Chapter Thirteen

Wondering what new plagues could fall upon them next, Hetty, Roger and Alec sped off behind Sara towards the bridge to deal with this latest crisis. Sara’s urgency had left them in no doubt that this was a matter that must be taken in hand.

“Sara!” Hetty called out in a vain attempt to make the fleet little girl wait for her.

Alec was the first of the party to reach the scene of the struggle. Felix and Andrew were still down on the planks, writhing in the dust and yanking ferociously at each other’s good clothes. Alec glowered down at the twisting bodies.

“All right, boys, stop that,” he ordered curtly. “Stop that right now, both of you. Come on.”

The two boys were so wrought up they didn’t even hear Alec. When his words had no effect, Alec grabbed Felix by the collar and forcibly lifted him away from his cousin. Luckily for Felix, Roger arrived in time to do the same to Andrew. The two men managed to pull their sons apart and set them upright on their feet a safe distance away from each other. Both boys were breathing hotly, and Felix sported a bloody nose.

“Felix, you know better than to get into fights,” Alec chided severely.

Felix was not about to be done out of his grievance-not even when suspended from his father’s fist. He lashed out an accusing finger at Andrew.

“He tossed his stupid rock collection in the river, and Grandpa King’s fishing basket too. Look!” He pointed over the bridge to where the basket bobbed and rocked in the current, growing more waterlogged by the minute.

Hetty’s hands flew to her mouth for, despite its decrepit state, the basket really was one of the King family treasures. “Andrew!” she gasped.

Roger gave his son a shake. “What’d you do that for, Andrew?”

Andrew only fixed his mouth stubbornly and refused to reply. Alec, quite at the end of his rope, answered for him.

“Because he can’t stand the blasted rock collection,” he shouted at his brother.

“Until a few weeks ago, he had no interest in rocks at all. He’s just trying to please you.”

Roger let go of Andrew and straightened up, startled by such a farfetched idea. Like a lot of fathers, he tended to think of his son as an exact replica of himself, and he hadn’t exactly taken the time to discover otherwise.

“That’s ridiculous. He’s always loved geology. It’s your fault, you damn fool. Since he’s been in Avonlea, you’ve done nothing but turn him against me.”

Alec released Felix’s collar so abruptly that Felix staggered to keep his footing. Like Felix, Alec had a lot of pressures built up inside of him, and it was only natural that he, too, should reach his limit. At this wild accusation from Roger, Alec stepped forward furiously.

“Well, if you really believe that, why are you letting him stay here with me now? Answer me that, Mr. Internationally Renowned Geologist.”

“Alec, stop that!” Hetty hissed, embarrassed at such dissension among the adults of the family.

In turn, Roger grew even angrier than Alec. Anger was a splendid way to keep from really thinking about whether or not there was any truth in Alec’s words.

“You make me sick!” Roger spat out, going on the attack. “Now I realize the mistake I’ve made leaving Andrew with someone who can’t even look after himself, let alone his family.”

Never had the contrast between the two brothers been more vivid—Alec in his well-worn farm overalls, Roger with his fine suit and educated sophistication. Alec had had his fill of Roger’s airs of superiority. He jabbed his finger fiercely towards Roger’s game leg, ready to drop a few home truths on his pampered brother.

“Just because of that blasted accident, you’ve taken your frustrations out on me. Well, I’ve had enough! You’ve got a chip on your shoulder that gets bigger and uglier the older you get.”

“Alec! Roger!” Hetty admonished rather desperately. “You’re both behaving like a couple of children.”

“Father would roll over in his grave if he ever knew what a failure you are,” Roger shot recklessly back at Alec.

The two men stood head to head, exactly as Felix and Andrew had done moments earlier. Alec gave Roger a shove, perhaps remembering, like Felix, all the extra work he had been stuck with as a boy because Roger had been above such menial tasks and busy with his books.

“You’re so full of yourself, you can’t see past your nose. You wouldn’t lift a shovel with that bum leg of yours.”

