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Tolbecken
by Samuel Shellabarger
Part 1: Tolbecken Oak
Chapter 1
A month of hot weather preceded the storm; it was called the Great Storm of 1898 for the lifetime of generation. In the town of Dunstable it set an all-time record for damage.
The heat was leaden — the sort that in summer gives the Middle Atlantic states a flavor of the tropics — weather-breeding heat, everyone admitted. For several nights the sky had been full of heat lightning and a muster of clouds, but nothing happened. The mosquitoes whined undisturbed in the darkness; the drugged trees hung low over lawn and sidewalk; people sweltered in their beds, and the next day’s fever sent the thermometer up. The tension had to break — somewhere, soon. Finally, on the night of July fourteenth, it broke over Dunstable. From his bed, Jared Tolbecken could hear the voices from the lawn; the family was sitting up late. He could distinguish his grandfather’s full laugh, his mother’s exclamations, Aunt Joan Maylin’s downright voice, Uncle Vincent’s drawl, and Aunt Sophia’s plaintive argufying. The last two were guests for the night. Even Grandmother, whose broken hip usually kept her indoors, had been carried out to enjoy the imaginary coolness of the lawn. Her serene, modulated voice contrasted with the others’.
Jared envied them all with a child’s passion. Grownups had all the fun; they didn’t have to go to bed while it was still light. When he was grown-up, they told him, it would be different. But hadn’t he been growing up for eleven years, and wasn’t he still a little boy? To him, looking forward, the wait seemed endless.
Grownups were spoiled by their own privileges — they didn’t half taste the mystery of things. On great occasions, like the Fourth of July, his birthday in June, or special family celebrations, he had learned what night is like outdoors. Grownups wasted it sitting on the lawn. If he were free, he would be exploring the garden paths — utterly changed at that hour — blind paths, velvety black, and sweet with the smell of cedars or the dry odor of box. He would dare to visit the spring in the far corner, overhung with willows and wild cherry trees, where the Negroes said the ghost of a woman walked. The approach to the spring was through high dank weeds, fearsome even at midday. Or he would cross the wide oval of lawn between the elm-shadowed house and the stable to the sundial. Or, skirting the grounds between fence and shrubbery, he might come as far as the front gate, to gaze at the distant façade of the house, pearl-vague in the darkness. Here in the center of the lawn, alone as befitted its dignity, stood Tolbecken Oak, and hanging from its lowest branch the new swing that Grandfather had just had put up. In his thoughts Jared savored the delight of swinging there now, back and forth, higher and higher, feeling the sweet rush of night air.
From his bed he could see the mass of the oak blacker than the surrounding darkness; at times, in a glimmer of far-off lightning, it stood out distinct and gigantic. It was older even than the house — they said it was three hundred years old. Three hundred years! Before the country was settled, when the town of Dunstable itself was a forest! Grandfather had once showed him a book printed in 1760 which described that part of the state; such and such a place was said to be five miles from Tolbecken Oak, another place ten miles. As far back as anyone could remember, it had served as a standard of comparison: an old man was sound as Tolbecken Oak; a tree was half as large. Its lowest branch, to which the ropes of the swing were fastened, sprung from the great tree fifteen feet up.
How he would like to be swinging now beneath its canopy — higher, higher. . . .
A new sensation wakened him, a draft of cool air filling the room with a scent of honeysuckle. It billowed the window curtains. A shutter banged. From near and far outside came the swish of leaves, and with it the shiver of advancing rain. Then, white and perpendicular, a streamer of fire lashed through the sky, revealing for an instant citadels of cloud suspended above the earth, and, somewhere close by, a bolting crash, clear-cut, riveted home the first shot.
Storm. Jared sat straight up in his bed, tingling. He could hear a racing of footsteps through the house, a slamming of windows; from below on the side porch the creak of awnings being pulled up, and the rasp of chairs being drawn out of range of the downpour. Aunt Joan’s voice sounded here and there in command as usual — “Elmira, have a look at the attic. Carrie! Fetch in Mrs. Tolbecken’s shawl. It was left on the lawn. Afraid? Oh, hurry up! You ought to be ashamed. . . .” Tolbecken prepared its defenses.
