As Mr Girtley roared those words a sudden thought flashed through my
mind, and I ran to the window, threw it open, and, as I did so, there
beneath me, reaching down to the low roof of a building below, was a
ladder, showing plainly enough the road by which the enemy had crept in.
From where I stood I looked out upon the backs of a score of buildings;
printing-offices, warehouses, and the like, and at the window of one of
these buildings I saw a couple of men, one of whom I felt certain was
some one I had seen before, but where, I could not tell.
I was back and beside poor Hallett directly, giving both Mr Girtley and
Tom a look which sent them to the window, to see that there was no doubt
how the misfortune had occurred; but I was too much taken up with
Hallett's condition to say more then.
"Is he much hurt?" cried first one and then another.
"Looks like a judgment on him," said the heavy, broad-faced man with
whom I had had my short, verbal encounter.
"Why?" said Tom Girtley sharply.
"Inventing gimcrack things like that," said the fellow in a tone of
contempt, "to try and take the bread out of honest men's mouths."
"Good heavens! man, leave the room!" cried Mr Girtley in a rage. "Go
and take off your clothes; they've been made by machinery! Go and grub
up roots with your dirty fingers! don't dig them with a spade--it's a
machine! Go and exist, and grovel like a toad or a slug, or any other
noisome creature; you are not fit for the society of men!"
The brute was about to reply, but there was such a shout of laughter at
Mr Girtley's denunciation and its truthfulness, that he hurried out of
the place, just as Hallett sat up and stared round.
"No," he said, "not much hurt; I'm better now. A piece of iron struck
me on the head. It is a mere nothing. Stunned me, I suppose."
He rose as he spoke, and there was a silence no one cared to break, as
he looked at the wreck of his machine.
"Another failure, Mr Rowle," he said sadly; and he took the old man's
hand, as if he were the one who needed all the sympathy. "I am very,
very sorry--for your sake. I cannot say more now."
"One word, Mr Hallett," said the great engineer. "Do you know that
this is all through malice?"
"Malice? No."
"Some scoundrel has been here and thrust in this bar of iron.
Gentlemen," he said, looking round, "this is an unfortunate affair; but
I speak to you as leading members of the printing business, and I tell
you that Mr Hallett's invention here means success, and a revolution in
the trade,--This is a case of wanton destruction, the act of some
contemptible scoundrel. You have seen the ruin here of something built
up by immense labour, but I pledge you my word--my reputation--that
before six months are past another and a better machine shall be running
before you--perfect."
There was a faint cheer, and quite a little crowd gathered round the
wreck while Mr Girtley turned to speak to Hallett.
"Thank you," said the latter, smiling; "you will excuse me now; I feel
rather faint and giddy, and I will get off home."
"I'll go with you, Hallett," I cried.
"No, no: I shall be all right," he said, with a sad smile. "I'll take a
cab at the corner on the strength of my success. Come to me after you
leave."
"I would rather go with you," I said.
"No, no, I want you to represent me here," he whispered. "Stay, Antony;
it will seem less as if I deserted the ruin like a rat, and I am not man
enough to command myself now."
"But you are not fit to go alone," I said earnestly.
"Yes, I am," he replied; "the sick feeling has gone off. It was nothing
to mind. I am not much hurt."
I should have pressed him, but he was so much in earnest that I drew
back, and after a formal leave-taking he left the room, and descended
the stairs, while a burst of angry remarks followed his departure.
"Ruddle," said one grey-haired old gentleman, "I think, for your
credit's sake, you ought to have in a detective to try and trace out the
offender."
"I mean to," said Mr Ruddle firmly, and he glanced at Grimstone, who
seemed to shrink away, and looked thin and old.
"For my part," said another, "I believe fully in the invention and I
congratulate the man of genius who--halloa! what's wrong?"
A burst of yells and hooting arose from the street below, and with one
consent we hurried to the windows, to see poor Hallett standing at bay
in a corner, hemmed in by about a hundred men and boys, evidently the
off-scourings of the district, who, amidst a storm of cries of "Who
robbed the poor man of his bread?"--"Who tries to stifle work?" and a
babel of similar utterances, were pelting the poor fellow with filth,
waste-paper full of printing-ink, mud, and indescribable refuse,
evidently prepared for the occasion.
Heading the party, and the most demonstrative of all, was a fat ruffian,
in inky apron and shirt-sleeves, whom I recognised as what should have
been the manhood of my old enemy, Jem Smith, while in the same glance I
saw, standing aloof upon a doorstep, a spectator of the degrading scene,
no less a person than John Lister, fashionably dressed, and in strange
contrast to the pallid, mud-bespattered man who stood there panting and
too weak to repel assault.
What I have said here was seen in a moment, as I cried out, "Tom
Girtley, quick!" rushed to the door, and down the stairs.
