Deluge. S. Fowler Wright

and how they had come to her, as though for protection from the terror of a failing world, and she had drawn milk from one of them, and slept on the short turf in the warmth of the rising sun, and wakened to know that the noon was past, and to find the cows in a recovered serenity grazing quietly around her (and the cows were hers, let Jephson say what he would!), and so, with another meal of new milk to ease the thirst with which she woke, and clothed only in the bathing dress in which she had landed, she had set out to explore the land that the floods had spared, and seek for further food, and garments, and shelter for the night to be.

      CHAPTER VI

      Climbing clear of the grassy hollow in which the cows had found their safety, she had reached an undulating space of land about half a mile broad, and beyond that a depression, in the centre of which was the ruin of a farmhouse. The hollow of this depression in which the house stood was actually below the new sea-level but the ground rose again on the further side. What had been a lofty upland had become an island of an area of a square mile or two only, but, on the southern side, there was a further space of land of about equal extent, divided by an arm of water which receded at low tide, so that it was possible to cross it with little difficulty. This further island had been swept over by the floods, and was bare of any life, though it now stood some feet above the water.

      Of this she learnt later. What she first saw was that two men were standing by the ruined house, and so, thinking little of her spare attire in her eagerness to meet with living creatures of her own kind, she had hurried down the slope, while they crossed the more level space beneath her. And with those men she had lived for the past days in the ruined house—and how she loathed them!

      They had been days of urgent toil, but without privation or any real discomfort. She thought of the tales she had read of people marooned on desert islands, and of their quarrels, and of the love that always followed. But the men in those tales were types rather than individuals, and these were—Jephson and Norwood. She noticed that she always thought of Jephson first.

      Neither of them was a native of the district. Jephson was a joiner by trade. He had been the foreman employed on the job of repairing the dilapidated farmhouse in which they were now living. He was a native of Birmingham. He had preferred to live on the premises, while his men lodged in the village. That had saved his life, though the room in which he had slept on the first night had fallen in, and he had been cut and bruised. The lobe of his left ear had been almost severed, and for lack of the aid of anyone with skill to stitch it, it would always hang loose.

      He was a man of medium height, very broadly made, and with a heavy, resolute step. His arms were long and very hairy, the hands coarse and spatulate. He had a tuft of straw-coloured beard, and a stiff moustache projecting like that of a walrus. His front teeth were decayed and broken. His head showed a skimpy fringe of yellow hair, around a natural tonsure. His eyes were small, deep-set, and intelligent, sometimes lit with a humour which was rarely kindly. His voice was deep, and his speech came with deliberation.

      He was of an intense acquisitiveness. He had lost a wife and some children, but he was more concerned as to the fate of a sum of three hundred pounds that he had deposited in the Municipal Bank of his native town. He was not of a type of mind that could easily realise that money had no intrinsic value.

      It was probably a penurious habit arising from this feature of his character which had led him to live on the job rather than lodge in the village near.

      It was clear to him that the house was his, as he had been on the spot when the floods came, and that Norwood and Claire could live there by permission only. His money was gone, but ‘findin’s is keepin’s now’ was the first law he announced for the regulation of his new dominion.

      Certainly he knew best how to deal with it, and under his expert and energetic hands it soon began to lose the ruined aspect that age and storm had bestowed upon it.

      He claimed also a dozen sheep that were running loose on the hill, because ‘the land goes with the house,’ and with the same argument he disputed Claire’s contention that the cows were hers; a contention first made in jest—for what difference did it make when there was milk for all?—but afterwards in earnest, when she found that even here the privileges of property might be employed to coerce her.

      Norwood was a man cast from a very different mould. His name had been known to her before as a professional cricketer of international reputation. He had been playing at Cheltenham in a three days’ match, which began on the Saturday before the storm. A too-convivial evening had been followed by a Sunday of heavy sleep, after which he had started out in the evening for a long walk, which experience had taught him was the best way to recover his condition after such an episode. He had been on the hilltop, and about to turn back, calculating that he would reach his hotel in time for three or four hours’ sleep before play would be recommenced when the storm had struck him, and he had lain there for many hours with no more protection than a pile of stones where a wall had fallen. When the force of the wind slackened, he had made his way to the farmhouse, and had remained there during the flood and earthquake of the following night, after helping the bruised and bleeding Jephson to disentangle himself from the collapse of the upper room in which he had been sleeping.

      He was a man of about thirty-five, tall, handsome in a rather weak and swaggering way, better educated than Jephson, but with far less knowledge or capacity for overcoming the practical issues of life. He was fair-haired, clean-shaven, with the healthy brick-red complexion of the athlete, and showing his vice only in a rather watery appearance of eyes that had still been clear enough to watch a fast ball from the bowler’s hand until the perfect timing of the stroke should drive it hard and low to the distant boundary.

      The sudden oblivion of the world he knew had left him with a sense of stupefaction, from which he had only gradually recovered, to inquire what his companions thought had happened to ‘poor Lil’—a sister, as they understood—with rather maudlin pathos.

      The condition of the lives of these three derelicts was controlled at first by the configuration of the little bay in which Claire had landed. Narrow at its entrance, it curved to the right hand and widened into a pool, which shallowed as the tide fell, so that the green of the flooded grass could be seen clearly through the water. Other things could be seen there also; and other things were left uncovered by the tide on the gently-shelving beach of the bay.

      For the sea-floor, which had been England, carried an empire’s wealth, and the great tides washed it out of the buildings that held it, or broke them down and released it, to add to all that had floated since the flood had risen, and the little bay was like a trap to catch them.

      And all these things they toiled to save without ceasing, under Jephson’s restless urgency. Nothing would he admit to be too cumbersome or too worthless to be dragged up from the tide level. When that had been done, there was the harder task of carrying all that was of sufficient value over the higher ground and down to the house. Norwood was the more disposed to grumble at this incessant toil, but though Jephson’s eager greed was unattractive in its intensity, Claire could see the reason which underlay it, and did her part, and more than that, in the common labour. Even timber might be worth more than they could easily estimate, for the trees on this island, which had been a hill-top, were little more than shrubs, and fuel for the winter, which must surely come, might not be easy to find.

      For the most part, Jephson worked with a tireless vigour at the repairing of the house, so that there might be weather-proof space for the storing of the salvage when they had dried it. He only asked for his companions’ help when something had to be done which required extra hands or strength; and he would come once to the beach with them each day to see what the tide had brought, remaining only if his help were needed, but urging them by ceaseless question and sarcasm, and by his own example, to yet greater efforts.

      During this time there was little of any real intimacy between these uncongenial companions that disaster had thrown together. At first the restraint of the civilisation of yesterday, the shock of the overwhelming calamity, and the urgency of their labours had combined to defer the inevitable difficulties of adjustment that were before them.

      Once or twice a conflict of wills had flared into sudden anger, that might die down as quickly, but left a