The draft of air leaped into a gale. Between the nearing bolts of thunder, sheets of rain filled up the intervals with the roar of a torrent. The storm shouldered against the house. Its lightning, more and more vivid, showed it grappling with Tolbecken Oak, which looked foursquare and unbending as ever.
Jared’s door opened before a woman’s heavy figure that crossed the room and shut the window. “Mercy on us!” she muttered. “The floor will be ruined! Children can sleep through anything.”
“I’m not asleep, Aunt Joan. Can I get up?”
“All right,” she said, mopping the drenched floor. “Get up, but put your clothes on. Don’t catch cold.”
With a bound he was out of bed and pulling on his trousers. He felt wonderfully excited; storms at sea and beleaguered castles were jumbled together in his mind.
“Electricity’s off,” said Aunt Joan. “There’s no relying on these newfangled inventions. We’ll have to light candles.”
This was even better — the gale outside, the shadows wheeling on the walls, the uncertain flicker on brass and mahogany.
Candle in hand, he hurried out. Through the arched colonial window of the hall, blinking on and off in the lightning, he could see the rain whopped sidewise by the fury of the wind like a host of flung lances. Earsplitting, almost continuous detonations shook the house.
“Rufus!” called the voice of Grandmother downstairs. “Rufus Tolbecken! The stable’s hit. That last bolt . . . I saw it myself. You’d better get the horses out.”
And in answer, the even steadier voice of her husband, “Why?” “Fire!”
“There’ll be no fire with this cloudburst. What end was struck?”
“The North Street end.”
“No harm done. Gregory’s there. But I’ll go over and make sure.”
There was comfort in these voices, and something that gave the boy a feeling of pride. It would take more than a storm to make Aunt Joan or Grandfather and Grandmother afraid. But the group huddled at the foot of the central stairs and dimly apparent in the flutter of a candelabra was something else again. Here sat his mother with Aunt Sophia and the maids, caricatured by their shadow dance on the wall. Before them, irresolute, stood Uncle Vincent Tolbecken; the center of the house was supposed to be the safest from lightning, and he himself should protect and reassure his wife. The droop of his sandy mustache reflected the droop of his shoulders.
“It won’t amount to much,” he was saying. “It’s almost over. Lightning never strikes twice . . .”
As he spoke, the place rocked and flashed. The rain pounded on roof and windows like drumfire.
“It’s all right,” croaked Vincent. “Only a thunder shower.”
“It’s nothing of the kind,” said Aunt Joan, descending the steps and pushing past them. “It’s a hurricane, and it’ll be a mercy if the roof holds. I’ve never seen anything like it. But a peck of help you people are, hanging on to the stairs. Do you think that if the Lord wants you, He can’t reach you there?”
She stood confronting them, square, muscular, hard. Her face, humorous and shrewd, showed the chiselings of sixty years.
“I don’t understand young people these days,” she continued, eying her nephew and the others. “No spunk. When I was young, there was nothing on earth I liked better than a storm. Still do, except for the damage. . . . Vincent, you ought to go to the stable with your father. He shouldn’t go alone.”
A sudden flash and roar stunned them. The women on the stairs screamed. Vincent Tolbecken clutched at the banister. Even Aunt Joan exclaimed, “Great Governor! That struck close — one of the trees, likely. I’ll have to see.” And turning away, she hurried along the hall.
“Vincent,” said Aunt Sophia, “you stay where you are. Husband and wife belong together. If the Judge is fool enough to go out on a night like this, your being along won’t help him.”
Vincent stayed. His tractability was one of the many traits which had left him what he was, a kindly nobody, wistful for the manhood he had never had courage enough to earn.
“Come here to mother, Jare,” called Bella Tolbecken. “You’ll be safer here.”
But the boy, afraid of capture, stole off to the rear of the house and down the service stairs. At the door to the pantry he encountered Aunt Joan. “Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Out with Grandfather.”
“The idea!”
“Yes, I am. Please, Aunt Joan . . .” He squirmed under her grip.
“I should say not! What do you want to get soaked for?” And when he answered like the hero of a favorite book, “My place is with him,” she burst out laughing.
