Rain had washed the soot off the carriage windows, but rain allowed very little to be seen as the train made its way, and that little was so wavering as to convey not much. As Eszterhazy pulled a window up and before he pulled it down again he looked upon a sodden landscape. Not far off the trains on the narrow-gauge branch-line seemed to move along like a procession of gondolas crossing the Venetian lagoon. It was after all his own private car and if he cared to keep the window open no one might gainsay him. He did not care: he had a boxful of things to read, and he did not want them rained upon. He would see the scenery later. Another time. When it stopped raining. If it ever did.
Rain in Scythia, rain in Pannonia, rain in Transbalkania — rain in Cisbalka- nia, for that matter. The rain was falling on the Acropolis and on the black mountain of Montenegro. All the Italian alliances in the world could not keep it from raining on Illyria, nor off the Hungarian shepherds in their shaggy capes. In the soggy delta of the Ister the Romanou gathered in their mucky huts, close around their smoky fires, ate smoked eels and thoughtfully wiped their fingers in their arm-pits. Here and there and everywhere the Tsiganes headed for drier ground and kept their keen black eyes open for drowned pigs; they had some very good recipes for drowned pig. In Klejn Tinkeldorff, Eszterhazy’s Tanta Tina clicked her tongue, and helped the housekeeper hang the washing in the kitchen. And, a few blocks away, Music Master De Metz sat composing motets. He did not know it was raining.
At the last train stop the diligence-driver helped the porter with Eszterhazy’s baggage. “I don’t know for sure will we be able to get Your Honor to the last stage, this here rain here be so heavy. They say as God be punishing this here district for that bloody new dam as will drown out the Sacred Grove, what a blasphemous thing to do.” He shook his head, scattering more rain, as he tight-hauled the rope on the tarpaulin cover for the baggage.
“Why, man,” said Eszterhazy, “this rain is falling not just here and not just on our country but all over Eastern Europe; they say it is the heaviest rain in many years.”
The driver looked at him doubtfully. “Not just here? Not just on — How does Your Honor know?”
Eszterhazy was not disposed to stand chatting while his clothes grew soaked. “Telegraphic reports,” he said. And got inside.
The driver, who had not a hope of keeping dry, looked at him through the window. “Ah. Telegraph. Oh’’ He had no more idea of how the telegraph worked than had a child, but he believed in it as surely as he believed in witchcraft. He pulled down the isinglass window, touched his hat, and mounted to the box. If the mica set into the leather flaps failed to keep out the wet, the passengers might lower the canvas curtains on the inside.
The driver proved right, as such drivers generally do: they had not been able to get Eszterhazy to the last stage, and so, leaving his baggage in charge of the manager of the post-station at the last stage but one, he had obtained a horse. It was still only afternoon, “though late, late was the hour,” yet the rain and mist and clouds so obscured visibility that he had ridden through many a night with less trouble. There came a time when he felt he might be better going on foot than on the back of a rain-blinded and nervous horse; and dismounted. He had intended to lead the beast, but the beast had other ideas; with a powerful jerk of neck and head it tore the leathers from his slippery hands and, with one last, loud neigh, made off. For a moment he was in fright for it; then, seeing it heading downhill, the way it had come, he thought the animal was likely to arrive safe enough (if wet enough) at its own stable. In a moment he had forgotten the horse and concentrated on keeping to the road.
He could scarcely see; he could hardly hear. It was no mere rainstorm which made the overwhelming sound now beating incessantly upon his ears, and which bothered him more than the wet. When he reached the new factory he would be out of the wet, into dry clothes; but would he be away from the noise? Soon enough he had an answer of sorts, though not the one he would
have hoped for. The road crested at the top of one of the hills, the road was going down, was turning to keep to the river, and —
Lines from an old Scottish poem, again courtesy of his aunt Lady Emma, supplied themselves: The river was great, and mickle wi’ spate.... Had they ever seen anything, though, like this, in Scotland? He had never before seen anything like it in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. Incredible sight. The water was a filthy hue of brown; God knows how many farms (in effect) were dissolved in it. To say that the river was swollen was to waste the word. The river had gone mad; the river was insane; the river rioted; and, grown vast and huge, the river seemed to throw challenge at the rainy heavens. There were no banks. There were no bridges. The sound of the waters drowned all other sound, almost it was drowning thought. Limbs of trees hurled and hurtled down that titanic millrace, were thrown high into the air, crashed back down in fume and spray but with no distinct... with, even no indistinct... noise of the fall. Timbers whirled around like straws; several times he saw the forms of cattle appear, whirl, bob, dive, vanish. They must have been long dead by then. And the unstable water made the stable earth tremble and shake.
How could the new dam stand up against all this? Could it? Well, probably. If they, there at the new factory below, so to speak, and alongside the dam, if they opened the sluices and allowed water to escape from the sides as well as over the top. /fthey opened the sluices? By now and in fact long before now, they of course must have.
He had heard much of all the men on guard roundabout this area by night and day, but he saw no one. He saw nothing, neither man nor beast. Animals looking to find refuge on higher ground by now would already have found it. .. found it, or been drowned. The water-birds?, where were they? Somewhere. Somewhere else. Not on the surface of the new-formed lake. He could not soon or easily become used to this new-formed lake. It was too unfamiliar, it was entirely unfamiliar, there was nothing he could recognize —
Stop.
Of course there was.
He recognized the vasty oak trees rising from amidst the waters and knew that he was looking at the Sacred Grove.
How long would and could the Grove’s trees survive, half-sunk beneath the waters as they were? He did not know. Bit by bit and very cautiously he advanced, but it was not easy; the road had become in part a stream-bed, and where not that, a mud-slick. And yet (he saw) he had been rather wrong, for there were living beings moving about; what were they? Children, very small children? No. Marmots, perhaps? Perhaps marmots, moving en masse in search of safety? Were there marmots here? Ground-squirrels, perhaps? And yet why did he keep thinking that they might be children, when plainly they could not and —
He saw them coming and increasing. He saw them coming on. He saw them coming, like an army of tiny brown pygmies, waving their stumpy ginger-red-brown arms. Their tiny black-marked mouths opening, wordlessly for all he could hear above the pouring rains and rushing waters. Had they something, each, in their small and fingerless hands? Were those mere meaningless motions, movements, gestures? Were they, seemingly, threatening? Stabbing? Against whom? Against what?