A STORM.
“Now I hope we shall have no more troubles before father comes home,”
said Madge on the Saturday afternoon, as she helped her mother to iron
some pinafores and pocket-handkerchiefs she had been washing out.
“Baby’s getting better, and only wants plenty of strengthening food;
and Jem begins work again on Monday--only three shillings a week,
though, to begin with--I’m afraid he’ll soon be tired of that; and--why
do you look so serious, mother?”
“I have so much to make me look so, Madge. You talk of no further
troubles, and forget that to-morrow’s Sunday, and there’s nothing for
dinner.”
Madge looked horrified, and scorched a handkerchief through stopping to
gaze at her mother.
“Have you come to an end of your money?” she asked.
“Very nearly. I must keep enough to get what’s necessary for baby.”
“Oh, mother! I ought to try and earn something too, though I shouldn’t
like to leave you to do all the work at home. Well, never mind about
meat for to-morrow. We’ll just have bread, that’s the cheapest thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Jack, coming in, for he was free early on
Saturday. “Nothing but bread for dinner? Here’s enough for a mutton
chop or two at any rate.” And he placed some shillings on the
ironing-cloth before Mrs. Kayll.
“My dear boy!” she cried; “_five!_ What have you done for your own
dinners during the week?”
Jack was nearly through the doorway by this time, but he looked back
over his shoulder half laughing, half confused.
“I’ve gone without any,” he said, and ran off.
The tears came for an instant into Mrs. Kayll’s tired eyes.
“Poor boy,” said she softly. “How good he is! And we have always
thought he cared for nobody but himself!”
“He is so quiet and says so little,” Madge answered, “that it is hard
to understand him. But he is of more real use than any of the others.
This morning and yesterday he was up before me, and had lighted the
fire, put the kettle on, drawn up the blinds, and unfastened the doors.”
Mrs. Kayll thoughtfully put the money into her purse. She was surprised
to find how little she had known of what was in her own children.
Where had they learned so much unselfishness? she asked herself, not
suspecting that they learned it of her, who never considered her own
feelings or her own pleasure, but lived for them and her husband.
Not long after, Bob came in with another contribution to the family
exchequer, in the shape of six more shillings which he had by some
means contrived to earn while taking care of his father’s office; so
that now Mrs. Kayll began to think they must have reached the lowest
depth of their troubles, and that things were beginning to mend.
But she was wrong. The worst catastrophe of all was in store when they
least expected it, but just now came the calm before the storm.
Mrs. Kayll went out that evening and bought some meat for the Sunday
dinner, and the essence of beef the doctor had ordered for the baby,
making what she spent go as far as possible, but yet providing enough
for all, making up by an extra quantity of potatoes for the rather
short supply of mutton. As for pudding, that was a luxury out of
fashion in the Kayll family, except on Sundays, for a long time.
They all went to bed that night in tolerably good spirits, dismissing
cares and anxieties until the next week, and, instead of sighing too
much for the absent one, looking forward to the time of his return, and
rejoicing that one more day of his detention was gone.
The next was a soft sultry hazy morning, with thundery-looking clouds
lying at first low round the horizon, then here and there slowly rising
up in dark threatening masses. The air was heavy and oppressive, and
the blacks lay about thickly, or lazily floated down from above.
In spite of the unsettled look of the weather, the two little girls
and Jack went to church, leaving Madge preparing the potatoes, Mrs.
Kayll attending to various domestic duties with the baby on her arm,
Bob cleaning knives and forks, and Jem looking on at first one, then
another, with his hands in his pockets.
“I’ve had a nice easy time of it with the cooking since father went,”
said Madge, scraping out the black eye of a potato. They had dropped
into a way of speaking of Mr. Kayll as though he were on a visit, and
were expected home at the latest on Tuesday. Mrs. Kayll, however, could
not quite, as the children did, make the best of to-day, and leave
to-morrow to take care of itself. It was not easy to forget that the
milkman had refused to bring any more milk until his bill was paid,
or that the butcher and baker would not let her have either bread or
meat, unless she paid for them on the spot. Of course they had their
own families to think about, and it was but natural that they should
consider them first. But the thought of next week and its struggles,
and the difficulty of feeding all the hungry mouths, made her look this
morning very care-worn and old.
And even when her husband should come home, it might be some time
before he was able to supply her with money, for lately he had had but
little to do.
The potatoes were cooking; the mutton was beginning to sputter in the
oven, and to smell very good, when the storm that had been threatening
all the morning came on with violence. The claps of thunder grew nearer
and louder, the lightning flashed in at all the windows, and after each
flash Jem counted--“One--two--three”--to see how many miles away the
storm actually was. But soon the thunder followed so quickly that there
was no time to count at all--it was evidently just overhead.
