heard before in all her life, a strange, shrill, high note: it hurt her
eardrums, it went spinning into hollow places under her skull, almost
obscenely, a note beyond the range of hearing. She scurried across the
room toward Sam, picking up her raincoat, thrusting her arms into the
sleeves.
“Come on, you!” yelled Sam, jerking his hand at Susan.
Margaret’s fingers were clumsy, tying the scarf over her head, she stood
at the doorway, the rain struck her face, she drew one long breath, and
held it, aching-endlessly, dashing a hand against her wet eyelids that
she might see. One of the two great elms which stood each side the
porte-cochere, the one farther from the house, toward the road, without
a sound that she could hear above the wind, with slow and appalling
dignity, swayed, bent, twisted its leafy bulk as if it turned to look at
the enemy that struck it down, and fell, carrying with it a great round
slab of yellowish earth, a mat of roots and wet soil as high as the roof
of the carriage entrance. Sam whimpered with excitement.
“Now you see! My God, ain’t this something! Get her started, will you?”
Margaret heard Susan’s voice, it made a quiet place in all this tumult,
for a moment she did not hear the separate words, speech seemed to have
no meaning, she had to shape them again in her own throat before she
understood what Susan had said. “I won’t stir a step in this downpour.
I’d be drenched to the skin.”
Sam seized Margaret’s wrist, jerked it. His young mouth twisted in
grotesque attempt to be strong and male, rescuing women. “I can’t drag
her,” he cried. “We gotta go, you come, Miss Turner, you ain’t such a
fool!”
Margaret dragged her raincoat together with her free hand, for an
instant she felt herself plunge forward with the boy, his strength
running beside her, carrying her to safety. Then she wrenched her wrist
out of his grasp and took a quick step toward the drawing room, and her
voice was strange in her ears as she cried out, “Susan—”
Susan waved her hand, a careless farewell, she pushed herself to her
feet, her coat sliding in a soft mound around her on the floor, her face
impertinent, mocking.
Swifter than thought, Margaret knew. “Run along, Sammy.” She made her
stiff face smile. “Tell—tell Eddie we’re all right here. Tell him Mrs.
Field can’t—”
“Run along yourself, Maggie! What you waiting for?” Susan was
imperative, silencing her. “I don’t want your company! You’re too
respectable! The house won’t blow down.”
Margaret pushed at Sam, who hung in the doorway, tormented. “For
Heaven’s sake, Sam, get out! I don’t intend to drown myself in that
rain! Why should I want to go to town? Pull that door shut after you—”
She laid herself against the door, his desire to be off and her will
together shut it, and water curled swiftly under it, over the floor.
She hesitated, taking a few steps into the drawing room. Susan had
dropped back on the couch, she was pulling her coat from under her feet,
her eyes angry, green, as she looked at Margaret.
“You’re a fool, Maggie!”
“You can’t even stand on that foot, can you?”
“What’s that to do with you?”
“Why didn’t you let me tell him?” Margaret moved nearer, step by step,
her hands twisting together at her breast. “Were you afraid your Eddie
would risk his life, trying to get you?”
Susan laid her coat over her knees, her hands smoothing the fur, the
fingers disappearing in the long tawny hairs, she was silent a moment;
when she looked up her face was somber, on each side of her mouth lower
than the rouged cheek-bones was a dull red streak. “No, Maggie. If you
must know, I was afraid he wouldn’t. I’d rather not know. Think how
embarrassed I’d be if I called for help—and no one came! This way—” She
turned her head, listening; the arrows of the wind whistled over the
house. “There’s a queer smell to the air,” she said. “It’s like some
strange drug, you take a sniff and you don’t go on fooling yourself.”
Her somberness was gone, in a little flashing smile. “Why did you stay,
Maggie? You’re scared to death, you know you are, that nice boy would
have taken you—”
“You let me see your foot, Susan Lathrop,” said Margaret, sternly. She
knelt stiffly in front of Susan, she pushed the folds of coat away from
Susan’s knees, and laid her hands on the pointed toes of the sandals,
pulling both feet toward her. Then she sat back, her fingers touching
the swollen ankle, puffy and discolored through the chiffon stocking.
