CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The struggle began again. Now, because young Fred Davies had seen something and felt something, although he did not go about deliberately telling it to everyone, his feeling became known. It got around.

It was told and corroborated. Men were enabled to see what he had seen. So much he added to the story.

People were touched and enlarged and encouraged by the rumor of a strong man, who met defeat head on and strode over it and began again. So Captain Trezona grew in the story and became a symbol of men against black odds.

Those who went on working under his direction were spurred and stimulated and filled with hard pride. A setback was magically changed into an opportunity. The rescuers were cheerful.

On the surface the hot day declined to a stifling twilight. No breeze lifted the blanket of heated air that wrapped the town close. There was something mean and cruel in the weather as if the malignant sun hid over the horizon and sent dark blind feelers back. It would not let the town go.

Down at the corner where the arc lights bloomed, three disconsolate youths stood hunched and, from time to time, looked over their shoulders or up into the sky as if they feared something watched them accusingly. They did not stand here long. No girls came by.

Cyril sat in his castle, on his throne, and surveyed his kingdom. It soothed him to put down the figures and add the sums and consider the money. He was glad to be alone.

His sister, Madeline, in a loose gown, roamed the hot little downstairs rooms. The mass of her hair was hot and heavy on her head. She took it down and combed it and swept it up. She was glad to be alone. It was good to be by herself and no need to think how she looked.

But she needed to show someone how she could look, to obliterate a false scene, retrieve something lost.

She told herself now that there was no real hope for Arthur, whatever people like Mr. Trezona chose to pretend.

Oh, Arthur would never come back. Face it, she thought, and she wept for him. Tears squeezed from her eyes. Cyril was wrong. Of course she wept for him, poor Arthur. She had been very fond, very fond, somehow. He had loved her. Of course it had come into her mind what the world would look like if he died. She wagered it had come into the mind of every wife or woman whose man was in this thing. Why it would! It must! There was nothing so wrong just in imagining.

Cyril was heartless. It wouldn’t occur to him that the heart could be fond, while the head saw the consequences.

Cyril was cruel. He liked to wound and to harry people. But she knew he was smart, smarter than she, or more sensitive. He often saw things and prophesied correctly. Now she went over and over in her mind the words she had said to Henry Duncane. The way she had said them.

Of course a heart that was fond would think of pain, and hope there was no pain for another. There was nothing so wrong in what she had said. Or how she’d said it. Anyhow, she’d been distracted. Out of her mind with anxiety. Cyril had nearly said so.

To cover up? Had there been need to cover up?

She took her thumb from her teeth and looked at it. The thumbnail had been stripped down to the qu ck. Well, naturally. Of course she worried. Everyone did. If her anxieties were a little different and a little more complicated, so was she!

If she could only see Henry Duncane for two minutes! He had not thought anything wrong. She could tell in two minutes. She had not given a wrong impression. How could she? For nothing she had thought or felt was really bad.

She remembered her spell over Henry was just the quality of being forthright, and ruthlessly so. Bold and clearheaded. What if she were to say to him …

(Now she saw herself, the pure line of her face, the candid simplicity of her gaze, lifted.) “If Arthur dies down there,” (her voice would be low, musical and sad) “I’m sorry for his sake. But for mine … he was a violent man and I …”

No, no.

Anyhow, she did not feel so, no matter what Cyril said.

She felt …

Why she wept for him! It was terrible, terrible! She had not wanted to get away from Arthur in this fashion. Not her fault the rocks fell down.

If she could only see Henry for one minute, somewhere alone where meanings needn’t be double. Alone. But there was no way to manage it. She could not go to his house. That was impossible, and he had forbidden it, besides.

He would never come here.

Unless, when the news came, finally, he came to condole. She dreamed awhile.

But he might not come. She wasn’t absolutely sure that he would come.

Wait and see, she supposed drearily. Wait and wait, and months later, and she a widow.…

One minute, tonight, and she would know where she was. She didn’t know where she was, and it was intolerable!

