The heat on Wednesday had such a climax.
About five o'clock, Eedie Trezona stood at her back gate and looked up at the band of ugly, yellow-green which was being borne, like a bone, in the teeth of the rolling green-black cloud.
"Will you make it, Ellen?" Eedie asked her departing caller, anxiously. "Hadn't you better wait over?"
Mrs. Trestrial was climbing headfirst into her model T Ford. She set her haunches behind the wheel and turned her long horsy face. The gray curls hobbled at her temples. "I'll make it, Eedie, never fear."
She was a cousin on the captain's side, sixty odd, a long-boned, long-jawed, vigorous and independent Cornish-woman. She looked like a caricature of a spinster. But she was a widow, although her husband's memory had faded out of the people's minds. It was almost as if Mrs. Trestrial had achieved the Mrs. to her name all by herself, a title of respect for her years and her personality.
"My young men to think on," she said, "and their supper to get.'"
"Be careful, do!"
"Never fear," said Mrs. Trestrial cheerily, and bolt upright, grasping the wheel fearlessly with her head held high, she
set off down the hill. Her driving was a caution. Somehow the skittering little car was given its head as if it had been a horse, and Mrs. Trestrial merely clucked to it or gave it a hint to her desires intermittently by a sudden yank at the wheel. The car careened, now, down around the bend at the bottom of the first slope with a sassy flourish of its hindquarters.
Eedie turned again to look at the clouds.
From this high house, which lay on the upper road northwest of the town, she had a vast skyscape. The full wickedness of the coming storm was visible all the way down to a far horizon.
Eedie counted her chickens. She glanced up the road. Gideon would be coming soon. No doubt he'd make it. Dorothy was safe in the kitchen. Dickie was safe in the house, too. Wesley had gone to work early to get under shelter before the storm broke. Wesley would be underground soon and safest of them all.
He had been able to sleep in the afternoon, once some of his burden lay on her shoulders, too. All things being equal, it was his heritage to fall into a state of happiness just as she did. In him, as in her, hope would spring up given any chance at all. So, waking, he had seemed a little easier. For this she was easier and grateful.
So, although Ellen Trestrial's presence had prevented any more talk between them about the trouble he was in, still the unspoken word that passed in a glance and a touch as he left was not woe. It was hope. All might yet be well. The man, Varker, would be merciful and give time. Honest endeavor to pay, made to the best of one's capacity, would surely be recognized. Hearts were not willingly hard. So there would be kindness and mercy.
Evil hung over the house but, like the cloud in the west, it had not yet broken. And in the ominous yellow light, the breathlessness of the air before the storm, Eedie Trezona even found a root reason to tuck under the hope that already flowered out of nothing more substantial than her owti quick and ungrudging forgiveness.
To the grandeur and the beauty of all the world she could see the brilliant greens leaping out in this light, the billow-
ing black coming up, the narrowing margin of blue sky—so calm and clear and high and far—that she knew arched over and would return: to all of this she could not help responding with reverent awe. How glorious and powerful was God! She, so small, need not wonder how He would save the truly repentant loving boy, and the good loving father from the stinging blows that could rebound between them, back and forth. Pain and the pain of giving pain . . . She need not wonder nor ask, but hopefully praise, for His was the Power and the Glory.
Madeline Cole moved nervously to and fro in her tiny kitchen. Arthur was gone—off early because of the impending storm. He had caught a ride up to the mine with someone, so the routine was broken and supper over too early. She was restless, thrown off her stride, and pressed upon by the atmosphere besides.
"Going to be a bad one." Cyril put his head through the door. "Windows closed upstairs?"
She nodded.
"Turn on the light, why don't you?"
"I don't like ..."
"Superstition," scoffed he. "Have some light in here. Lightning's not going to be attracted by a one hundred watt bulb."
"I suppose you know," she said sullenly.
"I'm no engineer."
She stopped in her tracks. "Turn it on then."
Cyril smiled. But he did not turn on the electric light. The wicked sky, the lowering yellow-lined gloom suited his sister, he thought. He watched her begin again to lash to and fro, turning like a cat, beautiful and savage.
He said speculatively, "Say, we got no college dreams tonight, did we?"
"The storm," she said. "He was in a hurry."
Cyril grunted skeptically. He leaned on the doorjamb. "You and Duncane got together last night?" he asked lightly.
She flashed around and faced him with her fists at her neck. "You . , . !"
"You're a fool, Madeline," he said. "Now what? Now what?"
"None of your . . , !"
'Tristan again, eh? But the same old slightly shopworn Isolde."
"You don't understand . . ."
"Tell me it's love," he jeered. "Go ahead. It's in your department, I'll grant you that. If you'd use your head for one minute . . ."
"You don't own me," she cried. "You keep out . . ."
"No," he said. "No, I don't own you. If I did, you'd act less like a headless chicken; that I'd promise."
She started to rush past him but he caught her arm. "What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"You're pretty good," he said, "but I'm the one person you can never deceive. So don't try. What's going on?"
"Nothing," she said this time eye to eye.
He laughed. "Well, I believe it and I'm the only person who will. You realize? What do you think you're going to do?"
