Theodora glanced up from her troubled musings to perceive that she
was quite alone in the attic. They had gone and left her. They had
forgotten all about her. She sprang from the packing case and danced
for joy. It was the first time in all her life that Lary had forgotten
her. It was the best omen of all. They were standing at the foot of the
stairs--and they weren’t saying a word. She paused, on tiptoe, afraid
to breathe lest she break the witching spell. What did people think
about, when they were all alone in that kind of heaven? Now she heard
their feet on the lower stairs. She hurried to the window to see them
go down to the grassy plot before the house, where her father joined
them.
The rosy picture was obscured, in an instant, as if she had spilled
the ink bottle over it, and daddy’s danger loomed before her. She
trudged wearily down to join them on the grass. Things never were what
you thought they were going to be. When she reached the edge of the
veranda, a pair of strong arms caught her in a yearning embrace.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate your papa?”
“If there’s any reason. Did you get the Marksley contract?”
David’s transparent face darkened.
“Yes ... but that’s not a matter for congratulation. I figured so high
that I counted on escaping. I didn’t want it at any price.”
“Then what is it?”
“You know, this was the annual meeting of the college Board--and they
elected your papa treasurer. When Dr. Clarkson made his nominating
speech, I didn’t dream he was talking about me.”
“Mamma said this morning that they’d shove it off on you--after the way
the last two treasurers handled the funds. She couldn’t see why you
would want to do all that work, just to be called the most honest man
on the Board.”
“Mamma and I don’t always look at things alike. Come, my dears, she is
at the door, and dinner may be waiting.”
“Eileen went to a party, over at Ina’s,” Theo cried, mindful of danger.
To herself she added: “Well, she did. I didn’t tell him she wasn’t
there still.” Daddy must not find out that she was right across the
street. There had been too many disagreements, and it never did daddy
any good to fight back. He always got the worst of it, and it made him
sick. She wanted to ask Mrs. Ascott to come with them, and eat dinner
in Eileen’s place. Mamma would hardly raise a scene before company. As
the invitation took shape on her lips, it was halted by her mother’s
curt voice:
“I suppose you like your victuals cold, the way you stand there and
gossip.”
The three Trenches stepped over the wall, which at the front was little
more than an ornamental coping, and Judith went in to her lonely meal.
V
Dinner was scarcely over when the room was plunged in a glare of fire,
the startling illumination followed almost instantly by thunder that
crackled and smote. Then the storm, that had hovered all afternoon
in the sultry air, broke with the fury of explosively released wind
and rain. Nanny called for help, as the deluge poured through the
screens at three sides of the cottage in quick succession. Before the
east windows had been closed, the rain was driving straight from the
south--and the attic window wide open. Nanny’s bulk halted at the foot
of the breath-exhausting stairs, and her mistress ran past her, to make
good the publisher’s injunction, “Keep Dry.” When the sash had been
lowered, Judith went to the rear of the attic and looked down into the
garden, tossing in the summer storm.
Sharp, hissing flames heralded the detonation of thunder such as she
had heard nowhere save in the Alps or the tropics. The earth, a moment
ago black with the pall of midnight, leaped into the semblance of a
stage set with dancing marionets, that vanished in the ensuing darkness
to rise again with the next purple flash. Now the wind swooned, lay
panting and breathless against the palpitating bosom of the earth. And
now it leaped with renewed ardour, gripped the pear tree and shook
it as an ill-controlled mother shakes an unruly child. One of the
trellises at the east side of the lawn went over with a crash, carrying
in its wake a shower of Prairie Queen roses. The Dorothy Perkins looked
on with serene security from the shoulder of the garage, her petals
draggled, but exultant in the garish light.
The air was clearing now. Gradually the tender green corn slumped
down in the softened loam and a disconsolate toad hopped mournfully
across the white gravel walk. This was too much even for a toad.
With a long, soul-sickening lunge he disappeared in the shrubbery,
as the thunder rumbled its retreat behind the western horizon. Out
of its dying reverberation, music came floating up through the moist
air ... marvellous strains. Judith crossed the attic and threw open
the window. Yes, her surmise was right. Eileen and Mrs. Nims were
playing Debussy’s matchless tone picture, “Garden in the Rain,” the
’cello blending exquisitely with the piano. Would David hear? Would
he recognize his daughter’s touch? But Eileen had never played like
this. The tones came, moist and meaningful, lulling the conscious mind
to dreams, steeping the senses in the drowsy calm that follows the
delirium of summer heat.
Judith Ascott felt her soul at one with the garden ... arid clay, whose
thirst had been quenched. She had played Debussy’s imagist arrangement,
and had rejected it because it failed to symbolize a prosaic natural
phenomenon. Now she knew that it was not the rain, but the garden,
which the composer had in mind. She had approached the theme from
overhead, just as a moment ago she had looked down on her own garden.
With a thrill she perceived Debussy’s thought in all its naked,
elemental beauty--the primitive consciousness of maternal Earth, glad
and grateful for the benison of summer rain.
Had something new come into Eileen’s playing? Was it Adelaide
Marksley’s ’cello that made the elusive thought tangible? Was it,
rather, something that had come into her own soul? She had been so
long athirst. Must one faint beneath the heat, brave the wind and the
lightning’s terror, in order to drink in at last the bountiful rain?
Was there any price one would not pay for such peace as had found
habitation within her soul?