She too now went away, slowly, one step at a time, often stopping and looking back: would not the fire go out again? She began to feel anxious. Had she perhaps not carefully enough raked the great fire in the hearth out into the room and spread it about the floor? And covered it with straw and oil-soaked rags? All her woolen things, her black Sunday gown and the kerchief--a gift from her deceased husband--she had torn to bits for the purpose. Had she perhaps not put sufficient burning chips into the bed, among the feathers of the pillows that she had ripped open? Oh, yes! The bed was already burning like a torch when she had tottered out of the back door, half smothered, with eyes blinded by smoke. Oh, yes, she could rest easy on that score, the house would burn surely enough, there would be a flame that all the village could see!
Somewhat more rapidly she walked on. She intended to go up to the pasture. Up on the hill top she could best see how the fire rose higher and higher, how it caught the roof, which her late husband had thatched anew for the wedding; how it consumed the house that her grandfather in paradise had built in days of yore!
She only hoped that nobody would come home too soon, before the house was really burning, was burning like mad!
She still worried. Concealed by the grove of fir-trees, the village was now out of her sight. Was the house still burning, was it really still burning?
She ran and panted uphill. Up, up to the pasture! There she could see, there--
"Ah!" A long scream of insane delight arose tumultuously from her breast. There the village lay at her feet. A thick cloud of smoke had settled down upon it. But now, now--ah!--now there was a red flame shooting through the cloud! It divided, a whirlwind was blowing in it, fiery tongues stuck up, gigantic, joyously bright, and lapped to the right, and lapped to the left, and united, and flowed into one another, and grew longer and broader--became a fiery ribbon that unrolled more and more and speedily wound itself out as if from a spool.
With wide-staring eyes the woman gazed: Jesus, that was a fire--that was a fire!
It was a long while ago that Widow Driesch's cottage was the only one on fire. Dried by the drought and the ardent sun, the thatched roofs had been kindled like tinder. Now the cottages were burning, four, five. But as though this were not enough, the wind got behind and blew air into the flames. The conflagration swept down one whole side of the village; in ghostly haste the flames leaped from gable to gable. Like mats rolled together by a scrupulous hand, the thatched roofs curled up; first they sizzled, then they flared, but then--hi!--the ripe grain, every kernel a spark, exploded like powder and shot sheaves of fire into the air. A noisome exhalation mounted to the heavens and darkened the sky; from the stables came the desperate cries of the confined animals.
Katherine Driesch did not hear the wretched bellowing of the creatures dying in the flames. She did not hear the cries which suddenly like an alarm were wafted to her from far down in the fields. She did not hear the crashing of beams and walls--she merely saw. Saw, with triumphant eyes, a wild, undulating tempest of flame, a glow, gigantic, blotting out the sunshine with its redness, a torch, tall as a pine-tree, brandished by the wind and flaring up to heaven, up to the eternal throne of the Most Merciful.
The mother fell to her knees upon the pasture, upon the green grazing ground of the herds, and stretched wide her arms and clasped them together again, as though she were taking some one to her heart; and wept and laughed and raised her trembling hands high above her gray head and cried louder than the hundred voices of the on-rushing villagers--cried into the tumult of the bellowing beasts, into the crashing of the beams and the crackling of the flames: