Strength came again, and with it the desire to adventure further.
He searched among ruined houses, but was several days before he had any means of making another fire.
His greatest find at this time was a sack of sharps in a farm outbuilding, and a smaller quantity of bran. When he had secured a further supply of matches he made this meal into a kind of thick soup, and it was delicious to his altered palate.
He came on a woman who had sustained life, with an amazing vitality, crawling upon the ground, and dragging after her a broken leg.
He stayed beside her, doubtless prolonging her life, and almost certainly increasing her misery, after the tradition in which he had been educated. He could not save her life, for which an amputation would have been the only hope, and that was beyond his skill or resources.
She died unconquered, as she had lived, being too great for circumstances. She died with a faith serene and untroubled. Having fought hard for life, she accepted death confidently. “Though He slay me yet will I trust Him,” she quoted, when the fever slackened.
She lay unconscious for two days before he was sufficiently sure that she was dead to bury her from the flies.
After that, he came on an open drain in a deserted highway, at which a navvy was blindly excavating. The man begged his assistance for the useless labour. He was plainly mad, and when Martin declined to help him he made a murderous attack, from which Martin escaped with difficulty.
He wondered how the man lived.
He avoided that stretch of road for the following days, until he came on the man again, then in a condition of raving insanity. He mistook Martin for his Creator, and cursed him in words unfit for reproduction.
In the end Martin was compelled to kill him with his own pick.
At this time Martin did not go far from the shore which overlooked the place of the ruins of his own home. When his physical needs were satisfied, he would sit for many hours gazing over the water. His body recovered strength. His health became more vigorous than it had ever been, but his mind lacked incentive to do more than provide for his immediate necessities.
His reason told him that the whole earth could not be under water. He expected continually to see the smoke of some approaching steamer.
But the seas remained empty.
CHAPTER IV
The hours passed very quickly to Helen after Martin left her. He had provided as far as was possible for her comfort during his absence. Food and water were near to her hand. Fire was beneath her and within her reach, but it was not cold. He had left a stock of broken wood, sufficient to keep it alight till his return, if it were used with discretion. She could easily throw it on, piece by piece, from where she lay. She let the children scramble on the side of the pit, guiding them with her voice to avoid the brambles and the steeper places, but they soon came back to her. Tired by the excitement of their strange experience, they were glad to nestle against her, and slept, one on either side, in the warm safety of her arms.
Among the attempts which have been made by mankind to solve the enigma of conscious life, its end and its beginning, the most rational (as it may foolishly seem to an imperfect knowledge) is that of the transmigration of souls. With this theory there is commonly linked one of progression or penalty, by which each incarnation is controlled by the conduct of the individual in the one which preceded. Whether true or false, the two theories are without necessary sequence. It would be as probable to postulate that the ego is unalterable, and that the incarnations it may undergo are not rewards, nor penalties, nor of any educational purpose, but are rather a series of tests of its quality, by which its value is proved under different conditions and with conflicting environments.
However this may be (if it be at all), it appears evident that there is little difference in the nature of mankind when tested by circumstances the most refined or the most barbarous, or when compared over the longest periods of recorded history. Of this there is no clearer proof than in the actions of individuals whose conditions are sharply changed by natural convulsions, by war, or famine, or by the sudden acquisition of unusual wealth.
To each of those who had survived the first assaults of flood, and fire, and tempest, the test came, which was as though they approached a new incarnation without losing the memory of that which had preceded it.
Helen, her mind stunned by a catastrophe too sudden and too vast for immediate comprehension, and knowing only doubtfully the extent to which civilisation had fallen before it, felt, rather than thought, as she lay unsleeping between her children. She had no consciousness of immediate danger. She supposed that, for the time at least, to be over. She had no fear that Martin would not return as he had promised. She was not of a nature that worries over imagined evil, and her confidence in him was habitual. But her thoughts moved uncertainly, as does an insect whose nest is broken or removed in its absence. The furniture of her mind had become worthless. Thoughts of her home, neighbours, recreations, pleasures, garments, engagements, would obtrude or betray her into a moment’s forgetfulness, only to be thrown aside with the realisation that they had no further meaning. Her brain brought her the accustomed memories, to find itself always repelled and its tributes rejected. Beyond this, it had nothing to offer, except the enigma of the future, to which it could supply no answer.
So she lay, and felt only, while it commenced its patient task of covering rejected thoughts, and arranging new facts in readiness for when she should require them.
But there were some things which it was not asked to change, but rather to call to an added consciousness and first of these was that instinct that held dominion separate from herself, however willingly she might foster it in every cell of her body. The instinct which her generation had been persuaded to betray, to their own undoing. Her arms tightened round the two that slept so confidently in their protection—arms so pitifully weak to shield them against the blind forces that wrecked the earth around her. Out of a sudden agony of prayer, her soul rose to that height of God-in-man which is the tragic greatness of humanity, and before which death itself is ashamed and impotent. She knew the weakness of her arms, and was not daunted. She knew the strength of her opponents, and was resolute to resist them. They should not suffer, though the whole world fall.