Her gaze flickered.
"Ah, you have plans?"
"Maybe," she defied.
"You're insane," he told her gloomily. "What about Arthur?"
"What about him?"
"It's bad enough," said Cyril with a vicious twist to his mouth, "that you jumped into getting married without looking twice at him. But now you live in the same house, haven't you seen him? Don't you know what he's like?"
"What is he like? A child, you say."
"A violent one." Cyril was quite earnest. "Violent, I say. Because he's got room in his head for one idea at a time and only one. No second thought is going to cool Arthur off. Not quick enough. Do you want to get your neck broken?"
"No." She jerked to get out of his grasp but he held her.
"Don't scoff. I'm warning you."
"What can he do?" she said sullenly.
"Break your neck. And be very sorry, of course, five min-
utes later. Probably sob all the way to the gallows, pitifully."
"I'm not ... He won't . . . Let go."
Her gray e}es turned. The yellow light washed her pale face. She looked intently into the pale, cold eyes of her brother. "What do you advise?"
He didn't answer. Her voice grew thin and insolent. "Out of your vast experience in affairs of love . . . Tell me, what would you do?"
He let go her arm.
"You'd work and send him to college? Or whatever he wants to do next week? Or leave that out of it. You'd even live the rest of your life miserably with the wrong one? Or would you ask for a divorce?"
"Ask," he said shortly. "Ask, by all means. Ask pretty."
"What can he do? I haven't . . ."
Thunder cracked and then settled to a long deep roar.
"Go a thousand miles and hide and then ask," Cyril said.
Lightning quivered wickedly.
"You might as well ask the lightning, you know, to wait and think a minute before it jumps."
"But," she insisted, "you'd try to get out of it? You wouldn't give up? At least, you'd ask?"
"I?"
<
br /> "Wouldn't you?"
Cyril realized what she wanted from him. "Will he, you mean." He smiled. "Poor Henry Duncane. He'll ask. He'll try. You'll devil him until he does."
Outside the cloud broke and the rain gushed down.
Madeline had relaxed suddenly as if the breaking of the storm relieved her. "Go on, scare me," she challenged. "So you can go on living here cheap." Her voice was saucy.
"It would cost me," snapped Cyril, "to bury you. I'd be the one to pay for it."
"Ah, for your sake I'll be careful," she mocked him.
But when the lightning came again, he saw that her face was thoughtful. He knew she had listened to his warning. She saw that he was satisfied.
So was she. Although he might go very shrewdly about it because his blood was colder, Cyril, too, would try—just as she was trying—to get whatever it was he wanted. Anyone
would, thought Madehne, with a shiver of pleasure. Whatever they pretended, everyone did.
Libby Duncane had no appetite. In the lurid light she pecked and pretended. Celestina, serving, moved stiffly. If it had not been for Henry, both women would have abandoned the whole idea of a meal in the tension and threat of the weather.
But Henry sat to his supper just as if the whole sky were not about to crack open and possibly destroy them. His indifference was, to Libby's nerves, both comforting and exasperating in a throbbing alternation.
Already her ears were stretched to hear the fatal phone ring. If only she could know for sure that Henry would be here in the house with her throughout the storm. She might then settle against the comfort of his calm. But she couldn't know any such thing for this time, as so often before, one or other of the phones might ring. If there was trouble and there usually was, if lightning struck at any point along the line between the falls and the mine, and it usually did, then the mine phone would ring. And if the mine phone went dead, as it usually did, then the regular phone would ring just the same. And Henry would stand there with lightning playing around his head (or so it seemed to her) and usually, sooner or later, he would fling out of the house into the very worst of it, leaving her not only alone but, outrageously, to be the one who must still those shrieking phones she was afraid to touch—to say that he had gone.
As for Celestina, she gave neither the slightest comfort nor was she of the slightest use. Once the storm broke Celestina would be immobilized. She would not so much as run to close a window in direst need. She would kiss the cross in some dark corner.
Thunder muttered, mumbled and muttered, lying low. No use to think it was going another way or that it would skip over. They were in for it.
Henry was counting. He had a way of counting seconds and multiplying or something. He would sit there and do arithmetic in his head and then he would say calmly that the storm was so and so many miles away. Libby didn't believe
it. To her the thunder was as incalculable and tricky as human fury, and it was malign. It could mutter and fool you, for next time it could just as well crack in the very room. And Henry's arithmetic was a silly, school-born abstraction.
"About five miles," he said now. She didn't believe it. "Finished? Let Celestina get the dishes."
He strode into the sitting room. Libby, hearing the dishes chatter in Celestina's nervous hands, looked back at tlie girl with compassion.
"Just stack them, Celestina. You may wait and wash them later."
Celestina ducked her head. She gave no thanks. She hardly seemed grateful. She wouldn't have washed the dishes anyway.
Libby thought, she looks like an animal. Well, we are all animals.
Henry was standing in the bay window. But what kind of animal was Henry? thought Libby, his wife, that he could stand and look straight up into the storm's dark face? She couldn't help feeling he tempted it. It might smite his insolence.
"I suppose," she said gloomily, "you'll be out in this sooner or later."
