It was all arranged, but it took time. Libby could understand that, now. The house thrust up into the storm, and she, sheltered, was rather pleased with all the tumult outside. Like everybody of any importance in Shakespeare, she mused, this baby gets born with portents.
She said to Mrs. Trestrial, "It will be a boy."
"It will be what it will be," said Mrs. Trestrial, rocking. "That Celestina's got a towel over 'er 'bad."
"She always does."
"Tellin' 'er beads. I told 'er a thing or two."
"Oh, Mrs. Trestrial, if she's scared of the storm she can't help it."
"If she's sweet on Wesley Trezona she'd better 'elp it."
"Why?"
"Never do."
"Why?"
"Never do, is all."
"But if they fell in love . . . ?"
"They can fall h'out," said Mrs. Trestrial.
"But why?" Libby felt, unreasonably at such a time, very sorry for all young things.
" 'E's been taught one way, and she another. 'Twouldn't do," said Mrs. Trestrial with authority.
"Oh," said Libby faintly, "there'd be no contract."
"What's that, child?"
Libby began to groan. She enjoyed the noise she made.
"Is it bad?"
"Not that bad/' she gasped. "I'm glad it's a noisy storm. I can yell all I want."
"No need be quiet," grinned Mrs. Trestrial.
"Mrs. Trestrial, I love you!" (What a delirious thing to say aloud!) "My mother would want me not to yell."
"Expect she believes in puttin' up a good show, eh?"
"Yes," said Libby, eyes widening. "Yes, I suppose. . . ." Her thoughts veered. "I hope the lightning doesn't strike the doctor."
"No matter if it do," said Mrs. Trestrial calmly. "Us'll manage."
The storm was furious. It couldn't get in. The mine phone rang.
Ahha, thought Libby. It wasn't Henry's ring but, as in a vision, she could see a man somewhere needing to tell another about some difference in the way things were going. Strange how she could see the ringing of the phone tonight from the other end of the line instead of here. She thought, I'm getting clairvoyant or something odd. This really is the funniest thing.
There was pain, now and again, but it seemed necessary.
About a quarter of ten Mrs. Trestrial had gone out of the room for a moment and Libby, let off and let rest for one of the intervals between, heard someone near her door.
"Who's there?" she called softly. It s me, ma am.
"Celestina?" With that queer power of seeing things from the other end, Libby felt suddenly a great pity for poor Celestina, so worried about the boy in the mine, so frightened by the storm, so chivvied about by Mrs. Trestrial, and a prisoner in this house. "Come here."
The door opened. "Miz Trestrial went in the kitchen. Said I was to tell her if you called, ma'am."
"Come in."
The girl squeezed through, cowering. "Are you all right, ma'am? Did you want . . . ?"
"Ma'am," said Libby. "Now what makes you . . . ?"
The spasm came and passed while thunder shook the very floor. In the midst of the double uproar Libby thought Cel-
estina might have said, "Mr. Duncane told me to call you ma'am, ma'am."
The girl stood with her shoulders drawn up, tense against thunder and lightning.
"Don't be afraid, Celestina," (What a useless thing that was to say!) "I only wanted to tell you that I'm sorr)' you and I haven't got along better. I don't want this feeling that you dislike me, and I don't want to dislike you. Can't we improve?"
"Yes, ma'am." The answer was dull and didn't mean much.
"There are many things I didn't know," murmured Libby. "You were right about that. Well, I can only say I'm sorry." (Useless, she was thinking. Well, I've tried.)
But now Celestina's dark eyes turned. She did not like the pale-haired woman in the bed, and never would. But she had a new thing in her heart, now. From a source she had never thought to find it, help had come.
Henry Duncane, by simply listening and then replying, had cleared away the unhappiness of her confusion. It was all right for Celestina to feel just the way she did feel. It was all right to care and to pray for Wesley Trezona and it did not mean she betrayed herself or her own pride or her loyalties or her people or anything. She felt sure about Wesley now. Of course she liked him and prayed for his safety. But she was less upset about him. She was ready for a quiet sorrow or a quiet rejoicing. Neither would change the course of Celestina's private and personal destiny very much at all.