The hours passed, and Martin did not return. The sun, which no longer shone down into the pit, but touched the bushes on its eastern side with the golden light of evening, told her that she was not deceived as to the time which had passed. She determined to test her ability to stand. Drawing herself carefully from between the sleeping children she rose painfully. She was stiff and bruised, but the numbness had gone from her side, though it hurt her sharply. It hurt her, too, if she breathed deeply. It hurt her more if she touched it. But she was glad she could stand.
She had never been credited with any physical courage. She would be startled by a dog’s bark. She would walk wide of a quiet cow. She could certainly have run in terror from a rat had it advanced boldly upon her, though it were as absurd as though a cat should offer battle to an elephant. But she had that high quality of passive courage which can face pain and wounds, after their infliction, with a more resolute spirit than is possible to many who may more lightly take the risks which incur them.
She soon found that she could move more easily, and that she could more exactly gauge her capacity to do so without hurting herself too sharply. She busied herself in many little activities of which she had thought as she lay. She woke the children and fed them. She had a meal herself. She was hungry, and there was no good purpose in waiting to share it with Martin—surely he would not be long now? The sun must be near setting.
Casually she looked at the further side of the pit, was puzzled by what she saw, and looked more closely. While she did so, a wave swirled over the edge, spilling through the bushes, and splashing into the hollow.
Her mind poised blank for a moment, and then woke to full consciousness of its meaning. She knew that the field below the pit slope
d downward, though only gently. Beyond it, stretched miles of lower land to the river valley. Water flowing over the edge could only mean an inundation beyond conception. Before the next swirl of the rising water fell over the edge with a louder noise, and in a fuller volume, her purpose had taken shape, and she had commenced its accomplishment. With no thought of saving anything but their bare lives, and with even Martin forgotten, she was climbing up the bank, with the two children under her right arm, while she used her left as best she could to support her in the burdened climb. There was one chance—so small a chance—if she were not too late already. Her memory searched for details of every drop and rise in the ground before her. She decided that she was not yet too late—but how fast might not the water be rising around her? She must not be too late.
She was on the edge of the pit now, and cast a glance around, though she did not delay for an instant. Mile on mile the water stretched interminably to southward. In the shallowness of the foreground, trees rose and hedges showed. There was no regular succession of waves, but the surface heaved irregularly as it advanced. It was covered by debris of a thousand kinds. The low sun glorified it.
As she looked, a fox ran past, carrying a cub in her mouth. The creature did not mind her.
She became conscious that the children, roughly held and dragged through weed and briar, were crying in a frightened way. She was running now, though weakly enough up the field, and changed the younger one to her injured arm. It is the highest evidence of her courage that her voice could soothe them. Sensitive to her mood they became quiet with a consciousness of drama, but not of tragedy, as she bore them.
Her progress was not rapid, for she was weak and burdened. There were obstacles also to be surmounted, or avoided as best she might. But she knew her purpose, and her spirit used the little strength she had to its last atom of energy. Nature held the scale that trembled to the verdict of death, watched it—and let her go.
It was half a mile beyond that there had been a public park, where some skiffs were kept on a small lake for hiring. The park lay in a hollow, lower than the level which the water had gained already. But the land around was higher. It might be under water now, but she thought not. When it filled, it would do it quickly. How quickly, she could not tell.
Her way was shortened by the fact that the park wall was fallen, and it was that which made the final difference. She gained the pond when water was already pouring into the hollow. She found the boats had broken from their moorings, and had been driven against a bushy bank on the further side. Leaving the children, she had to wade in waist deep to reach them. Two of them were damaged. She found one that seemed sound. Fortunately, it was more stoutly built than the others, which were river skiffs of the lightest kind. She pulled it through the water to where she had left the children. Water was draining into the pool at a hundred points by now. The water was up to her armpits at one point as she waded back. The place where she had laid the children down was covered, but they had retreated before it. Grounding the boat, she lifted them in, and sat down on a thwart—and waited. There was nothing more to be done. She had no sculls. The water was now rising so rapidly that the boat lifted from the bank almost before she was seated. Fortunately, it rose gently and evenly. As there was no outlet at first, there was no strength of current until the smaller trees were flooded, and the expanse of water was wide and fairly clear around her. Then the boat began to drift rapidly. It seemed that water was pouring out as well as in now, and they were swept to where the stumps of a row of elms that the storm had snapped showed raggedly above the flood. There was nothing to be done. She could only watch and wait for death—if death were coming. She put the children in the well of the boat, and sat there with them, thinking that the lower they were the better the boat would balance. The boat struck something which held it. It leaned somewhat as the current pressed it. Some water splashed over. They swept at perilous speed between the broken elm boles.
