A LAZY ROMANCE
I had slept but two nights at King's Cobb, when I saw distinctly that thenovel with which I was to revolutionize society and my own fortunes, andwith the purpose of writing which in an unvexed seclusion I had buriedmyself in this expedient hamlet on the South Coast, was withered in thebud beyond redemption. To this lamentable canker of a seedling hope theeternal harmony of the sea was a principal contributor; but Miss Whiffleconfirmed the blight. I had fled from the jangle of a city, and theworries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities; and the resultwas--
I had rooms on the Parade--a suggestive mouthful. But then the Parade issuch a modest little affair. The town itself is flung down a steep hill,at the mouth of a verdurous gorge; and lies pitched so far as the verywaterside, a picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edgesbristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crookedbreakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to itsharbourage--an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For theattractions of King's Cobb are--comparatively--limited, and its neareststation is a full six miles distant along a switchback road.
Possibly this last fact may have militated against the popularity ofKing's Cobb as a holiday resort. If so, all the better; and mayenterprise for ever languish in the matter. For vulgarity can claimno commoner purpose with fashion than is shown in that destruction ofancient landmarks and double gilding of new which follows the "openingout" of some unsophisticated colony of simple souls.
King's Cobb, if "remote and unfriended," is neither "melancholy" nor"slow"; but it is small, and all its fine little history--for it has hada stirring one--has ruffled itself out on a liliputian platform.
Than this, its insignificance, I desired nothing better. I wished to feelthe comparative importance of the individual, which one cannot do incrowded colonies. I coveted surroundings that should be primitive--anatmosphere in which my thoughts could speak to me coherent. I would beas one in a cave, looking forth on sea, and sky, and the buoyant glory ofNature; unvexed of conventions; untrammelled by social observances;building up my enchanted palace of the imagination against such abackground as only the unsullied majesty of sky and ocean could present.For the result was to crown with my name an epoch in literature; andhither in future ages should the pilgrim stand at gaze, murmuring tohimself, 'And here he wrote it!'
I laid my head on my pillow, that first night of my stay, with a brimmingbrain and a heart of high resolve. The two little windows, under athatched roof, of my sleeping place (_that_ lay over my sitting-room, andboth looked oceanwards) were open to the inpour of sweet hot air; andonly the regular wash of the sea below broke the close stillness of thenight. I say this was all; and, with the memory upon me, I could easily,at any time, break the second commandment.
I had thought myself fortunate in my lodgings. They were in a mostcharming old-world cottage--as I have said on the Parade--and at hightide I could have thrown a biscuit into the sea with merely a lazy jerk.My sitting-room put forth a semi-circular window--like a lighthouselantern--upon the very pathway, and it had been soothing during theafternoon to look from out this upon the little world of sea and sky andstriding cliff that was temporarily mine. From the Parade four feet ofstone wall dipped to a second narrow terrace, and this, in its turn, wasbut a step above a slope of shingle that ran down to the water.
Veritably had I pitched my tent on the wide littoral of rest. So Ithought with a smile, as I composed myself for slumber.
I slept, and I woke, and I lay awake for hours. Every vext problem of mylife and of the hereafter presented itself to me, and had to be arguedout and puzzled over with maddening reiteration. The reason for this wasevident and flagrant. It had woven itself into the tissue of my briefunconsciousness, and was now recognised as, ineradicably, part of myself.
The tide was incoming, that was all, and the waves currycombed the beachwith a swishing monotony that would have dehumanized an ostler.
This rings like the undue inflation of a little theme. I ask no pity forit, nor do I make apology for my weakness. Men there may be, no doubt,to whom the unceasing recurrent thump and scream of a coasting tide onshingle speaks, even in sleep, of the bountiful rhythm of Nature. I amnot one of them--at least, since I visited King's Cobb. The noise of thewaters got into my brain and stayed there. It turned everything elseout--sleep, thought, faith, hope, and charity. From that first awakeningmy skull was a mere globe of stagnant fluid, for any disease germs thatlisted to propagate in.
