At this stage in his thinking he removed his arm from Hamlet's neck and looked at the animal. At the same moment the light that had filled the glass-house with a fiery radiance that burnt to the very heart of the place was clouded. Above, in the sky, black, smoky clouds, rolling in fold after fold, as though some demon were flinging them out across the sky as one flings a carpet, piled up and up, each one darker than the last. The light vanished; the conservatory was filled with a thick, murky glow, and far across the fields, from the heart of the black wood, came the low rumble of thunder. But Jeremy did not hear that; he was busy with his thoughts. He stared at the dog, who was lying stretched out on the dirty floor, his nose between his toes. It cannot truthfully be said that the resolve that was forming in Jeremy's head had its birth in any fine, noble idealisms. It was as though some bully, seizing his best marbles, had said: “I'll give you these back if you hand over this week's pocket-money!” His attitude to the bully could not truthfully be described as one of homage or reverence; rather was it one of anger and impotent rebellion.
He loved Hamlet, and he loved his mother more than Hamlet; but he was not moved by sentiment. Grimly, his legs apart, his eyes shut tight, as they were when he said his prayers, he made his challenge.
“I'll give you Hamlet if you don't take Mother—” A pause. “Only I can't cut Hamlet's throat. But I could lose him, if that would do.. . Only you must take him now—I couldn't do it to-morrow.” His voice began to tremble. He was frightened. He could feel behind his closed eyes that the darkness had gathered. The place seemed to be filled with rolling smoke, and the house was so terribly still!
He said again: “You can take Hamlet. He's my best thing. You can—You can—”
There followed then, with the promptitude of a most admirably managed theatrical climax, a peal of thunder that seemed to strike the house with the iron hand of a giant. Two more came, and then, for a second, a silence, more deadly than all the earlier havoc.
Jeremy felt that God had leapt upon him. He opened his eyes, turned as though to run, and then saw, with a freezing check upon the very beat of his heart, that Hamlet was gone.
V
There was no Hamlet!
In that second of frantic unreasoning terror he received a conviction of God that no rationalistic training in later years was able to remove.