In Exile and Other Stories Part 9

Nature sometimes strikes in upon the hopeless monotony of life in remote farmhouses with one of her phenomenal moods. They come like besoms of destruction, but they scatter the web of stifling routine; they fling into the stiffening pool the stone which jars the atoms into crystal.

The storms, that had ambushed in the lurid August skies and circled ominously round the horizon during the first weeks of September, broke at last in an equinoctial which was long remembered in the mill-house. It took its place in the family calendar of momentous dates with the hard winter of 1800, with the late frost that had coated the incipient apples with ice and frozen the new potatoes in the ground in the spring of '97, and with the year the typhus had visited the valley.

The rain had been falling a night and a day; it had been welcomed with thanksgiving, but it had worn out its welcome some hours since, and now the early darkness was coming on without a lull in the storm. Dorothy and the two older boys had made the rounds of the farm-buildings, seeing all safe for the second night. The barns and mill stood on high ground, while the house occupied the sheltered hollow between. Little streams from the hills were was.h.i.+ng in turbid currents across the lower levels; the waste-weir roared as in early spring, the garden was inundated, and the meadow a shallow pond. The sheep had been driven into the upper barn floor: the chickens were in the corn-bin; and old John and the cows had been transferred from the stable, that stood low, to the weighing floor of the mill. A gloomy echoing and gurgling sounded from the dark wheel-chamber where the water was rus.h.i.+ng under the wheel and jarring it with its tumult.

At eight o'clock the woodshed was flooded and water began to creep under the kitchen door. Dorothy and the boys carried armfuls of wood and stacked them in the pa.s.sage to the sitting-room, two steps higher up. At nine o'clock the boys were sent protesting to bed, and Dorothy, looking out of their window as she fumbled about in the dark for a pair of Shep's trousers that needed mending, saw a lantern flickering up the road. It was Evesham on his way to the mill-dams. The light glimmered on his oilskin coat as he climbed the stile behind the well-curb.

"He raised the flood-gates at noon," Dorothy said to herself. "I wonder if he is anxious about the dams." She resolved to watch for his return, but she was busy settling her mother for the night when she heard his footsteps on the porch. The roar of water from the hills startled Dorothy as she opened the door; it had increased in violence within an hour. A gust of wind and rain followed Evesham into the entry.

"Come in," she said, running lightly across the sitting-room to close the door of her mother's room.

He stood opposite her on the hearth-rug and looked into her eyes, across the estrangement of the summer. It was not Dorothy of the mill-head, or of Sloc.u.m's meadow, or the cold maid of the well; it was a very anxious, lonely little girl in a crumbling old house, with a foot of water in the cellar and a sick mother in the next room. She had forgotten about Ephraim and his idols; she picked up Shep's trousers from the rug, where she had dropped them, and, looking intently at her thimble finger, told him she was very glad that he had come.

"Did you think I would not come?" said he. "I'm going to take you home with me, Dorothy,--you and your mother and the boys. It's not fit for you to be here alone."

"Does thee know of any danger?"

"I know of none, but water's a thing you can't depend on. It's an ugly rain; older men than your father remember nothing like it."

"I shall be glad to have mother go, and Jimmy; the house is very damp. It's an awful night for her to be out, though."

"She _must_ go!" said Evesham. "You must all go. I'll be back in half an hour"--

"_I_ shall not go," Dorothy said; "the boys and I must stay and look after the stock."

"What's that?" Evesham was listening to a trickling of water outside the door.

"Oh! it's from the kitchen. The door has blown open, I guess."

Dorothy looked out into the pa.s.sage; a strong wind was blowing in from the kitchen, where the water covered the floor and washed against the chimney.

"This is a nice state of things! What's all this wood here for?"

"The woodshed's under water."

"You must get yourself ready, Dorothy. I'll come for your mother first in the chaise."

