Fire Will Freeze

2

“He seems,” Miss Seton announced in a weak voice, pressing her nose right up against the pane, “to be gone.”

The man in the back seat removed Miss Seton’s sable-covered elbow from his ribs and said dryly, “Would you mind? I’m rather ticklish.”

Miss Seton looked down into a pair of amused brown eyes shaded by the brim of a grey fedora. Against the grey of his hat and overcoat, the man’s skin was deeply tanned and leathery. His mouth was twisted in a rather cynical half-smile.

“My name’s Charles Crawford,” he said. “Remember me as Charles Crawford, a very ticklish man.”

“The bus driver,” Miss Seton said coldly, “has disappeared.”

“Well?” Mr. Crawford said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing at all.” Miss Seton turned away, blushing slightly. Obviously Mr. Crawford was not one of those people who are helpful in a crisis, if there was a crisis. A city slicker, she decided, who got his tan under a sun lamp and stood around making small talk.

Still, he looked competent — more competent than the other men in the bus. She glanced worriedly at the cluster of men standing in the aisle talking. Neither Mr. Hunter nor Mr. Herbert Thropple would be capable of taking charge in an emergency. They were both good substantial citizens, but they couldn’t even manage their respective women. Mr. Goodwin was probably, if the magazine was correct, drunk, or if not drunk, crazy. As for the red-haired Chad Ross, he looked as though he was impatiently waiting for the rest of the bus to be devoured by wolves.

Miss Gracie Morning’s voice rose above the babble:

“Give the fellow time. Maybe he’s taking a walk or something.”

“Taking a walk?” Maudie said shrilly. “In this blizzard?”

“Well, you never can tell,” said Miss Morning, who had met many strange people in her short life and had learned not to be surprised.

“This is so stupid!” Joyce cried with a withering glance around the group. “Here we are in a serious situation and all we do is talk! The driver has gone. Why should he disappear in a raging blizzard with no place to disappear to? What is there to talk about? We’ll have to follow him, now, before the snow fills in his tracks.”

None of the others had thought of this possibility. A pregnant silence descended, broken finally by Miss Seton.

She said in a quiet voice, “If we wait much longer we won’t have any choice. The driver must have gone some place. If we follow him now, we’ll be able to reach the same place. If we wait we’ll have to stay here in the bus all night.”

“Why?” Charles Crawford demanded lazily from the back seat.

“Talk, talk, talk,” Joyce said scathingly. “He’s been gone fifteen minutes now.”

“Perhaps Mr. Crawford has a suggestion,” Miss Seton said.

“Well,” Mr. Crawford said, “I have driven buses.”

Mrs. Vista beamed in the direction of Mr. Crawford. “Splendid! I knew everything would come right in the end. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men...’ ”

“Evaline,” Mr. Goodwin said sadly, “it is bourgeois to quote Shakespeare.”

“You can?” Miss Seton said sharply to Mr. Crawford. “You think you can drive it?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Crawford.

“Hadn’t you better hurry then? The snow may be drifting over the road.”

Mr. Crawford rose from his seat. The others fell back to let him pass. He seated himself behind the wheel and reached for the ignition.

“And what,” Joyce inquired with gentle irony, “if the driver comes back and finds us gone? He may freeze to death. I think we’re making a terrible mistake and I’ll bet two to one that Mr. Crawford couldn’t drive a camel.”

“True,” said Mr. Crawford. The engine began to roar and Mrs. Vista began to roar, too, encouraging it.

The others sat on the edge of their seats waiting for the lurch forward. The lurch came, and another, and another, and the bus was a few yards closer to the Chateau Neige. The engine raced and sputtered into silence.

Mr. Crawford removed his hat and Miss Seton could see that he was sweating and his hands were clenched tightly on the steering wheel, almost desperately.

Queer, Miss Seton thought. In an interval between lurches she moved up the aisle and took the front seat beside Mrs. Vista. Though the bus was extremely cold she saw that Mr. Crawford had unbuttoned his overcoat. Lurch. Mr. Crawford’s overcoat pocket swung and struck the back of his seat. There was a clang of metal, barely noticeable over the roar of the engine.

He has a gun, Miss Seton thought, and the whole scene became suddenly unreal — the blizzard, the missing driver, Mr. Crawford bent over the wheel with his breath coming out of his mouth like puffs of smoke, the gun in his pocket...

Lurch. The engine died again and Mr. Crawford’s mouth moved in silent cursing.

“I think that settles it.” Joyce’s voice rang out clearly through the bus.

