On an August afternoon, Mary walked languidly up the street to her father's house. She was bare-headed, dressed in a plain white muslin, and carried a small parasol, though the sun was hidden in a thick haze. It was about four o'clock. All day the heat had been intense, the air was thick, motionless, stifling. The greyish haze hung low and heavy, and darkened steadily.
It was as though all the heat of the summer, of all the long monotonous summer days, had been gathered up, concentrated in that one day; as if it hung there between the baked earth and the thick blanket of cloud sinking lower and lower, pressing down.
There was no feeling of space. The prairie was stagnant, torpid—nothing stirred on it, except the small ant-like motions of men. The horizons of the vast plain had disappeared....
Day follows day, each with its little occupations, orderly, monotonous, peaceful. Some little corner of the world seems a safe place to live in—shut in upon itself, shut out from disturbance—perhaps too safe. Life may grow dull and languid, sometimes, even when new pulses are stirring in it, grow faint. Long summer days, one like another, each with its weight of humid heat, pile up a burden....
Vast unbroken spaces are dangerous. Beyond that curtain of sullen mist, who knows what is brewing?Unknown forces, long gathering and brooding, strike suddenly out of darkness. That infinite monotony of the prairie breeds violence—long suppressed, breaking at last....
Mary found her mother sitting on the porch, gasping, fanning herself with a palm-leaf.
"What a day—the worst yet," moaned Mrs. Lowell. "Have a glass of lemonade, Mary? I made some for your father. It's on the dining-room table."
"Where is Father?"
Mary dropped into the hammock, panting.
"He hasn't come back yet. I wish he'd come. There's going to be a storm."
Mary lay against the cushion, her lips parted, breathing heavily.
"How pale you are! What ails you, child?" Mrs. Lowell asked with alarm.
"Nothing—the heat—"
"Don't you want the lemonade? I'll get it for you—"
"No, no—I'll go in a minute—"
But Mrs. Lowell rose with an effort, and went in. When she brought the lemonade, Mary sat up with a faint murmur of thanks, and drank it. Mrs. Lowell stood looking at her with watchful tenderness.
"There isn't anything the matter, is there? You ought to be careful, this hot weather, and not overdo, Mary."
"No, it isn't anything—"
Mrs. Lowell took the empty glass and went back to her chair.
"Laurence is over at Elmville," said Mary languidly."I'm afraid he'll get caught in the storm. How dark it's getting."
She looked out at the low cloud that thickened momently and that now was clotting into black masses against a greenish grey. The rattle of the doctor's old buggy was heard approaching; he drove rapidly in past the house. His horse was sweating heavily and flecked with foam. They caught a glimpse of his pale face as he passed.
"Thank goodness," murmured Mrs. Lowell. "Perhaps we'd better go in."
But she remained, gazing at the clouds. A few people went by, more hurriedly than usual. It was almost dark now, a strange twilight. Mary left the hammock and came to look up at the sky. Up there were masses of cloud in tumult, but down below not a breath of air stirred.
"How queer it looks—I wish Laurence was home. He starts about this time," she said uneasily.
"Oh, he'll wait till it's over.... I wonder why your father doesn't come in...."
Mary turned and entered the house, but the doctor was not there, and she went on out into the garden. At the door of the stable she saw the horse hitched, he had not been unharnessed. Dr. Lowell stood there, looking up. She went quickly along the path to him.
"Say, Mary, this looks mighty queer. We're going to have a big wind," he called to her. "You better go in."
"Well, why don'tyoucome in? Aren't you going to unhitch?"
"I suppose so," he said with a worried glance. "Satan acted like the very deuce on the way home—"
He looked at the wooden stable doubtfully.
"I suppose I'll have to put him in there. I don't know but we're going to get a twister."
He unbuckled the tugs and pushed the buggy into the stable, and then, holding the sweating, stamping horse firmly by the halter, led him in, but did not take off the harness. He shut the stable-door and joined Mary, gazing up at the boiling black clouds, which cast greenish gleams. He looked around at his garden, kept fresh and full of blossom by his labours. The yellow of late summer had begun to shoot through its green, but it was still lovely, tall phlox blooming luxuriantly, and many-coloured asters. In the sick light, the foliage and flowers looked metallic, not a leaf moved. The doctor took Mary by the arm and they went in. Mrs. Lowell was shutting all the windows. It was hot as a furnace in the house. The cellar-door stood open.
"It's cooler down there," suggested Mrs. Lowell in a trembling voice.
"Well, we may have to," the doctor responded calmly, helping himself to lemonade.
Mary hurried to look out of the front windows. The passers-by were running now, teams went by at a gallop. Then it was as if a great sighing breath passed over, the trees waved and tossed their leaves, and then—the wind struck.
In an instant the air was full of tumult, of flying dust, leaves, branches, and darkened to night, with a roar like the sea in storm. All was blurred outside the windows, the house shook and seemed to shift on its foundations, blinds tore loose and crashed like gun-fire.
