That anyone could have lived beneath that avalanche was beyond probability.
Slowly, in a reluctant misery, he turned away, and had soon made a successful issue from the rear of the house, and across the stable yard, where he received a cut from a flying slate, which would have had more notice in quieter times, and so, by a struggling, falling course, to a stack of last year’s hay, which was still standing in the field, and which he had made his objective. It was over the ridge, and so protected slightly from the wind’s full pressure, but when he reached it he found that its thatching, and much of its upper portion, had been torn off and scattered.
He rested beneath it for a few moments, gaining strength and breath for further effort, but dared not leave the children there, as he had first intended, lest they should be smothered by a further subsidence. He realised that safety was not easily to be found, and yet to get back was urgent, and to do that, against the torment of wind which was now raging, it was imperative that he should be relieved of his burdens.
There was a marl-pit close at hand, which gave a moment’s hope, till he recalled the steepness of its more sheltered side, and the deep pool it held; there was a larger one, with a dry bottom, farther away, and on this he decided.
It was of unusual width and depth, even for a district where these old pits were frequent, and often of considerable size. It was on the edge of a clump of oak trees, but these were to the south, so that there would be no danger from them while the wind held from its present quarter.
There were some old hawthorns growing within it, on the slope of its northern bank, so that the tops of the trees were about level with the field’s edge.
Here he made his way, and slid and stumbled down its easier slope, and found a sandy spot that was nearly level beneath the hawthorns, and laid his bundles down, and could at last think with some clearness, which had been impossible while the burdened struggle with the storm continued.
The younger child, warmly wrapped and covered from the wind, was surprisingly sleeping, but the elder was very widely awake, with excited wondering eyes. She looked doubtful as he rose to go, and her lip trembled, but when he laughed and told her that she must be good and he would soon be back and her mother also, and that they would have breakfast under the trees, she took it as a new game, and only said: “Muvver come soon?” as she turned away. “Yes, very soon,” he said with a light assurance he was far from feeling, wondering whether she could still be living, or if they or he would be alive when the day ended.
He paused a moment as he gained the pit’s edge before he climbed out to meet the force of the screaming hurricane which raged round him. There was still no rain, but the sky was darkened with low, black clouds that hurried southward at a rate that looked fantastic, and the air had become strangely cold, so that he shivered as the wind met him.
Beneath the clouds, the whole of the south-western horizon was of the colour of heated copper.
This he saw first, because he had climbed to the west of the pit, where the ascent was easier, but when he looked to the further side he was startled by the evidence of nearer calamity. Heavy smoke was driving across the field from the fallen ruins of the house which he had left but a few moments earlier, and from the eastern wing a pillar of flame bent as the wind’s gusts gripped it.
He was never clear in his mind as to how he got back to the burning building. But he had the sense to keep on up the field, so that he should approach it to windward.
When he had done this, in short time or long, he had a moment’s relief in the consciousness that he was not too late, if any rescue were possible.
He stood at last holding to a root of the upturned tree, and partly sheltered from the wind by the mass of earth which it had torn up, but which still held it; and perhaps it was then that he was first subconsciously aware that the heat and suffocation of the air he breathed were not entirely due to the burning of his own house which the wind blew from him, but to the greater conflagration of the city on the outskirts of which he lived, and which must have involved it entirely within a few hours, if it had not then done so. With it, the wind brought a faint, continuous, wailing cry, as of the gathered lamentation of thousands, and beneath his feet a half-fledged thrush fluttered feebly with a broken wing.
Before him, the wall of the house was still standing, to the height of the first floor. The great tree which had broken the roof and the upper story was supported now by the whole structure on which it leaned, its breadth of branch distributing its weight very widely, but it looked as though at any moment the ruin must collapse entirely.
Though the lower wall stood, the window, which opened to the ground, had been blown or broken inward, and by this gap he was able to climb over a debris of fallen bricks, and beams, and shattered furniture, and broken boughs, searching fearfully in a shadowed gloom, to which the smoke of the burning wing was already penetrating, till a voice from the further side said with eager urgency: “Are they safe?”
“Yes,” he said, “but are you?”
“I felt sure you’d saved them. I don’t know. But move carefully.”
He was struggling, in natural haste, toward the site from which the voice came, but now paused as she continued, while his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and helped him to understand what she told him. “Wait a moment, and listen. I am pinned under a beam. I don’t feel hurt at all, but I can’t move, and I don’t know whether I am really injured. I didn’t care to struggle hard till you came, because, as you can see, its full weight is not on me now, but if I moved I might bring it. I felt sure when you did not come, and I did not hear them cry, that you had got them safe. You wouldn’t all have been killed at once. So when I heard nothing I just waited. Where have you left them?”
He answered briefly, his mind occupied in overcoming, without any resulting disturbance, the obstacles that still divided them The thoughts that the whole edifice might collapse at any moment; that a hasty movement might bring disaster, that the fire was advancing its own argument of urgency, and that the children would almost surely die unless he should return to them safely, left no mental leisure for the needless words which they had spent so much of their lives in exchanging.
