THE HEAVENS OPENED
Bennington awoke early the next morning, a pleased glow of anticipation
warming his heart, and almost before his eyes were opened he had raised
himself to leap out of the bunk. Then with a disappointed sigh he sank
back. On the roof fell the heavy patter of raindrops.
After a time he arose and pulled aside the curtains of a window. The
nearer world was dripping; the farther world was hidden or obscured by
long veils of rain, driven in ragged clouds before a west wind.
Yesterday the leaves had waved lightly, the undergrowth of shrubs had
uplifted in feathery airiness of texture, the ground beneath had been
crisp and aromatic with pine needles. Now everything bore a drooping,
sodden aspect which spoke rather of decay than of the life of spring.
Even the chickens had wisely remained indoors, with the exception of a
single bedraggled old rooster, whose melancholy appearance added
another shade of gloom to the dismal outlook. The wind twisted his long
tail feathers from side to side so energetically that, even as
Bennington looked, the poor fowl, perforce, had to scud, careened from
one side to the other, like a heavily-laden craft, into the shelter of
his coop. The wind, left to its own devices, skittered across
cold-looking little pools of water, and tried in vain to induce the
soaked leaves of the autumn before to essay an aerial flight.
The rain hit the roof now in heavy gusts as though some one had dashed
it from a pail. The wind whistled through a loosened shingle and
rattled around an ill-made joint. Within the house itself some slight
sounds of preparation for breakfast sounded the clearer against the
turmoil outside. And then Bennington became conscious that for some
time he had _felt_ another sound underneath all the rest. It was grand
and organlike in tone, resembling the roar of surf on a sand beach as
much as anything else. He looked out again, and saw that it was the
wind in the trees. The same conditions that had before touched the harp
murmur of a stiller day now struck out a rush and roar almost
awe-inspiring in its volume. Bennington impulsively threw open the
window and leaned out.
The great hill back of the camp was so steep that the pines growing on
its slope offered to the breeze an almost perpendicular screen of
branches. Instead of one, or at most a dozen trees, the wind here
passed through a thousand at once. As a consequence, the stir of air
that in a level woodland would arouse but a faint whisper, here would
pass with a rustling murmur; a murmur would be magnified into a noise
as of the mellow falling of waters; and now that the storm had
awakened, the hill caught up its cry with a howl so awful and sustained
that, as the open window let in the full volume of its blast,
Bennington involuntarily drew back. He closed the sash and turned to
dress.
After the first disappointment, strange to say, Bennington became quite
resigned. He had felt, a little illogically, that this giving of a
whole day to the picnic was not quite the thing. His Puritan conscience
impressed him with the sacredness of work. He settled down to the fact
of the rainstorm with a pleasant recognition of its inevitability, and
a resolve to improve his time.
To that end, after breakfast, he drew on a pair of fleece-lined
slippers, donned a sweater, occupied two chairs in the well-known
fashion, and attacked with energy the pages of Le Conte's _Geology_.
This book, as you very well know, discourses at first with great
interest concerning erosions. Among other things it convinces you that
a current of water, being doubled in swiftness, can transport a mass
sixty-four times as heavy as when it ran half as fast. This astounding
proposition is abstrusely proved. As Bennington had resolved not to
make his reading mere recreation, he drew diagrams conscientiously
until he understood it. Then he passed on to an earnest consideration
of why the revolution of the globe and the resistance of continents
cause oceanic currents of a particular direction and velocity. Besides
this, there was much easier reading concerning alluvial deposits. So
interested did he grow that Old Mizzou, coming in, muddy-hoofed and
glistening from a round of the stock, found him quite unapproachable on
the subject of cribbage. The patriarch then stumped over to Arthur's
cabin.
After dinner, Bennington picked up the book again, but found that his
brain had reached the limit of spontaneous mental effort. He looked for
Old Mizzou and the cribbage game. The miner had gone to visit Arthur
again. Bennington wandered about disconsolately.
