CHAPTER I.
“O’ER CRAG AND TORRENT, TILL THE NIGHT IS GONE.”
By the time the spring came again, it had become quite customary for Mr. Clare to preach at least once on Sunday at St. Andrew’s, and the rector had been nearly satisfied that such Socialism as his colleague was at all likely to preach was very harmless Socialism, indeed, scarcely deserving the name. Also, the rector was inclined to look through very rose-colored glasses at one who could bring to church such a stiff-necked generation as Dr. Richards and Karl Metzerott, even though the former might come partly for love of his wife and son, and the latter chiefly through jealousy of the preacher’s influence on Louis and at “Prices,” where the Emperor had begun to feel bitterly conscious of a rival.
Yet Mr. Clare put forward no claim either to supremacy or even influence; it was simply the effect of his personality that brought such crowds to St. Andrew’s, and made his lightest word a command to his friends and followers at “Prices.” So, at least, said Karl Metzerott; perhaps the truth was that Ernest Clare’s personality was as nearly transparent as is possible to human nature; it was not himself, but the truth that was in him, of which all round felt the power. But it is a question whether a due appreciation of this fact would have retarded the growth of the unfriendly feeling whereof Karl had only just begun to be conscious. Nevertheless, “Prices,” hitherto so united, had begun to show signs of splitting into two camps. There was no open division, but the waters were troubled by the Spirit of God, and the word had gone forth amongst them, “If the Lord be God, then follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.”
Mr. Clare’s lectures, as they were called, on Sunday evening were overwhelmingly well attended, though the magnificent rendering of chorus, hymn, and anthem, that accompanied them, doubtless formed no unimportant part of the attraction. There were no formal prayers, an omission that scandalized some excellent people, including the Herr Pastor Schaefer, who took the duty upon himself to remonstrate with the delinquent. Mr. Clare’s reply was somewhat singular.
“‘Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.’
“If the hidden fire be not there, Herr Pastor,” he said, “how can it possibly tremble? If it be, the music will supply all it can ask; and if it be only a spark, I don’t want to extinguish it by the cold water of criticism.”
“But I do not understand you at all, Mr. Clare,” was the reply; “surely it is every one’s duty to pray.”
“You have been with them nearly twenty years, my friend; have they ever prayed with you?”
“It is quite true,” said the pastor, in genuine trouble and perplexity, “that religion seems to have little power over men in these days. Very few men ever pray at all; but it is not my fault: I pray with them, or offer to do so; and there my responsibility ends.”
Mr. Clare was silent a moment, then he said gently, “If they ever seem willing to let me pray with them, I assure you I shall not be slow to comply.”
He was very silent and thoughtful for the remainder of the day, and in the evening propounded a very strange question to Father McClosky.
“I say, Bryan, if you were a shepherd, a literal shepherd, you know, and one of your sheep were to stray into the desert and be lost, what would you do?”
“Sure, I trust I’d seek till I found it,” replied the Father, with a look of inquiry.
“And if you couldn’t find it one way you’d try another, eh? You wouldn’t simply stand on the edge of the wilderness and cry ‘Co-nan, co-nan!’ and then turn back satisfied, saying, ‘Well, it’s not my fault; I’ve called you, and there my responsibility ends’?”
Father McClosky laughed, but quickly looked grave and troubled. “Sure, we clergy have much to answer for,” he said. “There’s mighty few of us, maybe none, but could say his mea culpa to the sins of negligence and indifference. We’re all mighty unselfish about responsibility, and perfectly willing to make any one that wants it a present of our share.”
“I don’t think that peculiarity is confined to the clergy,” said Mr. Clare.
If it were, the remainder of this chapter might have remained a blank.
For the situation of Micklegard was, as this story has frequently indicated, upon a river, the physical beauty of which was the pride of every dweller upon its banks, though its moral character might be marred by treachery and fickleness. It was fed by mountain streams which were liable to a sudden rise at the time of the melting of the winter snows, or at any season after continuous heavy rain, and these floods, or “high water,” as they were euphoniously termed by those who seemed rather to prefer to have their cellars washed out occasionally, sometimes rose to the height of devastating inundations. The cause of their increased frequency and destructiveness was by some said to be the will of God; by others, a judgment on the wicked; others still ascribed it to the reckless destruction of the forests that had once clothed the hills to the top, and by retaining much of the snow on their sturdy branches, and, in spring, lessening the influence of the sun, had prevented its too rapid melting. That these views were at all reconcilable, that the will of God might be that the hills should bring righteousness to the people by teaching the reckless and money-loving that they could not safely trifle with the forces of nature, few seemed able to understand. Yet, if this lesson had been thoroughly learned, and followed out to its logical consequences, the calamity of which I have now to write would certainly never have occurred.
The winter which had just ended had been unusually mild; very little snow had fallen, even in the hills; but the months of April and May had been marked by an unusual rainfall, and the Mickle River, though not over its banks, stood at a height which, earlier in the year, would have been decidedly alarming, but which was viewed at this season with complacency as an excellent preparation for the summer droughts.