“You’re an idiot. You’re not a fraid-cat, though. Come along and don’t make trouble. There’s something queer about this storm — it’s the worst I’ve ever seen. Maybe the house’ll be struck next. If it is, it is; but we’ve got to be ready for anything.” She pushed him along in front of her. “We’ll watch it together,” she added. “There’ll be a lot of wreckage in town tonight.”
“Is that little Jare?” queried a voice from a nearby room.
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“Come here. Having a good time? This is a July celebration, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Rachel Tolbecken sat opposite one of the windows of the drawing room, unlighted except by the flashes of lightning. She watched the disorder of nature with a sort of amused surprise. Her tranquillity, in part the result of long invalidism, was too deep to be disturbed by what she called fireworks. Her hands, with their touch of lawn at the wrists, lay quiet on the arms of the chair; her head, with its tulle cap, rested a little languidly against the back. The portraits on the wall of Great-grandfather Jared Tolbecken in his stock, of Great-great-grandfather Rufus in his wig, and of Grandfather in a frock coat looked no less disturbed than she.
“A fine spectacle,” she observed. “Reminds me of the storm in Macbeth. I’ll never forget how Edwin Booth played it. I’ll have to read you the parts about the witches.”
“Reminds me of Judgment Day,” put in Aunt Joan. “Come on, Jared, we can see more of it from the hall window.”
Side by side there, they stood looking out at the night, now black as pitch and again bright with veins of fire that showed, beyond the gardens of Tolbecken, the circle of the town. Points of light appeared dimly, for the whole population was up, the inhabitants of each house cut off in the welter of wind and water and forced to watch out the night alone. Far off, several barns were ablaze, in spite of the downpour. The lightning bolts were striking within the town itself. Close at hand, the familiar outlines of a tree had altered; a great limb dangled beside the trunk. And everywhere, houses, trees, the very earth seemed to be bracing themselves against continued shock.
“ ‘Behold,’ ” said Aunt Joan, “ ‘the name of the Lord cometh from far, burning with His anger, and the burden thereof is heavy.’ If it isn’t Judgment Day and we live through it, you’ll remember this all your life.”
She broke off at a blast of wind behind them which was abruptly cut off by the closing of a door.
“Well, Rufus, I’m glad you’re back. Began to worry about your going alone. Everything all right?”
“Some bricks knocked down, and a considerable leak in one corner. The horses were frightened, but Gregory and I calmed them.”
“You’re wet through, I suppose.”
“Only my feet. Get me some slippers, will you, Joan?”
In oilskins and sou’wester, with his square white beard showing beneath it, Judge Rufus Tolbecken looked like a frigate master just coming in from the quarter-deck. But when he unclasped his slicker and removed the hat, which he hung carefully above the iron base of the umbrella stand, he appeared in his usual summer suit of pongee, a tall, loose-limbed figure, gaunt but still powerful, topped by the dome of a massive bold head. He belonged to the angular American type that Abraham Lincoln represented. There was a leonine dignity in his bearing and voice, but something childlike and gentle in the eyes, and sadness in the deep lines above the beard.
“Why, little Jare,” he said, beaming, “up and around? Making a night of it?”
“Yes,” snorted Aunt Joan, coming back with the slippers, “and wanted to follow you out to the stable, what’s more — said his place was with you.”
“And so it is.” Bending down, the Judge caught up his grandson and swung him back and forth.
“Heavy! So heavy! Eleven years old! But I can lift you yet. Eh, can’t I?” Then, releasing him, but with a hand on his shoulder, “Where are Vincent and the others?”
“On the stairs,” said Aunt Joan.
Rufus Tolbecken laughed. “ ‘Cowards die many times,’ ” he quoted, “but I’ll say this for them, that I’ve never seen the equal of tonight. Here, Jared, give a pull, will you?”
Seating himself, he presented an old-fashioned half boot, which Jared, braced at the other end, worked off. Having changed to his slippers, he strode hand in hand with his grandson to the study, a room lying secluded in a wing of the house, smelling of old leather and books. An oil lamp with a green shade stood on the desk.