For a time he drummed idly on the window pane. Then he took out his
revolver and tried to practise through the open doorway. The smoke from
the discharges hung heavy in the damp air, filling the room in a most
disagreeable fashion. Bennington's trips to see the effect of his shots
proved to him the fiendish propensity of everything he touched, were it
never so lightly, to sprinkle him with cold water. Above all, his skill
with the weapon was not great enough as yet to make it much fun. He
abandoned pistol shooting and yawned extensively, wishing it were time
to go to bed.
In the evening he played cribbage with Old Mizzou. After a time Arthur
and his wife came in and they had a dreary game of "cinch," the man
speaking but little, the woman not at all. Old Mizzou smoked
incessantly on a corncob pipe charged with a peculiarly pungent variety
of tobacco, which filled the air with a blue vapour, and penetrated
unpleasantly into Bennington's mucous membranes.
The next morning it was still raining.
Bennington became very impatient indeed, but he tackled Le Conte
industriously, and did well enough until he tried to get it into his
head why various things happen to glaciers. Then viscosity, the lines
of swiftest motion, relegation, and directions of pressure came forth
from the printed pages and mocked him. He arose in his might and went
forth into the open air.
Before going out he had put on his canvas shooting coat and a pair of
hobnailed leather hunting boots, laced for a little distance at the
front and sides. He visited the horses, standing disconsolate under an
open shed in the corral; he slopped, with constantly accruing masses of
sticky earth at his feet, to the chicken coop, into which he cast an
eye; he even took the kitchen pails and tramped down to the spring and
back. In the gulch he did not see or hear a living thing. A newly-born
and dirty little stream was trickling destructively through all manner
of shivering grasses and flowers. The water from Bennington's sleeves
ran down over the harsh canvas cuffs and turned his hands purple with
the cold. He returned to the cabin and changed his clothes.
The short walk had refreshed him, but it had spurred his impatience.
Outside, the world seemed to have changed. His experience with the
Hills, up to now, had always been in one phase of their beauty--that of
clear, bright sunshine and soft skies. Now it was as a different
country. He could not get rid of the feeling, foolish as it was, that
it was in reality different; and that the whole episode of the girl and
the rock was as a vision which had passed. It grew indistinct in the
presence of this iron reality of cold and wet. He could not assure
himself he had not imagined it all. Thus, belated, he came to thinking
of her again, and having now nothing else to do, he fell into daydreams
that had no other effect than to reveal to him the impatience which had
been, from the first, the real cause of his restlessness under the
temporary confinement. Now the impatience grew in intensity. He
resolved that if the morrow did not end the storm, he would tramp down
the gulch to make a call. All this time _Aliris_ lay quite untouched.
The next day dawned darker than ever. After breakfast Old Mizzou, as
usual, went out to feed the horses, and Bennington, through sheer
idleness, accompanied him. They distributed the oats and hay, and then
stood, sheltered from the direct rain, conversing idly.
Suddenly the wind died and the rain ceased. In the place of the gloom
succeeded a strange sulphur-yellow glare which lay on the spirit with
almost physical oppression. Old Mizzou shouted something, and scrambled
excitedly to the house. Bennington looked about him bewildered.
Over back of the hill, dimly discernible through the trees, loomed the
black irregular shape of a cloud, in dismal contrast to the yellow
glare which now filled all the sky. The horses, frightened, crowded up
close to Bennington, trying to push their noses over his shoulder. A
number of jays and finches rushed down through the woods and darted
rapidly, each with its peculiar flight, toward a clump of trees and
bushes standing on a ridge across the valley.
From the cabin Old Mizzou was shouting to him. He turned to follow the
old man. Back of him something vast and awful roared out, and then all
at once he felt himself struggling with a rush of waters. He was jammed
violently against the posts of the corral. There he worked to his feet.
The whole side of the hill was one vast spread of shallow tossing
water, as though a lake had been let fall on the summit of the ridge.
