Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  ‘It h’ain’t like them to think for to send us ‘elp.’

  ‘They ‘aven’t no boats up yonder,’ said Tom. ‘They be a good mile up from the river.’

  ‘Tom, dear, it’s a pity your boat be gone, for you might have row’d me right into Harebridge.’

  ‘Yes, Liz, if you’d set still I might have taken ‘ee through them currents, or as likely we might have gotten sucked under by an eddy, or a hole be knocked in the boat by some floating baulk.’

  ‘I be lighter than Liz; would ‘ee take me, Tom?’ said Billy.

  As the tops of the apple trees were still visible they judged the depth of the water to be about ten feet. Cattle passed the window, some swimming strong and well, others nearly exhausted. A dead horse whirled past, its poor neck stretched out lamentably, and they all laughed at the fox that floated so peacefully in the middle of a drowned hen-roost. The apples came by in great numbers; Billy forgot his fears in his desire to clutch some, and a little later they saw two great trees rolling towards the pointsman’s box.

  ‘There she goes!’ cried Lupton. ‘And how she do swim! She’d put me into the quay at Harebridge as well as a steam packet.’

  There was nothing to do but to watch and wonder if the flood was rising. Liz was certain it was sinking, and pointing to a post she said there was no sign of it ten minutes before. Lupton was not so sure, and when the post disappeared, which it did a few minutes afterwards, there could be no hope at all that the flood was not still rising, and then everyone began to wonder what the cause of the flood might be, and everyone, except Daddy, waited for Lupton to speak. But he was loth to tell them that he could only understand the great rush of water if the embankments up yonder at the factories had broken, and if that were so, ‘God help them!’ As Lupton said these last words their faces grew paler, all except Billy, who returned innocently to his grandfather to ask if he didn’t think the flood was as big now as the great flood of sixty years ago.

  ‘It be a flood and a big one, but the biggest of all was eighty years ago, when my cradle was washed away down to Harebridge and stuck fast in the alder.’ And he began to tell a story of other children whose cradles had been carried just down to the sea, frightening everyone with his loquacity.

  ‘Tom, ‘as ‘ee a bit of baccy to give to Daddy to stop his jaw with?’ said John Lupton.

  Tom fumbled in his pockets, and when their eyes met each read his own thoughts in the other’s face.

  ‘We must be doing something, that’s certain,’ said Tom. ‘But what shall we be doing?’

  ‘Yes, we must be astirring,’ Lupton answered. And without another word he began to look about the room. ‘Now, if we ‘ad but a few bits of timber we could make a raft. It’s a pity that bedstead is of iron.’

  Tom, who had gone back to the window, cried suddenly:

  ‘Give a hand here, John, for ‘ee was talking about a raft and bio wed if I ‘aven’t gotten one.’

  And looking over Tom’s shoulder Lupton saw that he Bad caught a few planks tied together - a slender raft that somebody up yonder had launched as a last hope.

  ‘Very likely so,’ said Lupton, ‘anyhow it is ours. It might carry one of us.’

  ‘Yes, one of us might chance his life on it and bring back ‘elp.’

  ‘That’s right enough; it’s an off-chance, but one of us had better risk it. Get along, lad, get along, and come back in a boat.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Tom,’ cried Liz; ‘let us be drowned together.’

  ‘Be ‘ee mazed, lass?’ said Lupton; ‘for Tom will manage right well on them planks, and he’ll come back in a boat.’

  ‘No, Father, no; I’d sooner die with Tom than live without him.’

  “Ee ain’t the only one; ‘ee’d better let him go or yonder church will see no wedding party next Monday. Tom, get astride of them planks at once.’

  ‘I think I’d better take this ’ere shutter with me’; and while it was lifted from its hinges Lupton lashed two broom handles together.

  ‘Not much of a punt pole, but the best I can give, and maybe it will get ‘ee out of the current.’

  But Liz held Tom back.

  ‘Yes, Liz, Tom loves ‘ee and that is why he must go: Come, girl, hands off. I don’t want to be rough with ‘ee, but Tom must take the risk of them planks. Now, Tom.’

  And away he went in a swirl, trying his best to reach bottom with his broom handles, but the raft rolled in the current, and Liz’s last sight of her lover was when he attempted to seize some willow branches. The raft slid from under his feet, and he fell into the flood.

  ‘He’s gone from ‘ee now, and we shall soon follow after if we don’t bestir ourselves.’

  ‘It matters naught to me now,’ said Liz.

  ‘I ne’er seen one mazed like ‘ee afore.’

