earth.
The atmosphere had now become dry and rare and infused with an acrid, saline character which irritated the nostrils like brine. The dun sky had darkened to a blackish purple, meeting the near horizon like smoke, blotting out distant objects and throwing into strange relief those that were near. The sense of increasing isolation from the outer world thus produced was terrifying to Nessie. She gripped Mary's hand more tightly as she cried, "These clouds are coming on top of us. It's like a big black wall. Oh! I'm feared of it. Will it fall on us?"
"No, dear," whispered Mary, "it can't hurt us." But the dark, enclosing barrier still advanced, and upon its summit streaks of lighter saffron lay, like spume upon the crest of a breaking comber. Against this background the three birch trees had lost their soft, silvery mobility; stiff and livid, they gripped the soil mure tenaciously with their sinewy roots, their stems standing straight, with closely furled branches, like masts awaiting oppressively the batter of a hurricane.
From amongst the now hidden hills came a secret mutter like the tattoo of muffled drums. It seemed as if it rolled along the crests of the hilltops, bouading down the ravines, across the streams and up the gulleys, the close-following notes chasing each other with a frantic revelry.
"That's thunder," shivered Nessie. "It's like guns firing."
"It's a long way off," Mary comforted her. "It may pass over us without breaking here."
" I feel it's going to be a terrible storm. Will we both go to Mamma, Mary?"
"You go if you like," replied Mary, "but you're just as safe here, dear."
The thunder drew nearer. It ceased to rattle continuously and instead pealed brokenly; but now each peal was loud as an explosion and each succeeding explosion more violent than the one before. This ominous quality of approach conveyed to Nessie the impression that she was the focus of some blind, celestial fury, which was surely converging upon her and would ultimately destroy her.
"I'm sure it'll get us," she gasped. "Oh! there's the lightning."
An ear-splitting crash accompanied the first flash of lightning, a thin, blue streak which darted raggedly across the dead sky, as if the detonation of the thunder had suddenly cracked the bowl of the firmament, allowing, for one quivering instant, a dazzling and unearthly light to penetrate.
"It's forked!" cried Nessie. "That's more dangerous than sheet. Come away from the window!" She tugged at Mary's arm.
"You're as safe here as anywhere," Mary repeated.
"Oh! It's no good saying that. This room of yours gets the worst of it! I'm going away to Mamma. I'll put my head below the blankets in her room till that awful lightning stops. Come away or you'll be struck;" and she rushed out of the room in a panic.
Mary did not follow her but continued to watch the growing storm alone. She felt like a lonely watcher in a tower, obsessed by pain and danger, for whose diversion a gigantic tourney was waged by nature's forces. The discord which raged outside was a drastic anodyne, which served to distract her from her increasing pain, the pangs of which seemed to her to be slowly intensifying. She was glad to be alone once more, glad that Nessie had left her. It was easier for her to suffer in solitude. The thunder fulminated wildly, and the lightning cas-
caded like fluid across the sky with a blinding intensity. Often, the onset of her pain would synchronise with a flash, and then she felt that she, a speck within the universe, was linked by the chain of light to this titanic upheaval of the heavens.
As the distracting influence of the storm upon her failed, the disturbance ceased to be palliative; she began, involuntarily, to interpret it in terms of her bodily suffering and became herself involved in the tumult around her. The rolling waves of thunder lifted her in their upward sweep and carried her off upon their undulating echoes, until, suddenly, a violet lightning flash would stab her with pain and cast her down again upon the ground. When the thunder failed, the wind, which had been rapidly increasing in volume, swept her back again into the midst of the chaos. This wind especially frightened Mary, began, indeed, to terrify her. The first soughing onset and retreat which had whirled the leaves and then left them motionless, had been but the prelude to a series of deeper and more powerful attacks. Now there was no retreat and with crushing vigour the full force of the blast struck the land. Mary felt the strong, stout house tremble to its foundations, as though an infinity of tearing fingers were rending each stone from its bed of mortar. She saw her own trees whipped downwards, like drawn bows bent double under some prodigious strain; with each gust they bent; then, liberated, again sprang upwards with a twanging sound. The arrows they released were invisible, but they penetrated Mary's room as shafts of pain. The long grasses in the field were no longer gently ruffled, but were flattened as though a gigantic scythe had decimated them. Each fierce blast of the gale battered at the windows, rattling them in their frames, then rushed howling around the house, with all the uncouth demons of sound loosed and rampant upon its wings.
Then the rain began. It fell at first in heavy, solitary gouts which stained the wind-swept pavements with spots each as large as a crown piece. Faster and faster came the drops, until a solid sheet of water deluged the earth. Water splashed upon the open roadways, hissed and dripped from the roofs and gutters of houses, spattered against trees, flattened shrubs and bushes by its very density and weight. Water flooded everything. The gutters were at once filled to overflowing and ran like torrents; the streets became watercourses, and running
streams, filled with floating debris, sluiced along the main thorough- fares.
With the commencement of the rain the lightning gradually ceased, the thunder passed over, and the air chilled perceptibly; but the storm, instead of abating, grew more violent with every moment. The wind gained velocity. Mary heard it drive the rain in waves, like sea surf, upon the roof of the house! then she faintly heard a snap and saw the flagstaff, riven from the turret, fall clattering to the ground.
At this she got up and began to pace up and down the room, hardly able to endure the racking ache which now seemed continually an element of her being. She had felt nothing of the kind before, nothing to equal this in all her life. She wondered, uncertainly, if she should ask her mother for some remedy, thinking that a hot application might perhaps do good, but, reluctantly, she abandoned the idea as dangerous. She did not know that such an antidote would have been ineffectual, for, although she had no apprehension of her condition, she was already advanced in the throes of a premature labour. Like the untimely darkness of the premature night which now began to fall upon the outraged earth, this precipitate travail had already, and too soon, begun to lay its mantle of suffering upon her. The mental hardships she had undergone were demanding an un-
dreamed-of toll, which she could not escape, and she had now, in all her unpreparedness, unconsciously begun to solve the dreadful mystery of the nativity of her child.
By this time she felt that it was impossible for her to go downstairs for tea, and, in despair, she loosened her corset and began again to pace up and down the narrow confines of her room. Between these pacings she stopped, supporting her body between her open palms. She discovered that it was easier for her to meet the paroxysms in a stooping posture and, from time to time, she stood crouching
against the end of her bed, her forehead pressed downwards against the cold metal of the rails.
As she remained heedlessly like this, in one of these spasms, suddenly the door opened and her mother entered the room. Mrs. Brodie had come to satisfy herself that Mary had suffered no ill effects from the storm and to reprimand her for not taking greater precautions, for Nessie had run to her with the story that lightning was striking into the room. She was herself terrified by the tempest and her overstrung nerves were quiveringly set for an outburst of recrimination.