Almost immediately after, another current struck them. They were whirled round for a time in a vortex which finally hurried them along the side of the row of stumps through which they had come, and out into a wide sea of troubled water over which darkness was falling.
She baled out the water which the boat had taken. She and the children were wet and cold, and the night was coming. If they survived it, what hope was there in a world that the floods had covered? For the first time she thought of Martin. Doubtless he was dead. She supposed that few could be living. She did not know. She looked over the edge of the boat, and a dead dog floated past.
She thought of Martin, and she had no wish for life to continue. She felt the pain of her injured side, and the exhaustion which had overcome her, and she thought that death could not be distant. She looked at the children that crouched together with wide frightened eyes that questioned the darkness, and she knew that she must not die if the floods spared them.
Leaning against a thwart she drew them to her and made herself their pillow. She was soaked and cold, and it was a poor bed to offer, but there was no better to be done. It was best for them to sleep while they could.
In the later night the moon looked down upon a little boat that turned and tossed in a troubled water. A woman lay where she had slipped on to the floor of the boat. It had shipped some water which washed over her face at times, but she did not heed it. Pillowed on her breasts, the children that she had saved slept peacefully. Born of a race of women that had learned to esteem their children as less than their pleasures, who would even pay to have them murdered in their own bodies, she had redeemed her own soul at the bar of God, and whether she were dead or living was a little thing.
It was the next morning that a group of men stood on a stretch of moorland that had been purple with heather before the curse of coal had blackened it, and was now the shore of a new sea.
They saw a boat that had grounded gently a hundred yards out, but with deeper water before them. They could not see whether it held anything living, but it would be a desirable possession under their new conditions of life. But who could swim? No one, unless it were Tom. But Tom Aldworth shook his head. He could swim, but very little. The inducement was not sufficient. Besides, he was not friendly with the men, nor they with him. He was an acquitted murderer, and as such he was entitled to and received much less goodwill than would have been accorded to one who had confessed and would be hanged tomorrow. But then—was there not a movement in the boat, and, perhaps, a cry, though a weak one?
Tom Aldworth took off his coat.
As he did so the cry came again. It was the cry of a child that pressed against a mother who was very cold and did not answer.
BOOK TWO: CLAIRE
CHAPTER V
Claire Arlington stood on the edge of what had once been a steep hillside in the Upper Cotswolds. Now it was lapped by a tide that rose within eighty feet of the summit.
Steep though the slope might be, it was still green with the sparse Cotswold herbage, which grew so thinly that the white chalk showed between it, and yet the sleek, long-barrelled cow that grazed on the cliff-top was evidence that it was not lacking in nourishment.
Claire was not thinking of cliff or cow, but gazing with troubled eyes upon the desolation of a quiet sea.
Looking north, there was no sign of land, though a whitening of broken water here and there beneath her told of shallows which a lower tide would leave uncovered.
There was no sign of the Malverns. If any of the higher lands of Wales had escaped the deluge, they were too low or too distant for her sight to reach them.
Only to the north-east was there at times a doubtful hint of land. If she were only sure—She was a strong swimmer. Once she had tried to cross the Dover Straits, and had been baulked by the tide when within but a short distance of the French coast. If she could only be sure that land were there—or of how far it might be.
It was but a few weeks ago—she had not counted the days, for count of days had ceased to matter—since she had spent long hour
s of darkness floating as best she might amidst the buffeting of continual waves, to find, when the dawn came that she was drifting fast towards a vision of green land, and then to realise that the current which bore her near would sweep her past it, and then to battle backward, yard by yard, until the sun had risen high above the horizon, and she was aware at last that she was clear of the current’s force and each tired stroke decreased the distance to the waiting land.
Then the land on which she climbed had seemed the most blessed thing for which a living creature could pray; and now she loathed it, so that death itself might seem less bitter.
Death? No; her heart told her that she had no will that way, whatever life might mean.
She stood there for a long time silent, gazing at the sea, the while her mind went back to recollection of all that had happened since she had survived that night in which so many millions must have perished.
Her husband among them—there was no possible hope that he could have lived. An invalid, awaiting an operation in the nursing home in Cheltenham, she would have been with him on the previous day, if the great storm had not made it impossible. She felt no keen regret. The horror had been too great. It had numbed her mind. And she knew that though she had loved him in a way, and there had been no differences between them, the bond had not been as strong as she had been taught such bonds should be. Pity rather than love—pity for a man maimed and disfigured in the prime of life—and then he had been querulous, and exacting, and jealous—so she knew, though she did not let the thought take form. But she was glad that the baby had not lived—for she could not have saved it—and how she had grieved when she had been told—but who could have foreseen?
Yes, there was no chance that he lived; not Cheltenham only, but all the land beyond—Ireland, perhaps—had gone. It was only a few days ago that a south-west wind had risen, and she had watched the great Atlantic rollers sweeping past, and felt the high surf drench her, even at that height, as she had seen and felt upon the Cornish headlands in the days gone by.
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