HOW UNCLE BOB HAD THE HORRORS. HOW LIZARANN ATE COLD CHESTNUTS IN
BED. DELIRIUM TREMENS. HOW JIM COULD SEE AT NIGHT, AND WAS UNDER THE
BED. POLICE!
Lizarann could not shut her eyes to the difference between Aunt Stingy,
as she anticipated her on the doorstep, and the Police Force, according
to her last impression of it. Her aunt's was not a bosom she could fly
to for solace in her trouble--well! no more was that of the Force,
if you insist on literalness up to the hilt; but metaphorically she
would far sooner have had recourse to the latter than the former. She
did not, however, expect penalties this time if she could get in her
explanation; but she had doubts whether the shortness of her aunt's
temper would allow of its development at sufficient length to be
understood.
She tried to think of some quick thing to say that would at once reveal
her daddy's mishap and the cause of her return without him. But she
should have done it before that sepulchral single knock had shown
the executive power of the knocker, and brought out by contrast the
footless, hoofless, wheelless silence of Tallack Street. Now that its
summons to open had been delivered, the poor little shivering author
of it could think of nothing at all. She might have done so, though,
as far as time went, for she had to repeat her knock after a pause
her terror made to seem short; while to her eagerness for any human
voice--even Uncle Bob's--it seemed awfully long. But, as it turned out,
the best she could have thought of would have been of little use.
The second knock brought about a shuffling in the house that fluctuated
a moment, threatened to subside as it had begun, then seemed to decide
on action, and approached the door--but heavily, being palpably Uncle
Bob, whose mission seemed to be considered complete by the household
when he had stood the door on the jar, and left it, without waiting to
see who had knocked. Of course, it could only have been Jim and the
child. So it looked as if Mr. Steptoe had decided that his duty was
discharged by removing obstacles to their entry, and leaving them to
close the door their own way. He'd stood the candle down and just left
it to gutter in the passage, when Lizarann got inside of the house.
There was something gone wrong there, too, evidently.
As her uncle was in the habit of using the adjectives popular in
his class rather freely, Lizarann was not surprised when, supposing
himself to be addressing her father, and asking him to "shet to that
door and keep the cold out of the house," he prefixed one open to many
objections to each of his three substantives. But she was surprised
at the tone of his voice, which chattered in gusts, as though control
over it went and came, and at the way he was crouching over the fire.
He had spoken to her father as Jim, and evidently was taking him for
granted--had grasped no facts.
"Please, where's Aunt Stingy?" The child could think of no better thing
to say. Something was altogether too wrong with her uncle. She could
see he was shaking. All things were all wrong clearly, and the world a
nightmare!
"In her bed, mayhap!--shamming ill, I take it." Then he raised his
voice, but never looked round: "Jim!--why can't you shut up that
da-da-damned d-d-door and come inside?" He had a fair convulsion over
those words, more like the chattering fit that sometimes comes before a
bad attack of sea-sickness than the effects of ordinary cold. Many may
not know this sort.
"Father ain't here," was all Lizarann could say.
"Then shet to the damned door till he comes." He could say this and
never look round, or notice the sob-broken voice, all a-strain with its
terrors, of the little speaker. If he had only cursed her for crying,
it would have sounded sane by comparison. Lizarann wished herself back
in the street, with the Turk. And how happy those few minutes seemed
now, when she did not know about daddy, and was telling Mother Groves
about the Flying Dutchman!
She could only stand speechless and utterly terrified at the oddity
of her uncle's manner--she well knew his ordinary one, of being in
the liquor he was never out of--and was just on the point of mere mad
screaming or starting to run God knows where, when the voice of Aunt
Stingy came from her bedroom above, also with alarm in it. "Jim, can't
you hear, you fool? Leave him to himself, I tell you. He's had the
horrors." Aunt Stingy seemed to imply that the horrors, whatever they
were, would subside of themselves.
Ill has a fixed point in the minds of young children--a simple maximum
it reaches and never goes beyond. Lucky for them that it is so! For a
step further would kill. Lizarann's mind could be dragged no farther
along the road of terrors that leads maturer lives to self-slaughter
or the madhouse. Or it may be some pitying angel wrapped her small soul
in a merciful stupefaction, that it might live. For when her aunt's
voice came again, peevish and impatient, but without sense of any very
abnormal conditions, she was able to answer, "Yass, Aunt Stingy," but
not very audibly.
"Why can't you answer when I speak? I tell you, let him bide. He's
best to himself, and he's had all what liquor there was.... Can't you
answer?... Fetchin' me down!..."
The child understood her aunt's context, for all its elisions. To
propitiate, she ran upstairs. A descent in wrath, portended by an
exaggerated foot-tramp, was averted by her words: "D-daddy ain't come
b-back--he ain't!"
"Why couldn't you speak?--little hussy! _You're_ a child to have in a
house. When's he coming?"
"He _ain't coming_! Yass--he _ain't_! He's took to the doctor on a
barrer. Yass--he _is_!" And Lizarann, whose small hands, cold and blue,
are all tremor and visible unrest from panic, would like to run, but
dares not. She has worded her awful message, though. That is something,
however much Aunt Stingy may doubt its truth.
"Who's to know you ain't lying? Who's to know he ain't in at the
Robin Hood? Now, if you're story-tellin'...!" A bony warning finger
should have been enough without any further details of the penalties
of falsehood. A reference to a flagellum that had once been inherent
in a discarded pair of the speaker's stays--an incredible wooden
lathe--ought to have been quite superfluous. But Mrs. Steptoe had had
great trials, to excuse her short temper.
However, nothing can alter the facts; and Lizarann can only repeat
her statement. Daddy had been took away on the p'leece barrer, with
curtings; and his leg was hurt. But the doctor was at the Horspital.
