‘Indeed, yes,’ said Midmore with a deep sigh. The old tricks were sprouting in the old atmosphere like mushrooms in a dung-pit. He passed into an abrupt reverie, shook his head, as though stung by tumultuous memories, and departed without any ceremony of farewell to catch a mid-afternoon express where a man meets associates who talk horse, and weather as it affects the horse, all the way down. What worried him most was that he had missed a day with the hounds.
He met Rhoda’s keen old eyes without flinching; and the drawing-room looked very comfortable that wet evening at tea. After all, his visit to town had not been wholly a failure. He had burned quite a bushel of letters at his flat. A flat – here he reached mechanically toward the worn volumes near the sofa – a flat was a consuming animal. As for Daphne… he opened at random on the words: ‘His lordship then did as desired and disclosed a tableau of considerable strength and variety.’ Midmore reflected: ‘And I used to think… But she wasn’t… We were all babblers and skirters together… I didn’t babble much – thank goodness – but I skirted.’ He turned the pages backward for more Sortes Surteesianae,15 and read: ‘When at length they rose to go to bed it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs, that the man before him walked very crookedly.’ He laughed aloud at the fire.
‘What about tomorrow?’ Rhoda asked, entering with garments over her shoulder. ‘It’s never stopped raining since you left. You’ll be plastered out of sight an’ all in five minutes. You’d better wear your next best, ’adn’t you? I’m afraid they’ve shrank. ’Adn’t you best try ’em on?’
‘Here?’ said Midmore.
‘’Suit yourself. I bathed you when you wasn’t larger than a leg o’ lamb,’ said the ex-ladies‘-maid.
‘Rhoda, one of these days I shall get a valet, and a married butler.’
‘There’s many a true word spoke in jest. But nobody’s huntin’ tomorrow.’
‘Why? Have they cancelled the meet?’
‘They say it only means slipping and over-reaching in the mud, and they all ’ad enough of that today. Charlie told me so just now.’
‘Oh!’ It seemed that the word of Mr Sperrit’s confidential clerk had weight.
‘Charlie came down to help Mr Sidney lift the gates,’ Rhoda continued.
‘The flood-gates? They are perfectly easy to handle now. I’ve put in a wheel and a winch.’
‘When the brook’s really up they must be took clean out on account of the rubbish blockin’ ’em. That’s why Charlie came down.’
Midmore grunted impatiently. ‘Everybody has talked to me about that brook ever since I came here. It’s never done anything yet.’
‘This ’as been a dry summer. If you care to look now, sir, I’ll get you a lantern.’
She paddled out with him into a large wet night. Half-way down the lawn her light was reflected on shallow brown water, pricked through with grass blades at the edges. Beyond that light, the brook was strangling and kicking among hedges and tree-trunks.
‘What on earth will happen to the big rose-bed?’ was Midmore’s first word.
‘It generally ’as to be restocked after a flood. Ah!’ she raised her lantern. ‘There’s two garden-seats knockin’ against the sun-dial. Now, that won’t do the roses any good.’
‘This is too absurd. There ought to be some decently thought-out system – for – for dealing with this sort of thing.’ He peered into the rushing gloom. There seemed to be no end to the moisture and the racket. In town he had noticed nothing.
‘It can’t be ‘elped,’ said Rhoda. ‘It’s just what it does do once in just so often. We’d better go back.’
All earth under foot was sliding in a thousand liquid noises towards the hoarse brook. Somebody wailed from the house: ‘’Fraid o’ the water! Come ‘ere! ‘Fraid o’ the water!’
‘That’s Jimmy. Wet always takes ’im that way,’ she explained. The idiot charged into them, shaking with terror.
‘Brave Jimmy! How brave of Jimmy! Come into the hall. What Jimmy got now?’ she crooned. It was a sodden note which ran: ‘Dear Rhoda – Mr Lotten, with whom I rode home this afternoon, told me that if this wet keeps up, he’s afraid the fish-pond he built last year, where Coxen’s old mill-dam was, will go, as the dam did once before, he says. If it does it’s bound to come down the brook. It may be all right, but perhaps you had better look out. C. S.’
‘If Coxen’s dam goes, that means… I’ll ’ave the drawing-room carpet up at once to be on the safe side. The claw-’ammer is in the libery.’
‘Wait a minute. Sidney’s gates are out, you said?’
‘Both. He’ll need it if Coxen’s pond goes… I’ve seen it once.’
‘I’ll just slip down and have a look at Sidney. Light the lantern again, please, Rhoda.’
‘You won’t get him to stir. He’s been there since he was born. But she don’t know anything. I’ll fetch your waterproof and some top-boots.’
‘’Fraid o’ the water! ‘Fraid o’ the water!’ Jimmy sobbed, pressed against a corner of the hall, his hands to his eyes.
‘All right, Jimmy. Jimmy can help play with the carpet,’ Rhoda answered, as Midmore went forth into the darkness and the roarings all round. He had never seen such an utterly unregulated state of affairs. There was another lantern reflected on the streaming drive.
‘Hi! Rhoda! Did you get my note? I came down to make sure. I thought, afterwards, Jimmy might funk the water!’
‘It’s me – Miss Sperrit,’ Midmore cried. ‘Yes, we got it, thanks.’
‘You’re back, then. Oh, good!… Is it bad down with you?’
‘I’m going to Sidney’s to have a look.’
‘You won’t get him out. Lucky I met Bob Lotten. I told him he hadn’t any business impounding water for his idiotic trout without rebuilding the dam.’
‘How far up is it? I’ve only been there once.’
‘Not more than four miles as the water will come. He says he’s opened all the sluices.’
She had turned and fallen into step beside him, her hooded head bowed against the thinning rain. As usual she was humming to herself.
‘Why on earth did you come out in this weather?’ Midmore asked.
‘It was worse when you were in town. The rain’s taking off now. If it wasn’t for that pond, I wouldn’t worry so much. There’s Sidney’s bell. Come on!’ She broke into a run. A cracked bell was jangling feebly down the valley.
‘Keep on the road!’ Midmore shouted. The ditches were snorting bank-full on either side, and towards the brook-side the fields were afloat and beginning to move in the darkness.
‘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 flood-gates, 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! Coxen’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 considerate 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 pronounced. ‘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 footpath, 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 Coxen’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 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.