And all that day the northward roads were choked with crowds that fled the horror of the southern flood, to perish even more surely when the farther north should sink beneath the waters. Ceaseless lines of rapid, over-loaded motors, held up continually by the impedimenta of the storm-strewn roads, or by the accidents of their own impatience; offering wild rewards—anything but the priceless-seeming benefit of the lift in the overcrowded vehicle—to pedestrians who would help to drag aside the broken tree, to clear the rubble of the fallen wall; cursing the slowness of men who worked heroically to keep the roadways clear, or frightening the slower cars with threats or actual violence into the byways that soon became as congested as the wider roads.
So the day passed, and the next sun rose on an ocean that had spread from the Rocky Mountains to the northern coasts of Africa, and had obliterated the isolation of the Baltic Sea.
Chapter Six
With the first dawn the wind had somewhat lessened the relentless pressure of the night, lessened also in the steadiness of its direction, till, with the broader day, it became variable both in force and direction, a matter of short and violent gales, and sudden calms, and fierce whirlwinds of contending air.
With the first light a straggling company from the church porch came out to survey the havoc of the storm.
For the most part they were a white-faced group, cowed and bewildered by the magnitude of the calamity which the morning showed them. They were in no physical condition to regard it bravely. They were shaking with cold, or stiff with rheumatism, after their vigil in rain-soaked garments on the unfriendly stones. They were hungry, and uncertain how to look for food. They saw a world in which the familiar buildings, that held the endless things that they had come to regard as the inevitable necessities of life, were burnt or fallen. They gazed at horizons, livid or dusky red, which told of more than local ruin. Vaguely they realized that there was no help but in themselves, and they were untrained in self-reliance, as they were unpractised in self-discipline.
All their customs, all the tendency of their laws for a generation, had discouraged their initiatives and reduced their freedoms. They had been taught the ethics of slavery. They had not been encouraged to think, nor allowed to act. They were not permitted to build even their own houses to their own designs, or to teach their own children as they would. Everything was under the direction of appointed specialists. Even the money that they earned had been withdrawn from their control in ever-larger proportions, so that it might be spent for them more wisely than they would be likely to do themselves.
It would be unjust not to recognize that there was often much of wisdom in the ways in which they were controlled and herded. We may say, as we please, either that they had been reduced or raised to the level of domestic animals. On the average they were better housed, better clothed, and better fed than their grandparents had been. Perhaps the advantages of liberty may be overrated. If they had sold their freedom to the bureaucrats for a mess of pottage it was a savoury mess,, and their bowls were filled very punctually.
But now they were faced with a calamity which could not be reported to the proper authorities, and their instinct to stand about and wait for the appearance of uniformed men, and for the appropriate relief fund to be opened, was obstructed by a cold, bewildering doubt as to whether there were any shepherds left for the sheep to look for. Even the Rector had disappeared.
A babble of voices broke out, foolish, exclamatory, or lamenting.
Two of the Rectory maidservants made their way up to the still smoking ruins. There was nothing left unburned except an old red-brick barn on the western side of the house, and that had fallen in ruin. It had contained nothing which would repay the toil of delving among the brick-heap—or so they thought. Later there might be others who would think differently.
Beside the barns were the pigsties, which were still standing. The Rector’s sow rose on her hind legs as their voices reached her, and put her snout over the top of the gate. In the later morning she would do so again, grunting angrily that her expected meal had not been brought with the usual punctuality. That evening she would make repeated useless efforts to jump the gate, and fall back baffled.
A day later men would come searching with murderous purpose for such as she, but would find the gate burst through, and the sty left empty….
The little crowd spread out from the church porch, the more robust leading their different ways to the ruins of their cottage-homes, and perhaps to find such food as the gardens offered—which was not much on the first of June—or to search apathetically, with stunned, bewildered minds, for those that the night had ended.
There was one man, Ben Millett, the local grocer, who found his wife lying in the little yard behind his burnt-out shop. She lay half dressed: a large, ungainly woman, who had stayed after he fled in an effort to save some of the stock. She had not entirely failed, for some cases of provisions had been piled against the farther wall of the yard, but it seemed that the storm had overcome her, and she had fallen with her head against the pump-trough.
Ben Millett did not attempt to raise, or even to touch her. He stood fascinated, observing the tyrant of twenty years so fallen. He noticed that her feet were charred, and the shoes partly burned away. Surely that would have roused her had there been any life remaining! He stood silent before a hope that he scarcely dared to rely on. But surely, surely she must be dead!
He only moved when young Rogers and his aunt and mother came into the yard together. They took no notice of the dead, but began to search among the boxes that she had salvaged at that fatal cost.
He heard the voice of the elder woman. “Sugar’s no good to we. Here, Harry, smash this one. It’s tins o’ something.”
He roused himself as from a dream, stepping over the burnt legs of the dead to protect his property.
“Look here,” he said angrily, “you mustn’t do that. They’re not yours. That salmon’s two-and-three-pence a tin.”
Harry Rogers, engaged in smashing one of them with a coal-hammer, remarked that he’d have some breakfast if they were four-and-six.
