Frances could find no word to say of the horror and fear which possessed her, remembering all the way he would go through the storm homewards, the desolate road and wind-whipped, bleak fields and woods, and, down there between the hills, the narrow valley, torrent-riven.
XXI
At the breakfast the professor was irritably anxious. "I wish I knew of some way of getting at Montague this morning; he ought to have a telephone put in!"
"You know why he doesn't," said Frances gently.
"I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of him."
The cup Frances held clattered in her trembling hands. Sleep! She remembered the big fire, the bright light she had kept all the night; she remembered how she had walked her room, had undressed, gone to bed, gotten up, dressed again, and sat by the fire shaking like the trees outside before the heavy blasts; remembered how she had resented the blue of the sky, and the rose of the sunrise flushing the east, while far off the fringe of heavy clouds fled away, when she flung open the shutters to the morning; and how every moment since she had held herself tense, listening, straining, for the tragedy she felt the night held.
"That old woman might attend to the 'phone," said her father, going back to his grievance. Montague had said long ago that with his all morning and all afternoon absences from the house while his work took him from field to vineyard, from vineyard to mountain-top, a telephone was useless.
"I think I'll call up Frazier," he said at last, as he pushed back his chair, "he's near and might know."