"I think I'd better go for Tishy now," he said abruptly, "It might be a job to get down the town later on."
He left the room, and Mrs. Mangan, in her husband's big chair, by his big fire, fell into tired yet peaceful ease of body and mind. How wonderful was Francis! Who but he would have dared to aspire for his children as he had? He had secured for Tishy the very pick of the country; and now, her own darling Barty! Was it possible? Yes! It was, if Francis said so! But what was "the argument he had up his sleeve?" Never mind! Francis would tell her when he came home. There was no hurry. But again, how wonderful was Francis!
She fell asleep. Barty woke her, coming into the room, dripping and shining in oilskins and sou'wester, like a lifeboat man.
"I couldn't get further than West Street, Mammie," he said, still breathless. "I had on my waders, but the water was up over them. They had boats going about, I believe, but I couldn't get hold of one. Tishy'll have to stay the night at the Whelplys'. I met a man that told me there was a big flood in the river, and haystacks, and cattle, and all sorts, coming down in it. It was up over the line, and the train hardly got out. It was near putting out the engine fires."
"Oh, my God!" said Mrs. Mangan, with her big eyes that were so like Barty's fixed on his, "the Riverstown road! Oh! Francis!——" she groped at the front of her blouse for her Rosary, her lips moving in hasty supplication, her eyes wild, roving from her son's face to the blackness of the window. Suddenly she thrust back the Rosary.
"Why do you tell me these things?" she cried, furiously, "you great omadhaun! Is it to frighten me into my grave you want? Is it nothing to you that your father's out alone? Oh God! Oh God! Why couldn't he think of me as well as of that damned woman away at Riverstown!" She began to cry, wildly, her forehead pressed against one of the streaming panes of the window. "Oh Francis, Francis!——"
There were many more than Mrs. Mangan and her son that sat up all through that night in the Valley of the Broadwater. Trembling people in little low-lying cottages, with thatched roofs held in place with ladders, and ropes, and stones, with doors and windows barricaded against the wind. But of what avail are barricades against the creeping white lip of water, crawling in under the doors over the earthen floors, soaking in, through mud-built walls, coming against them at first as a thief in the night, falling upon them later as a strong man armed?
From the lower side-streets of Cluhir the people fled before the flood to any shelter that the upper parts of the town could offer them. Ghastly stories were told of drowned cattle that were swept against the closed doors, and came pushing and banging at the windows, carried there by their conqueror as it were with mockery, to entreat for the succour that was too late.
When the pale dawn looked out through wind-torn clouds, it saw a half-mile breadth of racing water where had been pasture-fields; the yellow, foam-laced river was half way up the tall, slender arches of Cluhir Bridge, lapping ever higher, as if in envy, to hide the sole beauty of the ignoble town. Trees, and hayricks, broken boats, and humble pieces of cottage furniture, jostled each other between the piers, tossing and dancing in grotesque gaiety, like drunken holiday-makers on their way to the sea. The great river that is credited with exacting six lives each year, was claiming its toll. How many it took that December night does not now concern us, save, indeed, where one sad house was in question, where a wife and a son waited a long night through for the man who would not return to them.