  ‘But I seed many; sixty years ago all the sweethearts were parted, and by the score. The jade got them, here a girl and there a boy, all but Daddy Lupton, for a wise woman said she shouldn’t get ’im, and her word came true. I ain’t afeard of ’er. I’ve seen ’er in worse tantrums than to-day. It’s the rheumatics that I’m afeard of. These ’ere walls will be that damp, will be that...’ The old man’s voice died away in the whiteness of his beard.

  At that moment three tiles fell from the roof; a large hole appeared in one of the walls, and they all felt that the house was falling about them bit by bit. But the immediate danger was from the great baulks that the current swept down. If any one of these were to strike the house, Lupton said, it must topple over into the flood, and lest their luck shouldn’t last Lupton took a sheet from the bed and climbed on to the roof.

  ‘See a boat coming, Liz?’ her mother asked, for Liz sat looking towards some willows as if she saw something.

  ‘No boat will come for me. I want no boat to come for me.’

  ‘Come, Liz, come, Liz, I wouldn’t have ‘ee talk like that,’ her mother answered. The baby began to cry for the breast, and while suckling Mrs Lupton raised her head to her husband sitting on the broken wall, but he waved the sheet so despairingly that she did not dare to ask him if a boat were coming.

  ‘I can’t sit up ’ere any longer,’ he said at last. ‘Let us do something. I don’t mind what, so long as it keeps me from thinking.’

  ‘I think we’d better say our prayers,’ said Mrs Lupton.

  ‘Prayers? No, I can say no prayers. I’m too bothered; I want something that will keep me from thinking. The babbling of that water will drive us mad if we don’t do something. Let us tell stories. Liz, don’t sit there looking through the room or what’s left of it. You read stories in the papers, can’t you tell us one of them?’

  Liz shook her head. He asked for the paper; she answered that it was downstairs, and begged that she might take his place on the corner of the wall and wave the sheet on the chance that a boat might be passing within hail.

  ‘She don’t pay no attention to what we’re saying,’ said Lupton. ‘Now that Tom’s gone I think she’d just as lief make away with herself... and what may ‘ee be smiling at so heartily, Father? ‘Ee and the baby are the only two that can smile this morning.’

  ‘What be I smiling at? I heard ‘ee speak just now of stories. I can zay one, lots of ’em.’

  ‘Then tell us a story, Father, and a good one. It’ll keep our thoughts from that babbling water.’

  ‘Well, I was just a-thinking. It be now seventy years ago...’

  ‘Well, tell us about it.’

  ‘I’ve said it was night seventy years ago; I was a growing lad at the time. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Me and Bill Slater was pals. At that time Bill was going to be married; I can see her now, a fine elegant lass, for all the world like our Liz. It had been raining for weeks and weeks - much the same kind of weather as we’ve had lately, only worse, and the river...’

  ‘We don’t want to hear about the river; we want to forget it. I suppose ‘ee wants to tell us that Bill Slater and his lass was drowned? We don’t want that so
rt of story, we wants a cheerful story with lots of happiness in it.’

  ‘I only knows stories about those that the river took - plenty of ’em, plenty of ’em. The jade didn’t get me, for a wise woman said that she would never get me.’

  ‘Did she say, Daddy, that them that was with ‘ee was safe too?’

  Daddy was only sure of his own safety; and waking suddenly he said - ‘I’ve ‘eard John say that ‘ee would banish thinking with something. Us better have some cards then. Cards will wake us up.’

  ‘The old chap’s right,’ said Lupton. ‘Where be the cards? Be they downstairs too? Where’s Liz?’ Lupton climbed to her place, and after looking round he turned to those in the room and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid Liz has gone after her sweetheart.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Daddy. ‘The jade always gets them in the end. Where be the cards?’

  ‘Yes, where be the cards?’ Lupton answered almost savagely. ‘Be they downstairs, Mother?’

  ‘No, John; they be in the drawer of the table.’

  ‘Then, let’s have them out. What shall we play? Halfpenny nap? Come, Mother, and Billy too, and Daddy. Come, pull your chairs round. I gave ‘ee sixpence yesterday, Father. Find them out; ‘ee can’t have spent them, and Mother have ‘ee any coppers?’

  ‘I’ve near a shilling in coppers. That will do for Billy and myself.’

  As there were only three chairs the table was pulled up to the bed where Daddy was sitting.

  ‘Come, let us play, let us play,’ Lupton cried impatiently.

  ‘I’m thinking of the baby,’ said Mrs Lupton. ‘How unsuspecting he do sleep there.’

  ‘Never mind the baby, Mother; think of your cards.’

  After playing for some time Lupton found he had lost threepence.

  ‘I never seed such luck,’ he exclaimed.

  They played another round; again Lupton went nap and again he lost.

