Selected Stories (88 page)

‘What did Sidney do about it?'

‘He made a notch on the step. 'E said it was a record. Just like 'im.'

‘It's up to the drive now,' said Midmore after another long wait. ‘And the rain stopped before eight, you know.'

‘Then Coxen's dam '
as
broke, and that's the first of the flood-water.' She stared out beside him. The water was rising in sudden pulses – an inch or two at a time, with great sweeps and lagoons and a sudden increase of the brook's proper thunder.

‘You can't stand all the time. Take a chair,' Midmore said presently.

Rhoda looked back into the bare room. ‘The carpet bein' up
does
make a difference. Thank you, sir, I
will
'ave a set-down.'

‘Right over the drive now,' said Midmore. He opened the window and leaned out. ‘Is that wind up the valley, Rhoda?'

‘No, that's
it
! But I've seen it before.'

There was not so much a roar as the purposeful drive of a tide across a jagged reef, which put down every other sound for twenty minutes. A wide sheet of water hurried up to the little terrace on which the house stood, pushed round either corner, rose again and stretched, as it were, yawning beneath the moonlight, joined other sheets waiting for them in unsuspected hollows, and lay out all in one. A puff of wind followed.

‘It's right up to the wall now. I can touch it with my finger.' Midmore bent over the window-sill.

‘I can 'ear it in the cellars,' said Rhoda dolefully. ‘Well, we've done what we can! I think I'll 'ave a look.' She left the room and was absent half an hour or more, during which time he saw a full-grown tree hauling itself across the lawn by its naked roots. Then a hurdle knocked against the wall, caught on an iron foot-scraper just outside, and made a square-headed ripple. The cascade through the cellar-windows diminished.

‘It's dropping,' Rhoda cried, as she returned. ‘It's only tricklin' into my cellars now.'

‘Wait a minute. I believe – I believe I can see the scraper on the edge of the drive just showing!'

In another ten minutes the drive itself roughened and became gravel again, tilting all its water towards the shrubbery.

‘The pond's gone past,' Rhoda announced. ‘We shall only 'ave the common flood to contend with now. You'd better go to bed.'

‘I ought to go down and have another look at Sidney before daylight.'

‘No need. You can see ‘is light burnin' from all the upstairs windows.'

‘By the way. I forgot about
her
. Where've you put her?'

‘In my bed.' Rhoda's tone was ice. ‘I wasn't going to undo a room for
that
stuff.'

‘But it – it couldn't be helped,' said Midmore. ‘She was half drowned. One mustn't be narrow-minded, Rhoda, even if her position isn't quite – er – regular.'

‘Pfff! I wasn't worryin' about that.' She leaned forward to the window. ‘There's the edge of the lawn showin' now. It falls as fast as it rises. Dearie' – the change of tone made Midmore jump – ‘didn't you know that I was ‘is first?
That's
what makes it so hard to bear.' Midmore looked at the long lizard-like back and had no words.

She went on, still talking through the black window-pane:

‘Your pore dear auntie was very kind about it. She said she'd make all allowances for one, but no more. Never any more… Then, you didn't know 'oo Charlie was all this time?'

‘Your nephew, I always thought.'

‘Well, well,' she spoke pityingly. ‘Everybody's business being nobody's business, I suppose no one thought to tell you. But Charlie made ‘is own way for ‘imself from the beginnin'!… But
her
upstairs, she never produced anything. Just an ‘ousekeeper, as you might say. Turned over an' went to sleep straight off. She 'ad the impudence to ask me for ‘ot sherry-gruel.'

‘Did you give it to her,' said Midmore.

‘Me? Your sherry? No!'

The memory of Sidney's outrageous rhyme at the window, and Charlie's long nose (he thought it looked interested at the time) as he passed the copies of Mrs Werf's last four wills, overcame Midmore without warning.

‘This damp is givin' you a cold,' said Rhoda, rising. ‘There you go again! Sneezin's a sure sign of it. Better go to bed. You can't do anythin' excep'' – she stood rigid, with crossed arms – ‘about me.'

‘Well. What about you?' Midmore stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket.

‘Now you know about it, what are you goin' to do – sir?'

She had the answer on her lean cheek before the sentence was finished.

‘Go and see if you can get us something to eat, Rhoda. And beer.'

‘I expec' the larder'll be in a swim,' she replied, ‘but old bottled stuff don't take any harm from wet.' She returned with a tray, all in order, and they ate and drank together, and took observations of the falling flood till dawn opened its bleared eyes on the wreck of what had been a fair garden. Midmore, cold and annoyed, found himself humming:

‘That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass,
That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.

There isn't a rose left, Rhoda!

‘An awesome ebb and flow it was
To many more than mine and me.
But each will mourn his…

It'll cost me a hundred.'

‘Now we know the worst,' said Rhoda, ‘we can go to bed. I'll lay on the kitchen sofa. His light's burnin' still.'

‘And
she
?'

‘Dirty old cat! You ought to 'ear 'er snore!'

At ten o'clock in the morning, after a maddening hour in his own garden on the edge of the retreating brook, Midmore went off to confront more damage at Sidney's. The first thing that met him was the pig, snowy white, for the water had washed him out of his new sty, calling on high heaven for breakfast. The front door had been forced open, and the flood had registered its own height in a brown dado on the walls. Midmore chased the pig out and called up the stairs.

‘I be abed o' course. Which step 'as she rose to?' Sidney cried from above. ‘The fourth? Then it's beat all records. Come up.'

‘Are you ill?' Midmore asked as he entered the room. The red eyelids blinked cheerfully. Mr Sidney, beneath a sumptuous patch-work quilt, was smoking.

