the centuries which it carried.
But the storm did not strike with the sudden and interrupted violences of the tempests which it had known so often. It struck once, and the blow endured and continued, a relentless pressure. And the hours passed, and it did not slacken, and the stubborn strength endured it, and would not fear, though the joy of strife was gone, and every fibre ached and quivered; and the time came when the aching of the boughs was in the deep roots also, clutching, in terror now, to the hard rock which they had riven deeper for centuries The aching of the great east limb, which stretched horizontally across the path of the unceasing wind, became an increasing pain, and when it snapped at last, as a twig snaps, through its eight-foot girth, the stunned tree scarcely felt the pain of its parting. When the storm paused for a moment, and then struck with a fresh force, that bore the great tree bodily, with all its roots, and a hundred tons of the rock it gripped, into the hollow of the lane, it was scarcely conscious of the calamity that had overthrown it: it leaned, still half-erect, conscious, as in a dream, of the cessation of that intolerable strain, and falling into the heavy sleep from which it must wake at last to be aware of its ruin.
* * * * * * *
Muriel made her way up the deep lane with comparatively little difficulty, till she came to the place at which the oak had fallen. Here she found herself wading in loose soil, and sinking deeper at every step, till she fell over a projecting root of the fallen giant, that had held its position almost upright as it slid into the hollow.
To surmount this impediment would have been difficult in the daylight for one of her physical limitations. It was impossible in the darkness. But she was of the kind that does not easily turn from any purpose when once it has been undertaken. The bank rose steeply, its surface hidden by the overhanging shadows of bush and tree, and coated with a heavy undergrowth of weed and bramble. But she tried it, after an interval of rest—fortunately, in the blind chance of the darkness, selecting the opposite side from that on which the oak had grown, and in which it had left a gaping pit as far as its roots had spread beneath the surface level.
Actually, it was not as difficult as might be thought for one who had ceased to regard the scratching of face and arms or the tearing of sodden garments. Bush and tree gave support as well as hindrance to slipping feet, and aid as well as obstacle to hands that groped vaguely upward.
The time came when she felt the wind on the level field, and having struggled against it for a hundred difficult yards was glad to take to the bank again, and descend as best she might into the shelter of the narrow lane.
Having surmounted this obstacle, she might have had some difficulty in finding the hillside path that left the lane and straggled vaguely toward the Rectory and the church, with no evidence of where it forked in mid-field which she could have observed in the darkness, but that there was now a measure of light around her, of which she became conscious as soon as she had outflanked the obstacle of the fallen oak.
By this light she found her way round the hill as easily as the storm permitted, and learnt its cause as the Rectory came into sight. It was burning fiercely. Whether from the fire itself, or from the earlier action of the storm, its main structure, old and timber-built, had collapsed entirely. It showed now like a huge bonfire, from which a long trail of flame and smoke held down by the pressure of the wind, lay almost horizontally upon an ancient orchard, finding fresh fuel in its uprooted trees, and stretching on across a farther field, till it formed a hot and choking barrier to any who might attempt to struggle along the road that led to the shelter of the church from the eastern end of the village. For the church stood. It showed no lights, for its northern windows had fallen in, and its southern ones blown outward, and it would have been impossible to keep its candles or its ancient lamps alight in the tempest of wind and rain which blew through it.
But the walls remained, and the squat tower that was itself scarcely as high as the swell of land upon its northern side. And in the darkness, half lit by the flickering glow of the burning house, the Rector’s household, and about thirty others of the four hundred inhabitants of Sterrington village, crouched and sobbed and whimpered, or spoke confident words to others, as their natures led them.
The Rector stood in the shelter of the east porch, looking out in hesitation as Muriel reached it. He had just quietened an injured, frantic woman who had lost one of her children in the darkness as they had made their way to the church by promising that he would himself go to its rescue.
It was not a promise that he would lightly break. Yet what could he do till the wind should slacken and there be some light to guide him! The glare of the burning Rectory shone in his eyes, and made the howling darkness blacker. It would be difficult, he thought, on such a night, to find familiar paths, but now, when all landmarks were flattening, and the air was perilous with flying boughs and falling timber, and the ground was strewn with ruin…. And what cries could reach him through the screaming storm?
The firelight glowed up suddenly as Muriel approached, and shone directly upon her; yet at the first glance he did not recognize who she was.
Her sodden clothes were torn from her left shoulder and arm, and were otherwise filthed and shredded. Her face was smeared with soil and streaked with blood and rain and her hair was a wild disorder above it. He could see from her stumbling walk that she was in the last stage of exhaustion.
“Miss Temple! Are you hurt?” he said fatuously as he drew her on to the seat within the porch that gave some shelter from the wind.
She could not answer for some time, but leaned back, breathing with difficulty. There was the dreaded pain in her side. He was aware that she had fainted.
What could he do but wait beside, supporting her lest she should slip from the narrow bench.
After a time she revived.
“I think I’m all right now,” she said. “You mustn’t stay with me. There must be so much to do.”
The words reminded him of the errand on which he had been starting.
He said, “I am going to look for Mrs. Walkley’s Maud. She was struck by something as she came here, and some neighbours brought her along, and the other children; but Maud’s missing.”
“Then you mustn’t stay for me. I shall be all right now. I wish you hadn’t waited.”
The Rector still stood for a moment. He was not a hero. He hated to be out in the rain, even with an overcoat and some good boots. And now he was insufficiently clad and wearing bedroom slippers. And besides, his cough. He had been tired when he went to bed last night, and now, after barely escaping with his life from the collapse of the Rectory…. And what a loss for a poor man such as he! His library was known to book-collectors throughout the country. It was only last month that a self-invited dealer had offered him two thousand pounds for it. An absurd price! He believed that it was worth four. And it was insured for only three hundred pounds….
Certainly he did not want to go into the storm again in this half-clad condition to look for Maudie Walkley….
If the height of heroism is to be measured by the depth of disinclination or cowardice from which it springs, rather than from a ‘sea-level’ of normality, there was no braver deed in that night of a million of hidden heroisms that the advancing waters would cover than that of the Rev. Peter Smithers, stumbling down the slippery side of the hill into the rain-swept darkness, in his useless search for a child that was already dead.
Lost and bewildered, knowing only that he was somewhere in the lower meadows, he turned sharply more than once at the thought that he must be heading for the unfenced danger of the river-bank, till he knew that all sense of direction had left him.
He
