last her mission was accomplished. But in this house, she had not found the comfort she had anticipated. It was just a house. It was not a home. And there was little warmth before the fireplace. Though the fire blazed merrily, for her there were only ashes on the hearth.
Yekial dozed in the evenings for awhile before the hearth. He never talked. Occasionally he smoked a pipe of vile tobacco. All hunched up in his chair, he looked like a formless animal. His face in the fireglow was uglier than ever. And outside the house the wind whipped itself into frenzy, frustrated trying to get in.
The wind was mad. It shrieked and wailed. It implored the cold fingers of the moon to come down and help to tear this obstinate house apart. The commotion made the place drearier and more forlorn than ever. And Mary Blaine murmured inaudibly: "There is no sound more melancholy than the sobbing of the wind."
Then a great blizzard came down from the North. For days they were cut off from everything. Not a soul passed their door. It was all Yekial could do to fight his way to the barns to feed the animals. It was like living in the heart of an icy desert with only great winds for company.
The world was deserted. Yet pandemonium existed. The shrieking of the weird cold blasts almost drove her frantic. Something of the elemental discord entered her soul. She walked through all the empty rooms. She swept the floors. She made beds in the spare rooms that had not been slept in.
By morning of the second day the storm abated, the wind died down but it still remained cloudy. As Mary gazed out of her bedroom window, the white country and the white sky seemed to merge into one mass. It was like living on the inner side of a huge white globe. With the passing of the winds a stillness descended over the house that was more deafening than the voice of the storm. She hated silence. Silence made her think of the whispering halls in the sinister house of John Rott. There is nothing to fear in shouting, a voice that the whole world may hear, but a murmuring menace is a horror.
48