“Shut up!” Mr. Crawford said savagely. He tried the engine again but it was dead for good this time. He put his head down on his arm for a second and Miss Seton saw that his face was the color of putty and the sweat stood out on his forehead like little drops of oil.

No one spoke while he silently put on his hat and rebuttoned his overcoat and got out from behind the wheel.

He said at last in a soft voice, “The little lady wins.”

There was another silence. Then Joyce said crisply, “We’d better get started. We’ll have to leave all the luggage behind.”

Maudie began to weep. “I can’t! Oh, I can’t! We may freeze...”

“Hush, angel,” Herbert said masterfully. “Give me your hand.”

“Let go of me!”

“Do you want to stay here and die!”

“Yes!” Maudie shrieked.

“Well, all right,” Herbert said, and strode into the aisle and up to the door.

“Coming, Goodwin?” said Mr. Hunter.

Mr. Goodwin leaped up, struck his head sharply against the baggage rack and joined Herbert at the door.

“Come, Evaline,” he said to Mrs. Vista.

Mrs. Vista stared at him, annoyed. “Anthony, you don’t mean to say you’re going out into that storm with your weak chest? You must be crazy!”

Mr. Goodwin was always flattered by any aspersions cast on his sanity. He said almost gently, “Genius is to madness near allied. Come.”

The door swung open and the wind trumpeted in. Herbert stepped out and sank in snow up to his knees. He cupped his mouth with his hand and yelled, “Hurry up! The tracks are nearly gone! Make it snappy!”

Miss Morning scrambled out into the aisle and gave Maudie a good-natured push in the back. “Make it snappy, he says, dearie.”

Maudie swung around and glared at her. “You take your hands off me!”

“Phooey,” said Miss Morning pleasantly and followed Miss Seton and Joyce to the door.

Mr. Crawford was the last to leave. He watched the others carefully as they passed him.

There’s no danger from any of them, he thought. Bad luck for me, but they’re all harmless. I’ll just have to be more cautious. But what a filthy break!

He stepped out of the door and closed it behind him. He was barely conscious of the intense cold and the blinding wind. He was accustomed to both, and his mind was working too fast to permit him to feel discomfort.

Ahead of him Miss Seton tottered through the drifts, her eyes nearly closed. The wind needled her eyelids and stung them to tears which she wiped off with her stiffening gloves. There was nothing to hear. It was as if she was alone in a torture box with walls of wind, and sharp little knives of snow were being hurled from all sides.

Her face was a dull steady ache and her legs in silk stockings were numbed. When she leaned over a little she could see tracks ahead of her, and slightly to the right of these, a single set of footprints growing fainter and fainter as she moved, the footprints of the bus driver.

“Where could he have gone?” she gasped. “And why? Why?”

She stopped a moment to put her sleeve against her throbbing forehead. Her coat was thick with snow but the sleeve felt warm against her skin. I’m freezing, she thought wildly, I’m already frozen.

Then suddenly and miraculously the wind and snow vanished, as if a hole had opened in the sky and sucked them up and closed again. The silence was so sudden that she heard her own gasp of surprise and the heavy breathing of Mr. Crawford behind her. And she could see again; the bandages of snow had been lifted from her eyes, and in spite of the approaching dusk she saw everything with a new clarity and perspective — a column of strangers following some faint tracks in the snow: Mrs. Vista an enormous raccoon clinging to Mr. Goodwin’s coat, Mr. Goodwin taking off his hat and carefully shaking the snow from it, Mr. Hunter wiping his frosted mustache with a handkerchief, Paula Lashley standing beside Chad Ross, still not looking at him but staring out across the snow.

Joyce Hunter was gazing around her with evident satisfaction as if she had personally ordered God to do this little favor and He had obeyed.

Miss Seton looked at her and giggled. Joyce turned in her direction and shouted, “Are you all right? You’re not hysterical?” Her voice rang out sharply in the new intense silence.

In spite of her stiff cracked lips Miss Seton managed a murderous smile. “No, I’m not hysterical, Miss...?”

“Hunter,” Joyce said.

“Seton,” Miss Seton shouted.

Paula said quietly, “I think there’s a house over there.”

“A house!” Maudie Thropple gave a long shuddering sigh and swooned comfortably against Herbert. “A house. We’re saved.”

“Saved!” Mrs. Vista echoed.

Joyce casually flicked the snow from three curls at the top of her parka and remarked that there had never been any danger anyway and it seemed silly to get all emotional because they’d seen a house. She herself, she added, had known from the first that there’d be a house.