He shrugged and leaned toward the glass to see higher. A lightning bolt seemed to dance on the lawn.
"Henry, why do you go? Why do you always go yourself?"
He looked around at her. Now the thunder answered. Not five miles away, not any more.
"Aren't you the chief engineer? Aren't you a boss?"
He looked rather pleased, she thought. He came away from the windows and sat down. The light was so murky now they might have been under the sea. Henry switched on the lamp over his head and smiled at her.
"Don't you have subordinates?" she insisted.
"Sure do." He was still looking at her as if he were pleased.
"Then why aren't there some things you could get out of?" Her blue eyes were earnest. She meant what she was saying. "The dirty work. Tlie going out at night and getting wet. What good is it to be the boss if you have to do all the disagreeable things?"
"If there's trouble it's my job," he began, gropingly for Henry. The pleased look had vanished. Something she said had wiped it away.
"You could give orders."
"I do."
"But . . ."
"It's important . .." he said slowly.
"What is?" she said irritably. "That you go personally every single time and run around in the middle of lightning and get soaked? I think, in some weird way, you must like it."
He didn't answer until a long roll of thunder had swelled and died. Then he said, "I don't like getting soaked or being routed out, Lib. But I do like making sure the job's done right. I can't . . ."
"So," she said abruptly, cutting into his struggle to express something. "Then I can look forward to being alone in all the worst weather."
He made no answer. He seemed a little stunned by what she was saying. Her sense of injury swelled.
"And the worse it is the more likely I am to be alone?"
"Thunder storms are going to come up, Libby," he said, patiently, "and if the line goes out, or something happens at the Falls . . ."
"Henry, I don't like being alone," she interrupted again, "especially now." (She didn't believe he needed to go. She beheved he liked it.)
"You won't be alone," said Henry.
"Celestina," she scoffed. "You should see her. She crawls in a corner and puts something over her head"
He said, "Libby, it makes no difference . . ."
"No difference?"
"Lightning strikes without looking to see whether Celes-tina's got something over her head or even whether I'm home or not."
Was he grinning? A bolt glittered. An after-image of the wicked prongs shook on the eyeball.
"Oh, pull the shades, please," she cried. "I know it does, Henry." Her hands clasped each other. How could you explain the hideous power of unreason to a reasoning mind?
He went to draw the shades. As he did so, lightning ghmmered and outhned his body, and the spHt air clapped together over the roof.
"Close," he said thoughtfully.
Her mouth shook. "I'm so especially nervous right now." She pressed her lips together. Well that was a whopper, she thought. She lifted her head and threw the truth at him.
"I've always been scared to death in a lightning storm," she said and, so doing, thought she tore up and threw away a whole spring and summer's worth of painful self-control.
"Lots of people are," said Henry, betraying no surprise. Then he added gravely, "There is some danger."
Libby's lips fell open. She didn't perceive that he put out a fact to stand as a reasonable excuse for her. It seemed to her to be one of his blunt ineptitudes. A truth told cruelly at the wrong time because there was no sympathy.
"If you're trying to make me feel better," she struggled to think it was funny, "you certainly go a good way about it." She giggled. "Oh, Henry, how can you tell me there's danger! What do you think scares me?"
"The noise, I imagine," said Henry calmly.
A booming shook the whole house and she jumped and flushed. Suddenly the rain rushed down.
He followed the turn of her eye and got up to draw the streetside shades down too. Now
the room closed in and seemed to take its risks blind.
"WTiat did you do at home in a storm?" he asked her.
"At home? Oh, my home?"
"Your home," he said evenly.
Half Libby's mind was busy being thankful that the phones had not rung yet. So she only half-realized she had fallen into a habit that perhaps she ought to break. She said, half-absently, "Oh, Henry, when I say home I only mean my old home, of course. This is my home."
The storm was high now and the rain pounded down on the house that had never seemed less homelike.
Henry merely amended his question precisely. "What did you do at your old home in a storm? Had them, I suppose?"
What had she done at home? She couldn't remember. She
cringed. Surely that had struck in this very street. "Oh worried it through, I guess. Henry, this is a bad one!"
"Pretty bad," he agreed. But she thought there was something hard and far-off about his agreeing. Bad, to him, was volts, she thought, or some measuring, technical thing.
Her small face, that gathered into a small pointed chin, tried to be placid and proud.
The mine phone rang and she jumped again. Two shorts, two longs. Not Henry's ring. (She knew no rings but his.) She was glad it was not for him, and so was surprised and hurt somehow when he went to the phone and picked it up anyway and told somebody to get ready to do something.
"Not for you," she said reproachfully when he had finished.
His eyes went sideways. He came and sat down beside her. His eyes turned sideways again. "May not last much longer." She knew he had guessed that they said things like this to each other at home. He was right, of course. Of course, they did.
"I don't see how it can," she said shortly.
Doom cracked in the sky. The mine phone rang again but it was not Henry's ring. Nor did he go. She could feel that he listened and knew what it meant, but needn't go.
Now he picked up the Weekly Current (published in Pine-bend, the nearest town of size) that was the nearest thing Thor had to a local newspaper.
The trouble in Thor Page 8
