“The river!” he exclaimed. “It’s that!” and, rushing out of the room, he leaped headlong down the stairs, making for the pantry, where he caught up his hat.
The next minute he was running along the main road, instinctively feeling that this was the way anyone would take who wished to reach the river.
He did not meet a soul for the first few hundred yards, and then came suddenly, at a turn, upon a farmer’s man, in long smock-frock, driving a flock of sheep, and looking as if he had come far along the dusty road, perhaps travelling since daylight.
“Meet a young gent in dark-grey soot and brown billycock hat?” panted Jerry.
“Ay! Two mile along the road.”
“Which way was he going?”
“Simmed to be making for lower lane; but it’s all under water, and he’ll have to go round.”
“All under water!” muttered Jerry, as he ran on rapidly. “Two miles—and me sitting sleeping there like a pig. That’s it—that’s what he meant! What did he say?—‘Couldn’t face it?’ If I could only get there in time! He must have been cracked! He must have been mad! He’s gone to drown hisself and get out of his misery, just like the high-sperretted gent he is. I know: gents don’t think like we do. It’s the Latin and Greek makes ’em classic and honourable, and they’d sooner die than get a bad name. It’s all right, I suppose; but it seems stoopid to me, when you know you ain’t done nothing wrong.”
“Now, let me see,” thought Jerry. “I say he’s come this road, because he wouldn’t go and chuck hisself in the river up by the ruins, because he’d have had enough o’ them; so he’s come down here this way, and he’s found it ain’t so easy as he thought; for you can’t get to the water for far enough, if you want a good deep place. Chap can’t go and drown hisself in fields where it’s only six inches deep, without he goes and lies down in a ditch. Gent couldn’t do that. Be like dying dog-fashion! I know what he’s gone to do: he’s made for Brailey Bridge, where he could go over into a deep hole at once. Only wish I was alongside of him; I’d say something as would bring him to his senses.”
And as Jerry trotted on, he passed turning after turning leading to fords or down by the river, for the simple reason that, during the night, the waters had come swirling down at such a rate that the whole of the river meadows were widely flooded; but it meant his getting more rapidly to Brailey Bridge, a couple of miles from the town, for he was forced into avoiding the winding low road, which followed the curves and doublings back of the river, and making short cuts, which brought him at last, breathless and panting, in sight of something which made him stare and, for the moment, forget his mission.