Painted Windows | Page 8

swered nothing, for what I had to say would not, I felt, be understood.
One morning in June I left home with my resentment burning fiercely
within me. I had not cared for the things we had for breakfast, for I was
half-ill with fretting and with the closeness of the day, but my lack of
appetite had been passed by with the remark that any one was likely not
to have an ap- petite on such a close day. But I was so languid, and so
averse to taking up the usual round of things, that I begged mother to

let me stay at home. She shook her head decidedly.
"You've been out of school too many days already this term," she said.
"Run along now, or you'll he late!"
"Please --" I began, for my head really was whirling, although, quite as
much, perhaps, from my perversity as from any other cause. Mother
turned on me one of her "lastword" glances.
"Go to school without another word," she said, quietly.
I knew that quiet tone, and I went. And now I was sure that all was over
between my parents and myself. I be- gan to wonder if I need really
wait till I was grown up before leaving home. So miserably absorbed
was I in think- ing of this, and in pitying myself with a consuming pity,
that everything at school seemed to pass like the shadow of a dream. I
blundered in whatever I tried to do, was sharply scolded for not hearing
the teacher until she had spoken my name three times, and was holding
on to myself desperately in my effort to keep back a flood of tears,
when I became aware that something was happening.
There suddenly was a perfect silence in the room -- the sort of silence
that makes the heart beat too fast. The mist swimming before me did
not, I per- ceived, come from my own eyes, but from the changing
colour of the air, the usual transparency of which was being tinged with
yellow. The sultriness of the day was deepening, and seemed to carry a
threat with it.
"Something is going to happen," thought I, and over the whole room
spread the same conviction. Electric currents seemed to snap from one
con- sciousness to another. We dropped our books, and turned our eyes
toward the western windows, to look upon a changed world. It was as if
we peered through yellow glass. In the sky soft- looking, tawny clouds
came tumbling along like playful cats -- or tigers. A moment later we
saw that they were not playful, but angry; they stretched out claws, and
snarled as they did so. One claw reached the tall chimneys of the
schoolhouse, another tapped at the cupola, one was thrust through the
wall near where I sat.

Then it grew black, and there was a bellowing all about us, so that the
com- mands of the teacher and the screams of the children barely could
be heard. I knew little or nothing. My shoulder was stinging, something
had hit me on the side of the head, my eyes were full of dust and mortar,
and my feet were carrying me with the others along the corridor, down
the two flights of wide stairs. I do not think we pushed each other or
were reckless. My recollec- tion is only of many shadowy figures
flying on with sure feet out of the build- ing that seemed to be falling in
upon us.
Presently we were out on the land- ing before the door, with one more
flight of steps before us, that reached to the street. Something so strong
that it might not be denied gathered me up in invisible arms, whirled
me round once or twice and dropped me, not un- gently, in the middle
of the road. And then, as I struggled to my knees and, wiping the dust
from my eyes, looked up, I saw dozens of others being lifted in the
same way, and blown off into the yard or the street. The larger ones
were trying to hold on to the smaller, and the teachers were
endeavouring to keep the children from going out of the building, but
their efforts were of no avail. The children came on, and were blown
about like leaves.
Then I saw what looked like a high yellow wall advancing upon me -- a
roar- ing and fearsome mass of driven dust, sticks, debris. It came over
me that my own home might be there, in strips and fragments, to beat
me down and kill me; and with the thought came a swift little vision
out of my geography of the Arabs in a sand-storm on the desert. I
gathered up my fluttering