Coughing and choking, Chris and I sped through another parlor, and finally I had the chance to see the grand dining room--but it was full of smoke too! "Look," cried Chris, pulling me on, "there are French doors--the fools, there must be a dozen or more exits on the first 'floor, and everyone rushes for the front door!"
We made it outside and finally over to the car I recognized as Chris', and there Emma held Jory in her arms as she stared at the great house that was burning. Chris reached inside and pulled out a car robe to throw over my shoulders, and then he held to me as I leaned against him and sobbed for Bart--where was he? Why didn't he come out?
I heard the wail of fire engines winding around the hills, screaming in the night that was already wild with the wind and the snow. The snow that fell above the house on fire was speckled red dots that sizzled as they met the flames. Jory put out his arms, wanting me, and I held him close as Chris put his arms about me and held us both. "Don't worry, Cathy," he tried to comfort, "Bart must know all the ways to get out."
Then I saw my mother in her red flame dress, being restrained by two men. She screamed on and on, crying out her husband's name--and then that of the grandmother. "My mother! She's in there! She can't move!"
Bart was on the front steps when he heard her voice. He whirled about and sped back into the house. Oh, my God! He was going back to save the grandmother who didn't deserve to live! Risking his life--doing what he had to prove, after all, he wasn't just a lap dog.
This was the fire of my childhood nightmares! This was what I'd always feared more than anything! This was the reason I'd insisted we make the rope ladder of torn-up sheets so we could escape and reach the ground--just in case.
It was more than horrible to watch that mammoth house burn when once I would have been glad to see it go. The wind blew relentlessly and whipped the flames higher, higher until they lit up the night and fired the heavens. How easily old wood burned along with the antique furnishings, the priceless heirlooms that could never be replaced. If anything survived, despite what those heroic firemen did who raced about like crazy, connecting up hoses that squirted forth foam, it would be a miracle! Someone screamed, "People are trapped inside! Get them out!" I think it was me. The firemen worked with superhuman speed and agility to get them out while I cried wild and frantic. "Bart! I didn't want to kill you! I only wanted you to love me, that's all. Bart, don't die, please don't die!" My mother heard and she came running to where Chris was holding me tight in his arms.
"You!" she screamed, her distraught expression that of the insane, "You think Bart loved you? That he would marry you? You are a fool! You betrayed me! As you've always betrayed me, and now Bart will die because of you!"
"No, Mother," said Chris who tightened his arms about me, and his tone was that of ice, "it wasn't Cathy who cried out to remind your husband your mother was still inside. You did that. You must have seen he couldn't go back in that house and live.
Perhaps you would rather see your husband dead than married to your daughter."
She stared at him. Her hands worked nervously. Her cerulean blue eyes were darkly shadowed by the pools of black mascara. And as I watched and Chris watched something in her eyes broke--some minute thing that had lent clarity and intelligence to the eyes dissolved and she seemed to shrink. "Christopher my son, my love, I'm your mother. Don't you love me anymore, Christopher? Why? Don't I bring you everything you need and ask for? New encyclopedias, games and clothes? What is it you lack? Tell me, so I can go out and buy it for you, please tell me what you want. do anything, bring you anything to make up for what you're losing. A thousandfold over you will be rewarded when my father dies, and he will die any day, any hour, any second, I know! I swear you won't have to be up here much longer! No, not much longer, not much longer, not much longer." And on and on until I could have screamed. Instead I put my hands over my ears and pressed my face against Chris's broad chest.
He made some signal to one of the ambulance drivers, and warily they approached our mother who saw them, shrieked and then tried to run. I saw her stumble and fall, her heel caught in the long hem of her flaming red, glittering gown, and on the snow she fell flat, kicking, screaming and pounding her fists.
They took her away in a straightjacket, still screaming of how I had betrayed her, while Chris and I clung to one another and watched with wide eyes. We felt like children again, helpless with the fresh grief and shame we bore. I followed him about while he did what he could for those who had been burned. I only got in his way, but I couldn't let him out of my sight.
The body of Bart Winslow was found on the floor of the library with the skeletal grandmother still clutched in his arms--both suffocated by the smoke and not the flames. I stumbled over to fold down the green blanket and stared into his face to convince myself death had come again into my life. Again and again it kept coming! I kissed him, cried on his unyielding chest. I raised my head and he was looking straight at me--and through me--gone on to where I could never reach him and confess that I had loved him from the start--fifteen years ago.
"Cathy, please," said Chris, tugging me away. I sobbed when Bart's hand slipped from my grasp. "We have to go! There's no reason for us to stay on now that it is all over."
All over, all over--it was all over.
My eyes followed the ambulance with Bart's body inside, and my grandmother too. I didn't grieve for her--for she had got out of life what she put in.
I turned to Chris and cried again in his arms, for who would live long enough to let me keep the love I had to have? Who?
Hours and hours passed while Chris pleaded with me to leave this place that had brought us nothing but unhappiness and sorrow. Why hadn't I
remembered that? Sadly I leaned to pick bits and pieces of craft paper that once had been orange and purple, and other pieces of our attic decorations blew on the wind, torn petals, jagged leaves, ripped from their stems.
It was dawn before the fire was brought under control. By that time the mammoth greatness that had once been Foxworth Hall was only a smoldering ruin. The eight chimneys still stood on the sturdy brick foundation, and, oddly enough, the dual winding staircases that curved up into nowhere still remained.
Chris was eager to depart, but I had to sit and watch until the last wisp of smoke was blown away and became part of the wind called nevermore. It was my salute, the final one to Bartholomew Winslow whom I'd first seen at the age of twelve. On first sight I'd given my heart to him. So much so that I had to have Paul grow a mustache so he'd look more like Bart. And I'd married Julian because his eyes were dark, dark like Bart's. . . . Oh, God, how could I live with the knowledge I had killed the one man I'd loved best?
"Please, please Cathy, the grandmother is gone and I can't say I'm sorry, though I am about Bart. It must have been our mother who started the fire. From what the police say, it began in that attic room at the top of the stairs."
His voice came to me as from a far distance, for I was locked up in a shell of my own making. I shook my head and tried to clear it. Who was I? Who was that man next to me--who was the little boy in the back seat asleep in the arms of an older woman?
"What's the matter with you, Cathy?" Chris said impatiently. "Listen, Henny had a massive stroke tonight! In trying to help her Paul suffered a heart attack! He needs us! Are you going to sit here all day too and grieve for a man you should have left alone, and let the one man who has done the most for us die?"
The grandmother had said a few things so right. I was evil, born unholy. Everything was my fault! All my fault! If I'd never come, if I'd never come, on and on I kept saying this to myself as I cried bitter tears for the loss of Bart.
Reaping the Harvest
. It was autumn again, that passionate month of October. The trees this year were ablaze from the touch of early frost. I was on the back veranda of Paul's big white house, shelling peas and watching Bart's small son chase after his older half-brother Jory. We'd named Bart's son after him, thinking it only right, but his last name was Sheffield, not Winslow. I was now Paul's wife.
In a few months Jory would be seven years old, and though at first he'd been a bit jealous he was now delighted to have a younger brother to share his life-- someone he could boss, instruct and patronize. However young, Bart was not the kind to take orders. He was his own person, right from the beginning.
"Catherine," called Paul's weak voice. I put the bowl of green peas quickly aside and hurried to his bedroom on the first floor. He was able to sit up in a chair for a few hours a day now, though on our wedding day, he'd been in bed. On our wedding night he'd slept in my arms, and that was all.