LITMIR.BIZ

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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 that 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

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