“Your poor foot!” she said. Susan leaned forward, eyeing both extended
feet. “I have such nice ankles, too,” she said, gaily. Then, “Why,
Maggie! You’re crying!”
“You would have stayed here—”
Susan stretched one hand out, pushed the scarf back from Margaret’s
hair, smoothed the hair softly, and laughed. “And so you stayed. With a
shameless, dreadful—Maggie, what do people say about me?” Her finger-tip
touched Margaret’s forehead, brushed over her eyelids.
Margaret got to her feet, with an abrupt movement. The iron band, the
iron rod of her anger had gone, she did not know what the feeling was
which inundated her, it was like the rain, finding its way past barriers
of glass and wood, it was like the wave curling over grass, receding,
advancing again.
“It’s not raining so hard,” she said. “Look, it’s stopping!” The wind
had no shrillness now, through the window they could see the water,
breaking in long streamers of white. “I’m going to run over to my house,
to get some things for that ankle. It’s just a little way.”
Susan reached for her skirt, but Margaret moved with her quick, light
step toward the hall. “Don’t go, Maggie! Suppose you couldn’t get back!”
“I’ll get back!” Margaret chose the one argument to silence Susan. “I
ought to see that everything’s all right in my house, if the rain got in
there—”
“Leave the door open,” called Susan. “It’s too warm—”
The door opened so readily, swinging inward, that Margaret thought
someone must stand there, someone who had come for them, Sam, or Eddie.
No one. There was a yellow lake where the elm-tree had torn up the great
slab of soil, with a ragged fringe of turf, and water rippled along the
driveway. But the rain had stopped; the mist which filled the air was
salty on her mouth. She would get her feet soaked, but it was so warm
she wouldn’t catch cold; she could get bandage stuff, rubbing alcohol,
perhaps pack a basket with food, it might be several hours before anyone
could reach the house. The water was only ankle-deep, she splashed
ahead, had the wind changed? It seemed running to meet her, in warm
little puffs, coming over the land. She rounded the rear corner of the
house and stopped. Ahead of her rose a great mass of green, a tree,
hiding the sky, filling the space ahead of her; she thought, amazed,
why, that’s the way a bird sees a tree, looking into it, and then,
hastily, moved out around its bulk, her feet heavy in the tangled grass
and sodden ground. It was a long way past a fallen tree, its roots stood
up above her, she could not tell just where she had come, and she
stopped. Something was wrong, like looking at a familiar face and
finding it had no eyes, no mouth—The barns! Where were they? She began
to run, laboring, her breath catching, there were other trees down, but
already her eyes had accustomed themselves to that form of disaster, she
could see ahead of her under the mottled sky the rising land on which
her house stood, she could see the house itself, its white paint
shining, the only clear tone in all the landscape; it had been built to
weather storms, she thought, its low, sturdy shape settled against the
land. The old apple tree at one side sprawled askew. Margaret stumbled
against something, a log, no, a timber, gray, with marks of the ax like
ripples of water, a beam from the barn. The water was deeper here,
halfway to her knees, and ahead of her, ridiculously, as if it walked
over the field, moved a splintered door, she could see the hasp where a
padlock had hung. She took another step, and stopped, trembling.
The door was floating more quickly now, oscillating. Those green clumps
must be the tops of the lilac bushes, and lilacs stood higher than her
head. If she hurried, plunging forward, she could still cross. She
stared, turning her head slowly in a half circle. The ocean was moving
inland, breaking through at the low bit of shingle where the wall of
rocks began to merge into the long sandy beach, cutting across, gouging
across, the sod under her feet broke under her weight, eaten by the
water, and she braced herself, feeling water move against her legs. The
thought of her house was a voice shouting at her, hurry, you can still
reach me! Safety, shelter, her house, in a way her life, her love, all
that she had! She was strong, the current could not yet be swift, she
could swim. The muddy water eddied around the lilac clumps, she saw it
close over one of them. She could reach her house, and stay there, she
could not return. What claim had Susan on her, like that of her house?
