HOME ON THERANGE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 86, 22 January 1942, Page 7

HOME ON THERANGE

By BENTLEY RIDGE.

(Copyright).

CHAPTER XVI. EARTHQUAKE. * How the stoicism of these people put all her early fears of discomfort to shame, Myrle thought. Jack Henty departed in his rattling old car, and Myrle wondered how he expected to make a hundred miles in a day so easily. *■ At eight o’clock she rang the Barbours. “There seems to be very little change,” said Mrs. Barbour. “She came out of the anaesthetic, and was conscious for a little while. She asked for George and they sent for him from his hotel; my sister was there. She told me Rosemary asked him if she would be well by Christmas—they were to be married at Christmas you know. Isn’t it tragic ? Even if all goes well, of course, she® 5 won’t be fit by Christmas. Poor George!” “It sounds, then, as though she’s a little better?” Myrle managed to say. “They think she’s holding her own; though she was unconscious again when my sister, left half-an-hour ago. Poor dear, she was up all night —-quite worn out with anxiety.”

“Will you tell her how sorry I am,” said Myrle. Saying she would ring in the evening she rang off. She was glad that Rosemary was holding her own. But there was pain in admitting how little she had really forced herself to face the inevitability of Tellforth marrying Rosemary when she was well. The atmosphere of tragedy surrounding her would make it quite unavoidable.

Suppressing her unhappy thoughts, Myrle busied herself about the house. There was not a sound to be heard, not even a dog *barking, for the men had gone out to the far side of the station to get some sheep down off a steep face. Rarest* of all things, the day was still and overcast. She looked out from the verandah. The country lay solid and dead-looking in the dull light. Suddenly the fowls set up an agitated clamour in the henrun. Myrle went to see what was the matter, but found nothing wrong* Towards noon she was getting the lunch ready in the kitchen. Evelyn was reading in the living-room. A sudden sound fell, on Myrle’s ears, like the noise of a heavy motor truck on the drive.

“Now I Iwonder what that can be —?” she thought.

The floor shook under her feet, the house rattled.

“Earthquake!” The one word flashed through Myrle’s head. She ran towards the door, towards Evelyn; the rumble turned to a roar, the floor heaved like a sea throwing her back. The wooden walls danced like the sides of a cardboard box flung about by a giant hand. The shaking increased to a sustained, intolerable eresenda, made Myrle’s teeth grind together in her head; her ears were deafened by the crashing of crockery, the thunder of bricks from the chimney tumbling down the roof, thrown this way and that, Myrle staggered into the passage in a haze of dusf. The floor flew up to meet her foot, then fell away, and she fell sprawling, flat on her face. “DONT LEAVE ME!” “Myrle! Myrle!” As Myrle picked herself up shakily from the floor, everything grew quiet. She heard Evelyn’s voice screaming to her from the front door. A creaking, sighing silence fell as the house settled down again on its wrenched foundations.

Myrle groped her way hastily outside through the dust haze—her one idea being to get out. Evelyn stood on the lawn, where she had run out from the living room, sobbing with terror. “Oh, Myrle, look at the chimney! Look at the water ta»k!” The toppled chimney stack lay scattered across the .garden, and the tank from the tall support by the side of the house had crashed into a rose bush . . The ground under their feet trembled, and Evelyn shrieked in terror. "It’s coming again, it's coming again!” They could hear the rumble. it seemed to come travelling across the country from the mountains. Myrle clutched hold of Evelyn and stood steadily. She saw the ground lift in front of her like a wave, the movement passed underfoot like some slow sickening swell of the sea. The wooden house rattled and swayed, with renewed crashes as the things inside it fell about. The shaking subsided, and all was quiet. She looked at Evelyn, and saw in her face a reflection of what she felt she must look like herself. The child’s very lips were as white as paper. "■You wouldn’t think it possible, would you,” Myrle said breathlessly, "that the ground could behave like that.” a , Evelyn clung to her, seemed afraid to move in any direction. And, indeed, when the earth itself betrayed poor human kind, where could they escape? „ __ „ “I wish there was someone here, gasped Evelyn. “If Daddy was. here I wouldn’t mind.' _ _ T . Myrle thought of Christchurch. Had they had the earthquake down there? How much damage had been done? Or was it only a local disturbance? Looking round the lonely landscape, there was some reassurance in seeing it look just the same. Then her eye was caught by a raw yellow scar where a length of cliff had tumbled in a great ' mass into the river bed, carrying trees and bushes away with It. Dust hung over it in a dull cloud. “We’ll see if the men are anywhere about,” said Myrle, trying to reassure Evelyn as much as possible by her own calm. But the uneanniness of the experi-

ence left her feeling physically sick, loneliness made it all the worse.

The whares stood empty their contents overturned. Dread entered Myrle’s heart, thinking of her parents, of Tellforth, of Rosemary! The scattered bricks of the cook house chimney were eloquent of what might have happened in the city. “The men will probably come back quite soon,” said Myrle comforting Evelyn. “Let’s go and see how the poor fowls are —” She broke off abruptly, as a thought struck her. The exclamation burst from her lips: “Mrs Henty!” “What?’’ queried Evelyn.

“Mrs Henty! She’s all alone up at ‘Thelma.’ There isn’t another soul there!”

“Why—What?” “She’s expecting a baby very soon. Jack Henty Went down to town this morning—it was he who brought the fruit. I’ll have to go up there.”

Myrle set off at a run, for the shed which housed the Ford truck.

“Don’t leave me,” cried Evelyn in terror, flying after her. “I’ll take you too—poor little thing, did you think I’d leave you!” And Myrle stopped long enough to take her hand. ¥

The earth groaned again and shivered, and they halted for a moment. “It’s all right, it’s nothing,” said Myrle. She was right, and they hurried on.

The truck was housed in a garage on the drive. 'The doors of the garage had been burst open and the truck flung across the drive into the ditch on the other side where it stood with its front wheels in the air. “Well, we can’t do anything with that,” said Myrle breathlessly. She hastened back to the whares, looked across the paddocks hoping to see the men coming. There was no one in sight. She felt she dared not wait. They had been working on the the cliffs lower down the river. There was, no saying what might have happened there. They might be cut off or delayed. (To be continued.) The characters in tms story are entirely imaginary. No reference is intended to any living person or to any public o'* nrivate pronertx.