Читать книгу The rainproof invention: or, Some tangled threads - Emily Poynton Weaver - Страница 7

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THE GREAT MAN HAS A FALL.

After Miss Warrington left him, several things occurred to delay Mr. Norbury’s departure from his office. One or two people came in to speak to him, and he was obliged to have a long consultation with Mr. Milwood over the delinquencies of one of the dyers, who had carelessly damaged a considerable quantity of goods. When at last he took his hat and went out he was in no very enviable frame of mind. A number of small matters had gone contrary with him.

The mist was thicker than he had thought. He had almost to grope his way down the familiar street; but when he had turned the corner and reached the broader road, he went on with more confidence and less care. There were many passengers in the streets, for it was market day, and the country people had not all left the town; but Mr. Norbury walked quickly, caring little for the very considerable amount of jostling which he received and, perhaps, returned.

His house was nearly a mile from the factory, and in that distance he had to take three or four turns, as there was no very direct road between the two places. The fog was so thick that, though he knew the way so well, he took a wrong turning and had walked some distance before he perceived his mistake. When he did so, he recognized the street he was in, and instead of retracing his steps, decided to make a short cut across a piece of land that had long been lying waste. This would bring him directly into the street where he lived.

Now it happened that Mr. Norbury had not walked in that direction for some weeks, and, to his astonishment, he soon found himself stumbling over a heap of bricks. This should have warned him of danger, but he was so near home that he did not like to turn back. He walked very slowly and cautiously, but seemed to be perfectly entangled among heaps of mortar, piles of stone, and unfinished brick walls. The fog was so dense that he could not see half a yard in front of him, and at last he became so confused by the perils of the way, that he could not decide whether he was going towards home or away from it.

By this time he would have been thankful to reach even the point he had started from, but it was not to be! Turning aside to avoid a lime pit on the right, he incautiously advanced too quickly to the left, stumbled over something, fell headlong a distance of some eight or nine feet, and alighted in the half-finished cellar of one of a partly built row of houses.

For some little time he lay stunned by the fall, and when he came to himself he was lying on damp earth, stiff, bruised, and chilled through by long exposure to the foggy air. He could not move without great pain, and he was equally confused as to where he was and how he had come there. At length he began to remember what had happened, and the necessity of making some effort to improve his situation occurred to him. He did not know how late it might be, and he began to fear that he might not get help that night. With a great effort he managed to move a little from the uneasy posture in which he had been lying; at last he even contrived to sit up.

He had matches in his pocket, and after several vain attempts he struck one, with the agreeable result of being able to see the fog as well as feel it. He lit another. It glimmered for an instant on the brick wall close at hand. He guessed now where he was, and the prospect was not encouraging. Poor Mr. Norbury! he grew desperate, and, fancying he heard the faint rumble of a carriage in the distance, he shouted as loudly as he could. The sound of wheels came nearer and nearer (at least there was the satisfaction of knowing that he was not far from the road), nearer and nearer, and Mr. Norbury shouted in a fashion that would have done credit to his rollicking, noisy clerk, Bob Littleton. He listened breathlessly, gave another wild halloo, and waited again, then fairly groaned with despair. The carriage had passed and gone on.

The hour that followed was perhaps the most trying that Mr. Norbury had ever spent in his life. It was trying in every way—to his health, to his temper, to his lungs, and to his dignity. Every time a conveyance rattled by, he shouted as he had not shouted since he was a boy, but his efforts brought no relief. Then followed intervals of suspense, of anxious waiting and listening. All in vain, no one came to the rescue. He felt cramped with lying on the damp ground, and the pains in his head and limbs became more violent. He shouted and shouted again. Still no one came!

His position was not likely perhaps to prove conducive to clear reflection, and his thoughts wandered. He thought of his own comfortable fireside, of Elsie chatting to some one of her many admirers, of his patent and the factory, of his father and the old days at home; and then he meditated strangely on death, thinking less of the dim future beyond the grave (very dim and very uncertain to him), than of his unfinished and wasted toils to add one improvement to another. Would any other man, he wondered, win from the traces he had left the secret that had foiled him so long? Another carriage passed and left him there.

