07 - At a Winters Fire by Bernard Capes

Immerse yourself in the enchanting tales of Bernard Capes, crafted to captivate your imagination as you cozy up by the fireplace during the long, chilly days of winter. Let A. Gramour guide you through this collection of stories that promise to entertain and warm your spirit.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section seven of At a Winter's Fire. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
At a Winter's Fire by Bernard Capes, A lazy romance.
I had slept but two nights at King's Cob when

(00:24):
I saw distinctly that the novel with which I was
to revolutionize society and my own fortunes, and with the
purpose of writing, which in an unvexed seclusion I had
buried myself in this expedient hamlet on the south coast,
was withered in the bud beyond redemption to this lamentable
canker of a seedling hope. The eternal harmony of the

(00:47):
sea was a principal contributor. But Miss Whiffle confirmed the
blight I had fled from the jangle of a city
and the worries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities.
And the result was I had rooms on the parade
a suggestive mouthful. But then the parade is such a

(01:08):
modest little affair. The town itself is flung down a
steep hill at the mouth of a verduous gorge, and
lies pitched so far as the very water side, a
picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edges bristle
and stand up in the bite of a vaster bay
with a crooked breakwater like a bent finger beckoning passing

(01:30):
sails to its harborage, an invitation which most are cooi of,
excepting for the attractions of King's Cob are comparatively limited,
and its nearest station is a full six miles distant
along a switchback road. Possibly this last fact may have
militated against the popularity of King's Cob as a holiday resort.

(01:53):
If so, all the better, and may enterprise forever languish
in the matter, for vulgarity can claim no commoner purpose
with fashion than is shown in that destruction of ancient
landmarks and double gilding of new which follows the opening
out of some unsophisticated colony of simple souls. King's Cob,

(02:15):
if remote and unfriended, is neither melancholy nor slow. But
it is small and all its fine little history, for
it has had a stirring one has ruffled itself out
on a Liliputian platform. Than this its insignificance. I desired
nothing better. I wished to feel the comparative importance of

(02:38):
the individual, which one cannot do in crowded colonies, A
coveted surroundings that should be primitive, an atmosphere in which
my thoughts could speak to me coherent. I would be
as one in a cave, looking forth on sea and sky,
and the buoyant glory of nature, unvexed of conventions, untrammeled

(02:59):
by social absord servances, building up my enchanted palace of
the imagination, against such a background as only the unsullied
majesty of sky an ocean could present. For the result
was to crown with my name an epoch in literature.
And hither in future ages should the pilgrim stand at gaze,

(03:19):
murmuring to himself. And here he wrote it. I lay
my head on my pillow that first night of my stay,
with a brimming brain and a heart of high resolve.
The two little windows under a thatched roof of my
sleeping place that lay over my sitting room, and both
looked ocean wards, were open to the inpour of sweet

(03:40):
hot air, and only the regular wash of the sea
below broke the close stillness of the night. 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 most charming old world cottage, as I have said,

(04:02):
on the parade, and at high tide I could have
thrown a biscuit into the sea with merely a lazy jerk.
My sitting room put forth a semicircular window, like a
lighthouse lantern, upon the very pathway, and it had been
soothing during the afternoon to look out from this upon
the little world of sea and sky and striding cliff

(04:23):
that was temporarily mine. From the parade, four feet of
stone wall dipped to a second narrow terrace, and this,
in its turn, was but a step above a slope
of shingle that ran down to the water. Veritably had
I pitched my tent on the wide littorrel of rest,
so I thought, with a smile, as I composed myself

(04:44):
for slumber, I slept, and I woke, and I lay
awake for hours. Every vexed problem of my life and
of the hereafter presented itself to me, and had to
be argued out and puzzled over with maddening reiteration. The
reason for this was evident and flagrant. It had woven

(05:04):
itself into the tissue of my brief unconsciousness and was
now recognized as ineradicably part of myself. The tide was
in coming, that was all, and the waves curry combed
the beach with a swishing monotony that would have dehumanized
an ostler. This rings like the undue inflation of a

(05:25):
little theme. I ask no pity for it, 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 on Shingle speaks, even in sleep,
of the bountiful rhythm of nature. I am not one
of them, at least since I visited King's Cob. The

(05:46):
noise of the waters got into my brain and stayed there.
It turned everything else out sleep, thought, faith, hope, and charity.
From that first awakening, my skull was a mere globe
of stagnant fluid for any disease germs that listed to
propagate in Perhaps I was too near the coast line.

