Part 8

"I'll get 'em," agreed Gran'ma Mullins happily, "and I won't wake you no more nights, Susan. I suppose it's only natural that you, never having been married, can't possibly know the feelings of a mother. But I meant it kindly, Susan. When Lucy speaks of Hiram, she means it unkindly. But when I speak of Hiram, I always mean it kindly."

"Yes, I know," said Susan, "and if I believed like Mrs. Allen does, I'd know I was meant to listen and wouldn't mind. But I don't take no stock in that religion of Mrs. Allen's, and I won't be woke up. And although I don't want to hurt your feelings, I do want that understood right from the beginning."

"I'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins submissively. "And now I'll fetch the screwdriver."

That evening the four friends sat pleasantly once again on Mrs. Macy's piazza.

"Mrs. Lathrop had a letter from Jathrop to-day. Did you know that, Susan?" asked Mrs. Macy.

"No, I didn't," returned Susan Clegg. "What did he say?"

"He's going sailing to the West Indies in his new boat," Mrs. Macy informed her. "He's going for his health, and he's going to take three other millionaires and their own doctor."

Susan appeared unimpressed.

"He sent his mother a book about the place where he's going," said Mrs. Macy. "Do you want to see it?" She went in and brought it out.

Susan took the volume and viewed the title with an indifferent eye.

"_Stark's Guide to the Bahamas_," she read aloud. "What are they--something to eat?"

"You're thinking of bananas," suggested Mrs. Macy. "It's islands. It's where Columbus hit first. Nobody knows just where he hit, but he hit there; everybody knows that."

Susan placed the book under her arm. "I'll read it," she said briefly. "But I must say as to my order of thinking Jathrop's setting off just now is very much like a hen getting up from her eggs. Here's you and me--" addressing Mrs. Lathrop directly--"with our houses done away with, and him as has engineered the wreck skipping away with a parcel of men."

"He isn't skipping," interposed Mrs. Macy. "He's sailing--sailing in his own private boat, like the tea-man with the cup."

"Oh, I don't care what he's doing," said Susan, rising. "I'm about beat out, and I'm going home and going to bed. Such a week! The Bible says 'Whom the Lord loveth He chaseth,' and heaven knows I've been chased this week till my legs is about wore off. Such a week! I've had all the chasing I want for one while. And I never was great on being loved, so I'm going home and going to bed."

Whereupon, with the _Guide to the Bahamas_ under her arm and a heavy fold between her brows, Susan Clegg stalked over to her temporary domicile.

"I don't think Susan's very well," said Gran'ma Mullins.

"Maybe she's worried over Jathrop," suggested Mrs. Macy.

Mrs. Lathrop said nothing. She just rocked.

VIII

SUSAN CLEGG AND THE CYCLONE

"I d'n know, I'm sure, what star this town could ever have been laid out under," said Susan Clegg, one exceptionally hot night as the four friends sat out on Mrs. Macy's steps, "but my own opinion is as it must have been a comet, for we're always skiting along into some sort of hot water. When it ain't all of us, it's some of us, and when it ain't some of us, it's one of us, and now the walls of my house is up I'd be willing to bet a nickel as a calamity'll happen along just because something's always happening here and my walls is the youngest and tenderest thing in the community now."

"Your roof ain't--" began Mrs. Lathrop.

"Of course not; how could it be, when my walls is only just up? I don't wish to be casting no stones at him as is the least among us, but I will say, Mrs. Lathrop, as Jathrop's orders seem to be taking you up under the loving protection of their wings, while I'm running around like I was a viper without no warm bosom to hatch me. _Your_ walls have been up and a-doing for a week, but my walls have been sitting around waiting until I was nigh to put out. To see your laths going in and your plaster going on, while I stay lumber and nails, is a lesson in yielding to the will of heaven as I never calculated on. There's few things more aggravating than to see some other house speeding along while your own house sits silently, patiently waiting. Of course I can't say nothing, as even the boy as carries water knows my house is going to be a present to me in the end. It's all right, and likely enough the Lord has seen fit to send this summer to me as a chastisement; but I will say that if I'd known how this summer was going, the Lord would most certainly have had to plan some other way to punish me. I don't say as it wasn't natural that your walls should go up first, Jathrop being your son, and, now that he's rich, no more to me than a benefactor--"

"Oh, Susan!" expostulated Mrs. Macy.

