Now the buzzing broke out, and, not so tranquil, she noted the light. She took 11 in her left hand and shot it in. "Yes, Mrs. Talbot," she said quickly. "I'm ringing him."
After a while, she said: "I'm sorry, Mrs. Talbot. Doctor Bull can't be back yet. I think probably Mrs. Cole went to the movies in Sansbury, so she ought to be up on the evening train any moment. She may know where the doctor is. I'll try to get her as soon as the train's in."
Mrs. Talbot said nothing at all. There was simply a silence; then the click of her hanging up. Immediately came another sharp signal, a new light glowing. Mrs. Banning's precise voice gave May the number of the house behind the Cobble where Mr. Hoyt, the artist, lived. "Thank you," May said carefully, for Mrs. Banning was supposed to be the one who had complained to the district superintendent about what was called "indifference and slovenly service." Although May guessed what the purpose of the call was, and although the company had been known to discharge people for this seriously regarded offence, May remained quietly, the key caught towards her, listening in.
The voice which answered was Mr. Hoyt's daughter; a soft, flat yet fresh voice, distinctively Southern, skipping the hard consonants with an air of trustful sweetness. "Oh, Valeria," Mrs. Banning said, sweet too, but severe under it, "has Virginia left yet? I want to speak to her."
"She's right here, Mrs. Banning. She's just this minute going."
Plainly Valeria had now put, ignorant of the result, the mouthpiece against her breast. Slightly hollow, but clear to May and of course to Mrs. Banning, she could be heard saying: "Ginny! it's your mother. She sounds kind of mad, honey."
The faint jar of someone taking the telephone came through, and Virginia Banning's voice, vehement, said: "Yes, Mother. I'm coming! "
Mrs. Banning said: "Virginia, I think this is very inconsiderate of you. You know perfectly well that Larry wants the Ford to go to Sansbury."
"Lord!" said Virginia Banning. 'It's hardly half-past five! Even if he were going to New York, he wouldn't have to hurry —"
"Now, Virginia, I am not going to argue with you.
Larry has his evening arranged, and he's all ready —"
"All right! I told you I was coming, didn't I? I can't come while I'm on the telephone, can I?" She was inspired suddenly and said, violently ironic, "Why don't you make Guy let Larry have his car? Nobody's going to use that to-night —"
"Virginia, if you are not home in fifteen minutes —"
May could hear the crack of the replaced receiver. Mrs. Banning hung up then, but not before her voice, faint as it turned, probably towards Mr. Banning, observed something about such a problem.
May guessed that it was a problem. Four months ago, Virginia had been sent home from a girl's school she went to. Doris Clark had listened in on enough of the telephoning which attended this to be able to report that Virginia had so far forgotten the ladylike requirements of her sixteen years as to slap what Doris called the Principal's face. "She was so mad, she was crying," Doris added. "She said the Principal was a God damned old fool, right to Mrs. Banning; if you can imagine-—"
May could imagine. She saw Virginia Banning from a distance, but with a special sympathy. May, who hardly ever got anything she wanted herself, could feel for someone in practically the same situation. The fact that Virginia had, or could have, almost every single thing May would like but didn't get wasn't the point, either. She felt quite sorry, sitting there facing the switchboard. She even wished that she were intimate enough with Virginia to be able to tell her the importance of one great truth that merely being six years older than Virginia had taught May. There was a mercy in the world which you might not at first recognize. If you just kept on not getting what you wanted, you would stop wanting it in any painful way. It would be all right. You would learn to like what you had.
May looked out of the window and saw that while she had been absorbed the lights had come on up and down between the thick lower trunks of the elms. She arose, her wires following her, and pressed the switches, lighting first the porcelain-faced sign with the deep blue silhouette of the bell on the lawn, and then the bulb over the door on the porch. The room lights she didn't want; there was great comfort in this warm dusk.
As though it had chosen to take advantage of her momentary moving away, she saw the pilot light glow. Construction camp, she noted. "Number, please," she said, not taking time to seat herself.
