Читать книгу Dawn - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 7

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With the first dawn the wind had lessened somewhat the relentless pressure of the night, lessened also in the steadiness of its direction, till, with the broader day, it became variable both in force and direction, a matter of short and violent gales, and sudden calms, and fierce whirlwinds of contending air.

With the first light, a straggling company from the church-porch came out to survey the havoc of the storm.

For the most part, they were a white-faced group, cowed and bewildered by the magnitude of the calamity which the morning showed them. They were in no physical condition to regard it bravely. They were shaking with cold, or stiff with rheumatism, after their vigil in rain-soaked garments on the unfriendly stones. They were hungry, and uncertain how to look for food. They saw a world in which the familiar buildings that held the endless things that they had come to regard as the inevitable necessities of life were burnt or fallen. They gazed at horizons, livid or dusky red, which told of more than local ruin. Vaguely, they realized that there was no help but in themselves, and they were untrained in self-reliance, as they were unpracticed in self-discipline.

The little crowd spread out from the church-porch, the more robust leading their different ways to the ruins of their cottage homes, perhaps to find such food as the gardens offered—which was not much on the first of June—or to search apathetically, with stunned bewildered minds, for those that the night had ended.

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 anemic 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 enameled bowl in a ditch at the foot of the rectory garden. It had a hole in the bottom, but 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.”

“Will you show me?” Muriel 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 cared to drink herself, 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 the old man 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 road beneath the hill was bad enough, but in the afternoon, when the child 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 hedgegate, 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 to pass it.

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.”

“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 flatly, 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 quieted 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. 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 safety, and left her there to die? She looked doubtfully at the child, as she returned with the needed water. 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....