The rain had stopped. The whole valley was running with water. The lane down to the ford was a stream, and they could hear the river long before they saw it. A deep, continuous roar, like something enormous breathing. The ford was gone.
Where the stepping stones had been. The brown water went over in a great smooth hump with branches and whole clumps of grass turning in it. And halfway across, where a willow had come down in the night and caught on the stones, a man in a green coat was clinging to the fallen trunk with both arms up to his chest in the flood. Anna screamed his name. She did not know she had done it until she heard it.
Stepan turned his head. She saw his face across the water, gray and quite calm, the face of a man who had been in a cold river before and had already decided how it would end. She was out of the gig and down the bank before the Duke had stopped the horse. She went into her knees, and the cold took the breath out of her, and the current pulled her skirts so hard she nearly fell. The Duke's hand closed on her arm and hauled her back up onto the grass.
You cannot, he said. Anna, look at me. You cannot reach him. It is too strong for you. He was right, and she knew it.
She stood on the bank with the water pouring off her skirts and her whole body shaking. And she knew that she could not reach Stepan, not if she tried with everything she had. And she saw her husband strip off his coat and his boots and tie the end of the rope around his own waist with quick, hard hands. He threw the other end to the caretaker's son and told him to make it fast to the oak. Then he walked into the river.
It took him almost at once. It knocked him off his feet, and he went under, and the rope snapped taut, and Anna heard herself cry out. Then his head came up and he got his feet under him and he went on. He went on step by step across the stones, leaning into the current with the water breaking white against his chest. It seemed to take a very long time.
He reached the willow. He got an arm around the old soldier. Anna saw Stepan shake his head and try to push him away. And she saw the Duke take the old man's face between his hands and say something to him close over the roar of the water. She could not hear it.
She did not need to. She knew exactly which words he had. She had taught him every one of them. Brother, come home. Stepan let go of the willow.