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.