SMYTHE’S LAST BUDGET
Seth had heard at the post-office that the deer were coming down unusually early from their summer haunts high in the mountains. A fine herd had been seen just above Bratner’s, and Seth proposed to Marion that she should have a try at them. They would start early in the morning, stop the night at Bratner’s, and be back home late the second evening. Marion reluctantly consented, and before going to bed that night she laid out woolen underwear, her stoutest riding costume, with divided skirts and knickerbockers and tan boots lacing almost to her knees. She did not want to go, but, as more than once before, she yielded to Seth’s insistence rather than attempt an explanation.
That night, however, summer departed from the Park. A dry storm descended on the valley, and Marion lay awake while the wind howled around the corners of the ranch house, of which every timber seemed to be crying out in agony. She knew that high among the rocks the storm was smashing about in fury, and even in its sheltered hollow the house was hammered as if the elements were bent upon its annihilation. When each prodigious outcry had spent itself and died away there was still the moaning and fretting and troubled whimpering that reminded her of the plaints of an invalid pleading for help between paroxysms of pain. She was strangely depressed 203 by it, unaccountably distressed, and was glad when the first faint whitening of the window curtains told her of the dawn. She arose and dressed––after a moment’s hesitation––in the costume she had prepared the night before. Seth surely would not insist on the shooting trip in such weather, she thought, but it would please him to see her dressed for it. Besides, the temperature of her room reminded her that she would need warm clothes if she went out anywhere on such a day.
“Good, Marion!” cried Seth sure enough, when he saw her at the breakfast table. “Glad you’re not discouraged by a little wind.”
“But––you don’t mean to go on a day like this?”
“Why not?”
“The wind, and––we’ll get soaking wet.”
“No, it’s only a wind storm, and this is the tail end of it. The sun’ll be out in a couple of hours. We needn’t start in a hurry. We’ll leave the horses as they are––they’re all ready, bundles and the rest––until we see.”
Seth’s optimism annoyed her, but she felt encouraged when, after breakfast, she stepped out on the veranda and met the cold and quarrelsome day. A rough blast struck her in the face; she saw a ragged drift of clouds torn by the wind; and the whole landscape seemed to have undergone a melancholy change. Dispirited beyond measure, despite the one satisfaction that the weather gave, she re-entered the house, and sank uneasily into an armchair by the fire.
But Seth’s prediction was justified. Toward ten o’clock the wind ceased, and patches of blue began to 204 show in the blanket of gray. Claire shared Marion’s disinclination to go shooting on such a day (or any other kind of a day, for her part!), and they stood at the window actually deploring the blue rents in the clouds, when Marion uttered a sharp exclamation of surprise.