October 2nd. Last night was sticky, hot, and still, with the stars flaming overhead, as though they were trying to burn the heavens. I fell asleep at last, to be wakened suddenly by a sound as if the wind were ripping the sky off the earth, and ten million tons of water were sluicing through the hole. The world was all one glare of light, with sudden, momentary breaks of darkness, while a roar as of a thousand batteries surged up from every quarter of the heavens, and filled to bursting the black void above our heads. I sprang up to close the windows, my ankles brushed by quick, ghostly touches, as loose papers skittered over the floor.
The Peon and David came in, in hastily donned attire, for the storm was altogether out of the ordinary. The house trembled like a living thing, and in the air about us we could feel the crackle of the blinding light. Then came a crash that split the earth. A moment later, through the surging billows of water hurled through the wind-rent air, we saw a sudden, leaping light, red in the white electric glare. A huddled company of straw-stacks had been struck by the descending bolt, and not even that flood of water could quench the flames. The heavy clouds, weighted almost to earth, caught the sullen glow beneath them, and as they were flung onward and upward by the screaming wind, carried the lurid colors of destruction far into the blackness overhead. One moment a world of blinding white, as the lightning blotted out everything but its own wild glare. The next, a red and lowering world, sullen, portentous, with the evil color spreading, climbing, licking out on all sides in an orgy of ruin and waste whose greed defied the cataracts of water, and made the wild wind its minister and slave.
The air rocked with the thunderous down-pour under the crashing clouds. One of the maples fell prone in the lightning’s glare; and from every side came the sound of rending wood as branches were wrenched and split and hurled across the lawn. The house shook, while around us and above us the Titans fought. In the presence of that unveiled power one’s own small life dwindled to nothingness. One marveled that human feebleness yet held a place in a world so charged with forces, the least of which could wipe out all human effort and leave the earth as bare as a new-sponged slate.
Yet the fury passed. The Titans screamed and fought, but their power waned. The wind wavered and sank, sobbing like a beaten child; the rain splashed dully, dripping from porches and eaves; the thunder died on distant hills, and the lightnings grew fitful and weak. Even the storm-born flames were spent, until only a hot coal of light glowed under the breaking clouds. A star shone here and there, mirrored in the rain-pools of the drenched fields.
David opened the windows, and we drank in the freshness of the storm-cleansed air. The new-washed leaves, still green with summer time, whispered in the quietness, and here and there a cricket chirped, or a night-bird called to its mate. Power was veiled again, withdrawn; and life that had trembled in the balance resumed its wonted course.
October 9th. I asked Grace today about Cousin Jason. I knew she was worrying over something. Milly might be happy, but she wasn’t. So I asked her how he did.
“He won’t speak to me, Lil, at all. I have been there two or three times; but he wouldn’t see me.”
“Isn’t he coming to the wedding?” I asked.
“I wrote to ask him that—to show him we really wanted him; but he sent the letter back.”