Part 32 (1/2)

An invitation was never accepted with more cheerful willingness. It was arranged that Mrs. Harding, Miss Harding and I should arrive at Oak Cliff with the auto at about four o'clock Tuesday afternoon.

We were to start from Woodvale at half after one o'clock, so as to have plenty of time. That Fate, which is always prying into and disarranging the plans of us poor mortals, interfered with our arrangements an hour before the time fixed for our departure. The visitors who were to arrive in the evening came shortly after noon. It was exasperating.

I pictured myself making that long trip alone, and cursed the chattering arrivals who had the bad form to antic.i.p.ate the hour set for their welcome. There were three of them, and I noticed that they were of mature years.

I sat glumly watching them and heartily wis.h.i.+ng that the train which brought them had been blocked for an hour or two, when Miss Harding came smilingly towards me.

”Mamma cannot go,” she said.

”And you?” I asked, hardly daring to hope for the best.

”They seemed glad to excuse me, Jacques Henri,” she laughed.

I have no doubt I grinned like a Ches.h.i.+re cat. I refrained from telling the abominable falsehood that I was sorry Mrs. Harding could not go with us, and an hour later the huge touring car rolled smoothly away from the Woodvale club house, its front seat occupied by a supremely happy gentleman of the name of Smith, and by his side a supremely pretty young lady who waved her hand to the elderly group on the veranda.

I had been so absorbed in the unfolding of the incidents just narrated that I took no note of the weather or of anything else. For a month or more the weather has been so uniformly fine that we had come to accept the succession of warm but cloudless days as a matter of course.

When I was a boy my father drilled into me a knowledge of the visible signs of impending changes in meteorological conditions. As I became older the study of the warnings displayed in the sky and in the indescribable variations in the feel of the air possessed a fascination for me. During the early years after the formation of the club the members jested me on account of my predilection for weather forecasting, but the uniform accuracy of these guesses commanded their surprise and subsequently won their respect.

Chilvers and others sometimes call me ”Old Prog. Smith,” and I am more proud of that pleasantry than of some others.

There was not a breath of air stirring. The atmosphere seemed stagnant, like a pool on which the sun has beat during rainless weeks. The dried tops of the swamp gra.s.s and reeds pointed motionless to the heat-quivering sky. The dust cast up by our car hung over the road like a ribbon of fog.

The forest to our left shut off a view of the western sky, but I felt sure that the clouds of an approaching storm were already marshalled along its horizon. Then we shot out into a clearing and I took one swift look.

From north to south was spanned the sweeping curve of a gray cloud with just a tinge of yellow blended into it. The ordinary observer would have seen in it no premonition of a storm. It was smooth, light in tone and restful to the eye as compared with the angry blue from out of which the sun blazed.

The upper edges of this ma.s.s were unbroken save at one point near the zenith of its curve. From this there protruded the sharper edges of a ”thunder-head,” as if some t.i.tanic and unseen hand were lifting to the firmament a colossal head of cauliflower, its shaded portions beautifully toned with blue. This description may be homely, but it has the merit of accuracy.

I said no word of my certainty of the oncoming tempest, but threw on full speed and dashed ahead at a rate which startled my fair companion.

From the turn in the road just beyond the clearing we headed directly into the line of march of the storm. If it were slow-moving I calculated we would reach Oak Cliff before it broke, but I realised it would be close work.

Miss Harding leaned over and said something to me. The whirr of the machinery and the swaying of the car made conversation difficult. I presume she thought I was determined to show my nerve and skill as a driver.

”Why this mad haste, Jacques Henri?” she again cried, her head so close to mine that her hair brushed my cheek.

I returned a non-committal smile and fixed my eyes on the road which slipped toward us like a huge belt propelled by invisible pulleys.

The miles kept pace with the minutes. Of a sudden the sun was blotted out. When I lifted my eyes from the road I saw birds circling high in the sky. The cattle in adjacent fields lifted their heads and moved uneasily as if some instinct sounded a warning in their dull brains.

Above the trees I saw the skirmish line of the storm.

In after hours Miss Harding told me that she had quickly solved the secret of my wild dash. For a quarter of an hour she hung to the swaying seat and said no word. Once I looked into her eyes and read in them that she understood.

We dashed through a little village and paid no heed to the angry shouts and menacing gestures of a man who wore a huge star on his chest. Oak Cliff was only ten miles away. Could we make it?

The restful grays of the cloud had disappeared; and low down on the horizon I saw a belt of bluish black, and as I looked, a bolt of lightning jabbed through it. We were now running parallel to the storm, and I believed I could beat it to Oak Cliff. I felt certain I could reach the little hamlet of Pine Top, and from there on it would be easy to get to shelter. Between us and Pine Top was practically an unbroken wilderness, a part of the country reserved as a source of water supply for the great city far to the south of us.

Into that wilderness we dashed.

We were taking a hill with the second speed clutch on when a grating sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped the deep rolling ba.s.s of the thunder rumbled over the hills.