"Off his nut!" gasped Jerry, excitedly. "Who wants his fox-pin? I
wants him. Couldn't stand it!--half-dotty!"
He looked wildly round, and then his eyes lit upon the glittering waters
of the swollen river spreading far and near, and he once more uttered a
cry.
"The river!" he exclaimed. "It's that!" and, rushing out of the room,
he leaped headlong down the stairs, making for the pantry, where he
caught up his hat.
The next minute he was running along the main road, instinctively
feeling that this was the way anyone would take who wished to reach the
river.
He did not meet a soul for the first few hundred yards, and then came
suddenly, at a turn, upon a farmer's man, in long smock-frock, driving a
flock of sheep, and looking as if he had come far along the dusty road,
perhaps travelling since daylight.
"Meet a young gent in dark-grey soot and brown billycock hat?" panted
Jerry.
"Ay! Two mile along the road."
"Which way was he going?"
"Simmed to be making for lower lane; but it's all under water, and he'll
have to go round."
"All under water!" muttered Jerry, as he ran on rapidly. "Two miles--
and me sitting sleeping there like a pig. That's it--that's what he
meant! What did he say?--`Couldn't face it?' If I could only get there
in time! He must have been cracked! He must have been mad! He's gone
to drown hisself and get out of his misery, just like the
high-sperretted gent he is. I know: gents don't think like we do. It's
the Latin and Greek makes 'em classic and honourable, and they'd sooner
die than get a bad name. It's all right, I suppose; but it seems
stoopid to me, when you know you ain't done nothing wrong."
"Now, let me see," thought Jerry. "I say he's come this road, because
he wouldn't go and chuck hisself in the river up by the ruins, because
he'd have had enough o' them; so he's come down here this way, and he's
found it ain't so easy as he thought; for you can't get to the water for
far enough, if you want a good deep place. Chap can't go and drown
hisself in fields where it's only six inches deep, without he goes and
lies down in a ditch. Gent couldn't do that. Be like dying
dog-fashion! I know what he's gone to do: he's made for Brailey Bridge,
where he could go over into a deep hole at once. Only wish I was
alongside of him; I'd say something as would bring him to his senses."
And as Jerry trotted on, he passed turning after turning leading to
fords or down by the river, for the simple reason that, during the
night, the waters had come swirling down at such a rate that the whole
of the river meadows were widely flooded; but it meant his getting more
rapidly to Brailey Bridge, a couple of miles from the town, for he was
forced into avoiding the winding low road, which followed the curves and
doublings back of the river, and making short cuts, which brought him at
last, breathless and panting, in sight of something which made him stare
and, for the moment, forget his mission.
For, as he trotted on, he obtained a glimpse of the rushing, foaming
river tearing away, pretty well now beneath its banks, which were high
at the spot where the bridge, an antique wooden structure, had spanned
it with its clumsy piles. The great double wedge-shaped pier of oak
timbers, rotten and blackened with age, and which had supported the
roadway as it divided the river in two, was gone, and the remains of the
bridge were gradually being torn away.
Jerry drew his breath hard, and his throat felt dry, as he ran nearer,
descending the slope towards where the road ended suddenly, and thinking
of how the spot he approached was exactly such an one as would tempt a
half-maddened person to run right on, make one desperate plunge into the
muddy flood, and then and there be swept away.
He paused at last, standing in a dangerous place, at the very edge of
the broken bridge, gazing down into the hurrying waters, which hissed
and gurgled beneath him, lapping at the slimy piles which remained; and,
hot and dripping with perspiration as he was, he shivered, and felt as
if icy hands were touching him as he wiped his brow.
"It's too horrid! too horrid!" he groaned, in the full belief that he
was standing right on the place from which Richard Frayne had taken a
desperate plunge. "Why, a score of his chums had better have died than
him! I didn't ought never to ha' left him last night, seeing what a
state he was in. You might ha' saved his life, Jerry, and done more
good than you'll ever do blacking boots and brushing clothes, if yer
lives to a hundred and ten."
He looked wildly to the right, and saw that the pollard willows were
rising just out of the water, like heads with the hair standing on end.
There were great patches of fresh hay floating swiftly down, and, closer
at hand, something white rolling over and over, and he shuddered; but it
was only the carcase of a drowned sheep, one of several more which had
probably been surrounded in some meadow and swept away. Directly after,
lowing dismally, and swimming hard to save itself, a bullock came down
rapidly, with its muzzle and a narrow line of backbone alone showing
above the surface.
But Jerry knew well enough that no boat could live in the rushing water
which swirled along; and, unless the poor beast could swim into some
eddy and manage to get ashore, its fate was sealed.
The man's eyes followed the animal as it passed by the broken bridge and
was swept on more rapidly downward as soon as it was below.
"I came too late--I came too late!" groaned Jerry, as he still watched
the bullock, his eyes at the same time noting how the river had passed
over the bank on the other side and spread along meadows, and how it was
threatening to lap over the road which ran upon his side away down to
the mill, where the weir crossed the river and the eel-bucks stood in a
row between the piles.
"Yes, I've come too late, and I shall see that poor brute sink directly.
Shall I go on down by the mill?"
He shook his head. The bullock was going faster than he could have
walked, and, if anyone had plunged into the river from where he stood,
he must have been swept miles away in his journey onward to the sea.
"And we shall never find him!" he muttered. "Gone! gone!"