"That's what he is, Mrs. Macy; he's my benefactor, and I can't escape if I want to. You may tend a man's mother ten years, day and night, house cleanings and cistern cleanings, moths and the well froze up, and if the man comes back rich, he's your benefactor."

"Susan!" cried Mrs. Lathrop, "you--"

"Don't deny it, Mrs. Lathrop; it's the truth. It's one of those truths that the wiser they are, the sadder you get. It's one of those truths as is the whole truth and a little left over; and I'm learning that I'm to be what's left over, more every day. After a life of being independent and living on my own money, I'm now going down on my knees learning the lesson of being humbly grateful for what I don't want. I may sound bitter, but if I do it isn't surprising, for I feel bitter; and Gran'ma Mullins knows I'm always frank and open, so she'll excuse my saying that there's nothing in living with _her_ as tends to calm me much. A woman as sleeps in a bed as Hiram must have played leap-frog over all his life from the feel of the springs, and pours out of a pitcher as has got a chip out of its nose, ain't in no mood to mince nothing. I never was one to mince, and I never will be--not now and not never. Mincing is for them as ain't got it in them to speak their minds freely; and my mind is a thing that's made to be free and not a slave."

"Well, really, Susan," expostulated Mrs. Macy, "what ever--"

"Don't interrupt me, Mrs. Macy. I'm full of goodness knows what, but whatever it is, I'm too full of it for comfort. There's nothing in the life I'm leading this summer to make me expect comfort, and very little to make me feel full, but there's things as would make a man dying of starvation bust if he experienced them. And I'm full of such things. I never had no idea of being out of my house all summer, and now, when my walls is up at last, and it looks like maybe I'd get back a home feeling some day soon, I must up and get quite another kind of feeling--a feeling that something is going to happen. It's a very strange feeling, and at first I thought it was just some more of Gran'ma Mullins' cooking; but it kept getting stronger, and when I was in the square, I spoke to Mr. Kimball about it; and he says this is cyclone weather, and maybe a cyclone is going to happen. He says a man was in town yesterday wanting to insure everybody against fire and cyclones. Most everybody did it. Mr. Kimball says after the young man got through, you pretty much had to do it. Them as had policies with the company could get the word 'cyclone' writ in for a dollar. I guess the young man did a very good day's work. Mr. Kimball says if it's true as there's any cyclones coming nosing about here, he wants his dried-apple machine insured anyhow. It's a fine machine, and every kind of fruit as is left over each night comes out jam next day, while all the vegetables make breakfast food. He says it's a wonder."

"What makes him think we're going to have a cyclone?" inquired Mrs. Macy anxiously.

"He says the weather is cyclony. And he says if I feel queer that's a sign, for I'm a sensitive nature."

"I never--" said Mrs. Lathrop.

"No, nor me, neither. But Mr. Kimball seemed to feel there wasn't no doubt. He says I'm just the kind of sensitive nature as could feel a cyclone. Why, he says cyclones take the roofs off the houses!"

"Ow!" cried Gran'ma Mullins in surprise.

"If one's coming, I'm glad to know, for I never see one near to," said Mrs. Macy pensively.

"You won't see it a _tall_," said Susan, "for Mr. Kimball says the only safe place in a cyclone is the cellar; and to pull a kitchen table over you to keep the house from squashing you flat when it caves in."

"My heavens alive!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"That's what he said. But he says not to worry, for the young man told him as they're getting so common no one notices them any more. He says they're always going hop, skip, and jump over Kansas and everywhere, and no one pays no attention to 'em. He knows all about it. But he wanted it clear as he was only insuring for _cyclones_; he says his firm wouldn't have nothing to do with tornadoes. You can get as much on a cyclone as on a fire, but you can't get a penny on a tornado--"

"What's the diff--" asked Gran'ma Mullins.

