It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

[CHAPTER XV]

HOW LIZARANN WAS TAKEN TO MISS FOSSETT'S, BUT HAD A STITCH IN HER SIDE, AND WASN'T TO GO TO DADDY TO-DAY. HOW THE RECTOR WENT TO JIM IN THE HOSPITAL, AND JIM WAS DISAPPOINTED ABOUT HIM

If Lizarann had had no grounds for looking forward to a reappearance of the curious New Policeman who had rescued her, she would have been more on the alert about the events of the previous night that concerned Uncle Bob. But she had no doubt her rescuer would come back. And this anticipation, as well as the hopeful tone in which he had spoken of Daddy's prospects at the Hospital, set her mind quite at rest about everything but the thing which presented itself to her merely as exaggerated domesticity. It was Uncle Bob, only rather more so.

Seen from her point of view, the events that had preceded Uncle Bob were that Daddy had been in collision with a Pickford's Van, and had suffered, but not murderously, from the accident; that he had not been able to walk, because of his leg; and that he had been carried away by well-disposed officials to an institution that promoted soundness of wind and limb, and had even been known to make its bénéficiaires musical. A child's mind knows no proportion; and the last item, which was really a gratuitous invention of the boy whose name was not Moses, gained credence with Lizarann slowly, and ended by throwing every other particular into the shade. Further, she knew that Uncle Bob, considered as an infliction, had been worse—for he was to her merely an endemic disease that increased or diminished, like gout—and that he had run out in the snow. Nothing abnormal in that; besides, the police, new and old, had run after him, to say nothing of the doctor-gentleman from the house with "Surgery" wrote up big, where you could get a supply of medicine if you said where you come from, and took back an exhausted bottle with a surprisingly high number on it, considering its pretensions. And these events having passed muster as normal, what followed was only natural.

Her aunt had shown at first dispositions to join the chase, but had desisted in consequence of remonstrance from neighbours, who had begun to be aware that history had been in the making during the night at Steptoe's; he, though chronic the previous evening, having become acute in the small hours of the morning. Mrs. Hicks and Mrs. Hacker, and others, having trooped round the vortex of excitement, had counselled Aunt Stingy to remain where she would be of some use, and not go canterin' over the buildin' land with no object, in the manner of speaking. Wasn't three plenty?

Jimmy 'Acker, told off to follow the trail in the snow and bring back word if he see 'em coming, had come back uneasy and evasive, had told contradictory stories about what he see, and had confirmed the public belief in the untrustworthiness of boys. Questioned, during ostracism, by his sister and Lizarann, his replies had been mysterious, and his refusal to make them less so unintelligible. The expression, "Just you wait and see if what I told you ain't k'rect," laid claim to having said something, sometime; and no effort of his hearers' memory confirmed his having done so. Other emissaries departed to get information, and did not come back.

This state of uncertainty had been ended by the reappearance of the policeman and the doctor, who climbed back over the fence followed by straggling units from among those who had witnessed the scene at the lock. Everyone can read something written about Death on the faces of those who have just seen him.

"Now which of you women was this man's wife?" That was what Lizarann had heard the policeman—the old sort; she looked in vain for her glorious friend—say to wifehood within hearing. Whereupon Aunt Stingy became on a sudden hysterical, and was helped, gasping and crying, into the house. Lizarann wanted to go too, moved by pity for she knew not what—for something folk were speaking under their breath about to one another, not to her; nodding about, pointing about, to something past or present, beyond the railway-arch; drawing morals about and referring to their own foresight about. Then she had heard the voice of the doctor-gentleman:

"Which of you youngsters is his little girl?... Hadn't got a little girl, hadn't he?... Oh ah!—of course he hadn't.... I should say—which is the little girl whose dad's hurt his leg and gone to the Hospital?... Ah, to be sure!—Lizarann. Now, Lizarann, suppose you get your bonnet and wrop yourself up as warm as you can and come along o' me to Teacher at the School, just till Mr. Taylor comes to go to see Daddy with you. The big gentleman?... just him, and nobody else. Come along!" Which Lizarann did, with alacrity. Daddy was in view again.