A stranger passing Abel Edwards's house the day after his return
might have gotten the impression that one of the functions of village
life--a wedding or a funeral--was going on there. From morning until
late at night the people came down the road, wading through the snow,
the men with trousers tucked into boots, the women with
yarn-stockings over their shoes, their arms akimbo, pinning their
kilted petticoats to their hips. Many drove there in sleighs, tilting
to the drifts. The Edwards's door-yard was crowded with teams.
All the relatives who had come fourteen years before to Abel
Edwards's funeral came now to his resurrection. They had gotten the
news of it in such strange, untraceable ways, that it seemed almost
like mental telegraphy. The Greens of Westbrook were there--the three
little girls in blue, now women grown. One of them came with her
husband and baby; another with a blushing lout of a lad, to whom she
was betrothed; and the third, with a meek blue eye, on the watch for
a possible lover in the company. The Lawson sisters, from Granby,
arrived early in the day, being conveyed thither by an obliging
neighbor. Amelia Stokes rode to Upham on the butcher's wagon, in lieu
of another conveyance, and her journey was a long one, necessitating
hot ginger-tea and the toasting of her slim feet at the fire upon her
arrival. Amelia was clad in mourning for her old mother, who had died
the year before. At intervals she wept furtively, incited to grief by
recollections of her mother, which the place and occasion awakened.
"Every once in a while it comes over me how poor mother relished them
hot biscuits and that tea at your funeral," she whispered softly to
Abel, who smiled with child-like serenity in response.
All day Abel sat in state, which was, however, intensified in the
afternoon by a new suit of clothes, which Jerome had purchased in
Dale. As soon as Jerome returned with it, he was hustled into the
bedroom with his father.
"Get your father into 'em quick, before anybody else comes," said Ann
Edwards. She was dressed in her best, and Elmira had further adorned
her with a little worked lace kerchief of her own, fastened at the
bosom with a sprig of rose-geranium leaves and blossoms. Ann had
confined herself to her chair since arising that morning. She made no
allusion to her walking the night before, and seemed to expect
assistance as usual.
"Do you suppose mother can't walk this morning?" Elmira whispered to
Jerome.
"Hush," he replied, "don't bother her with it unless she speaks of it
herself. I have a book which gives instances of people recovering
under strong excitement, and then going back to where they were
before. I don't believe mother can walk, or she would."
Ann Edwards and Abel sat side by side on the sofa in the parlor, and
the visitors came and greeted them, with a curious manner, which had
in it not so much of the joy of greeting, as awe and a solemn
perplexity. Always, after shaking hands with the united couple, they
whispered furtively to one another that Abel Edwards was much
changed, they should scarcely have known him. Yet, with their simple
understandings, they could not have defined the change, which they
recognized plainly enough, for it lay not so much in form and feature
as in character. Abel Edwards's hair was white, he was somewhat
fuller in his face, but otherwise he was little altered, so far as
mere physical characteristics went. The change in him was subtler.
Jerome had noticed it the night before, and it was evidently a
permanent condition. Abel Edwards, from being a reserved man, with
the self-containment of one who is buffeted by unfair odds of fate,
yet will not stoop to vain appeals, but holds always to the front his
face of dumb dissent and purpose, was become a garrulous and happy
child. People hinted that Abel Edwards's mind was affected, but it
was a question whether that was the case, or whether it was the
simple result of his abandonment, fourteen years before, of the reins
which had held an original nature in check. He might possibly have
merely, when renouncing his toil over the up-grade of life, slipped
back to his first estate, and thus have experienced in one sense no
change at all.
Many of Abel's old friends and neighbors were not fully convinced of
the desirability of his reappearance. When a man has been out of his
foothold in the crowd for fourteen years, he cannot regain it without
undue jostling of people's shoulders, and prejudices even. The
resurrection of the dead might have, if the truth were told,
uncomfortable and perplexing features for their nearest and dearest,
and Abel Edwards had been practically dead and buried.
"They were gettin' along real well before he come; of course, they're
glad to see him, but I dun'no' whether they'll get along as well with
him or not," proclaimed Mrs. Green of Westbrook, with the very
aggressiveness of frankness, and many looked assent.
