Chapter III: Part 3

Margaret’s fingers were clumsy, tying the scarf over her head, she stood at the doorway, the rain struck her face, she drew one long breath, and held it, aching-endlessly, dashing a hand against her wet eyelids that she might see. One of the two great elms which stood each side the porte-cochere, the one farther from the house, toward the road, without a sound that she could hear above the wind, with slow and appalling dignity, swayed, bent, twisted its leafy bulk as if it turned to look at the enemy that struck it down, and fell, carrying with it a great round slab of yellowish earth, a mat of roots and wet soil as high as the roof of the carriage entrance. Sam whimpered with excitement.

“Now you see! My God, ain’t this something! Get her started, will you?”

Margaret heard Susan’s voice, it made a quiet place in all this tumult, for a moment she did not hear the separate words, speech seemed to have no meaning, she had to shape them again in her own throat before she understood what Susan had said. “I won’t stir a step in this downpour. I’d be drenched to the skin.”

Sam seized Margaret’s wrist, jerked it. His young mouth twisted in grotesque attempt to be strong and male, rescuing women. “I can’t drag her,” he cried. “We gotta go, you come, Miss Turner, you ain’t such a fool!”

Margaret dragged her raincoat together with her free hand, for an instant she felt herself plunge forward with the boy, his strength running beside her, carrying her to safety. Then she wrenched her wrist out of his grasp and took a quick step toward the drawing room, and her voice was strange in her ears as she cried out, “Susan—”

Susan waved her hand, a careless farewell, she pushed herself to her feet, her coat sliding in a soft mound around her on the floor, her face impertinent, mocking.

Swifter than thought, Margaret knew. “Run along, Sammy.” She made her stiff face smile. “Tell—tell Eddie we’re all right here. Tell him Mrs. Field can’t—”

“Run along yourself, Maggie! What you waiting for?” Susan was imperative, silencing her. “I don’t want your company! You’re too respectable! The house won’t blow down.”

Margaret pushed at Sam, who hung in the doorway, tormented. “For Heaven’s sake, Sam, get out! I don’t intend to drown myself in that rain! Why should I want to go to town? Pull that door shut after you—” She laid herself against the door, his desire to be off and her will together shut it, and water curled swiftly under it, over the floor.

She hesitated, taking a few steps into the drawing room. Susan had dropped back on the couch, she was pulling her coat from under her feet, her eyes angry, green, as she looked at Margaret.

“You’re a fool, Maggie!”

“You can’t even stand on that foot, can you?”

“What’s that to do with you?”

“Why didn’t you let me tell him?” Margaret moved nearer, step by step, her hands twisting together at her breast. “Were you afraid your Eddie would risk his life, trying to get you?”

Susan laid her coat over her knees, her hands smoothing the fur, the fingers disappearing in the long tawny hairs, she was silent a moment; when she looked up her face was somber, on each side of her mouth lower than the rouged cheek-bones was a dull red streak. “No, Maggie. If you must know, I was afraid he wouldn’t. I’d rather not know. Think how embarrassed I’d be if I called for help—and no one came! This way—” She turned her head, listening; the arrows of the wind whistled over the house. “There’s a queer smell to the air,” she said. “It’s like some strange drug, you take a sniff and you don’t go on fooling yourself.” Her somberness was gone, in a little flashing smile. “Why did you stay, Maggie? You’re scared to death, you know you are, that nice boy would have taken you—”

“You let me see your foot, Susan Lathrop,” said Margaret, sternly. She knelt stiffly in front of Susan, she pushed the folds of coat away from Susan’s knees, and laid her hands on the pointed toes of the sandals, pulling both feet toward her. Then she sat back, her fingers touching the swollen ankle, puffy and discolored through the chiffon stocking. “Your poor foot!” she said. Susan leaned forward, eyeing both extended feet. “I have such nice ankles, too,” she said, gaily. Then, “Why, Maggie! You’re crying!”

“You would have stayed here—”

Susan stretched one hand out, pushed the scarf back from Margaret’s hair, smoothed the hair softly, and laughed. “And so you stayed. With a shameless, dreadful—Maggie, what do people say about me?” Her finger-tip touched Margaret’s forehead, brushed over her eyelids.

Margaret got to her feet, with an abrupt movement. The iron band, the iron rod of her anger had gone, she did not know what the feeling was which inundated her, it was like the rain, finding its way past barriers of glass and wood, it was like the wave curling over grass, receding, advancing again.

“It’s not raining so hard,” she said. “Look, it’s stopping!” The wind had no shrillness now, through the window they could see the water, breaking in long streamers of white. “I’m going to run over to my house, to get some things for that ankle. It’s just a little way.”

Susan reached for her skirt, but Margaret moved with her quick, light step toward the hall. “Don’t go, Maggie! Suppose you couldn’t get back!”