‘Nah! I'm only thankin' God I ain't my own landlord. Take that cheer. What's she done?'

‘It hasn't gone down enough for me to make sure.'

‘Them floodgates o' yourn ‘ll be middlin' far down the brook by now; an' your rose-garden have gone after 'em. I saved my chickens, though. You'd better get Mus' Sperrit to take the law o' Lotten an' ‘is fishpond.'

‘No, thanks. I've trouble enough without that.'

‘Hev ye?' Mr Sidney grinned. ‘How did ye make out with those two women o' mine last night? I lay they fought.'

‘You infernal old scoundrel!' Midmore laughed.

‘I be – an' then again I bain't,' was the placid answer. ‘But, Rhoda,
she
wouldn't ha' left me last night. Fire or flood, she wouldn't.'

‘Why didn't you ever marry her?' Midmore asked.

‘Waste of good money. She was willin' without.'

There was a step on the gritty mud below, and a voice humming. Midmore rose quickly saying: ‘Well, I suppose you're all right now.'

‘I be. I ain't a landlord, nor I ain't young – nor anxious. Oh, Mus' Midmore! Would it make any odds about her thirty pounds comin' regular if I married her? Charlie said maybe ‘twould.'

‘Did he?' Midmore turned at the door. ‘And what did Jimmy say about it?'

‘Jimmy?' Mr Sidney chuckled as the joke took him. ‘Oh,
he's
none o' mine. He's Charlie's look-out.'

Midmore slammed the door and ran downstairs.

‘Well, this is a – sweet – mess,' said Miss Sperrit in shortest skirts and heaviest riding-boots. ‘I had to come down and have a look at it. “The old mayor climbed the belfry tower.” Been up all night nursing your family?'

‘Nearly that! Isn't it cheerful?' He pointed through the door to the stairs with small twig-drift on the last three treads.

‘It's a record, though,' said she, and hummed to herself:

‘That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass,
That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.'

‘You're always singing that, aren't you?' Midmore said suddenly as she passed into the parlour where slimy chairs had been stranded at all angles.

‘Am I? Now I come to think of it I believe I do. They say I always hum when I ride. Have you noticed it?'

‘Of course I have. I notice every –'

‘Oh,' she went on hurriedly. ‘We had it for the village cantata last winter – “The Brides of Enderby”.'

‘No! “High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire”.' For some reason Midmore spoke sharply.

‘Just like that.' She pointed to the befouled walls. ‘I say… Let's get this furniture a little straight… You know it too?'

‘Every word, since you sang it, of course.'

‘When?'

‘The first night I ever came down. You rode past the drawing-room window in the dark singing it – “And sweeter woman –”'

‘I thought the house was empty then. Your aunt always let us use that short cut. Ha-hadn't we better get this out into the passage? It'll all have to come out anyhow. You take the other side.' They began to lift a heavyish table. Their words came jerkily between gasps and their faces were as white as – a newly washed and very hungry pig.

‘Look out!' Midmore shouted. His legs were whirled from under him, as the table, grunting madly, careened and knocked the girl out of sight.

The wild boar of Asia could not have cut down a couple more scientifically, but this little pig lacked his ancestor's nerve and fled shrieking over their bodies.

‘Are you hurt, darling?' was Midmore's first word, and ‘No – I'm only winded – dear,' was Miss Sperrit's, as he lifted her out of her corner, her hat over one eye and her right cheek a smear of mud.

They fed him a little later on some chicken-feed that they found in Sidney's quiet barn, a pail of buttermilk out of the dairy, and a quantity of onions from a shelf in the back-kitchen.

‘Seed-onions, most likely,' said Connie. ‘You'll hear about this.'

‘What does it matter? They ought to have been gilded. We must buy him.'

‘And keep him as long as he lives,' she agreed. ‘But I think I ought to go home now. You see, when I came out I didn't expect… Did you?'

‘No! Yes… It had to come… But if anyone had told me an hour ago!… Sidney's unspeakable parlour – and the mud on the carpet.'

‘Oh, I say! Is my cheek clean now?'

‘Not quite. Lend me your hanky again a minute, darling… What a purler you came!'

‘You can't talk. Remember when your chin hit that table and you said “blast”! I was just going to laugh.'

‘You didn't laugh when I picked you up. You were going “oo-oo-oo” like a little owl.'

‘My dear child –'

‘Say that again!'

‘My dear child. (Do you really like it? I keep it for my best friends.) My
dee-ar
child, I thought I was going to be sick there and then. He knocked every ounce of wind out of me – the angel! But I must really go.'

They set off together, very careful not to join hands or take arms.

‘Not across the fields,' said Midmore at the stile. ‘Come round by – by your own place.'

She flushed indignantly.

‘It will be yours in a little time,' he went on, shaken with his own audacity.

‘Not so much of your little times, if you please!' She shied like a colt across the road; then instantly, like a colt, her eyes lit with new curiosity as she came in sight of the drive-gates.

‘And not quite so much of your airs and graces, Madam,' Midmore returned, ‘or I won't let you use our drive as a short cut any more.'

‘Oh, I'll be good. I'll be good.' Her voice changed suddenly. ‘I swear I'll try to be good, dear. I'm not much of a thing at the best. What made
you
…'

‘I'm worse – worse! Miles and oceans worse. But what does it matter now?'

They halted beside the gate-pillars.

‘I see!' she said, looking up the sodden carriage sweep to the front door porch where Rhoda was slapping a wet mat to and fro. ‘
I
see… Now, I really must go home. No! Don't you come. I must speak to Mother first all by myself.'

He watched her up the hill till she was out of sight.

Mary Postgate
¹