His aunt interposed civilly that “Of course, we’ll pay you, Mr. Millett.”
Mr. Millett said, “When?”
The women’s dresses had no pockets, and they had no money. It was not evident how or when such a debt could be settled. But Harry had some paper money in a trouser-pocket. At his aunt’s urgency he passed a ten-shilling note to the protesting grocer.
Mr. Millett, a very honest man, wished to give change correctly. He remarked that he had no money “on him.” He looked at his ruined store. A search for the cash-till did not seem a very hopeful project. He must go to the bank, where he had enough of savings to stock half a dozen of such shops, should he wish to do so. But the bank itself.… He looked down the wreckage of the once familiar street—the street in which he had lived since he was a child of three, when his father had come from Foxhill to take the position of ostler at the Ring o’ Bells—and he realized that the bank itself…and, perhaps, all his savings…suppose that his real wealth were in that heap of boxes?”
“Never mind the change now, Mr. Millett,” the elder woman remarked. “We can take it in groceries. I hope you’ve saved something good besides the salmon.”
“Oh, Harry, what are you doing?” his mother broke in plaintively. She had always hated waste, and he was smashing a second tin, and a third, recklessly open.
He had discovered a coal-hammer to be a form of tin-opener that causes spilling, and introduces dirt very freely. Never mind that. He would open one for each.
“There’s plenty here,” he said, pointing to the case, which still contained thirty-three tins of the same size.
Feeling an impulse of generosity at the sight of this plethora of a food which he rarely tasted, or enjoying the smashing of the tins, or from a mixture of these incentives—human motives are seldom easy to analyse—he burst another tin for their owner, and Mr. Millett, observing it, became conscious th
at he could also do with some breakfast.
He joined his customers very sociably, and as their appetites failed they had glances and words of pity for the dead woman three yards away. They almost forgot how she had been disliked when living. They became cheerful about the future with the consciousness of the food within them. Harry Rogers was a plasterer. There would be no lack of work for him. He could stay here, and make shift for himself. The women would go to their cousin’s in Wolverhampton. It did not occur to any of them that the elements would have the audacity to interfere with important towns. What were Town Councils and Chief Constables for?
A motor-cyclist hailed them from the road, inquiring whether they knew where he could get some more juice, and was he right for Codsall?
He seemed glad to stop and talk for a moment. He told vague, wild tale of spreading floods in the south. He should go back to America. He thought the blooming country was done for. Meanwhile he was going north for the safety of the Yorkshire moors—if not farther. No risks for him. But he had a married sister at Codsall, and he meant to take her, if she would come. No, no kids. Only married at Easter. Yes, very bad getting along. Two spills in the last ten miles. A streak of blood on his cheek supported the narrative. Well, he must get on. Hoped it would last. Didn’t look like getting any about here.
He gazed hungrily at the salmon-tins. Mr. Millett gave him his, which was nearly empty, his own appetite being satisfied, and was thanked for a welcome charity; but he had manœuvred, as the conversation proceeded, to conceal the reserves of food, and the skirts of Harry’s aunt had been used as promptly and more effectually for the same purpose.
The cyclist went on, cheerfully enough, to his destined end. They did not know that he was the first of thousands….
At midday Mr. Millett was burying a remnant of his often-plundered stock in a little coppice, a field’s-width from the road.
Five hours later he had heard with a sudden realization of his peril that Worcester was beneath the water. (He knew Worcester, where his brother had a corn factor’s business, which made it seem suddenly real and near.) He joined the crowd that jostled and panted on the northern road.
Chapter Seven
Mrs Walkley, setting out in a vain search for her missing child, whose death had cost the Rector’s life, took the elder girl with her, but left the wounded Cora in Muriel’s care.
Cora, a thin, anæmic child of seven or eight years, who had been knocked down by a blown branch, and whose right arm and side had been lacerated, was evidently unfit to walk, and Muriel, who had been nursing her in the darkness, offered to continue her charge when the daylight enabled the distracted mother to set out on her useless search.
She made a bed, of a kind, from some hassocks that had escaped the rain that drove through the church during the night. She went out to find some means of washing the wounds. She found an old enamelled bowl in a ditch at the foot of the Rectory garden. It had a hole in the bottom, but it was at one side, and it would still hold a good deal of water if it were tilted. So she was able to relieve the child’s thirst, and then to do what was possible for wounds that were inflamed already.
By this time the church had emptied, except for one old man who had gone out with the rest and then returned. He was bent with rheumatism, and stood without speaking, leaning on a heavy stick, and looking down on Muriel’s tattered and muddied form, and on the injured child.
At last he said, “It’s milk ’er needs…. There’s a cow in Datchett’s paddock, as like as not.”
Muriel looked up into a broad and weather-beaten face, wrinkled with age, with a spreading fringe of yellowish-grey hair. She thought of a sheep, but the eyes were smaller and less intelligent. The face did not alter its expression as she looked up. The life in the bent figure seemed remote and dull; but the words were good.
“Will you show me?” she said.
He seemed reluctant to move, or as though he had not heard; but in the end he came, moving painfully.
