THE STORM
That storm was always known as "The Storm" by everyone who was at the
Week-End Camp on that night in August. Greendale had been singularly
free from severe storms that season and the Carters had had no
difficulty up to that time in keeping dry. They had had rain in plenty
but never great downpours and their mountain had escaped the lightning
that on several occasions had played havoc not many miles from them.
The day had been exceptionally warm but very clear. The full moon had
taken the place of the sun when night came on and so brilliant was the
glow from that heavenly orb, one could almost fancy heat was reflected
as well as light. The great black cloud that came rolling over the
mountain was as much an astonishment to the dancers in the pavilion as
it was to the moon herself. They refused to recognize the fact that a
storm was coming up and the moon also held her own for some time after
the downpour was upon them. She kept peeping out through rifts in the
clouds and once when the storm was at its fiercest she sailed clear of
all clouds for a few moments, and then it was that the rarest of all
beauties in Nature was beheld by the damp and huddled-up crowd of
week-enders: a lunar rainbow.
It stretched across the valley, a perfect arc with the colors as clearly
defined as a solar bow but infinitely more delicate than any rainbow
ever beheld before.
There was no such thing as keeping dry. When Lewis Somerville and Bill
Tinsley built the pavilion, they had kept exactly to the architect's
plans, drawn so carefully by Robert Carter's assistant, Mr. Lane. The
roof projected so far on every side that they had remarked at the time
that nothing short of horizontal rain could find its way under that
roof. Well, this rain was horizontal and it came in first one direction
and then another until every bit of floor space was flooded. The thunder
sounded like stage thunder made by rolling barrels of bricks down
inclined planes and helped out with the bass drum. Great clouds rested
on the mountain tops and a wind, that seemed demoniacal in the tricks it
played, bent over great forest trees as though they were saplings and
then let them snap back into place with a deafening crack.
"Save the Victrola," whispered Tillie to Bill. "I want to dance with you
once before you go off, and water will ruin it."
That was enough for the devoted Bill. He took off his coat and wrapped
it tenderly over the top of the Victrola, which was still playing a gay
dance tune as no one had had the presence of mind to stop it. Then he
made a dash for the kitchen just as a river of water was descending and
in a twinkling was back bearing in his arms a great tin tub. This he
placed over the top of the precious music-maker. He felt very tender
toward Tillie just then for although her new dress was being ruined,
still her first thought had been for the Victrola so she could dance
with him.
The storm having come up so suddenly found the crowd totally unprepared.
Tent flys had been left up and the windows and door of the cabin, where
Mrs. Carter was installed, were wide open for the four winds of heaven
to blow through. Sad havoc they played with the dainty finery that Mrs.
Carter and Susan had left spread out on the bed. The wonderful hat,
brought as a present for Douglas, was picked up the next morning half
way down the mountain; at least the ruin was supposed to be that hat but
it was never quite identified as it had lost all semblance to a hat.
Lewis, after hearing the ultimatum from Douglas, as I have said, made
his solitary way to his tent where he threw himself on his cot to fight
it out with his disappointed self. A dash of rain on his tent aroused
him and then a mighty gust of wind simply picked up the tent and wafted
it away like thistledown.
"Well, of all----" but Lewis never finished of all the what, but in a
twinkling he had rolled up the bed clothes belonging to himself and his
tent mates, and then rushing to the neighboring tents that were still
withstanding the raging hurricane he rolled up blankets found there and
piled cots on top of the bundles.
It was a real fight, strong man that he was, to make his way to the
pavilion. Trees were bending before the wind and he found the only way
to locomote was to crawl.
"Just suppose the pavilion doesn't hold!" was ringing in his mind; but
the young men "had builded better than they knew." It did hold although
the roof was straining at the rafters and Lewis and Bill feared every
moment it might rise up and float off as their tent had done.
Lewis came under cover wetter than he would have been had he been in
swimming, he declared. Swimming just soaks the water in but the rain
had beat it in and hammered it down. The wind was still driving the rain
in horizontal sheets and the pavilion was getting damper and damper. The
week-enders were a very forlorn looking crowd and no doubt the majority
of them were far from blessing the day that had brought them to the camp
in Albemarle. They ran from corner to corner trying to get out of the
searching flood.
"I know they are blaming it on us!" cried Nan to Mr. Tucker.
"Who is blaming it on you?" laughed Page Allison. "Why, honey, it may be
doing worse things in other places. We should be thankful we are on a
mountain top instead of in a valley." Then she drew Mr. Tucker aside and
whispered to him: "See here, Zebedee, don't you think it is up to us
somehow to relieve this situation? If we get giddy and act as though it
were a privilege to be wet to the skin, don't you think we might stir up
these people and make a lark of this storm instead of a calamity? You
remember you told me once that you and Miss Jinny Cox saved the day for
a picnic at Monticello when a deluge hit you there?"
