complete marsh once in Minnesota and spread it out upside down on top of
a wood a little ways off; and when there's a tornado anywhere near, the
sewing-machines all tick like they was telegraphing."
"No!" cried Mrs. Macy.
"Yes, the young man said so."
"But do you believe him?"
"I don't know why not. I wouldn't believe Mr. Kimball because he's
always fixing up his stories to sound better than they really are, which
makes me have very little faith in him; but Judge Fitch says he'd make
a splendid witness for any one just on that very account. Judge Fitch
says with a little well-advised help Mr. Kimball would carry convictions
to any man,--he don't except none,--but I see no reason why the young
man wasn't telling the truth. Young men do tell the truth sometimes;
most everybody does that. A tornado catches up pigs and carries 'em
miles and pulls up trees by the roots. I don't wonder they won't insure
'em."
"The pigs?" asked Mrs. Macy.
"No, the tornadoes."
"What's the signs of a tornado?" asked Gran'ma Mullins uneasily.
"Well, the signs is alike for both. The signs is weather like to-day and
a kind of breathlessness like to-night. Mr. Kimball says a funnel-shaped
cloud is a great sign; and when you see it, in three minutes it's on
you, and off goes your roof if it's a cyclone, and off you go yourself
if it's a tornado."
"My heavens alive!" cried Mrs. Lathrop, clutching the arms of her
old-gold-plush stationary rocker.
"Do people ever come down again?" Gran'ma Mullins inquired; she was very
pale.
"Elijah didn't, Mr. Kimball says."
"Elijah Doxey?" cried Mrs. Macy. "Why, is he off on a cyclone? No one
ever told me."
"No, Elijah in the Bible, you know. The Elijah as was caught up in a
chariot of fire. Mr. Kimball says there ain't a mite of doubt in his
mind but that it was a tornado. I guess Mr. Kimball told the truth that
time, for it's all in the Bible."
"That's true," said Gran'ma Mullins. "I remember Elijah myself. He kept
a tame raven, seems to me, or some such thing."
"Oh, Susan!" Mrs. Lathrop cried out suddenly. "There's a fun--" Her
voice failed her; she raised her hand and pointed.
Susan turned quickly, and her face became suddenly gray-white. "It can't
be a cy--" she faltered.
With that all four women jumped different ways at once.
"Where shall we go?" shrieked Mrs. Macy. "Oh, saints and sinners
preserve us! Oh, Susan, where shall we go?"
But Susan Clegg stood as if paralyzed, staring straight at the
funnel-shaped cloud.
Gran'ma Mullins started for her own house; Mrs. Lathrop sprang up and
clasped the piazza post nearest; Mrs. Macy grabbed her skirts up at both
sides and faced the cyclone just as she had once faced the cow.
The funnel-shaped cloud came sweeping towards them. The town was
between, and a darkness and a mighty roar arose. Buildings seemed
falling; the din was terrible.
"I knew it," said Susan grimly. "It _is_ a cyclone!" She faced the
worst--standing erect.
The next instant the storm was on them all. It lifted Mrs. Lathrop's
old-gold-plush stationary rocker and hurled it at that good lady,
smashing her hard against the post. It raised the roof of Mrs. Macy's
house and dropped it like an extinguisher over the fleeing form of
Gran'ma Mullins.
"Oh, Gran'ma Mullins, it _is_ a cyclone!" Susan shrieked. But Gran'ma
Mullins answered not.
A second mighty burst of fury blew down two trees, and it blew Susan
herself back against the side wall of the house which shook and swayed
like a bit of cardboard.
"Oh, yes, it's a cyclone," Susan screamed over and over. "Oh, Mrs.
Lathrop, it's a real cyclone! It isn't a tornado; you can see the
difference now. It's a cyclone; look at the roof; it's a cyclone!"
Mrs. Lathrop could see nothing. She and the old-gold-plush stationary
rocker were all piled together under the piazza post.
And now came the third and worst burst of fury. It crashed on the
blacksmith's shop; it carried the sails of the windmill swooping down
the road, and then "without halting, without rest" lifted Mrs. Macy
with her outspread skirts and carried her straight up in the air. "Oh!
Oh!" she shrieked and sailed forth.
Susan gave a piercing yell. "Oh, Mrs. Macy, it's a tornado, it's a
tornado!" But Mrs. Macy answered not.
Tipping, swaying, ducking to the right or left, she flew majestically
away over her own roof first and then over that of Gran'ma Mullins'
woodshed.
