She went out, but Eveline Annersly sat a while thoughtfully by the open window. What she had expected had at last come to pass, and she had the satisfaction which does not always attend the efforts of the matrimonial schemer; for there was no longer any doubt that Carrie Leland loved her husband. Once more, as Nature will often have it, like had drawn to unlike, with a fusion of discordant qualities in indissoluble and harmonious union, that what the one lacked the other might supply. The pair she had brought together were no longer two but one, which, while she was quite aware that it did not always happen, was, when it did, like the springing up of the wheat—a mystery and a miracle.
Eveline Annersly was old enough to know that there are many mysteries, but that by love alone man may come nearest to their comprehension.
Then she remembered that it was getting late, and, leaving the window open, for the night was hot and still, sought her room, and in another half-hour was sound asleep. She had slept several hours, when she was awakened by a queer sound that seemed to come from outside through the open door. It was a dull noise, which, accustomed as she had grown to the beat of hoofs, suggested a company of mounted men riding up out of the prairie. The sound kept increasing, until she could have fancied that it was made by a regiment, and then suddenly swelled into the roar of a brigade of cavalry going by on the gallop. The house seemed to reel as under a blow, the doors swung to with a crash, and there was a clatter of things hurled down in the adjoining room. Then she rose and flung on a dressing-gown, and, crossing the room, stopped when she had clutched the door handle, almost afraid to open it, bewildered by the indescribable tumult. At last a gleam of light appeared between the chinks. Mustering courage to open the door, she saw Carrie standing in the room, half dressed, with a candle in her hand. That was just for a moment, for the feeble gleam went out, and she groped her way through black darkness towards the girl.
"What is it?" she gasped.
"The hail!" said Carrie, hoarsely. "Come with me. We must shut the window quick."
It cost them both an effort, and Carrie was some little time lighting the lamp when they had accomplished it. Then Eveline Annersly sank into the nearest chair, with her arm about the shoulders of the girl who knelt beside her. Even with the windows shut, the lamplight flickered, and, when it fell upon her, Carrie's face showed set and white.
"Ah," she said, "the wheat! It will all be cut down by morning, and Charley ruined."
It was a minute or two before Eveline Annersly quite understood her, for there was just then a deafening crash of thunder, and, after it, the stout wooden building appeared to rock at the onslaught of an icy wind that struck through every crevice with a stinging chill. The hail roared on walls and shingled roof with a bewildering din. Then the uproar slackened a little, and, as she glanced towards the melting ice which had beaten into the room, it seemed to her scarcely possible that Leland's crop could have escaped disaster. She had never seen hail like that in England; in fact, it scarcely seemed hail at all, but big lumps of ice, and the crash of it upon the roof was like the roar upon a beach of surf-rolled stones.
The sound of it, and the wild wailing of the gale, sapped her courage; so she understood the strained look in Carrie's eyes. There are times when men, as well as women, stand appalled by the elemental fury, and, shaking off all restraint that a complex civilisation may have laid upon them, become wholly human and primitive again. Carrie was half crouching at her aunt's feet, gazing up at her with wild, fierce eyes. Eveline Annersly shuddered a little as she glanced at her.
"Will the house stand?" she gasped.