"That's the trouble; nobody can just tell. A cyclone is wind and lightning mixed by combustion and drove forward by expulsion, the young man told Mr. Kimball. He said they'd got cyclones all worked out, and they can average 'em up same as everything else, but he says a tornado is something as no man can get hold of, and no man will ever be able to study. Tornadoes drive nails through fences--"

"Where do they get the nails?" asked Gran'ma Mullins.

"I d'n know. Pick 'em out of the fences first, I guess. And they strip the feathers off chickens and scoop up haystacks and carry them up in the air for good and all."

"Oh, my!" cried Mrs. Macy.

"Mr. Kimball said the young man told him that a tornado dug up a complete marsh once in Minnesota and spread it out upside down on top of a wood a little ways off; and when there's a tornado anywhere near, the sewing-machines all tick like they was telegraphing."

"No!" cried Mrs. Macy.

"Yes, the young man said so."

"But do you believe him?"

"I don't know why not. I wouldn't believe Mr. Kimball because he's always fixing up his stories to sound better than they really are, which makes me have very little faith in him; but Judge Fitch says he'd make a splendid witness for any one just on that very account. Judge Fitch says with a little well-advised help Mr. Kimball would carry convictions to any man,--he don't except none,--but I see no reason why the young man wasn't telling the truth. Young men do tell the truth sometimes; most everybody does that. A tornado catches up pigs and carries 'em miles and pulls up trees by the roots. I don't wonder they won't insure 'em."

"The pigs?" asked Mrs. Macy.

"No, the tornadoes."

"What's the signs of a tornado?" asked Gran'ma Mullins uneasily.

"Well, the signs is alike for both. The signs is weather like to-day and a kind of breathlessness like to-night. Mr. Kimball says a funnel-shaped cloud is a great sign; and when you see it, in three minutes it's on you, and off goes your roof if it's a cyclone, and off you go yourself if it's a tornado."

"My heavens alive!" cried Mrs. Lathrop, clutching the arms of her old-gold-plush stationary rocker.

"Do people ever come down again?" Gran'ma Mullins inquired; she was very pale.

"Elijah didn't, Mr. Kimball says."

"Elijah Doxey?" cried Mrs. Macy. "Why, is he off on a cyclone? No one ever told me."

"No, Elijah in the Bible, you know. The Elijah as was caught up in a chariot of fire. Mr. Kimball says there ain't a mite of doubt in his mind but that it was a tornado. I guess Mr. Kimball told the truth that time, for it's all in the Bible."

"That's true," said Gran'ma Mullins. "I remember Elijah myself. He kept a tame raven, seems to me, or some such thing."

"Oh, Susan!" Mrs. Lathrop cried out suddenly. "There's a fun--" Her voice failed her; she raised her hand and pointed.

Susan turned quickly, and her face became suddenly gray-white. "It can't be a cy--" she faltered.

With that all four women jumped different ways at once.

"Where shall we go?" shrieked Mrs. Macy. "Oh, saints and sinners preserve us! Oh, Susan, where shall we go?"

But Susan Clegg stood as if paralyzed, staring straight at the funnel-shaped cloud.

Gran'ma Mullins started for her own house; Mrs. Lathrop sprang up and clasped the piazza post nearest; Mrs. Macy grabbed her skirts up at both sides and faced the cyclone just as she had once faced the cow.

The funnel-shaped cloud came sweeping towards them. The town was between, and a darkness and a mighty roar arose. Buildings seemed falling; the din was terrible.

"I knew it," said Susan grimly. "It _is_ a cyclone!" She faced the worst--standing erect.

The next instant the storm was on them all. It lifted Mrs. Lathrop's old-gold-plush stationary rocker and hurled it at that good lady, smashing her hard against the post. It raised the roof of Mrs. Macy's house and dropped it like an extinguisher over the fleeing form of Gran'ma Mullins.