_Don’t go, Maggie!_ She set her teeth into her lower lip, she thought,
in a kind of dull incredulity, Why, no tide ever rose as fast as this,
and slowly, without another glance at water, hill, or house, she turned
back. As she went she thought the water followed at her heels, and when
at last she reached the stone steps she was not surprised that the pool
beneath the elm-tree roots had merged into a larger flood, and that
little waves beat up against the disk of mud. We’re on an island, now.
Cut off.
Her side hurt, and she stood, pressing her hand against it, before she
went into the house. She closed the door, and the squelch of her shoes
was loud in what seemed, after the outer tumult, like silence. Susan was
sitting just where Margaret had left her, and her breast rose and fell
in one long sigh. Margaret hung her raincoat over the newel post, she
rubbed a handkerchief over her face, her eyes burned; she wrung the
bottom of her skirt, and tried to pat it smooth.
“I couldn’t get anything for your ankle,” she said. “It was so wet—”
Susan beckoned her nearer. “Are you all right? I thought once I heard
you cry out! I started after you, but I can’t hop on one foot. Not far.
I told you you’d just get drenched. You—you didn’t see anyone—coming?”
“No, I didn’t.” Margaret sank down on the chair, she couldn’t yet draw a
full breath, her toes curled inside her wet shoes. Irritation jingled
through her weariness. How could anybody come? She opened her mouth to
tell Susan what she had seen, and said, instead, “Does it hurt much?”
“It hurt like hell while you were gone.” Susan grimaced. “You know, the
way everything’s worse when you’re by yourself. Wind, rain, aches,
anything. I don’t mind it now. I tell you, if I stuck it up—” She swung
around sidewise on the divan, and with both hands under her plump knee,
hoisted it up. A scarlet garter made a cushion of the soft flesh above
the knee. Susan patted it, hoisted the other leg, and leaned back
against the arm of the divan. “That’s better. Now you pull your chair
around, and we’ll talk. I think the storm is over, the sky is lighter,
see?”
Lighter, yes, with a sullen yellowish tinge under the dull clouds. Susan
held one wrist near her eyes, squinting at the tiny jeweled watch, the
sleeve slipping back from the plump white arm, creased at the wrist like
a baby’s. “It’s stopped,” she said. “I must have hit it when I took that
tumble. Now we don’t even know what time it is!” She eased herself a
little into place, her hands looked small, lying against the maroon silk
which strained over her wide soft thighs. “Well, I never did know the
time! You always did, Maggie! Remember how it worried you, being on
time?” She laughed. “Well, we’ve no date to keep today, have we? It’s
nice, having you here. It took a storm, didn’t it, to make you put up
with me?” Her smile was sly. “You don’t really think I’m all those names
you were calling me, do you? Anyway, you stayed with me. You know, when
you started for your house, I thought maybe you were clearing out.”
Margaret hitched her chair over the floor, nearer the couch. “I wanted
to,” she said, her mouth grim. “I don’t know why I came back.” She
thought, all these things are true about Susan, disgraceful, disgusting,
and yet I’m sitting here—I don’t mind being wet, or frightened—She
lifted her head as the whole house shivered, she heard the wind after it
had passed the house, and then a rumbling clatter, an avalanche of dull
noise.
“Is it raining stones now?” said Susan.
“I know. The chimney!” Margaret glanced behind her at the marble and
onyx face of the fireplace, she thought the sheet of metal which covered
the opening bulged outward, she saw a dark lip of sooty water along the
lower edge, creeping out over the hearth.
“What’s a chimney more or less?” Susan relaxed again, but she laid a
hand on Margaret’s knee. “I was thinking—while you were gone—that’s what
this damned house always does to me, sets me thinking. You never
married, Maggie? Have you been happy?”
Margaret sat very still, the queer sweet smell of the air perplexed her,
it was like morning, not like any morning she had known, but some
morning in a dream. She tried to gather around her the tatters of the
Margaret Turner she had meant to show to Susan, to confound Susan, a
proud, righteous, worthy woman, and she couldn’t find even a tatter.
