CHAPTER VIIITHE GREAT STORM
Heaven be praised for savin’ him!“‘Heaven be praised for savin’ him!’”
“‘Heaven be praised for savin’ him!’”
“‘Heaven be praised for savin’ him!’”
LIFE on the Hill-Top moved serenely, and Van grew like a weed. His church-going did not make a saint of him, but ever, he grewdearer to the heart of Betsy. I suspect, even, that the occasional wrongdoings of the aristocratic little scapegrace only endeared him the more. His sins were all sins of a high-strung, spirited disposition, and he was so human in his fallings from grace and his funny repentances, that Mrs. Johns would look at him, laugh, and exclaim,
“You may say what you like. He certainlylookslike adog; but he isn’t. He’s ‘folks.’”
One day a man who worked on the Hospital grounds came to the kitchen door and said excitedly to Mary,
“Is Van in the house?”
“No, I’m thinkin’ he’s out. Is anything wrong?”
“There’s a mad dog loose. He’s just bitten Joe Wood’s collie, and has gone away down town. They’re after him with guns.”
“The saints preserve us! I hope the darlint isn’t in the way of him!”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him, but you’d better look after him, wherever he is.” And the man hurried off.
Mary dropped her work and ran out to the road. There, trotting calmly home in an oppositedirection from that which the mad dog had taken, came Van, quite unconscious of any trouble that might be brewing for him.
“Heaven be praised for savin’ him!” said Mary. “Come in, ye little spalpeen. My heart do be beatin’ that hard I can’t get me breath.”
She ran to tell the family what had happened and just then the man came back to report that the mad dog had been killed, after biting two or three other dogs.
Well, it was much to be thankful for that Van was safe, but when Betsy came back from a trip to town, she learned that an order had been issued from the powers that be, and all dogs, for the remainder of the summer, must be either chained or muzzled.
“Muzzled he shall not be,” said Mrs. Johns. “If a mad dog came along, much good would a muzzle do! The chain is better. Poor Van, it’s a burning shame, just as you were getting to be almost an angel, and now it’s confinement for you until the first of September.”
So Van’s liberty was taken away from him, and, to make it harder, his beloved Betsy fell ill. An attack of tonsilitis it was, and Van must notbe allowed to disturb her. Thus, even in the house there was no liberty. Betsy’s door was shut, and the lonesome little prisoner might not have her comforting. Mary was good to him in the kitchen, but at every opportunity he would slip away upstairs and paw at Betsy’s door. There was no way to separate him from his beloved mistress, except to keep him outside the house. So all day long he ran sadly up and down, with his chain attached to a long wire that stretched from the apple tree to the honeysuckle porch. At night there was a warm bed made for him on a lounge in the shelter of the porch, and he could lie there, too, in the daytime, if he chose. But always there was the hated chain.
During the days of his imprisonment, Thatcher made it his pleasure to come for him, and take him for long walks in the woods, and these were his only really happy times. In the woods there were no mad dogs. So the chain would be loosened, and Van would enjoy a wild hour of liberty.
The days passed, and at last came one when Dr. Johns said that Betsy was better, and might sit up in bed for a little while. That day Van,after eating his dinner in the kitchen, went slyly up the back stairs, and put his paw on the door of the forbidden room. And lo! it opened to him, and there sat his mistress, propped among her pillows.
“Vanny-Boy! Dear Vanny-Boy!” cried she, and he flew on the wings of love, leaped upon the bed, and cried and moaned and kissed her ear as if she had been long away. Betsy snuggled him down by her side, and he went to sleep with his nose on her knee.
Mrs. Johns, coming in later, found him there.
“Please let him stay, Aunt Kate. I’ve missed him so, and I’m almost well now.”
So, after that, every afternoon, when he came in from his walk, he spent a happy hour with his dear mistress.
One night, after a hot and breathless day, Dr. and Mrs. Johns were sitting with Betsy in her little room. The lights were out to make it cooler, and the windows were open to the west. A puff of wind stirred the curtains and died away again. Dr. Johns walked to the window and looked out.
“We shall have a storm to-night,” said he.“There’s a bank of clouds brewing something over there in the northwest.”
“I think I’ll have a look around,” said Mrs. Johns, “and see that everything is safe, in case of a rain or blow.”
“Couldn’t we bring Van in the house, Uncle Ben?”
“I think he’s quite safe where he is. There’s a matting screen to keep off the wind and rain at the open end, and nothing can get through that mass of honeysuckle along the front. He’s better off where he is. Now, don’t worry, just go to sleep. It is bedtime, and everything will be fixed shipshape.”
Betsy sighed and said nothing more. Mrs. Johns saw that the little Prince was safe under his blanket on the couch and all cosy for the night, and she did not notice the pleading in his sad eyes as she gave him a final pat and left him alone.
Every one was quiet for the night, except Betsy, who lay tossing restlessly on her bed in the dark.
Outside, far off in the northwest, a strange whisper in the air grew to a mutter and a rumble. Betsy wrapped herself in a blanket and slippedin among the pillows of her window-seat, to watch the coming storm, and she wished that she had Van there for company; he liked a thunder-storm as well as she herself did.
Betsy looked out over the hills where she had so often watched the wonderful changes of the sunsets. In the south there was a thin crescent moon that showed its face by flashes between the scurrying advance-clouds, with which the little winds were having a grand pillow-fight. The moon rode serenely higher and higher and paid no attention to the play that was going on.
But after a time the game grew fast and furious, and the moon went quite out of sight, as bigger winds joined in with bigger and bigger pillows—not downy white ones, but gray puffs, like rolls of smoke.