The smaller bushes were uprooted and swept along, but the trees and
saplings held their own.
In a moment the stones and ridgelets began to show. It was over. Not a
drop of rain had fallen.
Bennington climbed the corral fence and walked slowly to the house. The
blacksmith shop was filled to the window, and Arthur's cabin was not
much better. He entered the kitchen. The floor there was some two
inches submerged, but the water was slowly escaping through the
down-hill door by which Bennington had come in. Across the dining-room
door Mrs. Arthur had laid a folded rug. In front of the barrier stood
the lady herself, vigorously sweeping back the threatening water from
her only glorious apartment.
Bennington took the broom from her and swept until the cessation of the
flood made it no longer necessary. Mrs. Arthur commenced to mop the
floor. The young man stepped outside. There he was joined a moment
later by the other two.
They offered no explanation of their whereabouts during the trouble,
but Bennington surmised shrewdly that they had hunted a dry place.
"Glory!" cried Old Mizzou. "Lucky she misses us!"
"What was it? Where'd it come from?" inquired Bennington, shaking the
surface drops from his shoulders. He was wet through.
"Cloud-burst," replied the miner. "She hit up th' ridge a ways. If
she'd ever burst yere, sonny, ye'd never know what drownded ye. Look at
that gulch!"
The water had now drained from the hill entirely. It could be seen that
most of the surface earth had been washed away, leaving the skeleton of
the mountain bare. Some of the more slightly rooted trees had fallen,
or clung precariously to the earth with bony fingers. But the gulch
itself was terrible. The mountain laurel, the elders, the sarvis
bushes, the wild roses which, a few days before, had been fragrant and
beautiful with blossom and leaf and musical with birds, had
disappeared. In their stead rolled an angry brown flood whirling in
almost unbroken surface from bank to bank. Several oaks, submerged to
their branches, raised their arms helplessly. As Bennington looked,
one of these bent slowly and sank from sight. A moment later it shot
with great suddenness half its length into the air, was seized by the
eager waters, and whisked away as lightly as though it had been a tree
of straw. Dark objects began to come down with the stream. They seemed
to be trying to preserve a semblance of dignity in their stately
bobbing up and down, but apparently found the attempt difficult. The
roar was almost deafening, but even above it a strangely deliberate
grinding noise was audible. Old Mizzou said it was the grating of
boulders as they were rolled along the bed of the stream. The yellow
glow had disappeared from the air, and the gloom of rain had taken its
place.
A fine mist began to fall. Bennington for the first time realized he
was wet and shivering, and so he turned inside to change his clothes.
"It'll all be over in a few hours," remarked Arthur. "I reckon them
Spanish Gulch people'll wish they lived up-stream."
Bennington paused at the doorway.
"That's so," he commented. "How about Spanish Gulch? Will it all be
drowned out?"
"No, I reckon not," replied Arthur. "They'll get wet down a lot, and
have wet blankets to sleep in to-night, that's all. You see the gulch
spraddles out down there, an' then too all this timber'll jam down this
gulch a-ways. That'll back up th' water some, and so she won't come all
of a rush."
"I see," said Bennington.
The afternoon was well enough occupied in repairing to some extent the
ravages of the brief storm. A length of the corral had succumbed to the
flood, many valuable tools in the blacksmith shop were in danger of
rust from the dampness, and Arthur and his wife had been completely
washed out. All three men worked hard setting things to rights. The
twilight caught them before their work was done.
Bennington found himself too weary to attempt an unknown,
_débris_-covered road by dark. He played cribbage with Old Mizzou and
won.
About half past nine he pushed back his chair and went outside. The
stars had come out by the thousand, and a solitary cricket, which had
in some way escaped the deluge, was chirping in the middle distance.
With a sudden uplift of the heart he realized that he would see "her"
on the morrow. He learned that no matter how philosophically we may
have borne a separation, the prospect of its near end shows us how
strong the repression has been; the lifting of the bonds makes evident
how much they have galled.