After that she went to Mrs. Kirkham's. There was no reason to expect news of Chrystie there, except that the old lady was a friend, had been a support and help on occasions less tragic than this. Also she knew many people and might have heard something. Lorry was catching at any straw now.
In the midst of her wrecked flat, her servant fled, Mrs. Kirkham was occupied in sweeping out the mortar and glass and "straightening things up." She was the first woman Lorry had seen who seemed to realize the magnitude of the catastrophe and meet it with stoical fortitude. Under her calm courage the girl's strained reserve broke and she poured out her story. Mrs. Kirkham, resting on the sofa, broom in hand, was disturbed, did not attempt to hide it. Chrystie might have gone out of town, was her suggestion, gone to people in the country. To that Lorry had the answer that had been haunting her all day:
"But she would have come in. They all—everybody she could have gone to—have motors or horses. Even if she couldn't come herself she would have sent someone to tell where she was. She wouldn't have left us this way, hour after hour, without a word from her."
It was dark when Mrs. Kirkham let her go, claiming a promise to bring Aunt Ellen back to the flat. They couldn't stay in the Pine Street house. Only an hour earlier the grandnephew had been up to say that the fire had crossed Market Street that afternoon. No one knew now where it would stop.
With the coming of the dark the size of the conflagration was apparent. Night withdrew to the eastern edges of the heavens; the sky to the zenith was a glistening orange, blurred with shadowy up-rollings of smoke, along the city's crest the torn flame ribbons playing like northern lights. Figures that faced it were glazed by its glare as if a red-dipped paint brush had been slapped across them; those seen against it were black silhouettes moving on fiery distances and gleaming walls. The smell of it was strong, and the showers of cinders so thick Lorry bent down the brim of her hat to keep them out of her eyes. As she came toward the house she felt its heat, dry and baking, on her face.
In front of her, walking in, the same direction, was a man, pacing the pavement with an even, thudding foot-fall. The gun over his shoulder proclaimed him a soldier, and having already heard tales of householders stopped on their own doorsteps and not allowed to enter, she curbed her eager speed and slunk furtively behind him, skirting the fence. Through the trees she could see the lawn, lighted up as if by fireworks, and then the two chairs—empty—the eiderdown lying crumpled on the grass. In the shade of branches that hung over the sidewalk, she scaled the fence and flew, her feet noiseless on the turf. She passed the empty chairs, and sent a searching glance up toward the windows, all unshuttered, the glass gone from the sashes. Were they in there? Had Aunt Ellen dared to enter? Had Fong overcome her terrors and forced her to take shelter? If he had she would be no farther than the hall.
Like a shadow she mounted the steps and stole in, the front door yawning on darkness. The stillness of complete desolation and abandonment met her ears.
She stood motionless, looking down the hall's shattered length and up the stairs. The noises from without, the continuous, dragging shuffle of passing feet, calls, crying of children, the soldier's directing voice, came sharply through the larger, encircling sounds of the city fighting for its life. They flowed round the house like a tide, leaving it isolated in the silence of a place doomed and deserted. She suddenly felt herself alone, bereft of human companionship, a lost particle in a world terribly strange, echoing with an ominous, hollow emptiness. A length of plaster fell with a dry thud, calling out small whisperings and cracklings from the hall's darkened depths. It roused her and she turned, pushed open the door and went into the drawing-room.
The long side windows let in the glare, a fierce illumination showing a vista of demolishment. Through broken bits of mortar the parquet reflected it; it struck rich gleams from the fragments of a mirror, ran up the walls, playing on the gilt of picture frames. She moved forward, trying to think they might be there, that someone might flit ghost-like toward her through that eerie barring of shadow and ruddy light. But the place was a dry, dead shell; no pulse of life seemed ever to have beaten within those ravaged walls. She summoned her energies to call, send out her voice in a cry for them, then stood—the quavering sound unuttered—hearing a step outside.
It was a quick, firm step, heavier than a woman's, and was coming down the stairs. She stood suddenly stricken to a waiting tension, dark against a long sweep of curtain, possessed by an immense expectancy, a gathering and condensing of all feeling into a wild hope. The steps gained the hall and came toward the doorway. Her hands, clasped, went out toward them, like hands extended in prayer, her eyes riveted on the opening. Through it—for a moment pausing on the sill to sweep the room's length—came Mark Burrage.