“I’ll get back!” Margaret chose the one argument to silence Susan. “I ought to see that everything’s all right in my house, if the rain got in there—”

“Leave the door open,” called Susan. “It’s too warm—”

The door opened so readily, swinging inward, that Margaret thought someone must stand there, someone who had come for them, Sam, or Eddie. No one. There was a yellow lake where the elm-tree had torn up the great slab of soil, with a ragged fringe of turf, and water rippled along the driveway. But the rain had stopped; the mist which filled the air was salty on her mouth. She would get her feet soaked, but it was so warm she wouldn’t catch cold; she could get bandage stuff, rubbing alcohol, perhaps pack a basket with food, it might be several hours before anyone could reach the house. The water was only ankle-deep, she splashed ahead, had the wind changed? It seemed running to meet her, in warm little puffs, coming over the land. She rounded the rear corner of the house and stopped. Ahead of her rose a great mass of green, a tree, hiding the sky, filling the space ahead of her; she thought, amazed, why, that’s the way a bird sees a tree, looking into it, and then, hastily, moved out around its bulk, her feet heavy in the tangled grass and sodden ground. It was a long way past a fallen tree, its roots stood up above her, she could not tell just where she had come, and she stopped. Something was wrong, like looking at a familiar face and finding it had no eyes, no mouth—The barns! Where were they? She began to run, laboring, her breath catching, there were other trees down, but already her eyes had accustomed themselves to that form of disaster, she could see ahead of her under the mottled sky the rising land on which her house stood, she could see the house itself, its white paint shining, the only clear tone in all the landscape; it had been built to weather storms, she thought, its low, sturdy shape settled against the land. The old apple tree at one side sprawled askew. Margaret stumbled against something, a log, no, a timber, gray, with marks of the ax like ripples of water, a beam from the barn. The water was deeper here, halfway to her knees, and ahead of her, ridiculously, as if it walked over the field, moved a splintered door, she could see the hasp where a padlock had hung. She took another step, and stopped, trembling.

The door was floating more quickly now, oscillating. Those green clumps must be the tops of the lilac bushes, and lilacs stood higher than her head. If she hurried, plunging forward, she could still cross. She stared, turning her head slowly in a half circle. The ocean was moving inland, breaking through at the low bit of shingle where the wall of rocks began to merge into the long sandy beach, cutting across, gouging across, the sod under her feet broke under her weight, eaten by the water, and she braced herself, feeling water move against her legs. The thought of her house was a voice shouting at her, hurry, you can still reach me! Safety, shelter, her house, in a way her life, her love, all that she had! She was strong, the current could not yet be swift, she could swim. The muddy water eddied around the lilac clumps, she saw it close over one of them. She could reach her house, and stay there, she could not return. What claim had Susan on her, like that of her house? _Don’t go, Maggie!_ She set her teeth into her lower lip, she thought, in a kind of dull incredulity, Why, no tide ever rose as fast as this, and slowly, without another glance at water, hill, or house, she turned back. As she went she thought the water followed at her heels, and when at last she reached the stone steps she was not surprised that the pool beneath the elm-tree roots had merged into a larger flood, and that little waves beat up against the disk of mud. We’re on an island, now. Cut off.

Her side hurt, and she stood, pressing her hand against it, before she went into the house. She closed the door, and the squelch of her shoes was loud in what seemed, after the outer tumult, like silence. Susan was sitting just where Margaret had left her, and her breast rose and fell in one long sigh. Margaret hung her raincoat over the newel post, she rubbed a handkerchief over her face, her eyes burned; she wrung the bottom of her skirt, and tried to pat it smooth.

“I couldn’t get anything for your ankle,” she said. “It was so wet—”

Susan beckoned her nearer. “Are you all right? I thought once I heard you cry out! I started after you, but I can’t hop on one foot. Not far. I told you you’d just get drenched. You—you didn’t see anyone—coming?”

“No, I didn’t.” Margaret sank down on the chair, she couldn’t yet draw a full breath, her toes curled inside her wet shoes. Irritation jingled through her weariness. How could anybody come? She opened her mouth to tell Susan what she had seen, and said, instead, “Does it hurt much?”

“It hurt like hell while you were gone.” Susan grimaced. “You know, the way everything’s worse when you’re by yourself. Wind, rain, aches, anything. I don’t mind it now. I tell you, if I stuck it up—” She swung around sidewise on the divan, and with both hands under her plump knee, hoisted it up. A scarlet garter made a cushion of the soft flesh above the knee. Susan patted it, hoisted the other leg, and leaned back against the arm of the divan. “That’s better. Now you pull your chair around, and we’ll talk. I think the storm is over, the sky is lighter, see?”