“You should have married Lester Field,” said Susan. “If he’d had you
admiring him, looking up to him—if he’d had to work—”
“But you took him, you ruined him.”
“You might have put up a fight for him. I didn’t know he’d ever seen
you! Oh, I heard, afterwards. He was a snob, Maggie, a lazy, selfish
snob. You were the farmer’s daughter, and do you know what I was? I was
a good marriage. Making a good marriage and sleeping with it aren’t the
same thing! I was glad when he took that header off his horse, it takes
too long to die of drink. When I come back here I think about him—and
Robert. It’s funny, isn’t it, how you see the ends of stories, as you
grow older. When you’re young, you never think that anything will end,
you will love forever, you’ll suffer forever, you’re sewed up tight in
what you feel right now—” Her mouth trembled a little, the lipstick on
the under lip had smeared thin, leaving a fine line of red below the
outline of the lip. “Now I know all the endings. I know how things come
out. Oh, I pretend I don’t, that’s the only way to have any fun—” Her
fingers pressed on Margaret’s knee, and the two looked steadily at each
other—are you frightened, uneasy?—as the whole house strained under the
wind, timbers sliding behind plaster, like the sound of movement in wood
and metal of a ship.
It’s true, thought Margaret; you begin to see the pattern that a whole
life makes, you do know the ends of stories. I have been troubled about
my own, it was coming in a circle back to all its beginnings. She laid
one hand over Susan’s, she felt a lightness in her blood, an ease, it
was like a dream to sit there, with hatred and envy gone.
“Look,” said Susan, “it is raining again.” She turned to glance over the
back of the divan toward the windows, they saw the way the water had
covered the floor, running under the door, down from the window ledges,
out from the fireplace, until it made a streaked covering, reflecting
oddly the shapes of the chairs, the angle of the walls, reaching the
carved feet of the divan.
“If you could walk—” Margaret was bewildered. “Could you get upstairs,
if I helped?”
“I can’t, not without crawling.” Susan lifted her coat away from the
floor. “I’m comfortable right here. You aren’t scared, Maggie? Rain
can’t wash this house away.”
“I don’t know what I am,” said Margaret, a little pettishly.
“I must look a sight,” said Susan. “Where’s my handbag? I had it when we
came in. There it is, on the mantel, get it for me, Maggie, dear.”
Margaret took the few steps to the mantel, she thought the tesselated
floor moved under her feet, she thought as she looked down that water
crept up along the lines of the patterned oak, how could it? Was there a
new sound in the house, a gurgle of water under the floor, a steady
slap-slap?
“You know, Eddie reminds me a lot of Robert,” Susan was saying, as
Margaret handed her the bag. She poked a finger under the rhinestone
clasp and spread the bag open. “I hadn’t thought of it before. What
happened to Robert, Maggie?”
“He died. He got typhoid in that mining camp.” (Where he went because of
you: tell her!) Margaret stood close to the couch.
“Dead?” Susan looked up, a vanity case snapped open in one hand. “I
didn’t know.” There was a crease between her plucked, accented brows.
“He would be an old man now, wouldn’t he? He was older than you—or me—I
never thought of that before.” She shrugged. “I don’t like elderly men,
they fuss so—diet, liver—they have hairs in their ears and their teeth
clack! Robert—ah, he didn’t have to grow old! He was beautiful. Eddie
isn’t really like him. Why, I remember the row they made about Robert,
right here in this room! Father and Mother—about Susan Lathrop and her
groom! I didn’t care, I loved him. But he cared, he was furious. He went
away, west. I would have waited forever—at least I thought so.” She
began to pat powder over her face, the scent strong for a moment. “But I
couldn’t stand his taking the money.”
“What money?” Margaret leaned closer, her hands clasped; Susan’s voice
had dropped; it was an unhappy whisper against the background of steady
noise around them. Susan set her lips together and dusted her chin.
“What money?” urged Margaret.
