THROUGH THE STORM
Bowed low to shield herself against the ever fiercer buffets of the
storm, Katherine gave Nelly free rein to pick her own way at her own
pace through the blackness. The rain volleyed into her pitilessly, the
wind sought furiously to wrest her from the saddle, the lightning
cracked open the heavens into ever more fiery chasms, and the thunder
rattled and rolled and reverberated as though a thousand battles were
waging in the valley. It was as if the earth's dissolution were at
hand--as if the long-gathered wrath of the Judgment Day were rending
the earth asunder and hurling the fragments afar into the black abysm
of eternity.
But Katherine, though gasping and shivering, gave minor heed to this
elemental rage. Whatever terror she might have felt another time at
such a storm, her brain had now small room for it. She was exultantly
filled with the magnitude of her discovery. The water-works deal! The
National Electric & Water Company! Bruce not a bona fide candidate at
all, but only a pistol at Blake's head to make him stand and deliver!
Blake and Blind Charlie--those two whole-hearted haters, who
belaboured each other so valiantly before the public--in a secret pact
to rob that same dear public!
At the highest moments of her exultation it seemed that victory was
already hers; that all that remained was to proclaim to Westville on
the morrow what she knew. But beneath all her exultation was a dim
realization that the victory itself was yet to be won. What she had
gained was only a fuller knowledge of who her enemies were, and what
were their purposes.
Her mind raced about her discovery, seeking how to use it as the basis
of her own campaign. But the moment of an extensive and astounding
discovery is not the moment for the evolving of well-calculated plans;
so the energies of her mind were spent on extravagant dreams or the
leaping play of her jubilation.
One decision, however, she did reach. That was concerning Bruce. Her
first impulse was to go to him and tell him all, in triumphant
refutation of his ideas concerning woman in general, and her futility
in particular. But as she realized that she was not at the end of her
fight, but only at a better-informed beginning, she saw that the day
of her triumph over him, if ever it was to come, had at least not yet
arrived. As for admitting him into her full confidence, her woman's
pride was still too strong for that. It held her to her determination
to tell him nothing. She was going to see this thing through without
him.
Moreover, she had another reason for silence. She feared, if she told
him all, his impetuous nature might prompt him to make a premature
disclosure of the information, and that would be disastrous to her
future plans. But since he was vitally concerned in Blake's and Peck's
agreement, it was at least his due that he be warned; and so she
decided to tell him, without giving her source of information, that
Blind Charlie proposed to sell him out.
Nelly's pace had slowed into a walk, and even then the gale at times
almost swept the poor horse staggering from the road. The rain drove
down in ever denser sheets. The occasional flashes of lightning served
only to emphasize the blackness. So dense was it, it seemed a solid.
The world could not seem blacker to a toad in the heart of a stone.
The instants of crackling fire showed Katherine the river, below her
in the valley, leaping, surging, almost out of its banks--the trees,
writhing and wrestling, here and there one jaggedly discrowned. And
once, as she was crossing a little wooden bridge that spanned a
creek, she saw that it was almost afloat--and for an instant of
terror she wished she had followed the higher back-country road taken
by the two automobiles.
She had reached the foot of Red Man's Ridge, and was winding along the
river's verge, when she thought she heard her name sound faintly
through the storm. She stopped Nelly and sat in sudden stiffness,
straining her ears. Again the voice sounded, this time nearer, and
there was no mistaking her name.
"Miss West! Katherine!"
She sat rigid, almost choking. The next minute a shapeless figure
almost collided with Nelly. It eagerly caught the bridle-rein and
called out huskily:
"Is that you, Miss West?"
She let out a startled cry.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"It's you! Thank God, I've found you!" cried the voice.
"Arnold Bruce!" she ejaculated.
He loosened the rein and moved to her side and put his hand upon the
back of her saddle.
"Thank God I've found you!" he repeated, with a strange quaver to his
voice.
"Arnold Bruce! What are you doing here?"
"Didn't you hear me shout after you, when you started, that I was
coming, too?"
"I heard your voice, but not what you said."
"Do you think I would let you go out alone on a night like this?" he
demanded in his unstrung tone. "It's no night for a man to be out,
much less a woman!"
"You mean--you followed me?"
"What else did you think I'd do?"
"And on foot?"
"If I had stopped to get a horse I'd have lost your direction. So I
ran after you."
They were moving on now, his hand upon the back of her saddle to link
them together in the darkness. He had to lean close to her that their
voices might be heard above the storm.
"And you have run after me all this way?"
"Ran and walked. But I couldn't make much headway in the
storm--Calling out to you every few steps. I didn't know what might
have happened to you. All kinds of pictures were in my mind. You might
have been thrown and be lying hurt. In the darkness the horse might
have wandered off the road and slipped with you into the river. It
was--it was----" She felt the strong forearm that lay against her back
quiver violently. "Oh, why did you do it!" he burst out.
A strange, warm tingling crept through her.
"I--I----" Something seemed to choke her.
"Oh, why did you do it!" he repeated.
Contrary to her determination of but a little while ago, an impulse
surged up in her to tell him all she had just learned, to tell him all
her plans. She hung for a moment in indecision. Then her old attitude,
her old determination, resumed its sway.