"Help! Help!" cried Gran'ma Mullins from under the roof.
Mrs. Lathrop was oblivious to all, smashed by her own old-gold-plush
stationary rocker.
Susan Clegg stood as one fascinated, staring after the trail which was
all that was left of Mrs. Macy.
"It was a tornado!" she said over and over. "Mrs. Macy'll always believe
in the Bible now, I guess. It was a tornado! It _was_ a tornado!"
* * * * *
"No, they ain't found her yet," Susan said, coming into the hotel room
where Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins had found a pleasant and
comfortable refuge and were occupied in recuperating together at
Jathrop's expense. Neither lady was seriously injured. Gran'ma Mullins
had been preserved from even a wetting through the neat capping of her
climax by Mrs. Macy's roof; while Mrs. Lathrop's squeeze between the
piazza post and her well beloved old-gold-plush stationary rocker had
not--as Gran'ma Mullins put it--so much as turned a hair of even the
rocker.
"No one's heard anything from her yet," continued Susan, "but that ain't
so surprising as it would be if anybody had time to want to know. But
nobody's got time for nothing to-day. The town's in a awful taking, and
I d'n know as I ever see a worse situation. You two want to be very
grateful as you're so nicely and neatly laid aside, for what has
descended on the community now is worse'n any cyclone, and if you could
get out and see what the cyclone's done, you'd know what _that_ means."
"Was you to my house, Susan?" asked Gran'ma Mullins anxiously.
"I was; but the insurance men was before me, or anyhow, we met there."
"The insurance men!"
"That's what I said,--the insurance men. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, we all know
one side of what it is to insure ourselves, but now the Lord in his
infinite wrath has mercifully seen fit to show us the other side. The
Assyrian pouncing down on the wolf in his fold is a young mother
wrapping up her first baby to look out the window compared to those
insurance men. They descended on us bright and shining to-day, and if we
was murderers with our families buried under the kitchen floor, we
couldn't be looked on with more suspicion. I was far from pleased when I
first laid eyes on 'em, for there's a foxiness in any city man as comes
to settle things in the country as is far from being either soothing or
syrupy to him as lives in the country; but you can maybe imagine my
feelings when they very plainly informed me as I couldn't put the roof
back on Mrs. Macy's house till it was settled whether it was a cyclone
or a tornado--"
"Settled--whether--" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"Cyclone or tornado," repeated Susan. "The first thing isn't to get to
rights, but it is to settle whether we've got any rights to get. I never
dreamed what it was to be injured--no, or no one else neither. Seems if
it's a tornado, we don't get a cent of our insurance. And to think it
all depends on Mrs. Macy."
"On Mrs.--" cried Gran'ma Mullins.
"Yes, because she's the only one as really knows whether she was carried
off or not. Well, all I can say is, if she don't come back pretty quick,
we're going to have a little John Brown raid right here in town; we--"
"But what--?"
"I'm telling you. It'll be the town rising up against the insurance men,
and the insurance men will soon find that when it comes to
dilly-dallying with folks newly cycloned upside down, it's life and
death if you don't deal fair. What with chimneys down and roofs turned
up at the corner like the inquiring angels didn't have time to take the
cover all off but just pried up a little to see what was inside,--I say
with all this and everything wet and Mrs. Macy gone, this community was
in no mood to be sealed up--"
"Sealed up!" cried Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins together.
"That's what it is. Sealed up we are, and sealed up we've got to stay
until Mrs. Macy gets back--"
"But--" cried Gran'ma Mullins.
"Everybody's just as mad as you are. Charging bulls is setting hens
beside this town to-night. Even Mr. Kimball's mad for once in his life;
he's losing money most awful, for he can't sell so much as a paper of
tacks. They've got both his doors and all his windows sealed, and he's
standing out in front with nothing to do except to keep a sharp eye out
for Mrs. Macy. He says it ain't in reason to expect as she'll fly back,
but she's got to come from somewhere, and he means to prevent her
getting away again on the sly. He says his opinion is as she'd have
stood a better chance before airships was so common. He says ten years
ago folks would have took steps for hooking at her just as quick as they
saw her coming along, but nowadays it'd be a pretty brave man as would
try to stop anything he saw flying overhead. I guess he's about right
there. It's a hard question to know what to do with things that fly,
even if Mrs. Macy hadn't took to it, too. My view is that we advance
faster than we can learn how to manage our new inventions. I d'n know,
I'm sure, though, what Mrs. Macy is going to do about this trip of hers.