He was one who had lived by words, and he was to find their use again under very different conditions, but there was an earlier lesson to be learned of their more frequent futility.
He saw that when the tree fell the first substantial impact had been given by a great lateral branch which grew toward the house, and which must have struck the roof and penetrated inward and downward as the tree leaned over.
From this cause, as also from the fact that it was built less strongly, the partition wall had been broken down lower, as well as more widely, than the outer one, so that its ruins had given little support to the cataract of brick and slate, of board and rafter, which had descended through the broken floor of the bedroom.
When the crash came, as she afterwards told him, Helen had been standing at an open wardrobe which was placed between the windows. A moment earlier these windows had been blown in on either side of her, with a rush of air which had nearly thrown her off her feet, but she had held her ground, and urged by this catastrophe, she had given up the attempt to clothe herself further, and had just gathered the contents of the wardrobe into her arms when the roof descended upon her. Blinded by dust and plaster, she continued to clutch the door of the wardrobe with one hand, the other arm being filled with the loose clothes she had gathered, while the floor gave way at the further end, causing the wardrobe to slide rapidly forward, carrying her before it; but, probably owing to the pull of her weight on the door, it swung round as it did so, so that it was beneath her as it was precipitated into the room below. It fell on its back which smashed very easily, as, like most of the furniture of those days, the parts which were usually hidden were made of thin and worthless wood.
She found herself lying across it, with the loose clothes beneath her, feeling no pain, and thinking herself free to
move when she would, but choked and blinded by the dust. A fresh fall of bricks and rubble came a moment later, at the further side of the room, and she lay awhile uncertain whether it would be more or less risky to remain still or to attempt escape.
As the dust began to clear, and no further fall came, she attempted to rise, and was surprised to find her legs immovable. A heavy rafter lay across them, itself bearing a mass of debris, but so placed that its further end was supported upon the ruin of the inner wall, and holding her only, she thought, as in a gentle vice, with pressure rather than weight. Indeed, she found that with a little twisting she got one leg entirely loose, and would have drawn it from beneath the beam but for the discomfort of the position which would have resulted. But when she attempted to release the other, at the first pull there was a slight movement among the broken bricks on which the beam was resting, and it settled down more heavily, so that the leg which she had loosed before was held again, and the other felt the pain of an increasing weight and pressure. There was an ominous slipping also in the debris which the beam supported, and being confident that Martin would find her, she had decided to remain quiet for a time in the hope that he could co-operate in a safer method of release. After that she had felt faint, though she knew no cause, and had since been sleeping or half-conscious, so that the time had seemed but a few minutes till she was aroused by his coming.
Martin could not tell what risk he took in the work of the next few moments. He tried to reach her with as little disturbance as possible, but as he did so an eddy of denser smoke rolled in from the hall, and he could see nothing clearly. The next moment it came more thickly in a pause of wind, with a blast of heat, and a flame glowed in the hallway.
He felt along the beam to where her legs were beneath it. He said: “When I can I will lift with all my strength and you must pull them out instantly. I can’t say whether I shall be able to do it, or for how long, or what will follow, but it seems the best chance we have. Are you ready? Now.”
Then the beam lifted, tilting somewhat from one end, with some noise and confusion of falling bricks.
Helen said: “I think they are clear now,” and cautiously, not knowing how far its supports might have shifted, he lowered the beam. It rested much as before, and then her voice came again, with an undertone of fear for the first time: “I can’t get up. I am too weak. My legs are cramped, but I think there’s something else wrong. Could you lift me?”
“Rather,” he said lightly, and indeed he was relieved so greatly that they could escape the fire, that he hardly felt the fear of what this incapacity might imply, as he would have done in other circumstances.
The wind was blowing again with recovered force, and they were less choked and blinded than they had been, but the fire in the hall was closer, and a sudden spurt of flame from the stairs lit them, so that he saw her plainly for the first time, lying almost face-downward, on the heap of clothes she had been collecting.
She tried to raise herself when she saw him: “Bring the clothes,” she began, and then her smile changed to an expression of sudden agony, and she sank forward in a faint from which she did not recover until he had carried her out of the burning building into a heavy rain which was now falling. The wind seemed more moderate, and though the rain was strangely cold for the season, it felt even pleasant as he left the stifling heat, the discomfort of which he had scarcely realised in the excitement of the rescue. He breathed deeply of the cooler air as he crossed the lawn, his relief that she was alive and recovered contending with fear as to the extent of her injury, anxiety to return to the children, and the consciousness that their food and all other necessities of life were lost within the burning building.
CHAPTER II
To the habits of those days, a marl-pit in a time of soaking rain was no fit place in which to lay an unconscious and injured woman, but he could think of no better resort, nor could he do other than unite her with the children if he were to go in search of food, as he surely must if their lives were to be long continued. He had realised already that they were faced by more than ordinary catastrophe, and that they must rely upon themselves if they were to find means to survive it.