"Listen," said an annoyed voice, "get me New York —quick, will you? The office will be shutting up."
"I will connect you with long distance at Torrington," May said. "One moment, please, Mr. Snyder." She drew out a toll-line plug.
There was a click, followed by the words: "Torrington operator."
May said: "New Winton calling, New York, New York, please." The line hummed higher and a snappish voice, strangely familiar when you remembered that she had no idea what the girl who spoke with it looked like, chanted, "My Danbury lines are engaged, New Winton. I will connect you via New Haven." Out of the murk of sound a voice like one from Heaven observed, "Hello—hello—hello —" The ring and click augmented with a noise like the rush of winds on the miles of dark wires.
"New Haven operator," remarked a new voice, remote, intensely articulate.
"Would you kindly ring New York for me?"
That was Torrington, May knew; and at once it turned back on her. "New Winton! Have you a number?"
When she had obtained it from Mr. Snyder, she twitched the key for Torrington's attention. "This is the New Haven operator," protested the far-away voice. "I am holding this line for Torrington. Please get off."
"My call, New Haven," May said. "New Winton calling New York."
"Thank you." The far-away voice sharpened officiously. "Kindly route through Danbury, New Winton. We aren't supposed to take calls —"
"New York City," said a disinterested, new voice. "Number, please?"
"I will give you Torrington, New York —"
"Hello!" objected May. "Here's your call, New York. New Winton, Connecticut, calling Ashland four. . .
May could hear the final throb of the ringing. The ease of these long leaps from city to city more distant absorbed her. She felt translated, gone from here; just as it gave her a small, ever-new pleasure to know that the ringing she heard so clearly was heard, too, through the mutter of New York. The voice that sounded next would be from an office somewhere in the jumble of great towers, looking out on the long angling shadows and glowing murky gorges between enormous buildings, thick pinnacles lighted for the end of the afternoon. "Interstate Light and Power."
"New Winton, Connecticut, calling," answered May. She held the key a moment, refreshed by distance, reluctant to return. Mr. Snyder was saying: "Interstate? Transmission Line Construction. Division three. Snyder speaking. Hughes there? Yes!" he broke out. "Yes! Well, stop him, sister, stop him! This is important."
After a moment, he cleared his throat, adding: "Oh, hello. Hughes? Snyder. New Winton. Sure, the truck came. Is anything wrong? Say, what the hell was the idea of sending those insulators? Haven't they got any specifications? What? They're five-unit strings. Well, all they need is some common sense! How are you going to hang two-twenty kilovolt conductors on them? Yeah, I know. He ought to be back selling coffee percolators. Sure, my fourteens probably went down to the Delaware job. Well, listen, Hughes; straighten up, will you? This damn storm has held everything up. We're scheduled to be through next week —"
Regretful, May let it go, making a mental note to ask Joe right away what five-unit strings were. It cheered him, she found, if, as soon as she got in, she could tell him something which he would then have to explain to her in great detail. She was still standing, and now she heard Helen Webster's overshoe-muffled feet on the porch. It was two minutes to six.
"Hello, darling," said Helen. "Say, this is like an oven!" She parted her coat. "And how about some light?" She turned it on.
After that she shrugged her coat off, jerked the hat from her head. Holdin
g both in one hand, she stooped unsteadily, loosened the fastenings of the overshoes, kicked them off against the wall. Then she hung up the hat and coat, patted her hair, and came down and hopped on the stool.
Blinking in the hard blaze of light, May slipped off the earphone, unhooked the noose of the mouthpiece. She said to Helen Webster: "You have the camp there, talking to New York, via Torrington, New Haven."
The buzzing broke out, the pilot light glowed. "That's Mrs. Talbot again," May said, glancing at the panel. "She's been trying to get Doctor Bull all afternoon."
Helen shoved the earpiece down her disordered black hair. "Number, please?" Her hand with the plug out ready to ring 11 faltered. She slid her other hand over the mouthpiece, turned her dark eyes back on May.
