At a Winter's Fire Part 15

The women caught her enthusiasm, and jeered and cheered formlessly, as their manner is; for each desired for her own voice a separate recognition.

Jenny pushed rudely past the abashed gaffer. She was hatless, and her hair had tumbled abroad. She raised her face, with the eyes s.h.i.+ning.

"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 noodles appeared their masters in juxtaposition with this fearless, defiant creature.

The man up aloft seemed to s.h.i.+ver in the shock of the outcry; and once more some fragments of mortar rolled from under his feet and bounded into the depths. The girl rounded upon the voicers.

"Hold thee blazing tongues!" she cried in fury. "D'ee warnt to shake un from his perch?"

She turned to the foremost group of men.

"A couple o' long scaffold poles fro' yonder!" she cried hurriedly, "and twenty fathom o' rope!"

Her quick eyes and intelligence had found what she wanted in a builder's yard no great distance away.

"Follow, a dozen o' you!" she cried; and sped off in the direction she had indicated.

Just twelve men, and no more, obeyed her. She was mistress of the situation, and the crowd felt it. They made room for the dominant intellect, and awaited developments, watching, in suppressed excitement and trepidation, the figure--whom exhaustion was slowly mastering--high up above them.

Suddenly a sort of huge L-shaped structure moved down the street, until it stood opposite the ruined house. Then, twisting and rearing itself aloft, it took to itself the form of a lofty, slender gallows.

It was formed of a couple of forty-foot scaffolding poles, stoutly bound and corded together, the base of one to the top of the other, so that they stood at right angles. Five or six feet of the b.u.t.t of the horizontal one was projected beyond its las.h.i.+ngs, and to this three lengths of rope were fastened, and trailed long ends in the dust as the structure was held aloft and pushed and dragged into position.

"Now!" shrieked the girl, red-hot, reliant, never still for a moment; "as marny as can hold to each end there, and swing the blessed boom out towards 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 the triple cordage--left, right, and middle, like the ribs of a tent.

They saw her meaning and fell into place with a shout. To hold the projecting pole levered up at that height was a test of weight and muscle, even without their man on the end of it; but there were plenty more to help pull, did their united force waver.

"Jack!" screamed the girl again, in a wildness of excitement. "Only a second longer, Jack! Hold on by your eyelids, and s.n.a.t.c.h the stick the moment it comes agen thee!"

The horizontal spar pointed down the street. Slowly the men worked round with the ropes, and slowly the point of the pole turned in the direction of the chimney-stack and its forlorn burden. There was room and to spare for the process in the wide gap made by the tumbled house.

The crowd held its breath. Here and there a strangled sob was rent from overstrained lungs; here and there the wailing voice of a baby whined up and subsided.

The pole swung round with the toiling men--neared him on the ruin. He turned his head and saw, s.h.i.+fted his position and staggered. Jenny gave a piercing screech. The men, thinking something was wrong, paused a moment.

On the instant there came a crackling, tearing sound--a heaving roll--a splintering crash and uproar. The man aloft was seen to make a flying leap--or was it only a hurled fragment of the falling chimney?--and white dust rose in a fog once more and blotted out all the tragedy that might be enacting behind it.

A horrible silence succeeded, then a single woman yelled, and her cry was echoed by fifty hoa.r.s.e 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 sea sarpint!"

The ropes became thick with striving men. The whole street resounded with a medley of cries.

Then the point of the boom swung slowly out of the fog, and there was the rescued man swinging and swaying at the end of it.

They lowered him gradually into the street. But the strain upon them was awful, 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 stood and mopped their hot foreheads, while the crowd rushed for the poor shaky subject of all its turmoil.

I could not get within fifty feet of him; or, I think, I should have given him and Jenny then and there all my fortune.

Later, I made their acquaintance in a casual way, and compromised with my conscience by presenting them with a very pretty tea-service to help them set up house with.

BLACK VENN

I

"George," said Plancine.

"Please say it again," said George.

She dimpled at him and obeyed, with the soft suggestion of accent that was like a tender confidence. Her feet were sunk in Devons.h.i.+re gra.s.s; her name was on the birth register of a little Devons.h.i.+re sea-town; yet the sun of France was in her veins as surely as his caress was on her lips.

Therefore she said "George" with a sweet dragging sound that greatly fluttered the sensibilities of the person addressed, and not infrequently led them to alight, like Prince Dummling's queen bee, on the very mouth of that honeyed flower of speech.

Now Plancine put her cheek on her George's rough sleeve, and said she,--

"I have a confession to make--about something a little silly.

Consequently I have postponed it till now, when it is too dark for you to see my face."

"Never!" he murmured fervently. "A double cataract could not deprive me of that vision. It is printed here, Plancine."

He smacked his chest hard on the left side.

"Yet it sounds hollow, George?"

"Yes," he said. "It is a sandwich-box, an empty one. I would not consign your image to such a deplorable casket. My heart was what I meant. How I hate sandwiches--misers s.h.i.+vering between sheets--a vile gastronomic economy!"

"Poor boy! I will make you little dough-cakes when you go apainting."

"Plancine! Your image here, yes. But your dough-cakes--!"