Abel's wife had no question in her inmost heart of its utter
blessedness at his return, but her grief at his loss had never
healed. For that resolute feminine soul, which had fought on in spite
of it, her husband had died anew every morning of those fourteen
years when she awoke to consciousness of life; but it was different
with his children. For both of them the old wounds had closed; it was
now like tearing them asunder, for it is often necessary to revive an
old pain to fully appreciate a present joy. Had Jerome and Elmira
been older at the time of their father's disappearance, it would have
been otherwise, but as it was, their old love for him had been
obliterated, not merely by time and absence, but growth. It was
practically impossible, though they would not have owned it to
themselves, for them to love their father, when he first returned, as
they had used. They were painfully anxious to be utterly faithful,
and had an odd sort of tender but imaginative pity towards him, but
they could grasp no more. Both of them hesitated when they said
father; every time they returned home and found him there it was with
a sensation of surprise.
Three days after Abel Edwards's return came one of the severest
rain-storms ever known in Upham. The storm began before light; when
people first looked out in the morning their windows were glazed with
streaming wet, but it did not reach its full fury until eleven
o'clock. Then the rain fell in green and hissing sheets.
"Gorry," Martin Cheeseman said, looking out of the mill door, which
seemed to open into a solid wall of water, "looks as if the great
deep was turned upsidedown overhead. If it keeps on this way long
there'll be mischief."
"Think there'll be danger to the mill?" Jerome asked, quickly.
"No, I guess not, it's built strong; but I wouldn't resk the solid
airth long under Niagry. Where you goin'?"
"Down to Robinson's store. I want to get something."
"Well, I should think you were half-witted to go out in this soak if
you could keep a roof over your head," cried Cheeseman, but Jerome
was gone.
He bought strong rope at Robinson's store, and before night the mill
was anchored to some stout trees and one great granite bowlder.
Cheeseman helped grumblingly. "I shall get laid up with rheumatiz out
of it," he said; "an' this rain can't keep on, it ain't in natur',
out of the Old Testament."
But the rain continued all that day and night, and the next day, with
almost unremitting fury. At times it seemed more than rain--there
were liquid shafts reaching from earth to sky. By noon of the second
day, half the cellars in the village were flooded; coops floated in
slatted wrecks over fields; the roads were knee-deep in certain
places; the horses drew back--it was like fording a stream. People
began to be alarmed.
"If this keeps on an hour longer, there'll be the devil to pay,"
Squire Eben Merritt said, when he came home to dinner. He had been
down to Lawyer Means's and crossed the Graystone brook, which was now
a swollen river.
"What will happen?" asked Abigail.
"Happen? The Main Street bridge will go, and the saw-mill, and the
Lord knows what else."
Lucina turned pale.
"It will be hard on Jerome if he loses his mill," said her mother.
"Well, the boy will lose it if it keeps on," returned the Squire.
"He's working hard, with four men to help him; they're loading it
with stones and anchoring it with ropes, but it can't stand much
more. I miss my guess, if the foundations are not undermined now."
Lucina said not a word, but as soon as she could she slipped
up-stairs to her chamber and prayed that her Heavenly Father would
save poor Jerome's mill, and stop the rain; but it kept on raining.
When Lucina heard the fierce dash of it on her window-pane, like an
angry dissent to her petition, she prayed more fervently, sobbing
softly in the whiteness of her maiden bed; still it rained.
The mighty body of snow, pierced in a thousand places by the rain as
by liquid fingers, settled with inconceivable rapidity. Great drifts
which had slanted to the tops of north windows twelve hours before
were almost gone. The wide snow-levels of the fields were all
honey-combed and glistening here and there with pools. The trees
dripped with clots of melting snow, there were avalanches from the
village roofs, and even in the houses was heard the roar of the
brook. It was, however, no longer a brook, not even a river, but a
torrent. It over spread its banks on either side. Forest trees stood
knee-deep in it, their branches swept it. At three o'clock Jerome's
mill was surrounded, though on one side by only a rippling shallow of
water. He had plenty of helpers all day; for if his dam and mill
went, there was danger to the Main Street bridge. Now they had all
taken advantage of the last firm footing, and left the mill. They had
joined a watching group on a rise of ground beyond the flood. The
rain was slacking somewhat, and half the male portion of the village
seemed assembled, watching for the possible destruction of the mill.
Now and then came a hoarse shout across the swelling water to Jerome.
He alone remained in his mill, standing by the great door that
overlooked the dam and the falls. He was high above it, but the spray
wet his face.