It took me very little time to reach the street, but it was long enough
to bring my blood to fever-heat, as, closely followed by Tom, I rushed
past John Lister, and fought my way through the yelling mob of ruffianly
men and boys.
Before I could reach Hallett, though, I caught sight of a carriage
farther up the street, and just then the noise and yelling ceased as if
by magic, while my efforts to reach Hallett's side became less arduous.
I, too, stopped short as I reached the inner edge of the ring which
surrounded my friend, for there, richly dressed, and in strange
opposition to the scene, was Miriam Carr, her veil thrown back, her
handsome face white, and her large eyes flashing as she threw herself
before Hallett.
"Cowards! wretches!" I heard her cry; and then, "Oh, help I help!"
For as, regardless of his state, she caught at Hallett, he reeled and
seemed about to fall!
Then I was at his side.
"Don't touch me!" he gasped, recovering himself and recoiling from the
vision that seemed to have come between him and his persecutors. "Miss
Carr, for heaven's sake!--away from here!"
For answer she caught his hand in hers, and drew his befouled arm
through her own.
"Come," she said, as her eyes flashed with anger; "lean on me. They
will not dare to treat a woman ill."
"Antony," cried Hallett hoarsely. "Miss Carr--take her away!"
"Lean on me," she cried proudly. "Antony, beat a way for us through
these curs."
I took Hallett's other arm, and as we stepped forward, Jem Smith uttered
a loud "Yah!" but it seemed as if it was broken before it left his lips,
and he went staggering back from a tremendous blow right in the teeth,
delivered by Tom Girtley.
Then there was an interlude, for some one else forced his way to the
front.
"Miss Carr! great heavens! what is all this?" he cried. "Give me your
hand. This is no place for you. What does this outrage mean? Quick!
let me help you. This is horrible."
"Stand back, sir!"
"You are excited," he cried. "You don't know me. I see now; there is
your carriage. Stand away, you ruffians. How thankful I am that I was
near! Take this man away. Is he drunk?"
As he spoke, John Lister, with a look of supreme disgust, pushed poor
fainting Hallett back, and tried to draw Miss Carr out of the crowd.
"Coward! Villain! This is your work!" she cried in a low, strange
voice; and as he tried to draw her away, she sharply thrust him from
her.
The crowd uttered a cry of excitement as they witnessed the act; and,
stung almost to madness with rage and mortification, Lister turned upon
me.
But I again found a good man at my back, for, boiling with rage, Tom
Girtley struck at him fiercely and kept him off, while in the midst of
the noise, pushing, and hustling of the crowd, a confusion that seemed
to me now as unreal as some dream, we got Hallett along towards the
carriage, he, poor fellow, seeming ready to sink at every step, while
the true-hearted woman at his side clung to him and passed one arm round
him to help him.
The coachman now saw that his mistress seemed to be in need of help, and
he shortened the distance by forcing his horses onward through the
gathering crowd.
But the danger was past, for those who now thronged out from the
buildings on either side were workpeople attracted by the noise, and
they rapidly outnumbered John Lister's gang of scoundrels, got together
by his lieutenant, Jem Smith, for the mortification of the man he hated,
while his triumph had been that the woman they loved had come to his
rival's help, glorified him, as it were, by her presence, and rained
down scorn and contempt upon his own wretched head.
As I said before, it seems now like some terrible dream, in which I
found myself in Miss Carr's carriage, with her sister looking ghastly
with fear beside me, and Hallett in the back seat, nearly unconscious,
beside Miss Carr.
"Tell the coachman to stop at the nearest doctor's, Antony," she said;
and I lowered the glass and told Tom Girtley, who had mounted to the
driver's side.
"No, no," said Hallett, faintly, for her words seemed to bring him to.
"For pity's sake. To my own home. Why have you done this?"
She did not speak, but I saw her take his hand, and her eyes fix
themselves, as it were, upon his, while a great sob laboured from her
breast.
"Mr Grace," faltered Miss Carr's sister, "this is very dreadful;" and I
saw her frightened eyes wander from the mud-besmeared object opposite
her to her sister's injured attire, and the sullied linings of the
carriage.
"Antony," said Miss Carr then, "do what is for the best."
For answer, I lowered the window again and uttered to Tom Girtley the
one word, "Home."
Fortunately, Revitts was on night duty, and ready to come as the
carriage stopped at the door, where we had to lift the poor fellow out,
and carry him to his bed, perfectly insensible now from the effects of
the blow.
I was rather surprised to find the carriage gone when I descended, but
my suspense was of short duration, for it soon came back with a
neighbouring doctor, whom Miss Carr had fetched.
Mary was at hand to show him up, while I ran down to the carriage-door,
where Miss Carr grasped my hand for a moment, her face now looking
flushed and strange.
"Come to me to-night, Antony," she said in a low voice--"come and tell
me all."
She sank back in the carriage then, as if to hide herself from view,
while in obedience to her mute signal, I bade the coachman drive her and
her sister home.