WHY THAT ENGINE STOPPED. BUT THE WHEELS HAD NOT GONE OVER DAVE. HOW
PETER JACKSON CARRIED HIM AWAY TO THE HOSPITAL. OF DOLLY'S DESPAIR
AT THE COLLAPSE OF THE _BARRAGE_, AND OF AN OLD COCK, NAMED SAM.
MRS. TAPPING'S EXPERIENCES, AND HER DAUGHTER, ALETHEA. OF THE
VICISSITUDES OF THE PUBLIC, AND ITS AMAZING RECUPERATIVE POWERS.
HOW UNCLE MOSES AND MR. ALIBONE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL
So few seconds would have made the whole difference. But so engrossing
had Dave found the contemplation of Michael Ragstroar and his yellow
jug, so exciting particularly was its disappearance into the swing-door
of the Wheatsheaf, that he forgot even the new mud that the men had
spaded up with their spades. And these seconds slipped by never to
return. Then when Michael had vanished, the little man stooped to secure
his cargo. It was slippery and yet tenacious; had been detachable with
difficulty from the spade that wrenched it from the virgin soil of its
immemorial home, and was now difficult to carry. But Dave grappled
bravely with it and turned to go back across the bridge.
A coming whirlwind, surely, in the distance of the street--somewhere now
where all the gas-lamps' cold green stars are merged in one--now nearer,
nearer still; and with it, bringing folk to doors and windows to see
them pass, the war-cry of the men that fight the flames. Charioteers
behind blood-horses bathed in foam; heads helmeted in flashing
splendour; eyes all intent upon the track ahead, keen to anticipate the
risks of headlong speed and warn the dilatory straggler from its path.
Nearer and nearer--in a moment it will pass and take some road unknown
to us, to say to fires that even now are climbing up through roof and
floor, clasping each timber in a sly embrace fatal as the caress of
Death itself:--"Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" Close upon us
now, to be stayed with a sudden cry--something in the path! Too late!
Too late, though the strong hand that held the reins brought back the
foaming steeds upon their haunches, with startled eyes and quivering
nostrils all agape. Too late, though the helmeted men on the engine's
flank were down, almost before its swerve had ceased, to drag at every
risk from beneath the plunging hoofs the insensible body of the child
that had slipped from a clay heap by the roadside, on which it stood to
gaze upon the coming wonder, and gone headlong down quite suddenly upon
the open road.
You who read this, has it ever fallen to your lot to guide two swift
horses at a daring speed through the narrow ways, the ill-driven
vehicles, the careless crowds and frequent drunkards of the slum of a
great city? If so, you have earned some right to sit in judgment on the
fire-engine that ran our little friend down. But you will be the last of
all men to condemn that fire-engine.
"Dead, mate?" One of the helmeted men asks this of the other as they
escape from the plunging hoofs. They are used to this sort of thing--to
every sort of thing.
"Insensible," says the other, who holds in his arms the rescued child, a
mere scrap of dust and clay and pallor and a little blood.
A fire-engine calculates its rights to pause in fractions of a minute.
The unused portion of twenty seconds the above conversation leaves,
serves for a glance round in search of some claimant of the child, or a
responsible police-officer to take over the case. Nothing presents
itself but Mrs. Tapping, too much upset to be coherent, and not able to
identify the child; Mrs. Riley, little better, but asking:--"Did the
whales go overr it, thin?" The old man Sam, the watchman, is working
round from his half-tent, where he sleeps in the traffic, but cannot
possibly negotiate the full extent of trench and bridge for fifty
seconds more. Time cannot be lavished waiting for him. The man at the
reins, with seeming authority, clinches the matter.
"You stop, Peter Jackson. _Hospital!_ Don't you let the child out of
your hands before you get there. Understand?--All clear in front?" Two
men, who have taken the horses' heads, to soothe their shaken nerves
with slaps and suitable exclamations, now give them back to their
owners, leaving them free to rear high once or twice to relieve feeling;
while they themselves go back, each to his own place on the engine. A
word of remonstrance from the driver about that rearing, and they are
off again, the renewed fire-cry scarcely audible in the distance by the
time Old Sam gets across the wooden bridge.
To him, as to a responsible person, says Peter Jackson:--"Know where he
belongs?"--and to Mrs. Riley, as to one not responsible, but deserving
of sympathy:--"No--the wheels haven't been over him."
"Down yonder Court, I take it. Couldn't say for sartin." So says Sam;
and Mrs. Tapping discerns with pious fervour the Mercy of God in this
occurrence, He not having flattened the child out on the road outright.
