The candle died hard. But Lizarann knew that the longer it took, the less it would taint the atmosphere after its last convulsion, and left it to smoke in peace. So she watched it from her bed that stood in what was little more than a cupboard off the room her father slept in, and cried to think that his was empty. She watched, and wondered which would come first, the last flicker, or her last mouthful of chestnut. For she ate those chestnuts cold, and shoved the shells well under the bolster so Aunt Stingy shouldn't see. She was a very human little girl, was Lizarann, for all she was so devoted to her daddy.
The candle outlived the last chestnut. Then consideration had to be given to the problem how to get to sleep afore the nasty smell come along the ceiling and down. Once asleep, you can ignore smells, even when sut. Sut is the worst, but candlegutter has a nasty flaviour with it. So Lizarann did wisely to go to sleep vigorously.
She was succeeding, and beginning to dream a nice dream, though she wasn't getting warm yet, when her aunt made a tempersome re-entry on the scene. Lizarann woke with a start, and, remembering all the dreadful reality, broke out crying—she couldn't help it! Shaken by one arm, and told to wake up and have done with that petering noise, she recovered self-possession, except for a lagging sob at intervals, and sat up. Directed, inconsecutively, to lie down and go to sleep again, and no more nonsense, she was preparing to comply when her aunt gave a first beginning of a screech and stopped it short.
"Whatever is it?... O Lard!..."
"It's a ch-chestnut sell. I eated it." Confession proved good policy in this case, averting inquiry which would have revealed the hidden store under the bolster.
"O Lard, what a turn it gave me!... he's made me as bad as himself...." The woman had a frantic look about her; her husband's horrors evidently had a sort of infection for her; though of course the child had little insight into this. "You bad child, you! You little good-for-nothing slut, lyin' in bed eating chestnuts, and your father in the Hospital!"
This wounded Lizarann to the quick, and righteous indignation overcame both grief and fear. "I ain't," she shouted, and for the moment quite forgot that she was, or at least had been, the moment before.
"Don't you tell me that, you ontruthful child, and your leavings staring you in the face! Now just you tell no more stories, but say where they've took your father, and what he's done to himself."
This retrospective use of a conviction for untruth—and a morally unjust one—to suggest a course of antecedent misrepresentation on her part, seemed to Lizarann quite the worst piece of mendacity within her experience. But it got the conversation still further away from that nutshell deposit; and that was good, so far. "Father said he'd be took proper care on, and I w-wasn't to c-cry, and I shan't!"
"Can't you tell me where they've took your father to, instead of vexin' me? Is he gone to the Station, or the Hospital?"
"The Spoleece, they carried him off to the Sospital. Yass!" Then, sitting up in bed, a small monument of woe, for the moment tearless, Lizarann considered whether she had grounds for deciding which Hospital. She knew of three, the Smallporks, Guys's, and Bartholomew's, but she was very uncertain about the two last. She decided on denying the Smallporks, if asked. However, her aunt accepted the Hospital as sufficient. Let it go at that!
"What did your daddy say he'd done to his leg? Now, no makin' up! Say the truth, like he told you." This would have been a signal to many children to strain hard to invent the truth out of their own heads. Goaded by stupid, unsympathetic people, they do this in self-defence. But Lizarann was honourable and clear-headed.
"He only saided his leg—didn't say nuffint about it. Only the sip's doctor would make a square job of it. Yass!"
"And what good's your schoolin' done you? Couldn't you have the sense to ask and find? What ever do you suppose God gave you your tongue for?—to set with your mouth wide open? Little plagues can talk fast enough when they ain't wanted to it!" She then suggested, most unfairly, that Lizarann was detaining her by holding out false hopes of information. "I should like to know how long you expect me to stand here askin' questions. This time o' night! And me wanted to look after your uncle! Get down into your bed and ha' done with it! I can't waste my time talkin' to you." After which she departed and locked the door; Lizarann could not imagine why. But there was something very queer with Uncle Bob, who had been audible all the time in fitful outbreaks, conveying a sense of his adjective applied as a stigma to many things, and as a refreshing emphasis to parts of speech.
Lizarann's last impression—a hazy one, before deep sleep came, and total oblivion—was that her aunt went out from the house, leaving the street door on the jar, and that then she heard the voice of their neighbour Mrs. Hacker, saying, "He'll be all right by morning."
Now this little maiden attached only two ideas to this husband of her aunt: one, that he was a painful concomitant of all their lives, who had to be put up with, and where was the use of complainin'?—the other that he was the victim of a liver-disorder known as "the boil." His absorption of gin was part of himself; a practice as much identified with him as any inherent quality or fixed condition; perhaps the celibacy of a priesthood presents a sort of parallel case. So all new and strange developments in Uncle Bob were credited to this disorder, and when Mrs. Hacker from over the way said the patient would be all right by morning, the only suggestion to Lizarann's drowsy mind was that there was a bottle of doctor's stuff never been took, and that it had just come in handy. For—but perhaps you know this?—the masses, par excellence, account all drugs good for all diseases, if took reg'lar. The classes, prone to affectation, get prescriptions made up each time.
So the child was soon sound asleep and happy.
But the cobbler's disorder was the first beginning of the end of a long devotion to gin, and, to speak scientifically—always do so when you can!—he was in a very advanced condition of Alcoholism. But he was very unlike the priest, who, in the most advanced conditions of celibacy, passes his life—poor fellow!—in secret longing for the remedy. For Mr. Steptoe hugged his Alcoholism, caressed it, and fed it constantly with new supplies of raw gin. His affection for the cause of his disease was self-supporting, and he longed for small goes of it as keenly as the priest longs for the proper antidotes of his—for Home and Love.
When Aunt Stingy took such pains to lock her niece into the bedroom she might just as well have locked her husband into the front parlour. But she was deceived by appearances. For it was just—only just—untrue that he had had all the liquor there was. There was a short half-glass in the bottom of an unnoticed bottle, put by to be took back, and a penny on it. On this Steptoe greedily pounced, during his wife's first interview with the child in the next room. It produced that momentary flash that is so misleading in these cases, when actual improvement seems to follow a new stimulus. Often the trembling hand and idiot brain resume skill and coherency, for the moment, only to fall still lower at the next reaction. The woman felt secure in her husband's assurance that he was a blooming sight better, and that he couldn't tell what the described Hell had been the described matter with him. He promised to come to bed as soon as the fire giv' out; and she left him, free from the horrors for the time being, standing with his back agin' the mantelshelf, collecting the last heat with a view to sitting on it—the heat, not the mantleshelf—while he finished through his pipe.
She ought not to have done it. Or she ought to have took the key out of the outside of the bedroom door, or hid it anywheres handy—where he would never have looked for it, Law bless you! Instead, she went to bed herself, and probably fell asleep as soon as a sense of her husband moving, downstairs, seemed to warrant a belief that he was going to keep his word. She slept sound, and it may have been two hours past midnight when she was waked by a movement below, and found that her husband had never come to bed; was still smoking, probably. But this was not her first thought as, having lighted her candle, she sat up in bed, noting the sounds that followed. Her spoken reflection was: "If that's Lizarann prancing about, I'll let her know to-morrow." Then she remembered the key, and couldn't understand the position. And then took advantage of a silence to decide that it wasn't anything. When an "anything" may involve our having to get out of bed in the cold, we are apt to decide on its non-existence. She blew out the candle and lay down again.
