ON A NIGHT OF TEMPEST
The party was almost as wonderful as Caroline expected it to be, so you
may judge for yourself that it was a very wonderful party indeed. The
caterer way down in Boston didn't forget to send the ices and the cakes,
as Caroline in a private agony had feared that he might, and Frank
didn't puncture a tire or run into a ditch when he fetched them from the
train at Baring Junction. Eleanor Trowbridge, the little girl next door,
didn't come down with rash, as a subterranean rumor said that she was
coming, and Judge Holden's youngest granddaughter didn't go into a
tantrum and throw things, as she did (according to gossipy Sallie) to
the serious disturbance of little Patty Wheeler's Fourth of July party.
Caroline wore a frock (Jacqueline's frock!) the color of creamy
honeysuckle, hand-made and hem-stitched, with two rosettes of narrow
black velvet ribbon and gold tissue at the high waist line. Her guests
fluttered crisply in lavender and pale blue, shell pink and lemon
yellow. It was as if the posy bed had come alive and found sweet, shrill
voices in which to talk and laugh and call across the scented spaces.
They hunted peanuts, and they played at grace-hoops and ring-toss on the
lawn, where the shadows grew longer with the passing hours. Everybody
won a prize at something. They sat at the flower-decked table, and ate
the tiniest buttered rolls and creamed chicken in little shells of
pastry, ices that were so lovely Caroline wished she could keep hers
forever, and cakes so good to the eye and the taste that they just
bewitched you into taking another and another.
Then they played again among the shrubbery, hide and seek, and run,
sheep, run! You see, they all felt very well acquainted now. They were
much noisier than they had been before the refreshments, and the
youngest Holden began to show off and turn cart wheels.
"Our little girl has really the sweetest manners of them all," said Aunt
Eunice, as she looked down on the games from the shaded porch.
"She has more than manners," Cousin Penelope answered. "She has
_manner_. But of course," she added proudly, "blood will always tell."
The nicest party that ever was, the seven little girls said, when they
bade Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope and Caroline good-night and asked
Caroline to come soon and play with them. But in Longmeadow annals that
red-letter day of Caroline's life was to be remembered, not as the date
of Mrs. William Gildersleeve's grandniece's party, but as the date of
the worst tempest that had swept through the township in years.
[Illustration: "Jacqueline! It's I. Cousin Penelope. Don't be
frightened."]
Caroline waked in her bed just as a great cart-load of rocks--or so it
seemed to her--was dumped upon the roof. She could see the furniture,
the hangings, the very pictures on the walls ghastly and unfamiliar in
the glare of what must be a gigantic searchlight, which was shut off
suddenly and left the room in smothery, thick blackness.
Caroline ducked beneath the coverings and hugged Mildred tight in her
arms. A second crash shook the bed beneath her--a second burst of
flaming light searched her out, even beneath the sheet and the soft
blanket. She thought she was going to die with terror, when she heard a
little faint click, and a voice spoke right above her:
"Jacqueline! It's I--Cousin Penelope. Don't be frightened!"
Hesitatingly, Caroline put aside the coverings and sat up. The light on
the little table at her bedside had been switched on, and in the shaded
brightness stood Cousin Penelope. She wore a silk dressing-gown of pale
lavender, embroidered with clusters of purple wistaria. Her hair hung in
a long braid at either side of her pale face. She looked gentler than
ever Caroline had known her or dreamed that she could be. When she
smiled, Caroline smiled back.
"Mildred was a little frightened," said Caroline. "I'm glad you came in,
Cousin Penelope. Will you stay--or does Aunt Eunice want you?"
"Mother has lived through so many tempests that she doesn't mind them
now," said Cousin Penelope. She drew up the low rocker and sat down. "I
don't think they can be worse than your California earthquakes."
My conscience! How Jacqueline would have resented the suggestion that
there were ever earthquakes in California! But Caroline was too ignorant
of the proper attitude of a Native Daughter to be indignant. She only
held Mildred tighter and gasped a little, as the room once more was
irradiated with white and awesome light. She looked gratefully at Cousin
Penelope.
"I don't mind it much," she quavered, "now that you are here. It--it
does make you think of poetry, doesn't it?
