Wing turned in evident dismay. "Why you up so early?" he asked with the childlike freedom of the Oriental. "Those girls heap lazy! not come down yet—house all dark." He spread his slender brown hands in feigned disgust. "I gless you not know that big tree fall over las night? Most hit my klitchen. You come see." He threw open the screen, pointing beyond. Isabel saw a Monterey pine low and done for by the storm. Heavy, drenched branches, crushed and aromatic, rose from the ground to the top of a nearby porch, which had just escaped them. Years of growth and vigor were down with a blast from the surcharged sky. She seemed to feel the human significance of the fallen pine.
"Poor thing!" she exclaimed, peering into upturned limbs of the vanquished tree. "Poor thing!"
Wing beamed. His white teeth flashed credulous interest. "You think that tree get hurt—all same me?" he demanded. Isabel saw that she was planting fresh superstition on celestial soil.
"I am not quite sure," she answered. "Still, a great tree could hardly tear away from earth without feeling it. It must have suffered," she maintained. Unconsciously she was thinking of her husband. That Philip had been uprooted, cast down like the pine filled her with dread as she went quickly from the kitchen. But the storm, which left the house in total darkness during the night had also interfered with telephone service. After vain attempts to communicate with the central office, she dashed off a note to a well-known nerve specialist. She begged him to come at once, explaining that her husband was too ill to leave his bed. From the terrace she watched the gardener depart with her note. She felt at last like one who stakes all on a final venture. Would the doctor come soon? Would Philip resent the visit? Above all, how should she break the news to the invalid, who begged to be left alone? "Don't call a doctor," he had pleaded; and again she wondered if she had been wise in a grave emergency. The house was now astir. Belated maids were at work. Soon shrill exclamations arose from the wet garden. Madame had discovered the fallen pine, to fly below with the boy. Reginald was proudly equipped with rubber boots. His red coat flashed as he outran his excited companion. Isabel translated the French woman's lament for the lost tree; then the boy cried out in distress. His mother reached his side to find him in tears, holding a dead oriole. The once gay, golden little creature lay limp in the child's hand.
"Poor birdy! See, he's all, all broken!" he bemoaned. "Can't you mend him, mother dear? Can't you make him stand up?"
"He has been hurt by the storm," Isabel explained, stroking the feathers of the little victim. "Perhaps he lived in the pine tree. We may find his nest."
Reginald began to search along the path, while Isabel found a sharpened stick. When she came to a clump of ferns she bent and quickly dug a tiny bed in the wet earth. Her son, running back, saw that the oriole was gone.
"There wasn't any nest!" he shouted, gazing incredulously at his mother's empty hand, "And I suppose the poor birdy's all mended. Why didn't you wait? I wanted—I wanted to see him fly away." Fresh tears betokened the boy's disappointment. Isabel felt justified in the deception, as she led the child indoors. He would understand soon enough.
Wing had just brought back a dainty tray, with everything on it declined by the master. The good fellow was greatly distressed. "Boss not eat—he die! Sure!" he muttered.
Isabel went above. She felt again that she had done right in calling a physician, and strove for courage to announce the approaching visit. When she entered her husband's room he seemed to be dozing. She did not rouse him. Perhaps, after all, sleep would prove to be Philip's best medicine, and something whispered that her apparent anxiety was not good for the broken man she loved. She went out, acknowledging a mistake. When Philip awoke she would tell him about the doctor, with incidental lightness. Then sooner than she expected she heard an automobile and knew that her note had been timely. The specialist was at hand—in the hall below. She could not prepare Philip for an unwelcome call. But she was eager to unburden her heart, willing to rest her fear with one who ought to assume it. And at once she told of her husband's early education, of the first success of his priesthood, of his ambition for a great Middle West cathedral, of the bishop's unjust course, of Philip's natural struggle, followed with excommunication from the Church; then all too soon—before he could readjust his life—of the public humiliation in the old mission. She kept nothing back but her own hard part as the wife of an apostate priest. The dread that she had been the sole cause of a brilliant man's undoing she bravely acknowledged. Philip could not forget, could not supplement his relinquished work with domestic happiness.