the towpath, hardly meaning what he said, saying it because he was in
perplexity, not because he desired extraneous help out of it; 'Would to
Heaven,' he had said, 'that my course were determined for me!' and at
once, that same night, within an hour, Heaven had responded to the call.
*CHAPTER V.*
*RIPE AND DROPPED.*
Mrs. Sidebottom slept soundly, only troubled by the mistake about the
tablecloth. The captain slept soundly, troubled by nothing at all. The
scream of steam-whistle, the bray of buzzer and bawl of syren, the
jangle of alarm bells, and the hum of voices outside their windows, did
not rouse them. They had become accustomed to these discordant noises
which startled the ears every morning early, to rouse the mill-hands and
call them from their beds. Moreover, the whistles and buzzers and
syrens were not in the town, but were below in the valley, at some
distance, and distance modified some of the dissonance.
It is true that Mrs. Sidebottom dreamed, and to dream is not to enjoy
perfect rest. She dreamt that her brother Jeremiah was examining the
tablecloth, and that she was dribbling water over the sheet out of a
marrow-spoon, in patterns, to give it an appearance of being figured
with acorns and oak-leaves. And she found in her dreams that Jeremiah
was hard to persuade that what he had before him was a figured damask
tablecloth and not a sheet. And she thought how she assured her brother
on her word that what he saw was a watered table-cover, and mightily
pleased she was with herself at her ingenuity in equivocation.
But towards morning the house was roused by violent ringing at the
front-door bell, and by calls under the windows, and gravel thrown at
the panes. The watchman had come, at Salome's desire, to inquire if by
chance Mr. Pennycomequick was there. He had gone out, after his return
home, and had not returned or been seen. Fears were entertained that he
might have been swept away in the flood.
'Flood! what flood?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom.
'The valley is full of water. Holroyd reservoir be busted.'
'And--Mr. Pennycomequick has not been seen?'
'No, ma'am. Miss Cusworth thought there might be a chance he had come
back here and was staying talking.'
'He has not been here since he dined with us.'
'He said he was boun' to take a stroll on t' tow-path. I see'd him
there. If he's not got off it afore the flood came down he's lost.'
'Lost! Fiddlesticks! I mean--bless my soul.' Mrs. Sidebottom's heart
stood still for a moment. What! Jeremiah ripe, and dropped from the
tree already. Jeremiah gone down the river with the _anges-a-cheval_
inside him that he had enjoyed so recently.
She ran upstairs and hammered at her son's door. His window looked out
on the valley, not into the street, and he had not been roused at the
same time as his mother. As she ran, the thought came to her uncalled,
like temptations, 'I needn't have had champagne at six-and-six. It does
not matter after all that the sheet and the tablecloth changed places. I
might just as well have had cheap grapes.'
'Lamb!' she called through the door, 'Lamb! Do get up. Your uncle is
drowned. Slip into your garments. He has been swept away by the flood.
Don't stay to shave, you shaved before dinner; and your prayers can
wait. Do come as quickly as possible. Not a minute is to be lost.'
She opened his door, and saw her son with a disordered head and sleepy
eyes, stretching himself. He had tumbled out of his bed and into his
dressing-gown. There was gas in the room, turned down to a pea when not
required for light; and this the captain, when roused, had turned up
again.
'Oh, Lamb! Do bestir yourself! Do you hear that your uncle is dead,
and that he has been carried away by a flood? It is most advisable that
we should be in his house before the Cusworths or the servants have made
away with anything. These are the critical moments, when things
disappear and cannot be traced afterwards. No one but the Cusworths
know what he had, there may be plate and jewellery that belonged to his
mother. I cannot tell. We do not know what money there is in the
house, and what securities he has in his strong box. My dear Lamb!
Yes, brush your hair, and don't look stupid. You may lose a great deal
by lack of promptitude. Of course we must be in charge. The Cusworths
have no _locus standi_. I shall dismiss them at the earliest
convenience. Good gracious me, what things you men are! If you go to
bed you get frouzy and rumpled in a way women never do. I have noticed,
in crossing the Channel, how a man who gets sea-sick breaks up
altogether and becomes disreputable; whereas a woman may have been ten
times as ill, yet when she steps ashore she is decent and presentable.
