“No, no, don’t, please don’t!” Mother begged. “You couldn’t do anything, and I don’t dast to go out—and I’m afraid to stay here alone.”
But Father was putting on his raincoat. “I’ll just run down and see—be right back.”
“Don’t go a step farther than the top of the cliff,” she wailed.
He hesitated. He wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be in the midst of heroic effort. The gods had set the stage for epic action that night, and his spirit was big with desire for bigness. It was very hard to promise to put goloshes upon his winged feet.
But Mother held out her hands. “Oh, I need you, Seth. You’ll stay near me, won’t you?”
There may have been lordly deeds in the surf that night—men gambling their lives to save strangers and aliens. One deed there certainly was—though the movies, which are our modern minstrelsy, will never portray it. While he strained with longing to go down and show himself a man—not just a scullion in an unsuccessful tea-room—Father stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the life-savers launch the boat, saw them disappear from the radius of the calcium carbide beach-light into the spume of surf. He didn’t even wait to see them return. Mother needed him, and he trotted back to tell her all about it.
They went happily to bed, and she slept with her head cuddled on his left shoulder, his left arm protectingly about her.
It was still raining when they awoke, a weary, whining drizzle. And Father was still virile with desire of heroism. He scampered out to see what he could of the wreck.
He returned, suddenly. His voice was low and unhappy as he demanded, “Oh, Mother, it’s— Come and see.”
He led her to the kitchen door and round the corner of the house. The beloved rose-arbor had been wrecked by the storm. The lattice-work was smashed. The gray bare stems of the crimson ramblers drooped drearily into a sullen puddle. The green settee was smeared with splashed mud.