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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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.