  ‘Perhaps it will be them that loses that’ll be saved,’ he said, shuffling the cards.

  ‘Father, I can’t play,’ said Billy.

  ‘Why can’t you play, my boy? Ain’t Mother a-teaching ‘ee?’

  ‘Yes, Father, but I can’t think of the cards; dead things be floating past the window. May I go and sit where I can’t see them?’

  ‘Yes, my boy, come and sit on my knee. Look over my cards; but mustn’t tell them what I’ve gotten.’

  ‘Grandfather seems to be winning; he has gotten all the coppers, Father.’

  ‘Yes, my boy, Grandfather is winning.’

  ‘And what will he do with the winnings if he be drowned, Father?’

  ‘Grandfather don’t think he will be drowned.’

  The old man chuckled, and turned over his coppers. His winnings meant a double allowance of tobacco and a glass of ale, and he thought of the second glass of ale he would have if he won again.

  ‘Whose turn is it to play?’ said Daddy.

  ‘Mine,’ said Lupton, ‘and I’ll go nap again.’

  ‘‘E’ll go nap again.’

  Lupton lost again, but this time instead of cursing his luck he remained silent, and at that moment the rush of water beneath their feet sounded more ominous than ever.

  ‘I’ll play no more,’ said Lupton. ‘I dunno what I be doing. There’s naught in my head but the babbling of that water.’

  A tile slid down the roof, they sprang to their feet, and then they heard a splash. The old man played with his winnings and Billy began to cry.

  ‘It’s sure and certain enough now that no help will come for us,’ said Mrs Lupton. ‘Let’s put away the cards and say our prayers, and ‘ee might tell us a verse out of the Bible, John.’

  ‘Very well, let’s have a prayer. Father, give over counting your money.’

  ‘Then no one be coming to save us,’ cried Billy. ‘I don’t want to drown, Father. I be too young to drown. Grandfather’s too old and baby too young to think much about drowning. But if we drown to-day, Father, I shall never see the circus.’

  ‘Kneel down, my boy; perhaps God might save us if we pray to Him.’

  ‘Oh, God, merciful Saviour, who has power over all things, save us. Oh, Lord, save us.’

  ‘Go on praying, Mother,’ Lupton said, as he rose from his knees, and taking another sheet from the bed he climbed to the top of the broken wall; but he had hardly reached it when some bricks gave way and he fell backward and drowned. Mrs Lupton prayed intermittently, and every now and then a tile splashed into the water.

  ‘The way to manage ’er is take ’er easy. She won’t stand no bullying, and them giddy young folks will bully ’er, so she always goes for ’em.’

  Five or six tiles fell, the house rocked a little, and they could feel the water lifting the floor under their feet.

  ‘Mother,’ said Billy; the child was so calm, so earnest in his manner, that he seemed suddenly to have grown older. ‘Mother, dear, tell me the truth - be I going to drown? We have prayed together, but God don’t seem like saving us. I’m afraid, Mother; bain’t you afraid? Father’s gone and Liz’s gone and Tom’s gone, all except Grandfather and us. Grandfather and the baby don’t seem afraid. Mother, let me ‘ave your ‘and; ‘ee won’t lose hold of me.’

  Mrs Lupton took the baby from the bed and looked at it, and when she looked up she saw the old man playing with the coppers he had won.

  ‘Does drowning hurt very much, Mother?’

  The wall wavered about them, some bricks fell out of it; Billy was struck by one, struggled a little way, and fell through the floor. The floor broke again, and another piece of the roof came away, and Mrs Lupton closed her eyes and waited for death. But death did not seem to come, and when she opened her eyes she saw that the floor had snapped at her feet and the old man was standing behind her.

  ‘A darned narrow escape,’ he muttered. ‘As near as I have had yet.’

  ‘They’re gone, they be all gone, all of them. Baby and all.’

  “Ee must have let her slip when the roof came in.’

  ‘I let the baby slip!’ And looking down she saw the child floating among broken things.

  ‘Well, that was a narrow escape,’ chimed the quaking voice of the octogenarian. ‘I’m sore afraid the house is in a bad way. I seed many like...’

  By some great beams the south wall still held firm, and with it the few feet of floor on which they were standing.

  ‘They be bound to send a boat afore long, or else the wise woman... Everything’s gone - table, cards and a shilling in coppers.’

  ‘They’re all gone; everything is gone.’

  ‘Yes, the jade’s got ’em. She ‘as brought near every one I knew at one time or the other.’

  Then the wild grief of the woman seemed to wake reason in Daddy’s failing brain.

  Her eyes were fixed on the bodies of her husband and child dashed to and fro and sucked under by the current, appearing and disappearing among the wreckage.