(06:07):
The highest appreciations of nature's thunderous forces are conceived, I believe.
In the muffled seclusion of the study, I had heard
of still rooms. I did not quite know what they were,
but they seemed to me an indispensable part of seaside lodgings,
and for the rest of that night I ardently and

(06:27):
most tearfully longed to be in one. I came down
in the morning jaded and utterly unrefreshed. It was patent
that I was in no state to so much as
outline the preliminaries of my great undertaking. Use shall accustom me,
I groaned, I shall scarcely notice it to night. And
it was at this point that Miss Whiffle walked like

(06:50):
a banshee into the disturbed chambers of my life and
completed my demoralization. I must promise that I am an
exquisitely nervous man, one who would accept almost ridiculous impositions
if the alternative were a scene. Strangers, I fancy are
quick to detect the signs of this weakness in me,

(07:10):
But none before had ever ventured to take such outrageous
advantage of it as did Miss Whiffle. With the completest success.
This lady had secured me for a month. My rights
extended over the lantern windowed sitting room and the bedroom
above it. They were to include moreover board of a
select quality. Select represented Miss Whiffle's brazen mean of morality,

(07:35):
and indeed it is an elastic and accommodating word. One,
for instance, may select an aged gander for its wisdom,
knowing that the youthful gossling is proverbiably green. Miss Whiffle
selected the aged gander for me, and I gnawed at
sinewy limbs without a protest. On a similar principle, she

(07:57):
appeared to ransack the town shops for prehistoric joints. The
locality was rich in fossils and vegetables that, like eggs,
only grew harder the more they were boiled. I submitted,
of course, and should have done no less by a
landlady not so obstreperously constituted. But this terrible person gaged

(08:18):
and took me in hand. From the very morning following
my arrival. She came to receive my orders after breakfast,
tepid chickory and an omelet like a fragment of scorched blanket,
with her head wrapped up in a towel. Thus habited,
she had the effrontery through trust the meal had been
to my liking. I gave myself away at once by

(08:40):
weakly answering, oh, certainly as to dinner, sir? She said, faintly.
It is agreed, no kitching fire in the heathening, that
is understood. I said, oh, certainly again? What I should recommend,
she said, as she winced obstrusively at every sixth word,

(09:01):
is an arty meal at one and a light supper
at height. That would 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 in pain, agonies,
said miss whiffle toothache neuralgia, sir, for my sins is

(09:27):
there is there no remedy. She was taken with a
sharp spasm of laughter, mirthless but consciously expressive of all
the familiar processes of self effacement under torture. I arks,
nothing but my duty, sir, she said, that is the
mere and balsam to a rackin head, not but what
I owes to a shrinking like unto death over the

(09:50):
thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest
and quiet is needful, but it's little I shall get
of either out of a kitchen fire 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.
I suppose there is nothing cold, not enough, sir, in

(10:11):
all the ouse to bait a mouse trap. Nor would
I inconvenience you if not for your own kind suggestion.
But potted meats is 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 pardon, sir. But to walk out in this eat,
and every rolling pebble under my foot a knife through

(10:34):
my head, No, sir, I make bold to 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 to myself.
If you take my advice, you will lie down, And where, sir,
she answered, with a particularly patient smile. The beds is

(10:57):
unmade as yet, sir. She went on in a suffering
decline and rumpled sheets as thorns to a bursting brain.
Then she looked meaningfully at the sitting room sofa. I'm
made bold to think if you add appened to being
a goin to bathe, the only quiet place in the ouse.
She murmured in semi detached sentences, and put her hand

(11:19):
to her brow. Five minutes later, I fear no one
will credit it. I was outside the house, and miss
Whiffle was installed, towel and all upon my sofa. For
a moment, I really think the outrageous absurdity of the
situation did goad me to a tottering point of rebellion.
I had not the courage, however, to let myself go,

(11:41):
and as usual, succumbed to the tyranny of circumstances. 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 oven of its
hills burned red hot, like pottery in the kiln. I

