The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 86/212

Helen's room was over the porch, the windows facing north, looking out

upon the pike and across the fields beyond. "Please don't light the lamp,

Minnie," she said, when they had gone upstairs. "I don't need a light."

Miss Briscoe was flitting about the room, hunting for matches. In the

darkness she came to her friend, and laid a kind, large hand on Helen's

eyes, and the hand became wet. She drew Helen's head down on her shoulder

and sat beside her on the bed.

"Sweetheart, you mustn't fret," she soothed, in motherly fashion. "Don't

you worry, dear. He's all right. It isn't your fault, dear. They wouldn't

come on a night like this."

But Helen drew away and went to the window, flattening her arm against the

pane, her forehead pressed against her arm. She had let him go; she had

let him go alone. She had forgotten the danger that always beset him. She

had been so crazy, she had seen nothing, thought of nothing. She had let

him go into that, and into the storm, alone. Who knew better than she how

cruel they were? She had seen the fire leap from the white blossom and

heard the ball whistle, the ball they had meant for his heart, that good,

great heart. She had run to him the night before--why had she let him go

into the unknown and the storm to-night? But how could she have stopped

him? How could she have kept him, after what he had said? She peered into

the night through distorting tears.

The wind had gone down a little, but only a little, and the electrical

flashes danced all around the horizon in magnificent display, sometimes

far away, sometimes dazingly near, the darkness trebly deep between the

intervals when the long sweep of flat lands lay in dazzling clearness,

clean-cut in the washed air to the finest detail of stricken field and

heaving woodland. A staggering flame clove earth and sky; sheets of light

came following it, and a frightful uproar shook the house and rattled the

casements, but over the crash of thunder Minnie heard her friend's loud

scream and saw her spring back from the window with both hands, palm

outward, pressed to her face. She leaped to her and threw her arms about

her.

"What is it?"

"Look!" Helen dragged her to the window. "At the next flash--the fence

beyond the meadow----"

"What was it? What was it like?" The lightning flashed incessantly. Helen

tried to point; her hand only jerked from side to side.

"Look!" she cried.

"I see nothing but the lightning," Minnie answered, breathlessly.

"Oh, the fence! The fence--and in the field!"

"Helen! What was it like?"

"Ah-ah!" she panted, "a long line of white--horrible white----"

"What like?" Minnie turned from the window and caught the other's wrist

in a fluttering clasp.