DESERTED.
When Bob, carrying the baby, ran down in answer to his mother’s call,
Jem remained where he was, looking out at the storm. In spite of the
natural feeling of nervousness, he enjoyed seeing the lightning flash
out from the thick bank of heavy clouds, showing their shapes where all
had seemed one mass of dull gray, and dart in a brilliant jagged streak
across the sky. For a little time he forgot everything else in this
strange pleasure. In his mind was the thought that it was like seeing
fireworks, only that no fireworks were half so grand.
Flash after flash. Peal after peal. There had not been such a
thunder-storm here for years. Jem forgot even to look at the pool
stretching across the road; but when at last he did bring his eyes down
again to the earth, it was to see that the sheet of water, starred all
over with the plashing rain-drops, extended now in places actually over
the pavement. A cab came along, and the boy laughed till the tears
came into his eyes at the concern of the old lady inside, who kept
putting out her head and telling the cabman to go another way, while he
insisted on driving straight forwards, splashing up the very centre of
the road, without paying the slightest heed to the old lady’s anger.
Jem watched until the cab and its occupant were safe on dry land, or
rather on land as dry as any could be in such a rain.
“I wonder what it’s like at the back,” he said then. And when the
flashes grew less frequent, and seemed to come more from behind the
house, he ran into the bed-room that looked on the yard where Mrs.
Kayll and Madge were wont to hang out the clothes to dry every week,
and on numbers of other back windows and other yards, where other
people also hung out their clothes to dry.
The ground here was pretty nearly covered with standing water, but
there was at present nothing much to be seen, except that in the next
yard but one several little jets of water forced their way here and
there through the fence and spurted fiercely into the inclosure. Beyond
this last fence was a large space of open ground not yet built upon and
sloping gently upwards, so that the rain ran down the incline until
checked by the wooden palings. There it rose and rose, and the jets
grew larger as the water wore for itself a passage, but the weight
beyond was too great to be kept back long by such a feeble barricade.
It gave way suddenly with a report like that of a pistol, and the
boards were flung here and there as the flood dashed onwards, sweeping
away in its course the next fence, and then those on each side of the
Kaylls’ yard, while at the same time Jem felt the floor shake under his
feet.
At this he shrank back from the window in horror, for there in an
instant was water all round him, and nothing left standing of the
divisions between the yards but a post here and there, like the last
relics of a wrecked vessel.
Running out into the passage with a vague intention of getting away at
once into safety, Jem was about to descend the stairs, when he found
to his consternation that the lowest steps were out of sight in muddy
water.
“Mother! Bob! Madge! Where are you?” he cried.
There was no answer.
He called again and again, but still there was no reply save a kind of
washing sound from below, and a long muttering growl from above. Where
could they be? Had this rush of water come upon them suddenly, and were
they drowned down there in the kitchen or little parlour?
His first impulse was to go and look, though his heart beat terribly
fast, and all his strength seemed to have gone and left him weak and
trembling. He descended a few steps as far as the edge of the water,
and then all at once the sight of it made him sick and giddy, and he
would have fallen in if he had not turned round quickly, and, holding
by the balustrade, climbed up again to the bed-room.
“They can’t have gone and left me,” he sobbed. “They wouldn’t do that,
without even calling to me to come. And here I am, and can’t get out! I
shall have to stop and be drowned.”
He hurried once more to the front window, and looked out first in one
direction, then in the other. Why, there they were--his mother under
an umbrella with the baby, Madge and Bob in the road, higher up the
hill, with the rain beating upon them, and a few people standing about
talking to them earnestly. He tried to open the window and shout to
them, but the sash stuck in its frame, and before he had succeeded
in making it slide up, Mrs. Kayll had carried the baby into a house,
near which she had been standing, and Madge had followed. Bob was left
alone, looking about him as though trying to find a dry way to get back.
Jem shouted his name, but a clap of thunder at that moment made his
voice inaudible; he saw his brother turn to speak to some one, and then
walk across to the other side of the road.
They had left him to his fate, then! He was deserted. The wild thought
crossed his mind that they had perhaps done it to punish him for the
faults that came back to his memory now with perfect clearness. He saw
all in a moment that he had up till now cared far more for himself than
for anyone else, and this was the result: those who ought to have loved
him had forgotten him in the moment of danger, or, worse still, had
wilfully left him to do the best he could for himself.
Poor Jem! This was a lesson he never unlearnt. The misery and fear of
the discovery were so great that he was completely overcome. He dropped
down on the bed-room floor unconscious. It was just at that point of
time that Bob, picking his way back with water nearly up to his ankles,
stopped short with a sudden exclamation, and stared about him.
“Why,” he said aloud, “where on earth is Jem?”
The recollection that his brother had been with them at first, and that
he had seen nothing of him since the water began to enter the house,
turned him quite cold with misgivings. How could he have so entirely
forgotten the boy all this time?
Not that it was really surprising in the sudden excitement and bustle
of such an unexpected disaster. And besides, the Kayll boys were so
accustomed to taking care of themselves, that it was not natural to
anyone to trouble about them, or inquire where they were when absent.
“Oh, he’ll turn up,” was the family feeling if a boy were missing. But
now Bob was aghast at the thought that Jem might _not_ turn up. He
waded towards the house with pale face and staring eyes. His brother
must be somewhere within, yet he was at neither window;--where could he
be?
The rain had ceased to fall at last, and the depth of the flood was not
increasing, even though as yet there was no evidence of its growing
less. As people began fast to collect, now that the worst was over,
and to make some attempts to clear away the rubbish that was choking
up the gratings over the drains, so that the water might run through
more quickly, he asked of several if they had seen Jem; but no one
remembered anything of him since the beginning of the storm. As Bob
explained his fear that the boy must be still in the house, which it
was now impossible to enter except by the bed-room windows, a ladder
was quickly fetched and laid across from the road to the sill of that
which Jem, on his discovery that he was left behind, had thrown open.
Another minute, and Bob was in the little bed-room, lifting up his
brother, who still lay in a dead faint on the floor. As he raised him
he heard the people shouting to him from the outside to be quick, and
without knowing the meaning of their excited cries he carried Jem with
all speed to the window, passed him out to a man who was half-way up
the ladder ready to receive him, slid down closely after them, and was
seized by several hands and dragged across to the other side of the
road, just as with a rumbling sound, and then a terrible crash, the
little old house and the one adjoining it fell forward, a heap of ruins.