As he sat there,getting hotter and hotter,there grew,larger and larger before his eyes,the figure of Terrible God.That image of Someone of a vast size sitting in the red-hot sky,his white beard flowing,his eyes frowning,grew ever more and more awful.Jeremy stared up into the glass,his eyes blinking,the sweat beginning to pour down his nose,and yet his body shivering with terror.But he had strung himself up to meet Him.Somehow he was going to save his mother and hinder her departure.At an instant,inside him,he was crying:"I want my mother!I want my mother!"like a little boy who had been left in the street,and at the other,"You shan't have her!
You shan't have her!"as though someone were trying to steal his Toy-Village or Hamlet away from him.His sleepy,bemused,heated brain wandered,in dazed fashion,back to his father's sermon of that morning.Abraham and Isaac!Abraham and Isaac!
Abraham and Isaac!Suddenly,as though through the flaming glass something had been flung to him,an idea came.Perhaps God,that huge,ugly God was teasing the Coles just as once He had teased Abraham.Perhaps He wished to see whether they were truly obedient as the Jampot had sometimes wished in the old days.He was only,it might be,pretending.Perhaps He was demanding that one of them should give up something--something of great value.Even Jeremy,himself!
If he had to sacrifice something to save his mother,what would be the hardest sacrifice?Would it be his Toy-Village,or Mary or Helen,or his soldiers,or his paint-box,or his gold fish that he had in a bowl,or--No,of course,he had known from the first what would be hardest--it would,of course,be Hamlet.
At this stage in his thinking he removed his arm from Hamlet's neck and looked at the animal.At the same moment the light that had filled the glass-house with a fiery radiance that burnt to the very heart of the place was clouded.Above,in the sky,black,smoky clouds,rolling in fold after fold,as though some demon were flinging them out across the sky as one flings a carpet,piled up and up,each one darker than the last.The light vanished;the conservatory was filled with a thick,murky glow,and far across the fields,from the heart of the black wood,came the low rumble of thunder.But Jeremy did not hear that;he was busy with his thoughts.lie stared at the dog,who was lying stretched out on the dirty floor,his nose between his toes.It cannot truthfully be said that the resolve that was forming in Jeremy's head had its birth in any fine,noble idealisms.It was as though some bully,seizing his best marbles,had said:"I'll give you these back if you hand over this week's pocket-money!"His attitude to the bully could not truthfully be described as one of homage or reverence;rather was it one of anger and impotent rebellion.
He loved Hamlet,and he loved his mother more than Hamlet;but he was not moved by sentiment.Grimly,his legs apart,his eyes shut tight,as they were when he said his prayers,he made his challenge.
"I'll give you Hamlet if you don't take Mother--"A pause."Only I can't cut Hamlet's throat.But I could lose him,if that would do.
Only you must take him now--I couldn't do it to-morrow."His voice began to tremble.He was frightened.He could feel behind his closed eyes that the darkness had gathered.The place seemed to be filled with rolling smoke,and the house was so terribly still!
He said again:"You can take Hamlet.He's my best thing.You can--You can--"
There followed then,with the promptitude of a most admirably managed theatrical climax,a peal of thunder that seemed to strike the house with the iron hand of a giant.Two more came,and then,for a second,a silence,more deadly than all the earlier havoc.
Jeremy felt that God had leapt upon him.He opened his eyes,turned as though to run,and then saw,with a freezing check upon the very beat of his heart,that Hamlet was gone.
VThere was no Hamlet!
In that second of frantic unreasoning terror he received a conviction of God that no rationalistic training in later years was able to remove.
There was no Hamlet!--only the dusky dirty place with a black torrent-driven world beyond it.With a rush as of a thousand whips slashing the air,the rain came down upon the glass.Jeremy turned,crying "Mother!Mother!I want Mother!"and flung himself at the red glass doors;fumbling in his terror for the handle,he felt as though the end of the world had come;such a panic had seized him as only belongs to the most desperate of nightmares.God had answered him.Hamlet was gone and in a moment Jeremy himself might be seized .
He felt frantically for the door;he beat upon the glass.
He cried "Mother!Mother!Mother!"
He had found the door,but just as he turned the handle he was aware of a new sound,heard distantly,through the rain.Looking back he saw,from behind a rampart of dusty flower-pots,first a head,then a rough tousled body,then a tail that might be recognised amongst all the tails of Christendom.
Hamlet (who had trained himself to meet with a fine natural show of bravery every possible violence save only thunder)crept ashamed,dirty and smiling towards his master.God had only played His trick--Abraham and Isaac after all.
Then with a fine sense of victory and defiance Jeremy turned back,looked up at the slashing rain,gazed out upon the black country,at last seized Hamlet and dragging him out by his hind-legs,knelt there in the dust and suffered himself to be licked until his face was as though a snail had crossed over it.
The thunder passed.Blue pushed up into the grey.A cool air blew through the world.
Nevertheless,deep in his heart,the terror remained.In that moment he had met God face to face;he had delivered his first challenge.
P.S.--To the incredulous and cynical of heart authoritative evidence can be shown to prove that it was on the evening of that Sunday that Mrs.Cole turned the corner towards recovery.