He was going to say "Gone!" again--for the third time--but a hoarse
utterance escaped his lips instead, and he made a sudden movement to
climb over the rail and let himself down into the narrow cross-road
which ran to the mill.
But, as he grasped the open fence, all power of action left him, and he
stood, as if paralysed, staring at that which had caught his eye.
There, far away toward the mill, dwarfed by distance, but clearly seen
in the bright morning air, a figure had started up, run for a few yards
along the bank, and suddenly plunged in the flooded river. Jerry saw
the splashed water glitter in the sunshine and then, indistinctly, a
head reappear and remain in sight for some few minutes as its owner
floated or swam. Then a curve of the river hid it from his sight, and
he recovered his power of action again. Climbing the rail, he scrambled
down the side of the raised roadway, reached the bank, and started
running.
It was a mile to the mill, and in how many minutes Jerry covered the
distance he never knew, but he pulled up short in the mill-yard, to find
that he could go no farther; for the waters were well out beyond, and
went swinging round a curve at a terrific rate, the river being narrowed
here by the piers, buttresses, and piles upon which the mill-buildings
had been reared. The tops of the pier-piles showed in two places, but
that was all, and, though he climbed up the ladder leading to a whitened
door in the side of the building, he could see nothing but the waste of
hurrying water gleaming in the sunshine, and felt that the building was
quivering from the pressure of the flood.
Jerry clung to the handle of the door at the top of the steps, and the
flour came off white upon his Oxford mixture coat as he turned dizzy and
sick in his hurry and despair, for he knew that the figure he had seen
must be that of Richard Frayne, and he had come too late!
"He must have seen me," groaned Jerry; "and just as he was a-hesitating
he thought I'd come to drag him back, and he went in. Nothing couldn't
save him, and I seem to have drove him to his end."
In his own mind he wanted no endorsement of the correctness of his idea.
He had been sure that Richard had taken this route when he started from
the house; he had seen him; and it was all over.
But the endorsement came, for just then, heard above the rushing of the
river along the back-water and beneath the mill, where the huge
revolving wheel worked, came a loud "Ahoy!"
Turning quickly, Jerry saw, from his coign of vantage, the white figure
of the miller coming quickly down the road, waving his arms as if he had
once owned a wind-mill instead of a water-mill, and was imitating the
action of the sails.
"Hoi! come down from there," bawled the big, bluff fellow, as he came
within hearing. "'Tain't safe! I made all my people clear out last
night, and 'spected to see it gone by mornin'. Oh, it's you, Mister
Brigley. Looking for your young gent?"
"Yes! Seen him?" cried Jerry wildly.
"Ay, bit ago, when I were down before. He'd come down to see if the
mill was safe, I s'pose."
"But--it was--our young gent?"
"I say, don't look so scared," cried the miller, good-humouredly. "I
didn't mean to frighten you; but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if the
old place comes toppling down; and it will, if the water rises much
more. You're safe enough here."
"But, tell me," panted Jerry, who did not want telling, "it was our
young gent?"
"Ay, him as come fishing with the others, and sat out on the weir
yonder, tootling on that little pipe of his? Here! what's the matter
with you, man?"
"A boat! a boat!" gasped Jerry.
"A boat! what for? Mine's got a plank out of it, and, if it hadn't, you
couldn't use it now."
"But he's gone down! I see him jump in!"
"What!" yelled the miller, seizing Jerry excitedly by the collar.
"Nonsense! He's gone back by now."
"I--I was on the bridge."
"There ain't no bridge!" growled the miller: "swep' away."
"But I was over yonder--saw him jump in."
"You did?"
"Yes, and came here fast as I could."
The miller turned to look down the rushing river, and took off his white
felt hat, drew out a red cotton handkerchief, and began to mop his wet
brow.
"Then Heaven have mercy on him, poor lad! for he'll never get to shore
alive."
"But he could swim," said Jerry, feebly.
"Swim? Who's to swim in water like that? Never! I saw a whole drove
of sheep go down this morning, and a half a dozen bullocks. The river's
too much for them as can swim."
"But--but--"
"But--but, man. Ah! what was he doing to jump in?"
"Haven't you heard?" groaned Jerry, speaking to the miller, and staring
wildly down stream the while. "He got into dreadful trouble yesterday.
Killed his cousin!"
"What?"
"Come down here to end hisself, I s'pose!"
"Then he's done it, poor lad!" said the miller, solemnly.
"But couldn't we do nothing? Couldn't we try and help him?" whined
Jerry, piteously.
"No, my lad, not with the water rooshing down like this; it's beyond
human work, and--Hi! run--run!"
He caught at Jerry again, and the two men started to run for a few
yards, then turned to look back, as, after several warning cracks, the
whole of the great white timber-built mill literally crumbled down over
its undermined foundations and disappeared in the surging waters.
"I knowed it!" panted the miller. "Poor old place! I've spent many a
happy year there. Well, I come in time to save your life, squire."
"And I come to try and save his, but not in time," groaned Jerry. "Oh,
my poor dear lad!" he continued, as he leaned his arm against a tree and
bent his head upon it to weep aloud, "you were the master, and I'm only
a servant, but I'd ha' most give my life to ha' saved yours, that I
would. Yes!" he cried, fiercely, now in a wild, hysterical voice; "it
would ha' been better if you, too, hadn't come in time!"