He was in despair, past shouting, past thinking, almost past caring what became of him, when a familiar voice sounded from the darkness above: “Mr. Norbury! Mr. Norbury, where are you?”

He answered faintly, and another voice said: “He is there, Warrington, don’t you hear? down one of those cellars, I suppose.”

“How can he have got in, and how shall we get him out?” muttered Warrington.

“Give me your hand, Ralph, and I’ll find out what’s the matter. It’s lucky if no bones are broken. Hold the light steady—now—that’s right; let go, please;” and Bob swung himself down, not without a slip that threatened to disable him also. Then Warrington passed the lantern to him and he tried to discover whether Mr. Norbury was seriously injured. In the unsteady light the mill owner presented a most melancholy appearance, for his face was white and bruised, and his garments were covered with mud and clay. The kind-hearted little clerk was dismayed at the spectacle. “I am afraid he is badly hurt, Warrington!” he exclaimed. He spoke to the injured man and tried to rouse him; but he neither answered nor stirred. He next attempted to lift him into a more comfortable posture, but he was heavy and Bob not very strong; so he took off his overcoat and arranged it as a pillow on the little heap of bricks that had done duty before. Having accomplished this improvement he went to consult with Ralph, who was still waiting above. “I don’t think we two can manage to get him up without help,” he said; “but if you’ll go for a carriage and a doctor, I’ll stay here with him.”

“Very well; I’ll be as quick as I can. There’s something passing now;” and Warrington was hurrying away when Bob called out, “Here, Warrington, you had better take the lantern, or you’ll be in one of the other cellars next.”

“Thank you; well, perhaps I had,” said Ralph. So Bob was left in the darkness to keep watch beside a man who might be dying, for anything he knew. He sat down close to him, listening impatiently for Warrington’s return. The silence soon began to be very trying to his nerves, especially as it was broken at irregular intervals by the deep groans of the invalid. Bob expected them, and ought not to have been startled; but each time he was startled nevertheless. By and by he began to whistle softly to keep up his spirits, but his tunes sounded very melancholy down in the cellar, and he was so cold that he could hardly keep his teeth from chattering.

He stood up at last and stamped his feet to warm them; then, by way of doing something, he made a tour of investigation round their prison. He was not reassured to find that without help from above he himself would have some difficulty in escaping from it, for the masons had removed their planks and ladders. Suppose something had happened to Warrington! He had been gone so long that Bob began to fancy all kinds of possible and impossible explanations for his delay. He traveled round his cage three times, feeling the walls with his hands, but in the darkness he failed to discover any means of egress; and at last he sat down beside his unconscious companion to wait with all the patience he could muster.

Bob had been returning home, after doing some business in the town, when he came suddenly upon Warrington standing perfectly still in the middle of the road with a lantern in his hand. This astonishing sight brought Bob to a halt, and he was going to ask whether Ralph had lost his way, when that dignified gentleman made a hasty but imperious gesture to silence him, saying in impressive tones, “Listen! don’t you hear, Littleton?”

“Hear what?” said Bob, staring with all his might into the darkness.

“Mr. Norbury. I am pretty sure I heard him calling.”

“Mr. Norbury!” exclaimed Bob in accents of bewilderment. “He’s safe at home long ago. You’re dreaming, Warrington!”

“He is not safe at home, for I have just come from there; and he isn’t at the office, for Miss Norbury sent to see.”

Bob gave a low whistle. “He’d never lose himself in Wharton, Ralph. He knows the place too well. I expect he has just gone to call on some one.”

“I don’t think so. He has never done such a thing before, without letting them know at home. Besides, I am sure I heard some one calling over there.”