So hot! She brushed up her hair from her ears with both hands and went to the door. Dark on the porch. She slipped out. No breeze. No stars. The sky was low. This heat after dark was abnormal. She lifted the pure lines of her face and her lovely eyes rolled up.

There might be a storm brewing.

In a minute she felt sure of it.

She went softly upstairs and got her raincoat, she brought it down softly and hid it behind the kitchen door.

A storm? A lightning storm! It meant, to Madeline, a chance, a hope. Something might happen that she could seize upon for her own purposes.

Libby Duncane was disappointed to be able to sit at table for their late supper. It was late because Henry was late. When he came in finally he was surprised that they had waited for him.

Libby still wasn’t hungry. She didn’t want to talk—especially not about how she was feeling. She was impatient, and already very tired, and it seemed to her that the afternoon had been days long, the night would never come and never end, this baby was never going to be born, it would never leave her. She longed to get on with the ordeal, get into it, and get it over.

She felt as if she had fooled the whole household, that had waited with her all day, to be able to sit to supper. It was anticlimax. It was shabby of her to have held so much attention under false pretenses.

But Mrs. Trestrial would not leave her. She said her hired girl, Ethel, could manage. She had given instructions over the phone. Her young men must make do with a cold supper.

Henry seemed tired. He was taciturn. “Hot night.” He eyed the soup.

“Miz Duncane, taste the soup, child. Yes, ’tis ’ot.” Mrs. Trestrial’s curls quivered. “Getting on, Mr. Duncane, are they? Up to the mine?”

The story had reached them, the collapse of the rescuers’ first effort, the deaths and survivals, and the brave new beginning. Libby had heard it all filtered through Mrs. Trestrial’s way of telling it which was bald and calm.

“I mind when Gideon Trezona was a youngish man,” said his cousin now. “’E was that stubborn. Or so ’is Ma called ’im. My Auntie Bess—old Miz Trezona, that was—she was the stubborn one in that lot. My—a terror, I’ll tell you! Ah, she’s gone now. Seven boys, she ’ad, and Gideon the one in the middle. ’Twas a lovin’ family. Strict, she was, but lovin’ always.” Mrs. Trestrial sucked soup.

Celestina came in with the chops too soon. Her face was beaded and wan.

“It’s so hot,” said Libby. Her eyes licked around at the windows. “Henry, are you going back to the mine?”

“Not tonight,” he said quickly. “Nothing for me to do there.”

“They’ll ’ave ’em out before mornin’,” said Mrs. Trestrial, her shrewd eye on Celestina. “We’ll ’ear soon enough. No need to try pushin’ ’em from ’ere. They be pushin’! I mind, one time …” She told a tale of a disaster.

It was like reading history, Libby thought. It comforted. This was not the only time that men had been in trouble. Nor am I, she said to herself, the only woman who ever had a baby in thunder, lightning, and in rain. For, all of a sudden, she was perfectly sure that there was going to be a dreadful storm. I would, she thought with some amusement, with a faint relish for coming drama.

The storm, however, held off. The house was hot. The evening was cruel. Henry watched her. Mrs. Trestrial watched her. Celestina, when she had a chance, watched out of her dark sly eyes.

About nine o’clock Libby was standing in her bedroom showing Mrs. Trestrial some baby clothes—for the sake of motion, any kind of motion—when something took hold of her body and shook her. She was held in a great invisible paw that would do what it intended to do with her, now. No effort of hers was required whatsoever.

She said with a sensation of delight, “Oh. Is that how it really begins?”

Mrs. Trestrial said, baldly, “Yes. ’Tis.”

“Oh, I see! But it’s so surprising! But that’s not me doing anything!”

“Certain not,” Mrs. Trestrial bridled. “You wasn’t thinkin’ you would ’ave to see to the Lord’s work, single ’anded, was you? ’E’s about, child. ’E’ll attend to it.”

“Well!” said Libby Duncane. She thought: I must write to Mother, it’s the funniest thing.…

She heard Mrs. Trestrial at the phone calling the doctor. Henry came in. It was a strange and awkward moment. They seemed to have absolutely nothing to say to each other.

