The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors!
There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion.
And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass.
Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched weed, mile on mile, and warm endless sky.
The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes.
It was the children’s hour.
Five o’clock.
The bath filled with clear hot water.
Six, seven, eight o’clock.
The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.
Nine o’clock.
The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.
Nine-five.
A voice spoke from the study ceiling:
“Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?”
The house was silent.
The voice said at last,
“Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random.”
Quiet music rose to back the voice.
“Sara Teasdale.
As I recall, your favorite…”
“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.”
The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray.
The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.
At ten o’clock the house began to die.
The wind blew.
A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window.
Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove.
The room was ablaze in an instant!
“Fire!” screamed a voice.
The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings.
But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking eating under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus:
“Fire, fire, fire!”
The house tried to save itself.
Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.
The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs.
While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistoled their water, and ran for more.
And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.
But too late.