It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

"Ah, but I do! They're a sly race, and full of knowledge. How they did it between them I can't say, but there it is!—they've come to the understanding. And what's the queerer is that George himself don't above half-understand what's said to him by a Christian. It's only bees he can tackle!... What was you kindly going to say about Lizarann?"

Miss Fossett, rendered cautious by the lapse she had so nearly made, saw no way of approaching the subject she was curious about. So she chatted on about Lizarann, hoping it might come into their talk accidentally. Jim was eloquent about his gratitude for all that had been done for himself and his child. "But for you and the master," said he, "I'd have been selling matches in the streets still. That was before my accident. But you won't say anything of that to my lassie." His hearer understood him. No—she would say nothing of his begging days to Lizarann. He thanked her again. "But," he added, "I wish you and the Rector-gentleman could have seen me eight year agone—no!—barely seven year. I might have been grateful to some kind of purpose then. I'm little use now!" Pride without a trace of vanity was in his voice as he added: "There was a fine man in my place in those days, and you'd ha' said so, lady." The waste remnant was speaking of its former self.

Adeline Fossett succeeded in none of the things she tried to say. It did not matter. He would be sure to talk of the past, and she would glean all she wanted. He took for granted, as part of the conversation in the interim, the fact of his wife's death.

"That was it, ye see: her mother died. She would have been the eldest."

"I understand. The little one herself told me of your accident, and how you came back...."

"Aha!—my little lass! In coorse she would tell it! And she told about the Flying Dutchman, I'll go bail." Jim laughed joyously at the image his mind formed of Lizarann telling her inherited legend dramatically. As to the incredulity, he knew it would exist in some minds; so let it pass! "I came back, lady," he continued, "and I found Lizarann. But I was all in the dark, and no sight of my wife's face. And there was no hiding it from her about my eyes—no chance! I never ought to have gone a-nigh the house. But she might have died, too...."

"You mean she would not have recovered, perhaps, if you had stopped away."

"Ah—if I had, ever so! But I was mazed with the longing to hear my girl's voice again, and maybe I never gave her the thought I should have done. I was a bad young man in those days, and suited myself when I might have done others a turn, many's the time. It's over and done with now." And his old self had vanished with it; so completely that the voice of its derelict, now speaking, had no consciousness in it of the way his narrative affected his hearers, as he continued, replying to a word of inquiry from her: "My accident—ye'll have heard all that from the lassie? My mates, they got me off to the Hospital, and the doctor there, he dressed my face. And, do ye know, mistress, it wasn't till the dressings and strappings was removed I knew that I was blind. Nor my mates. And they had to tell me—mind you!—that the last strap was off. I couldn't have guessed it. I was thinking I should see. But it was all dark, and the doctor, he says: 'Sorry for you, my lad, but the sight's gone. Ask 'em in London; they'll tell you the same.' So my mates, they brought me away; and there was the sun, by the heat. But I could only see black, and I judged the doctor would be in the right of it, in the end. My mate Peter Cortright, he says, 'Never you fret, Jim; it'll all come right. Give 'em a week or so, and wear a pair o' blue spectacles a while, and you'll soon be forgetting all about it.' So I says to him, 'What did old Sam Nuttall say ten days a-gone?'"

"What did Peter say?" asked Miss Fossett.

"Well, ye see, Peter, he knew! My ship's owners, out at Cape Town, they were sorry, but in course no responsibility lay with them. I'd myself to blame. They gave me my passage home, and home I came, in the dark! Aboard of an old screw-collier from Liverpool, one o' the sart they call 'tramps.' Not fit for sarvice, and underhanded. And on to that dysentery, and half the crew down in their berths, doctorin' each other the best they might. Well!—I'll tell ye." Jim seems amused at this narration. "I was passing the time nigh to the binnacle, where the master and a young man with a fractured arm were steering at the wheel; for the rudder-chains, they'd fouled and got jammed, and there was nothing for it but to run a file through 'em and free the rudder, so they could work the starn-wheel, kept as a resarve. Ye see?... Well!—the master, he'd been thirty-eight hours at it, and he just gave out. So I made bold to suggest he should go to his berth, and I should put a bit of force on the handles, and young O'Keeffe—that was the young man's name—had a pair of eyes in his head, and we'd make it out between the two of us. 'Keep her off two points when you see the flashlight,' says the master, and off he goes to his berth. And from then on, mistress, ye'll believe I did a stroke of work at that wheel, just clapping on at the given word. But that's the last bit of work, to call work, ever I did, or ever I shall do this side o' the grave." Jim's voice rang its saddest note till now, over the dire knowledge that had come to him that the joy of work could never be his again.