Читать книгу Dawn - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 4

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Muriel went to bed at once when she returned from the evening service. She had gone a good deal during the day, and she was physically tired, and mentally somewhat depressed.

She had had ambitions once; dreams, as we all have. But they were faded now. Besides, she was not her own, and the regret was an infidelity. “Thine be the glory.” Tears came as she thought how little glory she had brought to God. And now His message had come that she was no longer needed. She must just rest and die.

Her thoughts wandered to the rector to whom she had listened that evening. His personality had attracted her. A somewhat ascetic face, with a weary look in the eyes. She was not uncharitable. She supposed he served God in his own way, though it was not hers. “He who is not against us is of our part.” She wondered vaguely as to the nature of the work he did—so different from what hers had been among the Zulu kraals. Probably he was tired and dispirited also. The empty pews ... But what use was there in telling people about old geologic changes, which, if they were true at all, had no meaning today? The flood was past. That was part of the old dispensation. Now there were only the troubles of the last days for the world to endure before the glory of the millennium dawn. “There shall be wars, and rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places....” The last days might be very near....

She went to sleep at last, and while she slept the earth’s crust sank slightly and very gently in the northern hemisphere, and lifted slightly farther toward the equator.

It was a trivial change. Not enough to make earth falter in its settled course through the heavens, scarcely enough to change the axis on which it spun. There would be some space of bare land steaming in tomorrow’s sun, which the tropic ocean had covered; some space of water where the land had been. That was all.

... Muriel dreamed that she stood with the rector on a bare plain. It was black night, and the wind was terrible. They were lost in the night. He said he knew the way, but she did not believe him. He was leading her into a pit where they would drown together. And there was a voice that cried through the night, a voice she knew. A voice that cried in an agony of terror, “Miss Temple, wake up. I think the roof’s afalling.”

Muriel was awake now. By the light of a candle she saw the comfortable face of her landlady, now white with fear. She heard the noise of a steady rush of air, which did not pause nor vary. She heard the rumble of a falling wall. She heard the woman’s frightened voice protesting. “I’m scairt to death, Miss Temple. It’s got such a queer sound. It’s not an ornary storm.”

No, it was not an ordinary storm. Muriel realized that, as she reassured her companion with a cheerful word, and began to dress quickly, for the cottage might really prove unsafe if this wind continued.

It was fortunate that her dressing was soon done, for she had scarcely finished when the window blew in, extinguishing the flickering light of the candle; and the next moment, through the darkness, there came a rattle of falling tiles at the farther end of the room, where the cottage roof was descending upon them.

Muriel stood uncertainly. There was a sound behind her in the darkness like the snapping of wood, and then a heavy sliding of something, and then a fall. But these noises, however loud and near, seemed confused and distanced by the sound of a wind which never ceased nor varied as it rushed southward to fill the void from which the land had fallen. But she knew nothing of that. She was concerned—though still with something of the serenity of those whose minds are trained to self-discipline—with the triviality of her own environment. She was aware that part at least of the roof was gone, that something struck her on the shoulder, causing her to lose her footing. She stumbled over the body of Mrs. Wilkes, and came to her knees across her. She spoke to her, but there was no answer. She knew that their safety lay in flight down the narrow stairs if they could reach them. She tried to drag the inert body, but its bulk among the fallen rubble of the roof was too much for her strength. As she made this effort, she was aware of something warm and wet that was flowing over her hand. She knew that it was blood. Perhaps she could stanch ... She had not lived for twenty years in savage Africa to be strange to the results of accident, or any form of violence. Feeling upwards, she learned the uselessness of her efforts. The woman’s head was half severed from her body.

Knowing this, she lost no further time. She crawled on hands and knees to the place where she supposed the door to be, raising her hands continually to feel for any fallen obstacle that might confront her, or for the guidance of the wall. Her eyes were adjusted to the darkness, and she began to see a little way ahead. She found the door, and then the stairs.

Soon, she was in the open air. Stinging rain that was carried almost level on the steady force of the wind struck her face like hail. Muriel covered her face with her hands. She knew the way to the garden gate, and she feared at every moment that the cottage would collapse toward her. But she could not make much headway. Ridges of soft soil were beneath her feet. She must have been blown onto the potato bed which she had observed Mr. Wilkes to be hoeing on Saturday. She wondered where he could be now. It seemed impossible that he could be asleep in the battered cottage. Yet perhaps she ought to try to go back to warn or find him.

As she tried to turn, she heard the noise of the falling walls, as the cottage flattened to the wind. She made two stumbling steps, and fell to her knees. Then she lay flat again on the wet earth that seemed the only stable thing remaining in a world of ruin. She did not doubt the earth.

She lay there for an hour or more, while the wind blew over her. As she did so, her body recovered a measure of its strength from the violent ordeal it had endured. She had a natural desire to find some place of rest and shelter. Perhaps the rectory, which she had scarcely seen, but which she knew lay in the hollow of the hill behind the church, not more than three or four hundred yards away, might give her a haven. Her mind, courageous, practical, tenacious, was already planning the way to safety which she had thought.

She tried to remember, to construct the way which she must take before making any effort to commence the journey. Then she rose on her knees, and was surprised to find how well she could see among the surrounding shadows. But they were strange, confusing shadows. The contours of familiar things were changed and flailed and flattened. Yet she could see the gap of the back-lane gate, in the low hawthorn hedge that still stood stoutly. But the walls and roof of the well must have fallen in.

An uprooted plum-tree, dragging at intervals farther across the garden, lengthened her progress, but she found the gate at last, or, rather, the gap where the gate had been, and scrambled down the three stone steps to the lower level of the lane.

After that, progress was easier.