"I had a suspicion that I might learn something about father's case,"
she said.
"It was foolishness!" he cried in fierce reproof, yet with the same
unnerved quaver in his voice. "You should have known you could find
nothing on such a night as this!"
She felt half an impulse to retort sharply with the truth. But the
thought of his stumbling all that way in the blackness subdued her
rising impulse to triumph over him. So she made no reply at all.
"You should never have come! If, when you started, you had stopped
long enough for me to speak to you, I could have told you you would
not have found out anything. You did not, now did you?"
She still kept silent.
"I knew you did not!" he cried in exasperated triumph. "Admit the
truth--you know you did not!"
"I did not learn everything I had hoped."
"Don't be afraid to acknowledge the truth!"
"You remember what I said when you were first offered the nomination
by Mr. Peck--to beware of him?"
"Yes. You were wrong. But let's not talk about that now!"
"I am certain now that I was right. I have the best of reasons for
believing that Mr. Peck intends to sell you out."
"What reasons?"
She hesitated a moment.
"I cannot give them to you--now. But I tell you I am certain he is
planning treachery."
"Your talk is wild. As wild as your ride out here to-night."
"But I tell you----"
"Let's talk no more about it now," he interrupted, brushing the matter
aside. "It--it doesn't interest me now."
There was a blinding glare of lightning, then an awful clap of thunder
that rattled in wild echoes down the valley.
"Oh, why did you come?" he cried, pressing closer. "Why did you come?
It's enough to kill a woman!"
"Hardly," said she.
"But you're wet through," he protested.
"And so are you."
"Have my coat." And he started to slip it off.
"No. One more wet garment won't make me any drier."
"Then put it over your head. To keep off this awful beat of the storm.
I'll lead your horse."
"No, thank you; I'm all right," she said firmly, putting out a hand
and checking his motion to uncoat himself. "You've been walking. I've
been riding. You need it more than I do." And then she added: "Did I
hurt you much?"
"Hurt me?"
"When I struck you with my crop."
"That? I'd forgotten that."
"I'm very sorry--if I hurt you."
"It's nothing. I wish you'd take my coat. Bend lower down." And moving
forward, he so placed himself that his broad, strong body was a
partial shield to her against the gale.
This new concern for her, the like of which he had never before
evinced the faintest symptoms, begot in her a strange, tingling, but
blurred emotion. They moved on side by side, now without speech,
gasping for the very breath that the gale sought to tear away from
their lips. The storm was momently gaining power and fury. Afterward
the ancient weather-men of Calloway County were to say that in their
time they had never seen its like. The lightning split the sky into
even more fearsome fiery chasms, and in the moments of wild
illumination they could see the road gullied by scores of impromptu
rivulets, could glimpse the broad river billowing and raging, the
cattle huddling terrified in the pastures, the woods swaying and
writhing in deathlike grapple. The wind hurled by them in a thousand
moods and tones, all angry; a fine, high shrieking on its topmost
note--a hoarse snarl--a lull, as though the straining monster were
pausing to catch its breath--then a roaring, sweeping onrush as if
bent on irresistible destruction. And on top of this glare, this rage,
was the thousandfold crackle, rattle, rumble of the thunder.
At such a time wild beasts, with hostility born in their blood, draw
close together. It was a storm to resolve, as it were, all complex
shades of human feeling into their elementary colours--when fear and
hate and love stand starkly forth, unqualified, unblended. Without
being aware that she was observing, Katherine sensed that Bruce's
agitation was mounting with the storm. And as she felt his quivering
presence beside her in the furious darkness, her own emotion surged up
with a wild and startling strength.
A tree top snapped off just before them with its toy thunder.
"Will this never stop!" gasped Bruce, huskily. "God, I wish I had you
safe home!"
The tremulous tensity in his voice set her heart to leaping with an
unrestraint yet wilder. But she did not answer.
Suddenly Nelly stumbled in a gully and Katherine pitched forward from
the saddle. She would have fallen, had not a pair of strong arms
closed about her in mid-air.
"Katherine--Katherine!" Bruce cried, distracted. Nelly righted herself
and Katherine regained her seat, but Bruce still kept his arm about
her. "Tell me--are you hurt?" he demanded.
She felt the arms around her trembling with intensity.
"No," she said with a strange choking.
"Oh, Katherine--Katherine!" he burst out. "If you only knew how I love
you!"
What she felt could not crystallize itself into words.
"Do you love me?" he asked huskily.
Just then there was a flash of lightning. It showed her his upturned
face, appealing, tender, passion-wrought. A wild, exultant thrill
swept through her. Without thinking, without speaking, her tingling
arm reached out, of its own volition as it were, and closed about his
neck, and she bent down and kissed him.
"Katherine!" he breathed hoarsely. "Katherine!" And he crushed her
convulsively to him.
She lay thrilled in his arms.... After a minute they moved on, his arm
about her waist, her arm about his neck. Rain, wind, thunder were
forgotten. Forgotten were their theories of life. For that hour the
man and woman in them were supremely happy.