"'The heavens are veined with fire,
And the thunder--how it rolls!
In the lulling of the storm----'"
Down came another cartload on the roof, only this time it didn't sound
like mere rocks, but like metal rails.
"Ow!" squeaked Caroline. "Do you think that hit anything? Of course I'm
not frightened, but Mildred is downright hectic."
Cousin Penelope rose and pulled down the blinds, and drew the chintz
curtains across the windows. The fearsome glare of the lightning was
shut out, but the thunder still thumped and thudded overhead. Caroline
was glad that when Cousin Penelope sat down again, she drew the chair
quite close to the bedside.
"It's very comforting to have you here, Cousin Penelope," she murmured.
"We're company for each other, Jacqueline. Now lie down and go to sleep
again. I won't leave you till the storm is over."
So Caroline nestled down in her bed and closed her eyes, and thought of
her party. She opened her eyes again, as the thunder crashed angrily,
and saw Cousin Penelope sitting in the soft lamplight, so different from
Cousin Penelope by day.
"I like you with your hair down, Cousin Penelope," Caroline said
sleepily. "I wish you wore it always that way. You are so pretty with
your hair down."
Cousin Penelope actually flushed, cheek and throat, but she wasn't
angry, for her eyes were smiling.
Then Caroline shifted Mildred in her arms, and closed her eyes once
more. Presently she realized that there had been silence for a space
that was long enough to be felt--silence except for the roar of rain
upon the roof, and that was nothing to the anvil clang of the thunder
that for so long had deafened them.
"Mildred is going to sleep," said Caroline, without opening her eyes.
"She thinks the storm is most over."
The thunder rolled, but it was far away, like a noise in dreams, and
presently it was only in dreams, for Caroline, that the thunder rolled.
When she opened her eyes again, there was no light in the room, except
the pale light that came from the rain-washed out-of-doors. Against the
night Cousin Penelope's form was outlined, as she finished putting up
the blinds and opening the windows. Then she came softly across the
room, in the fresh, sweet air and bent and drew the coverlet over
Caroline's shoulders.
"Good-night, Cousin Penelope," Caroline whispered sleepily. "Go back to
bed now--or you'll take cold."
In the darkness Cousin Penelope bent suddenly, and the faint scent of
violets came with her. She kissed Caroline's forehead, and Caroline put
up her arms, and caught her round the neck, and kissed her cheek.
"You're so good, Cousin Penelope," she whispered. "I'm so glad you like
me."
For a moment Cousin Penelope held her close.
"Of course I--like you, Jacqueline."
The naming of the name that was not hers made Caroline shrink in the
arms that held her.
"I want you to like me always!" she cried from her very heart.
"Silly little girl!" Cousin Penelope whispered tenderly--think of Cousin
Penelope being tender!--and kissed her again. Then she tucked her in
snugly, and bade her sleep, for the storm was over, and went away.
But Caroline lay wide awake, until the rain had dwindled to the mere
dribble of water from the roof, and when she slept at last, her dreams
were troubled.
For Jacqueline at that hour, there were no dreams. All the first part of
the night she had slept soundly. She was really tired, for she had
worked hard all day, in an honest effort to make up for the naughtiness
of the day before, and to show that she appreciated the way in which no
one, not even Neil, alluded to it. (Neil had actually come forward, and
offered to help wash the dinner dishes!)
But when the first crash of thunder reverberated from the eastern
mountains to the hills across the river, Jacqueline sat right up in bed.
Where was she? What was happening? A white blaze lit the topsy-turvy
baskets of roses on the wall-paper, so that she clapped her hands to her
eyes and thought she was blind for life. Then she felt the clutch of
frightened little arms flung round her, and heard Nellie sob:
"Oh, Jackie! I'm so scared!"
"Thunder can't hurt you, goosey!" quavered Jacqueline, with her arm
pressed tight across her eyes. The roof would fall upon their heads next
moment, she was sure. The whole house would go up in a blaze of fire.
Oh, why didn't Aunt Martha come to rescue them?
But Aunt Martha didn't come. Nobody came! The thunder shook the roof
beams. The lightning sheathed the room in molten flame. Nellie sobbed,
and choked, and clung round Jacqueline's neck.
"Mammy! Mammy!" she gasped.
