The floods of ’52 are still remembered in East Anglia. The worst and most widespread were in November, but “February Fill-Dyke” brought the more localized catastrophe in Little Bradmarsh. The village, lying as it did along the left bank of the Brad, was caught between two waters, the overflow of the streams to the north that ran down silt-laden towards this bank, and the backwash over the bank from the Brad itself, which, already swollen by rain, and by the waters pumped into it from the marsh-mills on its right bank, was prevented overflowing southwards by the dyke that further protected Long Bradmarsh.

It was Nip that brought Jinny the news, though she did not understand its purport till the service was over. For it was to church that he brought it. That ancient building, standing isolated on its green knoll flaked with gravestones, had begun to appeal to him as much as to Jinny, and despite her efforts to dodge or shake him off, he had become a regular churchgoer. Nobody seemed to mind his sitting in her pew or squatting by the stove: perhaps so exiguous a congregation could not be exigent, and in that aching void even a canine congregant was not unwelcome. But his mistress, despite the sense she shared with Mr. Fallow of divine glimmerings in the animal creation, had always an uneasy feeling of indecorum, especially when Nip snored through the sermon like a Christian, and she was congratulating herself that the “Fifthly and Finally” had been safely reached without him, when in he trotted—far wetter and muddier than on the day he had plumped on Will’s knees in the chapel. The sight of him dripping steadily along the aisle towards the stove did not interrupt the hymn: the worshippers, though the morning had begun with a set-back to snow, were in no wise surprised by a return to rain. Only that Saturday night it had rained “cats and dogs”: one dripping dog was therefore no alarming phenomenon. They did not realize that Nip had largely swum to church.

But when, at the church-door, they began to fumble with their umbrellas, they saw with wide eyes of astonishment and dismay that though a mere sleety drizzle misted the air, below the lych-gate a strange expanse of waters awaited their feet. Except for one broad finger of land pointing along the centre of a vast yellow lake, their world was suddenly turned to water, and Jinny had a weird wonder as to what the dead would think could they rise and see the transformation wrought in the earthy spot where they had laid themselves so securely to sleep.

But the first impression of plumbless depth was contradicted by the hedgerows standing up—despite their reflections—much as before, still with a light powder of the morning’s snow, and when Jinny advancing to the gate, amid a chaos of ejaculatory comment that would have done credit to a full-sized congregation, probed the lake with the point of her umbrella, she exhibited barely three inches of moist tip. Reassured except for Sunday shoes, the bulk of the worshippers plashed forwards more or less boldly. But Miss Gentry refused to be comforted: she was already half hysterical and clutching at Jinny, for she recalled her anciently prophesied doom of drowning. What was the use of a lifelong refusal to set foot on the water? The water was come to her, as the Clown opined of Ophelia. Jinny could quiet her only by promising to see her safely to her door. With a jump the girl reached the four steps by which the ladies anciently mounted to their pillions, and running up, she surveyed the vista of waters, amid which the three pollarded lime-trees before Miss Gentry’s cottage rose like a landmark. She could now make a mental map of the driest route. For from this observation-post, though she had a sodden sense of mist and rain and blowiness, the sense of an unbroken aqueous expanse disappeared. She could see water, water, but not everywhere, nor were even the watery parts submerged uniformly. It was like some infallible illustration of the ups and downs of Little Bradmarsh. Never before, not even under the varying strains of Methusalem, had she realized how undulating the village was for all its apparent flatness. She saw now how much a few feet counted, and how the majority of the cottages and the farmhouses—all the ancient ones indeed—had planted themselves along that dry finger: “the Ridge” they called it, she remembered, though the name had hitherto been a mere sound to her ear, for so gradual was its slope that she had never felt the ascent nor put on the brake in descending. But to see it culminating in the Common and her own dear Blackwater Hall was now a cheering spectacle. While a white-flecked, wind-whipped waste of yellow water was spreading where yesterday blackened pastures had stretched, here were brown fields quite untouched by the flood-water, with their furrows chalked out in snow. One field all winter white, with thin blades just peeping up, looked friendly rather than forlorn—such was the effect of contrast. Lower down the Ridge were stretches covered with a deposit of silt and leaf-mould, with plough-handles sticking up, and between these and the flooded regions was a half-and-half world that reminded Jinny of the salt-marshes: a maze of pools and pondlets and water-patterns in a greenish slime mottled with hillocks.

Taking off her precious shoes and stockings, Jinny descended from her observation-post and plunged the “little fitten” admired of her grandfather into the chilling muddy lake, which seemed to have risen since she gauged it. Miss Gentry, clenching her teeth, followed her example, but in the effort to grasp at once her skirt, shoes, and muff (with prayer-book couchant), and to prevent her umbrella from soaring off on adventures of its own, she made more twitter than progress, and when, at their first stile, Nip, plunging through the bars, dived into the field and swam boldly forward, Miss Gentry with a shriek perched herself on the stile and refused to come down. Jinny, baring her legs still higher, strove to laugh away her patron’s fears, but her very precaution of tucking up had driven the dressmaker into a new frenzy.

