'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.' Helena laughed ironically.
'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.
'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I
offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
know, it's not that I'm afraid....' The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something
had happened.
Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.
No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood
to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing
a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the
storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised.
The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her
feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with
grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have
happened to him--I should have known. I should have known the moment his
spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.' She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have
received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go
and see.' She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
she went to sleep.
The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon
her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by
reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state
of affairs.