She went without even the moment's notice as folks in a hurry always has
had up to now. She's been gone most twenty-four hours. She's skipped
three meals already, not to speak of her night and her nap; and you know
as well as I do how Mrs. Macy was give to her nights and her napping."
Susan shook her head, and Mrs. Lathrop looked wide-eyed and alarmed.
"But now--" Gran'ma Mullins asked.
"I've been all over the place," Susan continued. "I didn't understand
fully what was up when I scurried off to try and get those men to put
the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house, but I know it all now. It's no use
trying to get anybody to do nothing now; the whole town's upside down
and inside out. I never see nothing like it. And the insurance men has
got it laid down flat as nobody can't touch nothing till it's settled
whether it's a cyclone or a tornado. Seems a good many was insured for
cyclones right in with their fires without knowing it; but there ain't a
soul in the place insured against a tornado, because you can't get any
insurance against tornadoes--no one will insure them. The insurance men
say if it's a tornado, we won't have nothing to do except to do the best
we can; but if it's a cyclone, we mus'n't touch anything till they can
get some one to judge what's worth saving and how much it's worth and
deduct that from our insurance. That's how it is."
"But what has--?" began Gran'ma Mullins.
"How long--?" demanded Mrs. Lathrop.
"Nobody knows," said Susan. "The whole town is asking, and nobody knows.
The insurance company won't let anybody go home or get anything unless
they'll sign a paper giving up their insurance and swearing that it was
a tornado. Mr. Dill just had to sign the paper because he was taking a
bath and had nothing except the table cover to wear. He signed the paper
and said he'd swear anything if only for his shoes alone; and it seems
that his house isn't hurt a mite, and he didn't have no insurance
anyhow. A good many is blaming him, but he says he really couldn't think
of anything in the excitement and the table cloth. It's a awful state of
things. The cyclone has tore everything to pieces, and the insurance
men has put their seal on the chips. People is being drove to all
lengths. The minister and his family is camping in the henhouse. Our
walls is fell in so goodness knows what will happen to you and me next,
Mrs. Lathrop. The wires is all down, so we can't hear nothing about the
storm. The rails is all up, so there's no trains. The church is stove
in, so we can't pray. But I must say as to my order of thinking, it
looks as if no one feels like praying. The insurance men is running all
over, like winged ants hatching out, sealing up more doors and more
windows every minute and getting more signatures as it was a tornado
before they'll unstick them. Nothing can't be really settled till Mrs.
Macy comes back. Mrs. Macy is the key to the whole situation."
"But why--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"The Jilkins is in from Cherry Pond, and all it did there was to rain.
The Sperrits was in, too, and the storm was most singular with them. It
hailed in the sunshine till they see four rainbows--they never see the
beat. Mr. Weskins is advising everybody to go into their houses and make
a test case of it. Judge Fitch is advising everybody not to. It's plain
as he's on the side of the insurance men. He says just as they do, that
we'd better wait till Mrs. Macy comes back and hear her story. He says
in the very nature of things her view'll be a most general one. He says
all there is to know she'll know; she'll know the area affected and be
able to tell whether it was electricity or just wind. Mr. Kimball said
if she went far enough, she'd be a star witness; but no one thinks that
jokes about Mrs. Macy ought to be told now. The situation is too
serious. It may be _very_ serious for Mrs. Macy. If the storm stopped
sudden, it may be very serious indeed for Mrs. Macy. Mrs. Macy isn't as
young as she was, and she hadn't the least idea of leaving town; she
wasn't a bit prepared, that we can all swear to. She was just carried
away by a sudden impulse--as you might say--and the main question is
how far did she get on her impulse, and where is she now? To my order
of thinking, it all depends on how she come down. Cycloning along like
she was, if she come down on a pond or a peak, she'll be far from
finding it funny. I was thinking about her all the way here, and I can't
think of any way as'll be easy for her to come to earth, no matter how
she comes. And if she hits hard, she isn't going to like it. Mrs. Macy
was never one as took a joke pleasant; she never made light of nothing.
She took life very solemn-like--a owl was a laughing hyena compared to
Mrs. Macy. It's too bad she was that way. My own view is as she never
got over not getting married again. Some women don't. She always took it
as a reflection. There's no reflection to not getting married; my
opinion is as there's a deal of things more important and most thing's
more comfortable. If Mrs. Macy was married, she'd be much worse off than
she is right now, for instead of being able to give her whole time and
attention to whatever she's doing and looking over, she'd be wondering
what he was giving his time and attention to doing and prying into. When
a man's out of your sight, you've always got to wonder, and most of the
time that's all in the world you can do about a man. Now Mrs. Macy's
perfectly independent, she can go where she pleases and come down when
she pleases, and she hasn't got to tell what she saw unless she wants
to. Mrs. Brown says she ain't never been nowhere. It's plain to be seen
as Mrs. Brown's envying Mrs. Macy her trip."