"Oh, my God!"she said. "Listen, May. That poor kid is dead!"
2
In bad weather, or in winter, few cars attempted the climb to Cold Hill. It would be absolutely impossible for the school buses, so Cold Hill continued to have its small, shabby, one-room school for the children of the families living in the dozen poor farms which succeeded each other along the cleared strip of barren upland. No one of any means or influence lived on these drearily wind-swept acres, fifteen hundred feet, every foot difficult, above New Winton in the valley, so there was no reason for New Winton to add the great expense of making the road passable to its already sufficient troubles with roads.
In the case of the Cold Hill road, there was a further paralysing point. At the end of the seventeenth century the first white men to see and covet the valley had stood at this edge of the eastern hills. They descended—or if they did not, their wagons and ox-teams must have, for it was the one possible place—just where the Cold Hill road still came down. For at least three-quarters of a century this road, not then so much worse than other roads, was the way to New Winton. They called it the Hartford Post Road. Now described for the purpose as the Historic Hartford Post Road, its plight was pressed regularly by New Winton's representative in the legislature, to the attention of the Committee on Roads, Bridges, and Rivers. As New Winton was, if possible, less important to Hartford than Cold Hill was to New Winton, for thirty years it had been just as regularly disregarded. The State Highway Department had never been instructed to acknowledge responsibility. Perhaps it never would be; but as long as New Winton hoped the state might sometime take it over, there was little likelihood of the town doing anything.
Though this was Friday morning, Joel Parry hadn't seen anyone try the Cold Hill road since the storm on Tuesday. At nine o'clock, standing aimless in his barnyard, not sure yet how best to waste the day, he was interested to notice a motor-car. It was rounding the dammed-up, frozen pond which, fenced about and posted with No Trespassing signs, was the reservoir of New Winton's water-supply system.
Joel's eyes were not good. Blinking against so clear a morning and so much painful snow filling this high hollow behind the Cobble, he couldn't tell who it was. It might be someone coming to see him; or someone going on around the Cobble to the Lincolns'. People going to the Hoyts' usually came the other way, but most cars were bound for one or the other. He took several steps down towards the roadside to ask the driver, because he could tell him that the Lincolns weren't there. Like Mr. Hoyt, Mr. Lincoln was a painter—an artist, that was—and had a good deal of what Joel understood was temperament. It had made him gather up his wife, infant son, and servant, close his house, and depart on Monday with fantastic violence for New York. He had stopped to make an arrangement with Joel about keeping an eye on the place.
At the roadside, huddled in his mackintosh and ready to triumph over the driver with his information, Joel saw first, in the corner of the wind-shield, a white oblong card with black letters. Not yet able to read it, Joel did not need to. He knew at once that it said: Board of Health.
He turned squarely round, retiring with surly preoccupation as though on some important errand to the barn. He heard the car come abreast and pass him. His curiosity made him look to see which way it would go at the fork beyond. To his astonishment, it went right, and he could not stop himself from shouting out, sour; in a sense, jeering: "You'll never make Cold Hill! "
Not heeding him, the car jolted into the lower woods. The angle of the barn hid it from sight.
Doctor Bull heard Joel. Joel was one of his inveterate enemies. Joel had been, without the least relenting, ever since the summer afternoon eight years ago when his boy, Joel, died. Nothing like the course of events to establish a diagnosis; and young Joel's complaint had been appendicitis after all. They got him to the Torrington hospital twenty minutes before his advanced peritonitis finished him. An interne there, not aware that any physician had been consulted in the case, chided Joel. The patient should have been brought in two days ago. Joel, interpreting the information in his own way, said widely that Doctor Bull had killed his son. When you got right down to it, George Bull guessed he had, for he had administered a dose of castor-oil and told them not to worry. On the other hand, if he were to send everybody he had found in forty years' practice with symptoms of a moderate bellyache over to a hospital miles away for observation —
Now, actually seeing the Cold Hill road begin its climb, George Bull saw too that Joel was probably right; it looked impossible. More pleased than not, he roared out loud, exhilarated by the freezing blue sky, the bold rise of the snowy woods, and something to get to grips with. He opened his engine wide and rushed to the attempt.
