Put Yourself in His Place Part 125

He then drew his Grace to his panting bosom, and his face was full of mortal agony.

She consoled him. "Never mind, my angel. G.o.d has seen you. He is good to us, and lets us die together."

At this moment the house gave a rock, and there was a fresh burst of wailing.

This, connected with his own fears, enraged Henry.

"Be quiet," said he, sternly. "Why can't you die decently, like your betters?"

Then he bent his head in n.o.ble silence over his beloved, and devoured her features as those he might never see again.

At this moment was heard a sound like the report of a gun: a large tree whirled down by the flood, struck the plane-tree just below the fork, and cut it in two as promptly as a scythe would go through a carrot.

It drove the upper part along, and, going with it, kept it perpendicular for some time; the white face and glaring eyes of Frederick Coventry sailed past these despairing lovers; he made a wild clutch at them, then sank in the boiling current, and was hurried away.

This appalling incident silenced all who saw it for a moment. Then they began to wail louder than ever.

But Little started to his feet, and cried "Hurrah!"

There was a general groan.

"Hold your tongues," he roared. "I've got good news for you. The water was over the top windows; now it is an inch lower. The reservoir must be empty by now. The water will go down as fast as it rose. Keep quiet for two minutes, and you will see."

Then no more was heard but the whimpering of the women, and, every now and then, the voice of Little; he hung over the parapet, and reported every half-minute the decline of the water; it subsided with strange rapidity, as he had foreseen.

In three minutes after he had noticed the first decline, he took Grace down through the roof, on the second floor.

When Grace and Henry got there, they started with dismay: the danger was not over: the front wall was blown clean out by the water; all but a jagged piece shaped like a crescent, and it seemed a miracle that the roof, thus weakened and crowded with human beings, had not fallen in.

"We must get out of this," said Little. "It all hangs together by a thread."

He called the others down from the roof, and tried to get down by the staircase, but it was broken into sections and floating about. Then he cut into the floor near the wall, and, to his infinite surprise, found the first floor within four feet of him. The flood had lifted it bodily more than six feet.

He dropped on to it, and made Grace let herself down to him, he holding her round the waist, and landing her light as a feather.

Henry then hacked through the door, which was jammed tight; and, the water subsiding, presently the wrecks of the staircase left off floating, and stuck in the mud and water: by this means they managed to get down, and found themselves in a layer of mud, and stones, and debris, alive and dead, such as no imagination had hitherto conceived.

Dreading, however, to remain in a house so disemboweled within, and so shattered without, that it seemed to survive by mere cohesion of mortar, he begged Grace to put her arm round his neck, and then lifted her and carried her out into the night.

"Take me home to papa, my angel," said she.

He said he would; and tried to find his way to the road which he knew led up the hill to Woodbine Villa. But all landmarks were gone; houses, trees, hedges, all swept away; roads covered three feet thick with rocks, and stones, and bricks, and carca.s.ses. The pleasant valley was one horrid quagmire, in which he could take few steps, burdened as he was, without sticking, or stumbling against some sure sign of destruction and death: within the compa.s.s of fifty yards he found a steam-boiler and its appurtenances (they must have weighed some tons, yet they had been driven more than a mile), and a dead cow, and the body of a wagon turned upside down: [the wheels of this same wagon were afterward found fifteen miles from the body].

He began to stagger and pant.

"Let me walk, my angel," said Grace. "I'm not a baby."

She held his hand tight, and tried to walk with him step by step. Her white feet shone in the pale moonlight.

They made for rising ground, and were rewarded by finding the debris less ma.s.sive.

"The flood must have been narrow hereabouts," said Henry. "We shall soon be clear of it, I hope."

Soon after this, they came under a short but st.u.r.dy oak that had survived; and, entangled in its close and crooked branches, was something white. They came nearer; it was a dead body: some poor man or woman hurried from sleep to Eternity.

They shuddered and crawled on, still making for higher ground, but sore perplexed.

Presently they heard a sort of sigh. They went toward it, and found a poor horse stuck at an angle; his efforts to escape being marred by a heavy stone to which he was haltered.

Henry patted him, and encouraged him, and sawed through his halter; then he struggled up, but Henry held him, and put Grace on him. She sat across him and held on by the mane.

The horse, being left to himself, turned back a little, and crossed the quagmire till he got into a bridle-road, and this landed them high and dry on the turnpike.

Here they stopped, and, by one impulse, embraced each other, and thanked G.o.d for their wonderful escape.

But soon Henry's exultation took a turn that shocked Grace's religious sentiments, which recent acquaintance had strengthened.

"Yes," he cried, "now I believe that G.o.d really does interpose in earthly things; I believe every thing; yesterday I believed nothing. The one villain is swept away, and we two are miraculously saved. Now we can marry to-morrow--no, to-day, for it is past midnight. Oh, how good He is, especially for killing that scoundrel out of our way. Without his death, what was life worth to me? But now--oh, Heavens! is it all a dream? Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

"Oh, Henry, my love!" said Grace imploringly; "pray, pray do not offend Him, by rejoicing at such a moment over the death, perhaps the everlasting death, of a poor, sinful fellow-creature."

"All right, dearest. Only don't let us descend to hypocrisy. I thank Heaven he is dead, and so do you."

"Pray don't SAY so."

"Well, I won't: let him go. Death settles all accounts. Did you see me stretch out my hand to save him?"

"I did, my angel, and it was like you: you are the n.o.blest and the greatest creature that ever was, or ever will be."

"The silliest, you mean. I wondered at myself next minute. Fancy me being such an idiot as to hold out a hand to save him, and so wither both our lives--yours and mine; but I suppose it is against nature not to hold out a hand. Well, no harm came of it, thank Heaven."

"Let us talk of ourselves," said Grace, lovingly. "My darling, let no harsh thought mar the joy of this hour. You have saved my life again.

Well, then, it is doubly yours. Here, looking on that death we have just escaped, I devote myself to you. You don't know how I love you; but you shall. I adore you."

"I love you better still."

"You do not: you can't. It is the one thing I can beat you at and I will."

"Try. When will you be mine?"

"I am yours. But if you mean when will I marry you, why, whenever you please. We have suffered too cruelly, and loved too dearly, for me to put you off a single day for affectations and vanities. When you please, my own."

At this Henry kissed her little white feet with rapture, and kept kissing them, at intervals, all the rest of the way: and the horrors of the night ended, to these two, in unutterable rapture, as they paced slowly along to Woodbine Villa with hearts full of wonder, grat.i.tude, and joy.

Here they found lights burning, and learned from a servant that Mr.

Carden was gone down to the scene of the flood in great agitation.

Henry told Grace not to worry herself, for that he would find him and relieve his fears.