CHAPTER XXI
AFTER THE STORM
Inky clouds were gathering over the sunlight when Shirley came from Damory Court, along the narrow wood-path under the hemlocks, and the way was striped with blue-black shadows and filled with sighing noises. She walked warily, halting often at some leafy rustle to catch a quick breath of dread. As she approached the tree-roots where the cape jessamines lay, she had to force her feet forward by sheer effort of will. At a little distance from them she broke a stick and with it managed to drag the bunch to her, turning her eyes with a shiver from the trampled spot near by. She picked up the flowers, and treading with caution, retraced her steps to the wider path.
She stepped into the Red Road at length in the teeth of a thunder-storm, which had arisen almost without warning to break with the passionate intensity of electric storms in the South. The green-golden fields were now a gray seethe of rain and the farther peaks lifted like huge tumbled masses of onyx against a sky stippled with wan yellow and vicious violet. The wind leaped and roared and swished through the weeping foliage, lashing the dull Pompeian-red puddles, swirling leaves and twigs from the hedges and seeming to be intent on dragging her very garments from her as she ran.
There was no shelter, but even had there been, she would not have sought it. The turbulence of nature around her matched, in a way, her overstrained feeling, and she welcomed the fierce bulge of the wind in the up-blowing whorls of her hair and the drenching wetness of the rain. At length, out of breath, she crouched down under a catalpa tree, watching the fangs of lightning knot themselves against the baleful gray-yellow dimness, making sudden flares of unbearable brightness against which twigs etched themselves with the unrelieved sharpness of black paper silhouettes.
She tried to fix her mind on near things, the bending grasses, the scurrying red runnels and flapping shrubbery, but her thoughts wilfully escaped the tether, turning again and again to the events of the last two hours. She pictured Unc’ Jefferson’s eyes rolling up in ridiculous alarm, his winnowing arm lashing his indignant mule in his flight for the doctor.
At the mental picture she choked with hysterical laughter, then cringed suddenly against the sopping bark. She saw again the doctor’s gaze lift from his first examination of the tiny punctures to send a swift penetrant glance straight at her, before he bent his great body to carry the unconscious man to the house. Again a fit of shuddering swept over her. Then, all at once, tears came, strangling sobs that bent and swayed her. It was the discharge of the Leyden jar, the loosing of the tense bow-string, and it brought relief.
After a time she grew quieter. He would perhaps still be lying on the couch in the dull-colored library, under the one-eyed portrait, his hair waving crisply against the white blanket, his hands moving restlessly, his lips muttering. Her imagination followed Aunt Daph shuffling to fetch this and that, nagged by the doctor’s sharp admonitions.