“It seems to be blowing over,” said the Judge, as the intervals between flash and thunder lengthened. “A good thing, too, for there’ve been a lot of people tonight caught short and a little uneasy. Nothing like a storm to remind folks of their last hour. We’ll sit here awhile and then go to bed. It’s getting late.”
A renewed pelting on the roof and booming of wind interrupted him. They preluded a fresh outburst of the storm, which had either circled back or was being reinforced by a second gale from the north. Shorter than the first, but more furious, it fell upon the town with a general discharge of lightning. It was as if all the resources of the elements, baffled thus far, were being thrown into a last attack.
From the door of the study, at which she had appeared as if from a crash of thunder, even Aunt Joan confessed alarm.
“It’s pretty bad, Rufus, and it’s getting worse. But it’s not so much the lightning as the wind — I don’t know whether the walls can stand it. The roof’s split open in three places. I’ve been mopping so much water that I’m tired.”
The Judge smiled. “Don’t worry about the walls, Joan. People built homes to last in those days — twelve-inch timbers strong as Tolbecken Oak. As for lightning, if Bella and Sophy are scared, let them go down to the cellar. I’ve been told that’s the safest.”
“It’s flooded,” said Aunt Joan.
“Well, then, let them stay where they are. Tell ‘em they won’t know it if they’re hit. . . . I’d better step in and see Rachel. With her heart trouble, she oughtn’t to get worked up.”
“Rubbish!” returned his sister-in-law. “She’s asleep. We Maylins never took any stock in nerves.”
Turned toward the window with Jared between them, they stood absorbed by the splendor and savagery of the storm. An almost continuous illumination disclosed mass upon mass of clouds surging toward the horizon, disclosed details of house and tree ghastly and forlorn, but it showed also, unswayed by the wind, solid as a tower, the great oak in the center of the lawn. Tempered by countless storms, it stood assured by its centuries of life, keeping its watch, an assertion of the past, an assertion of vigor and continuity.
The flagstaff midway toward the gate had been splintered; bolts had maimed several trees.
“I wonder what’s happened in town,” said Rufus Tolbecken. “Jerry-built modern houses won’t hold against this. We’ll have bad news tomorrow. Besides, the river’s rising. There’ll be damage from flood. But, you know, I think our place has been the bull’s-eye, and we’ve lasted it out.”
They remained staring at the window.
Then suddenly, as if all the fire in heaven were focused in one ball of flame, the lightning struck again, obscuring what it had hit by its unbearable vividness. The concussion of the report sent them staggering back, ears ringing, bewildered for a moment by the interplay of filaments across the retina. Hard upon this came a succession of crashes, a thudding and a rending, and a fountain of sparks in the night.
Too frightened to cry and still dazed by the shock, Jared heard his grandfather speaking in a voice entirely new to him.
“Look,” he was saying, “the oak!”
Some echoing flashes, glancing back from the clouds, once more lighted the lawn. Its immemorial sentinel had been stricken. A splintered trunk, a remnant of branches sinking in their turn, the glow of a thunderbolt at the heart were all that were left.
Aunt Joan gave a low cry, but said nothing. Urgent entreaties from the hall asking whether the house had been struck passed unheeded.
“The oak,” repeated Grandfather in the same odd voice. And after a long time, “I remember coming back from the war . . . I could see the top of it across the houses. . . . I remember how Father and Mother used to sit out there in the evening. . . .”
“Well,” said Aunt Joan suddenly, “everything comes to an end. You can’t alter that. We’ll plant ivy around the trunk — there’ll be that much left. A kind of monument. . . . I’ll go along now and tell the others what’s happened.”
Silent because Grandfather was silent, distressed by what he could not wholly understand, the boy remained leaning against the side of Rufus Tolbecken’s chair. The strong profile of the man stood out against the lamplight. One hand smoothed his beard, but Jared could see — as one by one the remaining branches of the oak crashed down — the hand tightening as if in pain.
“Sounds like the snapping of a cable,” said the Judge at length. “And that’s what it is — one strand after the other.”
He threw out an arm and lifted the boy to his lap. The thunder rumbled far off; the rain lessened, became at last a pattering, followed by the splash of drops among leaves. A cool night air stirred.
“Time to sleep now, little boy,” he muttered. “The storm has passed.”