(12:01):
went and bought my tinned meat, a form of preserve
quite odious to me, and strolled back disconsolately to the parade,
occasionally flitting past the lantern window, I would steal a
side glance into the cool luminosity of my own inaccessible parlor,
And there, always reclining at her ease upon my sofa,
was the irradicable resentment of Miss Whiffle. At one o'clock

(12:26):
I ventured to reclaim my own and sat me down
at table, a scorched and gluttonous wreck, too overcome with
lassitude to tackle the obnoxious meal of my own providing,
and to the sofa, already made familiar of that dishonored towel,
I was fain presently to confide the empty problem of
my own aching head. All this was but the forerunner

(12:48):
and earnest of a month's long martyrdom. That night, the
sea had me by the nerves again, and for many
nights after. And although I grew in time to a
certain tolerance of the booming monotony, it was the tolerance
of a dully resigned, not an indifferent brain. When it
came to the second morning, not only the novel, but

(13:11):
the mere idea of my ever having contemplated writing one,
was a thing with me, too feebly marvel over. And
from that time I set myself down to exist and broil,
only doling out a languid interest to the locality, the
shimmer of whose baking hillsides made all life a quivering,
glaring phantom of itself. Miss Whiffle tyrannized over me, more

(13:34):
or less according to her mood, but she did not
usurp my sitting room again. I used to sit by
the hour at the lantern window, in a sort of
greasy blankness like a meat pudding, and vacantly scrutinized the
loiterers who passed by. On the hot asphalt of the parade.
Screened by the window curtains, I could see and hear
without endangering my own privacy. And many were the odd

(13:58):
interchanges of speech that fell from strangers, unconscious of a listener.
One particularly festering day, after dinner, I had the excitement
of quite a pretty little quarrel for dessert. Miss Whiffle
had stuffed me with suet in meat and putting to
a point of stupefication that stopped short only of absolute insensibility.

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And in this state I took up my usual post
at the window, awaiting in swollen vacuity the possibilities of
the afternoon on the horizon violet hot sea and sky
showed scarce a line of demarcation between them. Nearer in
the waves snored stentoriously from exhausted lungs, as if the

(14:40):
very tide were in extremis not. A breath of air
fanned the pitiless parade, and the sole accent on life
came from a droning, monotonous voice, pitched from somewhere in
quarrelous complaint. Farsty, it wailed, Farsty, I warned thee, and
again I warrned thee. Farsty, FARSTI Farsty, drawn out in

(15:04):
an inconceivable passionlessness of desire, again and again, till I
felt myself absorbing the ridiculous yearning for an absurd person,
and inclined to weep hysterical tears at his unresponsiveness. Then
through the suffocating miasma, thridded another sound, the whine of
a loafing tramp, slowly pleading along the house fronts. Vainly too,

(15:27):
as it appeared, friends, went his formula nasal and forcibly
spasmodic in the best goal catcher's style. Perhaps you will
ask why I, able bodied man are asking for assistance
in your town, friends, I answer, because I cannot get work,
and because I cannot starve. Any honest work I would

(15:50):
be thankful for, but no one will give it to me.
Then followed an elaborate presentation in singsong verse of his
own undeserved indigence and the brutality of employers, and so
the recitation again, friends, the least assistance would be welcome.
I am an honest British workman, and employ meant I

(16:12):
cannot obtain you sit in your comfortable ouses, and I
ask you to ask ist a fellow creature driven to
this for no fault of his own, For many can
help one where one cannot help many. Then he hove
into sight a gastropoddus tub of a fellow with a

(16:33):
rascally red eye, and I shrank behind my curtains, for
I never court parley with such gentlemen. He spotted me.
Of course, rogues of his feather have a hawk's eye
for timid quarry, and his bloated face appeared at the window.
Sir friend, he said, in a confidential, hoarse whisper, won't
you help a starving British workman? I gave him sixpence,

(16:56):
cursing inwardly. This my concession to pure timorissness, and the
beastial 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
suety doze, for I was semi conscious of voices raised

(17:17):
in dispute for a length of time before I roused
to the fact that two people were quarreling just outside
my window. They were a young man almost a boy,
and a girl of about his own age, and both
evidently belonged to the laboring classes. She was I took
occasion to notice, aggressively pretty, in that hot red and