Mary felt a grasp on her arm, and saw her mother'sface, white and scared. Mrs. Lowell tried to drag her away, shouted something. But she wrenched her arm loose, turned and ran upstairs. From the second-story windows she could see nothing but a wild whirl, the trees bent down and streaming, dim shapes in the visible darkness driving past. There was still another stair, narrow and steep, to the attic. She climbed up there. From the small window in the eaves she could see over the tree-tops. The house shook and trembled under her, the roar of the wind seemed to burst through the walls, but she crouched by the low window, heedless. She started at a touch on her shoulder, her father was there beside her. She made room for him at the window, and pointed out, turning to him a white face of terror.
The fury of the wind was lessening, the darkness was lifting. The outer fringe of the storm-cloud had swept them—but out there on the prairie, miles away, they could see now—
There it was, a murky green and black boiling centre in the sky, and shooting down from it, trailing over the earth, something like a long twisting finger—
An instant's vision of it. Then there came a deluge of rain, beating on the sloping roof. Through the streaming window nothing could be seen. The doctor raised Mary and led her down the stair, she clung to him without a word. On the second floor they found Mrs. Lowell, about to mount in search of them, trembling with fright.
"It's all over, Mother," shouted the doctor through the drumming of the rain. "We only got the edge of it."
They went down to the lower floor. Now it was perceptibly lighter. The cloud fringe sweeping like a huge broom was passing as swiftly as it had come. The rain lessened in force, the grey outside brightened. The doctor and his wife looked at one another, and both looked at Mary, who stood beside a window staring out.
"Now, Mother," said Dr. Lowell briskly, "you get me a sandwich or something, I've got to start out. Mary! help your mother, will you? You might as well fill up a basket, as quick as you can—put in anything you've got, in five minutes—don't know how long I may be—"
He was already fastening his rubber coat, his old hat jammed down on his head. Mary followed her mother, blindly obeying her quick directions in the kitchen. The basket was packed by the time the doctor came out with his medicine-chest and a big roll of surgical dressings.
"Where you going?" Mrs. Lowell then demanded.
"There'll be some damage where that thing struck," said the doctor cheerfully. "I'm going over there. Don't you sit up for me, I may be all night. You better keep Mary here, till Laurence comes for her."
But Mary was putting on an old cloak of her mother's that hung in the entry.
"I'm going with you. Laurence is over there," she said.
Mrs. Lowell started to protest, but looking at Mary's face, stopped, and went to get a scarf to tie over her hair. The doctor said nothing, but went to hitch up his horse and put a feed of grain into the back of the buggy. They started. Satan indicated his displeasure at the turn of things by rearing up in the shafts and then trying to kick the dashboard in; but the doctor gave him the whip and he decided to go.
The road was mud-puddles, ruts and gullies, and strewn with branches, sometime great boughs or fence-rails lay across it. Other people were on the way now. Satan passed everything going in their direction. Salutations and comments were shouted at the doctor. Then they began to meet people coming the other way; the doctor did not stop to talk, but a man called to him that Elmville had been wiped out by the cyclone.
Two miles on they came to a cluster of houses where a crowd had gathered, most of them refugees who had fled before the storm. Two houses here had been un-roofed, sheds blown away, and the place was littered with splinters, but nobody was seriously hurt. From there on they met a stream of people, nearly all the population of Elmville, including the people from the creamery who had escaped into the prairie laden with whatever goods they could carry. Then they reached the last buildings left standing by the storm—a farmhouse and barns, by some freak of the wind untouched, a mile from Elmville. These were crowded with people from the town, mostly women and children, and a few men, some of them injured. The doctor pulled up his horse and shouted an inquiry for Laurence. Oh, Captain Carlin was all right, he had been there when the storm struck, had started home but decided he couldn't make it and stopped there—he had driven back now to see what he could do, and most of the men had gone after him. Wouldn't the doctor come in? One of the men had a broken leg and there was a woman with her headhurt by a flying brick, they thought she would die. The doctor hesitated. Mary said:
"You stay, Father, I'll drive on and find Laurence."
"You drive Satan! You couldn't hold him a minute!"
"I'll drive him."
He looked at her, realized that she was quite irrational, called out that he would come back, and drove on.
The storm had come at an angle to the road, so the wreckage of the town had blown the other way, but where its buildings had stood, with the tall brick factory in their midst, the skyline was now absolutely empty.
They came on Laurence's horse, tied to a fallen tree, and then Laurence himself came running toward them, out of a group of men who were lifting timbers. Mary was out of the buggy and in his arms in a moment, sobbing on his shoulder, clinging to him wildly, the rain falling on her bare head. She hid her face against his wet coat, not to see the desolation around her. But then after a little she raised her head and looked over his shoulder, her eyes full of the terror of death that had passed so near, that had threatened to strike to her heart....
A rubbish-heap, in which men were frantically digging for the wounded and dead, was all that was left of the town. A heap of splintered boards and bricks, with pitiful odds and ends of household furniture mixed in. Not a wall was standing, not one brick left on another, all was levelled to the earth.
The wind had roared away across the prairie and there, somewhere in the midst of vast spaces, it would vanish. Over beyond, now, near the horizon, a rift had opened in the grey clouds, and through it was visible a long belt of blue sky—serene, limpid, smiling.