“There’s no risk so long as we dodge the ditches,” Jinny pointed out, “and you can see those by the hedges. And look up there—there’s your lime-trees signalling their feet are dry.”

“Yes, but I can’t get to them. Oh, Jinny, go and fetch me your cart. Do be a love.”

“Sunday?”

“It’s a question of life and death.”

“Very well,” Jinny pretended. “If I cut through that field with the cows I shan’t be long,” she said with cunning carelessness.

But she had not gone many yards ere, as she expected, she heard Miss Gentry plashing desperately behind her with cries of “Wait for me, Jinny! Wait!” Miss Gentry did not reflect that the cows would not be out in that weather; to face those fearsome inches under escort was a lesser evil than the possible dangers from panic-stricken cattle that now rose before her mind, and with one horn of the dilemma a bull’s, her choice was precipitated.

At the Four Wantz Way new terrors arose for the poor lady. It was not from the swirl of waters that met there, for her road now stretched visibly upwards, but from the fact that the Pennymoles were occupied in moving their treasures to “the high room.” The genial paterfamilias darting to his doorstep—with the kerchiefed owl he was rescuing in his hand—had his own flood of authoritative lore to pour out, but he could make no headway till Miss Gentry had blushingly apologized for her bare feet, and been assured that no respectable man would look at them. Then, though his hearers stood splashed and blown about, he held even Jinny spellbound with a description of Long Bradmarsh as he had known it in his boyhood before the embankment was put up, and when his parents had often had, even in summer, to open the back door of their cottage to let the water pour out. And what a work it had been, clearing up the muck afterwards! “That’s a terrible thing, the power of water,” he said solemnly. “People don’t know what it means who ain’t seen it. And it’s rising every minute.”

“What did I tell you, Jinny?” cried Miss Gentry. “Oh, Mr. Pennymole, will my house be safe?”

“It’s one thing, mum, to be in the flood and another to be out of it,” he responded oracularly.

“Come along!” said Jinny impatiently. “Your cottage has got two steps to begin with, and even if it gets up to your garden, you’ll be safe inside.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, Jinny,” corrected the oracle. “That fares to sap the foundations, and then crack! bang! you think it’s a big gun, and down comes walls and ceilings. My gran’fer seen a whole row of cottages washed away. And then there’s flotsam what bangs about and smashes you in.”

Miss Gentry clutched wildly at Jinny, dropping shoes and muff into the swirl. “And Squibs does hate to get her feet wet,” she babbled.

Alarmed at the effect of his pronouncement, the oracle hastened to tone it down and to pick up her things.

“No need to get into a pucker, mum. You’re all right, same as you’re in the high room. And Oi count ye’ve got a grate upstairs, which is more than we’re blessed with this weather. That gre’t ole stove can’t git up.”

“And you could sew in your bedroom,” Jinny added soothingly. “You’ve never known it get higher than the ground floor, have you, Mr. Pennymole?”

“Not in my born days,” answered the oracle.

“But there’s always new things happening,” wailed Miss Gentry.

“That’s wunnerful true,” Mr. Pennymole admitted, smiling. “Oi never thought Oi’d fare to oversleep myself. But the day there was that grand wedding at the church, Oi hadn’t time to make my tea.”

“And then he had two teas!” put in Mrs. Pennymole hilariously.

But before the story had proceeded far, they all became aware of people hastening from every quarter towards the unsubmerged regions, not for safety, but for salvage; carts and even wagons with teams began to come up, and the bustle and cackle recalled Mr. Pennymole to public duty.

Leaving his wife to finish telling the story, as well as transferring the furniture, he joined a party hurrying on to Farmer Gale’s five-acre field, and as Jinny and Miss Gentry passed along, they saw potato clamps being dug up, cattle driven higher, corn and hay unstacked and transported, and even threshing in hasty operation. The Sunday clothes of those who hadn’t stayed to “shiften,” but emphasized the profanity of the scene.

“You see what Dissenters are!” said Miss Gentry in disgust.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” quoted Jinny maliciously. But Miss Gentry did not recognize her own words. Jinny went on to praise the true Christianity of these labourers, who though ground down to a miserable wage, were now dashing to Farmer Gale’s assistance even in his absence—for he had apparently not yet returned from his place of worship at Chipstone. One cornstack saved, she calculated, would be worth more than he had paid Mr. Pennymole in the last five years.

“In this dreadful day of the Lord, it’s souls that want saving, not stacks,” said Miss Gentry.

Arrived at last on her own doorstep, she collapsed in Jinny’s arms. What was the use of not going to Boulogne, she demanded, if she was to be drowned in her bed? At least she might have had the hope of seeing her dear Cleopatra again. And surely the darling must have written, must have sent her address. Bundock must have lost the letters, or, worse, suppressed them! He owed her a grudge because she had resisted his importunities. Yes, Jinny—dead to Passion—had no idea to what lengths people born under other planets would go—even though married! But, extricating herself, Jinny, with that cold blood of hers, left her patron to the consolations of Squibs; she must get home to her grandfather, she explained; he would be worrying over her fate.