The Queen's Scarlet Part 11

And as Jerry trotted on, he pa.s.sed turning after turning leading to fords or down by the river, for the simple reason that, during the night, the waters had come swirling down at such a rate that the whole of the river meadows were widely flooded; but it meant his getting more rapidly to Brailey Bridge, a couple of miles from the town, for he was forced into avoiding the winding low road, which followed the curves and doublings back of the river, and making short cuts, which brought him at last, breathless and panting, in sight of something which made him stare and, for the moment, forget his mission.

For, as he trotted on, he obtained a glimpse of the rushing, foaming river tearing away, pretty well now beneath its banks, which were high at the spot where the bridge, an antique wooden structure, had spanned it with its clumsy piles. The great double wedge-shaped pier of oak timbers, rotten and blackened with age, and which had supported the roadway as it divided the river in two, was gone, and the remains of the bridge were gradually being torn away.

Jerry drew his breath hard, and his throat felt dry, as he ran nearer, descending the slope towards where the road ended suddenly, and thinking of how the spot he approached was exactly such an one as would tempt a half-maddened person to run right on, make one desperate plunge into the muddy flood, and then and there be swept away.

He paused at last, standing in a dangerous place, at the very edge of the broken bridge, gazing down into the hurrying waters, which hissed and gurgled beneath him, lapping at the slimy piles which remained; and, hot and dripping with perspiration as he was, he shivered, and felt as if icy hands were touching him as he wiped his brow.

"It's too horrid! too horrid!" he groaned, in the full belief that he was standing right on the place from which Richard Frayne had taken a desperate plunge. "Why, a score of his chums had better have died than him! I didn't ought never to ha' left him last night, seeing what a state he was in. You might ha' saved his life, Jerry, and done more good than you'll ever do blacking boots and brushing clothes, if yer lives to a hundred and ten."

He looked wildly to the right, and saw that the pollard willows were rising just out of the water, like heads with the hair standing on end.

There were great patches of fresh hay floating swiftly down, and, closer at hand, something white rolling over and over, and he shuddered; but it was only the carcase of a drowned sheep, one of several more which had probably been surrounded in some meadow and swept away. Directly after, lowing dismally, and swimming hard to save itself, a bullock came down rapidly, with its muzzle and a narrow line of backbone alone showing above the surface.

But Jerry knew well enough that no boat could live in the rushing water which swirled along; and, unless the poor beast could swim into some eddy and manage to get ash.o.r.e, its fate was sealed.

The man's eyes followed the animal as it pa.s.sed by the broken bridge and was swept on more rapidly downward as soon as it was below.

"I came too late--I came too late!" groaned Jerry, as he still watched the bullock, his eyes at the same time noting how the river had pa.s.sed over the bank on the other side and spread along meadows, and how it was threatening to lap over the road which ran upon his side away down to the mill, where the weir crossed the river and the eel-bucks stood in a row between the piles.

"Yes, I've come too late, and I shall see that poor brute sink directly.

Shall I go on down by the mill?"

He shook his head. The bullock was going faster than he could have walked, and, if anyone had plunged into the river from where he stood, he must have been swept miles away in his journey onward to the sea.

"And we shall never find him!" he muttered. "Gone! gone!"

He was going to say "Gone!" again--for the third time--but a hoa.r.s.e utterance escaped his lips instead, and he made a sudden movement to climb over the rail and let himself down into the narrow cross-road which ran to the mill.

But, as he grasped the open fence, all power of action left him, and he stood, as if paralysed, staring at that which had caught his eye.

There, far away toward the mill, dwarfed by distance, but clearly seen in the bright morning air, a figure had started up, run for a few yards along the bank, and suddenly plunged in the flooded river. Jerry saw the splashed water glitter in the sunshine and then, indistinctly, a head reappear and remain in sight for some few minutes as its owner floated or swam. Then a curve of the river hid it from his sight, and he recovered his power of action again. Climbing the rail, he scrambled down the side of the raised roadway, reached the bank, and started running.

It was a mile to the mill, and in how many minutes Jerry covered the distance he never knew, but he pulled up short in the mill-yard, to find that he could go no farther; for the waters were well out beyond, and went swinging round a curve at a terrific rate, the river being narrowed here by the piers, b.u.t.tresses, and piles upon which the mill-buildings had been reared. The tops of the pier-piles showed in two places, but that was all, and, though he climbed up the ladder leading to a whitened door in the side of the building, he could see nothing but the waste of hurrying water gleaming in the sunshine, and felt that the building was quivering from the pressure of the flood.

Jerry clung to the handle of the door at the top of the steps, and the flour came off white upon his Oxford mixture coat as he turned dizzy and sick in his hurry and despair, for he knew that the figure he had seen must be that of Richard Frayne, and he had come too late!

"He must have seen me," groaned Jerry; "and just as he was a-hesitating he thought I'd come to drag him back, and he went in. Nothing couldn't save him, and I seem to have drove him to his end."

In his own mind he wanted no endors.e.m.e.nt of the correctness of his idea.

He had been sure that Richard had taken this route when he started from the house; he had seen him; and it was all over.

But the endors.e.m.e.nt came, for just then, heard above the rushing of the river along the back-water and beneath the mill, where the huge revolving wheel worked, came a loud "Ahoy!"

Turning quickly, Jerry saw, from his coign of vantage, the white figure of the miller coming quickly down the road, waving his arms as if he had once owned a wind-mill instead of a water-mill, and was imitating the action of the sails.

"Hoi! come down from there," bawled the big, bluff fellow, as he came within hearing. "'Tain't safe! I made all my people clear out last night, and 'spected to see it gone by mornin'. Oh, it's you, Mister Brigley. Looking for your young gent?"

"Yes! Seen him?" cried Jerry wildly.

"Ay, bit ago, when I were down before. He'd come down to see if the mill was safe, I s'pose."

"But--it was--our young gent?"

"I say, don't look so scared," cried the miller, good-humouredly. "I didn't mean to frighten you; but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if the old place comes toppling down; and it will, if the water rises much more. You're safe enough here."

"But, tell me," panted Jerry, who did not want telling, "it was our young gent?"

"Ay, him as come fishing with the others, and sat out on the weir yonder, tootling on that little pipe of his? Here! what's the matter with you, man?"

"A boat! a boat!" gasped Jerry.

"A boat! what for? Mine's got a plank out of it, and, if it hadn't, you couldn't use it now."

"But he's gone down! I see him jump in!"

"What!" yelled the miller, seizing Jerry excitedly by the collar.

"Nonsense! He's gone back by now."

"I--I was on the bridge."

"There ain't no bridge!" growled the miller: "swep' away."

"But I was over yonder--saw him jump in."

"You did?"

"Yes, and came here fast as I could."

The miller turned to look down the rushing river, and took off his white felt hat, drew out a red cotton handkerchief, and began to mop his wet brow.

"Then Heaven have mercy on him, poor lad! for he'll never get to sh.o.r.e alive."

"But he could swim," said Jerry, feebly.

"Swim? Who's to swim in water like that? Never! I saw a whole drove of sheep go down this morning, and a half a dozen bullocks. The river's too much for them as can swim."

"But--but--"

"But--but, man. Ah! what was he doing to jump in?"

"Haven't you heard?" groaned Jerry, speaking to the miller, and staring wildly down stream the while. "He got into dreadful trouble yesterday.

Killed his cousin!"

"What?"

"Come down here to end hisself, I s'pose!"

"Then he's done it, poor lad!" said the miller, solemnly.

"But couldn't we do nothing? Couldn't we try and help him?" whined Jerry, piteously.