This is not a medical work, and it is no part of its business to locate exactly the case of Robert Steptoe in medical records. The discrimination of the symptoms of delirium tremens proper, and their points of difference from those of ordinary delirium—nervous or feverish—are matters of great interest, especially in their relation to treatment, but they belong elsewhere. Our function is limited to recording the symptoms of the case as they have been brought to our knowledge; and we must hope that our medical readers will allow a certain latitude to the description of the only instance of the malady that has come within its writer's experience. Some of it is necessarily conjectural, but nothing would be gained by a laborious effort to separate these portions from the certainties. For instance, the patient's hours in the room alone, after his wife left him, must be matter of surmise. But surmise to the following effect appears well grounded.
So long as the effect continued of the small dose of stimulant he had discovered, he remained sane and free from immediate delusion, and had no other intentions than to smoke through his pipe and follow his wife to bed, as promised. But after he had finished it, and knocked the ashes out—they were found on the hob, and the pipe stuck in the looking-glass frame, when the ground was gone over afterwards—his attention was arrested by something crawling over the table. He had seen one before (as appears by our narrative), in fact, he had seen several, causing a sympathetic horror in Aunt Stingy. He tried to destroy this one, but nothing came of the attempt. Putting a volume on it and crushing it down only caused it to come through the book and crawl over it. He tried this frequently, wondering at the result, but not specially alarmed—more amused perhaps in a kind of vacuous way—until he saw another, and then another. The place was all over them, and he called them names—some very inappropriate—and qualified them all with his favourite adjective. In themselves they really did not matter. But most unfortunately the fact that they were all going in the same direction showed him that they were emanations from a man of the name of Preedy, a leather-seller, of whom he used to purchase ready-closed uppers and cuttings. It was shrewd of him, he thought, to identify Preedy as their original source by the steady way in which they all kept going in one direction. And still shrewder to infer that it was all part of a scheme to oust him from the sort of little kennel or box in which he carried on his trade in a street half a mile off. It was left locked at night; but, seen by the light of these vermin, and a buzzing noise that accompanied them, what was to prevent Preedy getting possession of it and bribing the police on duty to support him in his usurpation? He sat down for a minute or two longer to think this out. The room was always well lighted, because the street gas-lamp, just outside, always showed through the clear space above the shutter.
Reflection did not even suggest that it might be a mistake about Mr. Preedy. If it had, his condition would not have been delirious. On the contrary, it all became clearer to him than ever. If it were not true, how came he to have read half-an-hour since full particulars of it under the heading "Late Entries" in the sporting journal that was still lying on the table? He could find it again in a minute, only it was so dark. He had a match and lit it, to read by; but his hand shook so—always along of that (described) Preedy—that he couldn't master the (described) small type. And his wife had got the candle away. Just like her!—she done it a-purpose. But he knew there was a candle in Jim's bedroom, next door.
The noise he made fumbling at the door, which was of course locked, waked Lizarann, who, having fallen asleep on the fact that her aunt had locked her in, knew that fact and no other as her senses returned. She called drowsily, "You locked the key that side," conceiving the disturber to be her aunt. Contrary to what might have been expected, her uncle understood clearly, and opened the door. But the reason he felt no surprise at the key having been turned outside was one of the indescribables of delirium. It was, somehow, because Lizarann answered instead of Jim. Of course—so it seemed to him—if Jim had answered, it would have been inside. You think that too strange? Try delirium, and see!
His wife had had nothing to gain by telling him of Jim's accident, and his faculties had not been at observation-point. Or, perhaps, he might be said to have forgotten that he had never known that Jim didn't come in to supper. Anyway, he accepted Jim as having gone to bed, and made a sort of apology for disturbing him.
"Ashkpardon mashcandlestick," said he, in two husky words, consisting of matter thrown loosely together, and added, as a single thought that might help, "Looshfermash." He had no idea about time—thought his wife had left him a few minutes since.
Lizarann was not frightened. She did not understand that Uncle Bob imagined her daddy was in his bed as usual; and there was nothing unusual in his coming to look for a lucifer-match. She called out to him without moving: "On the mankleshelf, Uncle Bob." But she was only half awake. She dimly heard him feeling about the room for the candlestick, and muttering to himself. Sporadic examples of his favourite adjective made outcrops in his monologue, becoming more and more frequent as he failed to discover the object of his search. Still, Lizarann thought herself at liberty to remain half-asleep, if she chose.
Not being sure how far she had done so—she might, indeed, have been wholly asleep without knowing it—she could not have said how long this continued. She was roused in the end by the delirious man suddenly exclaiming, in a voice of terror that filled her, too, with terror: "My Goard, then, he has only one!" He then broke out in incoherent fear: "You keep him off of me, master—you keep him off. Or I tell yer, I'll brind him—I will!" At which Lizarann's heart stopped. Not from anything in the words, which were of the sort that she would have told Bridgetticks were "only Uncle Bob." Uncle Bob occurred too frequently in daily life for her to fret much about his language. The cold shiver had run down her back, this time, because she knew there was no one in the room with him. But, may she not have known falsely? Surely there was someone else there, that he was speaking to. Listen!
"Good job you come in, master! You're a good chap, you are. You're Bonyparty, I take it, in the picter-book. You larn him to keep his distance, and I'm your friend. Won't you take nothing? Just a drain?..." He wandered on, with a thickness of speech that, if spelt ever so successfully, would only encumber the text.
Uncle Bob had gone mad, clearly, and would get himself took to the Asylum, where Bridgetticks's Aunt Tabither was. Bridget was very proud of this aunt. And though there might, as in her case, be advantages in the end, the present had to be faced. And poor Lizarann was the only soul that knew anything about it, and was stiff with terror in bed, in the dark, with a speechless tongue, but a calm interior spot somewhere, that was wondering when she would begin to cry out in her agony of fear, yet knew that daddy wasn't there to cry to.
In a few moments she was aware that the breath of the delirious man was catching again, as in terror, and his voice followed: "He ain't gone—he ain't gone! Don't you pay no attention to 'em, master! I can see his eye under the bed, spinning round like a wheel. If there'd a been two of 'em now...." Then in a sudden extremity of terror his voice was worse than if it had been a scream; he forced it from his lungs in a strained whisper. "My Goard!—he's a-coming. He's a-coming on. He'll get me afore he's done, he will.... Leave hold of me! Leave hold, you...." We have to stop short.
Lizarann's impression was that he then struck out to protect himself against his imaginary aggressor. He certainly fell, and was stunned. The child grasped this, and the fact that he was now harmless for the moment. But she was so dumbstricken that it was perhaps the whole of three or four minutes before she could find her voice, and then only for inarticulate hysterical screams.
The fall of Steptoe on the floor was the sound that waked his wife in the room above. The silence that followed was almost long enough to convince her of the safety of going to sleep again. But Lizarann's cries of heartfelt terror and entire panic came to stop that. The woman jumped up and lit her candle, whose wick had smouldered to the grease the last time it was blown out; it had to be coaxed, and a libation of melted paraffin had to be poured off it before it would flare up steady-like, so you could carry it and not spill. It taxed Mrs. Steptoe's nerves to negotiate all this, with that tryin' child making that noise downstairs. But it was either that or go down in the dark. We borrow her own phraseology. Besides, Lizarann had had nightmare and woke everybody, that time Jim gave Bob such a remindin', three months ago. So her aunt made her light secure before going below.
Her expectation was to find her husband in a stupid drunken sleep in the front parlour, and the door of the back room closed as she had left it. She saw the open door and quickened her pace.