I can wait for you no longer. I shall go on by myself. When you are
ready, follow.'
Mrs. Sidebottom ran back to her room, and was equipped to start in an
incredibly short time. When she again came forth she looked into her
son's room once more, and said, 'I do hope and trust, Lamb; that your
uncle took his keys with him. It would be too frightful to suppose that
he had left them behind, and that these Cusworths should have had the
house to themselves and the keys all this while.'
Mrs. Sidebottom hastened to the residence of her half-brother, which
stood on the slope of the hill a few minutes' walk from the factory.
There was now sufficient light for her to see that the whole basin of
the Keld was occupied by water, that not the fields only, but the
mill-yards as well were inundated. The entire population of Mergatroyd
was awake and afoot, and giving tongue like a pack of beagles. The
street or road leading down the hill into the valley was crowded with
people, some hurrying down to the water, others ascending, laden with
goods from the houses that had been invaded by water. The cottagers in
the bottom had escaped, or were being rescued. What had become of the
workers in Mitchell's no one knew, and fears were entertained for them.
The mill itself stood above the water, but if the hands engaged in it
had attempted to leave it, they must have been overtaken and carried
away by the flood. Fortunately the majority of the mills were nearer
the hillsides than Mitchell's, so that escape from them was
comparatively easy. The rush of the torrent had been along the course
of the river and canal, and though the water surged against the wall
that enclosed the mill-folds, and even entered the walls and swamped the
basements of the houses therein, it was with reduced force.
Mrs. Sidebottom gave little attention to the scenes of havoc, to the
distress and alarm that prevailed. Her one dread was lest she should
reach her brother's house too late to prevent its pillage.
When she arrived there she found that Salome was not in, that Mrs.
Cusworth, a feeble and sickly woman, was frightened and incapacitated
from doing anything, and that the servants were out in the streets.
'What made my brother go out?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom; 'why was he not in
bed like a Christian?'
'He had been sitting up, talking with Salome,' answered the widow, 'and
as he had taken no exercise for two days, and did not feel sleepy, he
said he would take a short walk.'
'What keys has he left, and where are they? I do not mean the key of
the groceries, or of the cellar, but of his papers and cash-box.'
Mrs. Cusworth did not know. She had nothing to do with these keys; she
supposed that Mr. Pennycomequick carried them about with him.
'Probably,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'but gentlemen when going out to
dinner sometimes forget to take the keys out of their pockets and put
them in those of the dress suit. I had a husband. He did it, and many
a lecture I have given him for his want of prudence. Do you know where
his everyday clothes are? I suppose he went abroad in his dress-coat
and smalls. I had better have a look and make sure.'
Mrs. Cusworth thought, in reply, that probably the clothes would be
found in Mr. Pennycomequick's bedroom.
'There is a light in it, I suppose,' said his half-sister. 'By-the-way,
who had charge of the plate?'
'I have,' answered the widow.
'You have, then, the key of the plate-chest?'
'There is no plate-chest. There is a cupboard.'
'Iron-plated?'
'Oh no; there is no silver, or very little--only some teaspoons, all the
rest is electro. But do you think, Mrs. Sidebottom, that dear Mr.
Pennycomequick is--is lost?' The widow's eyes filled and she began to
cry.
'Lost! oh, of course.'
'But we cannot tell, we do not know, but he may have taken refuge
somewhere.'
'Fiddlesticks--I mean, hardly likely. He was on the towpath, and there
is no place of refuge he could reach from that.'
'Really dead! really dead!' The poor widow broke down.
'Dead, of course, he is dead, with all this water. Bless me! You would
not call in the ocean to drown him. I have known a case of a man in the
prime of life who was smothered in six inches.'
'Yes, but he may have left the towpath in time, and then, instead of
returning home, have gone about helping the poor creatures who have been
washed out of their houses, and some of them have not had time to get
into their clothes. It would be like his kind heart to remain out all
night rendering every assistance in his power.'
'There is something in that,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, and her face became
slightly longer. 'He has not been found.'
'No, not yet.'
Mrs. Sidebottom mused.