But her heart was warm toward Henry Duncane. She felt she would do anything—anything—for him. If only she could help him, somehow, someday. She had already made a fantasy or two.
Why, she would even make up with this woman, so she could stay on here and every day cherish the sight and the sound of him. His "Good morning," even. And certainly she wouldn't do anything to trouble him, although maybe she already had. Well, then, she would undo it.
So filled with the best of intentions and impelled by devotion, Celestina drew nearer. "Miz Duncane, I'm sorry. When I said what I said, I was mad at you."
"I know," said Libby, faintly smiling. She believed she had touched the girl, after all. But she could not give her full attention for, at the same time, she heard the mine phone ring again. This time it was for Henr}'. Ah yes, she thought, he'll be out in it.
"It wasn't him," Celestina was saying passionately. "It was her, anyhow. Shes the one said all about she loved him, he loved her, and she'd get divorced. He never said anything like that! He never did! He wouldn't, Miz Duncane, and I'm sorry. Honest, all he said, he told her not to come here . . ."
"Who?"
"Miz Cole. They was under my window. But he didn't kiss her or anything like that. Ooooooh!"
Lightning blazed and Celestina leapt. A thunderbolt drowned every other sound and the girls arms went around her head. When the noise had rumbled off around the earth and fallen over the horizon, Henr) was there in the room with them,
"Do you want her in here, Libby?" he said in his brittle clipped pattering syllables.
Libby looked up at him. Whether he had heard what the girl had been saying or not, his face was cold. "I did call her," Libby said weakly. "No, I don't want her now."
The girl, with her arms still folded over the top of her head, wailed once and turned as if to run, turned back, wild with dismay. "Oh, please, Mr. Duncane. Don't look at me! I never meant anything. I was only ... I didn't . . ."
"Get your coat, Celestina," Henry said.
"Oh . . . Oh . . ." W^ailing and weeping, the girl ran away.
"I'll see that you aren't bothered," Henry said gently. "You mustn't be."
Now Libby was shaken and tossed by the thing that would not be diverted by anything—thunder, lightning, or a piercing of the heart—from what it now proposed to do with the body of Libby Duncane. And when it let her go, she heard Henry say, "You mustn't think about anything but the baby." Her own words, her own decree, now cut her sharply away from knowing, from asking, from being told.
"Henry . . ."
"There's some trouble at the Falls." He evaded—or he did not. She couldn't tell. "I ought to go, Libby. But if you need me . . ."
"I don't need you just now," she said slowly. "I told you so." Ah, no use to ask, she thought, not now. He would not tell her. He would soothe and protect her (as she had, herself, decreed) from any true thing that miglit offend her delicate sensibilities.
Henrv' bent. Perhaps he kissed her cheek, she wasn't sure. "I'll be as quick as I can." But he went awav and she could tell he was glad to go. She was glad when he was gone.
She wondered whether he had heard how Celestina had let a pretty monstrous cat out of the bag. Maybe he hadn't. Had. Hadn't. Never mind. The cat was out this time.
She thought that she and Henry had married too fast . . . Henry back from the war, bowled over by her daintiness, she by his forcefulness . . . But someone should have s
aid to them a year ago, " 'Twill never do."
She moaned. Mrs. Trestrial came bustling. "That girl's gone," said she, snifEng. "And good riddance, h'i say."
"Gone?"
" 'E asked me if I needed 'er. Land, if she's going to yell and holler, I said, no. So 'e took 'er."
"Henry? Took Celestina with him?"
"Drop 'er off 'ome, 'e said. Just as well." Mrs. Trestrial bristled.
"And she went, in this storm!"
"She went," said Mrs. Trestrial grimly. " 'c wouldn't stand for 'er nonsense."
"No." Libby's mouth grinned of itself.
The phone rang. In a mysterious way, she knew at once it was calling the boilerhouse. Now how did she know? "Trouble, Trouble," she muttered. Thunder boomed. Mrs. Trestrial's warm hand touched her arm. "Do you remember?" gasped Libby Duncane. "You said 'It isn't what you fear that's on your heels, it's some other thing.' "
"Did I say so?"
"You were right, too."