Perhaps I was too near the coast-line. The highest appreciations ofNature's thunderous forces are conceived, I believe, in the muffledseclusion of the study. I had heard of still-rooms. I did not quite knowwhat they were; but they seemed to me an indispensable part of seasidelodgings, and for the rest of that night I ardently and almost tearfullylonged to be in one.
I came down in the morning jaded and utterly unrefreshed. It was patentthat I was in no state to so much as outline the preliminaries of mygreat undertaking. "Use shall accustom me," I groaned. "I shall scarcelynotice it to-night."
And it was at this point that Miss Whiffle walked like a banshee into thedisturbed chambers of my life, and completed my demoralization.
I must premise that I am an exquisitively nervous man--one who wouldaccept almost ridiculous impositions if the alternative were a "scene."Strangers, I fancy, are quick to detect the signs of this weakness in me;but none before had ever ventured to take such outrageous advantage ofit as did Miss Whiffle, with the completest success.
This lady had secured me for a month. My rights extended over thelantern-windowed sitting-room and the bedroom above it. They were toinclude, moreover, board of a select quality.
"Select" represented Miss Whiffle's brazen mean of morality; and, indeed,it is an elastic and accommodating word. One, for instance, may select anaged gander for its wisdom, knowing that the youthful gosling isproverbially "green." Miss Whiffle selected the aged gander for me, and Ignawed its sinewy limbs without a protest. On a similar principle sheappeared to ransack the town shops for prehistoric joints (the localitywas rich in fossils), and vegetables that, like eggs, only grew harderthe more they were boiled.
I submitted, of course; and should have done no less by a landlady not soobstreperously constituted. But this terrible person gauged and took mein hand from the very morning following my arrival.
She came to receive my _orders_ after breakfast (tepid chicory and anomelette like a fragment of scorched blanket) with her head wrapped up ina towel. Thus habited she had the effrontery to trust the meal had beento my liking. I gave myself away at once by weakly answering, "Oh,certainly!"
"As to dinner, sir," she said faintly, "it is agreed, no kitching fire inthe hevening. That is understood."
I said, "Oh, certainly!" again.
"What I should recommend," she said--and she winced obtrusively at everysixth word--"is an 'arty meal at one, and a light supper at height."
"That will suit me admirably," I said.
She tapped her fingers together indulgently.
"So I thought," she murmured. "Now, what do you fancy, sir?"
"Dear me!" I exclaimed, for her face was horribly contorted. "Are you inpain?"
"Agonies!" said Miss Whiffle.
"Toothache?"
"Neuralgia, sir, for my sins."
"Is there--is there no remedy?"
She was taken with a sharp spasm of laughter, mirthless, but consciouslyexpressive of all the familiar processes of self-effacement undertorture.
"I arks nothing but my duty, sir," she said. "That is the myrrh andbalsam to a racking 'ed. Not but what I owns to a shrinking like untodeath over the thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest andquiet is needful, but it's little I shall get of either out of a kitchingfire in the dog days. And what would you fancy for your dinner, sir?"
"I am sorry," I murmured, "that you should suffer on my account. Isuppose there is nothing cold--"
"Not enough, sir, in all the 'ouse to bait a mousetrap. Nor wo
uld Iinconvenience you, if not for your own kind suggestion. But potted meatsis 'andy and ever sweet, and if I might make bold to propose a tin--"
"Very well. Get me what you like, Miss Whiffle."
"I must arks your pardin, sir. But to walk out in this 'eat, and everyrolling pebble under my foot a knife through my 'ed--no, sir. I make boldto claim that consideration for myself."
"Leave it to me, then. I will do my own catering this morning."
Then I added, in the forlorn hope of justifying my moral ineptitude tomyself, "If you take my advice, you will lie down."
"And where, sir?" she answered, with a particularly patient smile. "Thebeds is unmade as yet, sir," she went on, in a suffering decline, "andrumpled sheets is thorns to a bursting brain."
Then she looked meaningly at the sitting-room sofa.
"I made bold to think, if you _'ad_ 'appened to been a-going to bathe,the only quiet place in the 'ouse--" she murmured, in semi-detachedsentences, and put her hand to her brow.