Ascension Day fell this year near the end of May, and the three Rogation days preceding it were, as usual, employed as days of prayer for spiritual but especially for temporal blessings. In some of the churches constant intercession was carried on from six in the morning to nine at night, but of these St. Andrew’s was not one.
“I fear I shall never be able to put much heart into a petition for earthly blessings,” said the rector to Ernest Clare, “though I would not say so publicly; and, of course, it is quite right to ask God’s blessing on the fruits of the earth,” he added apologetically; “but to me ‘Thy Will be done’ includes everything.”
“‘Give us this day our daily bread,’” returned the other gravely.
“Yes, yes, I know; we have the best authority for it, I don’t deny that; but it seems to me more childlike just to trust God for things of earth, and spend one’s time in prayer for things of heaven.”
“‘Thy Will be done on earth,’” replied the younger clergyman, “and His will is—as He has told us—to clothe and feed us, as He clothes the grass of the field and feeds the sparrows. And that will shall be done one day.”
“Ah! there you are with your Communism,” said the rector. “Well, it’s only a matter of feeling, and, I dare say, I’m wrong about it.”
“I wish we all had your faith, sir,” said Mr. Clare; “but don’t you think one sometimes learns to pray by needing to pray for bread? Then, afterwards, one can pray for the Bread of Heaven.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said the rector.
Ascension Day brought another heavy rainstorm to swell the Mickle River,—a storm which increased, with the accompaniment of furious winds, during the night, and on Friday. About the middle of the afternoon Mr. Clare, who, in his capacity of carpenter, had gone up-town to attend to a job, was passing a telegraph office on his way home, when he heard his name called loudly and anxiously; and, turning round, saw a young operator, well known to him and us, by the name of Heinz Rolf, with his body half out of the window, beckoning wildly.
“Good God, Mr. Clare! the most horrible disaster!” he gasped, as the clergyman obeyed the summons. “The dam—the Cannomore Dam—has burst; forty feet of water rushing down the Cannomore Valley—thirty thousand people in the water now—and”—he paused with his eyes on Mr. Clare’s.
The Irish mind is not, like the German, fundamentally geographical; and for a moment the clergyman did not entirely grasp the situation.
“How terrible! When did it happen?” he said, with as yet no sense that the matter might concern him or his.
“The last message came a few minutes ago. Operator stood at her post till the last gasp—ticked over the wires, ‘This is my last message,’—then, I suppose, she was swept away, for we can’t get an answer from anywhere near there. The next news we have of the flood”—
“I see!” said Mr. Clare suddenly. “I see. The next news will be brought by the water itself!”
For a moment the two men stared at each other in horror. Then Mr. Clare said, “How much time have we to get ready for it? one hour? two?”
“Can’t hardly tell,” said one of the older operators, looking up from his instrument. “Of course, she loses force and swiftness as she comes along, and it won’t be no forty feet that we’ll get; but, with the river we’ve got now, I guess we’ll have all the water we want. We’ve telephoned the mayor’s office, and, probably, he’ll have the bells rung, to warn the people. My folks will have the flood over the tops of their chimneys, I guess, but I don’t see no way to help it. I can’t leave that door till the flood comes in at the window, or I won’t, anyway.”
“I’ll see to them,” said Ernest Clare, “and to your family, too, Heinz. I say, I suppose ‘Prices’ is above high-water mark?”
“It’s six foot, about, above all the high-water mark we have now,” said the operator grimly. “I don’t say where it’ll be to-morrow; but, maybe, their third story won’t be very wet.”
“It’s as safe as anywhere,” said Heinz, “except the tops of the hills.”
“Just so,” replied the other, and Mr. Clare hurried away.
“I suppose this is the answer to your prayers in the early part of the week,” said Dr. Richards, when Mr. Clare warned him of the coming danger.
“I could not tell you about that,” returned the other, “it is hard to decide upon the meaning of a message until one has read it through. Meanwhile, my rooms at ‘Prices’ are entirely at your service; and I should advise you to take valuables, papers, and clothing. You’ll have time to pack them up if you’re not too long about it. Drive over in your buggy, doctor, and I’ll send a boy for the Ark.”
Not every one, however, was as easy to move as the Richardses.
“Is it a flood?” asked one Irish family whom he visited and warned. “Sure, floods is nothin’ when you’re used to ‘em, your Honor.” And not a step would they budge, until they and their shanty were washed away together.
Most people refused to believe that a flood was possible at that season of the year, or that the bursting of the Cannomore Dam could possibly affect the Mickle River.
But at seven o’clock in the evening the river was over its banks; at midnight it was within a foot and a half of the level of “Prices,” and reported to be still rising. There was no rush of a wall of water at this distance from the scene of the catastrophe; only a slow, steady, terrible, irresistible rising. Where now was the beautiful river whereof they had boasted? Instead of it, a boiling, foaming devil rushed headlong by them; its yellow waters swirling with wreckage and horrible with corpses. Truly, their pride was turned to their destruction!
