were at the beach and they watched the storm from the door of the boathouse. It raged for half an hour and then blew off to the west, leaving the air chill, bitter, and clean; but the afternoon was over.
While the children were having their supper, Jim went up to the corn patch and set and baited his traps. As he started down the hill, he smelled baking cake from the kitchen. The sky had cleared, the light on the mountains was soft, and the house seemed to have all its energies bent toward dinner. He saw Nils by the chicken house and called good evening to him, but Nils didn’t reply.
Mrs. Garrison, Jim, and Ellen had cocktails before they went in to dinner, then wine, and when they took their brandy and coffee onto the terrace, they were slightly drunk. The sun was setting.
“I got a letter from Reno,” Mrs. Garrison said. “Florrie wants me to bring Carlotta to New York when I go down on the twelfth for the Peyton wedding.”
“Shay will die,” Ellen said.
“Shay will perish,” Mrs. Garrison said.
The sky seemed to be full of fire. They could see the sad, red light through the pines. The odd winds that blow just before dark in the mountains brought, from farther down the lake, the words of a song, sung by some children at a camp there:
“There’s a camp for girls
On Bellows Lake.
Camp Massasoit?s
Its name.
From the rise of sun
Till the day is done,
There is lots of fun
Down there…”
The voices were shrill, bright, and trusting. Then the changing wind extinguished the song and blew some wood smoke down along the slate roof to where the three people sat. There was a rumble of thunder.
“I never hear thunder,” Mrs. Garrison said, “without recalling that Enid Clark was struck dead by lightning.”
“Who was she?” Ellen said.
“She was an extraordinarily disagreeable woman,” Mrs. Garrison said. “She took a bath in front of an open window one afternoon and was struck dead by lightning. Her husband had wrangled with the bishop, so she wasn’t buried from the cathedral. They set her up beside the swimming pool and had the funeral service there, and there wasn’t anything to drink. We drove back to New York after the ceremony and your father stopped along the way at a bootlegger’s and bought a case of Scotch. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a football game and a lot of traffic outside Princeton. We had that French-Canadian chauffeur, and his driving had always made me nervous. I spoke to Ralph about it and he said I was a fool, and five minutes later the car was upside down. I was thrown out of the open window into a stony field, and the first thing your father did was to look into the luggage compartment to see what had happened to the Scotch. There I was, bleeding to death, and he was counting bottles.”
Mrs. Garrison arranged a steamer rug over her legs and looked narrowly at the lake and the mountains. The noise of footsteps on the gravel drive alarmed her. Guests? She turned and saw that it was Nils Lund. He left the driveway for the lawn and came across the grass toward the terrace, shuffling in shoes that were too big for him. His cowlick, his short, faded hair, his spare figure, and the line of his shoulders reminded Jim of a boy. It was as if Nils’s growth, his spirit, had been stopped in some summer of his youth, but he moved wearily and without spirit, like a brokenhearted old man. He came to the foot of the terrace and spoke to Mrs. Garrison without looking at her. “I no move the lilies, Mrs. Garrison.”
“What, Nils?” she asked, and leaned forward.
“I no move the lilies.”
“Why not?”