Low in the northwest a sullen mass of black lifted itself slowly, and one could see the head of old Father Wind rising out of his blankets. Taller and taller he grew, his long hair sweeping away in coils and spirals, that whipped uncannily off his head only to let other locks grow in their places. A giant he grew, with a bag on his back, and his blankets rolling up around him, dark andawful. He would give those Little Winds, who had waked him up, something to blow about.
Up and up he rose, leaving behind him a weird yellow counterpane stretched out along the line of hills. Lightnings flashed from his eyes, and his voice boomed like great guns.
The Little Winds and the Bigger Winds gave up their game, and scuttled off before the growing fury, as old Father Wind pulled handfuls ofrealwind out of his bag and threw them about. Soon his blankets, gray and ragged, unfolded and rushed up the sky, and the Little Winds disappeared altogether.
Then Father Wind had it all his own way, and he worked himself into a towering rage. Snake-like flashes of flame dripped from his finger-tips, darting back and forth till the whole sky was lighted up like a great furnace. Up rolled the blankets, one after the other, until one could see only a whirling, tumbling mass. On, on! The far hill-line was blotted out, and the sleeping town was drowned in a boiling, seething chaos of cloud, wind, and falling water.
Up the hill rushed Father Wind, now a vast, formless destroyer. He reached out his longarms, blew a great breath, and the first blast struck the hilltop where stood the solid buildings of the Hospital.
Rip-boom-bang! The house shook to its very foundations. Could it stand that awful onslaught? Betsy saw a great tree on the lawn snap like a twig, and with some fibers still clinging to the trunk, stretch its arms helplessly along the path of the wind. Leaves by thousands twisted off and flew like fear-driven goblins. A board from no-one-knew-where came up the hillside and struck the honeysuckle porch, tearing the vines till they floated out like green ribbons.
Every one in the house was awake now, rushing around to see if the doors and windows were safe.
Mrs. Johns came into Betsy’s room.
“Are you all right, dearie?”
“Yes, Aunt Kate; did you bring Vanny-Boy in?”
“No, dear, we did not waken in time.”
“Oh, Aunt Kate! He’s out there now?”
“We dare not open the door, Betsy. This is a terrible storm. I do not know what would happen if the wind should find an entrance.”
“We must get him—he will be killed!”
“We cannot, dear. It is not possible. He may not get hurt at all; and then any one might be killed who tried to go after him when things are flying as they are now. We must wait for a lull in the storm.”
Betsy said no more, but waited till Mrs. Johns went on further errands. Then, clinging to the walls and balusters, she stole down the stairs, and looked through the window that opened on the honeysuckle porch. It was a scene of battle; the matting screen, torn in shreds, appeared glued to the ceiling; as she looked, the last rocking-chair went careening away into the yard, where the wreckage of the other furniture already lay. Pillows and blankets were clinging to tree-trunks or plastered to sodden flower-beds, and poor Van was standing on the mattress, watching with big, frightened eyes as things went by.
Rip! went a shutter over his head, and trembling he crept up on the sill whose angle offered a bit of shelter.
Just in time! The next gust took the mattress with it, leaving only the bare iron bones of the cot, to which Van’s chain was fastened.
“If the wind should blow him off, his little neckwould be broken. Imustdo something,” thought Betsy.
Now the rain came down in blinding sheets. Betsy could stand it no longer.
“Vanny-Boy, I’m going to get you, no matter what happens.” It was easy enough to open the door, the waiting wind was only too eager. It took but an instant, but in that instant Betsy was soaked to the skin. Without heeding that, nor the roaring of the wind as it burst into the hallway, she stepped out into the awful tumult, slipped the catch of Van’s chain, picked up the half-drowned, frightened little body, and set him inside the door.
Then came the really hard part—to shut the door again. Betsy pushed with all her might. A strong man could hardly have done it, and she was just recovering from an illness. In the hallway pictures were torn from their moorings, and the furniture was dancing a quickstep. Try as best she might, with all her strength, she could not close the latch.
“I’ve got to do it,” she sobbed, “I’ve justgotto, that’s all there is to it!”
When a thingmustbe done, somehow one seemsto have a little more than human power. Betsy gave one more desperate push, and click! went the latch. She and Vanny-Boy were safe!
Now she turned to climb the stair, but instead she gave a weak little laugh, her legs crumpled under her like paper, and she went down in a wavering heap on the floor, with puddles of water running from her in every direction. Van stood over her, whining.
“Go call them, Van!Get your rope!”
He knew what that meant; oh, yes! Up the stairs he leaped, barking, as if rope was what all this fuss was about, anyhow.
“Why, there’s Van! How did he get in?” said Dr. Johns. A suspicion came to him, and he hurried down the stairs, where he found Betsy, dripping and helpless, but laughing.
“My dear, you should not have done this! Terrible things might have happened.”
“I justhadto do it, Uncle Ben. He’d prob’ly have been killed if I hadn’t.”
“And you might have been killed, you gallant little rescuer.”
“Well, it’s done now, and I’m glad I did it,”said Betsy, as she was carried upstairs, put in dry clothing and sent back to bed.
In the morning the adventurers turned out to be none the worse for their soaking. But oh, the wreck of the honeysuckle porch, and the flower-beds, and the noble trees whose heads had been lopped off! Nature had to work hard, with considerable help from the florist and the carpenter, to get things back into shapeliness. The honeysuckle porch had its broken vines trimmed off, the soaked pillows were dried out, and the place generally was restored to order. But Van slept there no more. His Betsy was better, and the freedom of the house was his again. September came, and with it the glad freedom of out-of-doors, and his old careless happy life.