Five minutes later (I fear no one will credit it) I was outside thehouse, and Miss Whiffle was installed, towel and all, upon my sofa.
For a moment I really think the outrageous absurdity of the situation didgoad me to the tottering point of rebellion. I had not the courage,however, to let myself go, and, as usual, succumbed to the tyranny ofcircumstances.
It was a blazing morning. The flat sea lay panting on its coasts, as if,for all its liquid sparkle, it were athirst; and the town, under the ovenof its hills, burned red-hot, like pottery in a kiln.
I went and bought my tinned meat (a form of preserve quite odious to me)and strolled back disconsolately to the Parade. Occasionally, flittingpast the lantern window, I would steal a side glance into the coolluminosity of my own inaccessible parlour; and there always, reclining ather ease upon my sofa, was the ineradicable presentment of Miss Whiffle.
At one o'clock I ventured to reclaim my own, and sat me down at table, ascorched and glutinous wreck, too overcome with lassitude to tackle theobnoxious meal of my own providing. And to the sofa, already madefamiliar of that dishonoured towel, I was fain presently to confide theempty problem of my own aching head.
All this was but the forerunner and earnest of a month's long martyrdom.That night the sea had me by the nerves again, and for many nightsafter; and, although I grew in time to a certain tolerance of the boomingmonotony, it was the tolerance of a dully resigned, not an indifferent,brain.
When it came to the second morning, not only the novel, but the mere ideaof my ever having contemplated writing one, was a thing with me to feeblymarvel over. And from that time I set myself down to exist and broilonly, doling out a languid interest to the locality, the shimmer of whosebaking hill-sides made all life a quivering, glaring phantom of itself.
Miss Whiffle tyrannized over me more or less according to her mood; butshe did not usurp my sitting-room again. I used to sit by the hour atthe lantern window, in a sort of greasy blankness, like a meat pudding,and vacantly scrutinize the loiterers who passed by on the hot asphalt ofthe Parade. Screened by the window curtains, I could see and hear withoutendangering my own privacy; and many were the odd interchanges of speechthat fell from strangers unconscious of a listener.
One particularly festering day after dinner I had the excitement of quitea pretty little quarrel for dessert. Miss Whiffle had stuffed me withsuet, in meat and pudding, to a point of stupefaction that stopped shortonly of absolute insensibility; and in this state I took up my usual postat the window, awaiting in swollen vacuity the possibilities of theafternoon.
On the horizon violet-hot sea and sky showed scarce a line of demarcationbetween them. Nearer in the waves snored stertorously from exhaustedlungs, as if the very tide were in extremis. Not a breath of air fannedthe pitiless Parade, and the sole accent on life came from a droning,monotonous voice pitched from somewhere in querulous complaint.
"Frarsty!" it wailed, "Frarsty! I warnt thee!" and again, "I warnt thee,Frarsty! Frarsty! Frar--r--r--rsty!" drawn out in an inconceivablepassionlessness of desire again and again, till I felt myself absorbingthe ridiculous yearning for an absurd person and inclined to weephysterical tears at his unresponsiveness.
Then through the suffocating miasma thridded another sound--the whine ofa loafing tramp slowly pleading along the house fronts--vainly, too, asit appeared.
"Friends," went his formula, nasal and forcibly spasmodic in the bestgull-catcher style, "p'raps you will ask why I, a able-bodied man, areasking for ass--ist--ance in your town. Friends, I answer, becorse Icannot get work and becorse I cannot starve. Any honest work I would bethankful for; but no one will give it to me."
Then followed an elaborate presentation, in singsong verse, of his ownundeserved indigence and the brutality of employers, and so therecitation again:--
"Friends, the least ass--ist--ance would be welcome. I am a honestBritish workman, and employ--ment I cannot ob--tain. You sit in yourcom--for--ta--ble 'ouses, and I ask you to ass--ist a fellow creature,driven to this for no fault of his own--for many can 'elp one where onecannot 'elp many."
Then he hove into sight--a gastropodous tub of a fellow, with a rascallyred eye; and I shrank behind my curtains, for I never court parley withsuch gentlemen.