"I cannot go," she said. "I don't believe there is any danger. This old house has stood for eighty years; it's not likely this is the first big rain in all that time." Dorothy's spirits had risen. "Besides, I have a family of orphans to take care of. See here," she said, stooping over a basket in the shadow of the chimney. It was the "hospital tent," and as she uncovered it, a brood of belated chickens stretched out their thin necks with plaintive peeps.

Dorothy covered them with her hands and they nestled with comfortable twitterings into silence.

"You're a kind of special providence, aren't you, Dorothy? But I've no sympathy with chickens who will be born just in time for the equinoctial."

"_I_ didn't want them," said Dorothy, anxious to defend her management.

"The old hen stole her nest and she left them the day before the rain.

She's making herself comfortable now in the corn-bin."

"She ought to be made an example of; that's the way of the world, however,--retribution doesn't fall always on the right shoulders. I must go now. We'll take your mother and Jimmy first, and then, if you _won't_ come, you shall let me stay with you. The mill is safe enough, anyhow."

Evesham returned with the chaise and a man, who, he insisted, should drive away old John and the cows, so that Dorothy should have less care. The mother was packed into the chaise with a vast collection of wraps, which almost obliterated Jimmy. As they started, Dorothy ran out in the rain with her mother's spectacles and the five letters, which always lay in a box on the table by her bed. Evesham took her gently by the arms and lifted her back across the puddles to the stoop.

As the chaise drove off, she went back into the sitting-room and crouched on the rug, her wet hair s.h.i.+ning in the firelight. She took out her chickens one by one and held them under her chin, with tender words and finger-touches. If September chickens have feelings as susceptible as their bodies, Dorothy's orphans must have been imperiled by her caresses.

"Look here, Dorothy! Where's my trousers?" cried Shep, opening the door at the foot of the stairs.

Reuby was behind him, fully arrayed in his own garment aforesaid, and carrying the bedroom candle.

"Here they are--with a needle in them," said Dorothy. "What are you getting up in the middle of the night for?"

"Well, I guess it's time somebody's up. Who's that man driving off our cows?"

"Goosey! It's Walter Evesham's man. He came for mother and all of us, and he's taken old John and the cows to save us so much foddering."

"Ain't we going too?"

"I don't see why we should, just because there happens to be a little water in the kitchen. I've often seen it come in there before."

"Well, thee never saw anything like _this_ before--nor anybody else, either," said Shep.

"I don't care," said Reuby, "I wish there'd come a reg'lar flood. We could climb up in the mill-loft and go sailin' down over Jordan's meadows.

Wouldn't Luke Jordan open that big mouth of his to see us heave in sight about c.o.c.k-crow, wing and wing, and the old tackle a-swingin'!"

"Do hus.h.!.+" said Dorothy. "We may have to try it yet."

"There's an awful roarin' from our window," said Shep. "Thee can't half hear it down here. Come out on the stoop. The old ponds have got their dander up this time."

They opened the door and listened, standing together on the low step. There was, indeed, a hoa.r.s.e murmur from the hills, which grew louder as they listened.

"Now she's comin'! There goes the stable-door. There was only one hinge left, anyway," said Reuby. "Mighty! Look at that wave!"

It crashed through the gate, swept across the garden and broke at their feet, sending a thin sheet of water over the floor of the porch.

"Now it's gone into the entry. Why didn't thee shut the door, Shep?"

"Well, I think we'd better clear out, anyhow. Let's go over to the mill.

Say, Dorothy, shan't we?"

"Wait. There comes another wave."

The second onset was not so violent; but they hastened to gather together a few blankets, and the boys filled their pockets with cookies, with a delightful sense of unusualness and peril almost equal to a s.h.i.+pwreck or an attack by Indians. Dorothy took her unlucky chickens under her cloak, and they made a rush all together across the road and up the slope to the mill.

"Why didn't we think to bring a lantern?" said Dorothy, as they huddled together on the platform of the scale. "Will thee go back after one, Shep?"

"If Reuby'll go, too."

"Well, _my_ legs are wet enough now. What's the use of a lantern? Mighty Moses! What's that?"

"The old mill's got under way," cried Shep. "_She's_ going to tune up for Kingdom Come."