"Catch me going off it! There"s his light burning all right." She halted undistressed at a little rise. "But the flood"s in the orchard. Look!"
She swung her lantern to show a front rank of old apple-trees reflected in still, out-lying waters beyond the half-drowned hedge. They could hear above the thud-thud of the gorged floodgates, shrieks in two keys as monotonous as a steam-organ.
"The high one"s the pig." Miss Sperrit laughed.
"All right! I"ll get _her_ out. You stay where you are, and I"ll see you home afterwards."
"But the water"s only just over the road," she objected.
"Never mind. Don"t you move. Promise?"
"All right. You take my stick, then, and feel for holes in case anything"s washed out anywhere. This _is_ a lark!"
Midmore took it, and stepped into the water that moved sluggishly as yet across the farm road which ran to Sidney"s front door from the raised and metalled public road. It was half way up to his knees when he knocked. As he looked back Miss Sperrit"s lantern seemed to float in mid-ocean.
"You can"t come in or the water"ll come with you. I"ve bunged up all the cracks," Mr. Sidney shouted from within. "Who be ye?"
"Take me out! Take me out!" the woman shrieked, and the pig from his sty behind the house urgently seconded the motion.
"I"m Midmore! c.o.xen"s old mill-dam is likely to go, they say. Come out!"
"I told "em it would when they made a fish-pond of it. "Twasn"t ever puddled proper. But it"s a middlin" wide valley. She"s got room to spread.... Keep still, or I"ll take and duck you in the cellar!... You go "ome, Mus" Midmore, an" take the law o" Mus" Lotten soon"s you"ve changed your socks."
"Confound you, aren"t you coming out?"
"To catch my death o" cold? I"m all right where I be. I"ve seen it before. But you can take _her_. She"s no sort o" use or sense.... Climb out through the window. Didn"t I tell you I"d plugged the door-cracks, you fool"s daughter?" The parlour window opened, and the woman flung herself into Midmore"s arms, nearly knocking him down. Mr. Sidney leaned out of the window, pipe in mouth.
"Take her "ome," he said, and added oracularly:
"Two women in one house, Two cats an" one mouse, Two dogs an" one bone-- Which I will leave alone.
I"ve seen it before." Then he shut and fastened the window.
"A trap! A trap! You had ought to have brought a trap for me. I"ll be drowned in this wet," the woman cried.
"Hold up! You can"t be any wetter than you are. Come along!" Midmore did not at all like the feel of the water over his boot-tops.
"Hooray! Come along!" Miss Sperrit"s lantern, not fifty yards away, waved cheerily.
The woman threshed towards it like a panic-stricken goose, fell on her knees, was jerked up again by Midmore, and pushed on till she collapsed at Miss Sperrit"s feet.
"But you won"t get bronchitis if you go straight to Mr. Midmore"s house," said the unsympathetic maiden.
"O Gawd! O Gawd! I wish our "eavenly Father "ud forgive me my sins an"
call me "ome," the woman sobbed. "But I won"t go to _"is_ "ouse!
I won"t."
"All right, then. Stay here. Now, if we run," Miss Sperrit whispered to Midmore, "she"ll follow us. Not too fast!"
They set off at a considerable trot, and the woman lumbered behind them, bellowing, till they met a third lantern--Rhoda holding Jimmy"s hand.
She had got the carpet up, she said, and was escorting Jimmy past the water that he dreaded.
"That"s all right," Miss Sperrit p.r.o.nounced. "Take Mrs. Sidney back with you, Rhoda, and put her to bed. I"ll take Jimmy with me. You aren"t afraid of the water now, are you, Jimmy?"
"Not afraid of anything now." Jimmy reached for her hand. "But get away from the water quick."
"I"m coming with you," Midmore interrupted.
"You most certainly are not. You"re drenched. She threw you twice. Go home and change. You may have to be out again all night. It"s only half-past seven now. I"m perfectly safe." She flung herself lightly over a stile, and hurried uphill by the foot-path, out of reach of all but the boasts of the flood below.
Rhoda, dead silent, herded Mrs. Sidney to the house.
"You"ll find your things laid out on the bed," she said to Midmore as he came up. I"ll attend to--to this. _She"s_ got nothing to cry for."
Midmore raced into dry kit, and raced uphill to be rewarded by the sight of the lantern just turning into the Sperrits" gate. He came back by way of Sidney"s farm, where he saw the light twinkling across three acres of shining water, for the rain had ceased and the clouds were stripping overhead, though the brook was noisier than ever. Now there was only that doubtful mill-pond to look after--that and his swirling world abandoned to himself alone.
"We shall have to sit up for it," said Rhoda after dinner. And as the drawing-room commanded the best view of the rising flood, they watched it from there for a long time, while all the clocks of the house bore them company.
""Tisn"t the water, it"s the mud on the skirting-board after it goes down that I mind," Rhoda whispered. "The last time c.o.xen"s mill broke, I remember it came up to the second--no, third--step o" Mr.
Sidney"s stairs."
"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 c.o.xen"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-sc.r.a.per 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 sc.r.a.per 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.