Читать книгу Dawn - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 9

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Muriel Temple would certainly not have lain silent had she been possessed of her normal strength, nor was she restrained by any fear of the rough group that had approached so nearly.

But she thought of the child, and of the faintness which had come to her when last she had risen, and she lay still, and left the situation for her Master to deal with.

The miners did not return, and three days later she found strength to dig a little churchyard grave for the body of Cora Walkley, who thus found a quieter resting-place than had come to most of those whom sea and storm had ended.

With reviving strength, and being freed of the encumbrance of the dying child, Muriel rose on the next morning with a determination to learn more of the condition to which her world had fallen.

Muriel, whose life had been largely spent elsewhere, might have been less quick than a native to notice the difference in the air from the sickly struggle of frustrated light which had been locally known as a sunny day, but she was conscious of another quality. The air was salt. A fresh and pleasant wind came from the north, and it brought a strong scent of the sea.

“It can’t be a mile away,” she thought wonderingly. She determined that her first enterprise should be to discover the meaning of the salt taste of the northern wind; but before doing this she made her way back to the ruins of the cottage where she had been living. She had seen from the hillside that it had escaped the destruction of fire, and she hoped to recover some of her personal possessions.

But her search was useless. Others had been there before her. The little well-tended garden had been trampled by many feet. There were the marks of wheels, and of a horse’s hoofs in the soft soil. Beams had been dragged aside, and tiles and bricks were scattered.

The body of John Wilkes, which had been exposed by these delvings (he had been smothered in the bed from which he had declined to rise), had been lifted, with that of his wife, into the ditch which bounded the garden on its lower side. There had been a rough attempt at burial.

She reflected that there might be other houses down the village which remained unplundered, but, before investigating further, she was still resolved to explore the limit of the land, and the meaning of the salt wind that she had breathed that morning. She made her way back to the church.

For the first time, she entered the vestry. It contained little of value, a recent theft at a neighboring church having made the rector cautious about his own property, but there was an ancient chest containing surplices and other vestments; a few devotional books; and a wall-mirror, with some brushes on a ledge beneath it. There was also an old brown jacket hanging behind the door, which the rector had used when he busied himself with the church brasses, or on other matters of cleaning or decoration which he did not always delegate to others.

She tried it on, and found that it came almost to her knees. Her hands did not emerge from the sleeves. There was a weight at one side. She discovered a pipe, a pouch of tobacco, a box of vestas about a third full, a stump of carpenter’s pencil. She emptied these out, except the matches, which were treasure not lightly to be cast aside.

The size of the coat was awkward, but the capacious pockets pleased her. They might be useful for many things. She was not only hunting her fellow men. Her food was almost exhausted. And some covering she must have.

She carried into the vestry a quantity of the hassocks and pew-coverings which had been the only bedding she had known for the past week, and the food-basket, nearly empty now; locked the door; hid the key; and started out to seek her kind.

She was aware that she must make a queer figure in the ungainly coat, but she was not greatly troubled. She realized sufficiently that others must be facing primitive necessities, and overcoming them as best they could.

In fact, she need not have troubled at all, for she was not destined to meet either man or woman till she returned in the evening. Had she made her way eastward to Larkshill, or to Cowley Thorn, she would have had a very different experience, and there was a scatter of human life to south and west; but she went up through the rectory grounds, where she almost trod on a hen as she tried a short cut through the shrubbery—a hen that dashed off her nest and flew squawking across the drive, leaving Muriel to the sight of a dozen eggs, and to the consideration of their possibilities for her empty larder. Her hand convicted them of the warmth of incubation. They were useless now, but she considered that a hen with tiny chickens may be caught very easily. She would remember the spot.

She went on by a field-path that went uphill in the direction she sought, and found an open gate into a larger field which had been plowed, but not planted. There was a cart-track by the hedge, and following this she came to another field in which oats were springing, and a dozen sheep fed freely.

Beyond was an open heath, which she supposed to be part of Cannock Chase, though she was not sure, knowing little of the geography of the district. Here the sheep were many, of all breeds and ages. They had broken through gapped hedges and fallen gates, and congregated according to their ancient practice on high and open ground.