'I don't see,' she said, 'how he can have got away if he went on the
towpath. I have heard he was seen going on to it. The towpath is
precisely where the greatest danger lay. It is exactly there that the
current of the descending flood would reach what you would call its
maximum of velocity. Is not Salome come in yet? Why is she out? What
is she doing?'
Then in came her son, in trim order; neither the danger in which his
uncle might be, nor his prospect of inheriting that uncle's fortune,
could induce Lambert to appear partially dressed. His mother drew him
aside into the dining-room.
'Lambert,' she said, 'there is no plate. I am not sorry for it, for if
Jeremiah had laid out money in buying silver, he would have gone in for
King's pattern, or Thread and Shell--which are both odious, vulgar and
ostentatious, only seen on the tables of the _nouveaux riches_.'
'Is my uncle not returned?'
'No, Lamb! and, there is a good soul, run down the road, bestir
yourself, and ascertain whether the towpath, to which your uncle
Jeremiah said he was going, is really submerged, and to what depth, and
ascertain also at what rate the current runs, and whether it is likely
to subside. Mrs. Cusworth thinks it not impossible that your uncle may
be helping the wretches who are getting out of their bedroom windows, or
are perched on the roofs of their houses. Oh, Lamb! if your uncle were
to turn up after the agony of mind he has occasioned me, I could hardly
bear it; I would go into hysterics. My dear Lamb! do keep that old
woman talking whilst I run upstairs to Jeremiah's dressing-room. I must
get at his everyday smalls, and see if he has left his keys in the
pocket; men do such inconsiderate things. I must do this as a
precaution, you understand, lest the keys should fall into improper
hands, into the hands of designing and unscrupulous persons, who have no
claim on my brother whatever, and no right to expect more than a book or
a teacup as a remembrancer. Lamb! it looks suspicious that Salome should
keep out of the way now. Goodness gracious! what if she has been
beforehand with me, and is out concealing the spoils! Go, Lamb, make
inquiries after your uncle, and keep an eye open for Salome. The girl
is deep. I will go and search the pockets of your uncle's panjams,
pepper and salt; I know them. We must not put or allow temptations to
lie in the way of the unconscientious.'
*CHAPTER VI.*
*A COTTAGE PIANO.*
Mr. Pennycomequick had but just reached the hut of the keeper of the
locks when he saw a great wave rushing down on him. It extended across
the valley from bank to bank, it overswept the raised sides of canal and
river, and confounded both together, and, as if impelled by the
antagonism of modern socialism against every demarcation of property,
caused the hedges of the several fields and bounding walls to disappear,
engulfed or overthrown.
The hut was but seven feet high on one side and six on the other, and
was small--a square brick structure with a door on one side and a wooden
bench on that toward the locks. Unfortunately the hut had been run up
on such economical principles that the bricks were set on their narrow
sides, instead of being superimposed on their broad sides, and thus made
a wall of but two and a half inches thick, ill-calculated to resist the
impetus of a flood of water, but serviceable enough for the purpose for
which designed--a shelter against weather. It was roofed with sandstone
slate at a slight incline. Fortunately the door looked to the east, so
that the current did not enter and exert its accumulated strength
against the walls to drive them outwards. The door had been so placed
because the west wind was that which brought most rain on its wings.
Jeremiah put a foot on the bench, and with an alacrity to which he had
long been a stranger, heaved himself upon the roof of the shelter, not
before the water had smitten it and swirled about the base and foamed
over his feet. Had he not clung to the roof, he would have been swept
away. To the west the darkness remained piled up, dense and undiluted,
as though the clouds there contained in them another forty-eight hours
of rain. A very Pelion piled on Ossa seemed to occupy the horizon, but
above this the vault became gradually clearer, and the crescent moon
poured down more abundant light, though that was not in itself
considerable.
By this light Jeremiah could see how widespread the inundation was, how
it now filled the trough of the Keld, just as it must have filled it in
the remote prehistoric age, when the western hills were sealed in ice,
and sent their frosty waters burdened with icebergs down the valleys
they had scooped out, and over rocks which they furrowed in their
passage.
Jeremiah looked at the lock-keeper's cottage, not any longer as a
possible place of refuge, but out of compassion for the unfortunate man
who was in it. Not a sound issued thence; not a light gave token that he
had been roused in time to effect his escape, if only to the roof.