"Oh, Gran'ma Mullins, it _is_ a cyclone!" Susan shrieked. But Gran'ma Mullins answered not.

A second mighty burst of fury blew down two trees, and it blew Susan herself back against the side wall of the house which shook and swayed like a bit of cardboard.

"Oh, yes, it's a cyclone," Susan screamed over and over. "Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a real cyclone! It isn't a tornado; you can see the difference now. It's a cyclone; look at the roof; it's a cyclone!"

Mrs. Lathrop could see nothing. She and the old-gold-plush stationary rocker were all piled together under the piazza post.

And now came the third and worst burst of fury. It crashed on the blacksmith's shop; it carried the sails of the windmill swooping down the road, and then "without halting, without rest" lifted Mrs. Macy with her outspread skirts and carried her straight up in the air. "Oh! Oh!" she shrieked and sailed forth.

Susan gave a piercing yell. "Oh, Mrs. Macy, it's a tornado, it's a tornado!" But Mrs. Macy answered not.

Tipping, swaying, ducking to the right or left, she flew majestically away over her own roof first and then over that of Gran'ma Mullins' woodshed.

"Help! Help!" cried Gran'ma Mullins from under the roof.

Mrs. Lathrop was oblivious to all, smashed by her own old-gold-plush stationary rocker.

Susan Clegg stood as one fascinated, staring after the trail which was all that was left of Mrs. Macy.

"It was a tornado!" she said over and over. "Mrs. Macy'll always believe in the Bible now, I guess. It was a tornado! It _was_ a tornado!"

* * * * *

"No, they ain't found her yet," Susan said, coming into the hotel room where Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins had found a pleasant and comfortable refuge and were occupied in recuperating together at Jathrop's expense. Neither lady was seriously injured. Gran'ma Mullins had been preserved from even a wetting through the neat capping of her climax by Mrs. Macy's roof; while Mrs. Lathrop's squeeze between the piazza post and her well beloved old-gold-plush stationary rocker had not--as Gran'ma Mullins put it--so much as turned a hair of even the rocker.

"No one's heard anything from her yet," continued Susan, "but that ain't so surprising as it would be if anybody had time to want to know. But nobody's got time for nothing to-day. The town's in a awful taking, and I d'n know as I ever see a worse situation. You two want to be very grateful as you're so nicely and neatly laid aside, for what has descended on the community now is worse'n any cyclone, and if you could get out and see what the cyclone's done, you'd know what _that_ means."

"Was you to my house, Susan?" asked Gran'ma Mullins anxiously.

"I was; but the insurance men was before me, or anyhow, we met there."

"The insurance men!"

"That's what I said,--the insurance men. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, we all know one side of what it is to insure ourselves, but now the Lord in his infinite wrath has mercifully seen fit to show us the other side. The Assyrian pouncing down on the wolf in his fold is a young mother wrapping up her first baby to look out the window compared to those insurance men. They descended on us bright and shining to-day, and if we was murderers with our families buried under the kitchen floor, we couldn't be looked on with more suspicion. I was far from pleased when I first laid eyes on 'em, for there's a foxiness in any city man as comes to settle things in the country as is far from being either soothing or syrupy to him as lives in the country; but you can maybe imagine my feelings when they very plainly informed me as I couldn't put the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house till it was settled whether it was a cyclone or a tornado--"

"Settled--whether--" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"Cyclone or tornado," repeated Susan. "The first thing isn't to get to rights, but it is to settle whether we've got any rights to get. I never dreamed what it was to be injured--no, or no one else neither. Seems if it's a tornado, we don't get a cent of our insurance. And to think it all depends on Mrs. Macy."

"On Mrs.--" cried Gran'ma Mullins.

"Yes, because she's the only one as really knows whether she was carried off or not. Well, all I can say is, if she don't come back pretty quick, we're going to have a little John Brown raid right here in town; we--"

"But what--?"