He spotted me, of course,--rogues of his feather have a hawk's eye fortimid quarry,--and his bloated face appeared at the window.
"Sir--friend," he said, in a confidential, hoarse whisper, "won't you'elp a starvin' British workman?"
I gave him sixpence, cursing inwardly this my concession to puretimorousness, and the bestial mask of depravity vanished with a grin.
After that I was left to myself, heat and haze alone reigning without;and presently, I think, I must have fallen into a suetty doze, for I wassemi-conscious of voices raised in dispute for a length of time, before Iroused to the fact that two people were quarrelling just outside mywindow.
They were a young man--almost a boy--and a girl of about his own age; andboth evidently belonged to the labouring classes.
She was, I took occasion to notice, aggressively pretty in that hot redand black style that finds its warmest admirers in a class cultivatedabove that to which she belonged; and she was scorning and flouting herslow, perplexed swain with that over-measure of vehemence characteristicof a sex devoid of the sense of proportion.
"Aw!" she was saying, as I came into focus of their dispute. "That's themoral of a mahn, it is. Yer ter work when ye like an' ter play when yelike, and the girls hahs ter sit and dangle their heels fer yer honours'convenience."
"I doan't arlays get my likes, Jenny, or I shud a' met you yesterday."
"Ay, as yer promused."
"We worked ower late pulling the lias, I tell yer. 'Twould 'a' meant halfa day's wages garn if I'd com', and theer, my dear, 'ud been reasonfor another delay in oor getting spliced."
"You're fine and vulgar, upon my word! A little free, too, and a littlemistook. I've no mind ter get spliced, as yer carls it, wi' a chap ascannot see's way ter keep tryst."
"Yer doan't mean thart?"
"Doan't I? Yer'll answer fer me in everything, 't seems. But yer've gotenough ter answer fer yerself, Jack Curtice. I'm none of the sort ter goor stay at anny mahn's pleasure. There's kerps and dabs in the sea yet,Jack Curtice; and fatter ones ter fish fer, too."
"But yer doan't understand."
"I understand my own vally; and that isn't ter be kep' drarging my toeson the Parade half an a'rtenoon fer a chap as thinks he be betterengaged summer else."
"And yer gone ter break wi' me fer thart?"
"Good-bye, Mr. Curtice," she said, and jerked her nose high and walkedoff.
Now here was an inconsistent jade, and I felt sorry and relieved for thesake of the young fellow.
He stood, after the manner of his kind, amazed and speechless. Man'ssaving faculty of logic was in him, but tongue-tied; and he could notexpress his intuitive recognition of the self-contradictory. Such naturesfrequently make reason articulate through a blow--a rough way
of knockingher into shape, but commonly effectual. Jack, however, was evidently alarge gentle swain of the dumb-suffering type--one of those unresistingleviathans of good-humour, upon whom a woman loves to vent that passionof the illogical which an antipathetic sex has vainly tried to laugh herout of conceit with.
I peered a little longer, and presently saw Mr. Curtice walk off in astate compound of bewilderment and abject depression.
This was the beginning to me of an interest apart from that which hadbrought me to King's Cobb. A real nutshell drama had usurped the place ofthat fictitious one that had as yet failed to mark an epoch by so much asa scratch. I accepted the former as some solace for the intolerablewrong inflicted upon me by the sea and Miss Whiffle.
I happened across my unconscious friends fairly frequently after that myfirst introduction to them; so often, indeed, that, judged by whatfollowed, it would almost seem as if Fate, desiring record of an incidentin the lives of these two, had intentionally worked to discomfit me froma task more engrossing.
Apart, and judged on their natural merits, I took Jack for a good stolidfellow, innately and a little aggravatingly virtuous, and perhaps atrifle more just than generous.
Jenny, I felt, had the spurious brilliancy of that division of her sexthat claims as intuition an inability to master the processes of thought,and attributes to this faculty all fortunate conclusions, but none thatis faulty. I thought, with some commiseration for him, that at bottom hermanner showed some real leaning towards the lover she had discarded--thatshe felt the need of a pincushion, as it were, into which to stick thelittle points of her malevolence. I think I was inclined to be hard onher. I have felt the same antagonism many times towards beauty that wasunattainable by me. For she was richly pretty, without doubt.