Mrs. Trestrial had pulled a window blind aside. "Thought 'twas about time. 'Ere's Doctor, now . . ."
The lights went out.
Libby sighed. As in a vision, she saw the storm-swept roads and Henry's car going toward the trouble in the works, at the Falls. And she saw the deep place where there was no storm, bu where a fight against trouble, trouble and death, was being valiantly fought. And she saw the doctor scooting up her walk, head down in the dark rain, and herself, writhing in this flickering lamplight, with the trouble of birth.
"This town's like a three ring circus tonight," she gasped, as the doctor rubbed the moisture off his ruddy cheerful face. "Is there any news at the mine? Have you heard?"
"I hear," he said soothingly, "they think they're getting very near again."
She was stabbed with pity. What it must be to wait! "So terrible," she said.
Mrs. Trestrial bridled. "She's fine, eh Doctor?"
"Am I?" said Libby, and then, "Gosh . . ,"
The doctor laughed and patted her hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There was no time to put up any side curtains. Henry made Celestina sit in the center of the tonneau, and still the rain splashed her from both directions. Water gurgled and swooped in the gutters, and the wheels of the car sent hard fans up to roar on the inside of the fenders.
The eye had no defense against the lightning's erratic brilliance. It could not adjust to the feeble effort of the car's headlights or easily learn to discount the silvery slash of light on rain that obscured even this.
Henry drove slowly because he had to.
Celestina, too miserable to be frightened, remembered a fantasy. To be alone in a car at night with such a man . . . ah bliss! But now that it came true it was not bliss, but sickening humiliation. He thought she was a nuisance. Nothing on earth could be worse than that. To be despised, to be hated and feared, to be struck in the face, beaten by the hand, would be better than that.
The car crept down past the first corner where the arc light added its bit to the defeat of any reliable visibility and it crept along the schoolyard in which the tall trees danced grudgingly in the wet wind. As it crept to the next corner a jittering scarecrow, something ragged and nervous in shiny black, flitted into its path.
The car under Henry's quick foot slid to a stop. The phantom had a face. Lightning lit the pale countenance, the wet cheeks, the great gray eyes in the sweet sockets of the beautiful bone of the face of Madeline Cole, and her dark hair lay wet and plastered on the white forehead.
"Henry. Henry." She was on the running board, body bending under the top. Pale insufficient light from the dash
came up, weirdly touching the underside of her chin and her nostrils.
He said sharply, "You shouldn't be out in this."
"Take me with you, ah please."
"I can't do that."
He was too staccato quick for Celestina, but the words were in her mouth and they fell out anyway. (She was a nuisance and humiliated to the bottom of her soul, but she could try not to be a nuisance, now, again.) "I can walk," she said shrilly.
The woman had not known she was there. The eyes tore themselves off Henry Duncane. The head turned. The face, in the dark, was a black blank, looking back. Yet neither she nor Mr. Duncane paid any attention to what Celestina had said. (She knew bitterly the idea was fantasy.) The storm whipped at them all.
"Where did you want to go?" asked Henry of Madeline Cole.
"Aren't you . . . going to the mine?" The woman fumbled toward making some sense of this.
"No," shouted Henry in thunder, ". . . going to the Falls. . . got to take Celestina home ... in a hurry . . ."
"Do you know anything?" Madeline brought her pale hands together like a little steeple. "Oh, I wish this wasn't happening. . . ."
"May be all right," shouted Henry. ". . . don't know any more . . . Doing everything they can."
The woman hung on the car. "Ah, but you understand, don't you? My heart aches. Heart aches. If it only could be as it was before, or if I knew . . ."
Henry said nothing. The storm boiled around them. But now a second scarecrow figure came, angular and floppity, flying through the headlight's beam. "I'll take care of her." It sounded competent. It reached and plucked the woman down.
Henry nodded. "Hurry!" he shouted. Under his hands and feet the car took hold of the slippery road and slewed on around the schoolyard. Celestina looked behind and saw two figures flickering across the street. The car ran to the wide place before the Company store, slipped and clawed
to the left, and passed the depot where a dim Hght burned.