"What's that child been after outside of the room? I'll soon know about that...." She soon knew all that could be known at the moment—that her husband, whom she nearly tumbled over, was insensible on the ground—or half-insensible, muttering—and that Lizarann was vociferous with terror in bed, and quite incapable, so far, of telling anything. Her first instinct was faultfinding, as against the child for screaming. "Stop your noise or I'll make you.... Lizarann!... do you hear?... Will you stop?" And then in a voice of vengeful resolution: "I'll be in after you directly." Whereupon Lizarann choked her screams back and waited.
Her aunt was examining Uncle Bob for bruises, so she thought; and he appeared to be resenting the inquiry. Suddenly he recovered his articulation in a wonderful way, and became quite unreasonably angry.
"You'll keep your hands off me, or I'll smack your chops for you." He gathered himself up and got on his legs, but swayed a little as he stood. "What's that you're a-sayin'? Why the (described) Hell can't you speak up? Your tongue's fast enough when nobody's asked you for it. Look you here, Pry-scilla Coupland, I ain't going to be minced about no more, for nobody." Lizarann knew from his calling his wife by her maiden name that her uncle's state was a dangerous one. He did it whenever he became savage with drink. What followed was no improvement. "Ah!—you may go and tell Jim if you like. He's in it, like the rest on 'em. I know all about their planning and scheming. I'll make my affidavit afore a lawyer. First thing to-morrow morning, and make an end of it all. I will!" His manner had such serious conviction in it that the child thought him sane for a moment. It was something grown-up that she didn't know about. Her aunt's reply, with an uneasy half-laugh in it, was an attempt to soothe and conciliate. "Whatever are you fancyin', Robert?" she said nervously. "Who's planning or scheming? Just you come up to bed, and be done with your talk-talk-talk. Affidavits and lawyers! Where shall we be next?"
"Don't you think to take me in!" His reply was in manner perfectly sane and coherent—that of a shrewd man of business, who sees through a clever imposture, being himself cleverer still. "Don't you think to take me in! I wasn't born last Sunday mornin'. Now look 'ee here, Pry-scilla Coupland! Shall I tell yer something I know? Shall I tell yer a little thing I know? A little—little thing?" This was said as a question of superhuman slyness, as he pointed an intuitive finger to emphasize it and waited. Then, quite suddenly, he became ferocious. "What the Hell, do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't know that it's you that's in behind it all? Ah!—you and Jim. One as like as t'other. It's a bloody conspiracy, I tell yer. And I'll make yer pay for it. I'll make yer pay." Still, Lizarann was impressed that he was speaking of something real, as there is nothing per se insane in an idea of a conspiracy, however groundless.
But when he next spoke, she saw that he was really mad. For her aunt, perceiving that her attempt at a soothing tone had only made matters worse, tried a little intimidation. "You wouldn't kerry on like that, Robert, exceptin' you knew Jim wasn't here. But he's a-coming, and I tell it you, for you to know. So just you bear it in mind—there!"
"Jim's over there. I seen him." He pointed to the bed.
"Talking silly, you are! His bed's empty, anyhow! But he's a-coming—that I tell you, plain. Now you come along upstairs."
"Aha!—right you are, Mrs. Hess." This was the initial of Steptoe. He went on with a sly triumphant wrinkling of his face, that mixed oddly with the tremor of eye and lip that is part of this disease. "No, he ain't in that bed. But I can tell yer where he is—he's under it! That's where Jim is. I seen his eye, plain to see!..."
"Jim's eye, ye silly! Come to bed, and sleep your drink off. Ye born fool! Jim's eye!"
"Ah!—Jim's eye. The one he opens at night. He's under-'anded and sly—sees a rare lot more than he'll put a name to! Why, I seen it, God damn you!"—with a sudden revival of ferocity—"I seen it, I tell you, there under that there bed."
Then Lizarann knew that he was mad. Of course, she knew nothing of delirium tremens, but she knew quite well the state often described as "mad drunk," and that her uncle when so affected always became violent; although since that occurrence three months since, fear of Jim had been a wholesome check. Oh, if Daddy were only here!—so thought Lizarann, as she stood in the doorway with her teeth chattering, and literally sick with terror.
"I tell you I seen it, and I'll tell you some more. Only just you stand still. I'm a going for to cut it out, by Goard! Only you wait till I get my * * * knife.... It's round the * * * corner against the window...." These were the last articulate words Lizarann heard, as her aunt followed their speaker into the front room. Then the voices of both in confusion—his raving, hers concealing apprehension badly under an attempt at command. This for a while; then a rapid crescendo of terror ending in a shriek, and an appeal to Heaven-knows-who to get the Police. And Lizarann—not seven yet!—had to make up her mind what to do.
CHAPTER XIII
HOW THE RECTOR OF ROYD TOOK A WRONG TURNING, AND PICKED UP LIZARANN IN THE SNOW. MR. STEPTOE'S KNIFE, AND HOW LIZARANN MADE HIM LEAVE HOLD OF IT. HOW AUNTIE STINGY WAS HANDY IN CASE OF ANYTHING, AND UNCLE BOB WENT TO SLEEP ON A SECOND-HAND SOFA
When the Rev. Augustus Fossett, the brother of Lizarann's schoolmistress, and incumbent of St. Vulgate's Church, Clapham Rise, got hæmoptysis, his friends tried to persuade him to throw up his appointment and go away to Australia or South Africa. His brother Jack wanted him to chuck the Church, and take to some healthy employment—the young man's expressions, not ours—and took the opportunity to generalize overmuch, on the subject of the causes of death among the Clergy. He said that something he referred to merely as "it" was "all very fine, but two-thirds of them died of consumption." He was devoted to his brother, and wanted badly to get Gus clear of that filthy slum, with its horrible rows of little houses that had two or three families in them before the mortar was dry. But Gus refused to comply with his family's wishes. "I know Jack thinks," said he, "that if he could only get me into a lawyer's wig, or a sailor's trousers, I shouldn't have an apex to my right lung, practically. And moist sibilant râles would be things unheard of." He added that he wasn't married, and never meant to be; that the neighbourhood was healthy, if it was a little damp; and that all he wanted was change of air now and again. Taylor would come and take his duties for a week or so, and he would go to Royd, and Bessie Caldecott would nurse him up, at the Rectory.
For the Rector of Royd, whose acquaintance the story has already made, was, in his relation to the Rev. Gus, the other half of one of those friendships that, according to Tennyson, have mastered time. So every now and again, as occasion arose, the Rev. Athelstan's broad chest and shoulders loomed large in the pulpit of St. Vulgate's, and his voice sounded altogether too big for the architectural treatment of the east window.
About six weeks before the story-time of last chapter, the reverend gentleman had said to his sister-in-law: "Bess, I can't have Gus kill himself this winter. He'll do it in the end, but let's keep him here as long as we can. I'll go and see to his parishioners in January, and he must come here. You mustn't let him work hard, and give him no end of cream and new-laid new-laid eggs. I can get Tom Cowper to do his work in February, and then I'll come back and take him for walks. Ah dear!" The Rector's anxiety about his friend got to the surface, through his tone of serene confidence, which was factitious.
"What are we to do about Phœbe and Joan?" said Miss Caldecott.
"Isn't it very likely all nonsense about infection?"
"I don't know." Then both looked perplexed; and that, as we all know, doesn't do any good.
"There's plenty of places for them to go to ..." said the Rector; but didn't say where.