Probably, almost certainly, he and his wife were floating as corpses in
their little room on the ground floor.
Away on the ridge to the north, yellow lights were twinkling, and thence
came sounds of life. The steam calls had ceased to shrill; they had
done their work. No one slept in Mergatroyd--no one in all the towns,
villages, and hamlets down the valley of the Keld--any more that night,
save those who, smothered by the water, slept to wake no more.
Hard by the lock, growing out of the enbankment, stood a Lombardy
poplar. The sudden blast of wind accompanying the water had twisted and
snapped it, but had not wholly severed the top from the stump. It clung
to this, attached by ligaments of bark and fibres of wood. The stream
caught at the broken tree-top that trailed on the causeway, shook it
impatiently, dragged it along with it, ripped more of the nerves that
fastened it, and seemed intent on carrying it wholly away.
Notwithstanding his danger and extreme discomfort, with his boots full
of water, Jeremiah was unable to withdraw his eyes for long from the
broken tree, the top of which whipped the base of his place of refuge;
for he calculated whether, in the event of the water undermining the
hut, he could reach the stump along the precarious bridge of the broken
top.
But other objects presented themselves, gliding past, to distract his
mind from the tree. By the wan and straggling light he saw that various
articles of an uncertain nature were being whirled past; and the very
uncertainty as to what they were gave scope to the imagination to invest
them with horror.
For a while the water roared over the sluice, but at last the immense
force exerted on the valves tore them apart, wrenched one from its
hinges, threw it down, and the torrent rolled triumphantly over it; it
did not carry the door off, which held still to its lower hinge, at
least for a time, though it twisted the iron in its socket of stone.
The water was racing along, now noiselessly, but with remorseless
determination, throwing sticks, straw, and then a drowned pig at the
obstructive hut. At one moment a boat shot past. If it had but touched
the hut, Jeremiah would have thrown himself into it, and trusted that it
would be stranded in shallow water. He knew how insecure was the
building that sustained him. There was no one in the boat. It had been
moored originally by a rope, which was snapped, and trailed behind it.
The moon flared out on the water, that looked like undulating mercury,
and showed a dimple on its surface above the hut; a dimple formed by the
water that was parted by the obstruction; and about this eddy sticks and
strands were revolving. Then there approached a cradle in which
whimpered a babe. On the cradle stood a cat that had taken refuge there
from the water, when it found no other spot dry for its feet. And now
the cradle swung from side to side, and as it tilted, the cat leaped to
the upraised side, mee-awing pitifully, and then, as the strange boat
lurched before a wave on the other side, the cat skipped back again to
where it was before, with tail erect and plaintive cry, but, by its
instinctive shiftings, preserving the balance of the little craft. The
cradle was drawn down between the walls where the sluice had been, and
whether it passed in safety beyond, Jeremiah could not see.
Now his attention was arrested by a huge black object sailing down
stream, reeling and spinning as it advanced. What was it? A house
lifted bodily and carried along? Jeremiah watched its approach with
uneasiness; if it struck his brick hut it would probably demolish it.
As it neared, however, he was relieved to discover that it was a
hayrick; and on it, skipping from side to side, much as the cat had
skipped on the cradle, he observed a fluttering white figure.
Now he saw that a chance offered better than that of remaining on the
fragile hut. The bricks would give way, but the hayrick must float. If
he could possibly swing himself on to the hay, he would be in
comparative safety, for it is of the nature of strong currents to
disembarrass themselves of the cumbrous articles wherewith they have
burdened themselves and throw them away along their margins, strewing
with them the fields they have temporarily overflowed. It was, however,
difficult in the uncertain light to judge distances, and calculate the
speed at which the floating island came on, and the rick struck the hut
before Jeremiah was prepared to leap. He, however, caught at the hay,
and tried to scramble into the rick that overtopped him, when he was
thrown down, struck by the white figure that leaped off the hay and
tumbled on the roof, over him. In another instant, before Jeremiah
could recover his feet, the rick had made a revolution and was dancing
down the stream, leaving a smell of hay in his nose, and the late tenant
of the stack sprawling at his side.
'You fool!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick angrily, 'what have you come
here for?'
'I could hold on no longer. I was giddy. I thought there was safety
here.'
