On the Escarpment

It was really summer, but the rain had fallen all day and was still falling. The weather can best be described by saying it was the kind reserved for church fêtes. The green leaves were being beaten off the trees by the steady downpour and were drifting about in the puddles. Now and then there would come a gust of wind so that the trees moaned and tossed their arms imploringly, though they had been rooted in our soil long enough to know better. Darkness fell early—indeed there had seemed little light all day, so that the process was slow and imperceptible. But when it was complete, the darkness was intense beyond the street lights and the rain still fell through it. I had played the piano until my head sang—pounded savagely and unavailingly at the C Minor Study of Chopin which had seemed, when Moisewitch played, to express all the width and power of my own love, my own hopeless infatuation. But Imogen was engaged to be married, that was the end.

So I lay, dry-mouthed, and endured. The only thing that pulled me out of myself every now and then was the sudden sound of blown water, dashed over the panes like gravel. Eighteen is a good time for suffering. One has all the necessary strength, and no defences. Midnight clanged from the tower of the church, and before the twelfth stroke had sounded, the three sodium lights in the square went out. In my head, Imogen drove his green, open Lagonda across the downs, her long, reddish hair flying back from her pale face—she was only five years older than I was. I ought to have done something; and now it was too late. I stared at the invisible ceiling, and she drove; and I saw him, so secure, so old, so huge in his ownership of the Stilbourne Adviser, impregnable. I heard his gnatlike voice and suddenly he was struck by lightning. I saw it branch down, there was a puff of smoke and he was gone. Somehow, the lightning had rendered Imogen insensible. I was carrying her in my arms.