"But they'll be so heart-broken," said Miss Caldecott, "if they are away when their uncle's here." For Mr. Fossett had always held rank as a "putative" uncle to Phœbe and Joan, with natural confusion in their minds as a result.
"We must think it out somehow," said the Rector. "Their potatoe uncle! Ah dear!"
It must have been thought out somehow, without danger of infection to Phœbe and Joan; for January saw Augustus shepherding the flock of Athelstan, and Athelstan heavily afflicted with the population of a suburban slum. "At least," said he to himself, in the small hours of the morning, as he plodded back to his temporary residence from a death-bed side, through a thick snowstorm—"at least in the country we are still Shakespearian. These Londoners get more unintelligible every year." For a youth whom he had heard communing with another had first said, "I'll have your hat, Maria," which seemed to have no meaning; and then when the other said, "What price 'Igh 'Olborn, Joe?" had merely replied, "So long," and trotted away whistling.
They were the last defilers of the English language, though, that he heard speech of for the best part of a two-mile walk. For all that had a bed to go to had done so an hour or more since, and left the white world to the snowflakes and the police-force—the latter sadly outnumbered by the former, and fairly driven to whatever shelters official obligation allowed. For the flakes, which at midnight had been large and rather benevolent than otherwise, with a disposition to lie down quietly and not fuss, had become small and vicious and revengeful, and were rushing point-blank along the streets seeking for the eyes of passers-by and finding none. The gas-lamps, which had at first enjoyed melting them as they came down, were giving up the attempt in despair, and had each its incubus of thickening snow to darken it. The Rev. Athelstan found it pleasant and stimulating—it reminded him of the Alps, years ago—and he had only met three vehicles, all told, in the whole of his walk, so far. One was a belated coster's cart, drift-blocked; whose donkey, its owner, and a policeman were trying to help it out of its difficulties. He lent a hand, and the rest of his physical resources, most effectually, and earned benedictions and a certificate that he was the right sort. Both the policeman and the costermonger spoke as though several sorts had been tried, and been found wanting. The former, as he wished him good-night, remarked that it was a blizzard this time, and no mistake, as though serious mistakes had been made in the classification of previous examples submitted. A sense of pass-exams. hung in the air. The Rev. Athelstan said good-night, and tramped or waded off through the snow, acknowledging to himself that he didn't know why a blizzard was a blizzard. Now his impression had been that this one was a bad snowstorm. However, a policeman would know, of course.
"American, I suppose," said he to himself, "and well up to date! Now I wonder...." He stopped opposite a wayside inn standing back from the road; a record of the days of an old suburban highway, with a drinking-trough for horses and a troughlet for dogs, and a swinging sign, half obscured by snowblotch that might fall off, or not. But it would in a minute, if waited for, for its framing creaked in the wind. "I wonder where I am?" he continued. "I've seen this pothouse before. I've photographed it, if it's the same. It was the Robin Hood." A snow-slip occurred at this moment, and left the outlaw's face and a portion of the merry greenwood visible. Oh dear yes!—the Robin Hood. No mistake about that, anyhow! The pause ended in complete enlightenment. "Then I know where I am. There's the new Cazenove slum on the left. Now I've got to take care not to go down the wrong turning. One's a cul de sac; ends in a fence. But I fancy mine's the next—yes!—mine's the next. Addy Fossett's school's just a bit farther on. Lady Arkroyd said it wasn't a slum! A slum made up of whited sepulchres—well! suppose we say machine-pointed brick sepulchres, and let 'em go at that." The difficulty of walking through the snow, and the silence, both seemed to favour soliloquy. He plodded on, driving aside the dry white snowdrift with his feet, and cogitating.
How deadly dark and silent it is down this side-street! Only one gas-lamp alight that one can see, some way on. And the silence! One might be murdered here so quietly, with so little inconvenience to one's murderer. And the cold! "Thank God it is me and not Gus," says the man in the snow through whose mind these thoughts pass. "He wouldn't be kept at home, even by a blizzard. Really—if I hadn't a good pair of eyes.... Hullo! what's that?" He quickens his pace towards something he has seen or heard.
An instant after, and the silence has vanished. Piercing shrieks are on the night—a child's shrieks—shrieks of frenzied and intolerable panic, there, where nothing can be distinguished yet.... Yes!—there—coming this way through the snow—this side of the dim lamp-gleam the snowdrift all but hides ... but oh, so small! How can a thing so small give such a cry?
How can it struggle so, either, as it is caught and picked up by a pair of strong arms, and wrapped in the bosom of a big overcoat? "Anything"—said the Rev. Athelstan, when he told the tale after—"anything to get the poor little barefooted, nightgowned scrap up off the snow, and out of the cold! The pluck of the midget! I never saw such a baby. Not seven yet—just think of it!" For he often told of this adventure of his afterwards. But let us tell it now.
"Oh, pleathe—pleathe—let me down!" It is such a heart-harrowing cry for liberty that its hearer almost believes himself cruel to shut his ears to it. But—the cold! "Oh, pleathe let me go to c-call for the Spoleece to c-come to ... Uncle Bob...."
"I'm the Police, dear child, this time. You show me where Uncle Bob is, won't you? Hush-sh!... there, dear, now! ... that way, is he? That's a good brave little girl.... In at this door, is it? That's right! Now I'll put you down." And then Uncle Bob's niece is on the ground, pulling with all her small force at the skirt of the big coat that has sheltered her. She doesn't believe the gentleman's statement that he is the Police; or only with some important reservations. But he is on the side of the right, she is sure, and is vast and powerful. It is no use her pulling, if he does not mean to come after all. But all is well, for he has only paused to get off the big coat the snow falls in lumps from as he leaves it behind him on the floor, and is pulled along the dark narrow passage towards some mysterious male voice out of all keeping with its surroundings—a voice with something of a Hyde Park orator's rant in it—pulled by the little nightgowned morsel that seems, now that the end is gained, and help has come, to be quite dumb with terror.
Along the narrow passage and through the door on the left. The room is lighted by a candle at its last gasp on a side-table, and the gleam through the window, above the closed shutters, of the street-lamp outside. There is light enough to see all that is going on in that room, and it is a sight to give pause to the readiest help, and unnerve the most willing hand. For any succour, in the very bringing of it, may in this case undo itself.
Against the wall, in the corner next the window, is the ashy face of a terror-stricken woman, kneeling with hands outstretched to avert violence threatened by a man who is waving some weapon before her eyes, while he talks incoherently. It is his voice that sounded like a popular orator's, making telling points. What seemed a meaning when the words were unheard vanishes as they become audible.
"You keep still afore I pin you to the wall. You * * * well know that what I swear to by Goard's the * * * truth. Climb up and see—all I say is, climb up and see! The * * * noospaper's on my side, and d'you think they don't * * * know.... Ah!—would you?—steady—steady! I'll put a strap on either side of you to keep you steady. You and Jim thought you were going to have it your own blooming way. And where d'you think he's gone?... He—he—he!" He laughed a sniggering laugh. "Jim, he's gone along the railings. Now, don't you go sayin' I haven't told you, or I'll just rip you up afore the clock strikes. I can have your liver out just as soon as not. I can give a reference, by Goard! Just you ask my wife—she can get a * * * reference." And then the Rev. Mr. Taylor saw that what he held in his hand was a pointed cobbler's knife, a deadly instrument.
