Abner, still under the influence of a divided emotion, took a step in his direction, but Alice pulled at his sleeve. The tears that she had been restraining as she ran overcame her and she could only cry ‘Abner . . . Abner . .’
‘What the hell’s up with you?’ he said roughly.
‘Your father, Abner . . .’ she sobbed. ‘It’s your father.’
‘What’s that? What’s he done?’
‘It’s an accident at the pit. Father sent up Elsie with the message.’
‘You mean he’s dead?’ said Abner, suddenly sobered.
‘No . . . not dead. . . . I don’t think so. It’s an accident. Some kind of accident. Elsie was that moithered she couldn’t say proper. So I left her there and ran off for you. I couldn’t take him in myself. I couldn’t think of nowt but running for you.’
‘Nell, if he bain’t dead what the hell’s the matter?’ said Abner practically.
They left the works together. Alice, still out of breath, could scarcely keep pace with Abner’s long strides, but now her nervous sobbing had ceased and she even smiled. At the corner of Hackett’s Cottages they met the procession from the colliery. For some obscure reason Alice’s father had lost the key of the store in which the stretchers were kept, and so they carried John Fellows home on a door. In his progress from the pit they had fallen in with a stream of children suddenly disgorged from the Ragged Schools, and a train of these had swollen the cortège, curious to find out who, or what, lay under the brown blanket. All the women of Hackett’s Cottages gathered at the gateway of Number Eleven to receive him, many of them carrying babies and offering haphazard advice in the intervals of giving them refreshment. The doorway of the house was too small to admit the improvised stretcher, so they laid it down at the side of the garden.
‘Be careful of my bloody tomatters,’ John Fellows growled. It was the first sign of life he had given. Abner and two others lifted him from the door and carried him through the kitchen and up the twisting stairs. The boards creaked under their weight as though they were on the point of splintering. It was his right thigh that had been broken; and once, on the journey upstairs, they jolted him so much that he unclenched his teeth and roared like a bull. The crowd in the roadway shuddered. This was their first considerable sensation.