“Look ahead there! look ahead, sir!” cried the men on the river. Val never moved, never turned to see what it was. What did it matter to him (the watcher thought), a capital swimmer, if anything did happen? How foolish she was to be afraid! Just then a great lumbering boat, with four oars waving out of it in delightful licence and impartiality, like the arms of a cuttlefish, full of holiday folk, came up, visible behind the eyot. There was a jar, a bump, a shout. “It ain’t nothing, he swims like a duck,” cried some voice near her. She could not tell who spoke; but through the dazzle in her eyes she saw that the long oars and the slim boat had disappeared, and that the holiday party—shouting, struggling about the river—were alone visible. Swim? Yes, no doubt he could swim; but the woman was his mother—his mother! She gave a great cry, and rushed with one spring into the punt that lay moored at the steps immediately in front of her door. She was not like one of you delicate ladies, who, all the same, would have done it too, had your boy been drowning. She knew how to do a great many rough, practical things. She pushed the big boat into the stream, and with her big pole, flying like a mad creature, was under the green willows looking for him before any one else could draw breath.
And it was well for Val, poor boy, that though he did not know it, his mother was by, with divination in her eyes. The best swimmer on the Thames could not have contended with the stupor of fever that was on him. When his boat was upset, rousing him out of a bewildering dream, he gave but one gasp, made one mechanical clutch at something, he knew not what, that was near him, and then was conscious of nothing more. His limbs were like steel, his head like lead. There was no power in him to struggle for his life. The boatmen about who knew him did not stir a step, but sat about in their boats, or watched from the rafts, perfectly easy in their minds about the young athlete, to whom a drench in the Thames was nothing. Only the woman, who was his mother, knew that on that particular day Val would sink like a stone. She was at the spot with the punt before any one knew what she was doing, but not before one and another had asked, calling to each other, “Where is he? He is too long under water. He don’t remember it’s March, and cold.” “He’ll get his death of cold,” said one old boatman. “Man alive!” cried out another, jumping over the boats that lay drawn up upon the rafts, “out with a boat!—he’s drowning. Out with your boat!”
What Val had clutched at was the root of one of the willows. He caught it without knowing, clenched it, and when he sank, sank with his drooping head on the damp soil of the eyot—into the water to his lips, but yet supported and moored, as it were, to life and safety by the desperate grasp he had taken of the willow. There the woman found him when she reached the spot. He had fainted with the shock, and lay there totally helpless, the soft wavelets floating over his dark curls, his face half buried in the soft, damp soil, like a dead man, making no effort to save himself.
She gave a cry which echoed over all the river. People a mile off heard it, and shivered and wondered—a cry of longing and despair. But before even that cry had roused the echoes, several boats had shot forth to her aid. The men did not know what had happened, but something had happened; they came crowding about her, while she, half sunk in the soft slime, dragged up in her arms out of the water the unconscious figure. She had his head on her arm, holding him up, half on land half in water, when they got to her. She was paler than he was, lying there upon her, marble white in his swoon. “Is he dead?” they said, coming up to her with involuntary reverence. She looked at them piteously, poor soul, and held the inanimate figure closer, dragging, to get him out of the water. Her pale lips gave forth a low moan. No one asked what right this strange woman had to look so, to utter that hopeless cry. No one even said, “He is nothing to her;” they recognised the anguish which gave her an unspoken, unasked right to him, and to them, and to all they could do. And nothing could be easier than to draw him from the river, to place him in the punt, where she sat down beside him, and with a gesture of command pointed to her house. They took him there without a word. “Carry him in,” she said, and went before to show them the room. “Go for a doctor.” They obeyed her as they would have obeyed Lady Eskside herself. They thought Val was dead, and so did she. She stood and looked at him, when they rushed away to get help for her, in a misery of impotence and longing beyond all words to say. Oh, could she do nothing for him! nothing! She would have given her life for him; but what is a poor mother’s life, or who would accept so easy a ransom? She could only stand and gaze at him in hopeless, helpless, miserable anguish, and wring her hands. She did not know what to do.
Fortunately, however, the doctor came very speedily, and soon engaged all her powers. He turned away the good fellows who had fetched him, and called the servant from the kitchen. “Quick, quick! every moment he remains in this state makes it worse for him,” said the man, who knew what could be done; and, though he was kind and pitiful, had no sword on his breast piercing him through and through. Val came back to life after a while, and to semi-consciousness. She had not expected it. She had obeyed the doctor’s orders in a stupor, docile but hopeless; but what a tumult, what a tempest woke and raged in her as she saw life come back! She kept quiet, poor soul, not daring to say a word; but her joy worked through her veins like strong wine; and she felt as if she could scarcely keep standing, scarcely hold her footing and her composure against the rapture that seemed to lift her up, to make a spirit of her. Saved! saved!—was it possible? She had borne speechless the passion of her anguish, but it was harder to fight with and keep down the tumult of her joy.
“Come here,” said the doctor, speaking in peremptory tones, as it was natural when addressing a person of her class. “I want to speak to you down-stairs. Sit down. Have you any wine in the house? where do you keep it? Be still, and I’ll get it myself. Now take this; what’s the matter with you? Did you never see a man nearly drowned before?”
“No,” she said, faintly, keeping up her struggle with herself. She wanted to cry out, to laugh, to dance, to shout for joy; but before the man who eyed her so strangely, she had to keep still and quiet. She put the wine aside. “I don’t want anything,” she said.
“Your pulse is going like a steam-engine,” said the doctor; “cry, woman, for God’s sake, or let yourself out somehow. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you speak?—then cry!”
She sank down on her knees; her heart was beating so that it seemed, to struggle for an exit from her panting, parched lips. “I think I’m dying—of joy!” she said, almost inaudibly, with a sob and gasp. “Poor creature, that is all you know,” said the doctor, shaking his head; “he is not round the corner yet, by a long way. Look here, do you know anything about nursing, or do you often give way like this? On the whole, I had better have him moved at once, and send for a nurse.”
“A nurse!” she said, stumbling up to her feet.