New water carts arrived below. Bugles shrieked along the streets. Ladders climbed into the red air.
Long, panting snakes began to work: the pumps spat flying water among the flames. But the fire retreated reluctantly, slowly ... gradually it collapsed with a hiss.
The alarm bell of Leopold’s Town went on shouting its clamour, asking for help, calling, complaining. All parishes responded. The whole of Pest was alarmed. Sooty débris floated in the air rent by the tolling of bells. Smoke covered the yellow walls. The water from the pumps flew down the window panes.
In that night the old house became really old.
CHAPTER XI
Ulwing the builder was carried out of the old house and the pillar-men looked into the hearse. Following behind, the mitred abbot, lighted wax candles, singing priests; the Mayor, the Town Councillors, the flags of the guilds; a big dark mass moving slowly under the summer sky.
The whole town followed Christopher Ulwing bare-headed and wherever he passed on his journey, the bells of many churches tolled. Then the door of the house was closed. The great master, the great silence, remained within.
It was on the day after the funeral that the new head of the Ulwing business took his father’s seat for the first time at the writing-desk in front of the barred ground-floor window. The house was still full of the scent of incense, faded flowers and the cold smoke of the conflagration.
Nobody moved at that early hour. John Hubert was quite alone. Several times he put his hands quite unnecessarily up to his necktie, then, as if he had been pushed forward, he fell over the table and wept silently for a long time. He sat up only when he heard steps in the neighbouring room. While wiping his eyes, he noticed that the china inkstand was not in its usual place. The sand had been put on the wrong side too. He made a mental effort and replaced everything as he used to see it in his father’s time.
There was a knock at the door. He remembered that this little door, through which people had come for decades, respectful, bowing, pale and imploring to the powerful Christopher Ulwing, now led to him. He raised his head with confidence, but only for an instant; then, as if frightened by what life was going to demand from him, he lowered it again.