This was felt, and offered, as a palliative. Surely it deserved better
recognition than, "And why couldn't the child tell me all this before?
Keeping me standin' here!" very wrathfully fired off at poor Lizarann.
She _had_ told it, and at the earliest possible moment. What could she
do more?
Aunt Stingy's reception of the story, which was less _émotionné_ than
Lizarann had expected, had its good side. Perhaps the presumptuous
boy's description of the powers of Hospitals was not all fanciful, and
her aunt's wider experience knew that in a short time daddy would be
back home again; not only well and sound, but even better and sounder.
Lizarann extracted consolation from her aunt's half callous hearing of
her news, without closely analyzing it. Probably Mrs. Steptoe would
have been more sympathetic if her own cup of bitterness, like her
small niece's, had not been full to the brim already. But sympathy
would have intensified Lizarann's solicitude about her father; the fact
that the news could be apathetically received by anyone, even Aunt
Stingy, fortified her. It may even be that she was braced by her own
keen feeling of the injustice her aunt did her in apparently ascribing
her father's disaster to her, when really she was only the innocent
and most unwilling bearer of the news of it. That, however, was Mrs.
Steptoe's attitude. "There's a many'd 'a said you didn't deserve no
supper," said she, and claimed a weak good-nature as a quality of her
own. She hustled Lizarann into her father's bedroom, with needless
collateral pushes in wrong directions, and the admonition, "Don't let
me catch you in the parlour, or you'll know of it. Starin' round!" Her
truculence, no doubt, had something of a safety-valve character, and
she may have thought that the youth of its object would remain ignorant
of its full stress, while she herself had the whole advantage of the
relief it gave. But really the child understood more than she ascribed
to her, and felt its injustice, tempered by the broad consideration
that it was only Aunt Stingy.
Mere ferocity towards children is bad enough, but it is hardest to bear
when it is illogical. Aunt Stingy was inconsecutive in her grounds
of indictment against Lizarann, and this added to the sting of her
injustice. No child would have been readier than she to see to her own
supper, and hot up half a bloater on the bit of fire that had looked
so cheerful in the front room--though she couldn't above half see it
for Uncle Bob gettin' in the way--or to stoast a slice of bread afore
the bars with a fair allowance of butter on; or to do what she dared
not ask her aunt to do, and lie the four chestnuts, which she still
treasured mechanically inside her frock, on the top bar where it was
flat, to get the heat back in 'em a bit, before cracking off the shell.
So it was inconsistent and absurd in her aunt, after telling her to
keep where she was or she would let her know, to return presently
with all the supper she would get to-night, comin' in so late, and to
add: "_I_ wasn't waited on when I was a little girl. Standin' round,
expectin' your elders to fetch and carry!" quite ignoring the fact that
she herself had paralyzed her niece's activity by instructions not to
go outside of that room until she was told to it. And equally so when,
without any evidence that the child was going to say a word, she added:
"Now, don't you answer me, for that I can_not_ abide; but just you eat
your supper and go to bed, or we shall have _you_ ill next." Of course,
it was only when Jim was out of the way that Mrs. Steptoe allowed the
shortness of her temper to get the better of her so completely, and on
this occasion everything was against elasticity.
Things were all so nightmare-like that nothing could well make
them worse, or Lizarann might have been additionally terrified and
oppressed when her aunt, before consigning her supper finally to her
for consumption, looked it all over closely and said, more to herself
than the public: "_I_ don't see any things a-crawling." As it was,
in the Valley of Shadows Life was passing through to-night, Lizarann
merely said: "There ain't nuffint on the stoast," and began her supper
off it sadly. Her daddy's great effort to speak against his pain, and
his reassuring words about the doctor, had made that cheerless evening
meal a possibility to his little lass. Full knowledge, and a year or so
more of life, would have meant inability to eat. But Lizarann was very
young, and, moreover, could not credit a possibility of mistake to her
daddy. Had he not spoken confidently of the "ship's doctor" making a
square job of his leg? She had certainly a slight misgiving that this
pointed to his leg assuming a different shape after the operation. All
sorts of contingencies hung about Hospitals. You never could tell what
grown people wouldn't be at next. But whatever the outcome was, daddy
would be _there_. And this black cloud would roll away.
Aunt Stingy retired, and left Lizarann to herself and her supper with
a final imputation of rebelliousness and disobedience that was quite
groundless--so its object thought. "_You_ do like I tell you, and go
straight to bed when you've e't your supper. Burnin' the candle-ends
for nothing!" She then did violence to the understanding, by adding:
"The light won't last you out, except you look sharp; and then
you'll be in the dark." If a rigid economy was compulsory, how could
extravagance be possible? But menace without method was Aunt Stingy's
attitude to-night.
Lizarann, left alone, looked all round the tray and under the milk-jug,
but could see nothing crawling. She was not so much concerned with the
avoiding such things as articles of diet as a County Family would have
been, or even the Upper Middle Class; her object was to throw light on
her aunt's soliloquy, which she had not ventured to ask the meaning
of. Getting no light, she ate the scrop o' bloater, and the stoast and
butter, and drank the milk, and did very well, for her aunt was not
christened Stingy from any tendency to cut down rations unduly. Only
she would have done better still, had she been able to sob less, and
if the resources of a pocket-handkerchief ten inches square had not
required supplementing by sleeves, which can only be crudely engineered
against tear-drops, or their reincarnations. But she got through her
supper before ever the candle set alight to the paper, and flared.
Then she got to bed before the flare became convulsive; not to be left
in the dark with--who knows?--a nightgowned sleeve inside out and no
finding where. Because we all feel that spectres are not to be trusted,
unless you have something on. Indeed, timid persons are not happy till
the whole thickness of the bedclothes is between them and possibly
convincing phenomena.
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.