“You weren’t the one dropped when you were a child,” Roger retorted, as if that made up for all the special treatment and privileges he had received.

“Well, sometimes,” Alec shouted, “I wish I was, because then I wouldn’t have to listen to you complaining about it forever.”

Roger’s face and neck turned scarlet. Fury made him breathe very hard. He seemed to have no arguments left except physical ones.

“Well, maybe you ought to know what it’s like!”

Without warning, Roger grabbed Alec by the shoulders and pushed him sideways, over to the side of the bridge against the railing. The railing was old and certainly not designed to take the weight of two belligerent men. In protest, it promptly sagged, cracked and broke away. For a moment, the two men seemed to hang, suspended in the air, astonishment stamped upon their faces. Then Alec’s body tore from Roger’s grip and went spinning down into the water below.

A dunking in the warm, shallow river might have been harmless enough had Alec not plummeted straight to the bottom and struck his head on a rock. When he surfaced, he lay motionless in the water, face down in the churning backwash his fall had caused. The rest of the family stood frozen on the bridge, gaping down through the splintered railing, unable to believe what had just happened.

Andrew was the first one to come to life. He sprang forward. “Uncle Alec?” he called, fully expecting his uncle to shake himself upright, find a footing on the rocky riverbed and come sloshing out onto the grassy bank at the side.

But Alec remained unmoving; only the agitation of the water caused him to bob up and down. His arms hung limp and his hair haloed his head like seaweed. Each fraction of a second that passed seemed to stretch into an age.

It was Hetty who first realized that Alec was unconscious. She began to jerk frantically at Roger’s sleeve.

“Roger! Roger, do something!”

“He’s drowning!” Felix shrieked, suddenly turning pale and forgetting everything else but his father’s danger. “He’s drowning!”

“Roger!” Hetty pleaded, staring down in horror at the limp body floating below.

Roger had been turning pale himself in a panic at what he had just done. Hetty’s prods at last galvanized him into action. Freed from his paralysis, he rushed round the end of the bridge and down the steep riverbank towards the water, losing his hat and tearing off his jacket as he went. In spite of his game leg, he moved with amazing quickness, half hopping, half sliding over the ledges of rock and crumbling earth until he, too, crashed into the water. Without a thought for his elegant white suit, Roger waded in, grabbed Alec by the shoulders and dragged him backward towards the shore.

By this time, all the others had scrambled down the bank too, getting smeared all over with grass stains and muddy earth. A row of willing hands were extended to help haul Alec’s heavy and awkward weight out of the water. But when they did, Alec only sagged slackly onto the grass, as unmoving as he had been in the water. Rivulets poured from his hair and his clothes. A great gash on his temple glared in the streaming expanse of his face.

For a moment, it looked as though panic were going to paralyze everyone again while Alec suffocated on the water in his lungs before their very eyes. However, Hetty had not been a schoolteacher for years, teaching the rules of water safety, for nothing. Fast action was needed by someone who knew what she was doing. Pushing the others aside, Hetty took command.

“Lay him over this boulder, Roger,” she ordered, already rolling up her sleeves. “Face down.”

As he had done so often before, Roger hurried to obey his older sister. He heaved Alec up over a large rock so that his head was hanging down on the other side. Hetty, veteran of a thousand schoolyard emergencies, grabbed Alec around the waist to pump water out of his lungs.

“One, two, three...” she panted, straining against her brother’s ribcage with all her strength.

Felix was shaking, Sara was white as a handkerchief, and Andrew was unable to move. Everyone watched in horrible apprehension while Hetty struggled with Alec’s bulk. Time stood still as Hetty pumped, and still Alec didn’t move.

Then, just when Felix was about to burst into howls, Alec twitched, sputtered and began to cough. Immense relief swept over the group. The children broke into enormous smiles. Roger released the breath that had been strangling in his own chest, and Hetty burst into tears.

Alec, the farmer, had turned out to be just as precious to Hetty as Roger, the famous geologist. She realized she had been behaving like a fool in the last few days, siding with one against the other. She was done, once and for all, with playing favorites.