“I say, Thomas Leveridge! what’s to be done?” he asked.
The man on the road did not answer at once; he looked with glazed eyes and quivering mouth at the little chest. He tried to speak, but he could not. He tried to raise himself, but was powerless.
“Shall we get you into the cart?” asked his comrade.
“Ay,” answered Leveridge; “take me home. I can’t go nowhere else. Poor Marianne!”
Some hours later the little funeral party returned to Woodman’s Well, without the deal chest, walking at an accelerated pace—or rather, let me say that the old women walked fast; the young mourners lagged. Eventually they got home, and Jack entered the cottage of the Leveridges. Without a word he ascended the rickety staircase. It was strewn with scraps of coloured paper, on which were stray letters of the exhortation, “Vote for Popjoy!”
He might have been following a paper-chase; for at intervals along the road, down the lane, these coloured scraps had shown the way to the cottage. They had fallen from the hand of the injured man as he had been conveyed home, and on his way had torn the posters, and strewn them.
On the bed in the upper chamber lay Thomas Leveridge. A surgeon had already been there, and had pronounced the hip dislocated and a bone broken. He had replaced the joint and had spliced the bone. Leveridge was condemned to occupy his bed for some weeks. Beside him sat his wife, with red eyes and pale cheeks; on the floor was a cradle, empty; and she, inadvertently, was rocking it with her foot. Her heart was too full for words.
Jack looked at the man. Leveridge had turned his face to the wall, and was breathing hard; and at intervals a convulsive movement interrupted his long-drawn inspirations. He put up his hand to lay hold of the coverlet and draw it over his shoulder, and it shook—he could catch hold of nothing.
Jack did not speak. He thought: Let him cry, it will do him good. Tears will wash out his fault; and a fault it was in him to neglect home, even for his political party. Home claims first duties, then come others. If we begin the other way on, we are setting a steeple weathercock downwards, and laying the foundations in the clouds.