"Keep still!" Jacqueline scolded. "Your mother isn't coming--nobody's
coming--and _I've_ got to get up and shut those windows."
Yes, that was just what she must do. For the rain, driven by the wind,
was drenching their bed, and doing nobody knew what damage besides. She
must get up--and she did get up! It wouldn't do ever to let Nellie think
that ten years old could be as scared as six years old.
Jacqueline struggled with the windows that stuck, while the rain soaked
through her thin nightdress, clear to her skin, and the thunder boomed
in her ears, and the lightning seemed aimed in all the universe at her
one poor little head. She remembered every dreary story she had ever
heard of people killed by lightning. She thought she _was_ killed, half
a dozen times at least. But she closed the windows and yanked down the
blinds, to shut out the glare. Then she made one flying leap into the
bed and clutched Nellie as tight as Nellie clutched her, and vowed to
herself that nothing--nothing in the wide world!--should tear her from
the protection of that bed, until the storm was over.
Just as she made that vow, there came from Aunt Martha's room a thin,
high-pitched wail that made both little girls catch their breath.
"What's Freddie crying for?" asked Nellie.
"He'll stop in half a jiffy," said Jacqueline. "Aunt Martha'll wake up
and take him. Why can't she hear him? He's crying loud enough."
He was indeed, strangling, gasping, screaming with fright, and as she
listened to him, Jacqueline grew frightened, too. For if Aunt Martha
were in her room, she would surely wake and go to Freddie, and if she
were _not_ in her room, oh, _where_ could Aunt Martha be? The night that
had been terrible before with ear-splitting noises and unearthly fires
was doubly terrible now, with the fear of unknown, ghastly things.
Jacqueline's breath came in uneven gasps, while she listened agonizedly
to hear Aunt Martha moving about, and heard only Freddie's cries.
But she couldn't let him cry like that, she realized. She would have to
go and get him--leave her snug bed--cross her room--the hall--Aunt
Martha's room--in that dreadful light and darkness, with the thunder
roaring round her, and the fear of unspoken things turning her blood to
ice.
"I can't--I can't!" Jacqueline's spirit fairly chittered within her. But
Freddie kept on crying--and he was just a baby. She couldn't let him
suffer there alone in the storm.
"Be a sport!" she told herself, through chattering teeth, and: "Nellie,
you shut up!" she said aloud, in a harsh, snappy voice.
Out of the bed she got, and she set her teeth tight, and she made
herself run straight into the next room. By a flash of lightning she
could see poor Freddie, with his face dark and convulsed, as he sat
screaming in his crib, and she could see Aunt Martha's bed, with the
coverings turned back, and Aunt Martha--gone. She didn't dare stop to
ask questions. She just caught up Freddie, who clawed her neck as he
clung like a terrified kitten, and she ran staggering with him back into
her own room. She plumped him into the bed beside Nellie, and scuttled
in beneath the coverings. She had thought confusedly that once she was
safe back in bed, she would have a good old cry to relieve her feelings.
But she couldn't cry. She had to quiet the two children.
"Hush up now!" she heard herself saying stoutly. "You're all
safe--you're here with Jackie--_I'll_ take care of you."
The thunder volleyed. The lightning flamed. The storm had lasted an
eternity. It would last, she felt, forever. Then, without warning, there
was Aunt Martha coming in at the door, a dark, indistinct figure, but
with Aunt Martha's footsteps that made Jacqueline, at the first sound,
cry out with relief.
"You've got Freddie?" Aunt Martha spoke in a strained, tired voice, not
like hers at all. "I knew I could trust you, Jackie. Look out for him
till morning. I've got to stay downstairs."
"What's happened?" whispered Jacqueline.
"I went down to close the windows," Aunt Martha went on, in that queer,
deadened voice. "I'd left them open because of the heat. Grandma had got
up to see to them. Somehow she must have lost her bearings, and slipped
and fallen. The phone won't work. Maybe the wires are down. Ralph's
going to get out the car and fetch the doctor right away."
"Oh, Aunt Martha!" Jacqueline cried aloud.
"Grandma isn't----"
"I'm afraid," said Aunt Martha brokenly, "I'm afraid she's hurt herself
pretty bad."