Here Muriel turned, and looked back. She could see for several miles, but there was no sign of ending land or of encroaching sea. South and east and west there must be a wide space of land which still endured above the water. She wondered whether there might yet be a further subsidence, but she was not greatly worried by the thought. After all that had happened, the land yet seemed very solid, very firm. It is hard to distrust it.

But looking north again she saw nothing but level heath, and feeding sheep, and the sky-line beyond. In the air, a black-headed gull circled slowly. She could not doubt that she was near the sea.

She would rest before she went farther. She lay on short warm grass, and slept long in the sunlight. She waked refreshed, and with a feeling of healthful vigor such as she had seldom felt in recent years.

She went on a little way, and stopped abruptly. The land broke off beneath her feet—broke off as straightly as though a knife had severed it. She looked down a cliff-wall of red marl, and thirty feet below, the ocean purred lazily in the sunlight, its full tide about to turn.

The sea was so quiet that a gull was sleeping on the gentle lift of the waves, its head beneath its wing. There was no sign of northern land; no sign of boat or sail. Only when she looked northeastward was she in doubt of whether the land curved outward or a separate island followed.

Looking at the peaceful water, she might have forgotten the devastation that it had wrought, had she not seen a broken chair that floated almost beneath her feet. There was nothing else in sight to tell of all that the water covered.

Muriel gazed at the ocean which stretched northward to the horizon limit, covering all the teeming life and wealth that had once been England; and though she pitied, it was without protest, as it was without fear.

... She sat thinking for a long time, while the sun’s arc declined to the northwest, trying to understand the conditions under which life would continue, and to decide how best she could aid it.

She was not too ill to be of some use to God under these changed conditions. If it were not so, would He have preserved her, when so many millions had perished?

Surely, not too ill; though she was aware of a lassitude which made her unwilling to face the return walk, in spite of the growing thirst from which she suffered. ... Her thoughts were broken by a scrambling and scuffling sound in the gorse-bushes behind her, and by the stampede of a dozen sheep that had been feeding near them.

She looked round, and caught a glimpse of a small white dog, a smooth-haired terrier, that was making excited rushes right and left at something that dodged it, but which she could not see. Then there came the agonized half-human cry of a captured rabbit, and a moment later the dog came out of the bushes, his prey hanging limp and dying in his mouth.

Muriel could not know whether he had been previously aware of her presence, but now he came straight toward her, wagging a stump of tail in the excitement of his successful hunting, and laying the rabbit at her feet.

Muriel loved dogs. The stranger was well satisfied with the praise she gave him. He sat down at her side, his stump still waggling on the ground, his head lifted sideways toward her caressing hand. He had a brass collar, with his name, and his owner’s inscribed upon it, “Gumbo, please return to George Hinde, The Ridge, Lower Helford.”

Muriel was not very clear as to the position of Lower Helford, but she supposed (rightly) that it was covered by the placid ocean beneath her. She wondered whether the dog’s master would appear, or she would hear him whistle for the return of the wanderer. She resolved to introduce herself should the opportunity come. She felt that the owner of such a dog could not be an unwelcome acquaintance.

But no call came, and the dog showed no inclination to leave her. Conscious of hunger, she began to think of the possibility of making a fire, and roasting the unexpected meal. But there was little wood lying around, and she was unsure that the gorse-bushes would be dry enough to burn freely, even if she had a knife to cut them. She must not come out without a knife again—it must surely be possible to find one somewhere.

She decided to return at once. If the dog followed her, she would conclude that he had lost his owner. So she picked up the rabbit, and returned with Gumbo trotting very contentedly at her heel.

In spite of her physical weakness, it is probable that there were few survivors of flood and storm who were better fitted to face the altered conditions under which life must now be sustained. She had seen and shared so much of primitive living, had so often been reduced herself to cruel expedient, that she was at once less perturbed by fear of privation, and abler to avoid its penalties.

Arriving home, she soon had a wood fire blazing on the open ground. A splinter of wood proved adequate to the skinning and preparation of the rabbit, and when she slept that night, in the added security of the locked vestry, with the dog at her feet, she thanked God in her prayers for the companionship He had sent her, and for the provision of the needed meal, with a gratitude which did not falter because of undue thought of the fate of George Hinde, or his family, that the waves had covered.