"He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out.
Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something?"
"You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma"am; if you are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark," said Gabriel.
"Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit."
"I"ll do anything!" she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica--every knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him appeared two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its sheen--the shapes vanished. Gabriel turned his head. It had been the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and Bathsheba.
Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.
"How terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve.
Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding her arm. At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his att.i.tude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn.
It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west.
The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching--thunder and all--and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He thought the crisis of the storm had pa.s.sed. But there came a burst of light.
"Hold on!" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and grasping her arm again.
Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones--dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad ma.s.s of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. In the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon the point of Gabriel"s rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba"s warm arm tremble in his hand--a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe.
Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant thunder. By the l.u.s.tre reflected from every part of the earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a huge riband of bark being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom.
"We had a narrow escape!" said Gabriel, hurriedly. "You had better go down."
Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response to her frightened pulsations. She descended the ladder, and, on second thoughts, he followed her. The darkness was now impenetrable by the sharpest vision. They both stood still at the bottom, side by side. Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather--Oak thought only of her just then. At last he said--
"The storm seems to have pa.s.sed now, at any rate."
"I think so too," said Bathsheba. "Though there are mult.i.tudes of gleams, look!"
The sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repet.i.tion melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from the successive strokes on a gong.
"Nothing serious," said he. "I cannot understand no rain falling.
But Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us. I am now going up again."
"Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve! I will stay and help you yet. Oh, why are not some of the others here!"
"They would have been here if they could," said Oak, in a hesitating way.
"O, I know it all--all," she said, adding slowly: "They are all asleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them.
That"s it, is it not? Don"t think I am a timid woman and can"t endure things."
"I am not certain," said Gabriel. "I will go and see."
He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone. He looked through the c.h.i.n.ks of the door. All was in total darkness, as he had left it, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of many snores.
He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned. It was Bathsheba"s breath--she had followed him, and was looking into the same c.h.i.n.k.
He endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of their thoughts by remarking gently, "If you"ll come back again, miss--ma"am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time."
Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder for greater expedition, and went on thatching. She followed, but without a sheaf.
"Gabriel," she said, in a strange and impressive voice.
Oak looked up at her. She had not spoken since he left the barn.
The soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble face high against the black sky of the opposite quarter. Bathsheba was sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up beneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder.
"Yes, mistress," he said.
"I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night it was on purpose to be married?"
"I did at last--not at first," he answered, somewhat surprised at the abruptness with which this new subject was broached.
"And others thought so, too?"
"Yes."
"And you blamed me for it?"
"Well--a little."
"I thought so. Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and I want to explain something--I have longed to do it ever since I returned, and you looked so gravely at me. For if I were to die--and I may die soon--it would be dreadful that you should always think mistakenly of me. Now, listen."
Gabriel ceased his rustling.
"I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my engagement to Mr. Troy. It was owing to circ.u.mstances which occurred after I got there that--that we were married. Now, do you see the matter in a new light?"
"I do--somewhat."
"I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun. And perhaps it"s no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever loved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that object I have mentioned. Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame. And at last I didn"t know what to do. I saw, when it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. But I was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his....
And I was grieved and troubled--" She cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. "And then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!" she whispered with desperate impetuosity.
Gabriel made no reply.
"He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about--about his seeing somebody else," she quickly added. "And now I don"t wish for a single remark from you upon the subject--indeed, I forbid it. I only wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before a time comes when you could never know it.--You want some more sheaves?"
She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded. Gabriel soon perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and he said to her, gently as a mother--
"I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired. I can finish the rest alone. If the wind does not change the rain is likely to keep off."
"If I am useless I will go," said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence.
"But O, if your life should be lost!"
"You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer. You have done well."
"And you better!" she said, gratefully. "Thank you for your devotion, a thousand times, Gabriel! Goodnight--I know you are doing your very best for me."
She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch of the gate fall as she pa.s.sed through. He worked in a reverie now, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that feminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him to-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak as warmly as she chose.