Thunder said, Remember me?

Libby spoke first. “Henry, it’s going to storm. You know it is. And the lights will go out, of course. They always do. So you’d better fetch a lot of candles.”

“Just you run across street and fetch my kerosene lamps,” said Mrs. Trestrial behind him briskly. “My young men can sit in the dark tonight. Doctor’s coming in about ten o’clock, child.”

“Thank you,” said Libby affectionately. Now she felt keyed-up and as pleased as a prima donna moving into her spotlight. “Go get the lamps, Henry, for goodness sakes. There isn’t another thing that you can do.”

His look became unfathomable as he ducked away.

Libby waited for the big paw to clutch her again.

Mrs. Trestrial said, “Walk about, do. We’ll ’ave a baby in the ’ouse, before mornin’.”

Now she went to draw the shades and transform Libby’s bedroom into a fortress against the weather. Now it was battened down, cozied in.

Henry came hurrying back with the lamps, brushing raindrops from his shoulder. Now Libby shuddered again in the grasp of the powerful thing that was attending to its mysterious business. She saw his face.

“Oh, Henry, don’t watch me!” she cried. “Go away, please. Because,” she said with her jaw hard, “if this gets bad and I feel like screaming, I’m darn well going to scream.”

His look was funny. He doesn’t understand, she thought. This is just necessary. It’s all arranged.

“Go and read or something,” she said crossly. “This is my job.”

“All right,” said Henry meekly.

She thought: now, he thinks I’m being brave but it isn’t that. It’s only necessary.

Thunder rolled over the roof. She thought of something else. “And Henry, listen. If the phone rings for you, and it probably will—it always does—you just go. I’ll have the doctor and Mrs. Trestrial, who know what to do …”

His lips opened. She was unreasonably annoyed that he should think her remarkably thoughtful of him in these circumstances. It was simply easier to make the matter clear right now. “After all,” she snapped, “the baby’s going to get born whether you’re in the house or not, you know.”

“Well, I guess so,” he said meekly.

She cocked her tousled head. She thought, I must sound like a shrew, and I must look a perfect fright, and I don’t care. But she said, half-apologetically, “Don’t I sound bossy?”

“You sure do,” said Henry meekly. The blinds were glowing. The thunder cracked. “Close,” he said, watching her.

He didn’t seem to know. The storm and the thing that had her now were all the same.

“She’ll be fine,” said Mrs. Trestrial, coming in with things on her arm. “Now—”

Henry put up his hands. “All right, I’m getting out.” He grinned. (But she thought his eyes did not.) “I’ll be in the sitting room.”

Libby thought with grim pleasure, I don’t believe he knows what to make of all this.

The storm rolled over the town and the rain drummed down slashing the hot dust. Lightning rived the thick air and cool currents threaded through.

It was all arranged, but it took time. Libby could understand that, now. The house thrust up into the storm, and she, sheltered, was rather pleased with all the tumult outside. Like everybody of any importance in Shakespeare, she mused, this baby gets born with portents.

She said to Mrs. Trestrial, “It will be a boy.”

“It will be what it will be,” said Mrs. Trestrial, rocking. “That Celestina’s got a towel over ’er ’ead.”

“She always does.”

“Tellin’ ’er beads. I told ’er a thing or two.”

“Oh, Mrs. Trestrial, if she’s scared of the storm she can’t help it.”

“If she’s sweet on Wesley Trezona she’d better ’elp it.”

“Why?”

“Never do.”

“Why?”

“Never do, is all.”

“But if they fell in love …?”

“They can fall h’out,” said Mrs. Trestrial.

“But why?” Libby felt, unreasonably at such a time, very sorry for all young things.

“’E’s been taught one way, and she another. ’Twouldn’t do,” said Mrs. Trestrial with authority.

“Oh,” said Libby faintly, “there’d be no contract.”

“What’s that, child?”

Libby began to groan. She enjoyed the noise she made.

“Is it bad?”

“Not that bad,” she gasped. “I’m glad it’s a noisy storm. I can yell all I want.”

