THE STORM
It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few heat
drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken. In
brooding silence the world seemed pent beneath the purple firmament.
By rapid walking in the heat Shelton had got rid of his despondency. He
felt like one who is to see his mistress after long estrangement. He,
bathed, and, straightening his tie-ends, stood smiling at the glass. His
fear, unhappiness, and doubts seemed like an evil dream; how much worse
off would he not have been, had it all been true?
It was dinner-party night, and when he reached the drawing-room the
guests were there already, chattering of the coming storm. Antonia was
not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano waiting for her entry. Red
faces, spotless shirt-fronts, white arms; and freshly-twisted hair were
all around him. Some one handed him a clove carnation, and, as he held
it to his nose, Antonia came in, breathless, as though she had rushed
down-stairs, Her cheeks were pale no longer; her hand kept stealing to
her throat. The flames of the coming storm seemed to have caught fire
within her, to be scorching her in her white frock; she passed him
close, and her fragrance whipped his senses.
She had never seemed to him so lovely.
Never again will Shelton breathe the perfume of melons and pineapples
without a strange emotion. From where he sat at dinner he could not see
Antonia, but amidst the chattering of voices, the clink of glass and
silver, the sights and sounds and scents of feasting, he thought how he
would go to her and say that nothing mattered but her love. He drank the
frosted, pale-gold liquid of champagne as if it had been water.
The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick, soft
shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned. There was
not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the flowers; but two
large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and wheeled between the
lights over the diners' heads. One fell scorched into a dish of fruit,
and was removed; the other, eluding all the swish of napkins and the
efforts of the footmen, continued to make soft, fluttering rushes till
Shelton rose and caught it in his hand. He took it to the window and
threw it out into the darkness, and he noticed that the air was thick
and tepid to his face. At a sign from Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains
were then drawn across the windows, and in gratitude, perhaps, for this
protection, this filmy barrier between them and the muffled threats
of Nature, everyone broke out in talk. It was such a night as comes
in summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence,
which was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground
like the muttering of all dark places on the earth--such a night as
seems, by very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful
threats to justify man's cowardice.
The ladies rose at last. The circle of the rosewood dining-table, which
had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a likeness to
some autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam under the
sunset with red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of cigarettes was
clinging, like a mist to water when the sun goes down. Shelton became
involved in argument with his neighbour on the English character.
“In England we've mislaid the recipe of life,” he said. “Pleasure's a
lost art. We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to beauty,
we've lost the eye for' it. In exchange we have got money, but what 's
the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?” Excited by his
neighbour's smile, he added: “As to thought, we think so much of what
our neighbours think that we never think at all.... Have you ever
watched a foreigner when he's listening to an Englishman? We 're in the
habit of despising foreigners; the scorn we have for them is nothing to
the scorn they have for us. And they are right! Look at our taste! What
is the good of owning riches if we don't know how to use them?”
“That's rather new to me,” his neighbour said. “There may be something
in it.... Did you see that case in the papers the other day of old
Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a bottle? When
the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found eleven bottles
out of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha! Well, there's nothing wrong
with this”; and he drained his glass.
“No,” answered Shelton.
When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.
At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat. A heavy odour, sensual,
sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous shrubs.
He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils. Putting his hand down, he
felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with electricity. Then he saw,
pale and candescent in the blackness, three or four great lilies, the
authors of that perfume. The blossoms seemed to be rising at him
through the darkness; as though putting up their faces to be kissed. He
straightened himself abruptly and went in.
The guests were leaving when Shelton, who was watching; saw Antonia slip
through the drawing-room window. He could follow the white glimmer
of her frock across the lawn, but lost it in the shadow of the trees;
casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he too slipped
out. The blackness and the heat were stifling he took great breaths of
it as if it were the purest mountain air, and, treading softly on the
grass, stole on towards the holm oak. His lips were dry, his heart beat
painfully. The mutter of the distant thunder had quite ceased; waves of
hot air came wheeling in his face, and in their midst a sudden rush of
cold. He thought, “The storm is coming now!” and stole on towards the
tree. She was lying in the hammock, her figure a white blur in, the
heart of the tree's shadow, rocking gently to a little creaking of the
branch. Shelton held his breath; she had not heard him. He crept up
close behind the trunk till he stood in touch of her. “I mustn't startle
her,” he thought. “Antonia!”
There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no answer. He stood over
her, but even then he could not see her face; he only, had a sense of
something breathing and alive within a yard of him--of something warm
and soft. He whispered again, “Antonia!” but again there came no answer,
and a sort of fear and frenzy seized on him. He could no longer hear her
breathe; the creaking of the branch had ceased. What was passing in
that silent, living creature there so close? And then he heard again the
sound of breathing, quick and scared, like the fluttering of a bird; in
a moment he was staring in the dark at an empty hammock.
He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could bear uncertainty no
longer. But as he crossed the lawn the sky was rent from end to end
by jagged lightning, rain spattered him from head to foot, and with a
deafening crack the thunder broke.
He sought the smoking-room, but, recoiling at the door, went to his
own room, and threw himself down on the bed. The thunder groaned and
sputtered in long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of things
within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them all
likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of utility,
of their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons, abstractions,
with indecency in their appearance, like the naked nerves and sinews
of a leg preserved in, spirit. The sound of the rain against the house
stunned his power of thinking, he rose to shut his windows; then,
returning to his bed, threw himself down again. He stayed there till the
storm was over, in a kind of stupor; but when the boom of the retreating
thunder grew every minute less distinct, he rose. Then for the first
time he saw something white close by the door.
It was a note:
I have made a mistake. Please forgive me, and go away.--ANTONIA.