“There are those families at the lower mill,” said Mr. Clare suddenly; “has any one heard of them?”
“They were warned,” said some one, “but whether the blame fools moved out or not, I can’t say.”
“If you will lend me your boat,” said Mr. Clare, “I will see after them.”
“You? there’s work for you here, Mr. Clare; besides, the current”—
“Plenty of boats are out already,” said another; “they’ll be seen after.”
“There’s room for one more,” replied the clergyman quietly, “and I didn’t win the silver oar in the single-scull race at college for nothing. Look up on the hills there, black with refugees from the water! Who will help me to bring them off?”
Not one, but three boat’s crews were immediately at his service, and more would have been forthcoming had the boats at command been more numerous.
“You, Louis? I don’t know,” said the clergyman kindly, as the boy pressed to his side. “What would your father say to me?”
“I shall go too,” said Karl Metzerott.
The rain beat fiercely down upon the seething river, the wind churned the foul waters into foam which it dashed in their faces as if in bitter mockery of their pitiful attempts to brave the power of the elements; beams and timbers, heavy enough to grind their boats into powder, shouldered each other down the stream, and impeded each other’s progress, as though they had been human beings engaged in the race for wealth. Over all lay darkness, for the gasworks were long since under water, but the feeble light of the lanterns they had brought flashed now on a man’s face set in the agony of death, the open eyes staring upward as if in accusation; now on heavy tresses of a woman’s long wet hair, wrapped by the wind round and round the beam to which she had clung till her strength failed her.
He stood to windward of them, and his every word could be distinctly heard. The men paused in the very act of manning the boats, and turned to look at him. His hat was off, and the lantern in his hand flashed fitfully, as it was beaten by the wind, upon his pure, strong face, and the eyes fixed upon them in longing tenderness, as though they also were in danger and needed rescue.
“Let us pray,” said Mr. Clare.
Certainly Fritz Rolf set the example, but no man there waited to find it out. Every hat was off in an instant.
“‘O SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD, WHO BY THY CROSS AND PRECIOUS BLOOD HAST REDEEMED US, SAVE US, AND HELP US, WE HUMBLY BESEECH THEE, O LORD.’”
The next moment they were in the full course of the river, rushing with it down, down,—where!
There was no power of rowing upstream, and no need to row down. They could only keep the boat as steady as possible, and fend off the wreckage from every side, every man’s eyes strained meanwhile for any chance of saving life.
At last Ernest Clare gave a great cry. Dancing gayly down the river, as if at play upon the fearful tide, was a heavy, wooden cradle, hollowed from a single block. As it floated past him, Mr. Clare caught from it a little wailing baby, perhaps six months old. He gave it to Louis, who sat in the stern, and tried to steer as far as steering was possible. “Button it inside your coat,” he said, and Louis tried to obey. The child felt the grateful warmth, hushed its wailing, and even fell asleep from exhaustion. The little face peeped out just below the collar of the young man’s coat, his arm was round it, and he felt with a strange sensation the feeble throbbing of its baby bosom, and the sweet, warm baby breath stealing upward to his neck.
Now a huge beam went crashing against the window of a house round which the waters raged madly.
“It’s no matter,” said Fritz; “the man that lives there is a fellow with some snap to him. He moved out his family early this afternoon.”
The inhabitants of the next house had not been so fortunate, for faces were dimly visible in the dark windows, and voices were heard crying for rescue in the name of God.
One of the boats was filled with them, father, mother, and eight children, wet, cold, and miserable, crouching wretchedly in the bottom of the boat, and half disposed, as it tossed seemingly at the mercy of the stream, to think it a bad exchange for the house, which at least, as yet, stood firm.
Boat-load after boat-load was thus rescued, and set ashore at the nearest point whence they could make their way to a place of succor; for all the churches and public buildings, and many private houses, stood open that night, and warm food, shelter, and dry clothing were ready for all who claimed them.
And still the boats went on, on with the current, upon their errand of mercy.
Here delayed by the wreckage, there set free by a blow from some passing timber,—still they kept steadily on down the stream. And now there came to Louis a strange experience. For it seemed to him that before them moved a white Figure, wherein he recognized that which once trod the Sea of Galilee, and through the rushing of the waves and the roaring of the fierce wind there seemed to fall upon his ears the whisper, “Fear not, it is I.” And as all his life he had followed the Lord Christ, so now, he steered after the glimmer of that white form seen or fancied. And by faith or fancy it led them on till daybreak.
When they had returned home, drenched and exhausted, Louis laid his hand upon Mr. Clare’s arm, and smiled into his face with white lips but strangely shining eyes. “Mr. Clare,” he said, “oh, Mr. Clare, I have my wish, that I tried not to wish for. He has been very good to me. I know now that He is God, and that He could not—oh! He could not stay in Heaven while we suffered and died on earth; He must come down to help and save us!”
“He is saving us now, Louis,” said Mr. Clare, “saving us by what seems the extremity of His wrath. ‘O Saviour of the world, Who by Thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us, save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord’!”