“Mother! Bob! Madge! Where are you?” he cried.
There was no answer.
He called again and again, but still there was no reply save a kind of washing sound from below, and a long muttering growl from above. Where could they be? Had this rush of water come upon them suddenly, and were they drowned down there in the kitchen or little parlour?
His first impulse was to go and look, though his heart beat terribly fast, and all his strength seemed to have gone and left him weak and trembling. He descended a few steps as far as the edge of the water, and then all at once the sight of it made him sick and giddy, and he would have fallen in if he had not turned round quickly, and, holding by the balustrade, climbed up again to the bed-room.
“They can’t have gone and left me,” he sobbed. “They wouldn’t do that, without even calling to me to come. And here I am, and can’t get out! I shall have to stop and be drowned.”
He hurried once more to the front window, and looked out first in one direction, then in the other. Why, there they were—his mother under an umbrella with the baby, Madge and Bob in the road, higher up the hill, with the rain beating upon them, and a few people standing about talking to them earnestly. He tried to open the window and shout to them, but the sash stuck in its frame, and before he had succeeded in making it slide up, Mrs. Kayll had carried the baby into a house, near which she had been standing, and Madge had followed. Bob was left alone, looking about him as though trying to find a dry way to get back.
Jem shouted his name, but a clap of thunder at that moment made his voice inaudible; he saw his brother turn to speak to some one, and then walk across to the other side of the road.
They had left him to his fate, then! He was deserted. The wild thought crossed his mind that they had perhaps done it to punish him for the faults that came back to his memory now with perfect clearness. He saw all in a moment that he had up till now cared far more for himself than for anyone else, and this was the result: those who ought to have loved him had forgotten him in the moment of danger, or, worse still, had wilfully left him to do the best he could for himself.
Poor Jem! This was a lesson he never unlearnt. The misery and fear of the discovery were so great that he was completely overcome. He dropped down on the bed-room floor unconscious. It was just at that point of time that Bob, picking his way back with water nearly up to his ankles, stopped short with a sudden exclamation, and stared about him.