But Mr. Dayne, who had been a parson before he was a Secretary, had said no matter. Let him go in his patches upon his great adventure....
It had seemed natural to these two to be doing the last small services. There was no family here; friends' love was needed. But now there was only waiting....
Mr. Dayne, in Canal Street in his own business, had been at the Heth Works in the first uproar. At intervals, he had told the story to the others: a story of one machine too many unloaded on a strained floor; of a dry beam breaking with a report like a cannon; of men and women stampeding in the wild fear that the building was about to collapse. On the second floor, but two had kept their heads; and the young doctor, for all his bad foot, had been the quicker. It was supposed that the base of the machine itself had struck him, glancing. Mr. Heth, found two feet away, was buried by a litter of débris; his escape from death was deemed miraculous. And when they brought him round, it was told that his first word had been: "Vivian hurt?..."
Much remained puzzling: in chief the strange amiability of the master of the Works toward the man he had once threatened to break for libel. They had stood there chatting like friends, laughing.
But here Commissioner O'Neill could give little light. Last night his friend had told him, indeed, with evidences of strange happiness, that there was to be a new Heth Works at once. But he was mysteriously reserved as to how this triumph for the O'Neill administration had been brought to pass, saying repeatedly: "It's a sort of secret. I can't tell you that, old fellow." But O'Neill remembered now one thing he had said, with quite an excited air, which might be a sort of clue: "Don't you get it, Sam?... It's all good. Everybody's good ... Why, I've known it all the time."...
Now the two men had fallen silent. They were in the old waiting-room, with the office door fast shut between. Royalty had slept in this room once. It was decaying now, and bare as your hand but for the row of kitchen chairs along the wall. The minister kept walking about; kept humming beneath his breath. Once Sam O'Neill caught a line of that song: The victory of life is won. A strange sentiment at this time certainly; thoroughly clerical, though. It was a professional matter with Dayne; only he, O'Neill, had been really close to V.V. And he was continually burdened with a certain sense of personal responsibility for it all....
"I'd like to have the doctor for that little girl in there," said Mr. Dayne.
The Commissioner, who was getting really stout these days, cleared his throat.
"How's she goin' to get on without him?"
"Ah, how?" said the clergyman, musing.