During this time, and for many hours afterwards, he was too occupied with their own immediate needs to concern himself with larger issues, except as they were thrust upon him, but he could not be unaware that the north-west sky was now a lurid height of flame, where the city burnt, in which a hundred of those whom he had known most intimately had been sleeping but a few hours before. The wind was no longer steady, but veered in sudden gusts, as though it were drawn at times by the rising of the heated air. When it blew in that direction it was cold enough, and the rain was mixed with sleet, but when it came straight from the north it felt as though it were too hot and dry for the rain to cool it, though it could but have passed at a mile’s distance the furnace of that appalling tragedy.
But with the wind and the rain behind him, he made quick progress down the sloping field, and, reaching the pit, he went round to the easier side, and there sat and slid down it as best he could till they had reached the place where he had left the children.
Hawthorn and undergrowth made an insufficient screen from the rain that was falling, and as they grew only on the steeper side of the pit it was not easy to find a place beneath them both dry and level. He could see nothing better than the elder bushes beneath which the children had retreated, and there at last he laid her as best he could, treading down a space of grass and nettles, and breaking away the lower branches that gave insufficient space to stoop beneath them.
The fear that Helen had not escaped without some serious injury had been growing upon him as he carried her, and noticed her exhaustion and wavering consciousness, but doubt was certainty as soon as he raised the loose wraps and dresses on which she had lain, and which he had lifted with her. Below her waist they had been soaked in blood which had dried, and in a fresh stream which must have broken out when she moved, and which still continued to drip from them.
Another moment disclosed the injury. On the left side, across the lower ribs, a piece of broken glass had made a wound about six inches long, though not, he thought, very deeply.
“It hasn’t killed me?” she asked lightly, though with anxious eyes.
“No,” he answered, in the way of the world that they had known, where there was always leisure for words, whatever else might be lacking, so that a man might be expected to handle them skilfully, though he would be of little use with spade or chisel; “you’ll die of old age before that kills you. But you’ve lost a lot of blood, and you’ll have to lie quite still, and the question is how I can make you comfortable, and get all that is needed for you and the children.”
As he spoke, he saw that her eyes had wandered ruefully to the ruined dresses, and then forgot them in the realisation of the children’s safety, and with a sudden consciousness of all that was lost or left, he bent and kissed her. “You will soon be well,” he said, “and nothing matters, if you are safe and the children.”
They talked quietly for a few minutes, trying to comprehend the catastrophe which had fallen upon the world, and to adjust their minds to its necessities, and then she called to the children, who were crying quietly in a frightened way, to come to her, and comforted them, telling them that she was hurt in falling, but would soon be well, and making a game of everything.
Meanwhile Martin had improved their shelter to some extent, breaking down some of the lower growth, so that they could be brought more inward and gain some shelter from the bank itself, as well as from the trees above them, and had placed the various garments and the children’s bedclothes—the only things they had saved—in the driest spot he could find.
Helen lay in the dressing-gown which she had put on when she first rose, and would have no other covering, nor was she willing that he should examine her wound again when he suggested that they ought to be sure that no broken glass had been left in it.
“Perhaps you think I ou
ght to lose some more blood,” she said, “but I would rather have breakfast.”
Martin could sympathise with that feeling, as could the children, who were becoming fretful with hunger. They were all used to a ready meal when they rose in the morning. A marlpit might have blackberries in September, but at the end of May it offered no evident nourishment. The world’s fate became a less urgent matter than the meal they were needing.
It would be tedious to tell the work of the next few hours in detail.
Three times Martin went out and returned loaded with such necessities as he could discover, while the wind fell and the rain ceased, and the sky became covered with a reddish, smoky haze, beneath which the wet ground steamed visibly, and, as it dried, which it did very quickly, the atmosphere was one of oppressive and increasing heat, as of an oven.
During this time they saw no living person. If any but themselves had survived the ravages of fire and storm—and they supposed that many must have done so—they were cowering in such cover as they could find, or had fled in other directions. Such wind as continued blew towards the city, fortunately, no doubt, for them, as it was fortunate also that they were on higher ground, and that a ridge divided it from them, but it was clear that it still burnt, and indeed the whole sky, with its smoky haze, and horizons of molten copper, gave an impression of a world in flame.
Up to this time, through the physical exhaustion of his body, Martin’s mind had worked in a dazed and almost mechanical manner, only dimly realising the shadow of catastrophe beneath which their lives had fallen, and it may have been the effect of food, and a brief interval of rest, which made him so much more alertly conscious as he left the pit for the fourth time, but the dullest mind—and his was very far from that—would have been waked to some excitement when the red haze of the southern sky was transformed to a sudden sheet of flame, and a low rumble followed, as of a great noise at a great distance, and continued for some time, but with a gradually decreasing volume, till he could not tell certainly whether or when it had entirely ceased, while his strained hearing became aware that a low inarticulate murmur, as of the wailing of millions, was in the air continually.
Deluge: A Novel of Global Warming Page 3