(17:38):
black style that finds its warmest admirers, in a class
cultivated above that to which she belonged. And she was
scorning and flouting her slow, perplexed swain with that overmeasure
of vehemence characteristic of a sex devoid of the sense
of proportion. Ah, she was saying, as I came into
focus of their dispute, that's the more of the man

(18:00):
it is. You're to work when ye like, and ter
play when ye like, and the girl's house to sit
and dangle their heels for your honor's convenience. I don't
arleys get my likes, Jenny, or I should have met
you yesterday, ah as you're promised we worked or late

(18:21):
pullin' the lies. I tell Yer, twould have meant half
a day's wages, Garne if I come and there, my dear,
woud been reason for another delay in or getting spliced.
You're fine in vulgar upon my word, a little free too,
and a little mistook. I've no mind to get spliced,
as Yer calls it, with a chap As cannot seize

(18:43):
ways ter keep trist. You don't mean dart, don't I
you're an answer for me and everything to seems. But
you've got enough to answer you for yourself, Jack Curtis,
I'm none of the sort to go or stay at
anie Mon's pleasure. There's kerps and die in the sea yet,
Jack Curtis, and fatter ones to fish fur too. But

(19:05):
Yer don't understand. I understand my own valley, and that
isn't to be kept dragon mates on the parade half
an afternoon for a chap As thinks he'd be better
engaged somewhere else. And you're gone to break with me
for Thart goodbye, mister Curtis, she said, and jerked her
nose high and walked off. Now Here was an inconsistent Jade,

(19:27):
and I felt sorry and relieved for the sake of
the young fellow. He stood after the manner of his kind,
amazed and speechless. Man's saving faculty of logic was in him,
but tongue tied, and you could not express his intuitive
recognition of the self congratulatory. Such natures frequently make reason
articulate through a blow, a rough way of knocking her

(19:49):
into shape, but commonly ineffectual. Jack, however, was evidently a
large gentle swain of the dumb, suffering type, one of
those unresisting levia of good humor upon whom a woman
loves to vent that passion of the illogical which an
antipathetic sex has vainly tried to laugh her out of
conceit with. I peered a little longer, and presently saw

(20:12):
mister Curtis walk off in a state compound of bewilderment
and abject depression. This was the beginning to me of
an interest apart from that which had brought me to
King's Cob. A real nutshell drama had usurped the place
of that fictitious one that had as yet failed to
mark an epoch by so much as a scratch. I

(20:32):
accepted the former as some solace for the intolerable wrong
inflicted upon me by the sea and miss Whiffle. I
happened upon my unconscious friends fairly frequently after that my
first introduction to them, so often indeed, that judged by
what followed, it would almost seem as if Fate, desiring
record of an incident in the lives of these two,

(20:54):
had intentionally worked to discomfit me from a task more engrossing. Apart,
and judged on their natural merits, I took Jack for
a good stolid fellow, innately and a little aggravatingly virtuous,
and perhaps a trifle more just than generous. Jenny, I felt,
had the spurious brilliancy of that division of her sex

(21:15):
that claims as intuition an inability to master the processes
of thought, and attributes to this faculty all fortunate conclusions,
but none that is faulty. I thought, with some commiseration
for him, that at bottom her manner showed some real
leaning towards the lover she had discarded that she felt
the need of a pin cushion, as it were, into

(21:37):
which to stick the little points of her malevolence. I
think I was inclined to be hard on her. I
have felt the same antagonism many times towards beauty that
was unattainable by me, for she was richly pretty, without doubt.
When in the neighborhood of one another, however, they were
wont to assume an elaborate artificiality of speech and manner

(22:00):
in communion with their friends that was designed with each
to point the moral of a complete indifference and forgetfulness.
But the girl was by far the better actor, and
not only did she play her own part convincingly, but
she generally managed to show up in her rival that
sense of mortification that it was his fond hope he

(22:20):
was effectually concealing. A fortnight passed, and lo, there came
the end of the lover's quarrel. In all dramatic appropriateness.
By that time, the doings of Jack and Jenny had
come to be my mind's only refuge from such a
vacancy of outlook as I had never before experienced. All