The storm lulled. "I guess she thought you were going to the mine," piped Celestina, bravely. She wanted to please him. Henry gave her no answer at all. Everyone knew West Thor Mine was west, not east. Ever'one knew you couldn't get there this way.
Celestina covered her face and wept without sound. Life was too much for her. All her fantasies collapsed. She was a nuisance to Henry Duncane, she didn't know what he wanted, and she couldn't ever help him. Her mother was going to give her the devil, besides, when she got home and, oh Blessed Saint Barbara, turn the hghtning from our path.
The car stopped and he said, "You're wet already. You can run home from here, can't you?"
"All right." She got out and stood in the blasting rain. "Mr. Duncane, can I come back?" The dash light would throw up light against her features. Henry didn't even look at her.
"I don't know." Don't care, was in his voice too.
"Please . . ."
But he was gone. His car roared and seemed to slip out of her hand. It splashed around and went, black and glittering, rejecting her as nothing, back to the turn toward the Falls at the saloon corner. She wished she'd get struck by lightning. It would be better.
But she was young and suddenly she began to run; slipping, ducking, dodging, begging Mary, in Her Mercy, not to let Him take her up on that silly wish. The whole world of the Duncanes and all Protestants together (which was a kind of fantasy, anyhow) washed away in reality. She ran to get safe inside the house where the holy pictures hung on the walls and her manners were all they ought to be; into the warm dry place where lingered the scent of all the years of her life, of all she really knew, of home.
Cyril flung the house door open and shoved his sister in. "Middle of town," he growled. His look was disgusted. He had nothing more to say.
She wouldn't have listened, anyhow. She sat down, wet as she was.
Now she reviewed each word and every intonation. "I can't do that." What had he meant? W^as it shock, rejection, or a quick warning? Of course he couldn't take her with that Celestina in the car. She thought he might have. She thought of them, close and running free and wild, hidden in the storm. Oh, bad luck!
Nasty little girl saying she could walk. Hinting she understood too much. Well, she didn't matter.
"Where do you want to go?" Had he been helping her, hinting how she was to cover up for that girl's sake? She thrust down the uneasy thought that
Henry Duncane was not the man for intrigue. Oh, she couldn't tell . . . didn't know . . . didn't know where she was.
It was all Cyril's fault, actually.
"You," she said bitterly.
"Let it alone." Cyril was wet and disgusted. "Will you ever learn?"
"You!" she said furiously.
"I don't know what you thought you were doing. You don't know either."
"I do. I do. There was something I had to say."
"What?"
She closed her mouth stubbornly.
Cyril said without anger, "A man has, sometimes, other things on his mind besides the swish of your hips, or anybody's hips, dear sister."
She muttered, "Something Charley Beard could know and tell Arthur and if he . . ."
Cyril's laugh was sudden and contemptuous. "Your hips, eh? Even down that mine. Don't be funny,"
"Won't be so funny . . ." she said.
"Stay away from Henry Duncane. Don't you know that in a minute he'd have pushed you off that car? The man's busy."
"You forget, he loves me," she flared.
"You never heard of timing? I tell you, other things on his mind important to him . . ."
"I am important to him."
"Not exclusively," said Cyril. "Why don't women know that? I'm telling vou and you ought to make a note of it.
Don't bother a busy man." He had his coat off and was whipping the water off it.
"What do vou know about it? You. You're so wrong about everything. Thinking I want Arthur to die . . ."
"And now you'd rather Duncane didn't realize you'd just as leave Arthur died. All right . . ," he lifted his hand to ward her away. "If you can't see how you are letting yourself open, wider and wider . . ." Cyril wiped his face. "All right," he said. "I don't care."
His eyes rolled up, to see her, and they were sad.
She shrieked, "You!" What she thought was, I have power, I do matter. I will. I can get what I want my own way. "You don't know everything!" she shrieked.
He shook his head. He went into his own room and closed the door.
At the power plant the trouble was serious. Duncane soon knew that repairs would take time. The turbines were ready, and he was in touch on the phone, and they took over. That settled, now tliere was plenty of time. With power flowing from the auxiliary source, the trouble could be attacked in force and detail, by day, if necessary. Just because it was as serious as this, Henry was able to get away in less than an hour.
The trouble in Thor Page 18
