"Ah!—Jim's eye. The one he opens at night. He's under-'anded and sly—sees a rare lot more than he'll put a name to! Why, I seen it, God damn you!"—with a sudden revival of ferocity—"I seen it, I tell you, there under that there bed."
Then Lizarann knew that he was mad. Of course, she knew nothing of delirium tremens, but she knew quite well the state often described as "mad drunk," and that her uncle when so affected always became violent; although since that occurrence three months since, fear of Jim had been a wholesome check. Oh, if Daddy were only here!—so thought Lizarann, as she stood in the doorway with her teeth chattering, and literally sick with terror.
"I tell you I seen it, and I'll tell you some more. Only just you stand still. I'm a going for to cut it out, by Goard! Only you wait till I get my * * * knife.... It's round the * * * corner against the window...." These were the last articulate words Lizarann heard, as her aunt followed their speaker into the front room. Then the voices of both in confusion—his raving, hers concealing apprehension badly under an attempt at command. This for a while; then a rapid crescendo of terror ending in a shriek, and an appeal to Heaven-knows-who to get the Police. And Lizarann—not seven yet!—had to make up her mind what to do.
[CHAPTER XIII]
HOW THE RECTOR OF ROYD TOOK A WRONG TURNING, AND PICKED UP LIZARANN IN THE SNOW. MR. STEPTOE'S KNIFE, AND HOW LIZARANN MADE HIM LEAVE HOLD OF IT. HOW AUNTIE STINGY WAS HANDY IN CASE OF ANYTHING, AND UNCLE BOB WENT TO SLEEP ON A SECOND-HAND SOFA
When the Rev. Augustus Fossett, the brother of Lizarann's schoolmistress, and incumbent of St. Vulgate's Church, Clapham Rise, got hæmoptysis, his friends tried to persuade him to throw up his appointment and go away to Australia or South Africa. His brother Jack wanted him to chuck the Church, and take to some healthy employment—the young man's expressions, not ours—and took the opportunity to generalize overmuch, on the subject of the causes of death among the Clergy. He said that something he referred to merely as "it" was "all very fine, but two-thirds of them died of consumption." He was devoted to his brother, and wanted badly to get Gus clear of that filthy slum, with its horrible rows of little houses that had two or three families in them before the mortar was dry. But Gus refused to comply with his family's wishes. "I know Jack thinks," said he, "that if he could only get me into a lawyer's wig, or a sailor's trousers, I shouldn't have an apex to my right lung, practically. And moist sibilant râles would be things unheard of." He added that he wasn't married, and never meant to be; that the neighbourhood was healthy, if it was a little damp; and that all he wanted was change of air now and again. Taylor would come and take his duties for a week or so, and he would go to Royd, and Bessie Caldecott would nurse him up, at the Rectory.
For the Rector of Royd, whose acquaintance the story has already made, was, in his relation to the Rev. Gus, the other half of one of those friendships that, according to Tennyson, have mastered time. So every now and again, as occasion arose, the Rev. Athelstan's broad chest and shoulders loomed large in the pulpit of St. Vulgate's, and his voice sounded altogether too big for the architectural treatment of the east window.
About six weeks before the story-time of last chapter, the reverend gentleman had said to his sister-in-law: "Bess, I can't have Gus kill himself this winter. He'll do it in the end, but let's keep him here as long as we can. I'll go and see to his parishioners in January, and he must come here. You mustn't let him work hard, and give him no end of cream and new-laid new-laid eggs. I can get Tom Cowper to do his work in February, and then I'll come back and take him for walks. Ah dear!" The Rector's anxiety about his friend got to the surface, through his tone of serene confidence, which was factitious.