But Peter Jackson's question implied no intention to communicate with
the little victim's family. To do so would be a clear dereliction of
duty; an offence against discipline. He has his instructions, and in
pursuance of them strides away to the Hospital without another word,
bearing in his arms a light burden so motionless that it is hard to
credit it with life. So quickly has the whole thing passed, that the
drift of idlers hard on his heels is a fraction of what a couple more
minutes would have made it. It will have grown before they reach the
Middlesex, short as the distance is. Then a police-sergeant, who joins
them half-way, will take notes and probably go to find the child's
parents; while Peter Jackson, chagrined at this hitch in his day's
fire-eating, will go off Walworth way at the best speed he may, after
handing over his charge to an indisputable House-Surgeon.
One can picture to oneself how the whole thing might pass as it did,
between the abrupt check of the engine's career, heard by Uncle Moses
and his friend, and the two or three minutes later when they emerged
through the archway to find Dolly in despair; not from any knowledge of
the accident to Dave, for intense preoccupation and a rampart of clay
had kept her in happy ignorance of it, but because the water had broken
bounds and Noah's flood had come with a vengeance. Questioned as to
Dave's whereabouts, she embarked on a lengthy stuttered explanation of
how Dave had dode round there--pointing to the clay heap--to det some of
the new mud the men had spoyded up with their spoyds. She reproduced his
words, of course. Uncle Moses was trying to detect her meaning without
much success, when he became aware that the old man in the fur cap who
had shouted more than once, "I say, master!" was addressing him.
"Is that old cock singing out to one of we, Jerry?" said Uncle Moses.
And then replied to the old cock:--"Say what you've got to say, mate!
Come a bit nigher."
Thereupon Old Sam crossed the bridge, slowly, as Uncle Moses moved to
meet him. "Might you happen to know anything of this little boy?" said
old Sam.
Uncle Moses caught the sound of disaster in his accent, before his words
came to an end. "What's the little boy?" said he. "Where have you got
him?" And Dolly, startled by the strange sound in her uncle's voice,
forgot Noah's flood, and stood dumb and terrified with outstretched
muddy hands.
"I may be in the wrong of it, master"--thus Old Sam in his slow way, a
trial to impatience--"but maybe this little maid's brother. They've took
him across to the Hospital." Old Sam did not like to have to say this.
He softened it as much as he could. Do you not see how? Omit the word
"across," and see how relentless it makes the message. Do you ask why?
Impossible to say--but it _does_!
Then Uncle Moses shouted out hoarsely, not like himself: "The
Hospital--the Hospital--hear that, Bob! Our boy Dave in the Hospital!"
and, catching his friend's arm, "Ask him--ask more!" His voice dropped
and his breath caught. He was a bad subject for sudden emotions.
"Tell it out, friend--any word that comes first!" says Mr. Alibone. And
then Old Sam, tongue-freed, gives the facts as known to him. He ends
with:--"Th' young child could never have been there above a minute, all
told, before the engine come along, and might have took no warning at
twice his age for the vairy sudden coming of it." He dwells upon the
shortness of the time Dave had been on the spot as though this minimised
the evil. "I shouldn't care to fix the blame, for my own part," says he,
shaking his head in venerable refusal of judicial functions not assigned
to him so far.
"Is the child killed, man? Say what you know!" Thus Mr. Alibone
brusquely. For he has caught a question Uncle Moses just found voice
for:--"Killed or not?"
The old watchman is beginning slowly:--"That I would not undertake to
say, sir...." when he is cut off short by Mrs. Riley, anxious to attest
any pleasant thing, truly if possible; but if otherwise, anyhow!--"Kilt
is it? No, shure thin! Insinsible." And then adds an absolutely
gratuitous statement from sheer optimism:--"Shure, I hur-r-d thim say so
mesilf, and I wouldn't mislade ye, me dyurr. Will I go and till his
mother so for ye down the Court? To till her not to alarrum hersilf!"
But by this time Uncle Moses had rallied. The momentary qualm had been
purely physical, connected with something that a year since had caused a
medical examination of his heart with a stethoscope. He had been too
great an adept in the art of rallying after knock-down blows in his
youth to go off in a faint over this. He had felt queer, for all that.
Still, he declined Mrs. Riley's kindly meant offer. "Maybe I'll make the
best job of it myself," said he. "Thanking you very kindly all the
same, ma'am!" After which he and his friend vanished back into Sapps
Court, deciding as they went that it would be best to persuade Aunt
M'riar to remain at home, while they themselves went to the Hospital, to
learn the worst. It would never do to leave Dolly alone, or even in
charge of neighbours.
Mrs. Riley's optimism lasted till Uncle Moses and Mr. Alibone
disappeared, taking with them Dolly, aware of something terrible afoot;
too small to understand the truth, whatever it was; panic-stricken and
wailing provisionally to be even with the worst. Then, all reason for
well-meaning falsehood being at an end, the Irishwoman looked facts in
the face with the resolution that never flinches before the mishaps of
one's fellow-man, especially when he is a total stranger.
