Essential Novelists - Dinah Craik. August Nemo
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How high are the floods here, generally, Phineas?”
“I’m sure I can’t remember. But don’t look so serious. Let us enjoy ourselves.”
And I did enjoy, intensely, that pleasant stroll. The mere sunshine was delicious; delicious, too, to pause on the bridge at the other end of the town, and feel the breeze brought in by the rising waters, and hear the loud sound of them, as they poured in a cataract over the flood-gates hard by.
“Your lazy, muddy Avon looks splendid now. What masses of white foam it makes, and what wreaths of spray; and see! ever so much of the Ham is under water. How it sparkles in the sun.”
“John, you like looking at anything pretty.”
“Ah! don’t I!” cried he, with his whole heart. My heart leaped too, to see him so happy.
“You can’t think how fine this is from my window; I have watched it for a week. Every morning the water seems to have made itself a fresh channel. Look at that one, by the willow-tree — how savagely it pours!”
“Oh, we at Norton Bury are used to floods.”
“Are they ever very serious?”
“Have been — but not in my time. Now, John, tell me what you have been doing all winter.”
It was a brief and simple chronicle — of hard work, all day over, and from the Monday to the Saturday — too hard work to do anything of nights, save to drop into the sound, dreamless sleep of youth and labour.
“But how did you teach yourself to read and add up, then?”
“Generally at odd minutes going along the road. It’s astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it. And then I had Sunday afternoons besides. I did not think it wrong —”
“No,” said I; decisively. “What books have you got through?”
“All you sent — Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and the Arabian Nights. That’s fine, isn’t it?” and his eyes sparkled.
“Any more?”
“Also the one you gave me at Christmas. I have read it a good deal.”
I liked the tone of quiet reverence in which he spoke. I liked to hear him own, nor be ashamed to own — that he read “a good deal” in that rare book for a boy to read — the Bible.
But on this subject I did not ask him any more questions; indeed, it seemed to me, and seems still, that no more were needed.
“And you can read quite easily now, John?”
“Pretty well, considering.” Then, turning suddenly to me: “You read a great deal, don’t you? I overheard your father say you were very clever. How much do you know?”
“Oh — nonsense!” But he pressed me, and I told him. The list was short enough; I almost wished it were shorter when I saw John’s face.
“For me — I can only just read, and I shall be fifteen directly!”
The accent of shame, despondency, even despair, went to my very heart.
“Don’t mind,” I said, laying my feeble, useless hand upon that which guided me on so steady and so strong; “how could you have had time, working as hard as you do?”
“But I ought to learn; I must learn.”
“You shall. It’s little I can teach; but, if you like, I’ll teach you all I know.”
“O Phineas!” One flash of those bright, moist eyes, and he walked hastily across the road. Thence he came back, in a minute or two, armed with the tallest, straightest of briar-rose shoots.
“You like a rose-switch, don’t you? I do. Nay, stop till I’ve cut off the thorns.” And he walked on beside me, working at it with his knife, in silence.
I was silent, too, but I stole a glance at his mouth, as seen in profile. I could almost always guess at his thoughts by that mouth, so flexible, sensitive, and, at times, so infinitely sweet. It wore that expression now. I was satisfied, for I knew the lad was happy.
We reached the Mythe. “David,” I said (I had got into a habit of calling him “David;” and now he had read a certain history in that Book I supposed he had guessed why, for he liked the name), “I don’t think I can go any further up the hill.”
“Oh! but you shall! I’ll push behind; and when we come to the stile I’ll carry you. It’s lovely on the top of the Mythe — look at the sunset. You cannot have seen a sunset for ever so long.”
No — that was true. I let John do as he would with me — he who brought into my pale life the only brightness it had ever known.
Ere long we stood on the top of the steep mound. I know not if it be a natural hill, or one of those old Roman or British remains, plentiful enough hereabouts, but it was always called the Mythe. Close below it, at the foot of a precipitous slope, ran the Severn, there broad and deep enough, gradually growing broader and deeper as it flowed on, through a wide plain of level country, towards the line of hills that bounded the horizon. Severn looked beautiful here; neither grand nor striking, but certainly beautiful; a calm, gracious, generous river, bearing strength in its tide and plenty in its bosom, rolling on through the land slowly and surely, like a good man’s life, and fertilising wherever it flows.
“Do you like Severn still, John?”
“I love it.”
I wondered if his thoughts had been anything like mine.
“What is that?” he cried, suddenly, pointing to a new sight, which even I had not often seen on our river. It was a mass of water, three or four feet high, which came surging along the midstream, upright as a wall.
“It is the eger; I’ve often seen it on Severn, where the swift seaward current meets the spring-tide. Look what a crest of foam it has, like a wild boar’s mane. We often call it the river-boar.”
“But it is only a big wave.”
“Big enough to swamp a boat, though.”
And while I spoke I saw, to my horror, that there actually was a boat, with two men in it, trying to get out of the way of the eger.
“They never can! they’ll assuredly be drowned! O John!”
But he had already slipped from my side and swung himself by furze-bushes and grass down the steep slope to the water’s edge.
It was a breathless moment. The eger travelled slowly in its passage, changing the smooth, sparkling river to a whirl of conflicting currents, in which no boat could live — least of all that light pleasure-boat, with its toppling sail. In it was a youth I knew by sight, Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe House, and another gentleman.
They both pulled hard — they got out of the mid-stream, but not close enough to land; and already there was but two oars’ length between them and the “boar.”
“Swim for it!” I heard one cry to the other: but swimming would not have saved them.
“Hold there!” shouted John at the top of his voice; “throw that rope out and I will pull you in!”
It was a hard tug: I shuddered to see him wade knee-deep in the stream — but he succeeded. Both gentlemen leaped safe on shore. The younger tried desperately to save his boat, but it was too late. Already the “water-boar” had clutched it — the rope broke like a gossamer-thread — the trim, white sail was dragged down — rose up once, broken and torn, like a butterfly caught in a mill-stream — then disappeared.
“So it’s all over with her, poor thing!”
“Who cares? — We might have lost our lives,” sharply said the other, an older and sickly-looking gentleman, dressed in mourning, to