A Shower of Summer Days by May Sarton

Author:May Sarton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497685475
Publisher: Open Road Media

They had all three been disturbed during the Desmonds’ visit. This intrusion of strangers had torn open feelings which had perhaps been emerging but not recognized. Violet felt it quite absurd to have allowed what Sally said about the house to hurt her so much, but she had allowed it and now she watched her niece warily, this niece who had the power to make tears start in her eyes (Violet never cried, or almost never) just because she was not happy here. Sally was sitting on the arm of a chair swinging her foot and frowning. She would have liked to apologize for what she had said, but something in her withstood this capitulation—Ian, perhaps. She kept forcibly placing Ian between her aunt and herself, as a protection against the waves of emotion. Whatever is happening to me? Sally thought and suddenly got up and walked out of the room, without a word.

“Where are you off to, Sally? I was just going to mix a cocktail…” There was distress in Charles’s voice and Violet caught it at once. She sensed in herself, in Sally, now in Charles a precipitation of the atmosphere and wished to ward it off.

“Let her go,” she said quietly. “You’ll make her feel like a prisoner. She did her duty very valiantly by the Desmonds, but she has to escape, you know, she’s so afraid of being caught,” and Violet laughed a gentle slightly superior laugh.

“Well, then”—Charles turned away—“I suppose we might as well dress before we have a drink.”

Just then it thundered, and exactly as if someone had opened a sluice in the sky, a great sheet of rain poured down.

On their way upstairs Violet and Charles stopped on the landing. It was quite dark.

“Wherever did the storm come from?” Charles asked. “It was perfectly serene an hour ago.” This change without warning was upsetting, unsettling. It made him feel as if he didn’t know where he was.

Violet shivered. “It would be too bad if we were in for a spell of rain.”

“Nonsense. It’s a just a thunderstorm.” He turned up the stairs, but Violet sat down a minute on the window seat and peered out. The mountains were completely hidden; sitting there neither downstairs nor upstairs, alone, she felt marooned, isolated, in a kind of panic. What if Charles—Violet pushed away the dream-image of Charles and Sally locked in each other’s arms in the meadow, and fled.

But Sally was not thinking of Charles. She was walking up and down in her room (Violet sitting at her dressing table heard the footsteps, back and forth, back and forth and dropped the stopper of a perfume bottle). Sally was wondering how she would ever face Violet again, how she could possibly bring herself to go down to dinner at all. She had taken out her best sweater, black cashmere embroidered with pearls and silver thread. She tried buttoning it up to her throat over the yellow dress and then she tried it open, all the

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