Five thousand pounds

by Agnes Giberne

It was terrible indeed. I called mother, and she shrieked and wrung her hands and seemed half beside herself. There was no learning particulars at first. Father was carried upstairs, and laid on the bed, and one of the men went off for a doctor.

Father lay quite quiet and senseless, not even moaning. Dickenson, our former neighbour, was one of those who had come, and I took him aside, and asked how it had all happened.

He could not tell me very much. Partly from what he had seen, and partly from what had been told him, he knew that father had been with Mr. Simmons in the billiard-room, and that they had been playing for money, and that father seemed to lose over and over again and was very much excited, while Mr. Simmons seemed trying to soothe him. Then the two went into another room, and drink was called for, and father became still more excited. He seemed trying to get up a quarrel with Mr. Simmons, and he said over and over again that Mr. Simmons had ruined him.

Mr. Simmons kept quite cool all the time, but presently he was seen to get up and move away, in a sort of stealthy manner, making believe that he was coming back directly. Father grew quite furious then, and attacked him with his fists, and others in the room had to come to the rescue. Mr. Simmons took himself off, by their advice, and seemed not at all sorry to do so; and father went back to his seat, muttering and grumbling, and saying "he would be even with him yet."

After a while he got up to go home, and Dickenson, seeing how unsteady he was, followed some distance behind, not feeling sure that help mightn't be needed. And so it was. Father had not gone half a street length, before he seemed to fancy he saw Mr. Simmons ahead. He set up a sort of shout, and rushed off at a blind pace, and in a moment went headlong down a kind of open trap-door, with a deep warehouse cellar below. The marvel was that he escaped death on the spot.

I went back to him, after hearing all this, and waited till the doctor came. Mother was sobbing and crying and would not stay in the room. I did not dare to touch father. He lay just as they had put him down, helpless and senseless. Sometimes I thought he must be already gone. The men were very good, and would not leave me alone. One was Sykes, Mr. Johnstone's foreman, and I never shall forget his kindness, as he tried to cheer me up.

When the doctor came, I was sent away, and there was a long examination. Mother was sobbing so as to be quite useless, and the doctor sent for me afterwards, to speak to me.

He said that father was terribly hurt. There were broken bones, but he feared these were not the worst injuries. He could not say more yet, however: so he only gave careful directions how I was to manage, and promised to come again next day.

The next few weeks were just one long bout of nursing. It was wonderful how good some of our old neighbours were,—those who had been grannie's friends in earlier days. As for newer friends, who had clustered round us when the money came, they dropped off like dead leaves from a tree in autumn.

I don't know what we should have done without help. Mother was such a poor nurse, and so easily overcome, and also she was in sickly health. And I was a mere girl, quite unused to illness.