"The power man!" said she. "He'll have sane the last of his little boy
alive, only shure one hasn't the harrut to say the worrd. Throubles make
thimsilves fast enough without the tilling of thim, and there'll be
manes and to spare for the power payple to come to the knowledge without
a worrd from you or me, Mrs. Tapping."
Then said Mrs. Tapping, on the watch for an opening through which she
could thrust herself into the conversation; as a topic, you
understand:--"Now there, Mrs. Riley, you name the very reason why I
always stand by like, not to introduce my word. Not but that I will
confess to the temptation undergone this very time to say that by God's
will the child was took away from us, undeniable. Against that
temptation I kep' my lips shut. Only I will say this much, and no
concealment, that if my husband had been spared, being now a widow
fourteen years, and heard me keep silence many a time, he might have
said it again and again, like he said it a hundred times if he said it
once when alive and able to it:--'Mary Ann Tapping, you do yourself no
justice settin' still and list'nin', with your tongue in your mouth God
gave you, and you there to use it!' And I says to Tapping, fifty times
if I said it once, 'Tapping,' says I, 'you better know things twiced
before you say 'em for every onced you say 'em before you know 'em.'
Then Tapping, he says, was that to point at 'Lethear? And I says yes,
though the girl was then young and so excusable. But she may learn
better, I says, and made allowance though mistaken...." This is just as
good a point for Mrs. Tapping to cease at as any other in the story. In
reality Heaven only knows when she ceased.
A very miscellaneous public gathered round and formed false ideas of
what had happened from misinformants. The most popular erroneous report
ran towards connecting it somehow with the sewer-trench, influencing
people to look down into its depths and watch for the reappearance of
something supposed to be expected back. So much so that more than one
inoffensive person asked the man in charge of the pumping engine--which
went honourably on without a pause--whether "it" was down there. He was
a morose and embittered man--had been crossed in love, perhaps--for he
met all inquiries by another:--"Who are you a-speaking to?" and, on
being told, added:--"Then why couldn't you say so?" Humble apology had
then to be content with, "No, it ain't down there and never has been, if
you ask me,"--in answer to the previous question.
Old Sam endeavoured more than once to point out that the accident need
not necessarily end fatally. He invented tales of goods-trains that had
passed over him early in life, and the surgical skill that had left him
whole and sound. Trains were really unknown in his boyhood, but there
was no one to contradict him. The public, stimulated to hopefulness,
produced analogous experiences. It had had a hay-cart over it, with a
harvest-home on the top, such as we see in pictures. It had had the
Bangor coach over it, going down hill, and got caught in the skid. It
had been under an artillery corps and field-guns at a gallop, when the
Queen revoo'd the troops in Hyde Park. And look at it now! Horse-kicks
and wheel-crushing really had a bracing tendency; gave the constitution
tone, and seldom left any ill effects.
Only their consequences must be took in time. Well!--hadn't the child
gone to the Hospital? Dissentients who endeavoured to suggest that
broken bones and dislocations were unknown before the invention of
surgeons, were rebuked by the citation of instances of neglected
compound fractures whose crippled owners became athletes after their
bones had been scientifically reset, having previously been rebroken in
the largest number of places the narrator thought he could get credence
for. Hope told her flattering tale very quickly, for when Dave's uncle
and Jerry Alibone reappeared on their way to find the truth at the
Hospital, her hearers were ready with encouragement, whether they knew
anything about the matter or not. "I don't believe they do," said Uncle
Moses, and Mr. Alibone replied--"Not they, bless your heart!" But it was
refreshing for all that.
They met the police-sergeant on the way, coming from the Hospital to
bring the report and make inquiry about the child's belongings. They
credited him with superhuman insight when he addressed them
with:--"Either of you the father of a child knocked down by Fire-engine
67A in this street--taken into accident ward?" He spoke just as though
Engine 68B had knocked another child down in the next street, and so on
all over London.
But his sharpness was merely human. For scarcely a soul had passed but
paused to look round after them, wondering at the set jaw and pallid
face of the huge man who limped on a stick, seeming put to it to keep
the speed. Uncle Moses, you see, was a fine man in his own way of the
prizefighter type; and now, in his old age, worked out a little like Dr.
Samuel Johnson.
The report, as originally received by the police-officer, was that the
child was not killed but still unconscious. A good string of injuries
were credited to the poor little man, including a dislocated femur and
concussion of the brain. Quite enough, alone!--for the patient, his
friends and relations. The House-Surgeon, speaking professionally, spoke
also hopefully of undetected complications in the background. We might
pull him through for all that. This report was materially softened for
the child's family. Better not say too much to the parents at present,
either way!