LITMIR.BIZ

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fell into a restless slumber, she made her way over the fields to the main road that crossed it at right angles, going north, and here she came to a hedge-gate, over which she saw a limousine on the farther side, with two wheels in the ditch, which half a dozen men were toiling to move forward, while an impatient block of vehicles fretted in the rear. It was a spot where a fallen tree had been dragged aside, but only just sufficiently for one car to pass at a time, and this one had been too broad, or too badly driven, to pass it safely.

      There had been two ladies in the car, who had alighted, and stood on the uncrowded side of the tree, watching the workers. The men it carried had alighted also, but stood holding the doors, lest others should attempt to force a way in when the wheels were lifted.

      Muriel crossed over to the ladies. She was not ashamed of begging—had done so many times—for others; not herself—in a hundred circumstances.

      They stood, cool and clean and gaily clothed, looking with an aloof impatience at the slow lifting of the foundered wheels.

      Muriel said, addressing both indifferently, “Have you any food you could give me? I have a wounded child in the church.”

      The nearer of the ladies looked doubtfully at her companion who answered quickly, “No, indeed. We haven’t enough for ourselves.”

      “Nonsense, Ella,” came a man’s voice from beside the car, “we can spare some easily.”

      “Yes, of course,” said another.

      “If you once start giving to every beggar—” she began furiously, but the man did not heed her. He had entered the car, and had brought out a basket from its ample recesses.

      “You’d better take the lot,” he said, “you couldn’t carry much without something to put it in.”

      Muriel took it doubtfully. She saw clearly enough that she was benefiting from some antagonism which did not concern her. She felt that the other members of the party looked disconcerted by the extent of the gift. She did not like to accept anything which was reluctantly offered.

      “I don’t think I shall need all this,” she said, but the car began to move forward as she spoke. There was a rush to crowd in as it turned to the middle of the road, and the cars behind hooted their impatience to take the opening way. Muriel, basket in hand, was pushed aside and forgotten. She went back with a week’s provision for the sick child and her frugal needs.

      She walked back giddily, thinking at times that she was faint from the toils and exposures and lack of sleep she had experienced, at others that the earth itself was unstable beneath her. As she regained the church she knew that the weakness was not in herself alone. The ground rocked under her feet. She was glad to sit, and then lie flat, to reduce its effects. As the shocks continued she considered that the open skies were safer than any roof, however solid, and carried the child out of the church and laid her in the adjoining field.

      She lay down beside her, and as the earth quietened for a time, exhaustion triumphed, and she slept heavily.

      She still slept when the shocks came again, not with violent oscillations, but with a steady sinking beneath her. She might have slept on through the night in the open field, but, as the evening came, the child waked her, asking for water.

      She rose to get it, stiff, and heavy of limb, and slow of thought, but with the changed outlook that sleep will bring.

      She looked round, and saw no one. She heard no sound of human life. She felt suddenly lonely. Had all the world fled to some farther safety, and left her here to die? She looked doubtfully at the child as she returned with the needed water. Could she carry it? Not far. She reminded herself that God was everywhere. The earth was quiet now. The church still stood. The child must not lie out all night.

      She carried her back to the cushions where she had lain before…. The sky was clear of cloud, and a waning moon looked down on a hundred leagues of troubled, tossing water where there had been rich cities and fertile English fields but a night before. Only here and there an island showed above the covering waves, and on the largest of these an old grey church still stood among the surrounding ruins, and within it slept an exhausted woman and a dying child.

      Chapter Eight

      The short night ended. From the unshaken tableland of Asia, from the heights of the Himalayas, from the unchanged, enduring East, across the desolations of water that had been Europe, moved the regardless dawn.

      It moved across a thousand leagues of new uncertain seas of no sure tides, where fierce and changing currents hurried the floating wreckage of a continent, now here, now there—hurried, and flung them back—the floating wreckage, and the floating dead.

      It rose over some new-made islands in the western sea—islands with raw, unsanded, beachless coasts—islands on which some human life still endured among their storm-swept ruins—life that cowered terrified, or dazed, or maddened by the sudden calamity which it had experienced and perhaps survived.

      It rose upon the old grey church where Muriel and the child still slept—where Muriel, exhausted by exertions far beyond her normal endurance, might have slept for many further hours, had she not been wakened by the weak reiteration of the cry for water from the dying child.

      For she saw that the child must die unless some skill beyond her Own could be brought to aid her—would probably die in any case, as her experience told.

      She hesitated as to what it might be best to do. She might find medical aid—if she sought it. She could not tell how far the settled order of civilization had left the world, or how few might be those who were still alive around her.

      But when she tried to rise she found that the question was already answered. Exposure and exhaustion had left her too full of pain and weakness for any thought of walking farther than along the side of the field to the river below, from which she had been fetching the water that they required

      Well, if it were God’s will…. She tried to talk to the restless child when she had done what little was in her power for its physical comfort, but she could not reach its mind. It gazed at her with dull, unheeding eyes, or turned away its head in a sharp impatience.

      Later in the day it was in a delirium of fever, from which it had little respite till its life was closing.

      In the afternoon Muriel heard voices with a sudden hope. They were the voices of approaching men. They passed the door of the church, but did not enter.

      She supposed rightly that they had gone on to the Rectory ruins. They would return, she supposed, by the same path. Here she was right again, but her purpose to call them changed as they passed beneath the broken windows of the church and she heard their voices in an interjected narrative which it seemed that two or more were giving to the other members of the party:

      “If the…hadn’t been standing underneath the crane.…”

      “Fetched him a wipe over the jaw, and he fell….”

      “She’d got two ducks hidden under the seat….”

      “Told him to…the skulking hound….”

      It was too fragmentary for any meaning to emerge, but neither tones nor words gave expectation of any useful succour.

      The next minute she knew that the party had turned in at the church door.

      She heard rough voices and the stamp of heavy boots on the stones. She lay quiet, and saw them as they straggled up the aisle, though, as yet, she was unobserved. She recognized them as a group of miners—doubtless from the Larkshill collieries, which she knew to be no more than three or four miles away.

      She saw the foremost man very clearly. Not tall. A blunt-featured face, not uncomely. He was looking right and left in the empty pews as he advanced. She thought of the basket of food which lay near to her hand, and wondered how much, if any, would be left when these unwelcome visitors had departed. But she was not greatly perturbed, having an invariable formula for such emergencies. It was a case for prayer. After that the control of the situation was in very capable hands.

      The

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