It Never Can Happen Again. William De Morgan
lane, are off at a trot to requisition planks and cords. But not without establishing a slight collateral grievance, in the manner of their kind: "You've only got to name what you want, and we'll get it fast enough. Who's to know what you're askin' for, exceptin' you speak?"
Athelstan Taylor's surmise of course was that Uncle Bob had ended his run by falling into the lock at the upper end, where the ice was thin; and, breaking through it, had passed below the thicker ice, where he remained—probably jammed against the lower gate, which was closed. He noticed that this conjecture was at once accepted, but that no living soul of all those present referred to it in words. Silence is kept about it, but for a word between himself and the doctor, even till after the planks and cords and ladder have come, and the planks are laid athwart the sounder ice at the lower gate. One man can stand on them safely without fear of its giving—perhaps two. But one can break the ice with a pick fast enough, as soon as he can get at it. Hand him down a shovel to clear the snow a bit!
The parson is feeling sick at heart with his long night's vigil, and as though he could hardly face the dreadful end. He shrinks back, not to see more than he need. Then from the depths of the lock comes the crackling sound of the ice that breaks beneath the pick. Then the tension of the growing excitement as those on the brink watch for a result they feel confident of.
"Nothing there?"... "Nothing that side."... "Now you keep steady across with your peck—right you are!—across the middle ... don't go to sleep!... yes, now right up in the corner.... Something there?"... "Ah!—easy a minute till I catch holt ... have that cord ready.... Got him?"
"You are quite certain nothing can be done?"
"Absolutely certain. He was ready for heart-failure, without being an hour under the ice."
"Will you tell the poor woman, from me, that I had no choice but to go? And that poor baby...."
"Is there a baby?"
"Well—little girl of six then! Say I'll come at three to take her to see her father at the Hospital. You're sure it's the same case?"
"Not the least doubt. A blind sailor beggar—there couldn't be two. You know the wards at St. Brides.... Never mind—you'll find out.... What is it, my good woman?"
It is a woman with a tale to tell. Briefly, that she looked out of her bedroom window about an hour and a half since, and saw what must have been the unhappy inebriate running across the field, looking back, time and again, as if he see some party follering of him. Then he come to the lock, and stood close over the edge—back to, as you might say. So standing, he went wild, on the sudden, and threw up his arms, and there!—he was over in the lock, afore you could reckin him up like—clear over! Both her hearers are indignant, or perhaps incredulous about the truth of the story. For if she really saw this, why in Heaven's name did she give no alarm?—the man's life might have been saved! She expresses contrition as for an error of judgment, but no great remorse. She told her master—meaning her husband—who said it was a queer start. But it was that early! The exact bearing of this fact on the matter was far from clear.
"She'll have to tell her tale before the coroner, anyhow," said the doctor, as he showed his companion a short-cut into his road home. "Well!—now keep straight on—you'll be in the main road in five minutes. I hope you'll get a good breakfast and a good sleep before you marry those two sinners. Good-bye! Remember, straight on!"
For the Rev. Athelstan had told this gentleman of the binding engagement that he had to keep that morning as locum tenens at St. Vulgate's. He had with difficulty persuaded a navvy to remedy an omission in his duties towards the mother of his family, whom he had never led to the Altar of Hymen; and the said navvy had consented to do so this morning, and was rather entering into the fun of the thing. But if the parson were to fail in his appointment, was it certain that the delinquent would be brought to the scratch a second time?
However, he had still time for breakfast and rest before this appointment was due. So he walked briskly on through the thick snow, sad at heart, but wonderfully little the worse physically for his terrible experience. And as he walked he shuddered as he thought of the unhappy case of Alcoholism, flying over the spotless, virgin snow from God knows what, to his death. "I suppose Simon Magus had got out, after all, and was sharp on his heels," said the Rev. Athelstan, and then added: "At any rate, I'm glad it was me, not Gus!"
CHAPTER XV
HOW LIZARANN WAS TAKEN TO MISS FOSSETT'S, BUT HAD A STITCH IN HER SIDE, AND WASN'T TO GO TO DADDY TO-DAY. HOW THE RECTOR WENT TO JIM IN THE HOSPITAL, AND JIM WAS DISAPPOINTED ABOUT HIM
If Lizarann had had no grounds for looking forward to a reappearance of the curious New Policeman who had rescued her, she would have been more on the alert about the events of the previous night that concerned Uncle Bob. But she had no doubt her rescuer would come back. And this anticipation, as well as the hopeful tone in which he had spoken of Daddy's prospects at the Hospital, set her mind quite at rest about everything but the thing which presented itself to her merely as exaggerated domesticity. It was Uncle Bob, only rather more so.
Seen from her point of view, the events that had preceded Uncle Bob were that Daddy had been in collision with a Pickford's Van, and had suffered, but not murderously, from the accident; that he had not been able to walk, because of his leg; and that he had been carried away by well-disposed officials to an institution that promoted soundness of wind and limb, and had even been known to make its bénéficiaires musical. A child's mind knows no proportion; and the last item, which was really a gratuitous invention of the boy whose name was not Moses, gained credence with Lizarann slowly, and ended by throwing every other particular into the shade. Further, she knew that Uncle Bob, considered as an infliction, had been worse—for he was to her merely an endemic disease that increased or diminished, like gout—and that he had run out in the snow. Nothing abnormal in that; besides, the police, new and old, had run after him, to say nothing of the doctor-gentleman from the house with "Surgery" wrote up big, where you could get a supply of medicine if you said where you come from, and took back an exhausted bottle with a surprisingly high number on it, considering its pretensions. And these events having passed muster as normal, what followed was only natural.
Her aunt had shown at first dispositions to join the chase, but had desisted in consequence of remonstrance from neighbours, who had begun to be aware that history had been in the making during the night at Steptoe's; he, though chronic the previous evening, having become acute in the small hours of the morning. Mrs. Hicks and Mrs. Hacker, and others, having trooped round the vortex of excitement, had counselled Aunt Stingy to remain where she would be of some use, and not go canterin' over the buildin' land with no object, in the manner of speaking. Wasn't three plenty?
Jimmy 'Acker, told off to follow the trail in the snow and bring back word if he see 'em coming, had come back uneasy and evasive, had told contradictory stories about what he see, and had confirmed the public belief in the untrustworthiness of boys. Questioned, during ostracism, by his sister and Lizarann, his replies had been mysterious, and his refusal to make them less so unintelligible. The expression, "Just you wait and see if what I told you ain't k'rect," laid claim to having said something, sometime; and no effort of his hearers' memory confirmed his having done so. Other emissaries departed to get information, and did not come back.
This state of uncertainty had been ended by the reappearance of the policeman and the doctor, who climbed back over the fence followed by straggling units from among those who had witnessed the scene at the lock. Everyone can read something written about Death on the faces of those who have just seen him.
"Now which of you women was this man's wife?" That was what Lizarann had heard the policeman—the old sort; she looked in vain for her glorious friend—say to wifehood within hearing. Whereupon Aunt Stingy became on a sudden hysterical, and was helped, gasping and crying, into the house. Lizarann wanted to go too, moved by pity for she knew not what—for something folk were speaking under their breath about to one another, not to her; nodding about, pointing about,