Zebedee was the Tucker Twins' pet name for their father, and Page
Allison, their best friend, was also privileged to use the name for that
eternally youthful gentleman.
"I've been thinking we must do something, but the lightning is so severe
that somehow I think I must wait."
"You are like Mammy Susan who says: 'Whin the Almighty is a-doing his
wuck ain't the time fur a po' ole nigger ter be a-doin' hern.'"
"Exactly! But it is letting up a bit now, that is, the lightning is, but
the rain is even more terrific."
A great crash of thunder, coming simultaneously with a flash of
lightning that cracked like a whip, put a stop to conversation, and
Page, in spite of her bravery, for she was not the least afraid of
storms as a rule--clung to Mr. Tucker. Everybody was clinging to
everybody else and in the stress of the moment no one was choosy about
the person to cling to. Bill cursed his stars that Tillie was hanging on
to Skeeter, as pale as a little ghost, when she might just as well be
hanging on to him, while he, in turn, was supporting a strange person he
had never even met.
"That hit close to us!" exclaimed someone.
"I believe it hit me!" screamed a girl.
"Where are Susan and Oscar?" cried Douglas. "They will be scared to
death."
"When I went down in the kitchen after the tub for the Victrola, Oscar
was under the table and Susan was trying to get in the fireless cooker,
head first," volunteered Bill. "The kitchen is really the dryest place
on the mountain, I fancy."
"You forget the shower bath," suggested Helen. "Turn it on full force
and it would still be a thousand times dryer than any place here."
"I tell you what let's do!" spoke Dum Tucker with an inspiration that
all regretted had not come sooner. "Let's climb up and sit on the
rafters!"
Suiting the action to the word, she lightly ascended the trunk of the
huge tulip poplar tree that had been left in the center of the pavilion
as a support to the roof. The branches had been sawed off, leaving
enough projecting to serve as hat racks for the camp. These made an
admirable winding stair which an athletic girl like Dum Tucker made
nothing of climbing.
"Splendid!" and Dee Tucker followed her twin. In short order many of the
more venturesome members of the party were perched on the rafters where
they defied the rain to reach them. Even poor Mrs. Carter, her pretty
lace dress, if not absolutely ruined, at least with all of its first
freshness gone, was persuaded to come up, too, and there she sat
trembling and miserable.
"Come on up, Page!" shouted Dee to her chum.
"I'll be there soon," but Page had an idea that she meant first to
propose to Douglas.
Poor Douglas, this was a fitting ending to a day of worry and concern.
She felt like one
"Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster."
Of course country folk are always made to feel in some intangible way
that they are responsible for the weather when the weather happens to be
bad and city folk are visiting them. Douglas thought she had enough not
to bear the weight of the storm, but somehow she felt that that, too,
was added to her burden.
"I know exactly what you are thinking," said Page, coming up and putting
her wet arm around Douglas' wet waist. "I have lived in the country all
my life and whenever we have a big storm at Bracken or unseasonable
weather of any sort, we are always held personally responsible for it by
a certain type of visitors. You think this is going to harm your camp
and keep people from coming, don't you?"
"Why, how did you know?"
"A little bird told me--a stormy petrel. Now I tell you what we must do:
we must whoop things up until all of these week-enders will think that
the storm was about the most interesting thing that ever happened at
Camp Carter and they will come again hoping for a repetition of the
experience."
"Oh, Page! How can we?" and Douglas smiled in spite of herself.
"Well, let's call a council and appoint a committee on ways and means."
Mr. Tucker was first on the list, then Helen and Dr. Wright, Bill
Tinsley and Lewis Somerville. Nan was so busy looking at the beauties of
Nature that she had to be called three times before she answered.
"Come on, Miss Nan!" begged Mr. Tucker. "Your wise little head is wanted
on this committee."
"Only look at that bank of clouds as the lightning strikes on the edge
of it! It looks like the portals of heaven."
"Yes, and it came mighty near being that same thing," muttered Mr.
Tucker.
The storm was really passing. Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder
grew farther and farther apart. The rain gave one big last dash and
stopped as suddenly as it had begun and then the moon asserted herself
once more.
Every member of the hastily called council had some suggestion to make
and every suggestion was eagerly taken by the committee on ways and
means, that committee being composed of the entire council.