(22:40):
down the coast that summer, the languid air did swoon,
the earth broiled, and very thought perspired, and Miss Whiffle's
voice was like a steam whistle. One day, as I
was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal and balancing the
gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tuppy Yoka pudding,

(23:01):
a muffled rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the
window and floor vibrate slightly. It seemed so distant and
unimportant that I took no notice of it, and it
was only when ten minutes later I became aware that
certain excited townsfolk were scurrying past outside that I roused
slowly to the thought that here was something unusual toward. Then, indeed,

(23:24):
a sort of insane abandon flashed into life in me,
and I leaped to my feet with maniac eyes, something
stirring in King's cob. I should have thought nothing less
than the last trump could have pricked it out of
its accustomed grooves, and that even then it would have
slipped back into them with a sluggish sense of grievance.
After the first flourish, I left my congealing dish, snatched

(23:47):
up my hat, and joined the attenuated chase it was
making in one direction, a point apparently to the east
of the town. As I sped excited through the narrow
and tortuous streets, a great bulge of acrid dust belied
upon me. Suddenly at a corner, and turning the latter,
I plunged into a perfect fog of the same gritty smoke.

(24:09):
In this phantom figures moved, appeared and vanished. Horse cries 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 were re enacting, as if a sudden
swoop of Frank or Dutchman upon the coast had called
forth all the defensive ardor of its people. There was

(24:29):
nothing of gunpowder in this stringent opacity, however, but rather
a strong suggestion 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 aloft in the ruins. Then I grew as

(24:52):
insane as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly
to and fro striving at every con to pierce with
my eyesight the white. I pushed back my hat, I
gnawed my knuckles. I felt that I could not stay still,
yet knew not for what point to make almost I
felt that in another moment I should screech out. When
a breath of sea air caught the skirt of the

(25:13):
cloud and rolled the bulk of it up and away
over the housetops. Then at once it was revealed to
me the cause and object of all this gaggle and
confusion and outcry. It was revealed to the crowd too,
that stood about me, And in the revelation, the noise
of its mouthing went off and faded, till a tense
silence reigned, and the murmur of one's breathing seemed a sacrilege.

(25:37):
I saw before me a ruinous space, a great ragged
gap in a lofty block of brick and mortar. This
block had evidently at one time consisted of two high,
semi detached houses, and of these one lay a monstrous
heap of trembled and shattered debris, a ruin, but not
quite for as the course of a landslip will often tell,

(26:00):
with great spires and pinnacles of rock and ragged earth,
that have withstood the pull and onset of the moving hillside.
So here a sheet of shattered wall, crowned with a
cluster of toppled chimneys, stood up stark in the midst
of the general overthrow. And there, aloft, clinging to the
crumbling stack that might at any moment part and fling
and crush him to the savage ruin. Below stood the

(26:23):
figure of a solitary man. And the man was my
friend of the parade, Jack Curtis. I could see and
recognize him plainly, even the frantic clutch of his hands
and the deadly pallor of his face. The block, an
ancient one, had been, as I afterwards learned, in course
of demolition, when the catastrophe took place. At the moment

(26:44):
the poor fellow had been alone in his work, and
now his destruction seemed a mere matter of seconds. White
dust rose from the heap like smoke from an extinguished fire,
And ever as we looked, spars and splinters of brick
tore away from from the high fragment, yet standing, and
plunged with a thud into the rack underneath. It was

(27:06):
glaringly evident that not long could elapse before wall and
man would come down with a hideous shattering run, a slip,
a wilder clutch at his frail support might in an
instant precipitate the calamity. Then from the upturned faces of
the women, cries of pity and anguish broke forth, and
men nipped one another's arms and gasp and knew not

(27:28):
what council to offer. Do summat do summat? Cried the
women and their mates only shook off their pleadings with
a peevious show of callousness that was merely the dumb
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 aimless scurrying and turning

(27:50):
amongst the women. Why don't he stir theeself and hunt foreign, George, panted,
one that stood near me, twisting hysterically upon a slow
youth at her side. Shut up, Liza, he answered, gruffly,
then with a sort of indrawn gasp, look out the wall, lass,
look out the wall. It was obvious to the least
knowing what he meant to lean so much as a broomstick,

(28:13):
It seemed against that tottering ruin would infallibly complete its destruction.
One foot of the clinging figure high up was seen
to move slightly, and a little bomb of mortar span
out into the air and burst into dust on a
projecting brick. A long, shrill sigh broke from the crowd.