Lighter, yes, with a sullen yellowish tinge under the dull clouds. Susan held one wrist near her eyes, squinting at the tiny jeweled watch, the sleeve slipping back from the plump white arm, creased at the wrist like a baby’s. “It’s stopped,” she said. “I must have hit it when I took that tumble. Now we don’t even know what time it is!” She eased herself a little into place, her hands looked small, lying against the maroon silk which strained over her wide soft thighs. “Well, I never did know the time! You always did, Maggie! Remember how it worried you, being on time?” She laughed. “Well, we’ve no date to keep today, have we? It’s nice, having you here. It took a storm, didn’t it, to make you put up with me?” Her smile was sly. “You don’t really think I’m all those names you were calling me, do you? Anyway, you stayed with me. You know, when you started for your house, I thought maybe you were clearing out.”

Margaret hitched her chair over the floor, nearer the couch. “I wanted to,” she said, her mouth grim. “I don’t know why I came back.” She thought, all these things are true about Susan, disgraceful, disgusting, and yet I’m sitting here—I don’t mind being wet, or frightened—She lifted her head as the whole house shivered, she heard the wind after it had passed the house, and then a rumbling clatter, an avalanche of dull noise.

“Is it raining stones now?” said Susan.

“I know. The chimney!” Margaret glanced behind her at the marble and onyx face of the fireplace, she thought the sheet of metal which covered the opening bulged outward, she saw a dark lip of sooty water along the lower edge, creeping out over the hearth.

“What’s a chimney more or less?” Susan relaxed again, but she laid a hand on Margaret’s knee. “I was thinking—while you were gone—that’s what this damned house always does to me, sets me thinking. You never married, Maggie? Have you been happy?”

Margaret sat very still, the queer sweet smell of the air perplexed her, it was like morning, not like any morning she had known, but some morning in a dream. She tried to gather around her the tatters of the Margaret Turner she had meant to show to Susan, to confound Susan, a proud, righteous, worthy woman, and she couldn’t find even a tatter.

“You should have married Lester Field,” said Susan. “If he’d had you admiring him, looking up to him—if he’d had to work—”

“But you took him, you ruined him.”

“You might have put up a fight for him. I didn’t know he’d ever seen you! Oh, I heard, afterwards. He was a snob, Maggie, a lazy, selfish snob. You were the farmer’s daughter, and do you know what I was? I was a good marriage. Making a good marriage and sleeping with it aren’t the same thing! I was glad when he took that header off his horse, it takes too long to die of drink. When I come back here I think about him—and Robert. It’s funny, isn’t it, how you see the ends of stories, as you grow older. When you’re young, you never think that anything will end, you will love forever, you’ll suffer forever, you’re sewed up tight in what you feel right now—” Her mouth trembled a little, the lipstick on the under lip had smeared thin, leaving a fine line of red below the outline of the lip. “Now I know all the endings. I know how things come out. Oh, I pretend I don’t, that’s the only way to have any fun—” Her fingers pressed on Margaret’s knee, and the two looked steadily at each other—are you frightened, uneasy?—as the whole house strained under the wind, timbers sliding behind plaster, like the sound of movement in wood and metal of a ship.

It’s true, thought Margaret; you begin to see the pattern that a whole life makes, you do know the ends of stories. I have been troubled about my own, it was coming in a circle back to all its beginnings. She laid one hand over Susan’s, she felt a lightness in her blood, an ease, it was like a dream to sit there, with hatred and envy gone.

“Look,” said Susan, “it is raining again.” She turned to glance over the back of the divan toward the windows, they saw the way the water had covered the floor, running under the door, down from the window ledges, out from the fireplace, until it made a streaked covering, reflecting oddly the shapes of the chairs, the angle of the walls, reaching the carved feet of the divan.

“If you could walk—” Margaret was bewildered. “Could you get upstairs, if I helped?”

“I can’t, not without crawling.” Susan lifted her coat away from the floor. “I’m comfortable right here. You aren’t scared, Maggie? Rain can’t wash this house away.”

“I don’t know what I am,” said Margaret, a little pettishly.

“I must look a sight,” said Susan. “Where’s my handbag? I had it when we came in. There it is, on the mantel, get it for me, Maggie, dear.”

Margaret took the few steps to the mantel, she thought the tesselated floor moved under her feet, she thought as she looked down that water crept up along the lines of the patterned oak, how could it? Was there a new sound in the house, a gurgle of water under the floor, a steady slap-slap?

“You know, Eddie reminds me a lot of Robert,” Susan was saying, as Margaret handed her the bag. She poked a finger under the rhinestone clasp and spread the bag open. “I hadn’t thought of it before. What happened to Robert, Maggie?”

“He died. He got typhoid in that mining camp.” (Where he went because of you: tell her!) Margaret stood close to the couch.