“No need be quiet,” grinned Mrs. Trestrial.

“Mrs. Trestrial, I love you!” (What a delirious thing to say aloud!) “My mother would want me not to yell.”

“Expect she believes in puttin’ up a good show, eh?”

“Yes,” said Libby, eyes widening. “Yes, I suppose.…” Her thoughts veered. “I hope the lightning doesn’t strike the doctor.”

“No matter if it do,” said Mrs. Trestrial calmly. “Us’ll manage.”

The storm was furious. It couldn’t get in. The mine phone rang.

Ahha, thought Libby. It wasn’t Henry’s ring but, as in a vision, she could see a man somewhere needing to tell another about some difference in the way things were going. Strange how she could see the ringing of the phone tonight from the other end of the line instead of here. She thought, I’m getting clairvoyant or something odd. This really is the funniest thing.

There was pain, now and again, but it seemed necessary.

About a quarter of ten Mrs. Trestrial had gone out of the room for a moment and Libby, let off and let rest for one of the intervals between, heard someone near her door.

“Who’s there?” she called softly.

“It’s me, ma’am.”

“Celestina?” With that queer power of seeing things from the other end, Libby felt suddenly a great pity for poor Celestina, so worried about the boy in the mine, so frightened by the storm, so chivvied about by Mrs. Trestrial, and a prisoner in this house. “Come here.”

The door opened. “Miz Trestrial went in the kitchen. Said I was to tell her if you called, ma’am.”

“Come in.”

The girl squeezed through, cowering. “Are you all right, ma’am? Did you want …?”

“Ma’am,” said Libby. “Now what makes you …?”

The spasm came and passed while thunder shook the very floor. In the midst of the double uproar Libby thought Celestina might have said, “Mr. Duncane told me to call you ma’am, ma’am.”

The girl stood with her shoulders drawn up, tense against thunder and lightning.

“Don’t be afraid, Celestina,” (What a useless thing that was to say!) “I only wanted to tell you that I’m sorry you and I haven’t got along better. I don’t want this feeling that you dislike me, and I don’t want to dislike you. Can’t we improve?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The answer was dull and didn’t mean much.

“There are many things I didn’t know,” murmured Libby. “You were right about that. Well, I can only say I’m sorry.” (Useless, she was thinking. Well, I’ve tried.)

But now Celestina’s dark eyes turned. She did not like the pale-haired woman in the bed, and never would. But she had a new thing in her heart, now. From a source she had never thought to find it, help had come.

Henry Duncane, by simple listening and then replying, had cleared away the unhappiness of her confusion. It was all right for Celestina to feel just the way she did feel. It was all right to care and to pray for Wesley Trezona and it did not mean she betrayed herself or her own pride or her loyalties or her people or anything. She felt sure about Wesley now. Of course she liked him and prayed for his safety. But she was less upset about him. She was ready for a quiet sorrow or a quiet rejoicing. Neither would change the course of Celestina’s private and personal destiny very much at all.

But her heart was warm toward Henry Duncane. She felt she would do anything—anything—for him. If only she could help him, somehow, someday. She had already made a fantasy or two.

Why, she would even make up with this woman, so she could stay on here and every day cherish the sight and the sound of him. His “Good morning,” even. And certainly she wouldn’t do anything to trouble him, although maybe she already had. Well, then, she would undo it.

So filled with the best of intentions and impelled by devotion, Celestina drew nearer. “Miz Duncane, I’m sorry. When I said what I said, I was mad at you.”

“I know,” said Libby, faintly smiling. She believed she had touched the girl, after all. But she could not give her full attention for, at the same time, she heard the mine phone ring again. This time it was for Henry. Ah yes, she thought, he’ll be out in it.

“It wasn’t him,” Celestina was saying passionately. “It was her, anyhow. She’s the one said all about she loved him, he loved her, and she’d get divorced. He never said anything like that! He never did! He wouldn’t, Miz Duncane, and I’m sorry. Honest, all he said, he told her not to come here …”

“Who?”

“Miz Dole. They was under my window. But he didn’t kiss her or anything like that. Ooooooh!”