"I'm telling you. It'll be the town rising up against the insurance men, and the insurance men will soon find that when it comes to dilly-dallying with folks newly cycloned upside down, it's life and death if you don't deal fair. What with chimneys down and roofs turned up at the corner like the inquiring angels didn't have time to take the cover all off but just pried up a little to see what was inside,--I say with all this and everything wet and Mrs. Macy gone, this community was in no mood to be sealed up--"

"Sealed up!" cried Mrs. Lathrop and Gran'ma Mullins together.

"That's what it is. Sealed up we are, and sealed up we've got to stay until Mrs. Macy gets back--"

"But--" cried Gran'ma Mullins.

"Everybody's just as mad as you are. Charging bulls is setting hens beside this town to-night. Even Mr. Kimball's mad for once in his life; he's losing money most awful, for he can't sell so much as a paper of tacks. They've got both his doors and all his windows sealed, and he's standing out in front with nothing to do except to keep a sharp eye out for Mrs. Macy. He says it ain't in reason to expect as she'll fly back, but she's got to come from somewhere, and he means to prevent her getting away again on the sly. He says his opinion is as she'd have stood a better chance before airships was so common. He says ten years ago folks would have took steps for hooking at her just as quick as they saw her coming along, but nowadays it'd be a pretty brave man as would try to stop anything he saw flying overhead. I guess he's about right there. It's a hard question to know what to do with things that fly, even if Mrs. Macy hadn't took to it, too. My view is that we advance faster than we can learn how to manage our new inventions. I d'n know, I'm sure, though, what Mrs. Macy is going to do about this trip of hers. She went without even the moment's notice as folks in a hurry always has had up to now. She's been gone most twenty-four hours. She's skipped three meals already, not to speak of her night and her nap; and you know as well as I do how Mrs. Macy was give to her nights and her napping."

Susan shook her head, and Mrs. Lathrop looked wide-eyed and alarmed.

"But now--" Gran'ma Mullins asked.

"I've been all over the place," Susan continued. "I didn't understand fully what was up when I scurried off to try and get those men to put the roof back on Mrs. Macy's house, but I know it all now. It's no use trying to get anybody to do nothing now; the whole town's upside down and inside out. I never see nothing like it. And the insurance men has got it laid down flat as nobody can't touch nothing till it's settled whether it's a cyclone or a tornado. Seems a good many was insured for cyclones right in with their fires without knowing it; but there ain't a soul in the place insured against a tornado, because you can't get any insurance against tornadoes--no one will insure them. The insurance men say if it's a tornado, we won't have nothing to do except to do the best we can; but if it's a cyclone, we mus'n't touch anything till they can get some one to judge what's worth saving and how much it's worth and deduct that from our insurance. That's how it is."

"But what has--?" began Gran'ma Mullins.

"How long--?" demanded Mrs. Lathrop.

"Nobody knows," said Susan. "The whole town is asking, and nobody knows. The insurance company won't let anybody go home or get anything unless they'll sign a paper giving up their insurance and swearing that it was a tornado. Mr. Dill just had to sign the paper because he was taking a bath and had nothing except the table cover to wear. He signed the paper and said he'd swear anything if only for his shoes alone; and it seems that his house isn't hurt a mite, and he didn't have no insurance anyhow. A good many is blaming him, but he says he really couldn't think of anything in the excitement and the table cloth. It's a awful state of things. The cyclone has tore everything to pieces, and the insurance men has put their seal on the chips. People is being drove to all lengths. The minister and his family is camping in the henhouse. Our walls is fell in so goodness knows what will happen to you and me next, Mrs. Lathrop. The wires is all down, so we can't hear nothing about the storm. The rails is all up, so there's no trains. The church is stove in, so we can't pray. But I must say as to my order of thinking, it looks as if no one feels like praying. The insurance men is running all over, like winged ants hatching out, sealing up more doors and more windows every minute and getting more signatures as it was a tornado before they'll unstick them. Nothing can't be really settled till Mrs. Macy comes back. Mrs. Macy is the key to the whole situation."

"But why--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.