When in the neighbourhood of one another, however, they were wont toassume an elaborate artificiality of speech and manner in communion withtheir friends, that was designed with each to point the moral of acomplete indifference and forgetfulness. But the girl was by far thebetter actor; and not only did she play her own part convincingly, butshe generally managed to show up in her rival that sense of mortificationthat it was his fond hope he was effectually concealing.
A fortnight passed; and, lo! there came the end of the lovers' quarrel inall dramatic appropriateness.
By that time the doings of Jack and Jenny had come to be my mind's onlyrefuge from such a vacancy of outlook as I had never before experienced."All down the coast," that summer, "the languid air did swoon." The earthbroiled, and very thought perspired; and Miss Whiffle's voice was like asteam-whistle.
One day, as I was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal, andbalancing the gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tapiocapudding, a muffled, rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the windowand floor vibrate slightly. It seemed so distant and unimportant that Itook no notice of it; and it was only when, ten minutes later, I becameaware that certain excited townsfolk were scurrying past outside that Iroused slowly to the thought that here was something unusual toward.Then, indeed, a sort of insane _abandon_ flashed into life in me, and Ileapt to my feet with maniac eyes. Something stirring in King's Cobb! Ishould have thought nothing less than the last trump could have prickedit out of its accustomed grooves; and that even then it would haveslipped back into them with a sluggish sense of grievance after the firstflourish.
I left my congealing dish, snatched up my hat, and joined the attenuatedchase. It was making in one direction--a point, apparently, to the eastof the town. As I sped excited through the narrow and tortuous streets, agreat bulge of acrid dust bellied upon me suddenly at a corner; and,turning the latter, I plunged into a perfect fog of the same grittysmoke. In this, phantom figures moved, appeared, and vanished; hoarsecries resounded, and a general air of wild confusion and alarm prevailed.For the moment, I felt as if some history of the town's past werere-enacting, as if a sudden swoop of Frank or Dutchman upon the coast hadcalled forth all the defensive ardour of its people. There was nothing ofgunpowder in the stringent opacity, however; but, rather, a strongsuggestion of ancient and disintegrated mortar.
A shape sped by me in the fog, and I managed to stay and question it.
"What is it all?" I asked.
"House fell down," was the breathless answer; "and a poor chap left alofton the ruins."
Then I grew as insane as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly toand fro, striving at every coign to pierce with my eyesight the whitedrift. I pushed back my hat; I gnawed my knuckles; I felt that I couldnot stay still, yet knew not for what point to make. Almost I felt thatin another moment I should screech out--when a breath of sea air caughtthe skirt of the cloud, and rolled the bulk of it up and away overthe house-tops.
Then, at once, was revealed to me the cause and object of all thisgaggle, and confusion, and outcry. It was revealed to the crowd, too,that stood about me, and, in the revelation, the noise of its mouthingwent off and faded, till a tense silence reigned and the murmur of one'sbreathing seemed a sacrilege.
I saw before me a ruinous space--a great ragged gap in a lofty block ofbrick and mortar. This block had evidently, at one time, consisted of twohigh semi-detached houses, and of these, one lay a monstrous heap oftumbled and shattered _debris_. A ruin, but not quite; for, as the courseof a landslip will often tower with great spires and pinnacles of rockand ragged earth that have withstood the pull and onset of the movinghill-side, so here a high sheet of shattered wall, crowned with a clusterof toppling chimneys, stood up stark in the midst of the generaloverthrow. And there aloft, clinging to the crumbling stack, that mightat any moment part, and fling and crush him into the savage ruin below,stood the figure of a solitary man. And the man was my friend of theParade, Jack Curtice.
I could see and recognise him plainly--even the frantic clutch of hishands and the deadly pallor of his face.
The block--an ancient one--had been, as I afterwards learned, in courseof demolition when the catastrophe took place. At the moment the poorfellow had been alone at his work, and now his destruction seemed a merematter of seconds.