"But why--?" began Gran'ma Mullins with great determination.
"That's just it," replied Susan promptly. "I declare, I can't but wonder
what'll happen next. I'm in that state that nothing will surprise me.
Everything's so upset and off the track there's no use even trying to
think. My walls is fell into my cistern, and Mrs. Macy's roof is sitting
on the ground beside her house yet. The insurance men has sealed up
Gran'ma Mullins' house, and they wouldn't leave the henhouse open till I
signed a affidavit on behalf of the hens and released 'em from all
claims for feed. Mr. Dill said they tried to seal up his cow. They've
got Mr. Kimball's dried-apple machine tied with a rope. It's awful."
"But Susan--" interrupted Gran'ma Mullins.
"Mr. Weskins says the great difficulty is the insurance men say they
don't see how anything is going to be settled or decided until we hear
from Mrs. Macy. The point's right here. If she comes back, it's evidence
as it was a tornado, because if she comes back it proves as she was
carried off, in which case the insurance men won't have to pay nothing
anyhow, and we'll all be unsealed and allowed to go to work putting our
roofs back on our heads and clearing up as fast as we can. But Mr.
Weskins says if Mrs. Macy don't come back, there'll be no way to prove
as she was even carried off by the storm for you, Mrs. Lathrop, had your
back turned; and you, Gran'ma Mullins, was under the roof; and I'm only
one, and it takes two witnesses to prove anything as is contrary to law
and nature."
"Do they doubt--?" cried Mrs. Lathrop, quite excited--for her.
"Yes, they do. They doubt everything. Insurance men don't take nothing
for granted. They've decided to just pin their whole case to Mrs. Macy,
and there's Mrs. Macy gone away to, heaven knows where."
"Well, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins, "we must look on the bright side.
Mrs. Macy'll have something to talk about as'll always interest
everybody if she does come back, and if she don't come back, we'll
always have her to remember."
"Yes, and if we don't get our houses unstuck pretty soon, we'll remember
her a long while," said Susan darkly.
Three days passed by and no word was heard from Mrs. Macy. As soon as
the telegraph assumed its usual route, messages were sent all about in
the direction whither she had flown, but not a trace of her was
discovered by any one. The town was very much wrought up, for although
its members were given to having strange experiences, no experience so
strange as this had ever happened there before. The exasperation of
being barred out of house and home until Mrs. Macy should be found,
naturally heightened the interest. Everybody had had just time to add
the magic word "cyclone" to their policies before the cyclone came
"damaging along"--as Susan Clegg expressed it. Susan was much perturbed.
"Well, Mrs. Lathrop,"--she said on the afternoon of the third day, as
she came into the hotel room where the mother of the millionaire was now
equal to her usual vigorous exercise in her old-gold-plush stationary
rocker. "Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you may well be grateful as Jathrop has got
money enough for us to be living here, for the living of the community
is getting to be no living a _tall_."
Gran'ma Mullins, still in bed, turned herself about and manifested a
vivid interest, "Well, Susan," she said, "it's three days now; how long
is this going to keep up?"
"It can't keep up very much longer, or we'll have a new French
Revolution, that's what we'll have," said Susan. "Why, the community is
getting where it won't stand even being said good morning to pleasantly.
The children is running all over, pulling each other's hair, and Deacon
White says he's going to buy a pistol. Things is come to a pretty pass
when Deacon White wants to buy a pistol, for he's just as afraid of one
end as the other. But it's a straw as shows which way the cyclone blew
his house."
"But isn't something--?"
"Something has got to be done. The boys stretched a string across the
door of the insurance men's room this morning, and they fell in a heap
when they started out; and some one as nobody can locate poured a
pitcher of ice water through the ventilator as is over their bed. Seeing
that public feeling is on the rise, they sent right after breakfast for
the appraisers, and they're going to begin appraising and un-sealing
to-morrow morning. They've entirely give up the idea of waiting for
Mrs. Macy. The town just won't stand for any more hanging around waiting
for nothing. I never see us so before. Every one is so upset and divided
in their feelings that some think we'd ought to horsewhip the insurance
men, and some think we'd ought to hold a burial service for Mrs. Macy."