Lightning blazed and Celestina leapt. A thunderbolt drowned every other sound and the girl’s arms went around her head. When the noise had rumbled off around the earth and fallen over the horizon, Henry was there in the room with them.

“Do you want her in here, Libby?” he said in his brittle clipped pattering syllables.

Libby looked up at him. Whether he had heard what the girl had been saying or not, his face was cold. “I did call her,” Libby said weakly. “No, I don’t want her now.”

The girl, with her arms still folded over the top of her head, wailed once and turned as if to run, turned back, wild with dismay. “Oh, please, Mr. Duncane. Don’t look at me! I never meant anything. I was only … I didn’t …”

“Get your coat, Celestina,” Henry said.

“Oh … Oh …” Wailing and weeping, the girl ran away.

“I’ll see that you aren’t bothered,” Henry said gently. “You mustn’t be.”

Now Libby was shaken and tossed by the thing that would not be diverted by anything—thunder, lightning, or a piercing of the heart—from what it now proposed to do with the body of Libby Duncane. And when it let her go, she heard Henry say, “You mustn’t think about anything but the baby.” Her own words, her own decree, now cut her sharply away from knowing, from asking, from being told.

“Henry …”

“There’s some trouble at the Falls.” He evaded—or he did not. She couldn’t tell. “I ought to go, Libby. But if you need me …”

“I don’t need you just now,” she said slowly. “I told you so.” Ah, no use to ask, she thought, not now. He would not tell her. He would soothe and protect her (as she had, herself, decreed) from any true thing that might offend her delicate sensibilities.

Henry bent. Perhaps he kissed her cheek, she wasn’t sure. “I’ll be as quick as I can.” But he went away and she could tell he was glad to go. She was glad when he was gone.

She wondered whether he had heard how Celestina had let a pretty monstrous cat out of the bag. Maybe he hadn’t. Had. Hadn’t. Never mind. The cat was out this time.

She thought that she and Henry had married too fast … Henry back from the war, bowled over by her daintiness, she by his forcefulness … But someone should have said to them a year ago, “’Twill never do.”

She moaned. Mrs. Trestrial came bustling. “That girl’s gone,” said she, sniffing. “And good riddance, h’i say.”

“Gone?”

“’E asked me if I needed ’er. Land, if she’s going to yell and holler, I said, no. So ’e took ’er.”

“Henry? Took Celestina with him?”

“Drop ’er off ’ome, ’e said. Just as well.” Mrs. Trestrial bristled.

“And she went, in this storm!”

“She went,” said Mrs. Trestrial grimly. “’E wouldn’t stand for ’er nonsense.”

“No.” Libby’s mouth grinned of itself.

The phone rang. In a mysterious way, she knew at once it was calling the boilerhouse. Now how did she know?

“Trouble. Trouble,” she muttered. Thunder boomed. Mrs. Trestrial’s warm hand touched her arm. “Do you remember?” gasped Libby Duncane. “You said ‘It isn’t what you fear that’s on your heels, it’s some other thing.’”

“Did I say so?”

“You were right, too.”

Mrs. Trestrial had pulled a window blind aside. “Thought ’twas about time. ’Ere’s Doctor, now …”

The lights went out.

Libby sighed. As in a vision, she saw the storm-swept roads and Henry’s car going toward the trouble in the works, at the Falls. And she saw the deep place where there was no storm, but where a fight against trouble, trouble and death, was being valiantly fought. And she saw the doctor scooting up her walk, head down in the dark rain, and herself, writhing in this flickering lamplight, with the trouble of birth.

“This town’s like a three ring circus tonight,” she gasped, as the doctor rubbed the moisture off his ruddy cheerful face. “Is there any news at the mine? Have you heard?”

“I hear,” he said soothingly, “they think they’re getting very near again.”

She was stabbed with pity. What it must be to wait! “So terrible,” she said.

Mrs. Trestrial bridled. “She’s fine, eh, Doctor?”

“Am I?” said Libby. and then, “Gosh …”

The doctor laughed and patted her hand.