The little girl, clinging to him in convulsive terror, made sufficiently prompt action almost impossible. He felt that if he could have caught the man's eye, he might have been able to control him. But as it was, any movement on his part might have meant a stab in the woman's heart. He could see she had on only a thin sort of flannel wrapper over a night-dress, and he understood that the man, in his delirium, conceived her to be some enemy, not his wife certainly. What she was of course he did not know. The lips of his mind formed the simple word "drink"—the evil principle whose name accounts for half the ills flesh would have been so glad never to come to the enjoyment of, but must perforce inherit.
He dared not spring upon the man to pinion him, with that hideous knife so near the woman's life-blood. But a change was to come—one caused by the woman herself. She could barely gasp, so paralyzed was articulate speech; but the few words she said, "Catch hold upon him behind, master!" were heard and understood by the man, who instantly swung round to be ready for some unknown opponent. The Rev. Athelstan felt greatly relieved. The position was simplified: he was now face to face with a delirious maniac with a knife—a knife that seemed made for murder—that was all!
"Thank God it isn't Gus, but me!" said a passing thought as he caught the madman's eye, just too late to unsettle, as he might have done—so he fancied—the delivery of a thrust backed by the whole strength of the arm that sent it. It was well for him—so straight did the blow come—that the clerical hat he pulled off to stop it had a wide hard brim and a round hard crown, good for a point to slip on. The boss of a Japanese targe could not have balked it more cleverly. Had it struck the centre straight, it would have pierced through to the hand that held it. As it was, it went aslant, striking twice on the shining silk nap, but quite harmlessly.
"Give me the knife, my man. I can show you how to use it better than that." His voice could not have been more collected if he had been reading the Commination Service, without meaning it, in the little old peaceful church at Royd. The delirious man, whose conception of his own position was probably that of a victim somehow at bay, surrounded by conspirators, was for a moment convinced that he would better it by compliance, and was indeed actually surrendering the knife, when the woman's hysterical voice broke in, and undid everything.
"Yes—you give the gentleman up the knife, Robert! You give it him to keep for you now you ain't yourself, for to take good care of and giv' back. He'll do the best by you! You may trust the gentleman ... etc., etc." The Rev. Athelstan's mind said: "Deuce take the woman!—can't she hold her tongue?" but of course he said nothing so secular aloud.
The lunatic—for he was little else—had all but given up the knife, but of course now changed his mind. "You're answerin' for him, I see!" he exclaimed, with so sane a voice it was hard to think him delirious. "I can see round some of yer better than you think. Yes—Muster Preedy! Ah!... would you ... would you?..." This with an expression of intense cunning, with the knife held behind him; and a dangerous tendency to edge back towards the woman, all the while watching the Rev. Athelstan with a sly, ugly half-grin.
As he got nearer to the woman, she became unable to control herself—little wonder, perhaps!—and broke out hysterically: "Oh, God ha' mercy!—stop him! stop him!—Oh, Lard!—oh, Christ!..." and so on. It was time to act, and Athelstan Taylor knew it. Delay might be fatal. Guided by some instinct he could not explain, he shouted with sudden decision: "They're here, you fool! Can't you hear them?" and then, seizing on the pause in which the maniac's attention—caught also for the moment, perhaps, by railway sounds without—wandered to this mysterious "they," sprang upon him, and by great good luck pinioned his knife-hand as both rolled together on the carpetless floor. "Thank heaven it's me, not Gus!" thought he again, as he and his antagonist pitched heavily on the ground. He could feel the great strength there was still in the miserable victim of the fiend Alcohol. Often patients with this disorder will need three or four men to hold them—indeed, sometimes develope abnormal muscular strength, even while its tremors are running riot through their whole system.
But Mr. Steptoe's strength would have been abnormally developed indeed to enable him to contend against the successful competitor in a hundred athletic contests in the old 'Varsity days. A few sharp struggles, and he lay powerless, his adversary kneeling over him, grasping his two wrists, while he cursed and muttered below, before the railway sounds, connected apparently with the stopping of an almost endless luggage-train, had subsided into mere clinks that seemed to soothe it to stillness. But the knife was still in his right hand.
"Now where's that little maid?" Our little Lizarann had never run away, as some children might have done, but had held on bravely through the whole of the terrifying scene, full of admiration for this new Policeman—she almost thought he was really one; and when she heard him ask for her, she found voice to reply, not very articulately. She was there, please!—blue with the cold and her teeth chattering. Aunt Stingy was g-goed away. So much the better, the new Policeman seemed to think. He continued: "Very well, my child!—now you can be useful.... No, don't call your aunty. We'll do without her; she's no use. You do just as I tell you—just exactly!" Lizarann nodded her alacrity to obey orders. "Me?—yass!" is her brief undertaking.
The gentleman looked round at her, still grasping the wrists of his captive, who muttered on wildly, lost in a forest of execrations without meaning. He seemed satisfied that the child could be trusted, and determined at any rate to try a desperate expedient to get that horrible knife out of the maniac's clutch. The only other course would be to call or send for help. Send whom? This baby out in the snow again? Heaven forbid! As for the woman, she was no use. He could hear her hysterics in the next room. No!—if the child only dared do exactly as he told her, he would soon have that knife safe out of the way.
"Look here, my dear, where's the box of matches—the lucifer matches? Now don't you be frightened, but do as I tell you. You light a match!" Lizarann obeyed dutifully, though her hand shook. "Now, you know, if you blow that match out, there'll be a red spark, won't there?... Very well then, or yass, if you prefer it. Now I want you just to touch your father's hand with it ... oh, he's your uncle, is he?... well!—now you'll have to light another.... Now you touch his hand with it—don't you be frightened."
Lizarann followed her instructions without question. Whatever the gentleman said was right. Her duty was obedience. But she broke out in spasmodic terror at the result of what she had supposed to be some curious experiment; not to be understood by her, but certainly beneficial.
And Athelstan Taylor needed all his strength to retain the hand that was scorched, as his prisoner—or rather patient—gave a great plunge and a yell, as the fire touched him. But he kept his grip, though it was his left hand against the delirious man's right; and the knife, relinquished in the uncontrollable start, was left lying on the floor as he dragged him across the room away from it. He could breathe freer now that the knife was out of the way.
He inferred afterwards that the whole thing had happened very quickly; for the railway-occurrence without seemed to explain itself as a convoy of empty trucks shunting on a siding to allow an express to shriek past—an express that cared nothing for blizzards, and came with a vengeance, just as he gave his last instructions to Lizarann, waiting a moment for that little person's terror to subside.
"That's a good little girl. Now pick up that knife and take it away. And then ... well!—and then ... shut the door after you and go to bed, for God's sake, and get warm.... What? ... no!—never mind Aunt What's-her-name?... don't say anything to her—only go to bed too. What did you say her name was? Aunt Stingy?" It didn't seem probable, but the little maiden evidently felt surprised at its being thought the reverse. She confirmed it with gravity, and was departing, small and bitterly cold, but intensely responsible, when the new Policeman called her back.
"Look here, poppet!—you stand the street-door wide open, and then you go to bed. Now shut the door."
Lizarann obeyed religiously, and crept away silently to bed. Only, as she passed through her daddy's room with its empty pillow, life became too hard for her to bear. But tears came to help, big ones in plenty; and Lizarann's bed was kind. It absorbed, received, engulfed, all but cancelled the small mass of affliction that cowered into it and stopped its ears and did its best to cease. In two minutes after leaving the New Policeman, Lizarann was little more than a stifled sob, at intervals, in the dark; in five, at most, had cried herself to sleep.