'Less chance here than on the rick you have deserted. You have spoiled
your own chance of life and mine.'
'I'm starved wi' caud,' moaned the half-naked man, 'I left my bed and
got through t'door as t'water came siping in, and I scram'led up on to
t'rick. I never thowt t'rick would ha' floated away.'
'Here, then,' said Jeremiah, removing his great coat, but with a bad
grace, 'take this.'
'That's better,' said the man, without a word of thanks, as he slipped
into the warm overcoat. 'Eh! now,' said he, 'if t'were nobbut for the
way t'rick spun aboot, I could na' ha' stuck there. I wouldn't ha' gone
out o' life, spinning like a skoprill' (tee-totum), 'not on no account;
I'd a-gone staggering into t'other world, and ha' been took for a
drunkard, and I'm a teetotaler, have been these fifteen years. Fifteen
years sin' I took t'pledge, and never bust out but once.'
'You have water enough to satisfy you now,' said Jeremiah grimly.
'Dost'a want to argy?' asked the man. 'Becos if so, I'm the man for
thee, Peter--one, three, twenty, what dost'a say to that, eh?'
Jeremiah was in no mood to argue, nor was the time or place suitable;
but not so thought this fanatic, to whom every time and place was
appropriate for a dispute about alcohol.
'I wonder whether the water is falling,' said the manufacturer, drawing
himself away from his companion and looking over the edge into the
current. He saw apples, hundreds of apples swimming past; a long
wavering line of them coming down the stream, like migrating ants, or a
Rechabite procession, turning over, bobbing, but all in sequence one
behind the other. By daylight they would have resembled a chain of red
and yellow beads, but now they showed as jet grains on silver. They had
come, no doubt, from a farmer's store or out of a huckster's cart.
Jeremiah leaned over the eave of the hut to test the distance of the
water; then caught an apple and threw it on the roof, whence it rolled
over and rejoined the procession on the further side.
''Tis a pity now,' muttered the man in nightshirt and topcoat, ''tis a
pity aboot my bullock, I were bown to sell'n a Friday.'
Suddenly Jeremiah recoiled from his place, for, dancing on the water was
a human body, a woman, doubtless, for there was a kerchief about the
head, and in the arms a child, also dead. The woman's eyes were open,
and the moon glinted in the whites. They seemed to be looking and
winking at Jeremiah. Then a murky wave washed over the face, like a hand
passed over it, but it did not close the eyes, which again glimmered
forth. Then, up rose the corpse, lifted by the water, but seeming to
struggle to gain its feet. It was caught in that swirl, that dimple
Jeremiah had noticed on the face of the flood above his place of refuge.
How cruel the current was! Not content with drowning human beings, it
romped with them after the life was choked out of them, it played with
them ghastly pranks. The undercurrent sucked the body back, and then
ran it against the bricks, using it as a battering-ram. Then it caught
the head of the poplar and whipped the corpse with it, as though
whipping it on to its work which it was reluctant to perform. The
manufacturer had gone out that night with his umbrella, and had carried
it with him to the roof of the hut. Now with the crook he sought to
disengage the dead woman and thrust her away from the wall into the main
current; he could not endure to see the body impelled headlong against
the bricks.
'What art a'doing?' asked the man, also looking over. Then, after a
moment he uttered a cry, drew back, clasped his hands, then looked
again, and again exclaimed: 'Sho's my own lass, and sho's a hugging my
bairn!'
'What do you mean?'
'It's my wife, eh! 'tis a pity.'
Mr. Pennycomequick succeeded in disengaging the corpse and thrusting it
into the stream; it was caught and whirled past. The man looked after
it, and moaned.
'It all comes o' them fomentations,' he said. 'Sho'd bad pains aboot her
somewhere or other, and owd Nan sed sho'd rub in a penn'orth o' whisky.
I was agin it, I was agin it--my mind misgave me, and now sho's taken
and I'm left, 'cos I had nowt to do wi' it.'
You may as well prepare to die,' said Jeremiah, 'whisky or no whisky.
This hut will not stand much longer.'
'I shudn't mind so bad if I'd sold my bullock,' groaned the man. 'I had
an offer, but, like a fool, I didn't close. Now I'm boun' to lose
everything. 'Tis vexing.'