  ‘I can’t grieve like that; I ken grieve no more. I’m too old, and all excepting me baccy and the rheumatics are the same to me now.’

  ‘Saved!’ cried a voice. ‘Give way, my lads, give way.’

  ‘Saved, and the others gone!’ cried Mrs Lupton, and as the boat approached from one side she flung herself into the flood from the other.

  ‘Are you the only one left?’ cried a man as the boat came alongside.

  ‘Yes, the jade ‘as got all the others. There, they be down there; and my daughter-in-law has just gone after them, jumped right in after them. But it was told by a wise woman that the jade should never get me, and her words comes true.’

  ‘Now then, old gent, let me get hold of you. Be careful where you step. Do nothing to risk your valuable life. There you are, safe, safe from everything but the rheumatics.’

  ‘They be very bad at times, and I must be careful of myself this winter.’

  UNDER THE FAN

  CHAPTER I

  MRS WALLINGTON WHITE leaned her elbow on the crimson ledge of the private box, and
pressed her large feather-made fan against her cheek. She was a little woman, about thirty, beautifully dressed in black satin. Her shoulders were too large, but her waist had not lost its symmetry. In the orange-coloured glare a fine dust floated softly downwards; the dazzling light caressed the milky whitenesses of arms and breasts, and the diamonds flashed around necks turned pensively to listen. The curtained boxes seemed like the luxurious nests of birds; and fans, like wings, wafted breaths of musk-perfumed lace to and fro. The stalls were filled with young men, varying in age from twenty to twenty-five; they almost seemed to be in uniform, so exactly did the suits of black, shirt-fronts, and gardenias correspond.

  The black monotony was broken up here and there by groups of muslin-dressed young girls, with fair frank faces, and hair tied in a small knot behind the head, which Du Maurier loves to depict.

  They were with their mothers, placid-looking matrons of forty-five, in lace caps, and their fathers of fifty, City looking, with mutton-chop whiskers. Here and there might be seen a journalist, whose Bohemian life slyly peeped through his dress clothes.

  The finale of the first act had been reached. The young men levelled their opera-glasses in their white-gloved fingers; the ladies ceased fanning themselves and leaned to listen, for Miss St Vincent had stepped down to sing her famous song, ‘They thought to nobble the horse’. Although possessing scarcely enough voice to sing the slight music allotted to her, Miss St Vincent knew how to intensify the effect of her song by a thousand little tricks, and she amply atoned for her musical deficiencies by her charming acting.

  The piece was one of those modern comic operas now so much in fashion. It was trifling, whimsical, frivolous, and set to jingling tunes. The plot turned upon the fortune, in love and gambling, of an English nobleman, Lord Sidegirth, who had married an Arabian princess. He was obliged to resort to all kinds of disguises to escape the vigilance of his wife, who was as jealous of him as a lioness of her young. The scene was laid in Newmarket, and the slight story was garnished with choruses of betting-men, welshers, bookmakers, etc., written in correct slang to lively tunes. As the trainer’s daughter, Miss St Vincent was charming, and in her song, which told how she defeated the horse-nobblers and saved her lover from ruin, to use the correct phrase, she nightly brought the house down. She was an amusing mixture of the French and English girl; she had the sparkling grey eyes and the general rumpled look of the French grisette; but there was in her face much Saxon sentimentality and frankness. She was dressed in her father’s colours, pink and white. A short skirt, not long enough to hide her slender ankles and feet, in pale rose-colour, trimmed with a few large flowers, and garnished with a large white-cashmere scarf tied behind in the form of a pannier. The body was a jockey’s jacket, and the pink and white cap did not hide the large masses of mustard-coloured hair which shadowed her clear white temples and little ears. She spoke the racing slang with such gusto, and seemed to understand so thoroughly the intricacies of stable life, that the young men of Pall Mall could not resist; they came night after night to see her, and spent their mornings talking of her. The stage-doorkeeper had made his salary twice over in half-crowns and half-sovereigns, paid for the safe delivery of letters, bouquets, and small cases containing jewellery. Yet, notwithstanding all their persistence and generosity, not one of these young men had succeeded in making her acquaintance. All their invitations to dinner and supper remained unanswered, and the rings and bracelets were invariably returned when they were accompanied with the sender’s name. Morality of all kinds is generally a compromise. The best of us yield a little; and the pretty actress thought, and sincerely, that she was doing as well as the most scrupulous would demand if she returned a diamond ring when the sender enclosed his name; for then the jewel, she argued, was not a tribute paid to her art, but to her good looks. The reasoning may have been a little forced, but it perfectly satisfied her conscience; and is not that all that can be demanded of any of us?