Mrs. Steptoe, after giving way—quite excusably, to our thinking—upstairs for ten minutes or so, began to be aware that her self-control was returning. But being hysterical as well as human, she utilized it to go on moaning and gasping intentionally, some time after she had ceased to be able to do it involuntarily. Curiosity about who had given such a sudden and effectual succour then began to get the better of mere terror, and she perceived she ought to make an effort. So she went cautiously downstairs and listened, outside the door, to the voices in the front room; her husband's, now seeming less definitely insane, more weak and drivelling; and that of the stranger, whom she found it easiest to take for granted, although unexplained. Very severe shock makes the mind travel on the line of least resistance. No!—she wouldn't knock at the door just yet to ask if her services were wanted. That would do presently, especially as she expected stupor would soon follow her husband's outbreak, and if she showed herself now he might have a return. So after listening a few moments, sufficiently to satisfy herself that the stranger's voice showed a complete mastery of the position, Aunt Stingy retired into the bedroom adjoining, to be handy in case of anything—so she described her action afterwards—and then, having made sure that her niece was in bed in the little room and sound asleep, lay down on Jim's vacant bed for just a half-minute and closed her eyes. And would you have believed it?—or rather, it should be said, would Mrs. Hacker, to whom she told it, have believed it?—she was that dead wore out that only listening for two minutes to the voices going on steady, as you might say, set her off half unconscious-like, and in an unguarded moment sleep took her by surprise. Just the letting of her eyes close to had made all the difference! Kep' open, no such a thing! In this case they were not kept open, and there was such a thing. It took the form of profound sleep.
But before leaving the passage—the one known by the rather grandiose name of The Hall—Aunt Stingy first removed her rescuer's overcoat, that still lay on the ground, and hung it on a neighbouring hook. A more intelligent person would have seen that its owner might want it, for warmth, in a fireless room. She must needs then decide that the street door had no business to be on the jar, and it was just that child's carelessness leaving it open; and closed it, noiselessly. This was fatal to a calculation of Athelstan Taylor's, for he had told Lizarann to leave the door open in the full confidence that the policeman on the beat would notice it; and that he would by this means be brought into communication with the outer world, without having to leave his dangerous charge alone in the house with that plucky baby and that weak woman!
No doubt a policeman did come down the cul de sac street, but even a policeman's step is inaudible on three inches of very dry snow. It is otherwise when the snow is partly thawed, especially if a second frost comes. Mr. Taylor concluded, believing that the street-door was "on the jar," that the policeman's bull's-eye would at once detect it, and that his guard was sure to be relieved; but the hours went by and nothing came. It is more likely, though, that the policeman passed at a moment of noise from the railway, for goods-trains occurred at intervals through the night.
More than once he was all but resolved to leave the man's side and summon the woman, or go himself for medical help, whatever the risk might be. But he did not know what other knives might be within reach, and he was one of those people who always decide on the righter of two courses, however little may be the difference between them. Not the smallest risk should be run through fault of his of harm to come to that plucky infant—well!—or to the woman, for that matter. But he was obliged to admit that he felt less keen on that point.
So, though he relaxed his hold on the man as his paroxysms of violence died down—for they were intermittent—he never allowed him to go quite free, and scarcely took his eyes from him to inventory the scanty contents of the ill-furnished room he sat in. For he contrived to shift the position in a moment of the patient's quiescence, some half an hour after he found himself alone with him; half-dragging, half-lifting him on to an untempting and unrestful sofa, whose innate horse-hair was courting investigation through slits and holes that had evaded the watchfulness of ineffectual buttons, guardians of its reticence in days gone by. One of those articles of furniture of which we know at once that the understraps have given, and will have to be seen to some day. An analogous chair was within reach; and the New Policeman, not in love with his job, but strong in his determination to see it out, made up his mind to pass the rest of the night on it, if necessary, watching the fluctuations of his patient's delirium. Oh, how thankful he felt that all this had befallen him, not Gus! What a pleasure to think of his consumptive friend in the best room at the Rectory; sound asleep, said Hope, uncontradicted.
An hour or more passed. The violence of the patient had become more and more fitful, and seemed at length to be giving place to mere stupor. A little longer, and he would sleep. But suppose his heart failed and he died in his sleep. Mr. Taylor had had an uncle who drank, and who died of collapse after just such an attack of delirium tremens. Yes—but how long after? Then, on the other hand, there was no evidence to show how long this man's attack had been going on. Nor was the Rev. Athelstan quite clear that the case was uncomplicated; the brain might be unsound at the best of times. He tried to remember all he had seen or heard of the disorder. His impression certainly had been that insomnia was a characteristic symptom, and invariable. Now this man seemed to be sinking into a state of coma. He would keep watch over him, at least until he seemed quite unconscious, and then he would try to get help from without. He might be able to rouse a neighbour, and so communicate with the police and send for medical assistance. What he was most anxious to do was to get the man safe out of the way, at the workhouse-infirmary or the police-station, and to feel sure that he could leave the house safely with that child in it. He would come back next day as soon as he was at liberty, to find out more about her. It was fortunate that to-day was Tuesday, not Saturday—or rather he should have said, Wednesday, not Sunday. But one always thinks, when one has been up all night, that it is still yesterday!
Yes!—the breath of the man was coming more regularly, and his pulse felt slower and steadier. In a moment it would be safe to leave him and look for help. He withdrew his hand from the wrist it held and touched the sleeper's forehead. It was scarcely so hot as he had expected it to be. But it seemed insensitive to his touch, as there was no perceptible shrinking from it. The patient could be safely left for a moment.
He rose to his feet and stretched himself, glad of the respite. In the account of the affair that he wrote later to his substitute at Royd, he lays claim to having had no feeling at this moment but a wish for clean warm water to wash the touch of the drunkard's wrists off. He watched the motionless figure on the couch for a few moments, and the breathing satisfied him. He could be spared; for as short a time as need be, though.
He opened the door quietly and went out. But he returned to lock it; removing the key from within, but leaving it in the lock. Then he opened the street door and looked out. The little one had evidently misunderstood his instruction to leave it open—well! she really was almost a baby. However, that was enough to account for the non-appearance of any policeman. No police-officer ever leaves a "stood open" door uninvestigated in the small hours of the morning.
CHAPTER XIV
OF THE END OF THE BLIZZARD, AND OF SIMON MAGUS. HOW MR. TAYLOR FOUND A DOCTOR. OF A CHASE THROUGH THE SNOW, AND A CANAL-LOCK. WHAT WAS FOUND IN IT. BUT SIMON WAS INVISIBLE
How sweet and white and silent was the huge shroud of snow that lay so carefully on road and roof alike; unbroken, in this untrodden stillness, by so much as the memory of a rut inherited from yesterday's traffic; unmelted, even on the chimney-stacks, by the expiring efforts of yesterday's fires! How satisfied the stars that began to twinkle through the clearing veil of the snowdrift dying down, that the work of hiding London from them had been done thoroughly and well, and that they might shine on something clean at last! For the blizzard had gone to an appointment elsewhere, and the few flakes of belated snow that were afloat had given up all thought of blinding human eyes, and only seemed to pause in their selection of a resting-place. They had an embarras de choix.
