An Act in a Backwater

by E. F. Benson

Five was the hour of the afternoon milk and beef-tea, and Carmel hour, as it seemed to Jeannie, of the evening sacrifice. Food and the healing rain were poured out, a sign of His hand, abundant, health-giving. Exultantly she went her rounds, and found smiling faces. One only did not smile, for the girl lay in deep, natural sleep, as if the racket and tumult outside were a lullaby to her. Outside it had grown very dark; the wind had ceased; but as if to compensate for the darkness, from moment to moment an intolerable brilliance of lightning made a tenfold brightness. It was as if the town was beleaguered by the artillery of the sky, and from right and left fired unceasingly the guns of heaven. In the intervals between the flashes colour was blotted out from the world, dark roofs and black trees huddled together to meet a sky scarcely more luminous. Then in a moment the colour would be restored. The geraniums in the boxes outside the window, black before, leaped into their scarlet liveries; the black elm-tops, a dark blob, became an outlined company of green leaves, and the tiled roofs of the houses were red once more. A noise as of a hundred sacks of marbles poured out on to a wooden floor endorsed the truths, and once again the world became shadow and the click of gutters.

By six the first violence of the storm was momentarily abated. Sullen, blessed rain-clouds hung ready to burst, but when Jeannie and Miss Fortescue came to leave the hospital they passed unwetted down to Bolton Street. In Jeannie’s head an easy melody of love and joy bubbled and repeated, and listening to it she was silent. But Aunt Em spoke.

“I wish I had brought goloshes,” she said. “But I am glad this rain has come; it will flush the drains.”

It was Miss Fortescue’s habit, though those who knew her best least suspected it, to commend herself and those she loved to the special care of God every night. Though she never talked about religion, there was nothing in the world more real to her than her communion with things unseen. But she never lost sight of her undoubted connection also with things seen, and to-night her devotions were tepid. For at dinner Jeannie had been altogether unaccountable, the obsession of gravity and responsibility which had beleaguered her during the past week was altogether absent, and Miss Fortescue wondered what had driven it away. She had laughed and spilled things with the mastery of custom, and after dinner she had stopped in the dining-room with Arthur, smoking a cigarette.

Now Jeannie’s cigarette was, properly speaking, not a cigarette at all, but a barometer. It argued a very rare content and an almost passionate acceptance of the present circumstances of life. For weeks past, and more especially since this epidemic had come to the town, Jeannie could no more have smoked than she could have flown, and something, so argued Miss Fortescue, must have occurred to send her needle up this sky-high weather. The thunder-storm and the clearing of the air no doubt were predisposing causes, and so also might be reckoned the wonderful turn for the better of the case of the girl whose life had been despaired of that morning. But Miss Fortescue was not content to accept these alone as sufficient reasons. They would have occasioned relief, but no more, and this sudden rise in the barometer was due to the removal of a more marked depression. So, instead of going to bed, she put on her dressing-gown, and knocked softly at Jeannie’s door, and receiving no answer went in.

The room was brilliantly lighted. Jeannie seemed to have lit all the candles she could find, and she herself was standing far from the door by the wide-flung window and looking out into the night. She too had taken off her dress and put on a short-sleeved dressing-gown, which left her arms bare to nearly the shoulder. Her hair was hanging down her back in a great black river as far as her waist, and her face, nearly in profile, was cut like a cameo against the dark square of the night. The rain had begun to fall heavily again, and the room was filled with the “sh-sh-sh” of the drinking grass. Just as Miss Fortescue stood at the door the blackness outside turned to a sheet of blue flame, and the thousand rods of the rain became for a moment a prism of colour. Jeannie started, and turning half round saw her aunt. A smile of great happiness played round her mouth, and she held up her head, listening. In another half second came the great gongs of thunder in answer to the lightning, and she laughed with pleasure.

“Hear them, hear them!” she cried. “Oh, Aunt Em, isn’t it splendid? And the rain! Oh, the rain! Have you come for a talk? That is good also, for I cannot go to bed yet. Let us pull out our chairs to the window.”

Now, Miss Fortescue hated thunder-storms and snakes and German bands, but she hated thunder-storms the most. But Jeannie’s happiness was too infectious to be denied, and she sat down in the chair by her.

“Oh, I am so happy!” cried Jeannie. “Listen at the rivers down the gravel walks. There won’t be a flower in the garden to-morrow.”

“I don’t know that that is altogether an advantage,” said Aunt Em. “Haven’t you got a better reason than that?”