Deluge. S. Fowler Wright
such as would last till sunrise?
Mr. Webster’s man was away, but Mr. Webster would do it. The inspector was hurriedly grateful. He rang off. Martin went upstairs to dress hastily.
Helen was still sleeping peacefully, and when he woke her sufficiently to explain why he was going, she only said, “Don’t be long; it’s too cold to stay out at this time of night,” and was asleep again as she said it.
The house lay at some distance south of the road, and the wind blew from the north, so that it faced him almost directly as he entered the drive, to which the house stood sideways, facing west, and though the trees must have done something to break its force, he found that he could only stand against it with difficulty. He switched on the drive lamps (for the night was still dark) so that he found his way easily, though every yard was an effort, as though the air into which he stepped were solid substance into which a foot must be forced with difficulty.
Turning to the right when he left the drive, and passing a row of adjoining cottages, he came to the place of the accident. An elm had fallen across the road, scattering the bricks of a wall which had bounded the field in which it grew, so that he stumbled against one of them while the dark barrier of the fallen trunk was still at some distance. On his own side, it had crashed through a high fence of saplings, which had fallen for several yards on either side. A flash-light torch which he carried showed the giant bole stretching far into the field, and beyond a shadowy mass of broken or uplifted branches. Having fixed the torch with some labour, and the help of a pocket-knife (rather neatly, as he thought), on the fallen trunk, so that the wind should not displace it, and it would be a warning, however feeble, to any approaching traffic, he made his way back to the house.
The steady violence of the wind was still increasing. Turning in at the gate he found it difficult to move forward without falling. Had it come in gusts of such a force it must have been impossible to do so, but the pressure was so regular that the muscular effort needed for its resistance could be gauged with accuracy, and the greatest difficulty was to avoid an acceleration of pace, when moving before it, which would have become uncontrollable.
As he made his way to the house, he heard a heavy rumbling sound behind him, which he at first supposed to be thunder, but when it came a second time he recognised the fall of some large building that the wind had demolished.
But no fear for his own house, which was very solidly built, entered his mind, and he regained it with a sense of relief and of recovered security.
He was of the temperament that a high wind exhilarates, and the lives of most people of that time were so bare of unexpected incident, that any unusual physical occurrence, even of a threatening character, had an effect of pleasurable stimulus, and dim atavistic instincts moved slightly in their sleep, though they might not waken.
It is a thing almost incredible to tell, but it is simply true, and illustrates the intolerable monotony of their days, that a great industry had arisen which was occupied in collecting daily information respecting the actions or accidents of their fellowmen, and informing others concerning them, so that every day millions of people dissipated their time in learning (and at once forgetting) that a woman of whom they had never heard before, nor would hear again, had left her husband; or that a husband had broken his wife’s head; or a servant had taken his master’s property; that a building had been accidentally burned in a distant town; or a child drowned in a river fifty miles away; and even events of much greater triviality were repeated in a series of unending monotony.
Yet the collection of such details over a vast area gave to their readers, whose intelligences were dulled by the conditions of their existence, an illusion of surrounding incidents; and so they would spend their daily time in the absorbing of such vicarious excitement, while the actual conditions in which they existed were such that they might sometimes lack food or clothing for their children, and the land around them was neglected, or roughly cultivated by the machines which they produced in their crowded settlements, and which had replaced the living men and women by whom the work had been more efficiently performed in earlier days.
Of the joy of present living, of the captured meal and the barred door, of brief safety after hazard, of ecstatic rest after exhaustion, they knew nothing, either by imagination or experience.
So hateful were their own existences, and so hopeless were they of any change or improvement from their own exertions, that many thousands of them found relief in periods of temporary forgetfulness, during which they were enabled, by a supply of imaginary narrations, to occupy themselves with the supposed emotions or actions of invented lives.
As we have seen, the house-front faced sideways to the wind’s course, and it was owing to this circumstance that Martin was able, after a moment’s breathless struggle, to close the door again when he entered it.
As he did this he became conscious that the telephone was again ringing steadily, and he went to it in anticipation that he would hear an inquiry as to the work which he had just completed but a voice was speaking already as he raised the receiver.
“...should be held in readiness until more is known. Message ends. Home Office message begins. Broadcast by all means available. Post public notice this effect in all offices. Terrible calamity in Southern Europe. Land subsidence, and Mediterranean overflowing. Spain and Italy believed submerging. Telegraphic communications ceased except through Denmark. Believed no occasion alarm here, although gale increasing. Movements of population will greatly embarrass Government’s efforts to meet emergency. Public notice ends. Instruct all local authorities take immediate steps control provisions, Arrange population evacuate all unstable buildings. Close all banks. Suspend all transit services, awaiting further instructions. Government taking necessary steps maintain essential services. Precautions in cities against fire urgently necessary. Panic movements of population to be....”
The voice ceased, and the instrument no longer responded to any effort to rouse it. It was clear that he had received the end, and then the beginning of a message which was being repeated incessantly for the benefit of all who could hear it.
Martin went upstairs slowly. He was excited rather than shocked or alarmed by the stupendous nature of the catastrophe. His mind was too active for his feet to move very rapidly. Was it really true? And would his own country sink also into the abyss, and they with it? Was it safe to stay in the house, and if not, what should be the alternative? What food was there in the house, and could any tradesman reach them if this storm should continue? Would the court be closed, or ought he to attempt to reach it? Thank Heaven, that brief—! The fowl-house would never stand this wind—the hens would be loose among those young savoys in the morning, just planted out, if they weren’t dead—he must wake Helen; could anyone sleep through this wind? He would see that the children were safe before he did so; if they were awake he would bring them to her.
So he went first to their room, and found them sleeping as he had hoped, and the sight, illogically enough, gave him a feeling of the stability of established things, so that he went to look out of their window in a quieter and more sceptical mood. He would do nothing rashly. Those who lost their heads at such a time were the ones who suffered now, and were ridiculed afterwards.
The window was over the front door, and he could see the trees on the further side of the drive. They were not swaying at all, but bent before the wind so low that he could see over some of them (for the dawn was faintly widening) to a field beyond that was usually hidden entirely. And then the wind ceased. It ceased absolutely, and as suddenly as a clock ticks. The bent trees leapt upward.
There was a moment’s pause of stillness, and then the wind came again with a sudden and augmented blast, a triumphant downward rush that swept the tortured trees before it. Some that had resisted the gradually increasing pressure half the night now screamed and snapped, or fell full length, with a rending of deep roots, and tons of green-turfed soil flung loose around them. It caught up gate and fence, and carried them like paper till they were flung against a wall that held them back for a moment, and then fell itself in an equal ruin. A crash and rumble of falling bricks came from the farther end of the house at the same moment. Martin supposed it to be another chimney falling. The noise roused him to the need for action. He went quickly toward the bedroom where he had left his wife an hour