(28:33):
Then the male wise heads came together, and, desperate to
snap the cord of impotent suspense, mooted and rejected plan
after plan that their same judgment knew from the first
to be impractical. 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 upon the explorer,

(28:56):
The least stirring or shifting of the great heap of
rubbish flung about the base of the wall would certainly
risk the immediate collapse 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 houses along the path of the broken chimney stack

(29:17):
a good method of rescue, had circumstances lent themselves to it.
They did not. On the ruin side, a wide space
intervened on the other. The sister house to that which
had fallen, and which was also included in the order
of demolition, was itself affected by the loss of its support,
and leaned in a sinister manner its party walls bulged

(29:38):
and rent towards the scene of devastation. Nothing short of
the great Rock itself could, it seemed, snatched the poor
fellow from his death perch. There came suddenly an ominous silence.
Then strode out in front of his fellows, and he
moved so close to the ruin that the women whimpered
and held one another. An old, rough bearded chap in

(29:59):
stain corduroy. What's he gone to do? Gasped the sibilant voices.
He hallowed his hands to his mouth. He cleared his
horse throat two or three times. Only a little trailing
screech came from it at first. Then he cursed his
weakness and pulled himself together. Jark, Jark, Curtis. He hailed
in an explosive voice, Hallo the weak. Small response floated

(30:24):
down my lard, My poor lord. We've thought our best,
and we can do nothin for ye. Instantly, a shrill
protest of horror went up from the women. This was
not what they had expected. Walk leave the miserable boy
to his fate. There followed a storm of hisses from them,
absolutely reasonable, of course. The old fellow turned to retire

(30:46):
with hanging head. At the moment a girl, flushed, bloused, breathless,
broke through the skirt of the mob and barred his retreat. Oh,
she panted, shaking her jet black noodle at him. Here's
a parcel or, Gore crows for discussin' elp with a
Christian marn What a score of wiselings and not one

(31:07):
to hit out 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, 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

(31:28):
her hair 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 a
nigh done. Hold on a bit longer, jack. She screamed,
don't move till I tell ye I'm a going to
save thee jack again from the women. A rapturous cry

(31:50):
broke out what incompetent noodles appeared their masters in juxtaposition
with this fearless, defiant creature. The man up aloft seemed
to shiver in the shock of the out and once
more some fragments of mortar rolled from under his feet
and bounded into the depths. The girl rounded upon the voicers.
Hold the blazing tongues, she cried in fury. Do you

(32:11):
want to shaken from his perch? She turned to the
foremost group of men, a couple of long scafferd poles.
Fro yonder, she cried hurriedly, and twenty fathom a rope.
Her quick eyes and intelligence had found what she wanted
in a builder's yard no great distance away. Follow a
dozen of you, she cried, and sped off in the
direction she had indicated. Just twelve men and no more

(32:35):
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,

(32:59):
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 butt of the horizontal one
was projected beyond its lashing, and to this three lengths

(33:22):
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 many 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

(33:44):
upraised pole, and she drove them into position, a black
knot of man 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

(34:05):
to help pull did their united force waver Jack screamed
the girl again in the wildness of excitement. Only a
second longer, Jack, Hold on by your eyelids and snatch
the stick. The moment it comes again, thee the horizontal
spar pointed down the street. Slowly, the men worked round
with the ropes, and slowly the point of the pole

(34:26):
turned in the direction of the chimney stack and its
forlorn burden. There was room and to spare for the
process and 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

(34:50):
the ruin. He turned his head and saw, shifting 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

(35:12):
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 hoarse voices. The noise came from those at
the ropes. They were straining and tugging, and some of

(35:32):
them bobbed up and down like peas on a drum.
More on, yee, more on, yee. We've hooked un and
he's got the pull of a sea serpent. The ropes
became thick with striving men. The whole street resounded with
a medley of cries. Then the point of the broom
swung slowly out of the fog, and there was the
rescued man, swinging and swaying at the end of it.

(35:54):
They lowered him gradually into the street, but the strain
upon them was awful, and he came down with a
rush 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

(36:16):
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 end of Section seven.