Then the rain came down in torrents, and Mrs. Kayll looked anxiously
out, and hoped those poor children were in shelter, for the
church-goers had not yet come home, although it was past the usual time
for their return.
Madge looked in the oven to see that the meat was not cooking too fast,
and then she and the boys ran upstairs to look from a bed-room window,
and watch how the fierce rain pelted down on the dry road and beat up
again in spray. They could not see this from the lower windows, as
theirs being such an old house, and the road having been much raised
since it was built, it stood quite in a hole, and there were four steps
to go down from the gate to the door. The dwellings on each side were
also lower than the roadway, but the Kaylls’ was the lowest of all.
How it rained! Faster and faster! Jem fancied this was how the heavy
drops must have poured from the skies when the great flood was, and
nearly all the world was drowned. He watched the little rivulets
that ran down the hill at the foot of which they lived, noticed the
stream by the side of the path growing wider and wider, and saw that
the gratings above the drains were getting choked up with rubbish, so
that, from letting the water run through too slowly, they came to not
letting it run through at all.
“Oh, those children!” sighed Mrs. Kayll, looking anxiously up the hill.
“I am afraid they will be soaked to the skin. Not in sight yet! Where
can they be?”
And then she went down-stairs with Madge, leaving baby in Bob’s charge.
Bob held him up where he too could see what was going on outside--the
heavy rain still falling, the water beginning to stand in the road, in
a pool that spread and spread--the passers-by, hastening home under
dripping umbrellas, those who wanted to cross the road having to go far
enough round, or else plucking up sufficient courage to wade through,
ankle-deep, as though satisfied that they were already so wet that a
little more or less could not make much difference.
Still heavily as before the rain fell, and the little streams flowed
ever faster down the street. Jem was still thinking of the flood and
staring out, when Mrs. Kayll’s voice called from below:
“Bob, come and help me here a minute. It’s beginning to come in at the
front door.”
Bob ran down, but no help of his could stop the water out, for it was
now fast pouring over from the pavement down the four steps and into
the little area. Madge looked on, as it trickled and spread along the
passage.
“It’s just the same at the back,” she said. “I don’t see that we can do
anything but take some of the things upstairs if it keeps on. I wish it
would leave off raining.”
“Your father always said we should be flooded one of these days,
standing in a hole as we do,” said her mother disconsolately.
But instead of leaving off, it went on harder than ever, the water
rushing down the hill and pouring into the house with such force that
Mrs. Kayll, who had taken the baby from Bob, losing her nerve, opened
the front door and dashed up the steps to the level of the road,
calling to the children to follow. Bob and Madge ran after, to find
that even on the pavement they were standing in an inch or two of
water, while the rain beat on them fiercely.
“Look, mother!” cried Bob excitedly. “It’s rising fast, it’s a foot
deep at the very least in our parlour. And oh! what a shame! Our nice
dinner will be spoiled!”
“There’s one comfort,” said Madge, who looked pale and frightened, “the
carpet’s so bad already that being soaked can’t make it any worse.”
Mrs. Kayll did not answer. She was quite overcome by this new
misfortune, and scarcely seemed to know what to do. Half mechanically
she moved higher up the hill, trying by turning up her dress-skirt over
him to shield the baby from the wet, lest, weak as he was after his
illness, he should take a bad cold and be worse again. Someone, seeing
this, put a big umbrella into her hand, from under which she looked
back to see her little home getting every second more and more deeply
immersed.
Her more fortunate neighbours, whose houses stood high and dry, came
running out of their doors and begged her to go in with them.
“All right, mother. You and Madgie take baby in out of the wet,” said
Bob eagerly. “It won’t hurt me, and I can let you know as soon as it’s
any good for you to come back.”
Mrs. Kayll hesitated, but the baby was frightened, and as another
flash of lightning was followed by a deafening peal of thunder the
little thing began to cry. This plaintive sound brought her more to
herself. Whatever happened to the house and its contents, baby must be
taken care of, and not allowed to catch cold. And with that thought,
she yielded to the entreaties of a woman she knew, who had taken her
by the arm and was gently trying to draw her in, and merely saying,
“Come, Madge,” disappeared from the sight of the curious eyes that were
watching her from the windows on the opposite side of the way.
Madge went too, glad enough to get into shelter away from the beating
rain and the flashes of lightning, of which she was somewhat afraid.
And all the while, in their bewilderment and distress, both mother and
daughter had entirely forgotten that Jem was with them in the house
when the water began to come in, and that they had not seen him since.