There was a quick loss of headway; a slowing, vain jangle of his chains searching for a hold. Snow fanned up furiously, spurting under his hind wheels. Since he was presently making no progress, his engine stalled. He eased the car down to the bottom, turned it round, started up hill again, uproarious, backing this time.
To his slight surprise, he was successful. The snow, mauled to the underlying dirt by his first attempt, gave him some traction to start, and so just enough momentum to continue. Grunting, his face scarlet with cold and exertion, he peered over his shoulder, out and up, his hands busy with the wheel, twisting to take every advantage the surface gave him. In this way, uncertainly but steadily, he covered slightly more than half the ascent. He saw then that the bad curve ahead was going to be too much. He swept his eyes about, jerked powerfully to the right, and backing straight through an unbarred gate in the rail fence, found himself in an open field. Wheeling on this wind-thinned, never trodden snow, he was able to go into second. Picking a low place, he rode down the overgrowth of small bushes separating this field from the next, drove on up the slope between the spaced corn shocks, elated by the excellence of his inspiration. With surprisingly little difficulty he reached at last the fence behind the Crowes' barn.
Out, he put his bag on the running-board, stamped in the snow, shaking his shabby racoon coat into place. The red fleshy mass of his cheeks, the great bulging sides of his nostrils, red, too; the red, strong solid lips and blue eyes, wrinkled by the years at the corners but very bright and shining, gave him the air of a robust, benevolent Santa Claus. He beat his gloved hands together, hard, making a sound like Olympian applause while he looked down on the whole white valley.
New Winton lay there, but George Bull could not see it. The crest of the Cobble, now far below, concealed the village. He could see fields just west of it; the red brick, extensive slate roofs and cupola with golden top of the new village school; and part of the Episcopal cemetery. Beyond that, the fringe of bare trees marked the edge of the frozen river. He could even make out a small truck moving down the road to the heavy-beamed steel arc of the bridge.
Looking down more directly, between the slope of the hill he stood on and the low bump of the Cobble on which a thin screen or scruff of trees had been left, there was the round spot of the reservoir, adequately isolated. Two brooks, which joined with a now sunken spring to feed it, could be traced by their rocky courses some distance up and back through the irregular hillside. North, were the roofs of Joel Parry's house and barns. Seen from here, it looked very much
as though Joel's barnyard would drain into the reservoir. George Bull wished that such a thing could be suspected. Then, as Health Officer, he could have Joel's whole place condemned and make him a lot of trouble. As a matter of fact, Joel's land -was on a lower level, sloping into the gentle depression widening on, north, between Cold Hill and the northern point of the Cobble. Following this funnel-shaped falling away, one could see, well north, clear through the naked trees, the French provincial outlines of the house Norman Hoyt's cover-designing for a popular weekly had financed. It looked very pleasant this snowy morning. Thin blue smoke mounted, it seemed as much as fifty yards, straight up from the chimney at the end.
Out of the small gap where the bridge road went west through the hills to Truro came the newest feature of the valley. George Bull hadn't seen the Interstate Light & Power Company's high tension transmission line with all the steel up before. It was said to be the most considerable yet erected in the East, and George Bull could believe it. Even at this height the towers marched in tremendous parade. Grey skeleton galvanized steel, they crossed the narrow river, the flat fields, and, high above a special wire guard, US6W. They were hard to overlook; they were to carry 220,000 volts, and it was deemed expedient to lift up such a thunderbolt on towers ninety-seven feet tall where there was any chance of people moving around and under them. Once across the valley, they shortened to get over the wooded rise which turned the railroad and US6W into two separate south-bound channels. The line took, in effect, four relatively squat steps uphill and across the summit. Now the great towers were resumed again, three of them standing at thousand-foot intervals between the south slope of the Cobble and the north end of a marshy sheet of water close to the railroad track, called Bull's Pond.
The Last Adam Page 2