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A rash of lightning rattled the stars; Miss Wisteria's royal headgear caught fire in this brief tinseled burst, the glass jewels glittering roselike in the pink lights of the ferris-wheel, and Joel, left below, could see her white winglike hands alight on Idabel's hair, flutter away, squeeze the dark as if eating its very substance. They swung low, their laughter rippling like Miss Wisteria's long sash, and, rising toward a new flush of lightning, dissolved; still he could hear the midget's pe
Wind swung them like a lantern; it is wind, Joel thought, for he could see the pe
A wall of rain pushed toward them from the distance; you could hear it long before it came, humming like a horde of locusts. The operator of the ferris-wheel began letting off his passengers. "Oh, we'll be last," wailed Miss Wisteria, for they were suspended near the top. The rain-wall leaned over them, and she threw up her hands as if to hold it back. Idabel, everyone, fled as down it toppled like a tidal wave.
Presently only the hatless man stood there in the emptiness below. Joel, his eyes searching so frenziedly for Idabel, did not at first altogether see him. But the carnival lights short-circuited with a crackling flare, and when this happened it was suddenly as though the man turned phosphorescent: he seemed to Joel no more than a hand's space away. "Randolph," he whispered, and the name gripped him at the root of his throat. It was a momentary vision, for the lights all fizzled out, and as the ferris-wheel descended to a last stop, he could not see Randolph anywhere.
"Wait," demanded Miss Wisteria, assembling her drenched costume, "wait for me." But Joel leaped past her, and hurried from one shelter to the next; Idabel was not in the 10ў Tent: no one was there but the Duck Boy, who was playing solitaire by candlelight. Nor was she in the group huddled on the merry-go-round. He went to the livery stable. He went to the Baptist church. And soon, there being scarcely another possibility, he found himself on the porch of the old house. Leaves, gathering in a coil, spiralled hissingly across its deserted expanse; empty rocking chairs tilted gently back and forth; a Prince Albert poster swept like a bird through the air and struck him in the face: he fought to free himself, but it was as though it were alive, and, struggling with it, it suddenly frightened him more than had the sight of Randolph: he would never rid himself of either. But then, what was there in Randolph to fear? The fact that he'd found him proved he was only a messenger for a pair of telescopic eyes. Randolph would never bring him harm (still, but, and yet). He let down his arms: it was curious, for so soon as he did this, Prince Albert, of his own accord, flew off howling in the hoarse rain. And could he, with equal ease, appease that other fury, the nameless one whose envoy appeared in Randolph's guise? Vine from the Landing's garden had stretched these miles to entwine his wrists, and he saw their plans, his and Idabel's, break apart like the thunder-split sky; not yet, not if he could find her, and he ran into the house: "Idabel, you are here, you are!"
A boom of silence answered him; here, there, a marginal sound: rain like wings in the chimney, mice feet on fallen glass, maidenly steps of her who always walks the stair, and wind, opening doors, closing them, wind conversing sadly on the ceiling, blowing its damp sour breath in his face, breathing out its lungs through the rooms: he let himself be carried in its course: his head was light as a balloon, and as hollow-feeling; ice as eyes, thorns as teeth, fla