The great yellow flood came leaping tumultuously over the dam, and
rebounding in wild fountains of spray. Trees came with it, and
joists--a bridge somewhere above had gone. Strange, uncanny wreckage,
which could not be defined, bobbed on the torrent, and took the
plunge of annihilation over the dam. Every now and then came a cry
and a groan of doubt from the watchers, who thought this or that
might be a drowned man.
Besides the thundering rush of the water there were other sounds,
which Jerome seemed to hear with all his nervous system. The mill
hummed with awful musical vibrations, it strained and creaked like a
ship at sea.
The hoarse shouts from the shore for him to leave the mill were
redoubled, but he paid no heed. He was on the other side, and knew
nothing of a sudden commotion among the people when Jake Noyes came
dashing through the trees and calling for Doctor Prescott, who had
joined them some half hour before.
"Come quick, for God's sake!" he shouted; "you're wanted on the other
side of the brook, and the bridge will be gone, and you'll have to go
ten miles round. Colonel Lamson is down with apoplexy!"
Jerome did not know when the doctor followed Noyes hurriedly out to
the road where his team was waiting, and Squire Eben Merritt went at
a run after them, shouting back, "Don't let that boy stay in that
mill too long; see to it, some of you."
There came a great barn-roof down-stream, followed by a tossing wake
of hay and straw. The crowd on shore groaned. It broke when it passed
the falls, and so the danger to the bridge below was averted, but a
heavy beam slewed sidewise as it passed the mill, and struck it. The
mill quivered in every beam, and the floor canted like the deck of a
vessel. Martin Cheeseman rushed in and caught Jerome roughly by the
arm. "For God's sake, what ye up to?" he shouted above the roar of
the water, "Come along with ye. She's goin'!"
The old man had a rope tied to his middle; Jerome followed him,
unresistingly, and they crossed, almost waist-deep and in danger of
being swept from their foothold by the current. Cheeseman kept tight
hold of Jerome's arm. "Bear up," he said, in a hoarse whisper, as
they struggled out of the water; "life's more'n a mill."
"It's more than a mill that's going down," replied Jerome, in a dull
monotone which Cheeseman did not hear. There were plenty of
out-stretched hands to help them to the shore; the men pressed around
with rude sympathy.
"It's darned hard luck," one and another said, with the defiant
emphasis of an oath.
Then they turned from Jerome and riveted their attention upon the
mill, which swayed visibly. Jerome stood apart, his back turned,
looking away into the depths of the dripping woods. Cheeseman came up
and clapped his shoulder hard. "Don't ye want to see it go?" he
cried. "It's a sight. Might as well get all ye can out of it."
Jerome shook his head.
"Ye'd better. I tell ye, it's a sight. I've seen three go in my
lifetime, an' one of 'em was my own. Lord, I looked on with the rest!
Might as well get all the fun you can out of your own funeral. Hullo!
There--there goes the dam, an'--there goes the mill!"
There was a wild chorus of shouts and groans. Jerome's mill went
reeling down-stream, but he did not see it. He had heard the new
spouting roar of water and the crash, and knew what it meant, but
look he would not.
"Ye missed it," said Cheeseman.
Some of the men came up and wrung his hand hurriedly, then were off
with the crowd to see the Main Street bridge go. Jerome sat down
weakly on a pile of sodden logs, which the flood had not reached.
Cheeseman stared at him. "What on airth are you settin' down there
for?" he asked.
"I'm going, pretty soon," Jerome replied.
"You'll catch your death, settin' there in those wet clothes. Come,
git up and go home."
Jerome did not stir; his white face was set straight ahead; he
muttered something which the other could not hear. Cheeseman looked
at him perplexedly. He laid hold of his shoulder and shook him again,
and ordered him angrily, with no avail; then set off himself. He was
old, and the chill of his wet clothes was stealing through him.
Not long afterwards Jerome went down the road towards home. Half way
there he met a hurrying man, belated for the tragic drama on the
village stage.
"Hullo!" he called, excitedly. "Your mill gone?"
"Yes."
"Dam gone?"
"Yes."
"Gosh! Bridge gone?"
"Don't know."
"Gosh! if I ain't quick, I'll miss the whole show," cried the man,
with a spurt ahead; but, after all, he stopped a moment and looked
back curiously at Jerome plodding down the flooded road, his weary
figure bent stiffly, with the slant of his own dejectedness, athwart
the pelting slant of the storm.