“The money my father gave him, if he’d go off. I—I suppose he was poor—”
“Is that what they told you?” Margaret’s scorn brought Susan’s eyes up
from the mirror. “You might have known it was a lie! Robert never took a
cent, except his wages. Why, I sent him money that year, when I began to
teach, money for food!”
“I might have known,” said Susan, slowly. “I wasn’t as smart then. Why,
Maggie, it’s like a present! Everything was criss-cross, and we’re
laying it all straight.”
“When he died, his landlady sent me his things,” said Margaret. “His
account book, and a picture of you—and a letter. I would never give you
the letter.”
“I don’t want to see the picture!” Susan peered again into the little
mirror, she fished a lipstick out of the bag. She made a stroke with the
pencil, but her hand wavered, and the crimson was a clown’s mouth.
Angrily she dabbed at it with a handkerchief, sticking out the point of
her tongue to moisten a corner. “I don’t care how I look,” she said. She
dropped the lipstick, mirror, handkerchief, into the purse, and pinched
the rhinestones shut. “I’ve been a fool, haven’t I? But you have to have
somebody to love as long as you live, don’t you?” Her voice was warm
again, and clear. “Whatever they’ve been, I’ve had the loving of them.
Nobody can take that away!”
Margaret had drawn away from the divan, her shoulders hunched, her hands
doubled into fists. She wanted to listen to Susan, but something,
_something_ was moving past the windows at the end of the room, was
looking in. She walked toward the windows, slowly, not to frighten
Susan, her feet slipping in the water, inches deep, which covered the
floor, not quiet water, but water that swung as if the whole house
rocked a little. The room was darker, and she stared at the peaked roof
of a house outside the windows, cutting off all light, all glimpse of
ocean, a jagged hole where there had been a chimney; and it floated
higher than the upper ledges of the windows. Margaret looked at it
without great concern; she had lost her standard by which she measured
what happened, nothing now was astonishing. The dark, slanting roof
moved toward the house, as if it meant to climb in through the windows,
and then was sucked away. Margaret saw the ocean, it had come above the
window sills, a wave climbed up the sash, and its spray stung her face
there inside the house. She looked out, across the gray-green rollers,
not surprised that all the land was gone, every tree was gone, and the
house itself was islanded. She saw, between her and the sky, one great
wall, like fog turned into solid matter, high as the sky, advancing
without haste, with dignity. When that breaks, she thought, and turned
away from the window. She could run, she could climb the stairs, the
attic of the house was high, she would be safe there!
“What you looking at?” asked Susan.
“A wave,” said Margaret. She started across the floor, her feet begged
her to run, they were separate, alive, insisting upon flight, she
couldn’t save Susan, too, there was no time—no time. At the edge of the
couch she stopped, her hand reached for Susan’s, she slipped to the
floor, shutting her eyes, laying her face against Susan’s soft breast.
“Hang on,” she whispered, “hang on tight to me! I’m not afraid any more,
with you.”
“Why, Maggie!” said Susan, and under Margaret’s ear her heart,
undefeated, quickened its beat. For an instant, in the great blackness
which filled the room, a whirling blackness under the wall of water,
Margaret thought that they were children again, running ahead of the
storm, she with her hand in Susan’s. “We’ll stick together!” cried
Susan, and her voice had the golden curl of a trumpet. “Till we die!” If
it was fear that Margaret felt, it had, at the last, the strong sweet
taste of great elation. The wave walked over the house, the wind pried
at the walls, the front wall yielded first, falling outward, with a
soughing soft note, and the water swept through.
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcribed from Experiment: Four short stories. Coward-McCann, New York
(1940), pp. 1-67.
This is the uncut, longer version of the previously published Last
September (Good Housekeeping, vol. 109, July 1939, pp. 24-25, 116-129.).
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. Minor
typesetting mistakes were silently corrected. All other changes
(before/after) are listed here:
[p. 66]:
... she saw she stared at the peaked roof of a house outside the ...
... she stared at the peaked roof of a house outside the ...
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.