White dust rose from the heap, like smoke from an extinguished fire; andever, as we looked, spars and splinters of brick tore away from the highfragment yet standing, and plunged with a thud into the wrack underneath.
It was glaringly evident that not long could elapse before wall and manwould come down with a hideous, shattering run. A slip, a wilder clutchat his frail support, might in an instant precipitate the calamity.
Then from the upturned faces of the women cries of pity and anguish brokeforth, and men nipped one another's arms and gasped, and knew not whatcounsel to offer.
"Do summut! do summut!" cried the women; and their mates only shook offtheir pleadings with a peevish show of callousness, that was merely thedumb anguish of undemonstrativeness. For, while their throats were thick,their practical brains were busy.
Some one suggested a ladder, and in a moment there was an aimlessscurrying and turning amongst the women.
"Why don't 'ee stir theeself and hunt for un, Jarge?" panted one thatstood near me, twisting hysterically upon a slow youth at her side.
"Shut up, 'Liza!" he answered gruffly; then, with a sort of indrawngasp--"Look art the wall, lass--look art the wall!"
It was obvious to the least knowing what he meant. To lean so much as abroomstick, it seemed, against that tottering ruin would infalliblycomplete its destruction.
One foot of the clinging figure high up was seen to move slightly, and alittle bomb of mortar span out into the air and burst into dust on aprojecting brick. A long shrill sigh broke from the crowd.
Then the male wiseheads came together, and, desperate to snap the chordof impotent suspense, mooted and rejected plan after plan that their sanejudgment knew from the first to be impracticable.
At the outset it was plainly impossible for a soul to approach the ruins.Apart from the almost certain mangling such a venture would entail uponthe explorer, the least stirring or shifting of the gre
at heap of rubbishflung about the base of the wall would certainly risk the immediatecollapse of the latter.
Success, it was evident, must come, if at all, from a distance--but how?
One suggested slinging a rope from window to window of adjacent housesacross the path of the broken chimney-stack--a good method of rescue hadcircumstances lent themselves to it. They did not. On the ruin side awide space intervened; on the other, the sister house to that which hadfallen, and which was also included in the order of demolition, wasitself affected by the loss of its support, and leaned in a sinistermanner, its party walls bulged and rent towards the scene of devastation.
Nothing short of the great Roc itself could, it seemed, snatch the poorfellow from his death perch.
There came suddenly an ominous silence. Then strode out in front of hisfellows--and he moved so close to the ruin that the women whimpered andheld one another--an old, rough-bearded chap in stained corduroy.
"Whart's he gone to do?" gasped the sibilant voices.
He hollowed his hands to his mouth, he cleared his hoarse throat two orthree times. Only a little trailing screech came from it at first. Thenhe cursed his weakness, and pulled himself together.
"Jark! Jark Curtus!" he hailed, in an explosive voice.
"Hullo!"
The weak, small response floated down.
"My lard! my poor lard! we've thought oor best, arnd we can do nothunfower 'ee."
Instantly a shrill protest of horror went up from the women. This was notwhat they had expected.
"What! leave the mis'rable boy to his fate!"
There followed a storm of hisses from them--absolutely unreasonable, ofcourse. The old fellow turned to retire, with hanging head.
At the moment a girl, flushed, blowzed, breathless, broke through theskirt of the mob and barred his retreat.
"Oh!" she panted, shaking her jet-black noddle at him--"here's a parcelo' gor-crows for discussin' help to a Christian marn! What! a score o'wiselings, and not one to hit oot the means and the way?"
She had only just heard, and had run a mile to the rescue of her old lad.
The women caught her enthusiasm, and jeered and cheered formlessly, astheir manner is; for each desired for her own voice a separaterecognition.
Jenny pushed rudely past the abashed gaffer. She was hatless, and herhair had tumbled abroad. She raised her face, with the eyes shining.
"Jack!" she cried, in a shrill voice--"Jack!"
The little weak response wailed down again.
"Jenny! I'm anigh done."
