A THUNDER-STORM
Two Sundays in succession we had not been to church. As we were going
out, after lessons, on Monday morning, a thunder-storm came on. So
Bettina and I played in the upstairs passage. I remember how dark it
grew, although there was a skylight overhead, and a window opening on
the staircase. We groped for our playthings in the twilight, till quite
suddenly the _croisee_ of the casement showed as ink-black lines
crossing a square of blue-white fire.
The shadowy stair was fiercely lit; our toys, too, and our faces. The
moment after, we sat in blackness, waiting for the thunder. Far off it
seemed to fall clattering down some vast incline. Then the rain.
Thudding torrents that threatened to batter in the skylight.
Our mother came out of her room in time to receive the next flash full
upon her face. I see the light now, making her eyes glitter and her
paleness ghostlike.
She drew back from the window. Before the lightning died I had seen
that she was frightened. I had been frightened, too, till I saw that she
was. In the impulse to reassure her, my own fear left me. I went to her
in that second blackness and put my hand in hers. When I could see again
I looked through the streaming window-pane, as we stood there, and I saw
a man sheltering under the chestnut-tree at our gate. He lifted his
umbrella, and seemed to make a sign: "May I come in?"
"Why, there is Colonel Dover!" I said, and could have bitten my tongue.
My mother had moved away. She seemed not to hear, not to have seen.
I stood, half behind the curtain, praying God to keep him out. I prayed
so hard I felt my temples prick with heat, and a moisture in my hair. A
blinding flash made us start back. Almost simultaneously came a shock of
sound like a cannon shot off in the house. We three were clinging
together.
"That struck near by," my mother said, to our relief, for we had thought
the house must tumble to pieces. The storm slackened after that, and
daylight struggled back. We went on with our playing. I noticed, as my
mother went downstairs, that she kept her head turned away from the
window.
Presently we heard unaccustomed sounds in the hall. The tramping and
scraping of heavy feet. We looked over the banisters and saw a man being
carried in by Kleiner Klaus and our gardener. The man's clothes were
wet, so were his face and hair. It was Colonel Dover, staring with
fixed, reproachful eyes at the lady of Duncombe House. And my mother,
with a look I had never seen on her face, stood holding open the
drawing-room door for the bearers to pass.
Their feet left muddy marks in the hall....
We did not go downstairs till late that afternoon, when the body had
been taken away.
People said the steel ferule of the umbrella had attracted the electric
current.
I knew God had heard my prayer.
But in striking down my enemy he had struck the chestnut-tree. It was
riven from foot to crotch.
That was the day I had in mind when I excused my laboured playing: "You
expect me to be as quick as God."