“Dead?” Susan looked up, a vanity case snapped open in one hand. “I didn’t know.” There was a crease between her plucked, accented brows. “He would be an old man now, wouldn’t he? He was older than you—or me—I never thought of that before.” She shrugged. “I don’t like elderly men, they fuss so—diet, liver—they have hairs in their ears and their teeth clack! Robert—ah, he didn’t have to grow old! He was beautiful. Eddie isn’t really like him. Why, I remember the row they made about Robert, right here in this room! Father and Mother—about Susan Lathrop and her groom! I didn’t care, I loved him. But he cared, he was furious. He went away, west. I would have waited forever—at least I thought so.” She began to pat powder over her face, the scent strong for a moment. “But I couldn’t stand his taking the money.”

“What money?” Margaret leaned closer, her hands clasped; Susan’s voice had dropped; it was an unhappy whisper against the background of steady noise around them. Susan set her lips together and dusted her chin. “What money?” urged Margaret.

“The money my father gave him, if he’d go off. I—I suppose he was poor—”

“Is that what they told you?” Margaret’s scorn brought Susan’s eyes up from the mirror. “You might have known it was a lie! Robert never took a cent, except his wages. Why, I sent him money that year, when I began to teach, money for food!”

“I might have known,” said Susan, slowly. “I wasn’t as smart then. Why, Maggie, it’s like a present! Everything was criss-cross, and we’re laying it all straight.”

“When he died, his landlady sent me his things,” said Margaret. “His account book, and a picture of you—and a letter. I would never give you the letter.”

“I don’t want to see the picture!” Susan peered again into the little mirror, she fished a lipstick out of the bag. She made a stroke with the pencil, but her hand wavered, and the crimson was a clown’s mouth. Angrily she dabbed at it with a handkerchief, sticking out the point of her tongue to moisten a corner. “I don’t care how I look,” she said. She dropped the lipstick, mirror, handkerchief, into the purse, and pinched the rhinestones shut. “I’ve been a fool, haven’t I? But you have to have somebody to love as long as you live, don’t you?” Her voice was warm again, and clear. “Whatever they’ve been, I’ve had the loving of them. Nobody can take that away!”

Margaret had drawn away from the divan, her shoulders hunched, her hands doubled into fists. She wanted to listen to Susan, but something, _something_ was moving past the windows at the end of the room, was looking in. She walked toward the windows, slowly, not to frighten Susan, her feet slipping in the water, inches deep, which covered the floor, not quiet water, but water that swung as if the whole house rocked a little. The room was darker, and she stared at the peaked roof of a house outside the windows, cutting off all light, all glimpse of ocean, a jagged hole where there had been a chimney; and it floated higher than the upper ledges of the windows. Margaret looked at it without great concern; she had lost her standard by which she measured what happened, nothing now was astonishing. The dark, slanting roof moved toward the house, as if it meant to climb in through the windows, and then was sucked away. Margaret saw the ocean, it had come above the window sills, a wave climbed up the sash, and its spray stung her face there inside the house. She looked out, across the gray-green rollers, not surprised that all the land was gone, every tree was gone, and the house itself was islanded. She saw, between her and the sky, one great wall, like fog turned into solid matter, high as the sky, advancing without haste, with dignity. When that breaks, she thought, and turned away from the window. She could run, she could climb the stairs, the attic of the house was high, she would be safe there!

“What you looking at?” asked Susan.

“A wave,” said Margaret. She started across the floor, her feet begged her to run, they were separate, alive, insisting upon flight, she couldn’t save Susan, too, there was no time—no time. At the edge of the couch she stopped, her hand reached for Susan’s, she slipped to the floor, shutting her eyes, laying her face against Susan’s soft breast. “Hang on,” she whispered, “hang on tight to me! I’m not afraid any more, with you.”

“Why, Maggie!” said Susan, and under Margaret’s ear her heart, undefeated, quickened its beat. For an instant, in the great blackness which filled the room, a whirling blackness under the wall of water, Margaret thought that they were children again, running ahead of the storm, she with her hand in Susan’s. “We’ll stick together!” cried Susan, and her voice had the golden curl of a trumpet. “Till we die!” If it was fear that Margaret felt, it had, at the last, the strong sweet taste of great elation. The wave walked over the house, the wind pried at the walls, the front wall yielded first, falling outward, with a soughing soft note, and the water swept through.

Transcriber’s Notes

Transcribed from Experiment: Four short stories. Coward-McCann, New York (1940), pp. 1-67.

This is the uncut, longer version of the previously published Last September (Good Housekeeping, vol. 109, July 1939, pp. 24-25, 116-129.).

The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. Minor typesetting mistakes were silently corrected. All other changes (before/after) are listed here:

[p. 66]:
... she saw she stared at the peaked roof of a house outside the ...
... she stared at the peaked roof of a house outside the ...

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.