"Hold on a bit longer, Jack!" she screamed. "Don't move till I tell 'ee.I'm agone to save thee, Jack!"
Again from the women a rapturous cry broke out. What incompetent noodlesappeared their masters in juxtaposition with this fearless, defiantcreature.
The man up aloft seemed to shiver in the shock of the outcry; and oncemore some fragments of mortar rolled from under his feet and bounded intothe depths. The girl rounded upon the voicers.
"Hold thee blazing tongues!" she cried in fury. "D'ee warnt to shake unfrom his perch?"
She turned to the foremost group of men.
"A couple o' long scaffold poles fro' yonder!" she cried hurriedly, "andtwenty fathom o' rope!"
Her quick eyes and intelligence had found what she wanted in a builder'syard no great distance away.
"Follow, a dozen o' you!" she cried; and sped off in the direction shehad indicated.
Just twelve men, and no more, obeyed her. She was mistress of thesituation, and the crowd felt it. They made room for the dominantintellect, and awaited developments, watching, in suppressed excitementand trepidation, the figure--whom exhaustion was slowly mastering--highup above them.
Suddenly a sort of huge L-shaped structure moved down the street, untilit stood opposite the ruined house. Then, twisting and rearing itselfaloft, it took to itself the form of a lofty, slender gallows.
It was formed of a couple of forty-foot scaffolding poles, stoutly boundand corded together, the base of one to the top of the other, so thatthey stood at right angles. Five or six feet of the butt of thehorizontal one was projected beyond its lashings, and to this threelengths of rope were fastened, and trailed long ends in the dust as thestructure was held aloft and pushed and dragged into position.
"Now!" shrieked the girl, red-hot, reliant, never still for a moment; "asmarny as can hold to each end there, and swing the blessed boom outtowards him!"
Fifty may have responded. They swarmed like ants about the upraised pole,and she drove them into position--a black knot of men hauling on thetriple cordage--left, right, and middle, like the ribs of a tent.
They saw her meaning and fell into place with a shout. To hold theprojecting pole levered up at that height was a test of weight andmuscle, even without their man on the end of it; but there were plentymore to help pull, did their united force waver.
"Jack!" screamed the girl again, in a wildness of excitement. "Only asecond longer, Jack! Hold on by your eyelids, and snatch the stickthe moment it comes agen thee!"
The horizontal spar pointed down the street. Slowly the men worked roundwith the ropes, and slowly the point of the pole turned in the directionof the chimney-stack and its forlorn burden. There was room and to sparefor the process in the wide gap made by the tumbled house.
The crowd held its breath. Here and there a strangled sob was rent fromoverstrained lungs; here and there the wailing voice of a baby whinedup and subsided.
The pole swung round with the toiling men--neared him on the ruin. Heturned his head and saw, shifted his position and staggered. Jenny gave apiercing screech. The men, thinking something was wrong, paused a moment.
On the instant there came a crackling, tearing sound--a heaving roll--asplintering crash and uproar. The man aloft was seen to make a flyingleap--or was it only a hurled fragment of the falling chimney?--and whitedust rose in a fog once more and blotted out all the tragedy thatmight be enacting behind it.
A horrible silence succeeded, then a single woman yelled, and her cry wasechoed by fifty hoarse voices.
The noise came from those at the ropes. They were straining and tugging,and some of them bobbed up and down like peas on a drum.
"More on ye! more on ye! We've hooked un, and he's got the pull of a seasarpint!"
The ropes became thick with striving men. The whole street resounded witha medley of cries.
Then the point of the boom swung slowly out of the fog, and there was therescued man swinging and swaying at the end of it.
They lowered him gradually into the street. But the strain upon them wasawful, and he came down with a run the last few yards.
Then they let the angle of the gallows wheel over as it listed, and stoodand mopped their hot foreheads, while the crowd rushed for the poor shakysubject of all its turmoil.
I could not get within fifty feet of him; or, I think, I should havegiven him and Jenny then and there all my fortune.
Later, I made their acquaintance in a casual way, and compromised with myconscience by presenting them with a very pretty tea-service to help themset up house with.
At a Winter's Fire Page 6
