Kitabı oku: «The Hole in the Wall», sayfa 14

Grandfather Nat took me by the collar, and turned me round. "We'll get back, Stevy," he said. "Go on, I'll hold you tight."

And so in the pitchy dark I went back along the way I had come, walking before my grandfather as I had done when first I saw that lock. The dockmen had flung random life-buoys, and now were groping with drags and hooks. Some judged that the man must have gone under like a stone; others thought it quite likely that a good swimmer might have got away quietly. And everybody wished to know who the man was, and why he was running.

To all such questions my grandfather made the same answer. "It was a man I wanted, wanted bad, for the police. You find him, dead or alive, an' I'll identify him, an' say the rest in the proper place; that's all." Only once he amplified this answer, and then he said: "You can judge he was as much afraid o' the police as he was o' me, or more. Look where he went, when he saw 'em on the bridge!" And again he repeated: "I'll say the rest when he's found, not before; an' nobody can make me."

He was calm and cool enough now, as I could feel as well as hear, for my hand was buried in his, while he pushed his way stolidly through the little crowd. As for myself, I could neither think, nor speak, nor laugh, nor cry, though dizzily conscious of an impulse to do all four at once. I had Grandfather Nat again, and now he would not go away; that I could realise; and I clung with all my might to as much of his hand as I could grip.

CHAPTER XXIX
STEPHEN'S TALE

But I was to have neither time to gather my wits nor quiet to assort my emotions: for the full issue of that night was not yet. Even as we were pushing through the little crowd, and even as my grandfather parried question with answer, a new cry rose, and at the sound the crowd began to melt: for it was the cry of "Fire."

A single shout at first, and then another, and then a clamour of three together, and a beat of running feet. Men about us started off, and as we rounded the corner, one came running back on his tracks. "Cap'en Kemp, it's your house!" he cried. "Your house, Cap'en Kemp! The Hole in the Wall! The Hole in the Wall!"

Then was dire confusion. I was caught in a whir of running men, and I galloped and stumbled along as I might, dragging dependent from my grandfather's hand. Somewhere ahead a wavering light danced before my eyes, and there was a sudden outburst of loud cracks, as of a hundred carters' whips; and then – screams; screams without a doubt. Confusedly my mind went back to Viney's confederate, groping in at the bar-parlour door. What had he done? Smashed glass? Glass? It must have been the lamp: the lamp on the little table by the door, the lamp I had myself saved but ten minutes earlier!

Now we were opposite the Hole in the Wall, and the loud cracks were joined with a roar of flame. Out it came gushing at the crevices of doors and shutters, and the corners of doors and shutters shrivelled and curled to let out more, as though that bulging old wooden house were a bursting reservoir of long-pent fire that could be held in no more. And still there were the screams, hoarser and hoarser, from what part within was not to be guessed.

My grandfather stood me in a doorway, up two steps, and ran toward the court, but that was impassable. With such fearful swiftness had the fire sprung up and over the dry old timber on this side, where it had made its beginning, that already a painted board on the brick wall opposite was black and smoking and glowering red at the edges; and where I stood, across the road, the air was hot and painful to the eyes. Grandfather Nat ran along the front of the house to the main door, but it was blazing and bursting, and he turned and ran into the road, with his arm across his eyes. Then, with a suddenly increased roar, flames burst tenfold in volume and number from all the ground floor, and, where a shutter fell, all within glowed a sheer red furnace. The spirit was caught at last.

And now I saw a sight that would come again in sleep months afterwards, and set me screaming in my bed. The cries, which had lately died down, sprang out anew amid the roar, nearer and clearer, with a keener agony; and up in the club-room, the room of the inquests – there at a window appeared the Groping Man, a dreadful figure. In no darkness now, but ringed about with bright flame I saw him: the man whose empty, sightless eye-pits I had seen scarce twelve hours before through a hole in a canvas screen. The shade was gone from over the place of the eyes, and down the seared face and among the rags of blistered skin rolled streams of horrible great tears, forced from the raw lids by scorching smoke. His clothes smoked about him as he stood – groping, groping still, he knew not whither; and his mouth opened and closed with sounds scarce human.