Page said hot coffee for the entire camp must be made immediately and
she would do the making. Dr. Wright said a fire would be a pretty good
thing if it could be managed, and Bill Tinsley remembered some charcoal
braziers that Susan used for ironing and a box of charcoal in the corner
of the kitchen. Lewis went to gather up all the blankets in the camp and
those that were damp were draped along the rafters by the climbers. Soon
the brazier had a glow of coals that sent up heat to the rafters, and
Bill also put into use the great iron pot that had hung over the camp
fire just for picturesqueness. It had never had anything in it but
water, all the cooking being done on kerosene stoves and in a fireless
cooker. This made an excellent brazier and the coals were kept red hot
with the help of the automobile tire pump in lieu of bellows. Helen had
ambition for a welsh rarebit and started in with chafing dishes. This
called into requisition more workers and all of the camp was soon busy
cutting up cheese and toasting bread and crackers.
The Victrola was relieved of its tub and a ragtime record put on that
made all of the workers step lively, which did much toward starting
their circulation and warming them up generally. The Victrola ever after
that was called Diogenes, after a certain wise man who lived in a tub.
Everybody danced at his work and everybody was laughing and happy. The
moonlight was so dazzling in its brilliancy that it was difficult to
realize that not ten minutes before the biggest storm Greendale had ever
known had been making even the strong men tremble. Nan seemed to be the
only person who had not been afraid. Even those who had never before
minded a storm had been cowed by this one.
Page declared she had always liked storms before; even when a big gum
tree on the lawn at Bracken had been struck before her very eyes she had
not been afraid, but this time she was scared to death.
Dum said it seemed to be such a personal storm somehow and each flash
seemed to mean her. "I felt my naked soul was exposed to my Maker," she
said, as she gave her beloved father a hug. "I have got all kinds of
things to 'fess to you, Zebedee, things that I never thought made any
difference before," she whispered.
"Why, Dumdeedledums! What on earth?"
"Only this evening I smoked a cigarette, although I know you hate it--I
owe a little bill for soda water at Miller's, although I know you don't
want me to charge things--there are other things but I can't think of
them just now. Suppose--only suppose that I had winked out without
telling you or worse than that, suppose you had----" but Dum couldn't
finish for the big tears that rolled out of her eyes and which
Tucker-like she made no attempt to conceal. Zebedee lent her his
handkerchief and then had to wipe his own eyes, too.
"That is all right, honey, but don't do it any more. And now you turn in
and help these Carter girls and Page jolly up this crowd. Page is making
coffee and I am going with Somerville to right the tents and take stock
of the damage done by the storm."
When Page had first entered the kitchen she found the two negroes bent
over in abject woe. Oscar was praying while Susan moaned and groaned
with occasional ejaculations like a Greek chorus in a tragedy of
Euripides.
"Oh my Gawd, let the deep waters pass over me and let me come out whiter
than the snow and sweeter than the honey in the honey comb--let me be
putrified by fire and let the rollin' thunder's shock pass me by,
leavin' me stand steadfast, a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of
fire by night like unto a lily of the valley, a bright an' mawnin' star
that casts its beams on the jest an' the onjest----"
"Yes, my Gawd!" wailed the chorus. "An' the jest an' the onjest shall
lie down together like the lion an' the lamb in that great an' mighty
day an' who Gawd has united let no man pull acinder."
"Yes! Yes! In that day when the Rock of Ages shall smite the Shibboleth
and the Urum an' Thurum may be delivered not--remember thou thy servant
Oscar----"
"Yes! Yes, Lord! an' thy handy maiden Susan!"
Page entered and put a stop to the impassioned appeal by asking for the
coffee pot, while Bill Tinsley bore off the big brazier full of
charcoal.
"The storm is over, I think," said Page, with difficulty restraining her
smiles. "It was very terrible indeed."
"Turrible ain't no word for it; an' now you say the white folks wants to
eat agin? Lord love us if ev'thing don't make these here week-enders
emptier an' emptier. Feedin' of them is like pourin' water down a rat
hole."
"Well, you see, uncle, they all of them got so wet that it is wise to
give them something hot to drink, and then, too, we want them to forget
the terrible storm and think of the camp only with pleasure. You see
they might not come back again."
"Forget it! forget it! You can't lose these here folks. They'd ride all
the way from Richmond jes' to fill theyselves up, if for no other
reason. They is the empties' lot I ever come acrost."
Dee Tucker followed Page to the kitchen to see if she could be of any
assistance in making the coffee. She felt keenly sorry for the Carters
on account of this storm. Not being connected with them in any way,
the grumblers had not hesitated to criticize the whole thing in Dee's
presence when they got wet and scared. Dee had done all in her power to
soften their judgment, but there were several who did not hesitate to
blame the Carter girls because of their wetting. Nothing is so catching
as criticism and it spreads like wildfire with the genus boarder. She
told Page of her fears.
"We'll have to put a stop to it. You get Tillie Wingo and you and she
soft soap the men who are grouching, and then get Zebedee to go after
the females. He can make them believe they only dreamed it stormed."