“Well, if you did,” said Bob with his usual practicality, “let us go and look for him.” So saying he plunged valiantly into the fog, leaving Warrington to follow; but he was brought to a standstill, as Mr. Norbury had been, by a new brick wall. “Come on, Warrington!” he shouted; “I do believe I did hear something then, but I’ve got mixed up with the tower of Babel or something, and I can’t find my way out.”

For the next few minutes he followed cautiously in the wake of Warrington’s lantern. Suddenly he stopped, grasping Ralph unceremoniously by the arm. “What fools we are!” he exclaimed, “to risk our necks amongst all this rubbish! Mr. Norbury always goes home up King Street and along Dunham Road.”

Ralph shook off his hand a little roughly, for he resented the familiarity of both speech and action, and replied: “I had to come to Mr. Drayton’s to borrow this lantern, and I am sure I heard Mr. Norbury calling for help.”

“Why doesn’t he call now then?” said Bob impatiently. “Hush! what’s that?”

“I don’t know; some drunken fellow who has lost his way, I should think.”

“Perhaps it is he. Let us look and see.”

But that was more easily said than done, for the lantern only threw a narrow track of light in front, and left the mist on either side utterly unilluminated. There was no sound to guide them, and though they searched carefully all over the waste ground, they found no trace of him, except some fresh footprints, that, as Bob said, “might just as well have been made by any one else.”

“I wish he would give one good shout!” said Littleton as they again began to stumble amongst the bricks and pitfalls of the new buildings. He had hardly spoken when, seeming to come almost from beneath their feet, they heard not a shout, but a groan. Then Bob had scrambled down into the cellar, as we have already stated, and Warrington had gone for assistance.

It was not an easy matter to get Mr. Norbury safely up without hurting him, even with the help of the men who came with Warrington. He groaned a good deal as they put him into the cab, but he did not open his eyes, and his face looked drawn and pale in the light of the lantern.

“Do you think he is dying, Ralph?” gasped Bob.

“Dying!” repeated Warrington; “I hope not, but—I don’t know.”

“Hadn’t you better go on and break it to them?” suggested Littleton after a pause. “They ought to be told.”

“Won’t you go?” asked Ralph, unwilling for once to go to Mr. Norbury’s house or to see his daughter.

“No, oh, no! I don’t know them as well as you do. You go on quickly and I’ll see Mr. Norbury safely home, and then I’ll run for the doctor.”

Ralph made no more excuses but hurried on, and in spite of his desire to be calm and collected, gave such a thundering rap at the door that he startled the whole household.

Elsie met him in the hall and led him into the drawing room. She could see from his face that something alarming had happened. Her quickness of apprehension made his errand easier. He told his story in a very few words, but rather incoherently.

“Then you think him dangerously hurt?” said Elsie.

“I fear so, Miss Norbury.”

With a half-contemptuous glance at her mother, who was hysterical in her nervous excitement, Elsie stepped to the bell and rang it. When the servant appeared she quietly ordered her father’s room to be prepared and told the girl to send for the doctor. Ralph explained that Bob was going, and she did not forget to express her thanks for their thoughtfulness, even though she could hear the wheels already at the door. She told them where to take him, and what to do, but at the sight of her father’s deathlike face her own paled slightly. Like the young men, she feared the worst; but “there was no immediate danger,” the doctor said, “and if great care was taken there might not be danger at all.”

Ralph lingered until he was satisfied that he could be of no further use, and then left very regretfully, for he fancied that Miss Norbury found his presence a comfort in her trial.

Late as it was, Bob had waited for him, being anxious to hear the doctor’s report, and not liking to go into the house.

But Dr. Thay had been mistaken. In spite of all possible care Mr. Norbury grew worse; for several days he was delirious and hung between life and death. He was a difficult patient to nurse, for it was his first serious illness, and he would not submit to the doctor’s orders. As his mind began to get clearer his impatience and irritability increased, for he could not endure the thought that “his business was going to rack and ruin” in his absence; yet he was too weak and helpless to take the law into his own hands and follow his ordinary course of life as he would have desired.