back. Thane flung the door wide open, quickly lifted the coffin by the middle, rested the head of it on the lip of the oven, then took it by the foot and pushed it in. It made a grating sound above the roar of the fire and was instantly wrapped in a flame of burning wood. Seizing an iron bar he pushed it far in and slammed the door.
Hours passed. No word was spoken. Thane gave the fire no peace. He made it rage and bellow. The door of the oven was not opened again. From time to time he unstopped the little round eye through which a puddler kneads the waxing iron and peered in.
It was nearly two o’clock when he gorged the pit once more with fuel, propped the fire door shut, and stood in front of Agnes, saying: “We could go now.”
She rose slowly and he took her by the hand to lead her out.
When they came to the air by the door at which they went in he said: “Wait here by the wagon. I want to wash a bit.” She caught a white gleam of him in the moonlight as he got out of the puddler’s rig and heard him splashing under the tap at the water tank. He was not long, and returned carrying his coat on his arm, otherwise dressed as when he came, except that his collar was missing and the front of his shirt lay open. He offered to help her up.
“I’d like to walk,” she said.
One of the watchmen who had returned took charge of the horse and they departed on foot. Although dense smoke still issued from the stack there was very little of Enoch left in it, perhaps not a trace. When Thane last looked there was nothing on the incandescent bed of the oven but an ashy outline fainter than a shadow. The fire as it was would continue to burn for hours.
“Thought you might rather go to the hotel,” he said, when they were through the gate, and he had locked it again. “We’ve got rooms there.”
“I would,” she answered, “only I’ve no sleep in me and I’d like to walk.”
She was looking toward the mountain and they walked that way. Thane was stirred by an intuition, which he disbelieved, that if he were passive and let her choose they would come to a certain path. And they did. He had a further intuition, most unbelievable, that of her own accord she would stop at a certain place, turn in a certain way, and stand looking into the valley. And she did.
It was the spot at which they first met, the night of his battle with the Cornishman,—a night very like this one.
All the way she had been silent. If they touched, walking side by side, he made it clear without words that the contact was accidental. When they came to the path he stood aside and she went ahead. When at this spot she stopped and turned her face to the valley he went a few paces away, not to disturb her reverie, and stood with his face averted.
The summer night was cool; but the air he breathed was hot, tasteless and suffocating. Memory reconstructed the episode of their original meeting. It went on from there. He saw as in one picture the whole of his life with Agnes and feelings extremely inconsistent assailed him. There was one,—the one he thought he had got control of,—that rose higher and higher, for a reason he seemed painfully aware of and yet for a moment could not recall. Then he remembered. It referred to that moment in the mill when he kissed her for the first time in his life, and by force. He had forgotten it as one might momentarily forget having just committed a murder. He loathed himself for having done it. He wondered that she could tolerate him afterward, could walk with him alone, could speak to him with no sign of disgust. He wondered what she was thinking, so still in the moonlight. Probably thinking of that.
He became aware that she moved. She was coming toward him. He did not turn round. He detested himself so much that he could not bear to look at her, or to be looked at, and stepped out of the path to let her pass. She did not pass.
He felt her standing close to him,—near enough to have touched him. Still he did not turn. She raised her arms, slowly, with a wistfulness he could not have imagined or believed. He knew her hands were stealing around his neck and he could not realize it. Then she clasped him fiercely, hung her weight against him, adhered to him like a vine, saying, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Turning in her embrace he tried to kiss her. She buried her face in his neck, sobbing deeply, all the time clinging to him frantically as if she expected him to put her off. Lifting her head she leaned far back against the encircling chain of his arms and lay there looking at him, moonbeams in her eyes. Clasping him again she kissed his face, his mouth, his eyes, stopping only to whisper in his ear the most stupendous three words a woman can say.
For a long time he did not let the ground touch her feet. He carried her to and fro in the path, then up the mountain, higher and higher, and at last to the very top.
J
OHN, unable to sleep, had risen from his bed and gone walking. He let his feet drift, having nothing consciously in view, and presently found himself in the path where on just such a night six years before he had raced up and down in a panic calling the name of Agnes. It occurred to him to look for the spot at which he had found her things. Unable to make sure of it he idly gave up the effort. The view of the valley impressed him and he sat on a stone at some distance below the path to sense it. He was there when Agnes and Thane arrived. They could not see him; shrubbery above his seat concealed him. He could see them distinctly. His first impulse naturally was to disclose himself. Hesitation arose on the thought that their coming to this place must have been by romantic impulse; and then as the scene between them developed he could only sit still. They should never know he had witnessed it. Long after they were gone he sat there. And when he departed he stumbled straight down the mountain side to the highway lest they should still be near and see him if he went by the path.
He felt strangely exalted. His love for Agnes was hopeless. It had been hopeless as a matter of honor because she rightfully belonged to Thane. Now it was hopeless in a new and final sense because she had learned to love Thane as he loved her. What had been inevitable now was fulfilled, and what had been renounced in fair conduct was beyond temptation. There was also his feeling for Thane which made them closer than brothers.
He waited for them to seek him. That occurred on the second day. They had come to the hotel and Thane asked him to join them for supper. They required his advice. Much to their surprise Enoch not only had left no estate; he was hopelessly bankrupt. The mill was heavily in debt. They had to decide whether to pay off its debts or let it be sold for the benefit of creditors. They were in no state about it. Agnes, it was true, would never come into that fortune of her own out of which she had meant to pay those “balances owing Alexander Thane to be accounted for,” according to the black book. That no longer made the slightest difference. As for Thane, he cared nothing about being rich. Besides, his income now was large. Nevertheless, was it not an astonishing fact?
“Had you suspected it?” Agnes asked.
John told them of Enoch’s obsession against steel and how the wreck was made. He put it entirely on the ground of Enoch’s steel phobia and left himself out of it.
“What would be your guess to do with the mill?” Thane asked.
This question they debated at length.
“It’s too late to make New Damascus a steel town,” John said. “That opportunity has gone around. However, there will always be a want for New Damascus iron. I’ll go halves, if you like, to pay off the debts. We’ll form a close corporation and save the mill. Rationally worked it will pay its way.”
To this both Thane and Agnes agreed.
John went back to Pittsburgh. Thane and Agnes remained for several weeks, to settle Enoch’s affairs, to dismantle Number One Furnace and to arrange for reopening the mill under a superintendent brought by Thane from the Agnes plant.