The paddock was fortunately near—just over the hill—and after an hour or more of alternate coaxing and dodging a cornered, frightened cow yielded some reluctant milk to Muriel’s strange but not unskilful hands—not what it would have given in the garden shed to its own attendant, while it licked up the meal which was expected payment, but as much as Muriel herself cared to drink, and as much more as could be carried in the tilted bowl. For the old man would have none. He pulled out a chunk of bread and cheese from a capacious pocket. It was as though he silently implied that he was always adequately provided for such catastrophes.
At midday he disappeared. He did not return. Neither did Mrs. Walkley. Muriel never saw her again.
The child grew worse rather than better as the day advanced. She was weak and fretful, and at times somewhat delirious. Muriel would not leave her for long, but went out several times foraging for food, or to learn what she might of the conditions around her. She watched the crowds that struggled northward on the wreck-strewn roads. She heard the wild and fearful talk that urged the weaker forward.
The road beneath the hill was bad enough, but in the afternoon, when the child fell into a restless slumber, she made her way over the fields to the main road that crossed it at right angles, going north, and here she came to a hedge-gate, over which she saw a limousine on the farther side, with two wheels in the ditch, which half a dozen men were toiling to move forward, while an impatient block of vehicles fretted in the rear. It was a spot where a fallen tree had been dragged aside, but only just sufficiently for one car to pass at a time, and this one had been too broad, or too badly driven, to pass it safely.
There had been two ladies in the car, who had alighted, and stood on the uncrowded side of the tree, watching the workers. The men it carried had alighted also, but stood holding the doors, lest others should attempt to force a way in when the wheels were lifted.
Muriel crossed over to the ladies. She was not ashamed of begging—had done so many times—for others; not herself—in a hundred circumstances.
They stood, cool and clean and gaily clothed, looking with an aloof impatience at the slow lifting of the foundered wheels.
Muriel said, addressing both indifferently, “Have you any food you could give me? I have a wounded child in the church.”
The nearer of the ladies looked doubtfully at her companion who answered quickly, “No, indeed. We haven’t enough for ourselves.”
“Nonsense, Ella,” came a man’s voice from beside the car, “we can spare some easily.”
“Yes, of course,” said another.
“If you once start giving to every beggar—” she began furiously, but the man did not heed her. He had entered the car, and had brought out a basket from its ample recesses.
“You’d better take the lot,” he said, “you couldn’t carry much without something to put it in.”
Muriel took it doubtfully. She saw clearly enough that she was benefiting from some antagonism which did not concern her. She felt that the other members of the party looked disconcerted by the extent of the gift. She did not like to accept anything which was reluctantly offered.
“I don’t think I shall need all this,” she said, but the car began to move forward as she spoke. There was a rush to crowd in as it turned to the middle of the road, and the cars behind hooted their impatience to take the opening way. Muriel, basket in hand, was pushed aside and forgotten. She went back with a week’s provision for the sick child and her frugal needs.
She walked back giddily, thinking at times that she was faint from the toils and exposures and lack of sleep she had experienced, at others that the earth itself was unstable beneath her. As she regained the church she knew that the weakness was not in herself alone. The ground rocked under her feet. She was glad to sit, and then lie flat, to reduce its effects. As the shocks continued she considered that the open skies were safer than any roof, however solid, and carried the child out of the church and laid her in the adjoining field.
She lay down beside
her, and as the earth quietened for a time, exhaustion triumphed, and she slept heavily.
She still slept when the shocks came again, not with violent oscillations, but with a steady sinking beneath her. She might have slept on through the night in the open field, but, as the evening came, the child waked her, asking for water.
She rose to get it, stiff, and heavy of limb, and slow of thought, but with the changed outlook that sleep will bring.
She looked round, and saw no one. She heard no sound of human life. She felt suddenly lonely. Had all the world fled to some farther safety, and left her here to die? She looked doubtfully at the child as she returned with the needed water. Could she carry it? Not far. She reminded herself that God was everywhere. The earth was quiet now. The church still stood. The child must not lie out all night.
She carried her back to the cushions where she had lain before…. The sky was clear of cloud, and a waning moon looked down on a hundred leagues of troubled, tossing water where there had been rich cities and fertile English fields but a night before. Only here and there an island showed above the covering waves, and on the largest of these an old grey church still stood among the surrounding ruins, and within it slept an exhausted woman and a dying child.
Chapter Eight
The short night ended. From the unshaken tableland of Asia, from the heights of the Himalayas, from the unchanged, enduring East, across the desolations of water that had been Europe, moved the regardless dawn.
It moved across a thousand leagues of new uncertain seas of no sure tides, where fierce and changing currents hurried the floating wreckage of a continent, now here, now there—hurried, and flung them back—the floating wreckage, and the floating dead.
It rose over some new-made islands in the western sea—islands with raw, unsanded, beachless coasts—islands on which some human life still endured among their storm-swept ruins—life that cowered terrified, or dazed, or maddened by the sudden calamity which it had experienced and perhaps survived.
Dawn Page 3