Miss Seton looked around carefully. The house lay some five hundred yards to the east, a huge square pile of grey stone squatting on a small hill. A thin scraggly wisp of smoke issued from one chimney straight up into the sky.

It’s the only place, Miss Seton thought. He must have gone there. There’s nothing else.

Yet she hesitated. The footprints had disappeared now as if they had never existed. There was only a smooth unbroken field of snow in front of them, serene and inhuman. Inhuman, Miss Seton thought with a shiver. I can’t believe a man walked there.

Chad Ross was leading the way towards the house, his long legs moving in slow rhythm through the drifts. No one was talking, they were straining towards the house because it was very cold again. For a few minutes after the wind had lifted, they were warm by contrast and from excitement, but now their faces were aching. The fine laugh-lines around Miss Seton’s eyes deepened and became static.

Awful, she thought. Why would people live here? Or did people live here? Perhaps the house was inhabited by snow creatures, white wind-bloated ghosts which skimmed the snow and left no marks.

I am hysterical, she thought, the girl was right. I’m too old to cope with ghosts. I must think of something else.

Mr. Goodwin was directly in front of her so she thought about him and wondered where he got the strange hat with the feather. She kept looking at the feather to keep from thinking about the cold and the dreary-looking house ahead of them.

There was a queer sharp noise and the feather disappeared from Mr. Goodwin’s hat as precisely and quickly as if it had been shot off.

Shot off, Miss Seton repeated to herself.

She became aware that the others had stopped almost simultaneously and that Mr. Goodwin’s hands were fumbling towards his head. His voice, slightly cracked and husky, came to her ears:

“Someone is shooting at me.”

Mrs. Vista sat down abruptly in the snow. A second sharp crack splintered the silence.

“Down!” Charles Crawford yelled. “Keep down, everybody!”

Miss Seton’s knees were fluid and she sank gratefully down. She looked around at Charles Crawford and saw that he was the only one left standing and that he seemed to be doing his best to be murdered. He had taken off his hat and was waving it violently in the air. He didn’t look at all frightened or desperate as he had when he was trying to start the

bus. He simply looked angry and at the same time a little amused.

We must look like a pack of fools, Miss Seton thought. Close beside her, Miss Morning’s voice whispered, “Well, I’ll be damned. They must think we’re somebody else.”

Miss Seton raised her head a little and peered towards the house again. A light flickered for a moment in one of the windows on the second floor, and something white moved past the window. Like a ghost, Miss Seton thought, and closed her eyes very tightly and painfully.

Behind her Charles Crawford spoke again. “It’s all right now, I think, but I suggest we take it slow and keep down as much as possible. Move on, up there!”

Chad Ross, still at the head of the column, turned his head and scowled, but he started walking anyway with Paula Lashley close behind him. When they were within twenty yards of the house the front door began to open slowly and cautiously and a head appeared in the crack. It stayed there, motionless, for a full minute.

Mrs. Vista put up her hand and shouted, “Ahoy! Ahoy there! We’re lost!”

A sharp cackle of laughter bounced over the snow and a small squat figure came out of the door. She was dressed in black except for the white cap she wore on her head. She stood still on the snow-covered veranda, laughing.

Miss Seton shivered and turned to Charles Crawford. He had his hat back on and was watching the figure on the veranda with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t like the sound of that laugh,” Miss Seton whispered.

He smiled, too quickly. “Well, do I?” He raised his voice. “Move on, up there!”

It was not Chad Ross who moved first this time, it was Mrs. Vista. She plunged through the snow, wheezing and shouting, “Ahoy!” The rest followed her slowly. She waited for them at the bottom of the veranda steps and when they reached the steps they found out why.

The lady in black was not laughing, but crying. The tears were sliding down each side of her thick white nose. She did not brush them off but stood watching the people clustered at the foot of the steps, her mouth drawn back from her big white teeth, her black eyes impassive behind the tears. She had a shawl over her shoulders clutched together at the front by bony hands that were slightly dirty.

For a minute no one spoke at all except Mrs. Vista, who kept wheezing, “Ahoy!” in a faint whisper as if she were hypnotized.

Miss Seton looked at Charles Crawford, expecting him to step up and take charge as he had before. But Mr. Crawford had no intention of taking charge, apparently. He stood with his hands in his pockets, scuffing the snow with his feet.

The other men seemed equally at a loss, and Joyce Hunter had passed into another coma.

That, Miss Seton thought savagely, leaves me.

