While this excitement was upon her, a crash of thunder broke over the house, and a rush of wind rent its way through the trees, scattering their foliage in torn masses from the boughs. Then came another fiery scroll, unfolding itself upon the wind, casting its blue radiance upon the earth, and kindling the sky with its forked light.
The flash was so vivid and so prolonged that she started up with a cry of alarm. It was echoed by a shriek that cut sharper than steel through the noise of the storm.
“See, see,” cried Elsie, who now stood beside her, “the lightning has got him; call him back; call him back, I say!”
Her eyes flashed out their insane fire, lightning against lightning, both springing from darkness. The wind swept through her hair, filling it with rain-drops. The white folds of her garments and those flowing sleeves fluttered and shook about her like the wings of a spirit. Her clasped hands were extended over Catharine’s head into the storm. Elsie, aroused by the burst of thunder, had rushed from her sleep and stood before the window, daring the tempest as if she had been its spirit.
“Call him back; he is mine. Call him back!” she shrieked.
“Great heaven! what is this?” answered Catharine, pale with astonishment, for directly before her, passing, as it seemed, backward beneath the branches of the elm-tree, was her own husband. But while the words were on her lip, the lightning passed by; and the man who had appeared before her for a single moment was engulfed in the darkness.
It was an open casement by which they stood, just over the bay-window of the library. I have mentioned that an old forest-tree overshadowed this portion of the house, drooping its branches downward like a tent. As the darkness closed in upon them, Elsie leaped like a panther through the casement, lodged a moment on the bay-window, and seizing a pendent branch, flung herself forward into the blackness of the storm. A sharp, long cry came back from the tempest in which Elsie seemed to have been engulfed.
Catharine stood helpless with surprise and terror, straining her eyes to discover a trace of the maniac. But Elsie had disappeared. A flash of lightning revealed her for an instant as she rushed through its gleams beneath the trees, giving her white garments and her long hair back to the blast; then all was dark again.
Trembling with affright, Catharine ran down-stairs, seized a blanket-shawl, and went out in search of her charge. The storm still raged, but not so furiously as it had done—everything was wet through and through; every leaf dripped rain, the grass was so wet that it seemed like wading through a swamp as she passed on. Her night-robe was soon soaked, and her bare feet chilled to marble, as they sunk in the cold grass.
But she took no heed of this. Elsie had gone toward the water, and she was wild with fear that in her madness the maniac might plunge into the deep.