As the sole spectator of the stillness stood looking out into the night, and thinking Wordsworth to himself, he saw the fixed red eye of a Cyclops railway-signal through the clear air; snow-scoured, and innocent, so far, of smoke. All that mighty heart was lying still—yes! But that engine, idling on the line and wide awake, felt free to wander to and fro, with clanks, and finally to execute an arpeggio of truncated snorts downwards, and give a sudden yell, and depart behind a steam-blast from beneath its apron. Then Mr. Taylor saw distinctly, at the end of his wrong turning, the fence that stultified it as a thoroughfare.
A wall of snow was against the lower half of the door, and the whole row of houses it made one of was nearly masked by the drift-pile heaped against it; and the snow that had caught and held against every roughness on the upright wall lay thick on every ledge and slope, and filled in every cavity. A sense of compromise was abroad in the air—an anticipated suggestion of a thaw; not yet, you know, but in time! Athelstan Taylor, as a neighbour's clock struck five in a hurry, knew so well what the shovels meant to sound like in the morning while all was still dry; and what the falls of snow would be like from uncleared roofs later on, when much would be slush.
There was not a soul in sight in the cul de sac street, which had so obviously been the wrong turning. There was consolation in that, though, for the Rev. Athelstan, for if it had been Gus and not he, Gus would have known his ground better, and passed on. But then!—what might not have happened to that poor little kid, asleep in there? However, it was necessary now to think what was to be done. Not a soul in sight, and hardly a sound to be heard; the very murmur of the city's traffic, that never quite dies, barely audible! Every house more than ever like its neighbour, in its cloak of snow. Which door should he choose, to knock at? One opposite looked the most promising, he thought. But he would put on his greatcoat before crossing through the cold night air. Where was that coat, by the way? So—back into the house to get it!
He struck a wax vesta to make the dark passage visible, and soon saw where the woman had hung it on a peg near the stairway. Should he, after all, go upstairs and rouse her?—Well, no, on the whole! Because he thought the woman bad for the patient, and better out of the way on that account. It did not occur to him that she was in the adjacent room, and the exploration above contributed as an obstacle to his decision. He felt readier for a colloquy with a roused next-door neighbour, than for shaking a stupefied sleeper to wakefulness—one, too, whom he had very poor reliance on. Besides, his own clearest scheme was to get some safe person to take charge of the patient, while he himself went for a doctor. If he did this, the doctor would come. If he sent, perhaps no! How could he tell?
But after this slight delay, just as well to look in at the sleeper once more before leaving him! The Rev. Athelstan, feeling very much like the New Policeman, opened the door cautiously. Just as well, for his charge was no longer where he had left him. He could see him in the half-light, blundering against the window-shutter, apparently without purpose, and talking to himself.
"Everything's took away, by Goard! Now if I could just lay 'ands on that there * * * knife, I could slit 'em all up. All the biling; and that'd make me even with 'em! Who's makin' any offer to stop me?" He muttered on, and there seemed no object in interrupting him. Very likely he would lie down and doze off again. A few minutes' patience, anyhow!
Suddenly he stopped and turned. And then perceiving Athelstan Taylor as he stood by the half-open door watching him intently, he addressed him exactly as though he were one of a succession of applicants or customers, whom he had satisfied so far.
"Now who might you be, master? 'And over your job! I'll be answerable to see to it by to-morrow forenoon." He seemed for the moment quite composed and businesslike, then suddenly changed to shrewd suspicion. "Unless you're—unless you're—unless you're.... No!—would you? That's not playing fair, by Goard! Come—you're a gentleman!—give a beggar his fair chance...." For a sort of wily approach, as though to somehow circumvent an object of suspicion, had been promptly intercepted, and he found himself firmly held as before. Then an intolerable horror seemed to seize on him quite suddenly. "God's mercy—keep him off—keep him off! I'll never let on about him to no one. I promise. Only give me a blooming Testament. I'll swear!" He asked several times for a Testament, variously described, rather to the amusement than otherwise of his hearer, whose sense of language discriminated between words with meanings and expletives without. The drunkard's manner seemed to him to throw doubt on the validity of any affidavit made on an unstained volume.
But there was no amusement—nothing but a shudder—to be got out of the intense conviction of his delirium that there was some horror—some spectre or nightmare, God knows what!—in ambush behind the man who held him. Those who have nursed any ordinary fever-patient through the hours of low vitality in the night, know how hard it is to struggle against a sort of belief in the reality of his delusions—against the sympathetic dread, at least, that all but does duty for a real belief. In delirium tremens this conviction is overwhelming, and the Rev. Athelstan almost felt it would be an easement, just once, to glance round behind him, and make sure there was no one else in the room. And this, although the drunkard's description seemed to apply to a conjurer (with the usual drawback) who had escaped from his coffin, but might be got back if we was sharp. His conviction of the reality of this person was too fervid to be ridiculous, or anything but unearthly; even when he added, as confirmatory, that he was a Hebrew conjuror, as well as a sanguinary one. Simon Magus, perhaps?—thought the Rev. Athelstan. And when he told his friend Gus Fossett of this after, he pretended it had made him laugh.
The sound of a child crying, surely? Yes—the voice of the little girl, in an agony of grief or fear, in the next room! He flung the madman from him, and passed out of the room, locking him in. "I heard him," said he, afterwards, "begging me to keep Simon Magus off, but I couldn't stop to see to it." He went into the back room, where Lizarann, roused by memory of her miseries from the lighter sleep of morning, was shedding bitter tears because Daddy was not there, but in the Hospital. Who does not know how the consciousness of affliction awaiting us will drag us awake, however much we may strive to remain in dreamland? Lizarann was glad of the gentleman, though, whatever he was. And it was all the easier for her to give a short abstract of her tragedy of the night before, that her aunt had gone upstairs to dress, as a preliminary to action in connection with the front parlour, whatever it was that was going on there. For whether anyone was there with her husband—the gentleman of the night before, or a policeman, or doctor perhaps—she had yet to learn. And she was horribly cold. A favourable disposition towards lighting a bit of fire in the kitchen was all the more marked on this account.
The very small person sobbing in a very dirty nightgown in the middle of the back room could not—so Athelstan Taylor decided—go on indefinitely unwarmed on such a morning as this. He rejoiced to feel that there was still plenty of vital heat in her rudiment of a carcass, as he wrapped it in the first thing that came to hand, a stray relic of a blanket of days gone by. He picked the little bundle, so compacted, up on his knee, and helped the subsidence of its sobs with a word or two of consolation. While doing so, he could hear what difficulties his case next door was getting into with Simon Magus.
"Berbecause derdaddy's in the Sussospital and hurted his leg," said Lizarann, as far as our spelling will carry us, in reply to inquiry.
"That's a good little woman! Now she'll tell me all about it. How did Daddy hurt his leg?"
Lizarann settled down to her narrative. Here was human sympathy, at last, for her real trouble. For all the dreadful scene of last night was only Uncle Bob; and of course that sort of thing was always happening, more or less, with uncles. Not daddies, look you!—that was quite another pair of shoes.
"There was free spoleecemen," said she, beginning like a true artist with the strong, conspicuous points of her narrative, "took Daddy along like carrying a Guy, only the spoleeceman he pictited me up and held me inside of the skirting for Daddy for to kiss me. And Daddy, he says why didn't I call out like he told me 'Pi-lot!' so he could hear?..."
"But was Daddy being carried on a chair?" The reference to a Guy had complicated matters.