She shouldered her way past Mrs. Vista, looked firmly at the lady in black, and said, “Hello.”

It wasn’t the most brilliant beginning but it had its effect.

The lady stopped crying and said, in a voice soft and husky from tears:

“You are lost?”

“No, we are not lost,” Miss Seton said crisply. “We have lost our driver.”

“Driver?”

“The driver of the bus we were in.”

“Bus?”

“The bus that goes to the Chateau Neige,” Miss Seton explained. “The driver got out and left us. He came here. We followed him.”

“Here?” The lady raised one shoulder and brushed off her cheeks with her shawl. “How sad. How very sad.”

“We...” Miss Seton’s voice cracked and she looked angrily around at the others. “Why doesn’t somebody else say something?”

Mr. Hunter carefully cleared his throat and said, “We are very cold. May we come inside? I’m afraid we’ll freeze.”

The lady in black made a clucking noise with her tongue. “It is a mild day, an extremely mild day. We have had an extremely mild winter.” Her black eyes rested speculatively on them, one after another, until they came to Maudie. “That thin one there, she will freeze. There’s no blood in her.”

Maudie gave a little shriek and clung to Herbert. “Oh, take me away!”

“She is already freezing,” the lady said, and her eyes moved on to the others. Quite suddenly she began to cry again and backed away towards the open door, moaning, “I don’t want you here. Harry, you go away. I don’t want you here. This is my house, my house. Go away,

you thieves.”

Miss Morning had had enough. She thrust her way past the others and walked aggressively up the steps of the veranda. When she spoke her voice was surprisingly gentle:

“Nobody’s going to hurt you. We want to get warm. We wouldn’t hurt you.”

The woman backed away from her and made another swipe at her tears with her shawl.

“I haven’t room,” she whined. “I don’t want you in my house. There are so many of us already.”

Miss Seton had recovered herself. She followed Miss Morning up the steps and said briskly, “The driver is here, of course?”

“No, no, no one is here but me and my dear friends.”

“Your — friends?”

“My dear friends Floraine and Etienne and Suzanne — don’t you go in there!” she shouted at Miss Morning who was already inside the door. “You thief! Stealing from a poor lady. Poor Miss Rudd. Poor old lady.”

She followed Miss Morning inside. Miss Seton rather hesitantly went inside after her.

The hall was dim, with a high gilt ceiling. It smelled of must and rotting woodwork and stale food. An immense marble and brass staircase led up to the second floor, and on the first landing of the staircase a huge yellow cat stood waving its tail in the air.

“Hi, puss,” said Miss Morning.

Miss Rudd moved close to her and touched her arm. “My dear friend, Etienne,” she said softly. “Come, Etienne. Etienne, come here.”

The cat arched his back and spat. Then, with a last wave of his tail he stalked up the stairs.

Miss Rudd kept calling him softly, walking slowly towards the stairs.

The others were coming inside the house. Herbert came last, thrusting a reluctant Maudie ahead of him, and closed the door. At the sound, Miss Rudd darted back from the stairs and stood in front of Charles Crawford.

“I told you, Harry. I told you never to set foot in my house again with your thieving ways. Tell your friends to go, Harry. I won’t have them in my house!”

“You know her?” Miss Seton asked in a puzzled voice.

Charles Crawford looked at her savagely and blushed. “No, I don’t know her, you little dope.”

He shifted his feet and tried to appear nonchalant under Miss Rudd’s unblinking stare. Miss Seton began to giggle.

Miss Rudd’s eyes gleamed at her. “A pretty coat,” she said. “What a pretty coat.”

As she spoke a woman appeared on the stairs. She was holding Etienne the cat in her arms, stroking his fur. She was tall and well-built and wore a stiff white uniform that crackled as she moved down the steps. When she came closer Miss Seton saw that she was quite young, not over thirty, and heavily handsome, with dark skin and smooth dark hair braided with a coronet around her head.

She said, “Let them alone, Frances.”

Miss Rudd nodded her head back and forth.

“My dear friend, Floraine,” she cried. She plucked at Floraine’s sleeve as she passed. Floraine paid no attention.

“I am Floraine Larue,” she said in a brisk voice, “Miss Rudd’s companion.”

Miss Seton felt a surge of relief at the sight of this competent-looking nurse. She said, “We’ve lost our bus driver. He got out of the bus and came here.”

“Here?” Floraine raised her thick black eyebrows. “I’m sure you’re mistaken. No one came here.”

“No one came here,” Miss Rudd repeated, nodding her head.

“No one at all,” said Floraine.