Grandfather Nat roared distractedly for a ladder, called to the man to jump, ran forward twice to the face of the house as though to catch him, and twice came staggering back with his hands over his face, and flying embers singeing his hair and his coat.

The blind man's blackened hands came down on the blazing sill, and leapt from the touch. Then came a great crash, with a single second's dulling of the whole blaze. For an instant the screaming, sightless, weeping face remained, and then was gone for ever. The floor had fallen.

The flames went up with a redoubled roar, and now I could hold my place no longer for the heat. People were flinging water over the shutters and doors of the houses facing the fire, and from the houses adjoining furniture was being dragged in hot haste. My grandfather came and carried me a few doors farther along the street, and left me with a chandler's wife, who was out in a shawl and a man's overcoat over a huddle of flannel petticoats.

Now the fire engines came, dashing through the narrow lanes with a clamour of hoarse cries, and scattering the crowd this way and that. The Hole in the Wall was past aid, and all the work was given to save its neighbours. For some while I could distinguish my grandfather among the firemen, heaving and hauling, and doing the work of three. The police were grown in numbers now, and they had cleared the street to beyond where I stood, so that I could see well enough; and in every break in the flames, in every changing shadow, I saw again the face of the Groping Man, even as I can see it now as I write.

Floor went upon floor, till at last the poor old shell fell in a heap amid a roar of shouts and a last leap of fire, leaving the brick wall of the next house cracking and black and smoking, and tagged with specks of dying flame. And then at last my grandfather, black and scorched, came and sat by me on a step, and put the breast of his coat about me.

And that was the end of the Hole in the Wall: the end of its landlord's doubts and embarrassments and dangers, and the beginning of another chapter in his history – his history and mine.

CHAPTER XXX
STEPHEN'S TALE

Little remains to say; for with the smoking sticks of the Hole in the Wall the tale of my early days burns itself out.

Viney's body was either never found or never identified. Whether it was discovered by some person who flung it adrift after possessing himself of the notes and watch: whether it was held unto dissolution by mud, or chains, or waterside gear: or whether indeed, as was scarce possible, it escaped with the life in it, to walk the world in some place that knew it not, I, at any rate, cannot tell. The fate of his confederate, at least, was no matter of doubt. He must have been driven to the bar by the fire he had raised, and there, bewildered and helpless, and cut off from the way he had come, even if he could find it, he must have scrambled desperately till he found the one open exit – the club-room stairs.

But of these enough. Faint by contrast with the vivid scenes of the night, divers disconnected impressions of the next morning remain with me: all the fainter for the sleep that clutched at my eyelids, spite of my anxious resolution to see all to the very end. Of a coarse, draggled woman of streaming face and exceeding bitter cry, who sat inconsolable while men raked the ruins for a thing unrecognisable when it was found. Of the pale man, who came staring and choking, and paler than ever, gasping piteously of his long and honest service, and sitting down on the curb at last, to meditate on my grandfather's promise that he should not want, if he would work. And of Mr. Cripps, at first blank and speechless, and then mighty loquacious in the matter of insurance. For works of art would be included, of course, up to twenty pounds apiece; at which amount of proceeds – with a discount to Captain Kemp – he would cheerfully undertake to replace the lot, and throw the signboard in.

Mrs. Grimes was heard of, though not seen; but this was later. She was long understood to have some bitter grievance against the police, whom she charged with plots and conspiracies to defeat the ends of justice; and I think she ended with a savage assault on a plain-clothes constable's very large whiskers, and twenty-one days' imprisonment.

The Hole in the Wall was rebuilt in brick, with another name, as I think you may see it still; or could, till lately. There was also another landlord. For Captain Nat Kemp turned to enlarging and improving his wharf, and he bought lighters, and Wapping saw him no more. As for me, I went to school at last.