"Not a chair to set upon. A hospital-barrer. With skirtings. Yass! But I hadn't called out Pi-lot, so Daddy could hear...." Lizarann's conscience torments her on this point, which is one her hearer cares very little about. He wants to find out what hurt Daddy's leg, and the extent of the damage. He waits a moment to listen; thinks he hears a silence in the next room, as though Simon Magus had vanished and left his victim in peace. Something like knocking about of furniture follows. But the drunkard is safe locked in. He can do no great harm for a few minutes anyhow.
"Was it an accident, or did he tumble down of himself?" he asks. He knows the child will understand. A mere fall on a slippery pavement would hardly rank as an accident with her. An accident, unclassified otherwise, almost implies a vehicle, among this class of Londoners.
"Yass!—an accident. The boy said so." A self-explanatory boy, the speaker seems to think. The hearer accepts him as explained. But what was the accident, and how much was Daddy hurt? Didn't the boy tell? Gradually all that Lizarann has to communicate is elicited, and Mr. Taylor takes a cheerful view of the outlook.
"Then Daddy's gone to the Hospital? They'll set Daddy on his legs again. What does Daddy do for his living?"
"He's a Asker. Askin', he does. Yass!" Lizarann's large dark eyes, and her gravity, added force to this. "Every dye, by the Rilewye Stytion, where I goes to fotch 'im."
Athelstan Taylor gave a low whistle. "Oho!—that's where we are, is it?" He at once recognised the little girl whose fame had reached him from the great house at Royd, with which he was of course in frequent communication. "You're Lizarann Coupland, then; Lady Arkroyd's friend?"
"Yass!" said Lizarann, nodding. Not that she was sure of it. But she knew there was a Lidy, come to see Teacher at School, she did; and she couldn't have been certain, off-hand, that this wasn't the Lidy's nime, in the face of the gentleman's statement. So she assented. She felt rather proud. Her daddy was well spoken of among the élite evidently. She continued: "And the boy said, he did, they could mike Daddy's leg well any day of the week at the Sospital, because they done his Aunt and Uncle. And a gentleman was a corpse they done, out of a shore. And Mr. Parker's teef they done, as good as new! So they was all singin'! Yass—they was!" This came in instalments; our report is shortened, for convenience.
Athelstan Taylor said afterwards to his friend: "I was getting so sleepy by that time, that I didn't above half enjoy the little maid's hopeful chatter about her Daddy, which of course I confirmed. I had to commit it to memory to laugh at it afterwards." Indeed, his great strength and endurance had been sorely taxed by the trying nature of his long vigil; mere sitting up all night he would have made light of.
When Aunt Stingy appeared a few minutes after, having been employed in lighting the kitchen fire as projected, she found Lizarann still on Mr. Taylor's knee, kept warm in the extemporized wrap, and filling in the blanks in her narrative, in reply to his cross-questionings. With a curious lack of tact and insight, Mrs. Steptoe immediately denounced her niece's presumption, suggesting that the child had taken the gentleman by storm, as it were; and alleging that little g'yells ought to know better how to behave than that. The gentleman cut this ill-judged attempt to creep up his sleeve very short indeed.
"Now listen to me, if you please, Mrs. ... what's your name? ... oh—Steptoe. Mrs. Steptoe. I am going at once to get the nearest doctor to see your husband. And I think the best thing you can do will be to leave him quiet in the front room till I come back. He won't take any harm. And I hope when I come back I shall find the little girl dressed, with a nice warm fire to warm herself at. I suppose you can't get any breakfast for her yet awhile?... Well!—do what you can in that direction. Yesterday's milk is better than no milk." And with a very decisive refusal to take a cup of tea at any future time, on any terms, he buttoned his coat tight round him, and left the room. Lizarann heard the street door open and close, and then she was left friendless and alone with a formidable aunt. That good woman stepped out after the street door closed, and listened a moment at that of the front room, but finding all silent did not open it. She saw it had been locked, as the key had been inside overnight. Evidently her visitor had locked it.
She returned and afflicted Lizarann by a destructive co-operation in the gettin' of her frock on, a form of help that twitched its victim to and fro under the pretext of promoting her stability; that resented her offered assistance and denounced it as henderin'; that left her penalized by a sense of wrong hooks in wrong eyes, buttons adrift from their holes, and holes aghast at the intrusion of strange buttons. But Lizarann was used to this, and discerned in it the shortness of her aunt's temper. Her Daddy he'd always said poor Aunty she couldn't help her nater, and we must bottle up according. Lizarann beheld her aunt through a halo of Jim's patience and forgiveness.
Athelstan Taylor soon found the doctor in Cazenove Street, who came readily in answer to his summons. It wouldn't do to lose sight of the case, he said. The man, who was quite well known to him as a typical case of Alcoholism, to the police as an habitual drunkard, and to the neighbourhood as always the worse for liquor, might very easily die of collapse if he wasn't carefully nourished when the reaction came. He would be much safer in a Hospital. Often in cases of this sort, life or death would turn on an injection of morphine on the spot. Heart-failure might be very rapid. He spoke as though Mr. Steptoe's decease would be a real calamity. Mr. Taylor, tramping beside him through the snow, tried to shape a thought that hung in his mind. How if he himself, who preached a Resurrection or Hereafter that as like as not this scientific gentleman did not believe in—how if he was less keen to preserve this depraved life, as a chance to clean it up a bit for a wholesomer departure later on, than the doctor in his professional enthusiasm, his sportsmanlike eagerness to win in a game of Therapeutics against Death? He felt a little ashamed of having thought more than once that the miserable victim of vice would be "best out of the way." Out of the way!... where? And then, how did he know that this consensus of all mortals to try and save even the most worthless lives may not be an unconscious tribute to the underlying sense of immortality throughout mankind? Would an honest belief in extinction fight to preserve a life that is a pain to itself and a curse to its neighbours? So thinking, he turned with his companion into Tallack Street. "Last house on the right, isn't it?" said the doctor.
What was that policeman doing in front of the last house on the right? Looking about on the snow as though in search for something, and then stooping forward over the low railing to examine the window-fastenings. It was all secure there when Athelstan Taylor came away. He quickened his pace, and the doctor did so too.
"Anything wrong, officer?" Both ask the question at once.
"Couldn't say, Sir. Be so good as not to tread on these footmarks. I want 'em kept till my relief comes. He'll be here in a few minutes.... No—the window's not been tampered with, so far as I see. That's where it's so queer."
All three stand silent a moment. Then both gentlemen exclaim at once that they see. The queerness is clear enough to both. The footsteps on the snow all point away from the window, and a glance shows that there is no corresponding track of an approach to it.
None of the three seem to think the mystery soluble, for the moment, and mere speculation is useless. The policeman supplies an additional fact, but does not claim importance for it. The hasp of the window is visibly unclosed through the glass. But—so the officer testifies—they don't shut 'em to, as often as not.
"You can open it from outside," says the parson-gentleman to the policeman. "All right! I was coming to the house. I know the people."
"All right, officer!" says the doctor-gentleman. "You know me. Dr. Ferris, Cazenove Street." And thus encouraged the constable easily throws up the window from without. A touch on the shutters, and they open inwards. They reveal an empty room, and the track of the footsteps away from the window is at once explained—fully to the two who knew that a delirious man was the only tenant of the room, and clearly enough for purpose of action to the third, who only sees that some person, to whom the exclamation of both at once, "He has escaped!" applied, has been able to close the window behind him to disguise his flight, and may by now be far away at the end of a long trail they all start to follow, running through the snow as best they may. It is difficult to run, as the drifted snow is nearly knee-deep sometimes. But here and there the wind has kept the ground clear, blowing it like dry dust.