A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories.

by Mary Hallock Foote.

A TOUCH OF SUN

I

The five-o'clock whistle droned through the heat. Its deep, consequential chest-note belonged by right to the oldest and best paying member of the Asgard group, a famous mining property of northern California.

The Asgard Company owned a square league of prehistoric t.i.tles on the western slope of the foot-hills,--land enough for the preservation of a natural park within its own boundaries where fire-lines were cleared, forest-trees respected, and roads kept up. Wherever the company erected a board fence, gate, or building, the same was methodically painted a color known as "monopoly brown." The most conspicuous of these objects cropped out on the sunset dip of the property where the woods for twenty years had been cut, and the Sacramento valley surges up in heat and glare, with yearly visitations of malaria.

Higher than the buildings in brown, a gray-shingled bungalow ranged itself on the lap of its broad lawns against a slope of orchard tops climbing to the dark environment of the forest. Not the original forest: of that only three stark pines were left, which rose one hundred feet out of a gulch below the house and lent their ancient majesty to the modern uses of electric wires and telephone lines. Their dreaming tops were in the sky; their feet were in the sluicings of the stamp-mill that reared its long brown back in a semi-rec.u.mbent posture, resting one elbow on the hill; and beneath the valley smouldered, a pale mirage by day, by night a vision of color transcendent and rich as the gates of the Eternal City.

At half past five the night watchman, on his way from town, stopped at the superintendent's gate, ran up the blazing path, and thrust a newspaper between the dark blue canvas curtains that shaded the entrance of the porch. For hours the house had slept behind its heat defenses, every shutter closed, yards of piazza blind and canvas awning fastened down. The sun, a ball of fire, went slowly down the west. Rose-vines drooped against the hanging lattices, printing their watery lines of split bamboo with a shadow-pattern of leaf and flower. The whole house-front was decked with dead roses, or roses blasted in full bloom, as if to celebrate with appropriate insignia the pa.s.sing of the hottest day of the year.

Half-way down the steps the watchman stopped, surprised by a voice from behind the curtains. He came back in answer to his name.

A thin white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flicker of a fan held against the light.

"Oh, Hughson, will you tell Mr. Thorne that I am here? He doesn't know I have come."

"Tell him that Mrs. Thorne is home?" the man translated slowly.

"Yes. He does not expect me. You will tell him at once, please?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The curtain was fastened again from inside. A woman's step went restlessly up and down, up and down the long piazza floors, now m.u.f.fled on a rug, now light on a matting, or distinct on the bare boards.

Later a soft Oriental voice inquired, "Wha' time Missa Tho'ne wanta dinna?"

"The usual time, Ito," came the answer; "make no difference for me."

"Lika tea--coffee--after dinna?"

"Tea--iced. Have you some now? Oh, bring it, please!"

After an interval: "Has Mr. Thorne been pretty well?"

"I think."

"It is very hot. How is your kitchen--any better than it was?"

"Missa Tho'ne fixa more screen; all open now, thank you."

"Take these things into my dressing-room. No; there will be no trunk. I shall go back in a few days."

The gate clashed to. A stout man in a blaze of white duck came up the path, lifting his cork helmet slightly to air the top of his head. As he approached it could be seen that his duck was of a modified whiteness, and that his beard, even in that forcing weather, could not be less than a two days' growth. He threw his entire weight on the steps one by one, as he mounted them slowly. The curtains were parted for him from within.

"Well, Margaret?"

"Well, dear old man! How hot you look! _Why_ do you not carry an umbrella?"

"Because I haven't got you here to make me. What brought you back in such weather? Where is your telegram?"

"I did not telegraph. There was no need. I simply had to speak to you at once--about something that could not be written."

"Well, it's good to have a look at you again. But you are going straight back, you know. Can't take any chances on such weather as this."

Mr. Thorne sank copiously into a piazza chair, and pulled forward another for his wife.

She sat on the edge of it, smiling at him with wistful satisfaction. Her profile had a delicate, bird-like slant. Pale, crisped auburn hair powdered with gray, hair that looked like burnt-out ashes, she wore swept back from a small, tense face, full of fine lines and fleeting expressions. She had taken off her high, close neckwear, and the wanness of her throat showed above a collarless shirt-waist.

"Don't look at me; I am a wreck!" she implored, with a little exhausted laugh. "I wonder where my keys are? I must get on something cool before dinner."

"Ito has all the keys somewhere. Ito's a gentleman. He takes beautiful care of me, only he won't let me drink as much _shasta_ as I want. What is that?

Iced tea? Bad, bad before dinner! I'm going to watch _you_ now. You are not looking a bit well. Is there any of that decoction left? Well, it is bad; gets on the nerves, too much of it. The problem of existence here is, What shall we drink, and how much of it _can_ we drink?"

Mrs. Thorne laughed out a little sigh. "I have brought you a problem. But we will talk when it is cooler. Don't you--don't you shave but twice a week when I am away, Henry?"

"I shave every day, when I think of it. I never go anywhere, and I don't have anybody here if I can possibly avoid it. It is all a man can do to live and be up to his work."

"I know; it's frightful to work in such weather. How the mill roars! It starts the blood to hear it. Last spring it sounded like a cataract; now it roars like heat behind furnace doors. Which is your room now?"

"O Lord! I sleep anywhere; begin in my bed generally and end of the piazza floor. It will be the gra.s.s if this keeps on."

"Mrs. Thorne continued to laugh spasmodically at her husband's careless speeches, not at what he said so much as through content in his familiar way of saying things. Under their light household talk, graver, questioning looks were exchanged, the unappeased glances of friends long separated, who realize on meeting again that letters have told them nothing.

"Why didn't you write me about this terrible heat?"

"Why didn't you write _me_ that you were not well?"

"I am well."

"You don't look it--anything but."

"I am always ghastly after a journey. It isn't a question of health that brought me. But--never mind. Ring for Ito, will you? I want my keys."

At dinner she looked ten years younger, sitting opposite him in her summery lawns and laces. She tasted the cold wine soup, but ate nothing, watching her husband's appet.i.te with the mixed wonder and concern that thirty years' knowledge of its capacities had not diminished. He studied her face meanwhile; he was accustomed to reading faces, and hers he knew by line and precept. He listened to her choked little laughs and hurried speeches. All her talk was mere postponement; she was fighting for time. Hence he argued that the trouble which had sent her flying home to him from the mountains was not fancy-bred. Of her imaginary troubles she was ready enough to speak.

The moon had risen, a red, dry-weather moon, when they walked out into the garden and climbed the slope under low orchard boughs. The trees were young, too quickly grown; like child mothers, they had lost their natural symmetry, overburdened with hasty fruition. Each slender parent trunk was the centre of a host of artificial props, which saved the sinking boughs from breaking. Under one of these low green tents they stopped and handled the great fruit that fell at a touch.

"How everything rushes to maturity here! The roses blossom and wither the same hour. The peaches burst before they ripen. Don't you think it oppresses one, all this waste fertility, such an excess of life and good living, one season crowding upon another? How shall we get rid of all these kindly fruits of the earth?"

She did not wait for an answer to her morbid questions. They moved on up a path between hedges of sweet peas going to seed, and blackberry-vines covered with knots of fruit dried in their own juices. A wall of gigantic Southern cane hid the boundary fence, and above it the night-black pines of the forest towered, their breezy monotone answering the roar of the hundred stamps below the hill.

A few young pines stood apart on a knoll, a later extension of the garden, ungraded and covered with pine-needles. In the hollow places native shrubs, surprised by irrigation, had made an unwonted summer's growth.