"I wouldn't see any good in holding a service for Mrs. Macy," said
Gran'ma Mullins. "She wouldn't have been buried here if she was dead;
she was always planning to go to Meadville when she was dead."
"Yes," said Susan, "I know. Because Mrs. Lupey's got that nice lot with
that nice mausoleum as she bought from the Pennybackers when they got
rich and moved even their great-grandfather to the city."
"I remember the Pennybackers," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Old man
Pennybacker used to drive a cart for rags. It was a great day for the
Pennybackers when Joe went into the pawnbroker business."
"Yes," said Susan, "it's wonderful how rich men manage to get on when
they're young. Seems as if there's just no way to crowd a millionaire
out of business or kill him off. I'm always reading what they went
through in the papers, but it never helped none. A millionaire is a
thing as when it's going to be is going to be, and you've just got to
let 'em do it once they get started."
"It was a nice mausoleum," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Mrs. Macy has told me
about it a hundred times. It's so big, Mrs. Lupey says, she can live up
to her hospitable nature at last, for there's room for all and to spare.
Mrs. Macy was the first person she asked. Mrs. Macy thought that was
very kind of just a cousin. There's only Mrs. Kitts there, now, and Mrs.
Lupey's aunt, Mrs. Cogetts."
"Mrs. Macy didn't know she had a aunt," said Susan. "Mrs. Cogetts came
way from Jacoma just on account of the mausoleum. That's a long ways to
come just to save paying for a lot where you are, seems to me; but some
natures'll go to any lengths to save money."
"I wonder where Mrs. Macy is now," said Gran'ma Mullins, with a sigh.
"Nobody knows. A good many is decided that it's surely a clear case of
Elijah, only nobody pretends to believe in the Bible so much as to think
that she can go up and stay there. Mrs. Macy'd have to come down, and
the higher she went the more heaven help her when she does come down.
Mrs. Macy was very solid, as we all know who've heard her sit down or
seen her get up, and I can't see no happy ending ahead, even though we
all wish her well. The insurance men is very blue over her not coming
back, for they expected to prove a tornado sure; but even insurance men
can't have the whole world run to suit them these days. Anyhow, my view
is as it's no use worrying. Spilt milk's a poor thing to cook with. If
you're in the fire, you ain't in the frying-pan. The real sufferers is
this community, as is all locked out of their houses. The Browns is
living in the cellar to the cowshed, with two lengths of sidewalk laid
over them. Mrs. Brown says she feels like a Pilgrim Father, and she
sees why they got killed off so fast by the Indians,--it was so much
easier to be scalped than to do your hair. Mr. and Mrs. Craig takes
turns at one hammock all night long. Mrs. Craig says they change
regular, for whoever turns over spills out, and the other one is sitting
looking at the moon and waiting all ready to get in."
"I declare, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins warmly, "I think it's most
shocking. I won't say outrageous, but I will say shocking."
"But what are you going to do about it?" said Susan. "That's the rub in
this country. There's plenty as is shocking, but here we sit at the
mercy of any cyclone or Congress as comes along. Here we was, peaceful,
happy, and loving, and a cyclone swishes through. Down comes half a
dozen men from the city and seals up everything in town. I tell you you
ought to have heard me when they was sealing up your house and Mrs.
Macy's. I give it to 'em, and I didn't mince matters none. I spoke my
whole mind, and it was a great satisfaction, but they went right on and
sealed up the houses."
"Oh, Susan," began Mrs. Lathrop, "how are--?"
"All in ruins," replied Susan promptly. "I don't believe you and me is
ever going to live in happy homes any more. Fate seems dead set against
the idea. And nobody can get ahead of Fate. They may talk all they
please about overcoming, and when I was young I was always charging
along with my horns down and my tail waving same as every other young
thing; but I'm older now, and I see as resignation is the only thing as
really pays in the end. I get as mad as ever, but I stay meek. I wanted
to lam those insurance men with a stick of wood as was lying most handy,
but all I did was to walk home. Mr. Shores says he's just the same way.
We was talking it over this morning. He says when his wife first run off
with his clerk, he was nigh to crazy; he says he thought getting along
without a wife was going to just drive him out of his senses, and he
said her taking the clerk just seemed to add insult to perjury, but he
says now, as he gets older, he finds having no wife a great comfort."
"I wish Jathrop would--" sighed Mrs. Lathrop.