LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

estimate; and, though she pitied, it was without protest, as it was without fear.

      She did not think of the elemental forces of nature as operating with impartial and implacable obedience to blind and universal law. She looked upon them as the servants of an omniscient and omnipotent God, of Whose household she was a servant also—a servant of higher rank and of more assured position. She would not have put it in that way. She did not readily think in metaphor, unless it were in the Hebrew imagery to which she had been used from childhood. But she was assured that the sea was powerless to touch her, unless it were permitted to do so.

      She sat thinking for a long time, while the sun’s arc declined to the north-west, trying to understand the conditions under which life would continue, and to decide how best she could aid it. She was puzzled that her immediate surroundings should be so desolate, though the explanation was very simple. But she knew, by the men she had seen, that there were those who still lived in the Larkshill district. If they were of uncongenial types, the greater was the call upon her to join them. The greater, also, was the need for her to consider how she could serve them in practical ways, her missionary experiences having taught her the power of service and the methods by which she might stoop to conquer.

      She was not too ill to be of some use to God under these changed conditions. If it were not so, would He have preserved her when so many millions had perished?

      Surely not too ill; though she was aware of a lassitude which made her unwilling to face the return walk, in spite of the growing thirst from which she suffered…. Her thoughts were broken by a scrambling and scuffling sound in the gorse-bushes behind her, and by the stampede of a dozen sheep that had been feeding near them.

      She looked round, and caught a glimpse of a small white dog—a smooth-haired terrier—that was making excited rushes right and left at something that dodged it, but which she could not see.

      Then there came the agonized half-human cry of a captured rabbit, and a moment later the dog came out of the bushes, its prey hanging limp and dying in its mouth.

      Muriel could not know whether it had been previously aware of her presence, but now it came straight toward her, wagging a stump of tail in the excitement of its successful hunting, and laying the rabbit at her feet.

      Muriel loved dogs. The stranger was well satisfied with the praise she gave him. He sat down at her side, his stump still wagging on the ground, his head lifted sideways toward her caressing hand.

      The dog had a brass collar, with his name, and his owner’s, inscribed upon it: “Gumbo. Please return to George Hinde, The Ridge, Lower Helford.”

      Muriel was not very clear as to the position of Lower Helford, but she supposed (rightly) that it was covered by the placid ocean beneath her. She wondered whether the dog’s master would appear, or would she hear him whistle for the return of the wanderer. She resolved to introduce herself should the opportunity come. She felt that the owner of such a dog could not be an unwelcome acquaintance.

      But no call came, and the dog showed no inclination to leave her.

      Conscious of hunger, she began to think of the possibility of making a fire and roasting the unexpected meal. But there was little wood lying around, and she was unsure that the gorse-bushes would be dry enough to burn freely, even if she had had a knife to cut them.

      She must not come out without a knife again—it must surely be possible to find one somewhere.

      She decided to return at once; if the dog followed her she would conclude that he had lost his owner.

      So she picked up the rabbit and returned, with Gumbo trotting very contentedly at her heel.

      In spite of her physical weakness, it is probable that there were few survivors of flood and storm who were better fitted to face the altered conditions under which life must now be sustained. She had seen and shared so much of primitive living, had so often been reduced herself to crude expedient, that she was at once less perturbed by fear of privation, and better fitted to avoid its penalties.

      Arriving home, she soon had a wood fire blazing on the open ground. A splinter of wood proved adequate to the skinning and preparation of the rabbit, and when she slept that night, in the added security of the locked vestry, with the dog at her feet, she thanked God in her prayers for the companionship He had sent her, and for the provision of the needed meal, with a gratitude which was not faltered by undue thought of the fate of George Hinde, or his family, that the waves had covered.

      Chapter Eleven

      AS Muriel had watched the ocean that afternoon, and tried to imagine the conditions under which human life could be continuing, she had resolved to lose no time, as her strength had returned sufficiently, in joining herself to those who remained alive, and that she would set out the next morning to Cowley Thorn or to Larkshill, where she felt it to be most probable that her search would be successful. It was characteristic that she did not give any thought to her own safety or to her own advantage. It was the duty of service which called her. However limited her strength might be, she did not doubt that she could do something, in their emergency, to aid her fellows.

      But the next morning brought its own delays. She went farther among the ruins of Sterrington, and discovered, as she had expected, that there was much of probable or potential use which could still be salved from the ruins—much that weather and vermin were deteriorating, if not destroying.

      There was, in particular, a detached bake house which had contained several sacks of flour, which had been only partially protected by the ruins under which they lay. The exposed portions had attracted the cow to which she had been previously introduced in Datchett’s paddock, the Rector’s wandering sow, and a young black pig with which we have not been previously acquainted; and when these marauders had made some tactical dispositions to rearward, in the face of Gumbo’s vociferous protests, he had dashed into the rubble of flour and tiles and mortar and scattered a score of busy rats, of which he had got a grip of the rearmost, and returned to his new mistress shaking the life out of it triumphantly.

      Muriel recognized that the flour ought to be salved, but she found it a laborious task. She emptied a sack which had been largely exposed and damaged, carried it up to the vestry, and then filled it, in the course of many journeys, by means of the basket which had been given her from the foundered motor; the dog keeping guard over the sacks in her absence. In the process of filling the sack she had emptied another, which was carried up and filled in turn, and this continued till she had salved nearly four sackfuls. After this the weather turned wet, and the remaining flour was largely spoiled, at least for any lengthened storage.

      Meanwhile there was other needed food for which to forage, cooking to be done, and many things that hindered, and made the days pass quickly.

      She had felt that Datchett’s cow should be captured, and that its milk would be welcome, but she had difficulty in finding any enclosure that could be sufficiently secured without labour which she felt to be beyond her capacity.

      In the end she got it into the Rector’s orchard, where she tethered it while she strengthened hawthorn-hedges which had suffered little, because they were already so old and short, and thickly stemmed, and deep-rooted. The June grass was abundant among the uprooted orchard trees, and the cow settled down contentedly; but she gave little milk—little even for Muriel’s modest needs. She was near her time for calving again, and the interval during which she had been left unmilked had nearly dried her.

      Then there was no water in the orchard, and that meant a tub to be filled daily from a well in the rectory yard which still yielded freely.

      Meanwhile Muriel had tried to secure the two pigs, and had succeeded, with Gumbo’s energetic assistance, in persuading the Rector’s sow into a sty adjoining that from which she had escaped previously, but the young black pig had evaded all her efforts, and had finally disappeared.

      Having secured the sow, she became aware that she must release it again, or be content to remain sufficiently near the spot to feed it daily. And these things had not been done continuously, but between others, such as a determined search for sewing materials of any kind, on which she had been mainly occupied for three successive

Скачать книгу