The Romance of an Accident.
by Theodore Dahle.
Originally published in The Novel Magazine (C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.) vol.2 #12 (Mar 1906).
How an accident affected a whole village, and the lives of two people in particular.
The Deluge.
For three weeks it had rained, rained almost without ceasing.
The rain was still pelting against the windows, and doors, and walls of the tumble-down cottages, forcing its way through unmortared crevices, worn-out thatch, and battered, ill-fitting woodwork, making rivulets in parlours and pools in bedrooms. The deeply-rutted roads of the village were now the beds of rushing stream lets.
Over the wild, uncut hedges and rude fences the fallow land was churned into a red pulp. Field after field of ripening wheat and barley, three weeks ago tall, erect, and fair to see as it flashed beneath the mirror of the sun, lay limp and broken in far-stretching pools of standing water, still suffering the pitiless slashing of the rain.
Neither sight nor sound of moving thing was on the sandy pastures. The estuary of the river tore past them in an over-flowing torrent, washing out of the two or three tarred huts the crazy, home-made boats and crab pots of the fishermen.
Away beyond the lighthouse at the Point, the great sea roared, and rocked, and foamed. Into its depths the heavy clouds, black and swollen by a heat which left not a breath in the air, now emptied part of their burden of wreck and ruin. But here the deluge spent its fury in vain. The sea, reflecting the blackness of the clouds, swallowed up, with scarce a sign or sound of disturbance, all that came to it in increase. Under that low, far-stretching dome of ebony, in all that wide realm of restlessness, there was neither sail nor funnel.
It seemed as if the loneliness and the despair fallen on the village had settled also on the sea.
With the destruction of the crops and the loss of the boats and crab pots had gone the hopes and efforts of a year, and all that hope and effort meant to the people of this village nestling down 'twixt sea and river. Their bread was in the soil, and in such harvest of the sea and river as their boats and crab pots could gather when mercy and justice were upon the face of the waters. Where were they, three hundred all told, to find bread now?
The faces of the women were pale and drawn. The men stared blankly into the desolation with dull eyes and twitching features. A strange, strained silence sealed even the lips of the children; they played round the hearthstones as if afraid of their own whispers.
There had been a time when the field men sang to the swish of the scythe low among the corn. Sometimes the voices of the fishermen came up to the pastures from the crab boats.
But for three weeks there had been no song. Only the metallic slash of the rain on the thatch and the cobbles.
■ ■ ■
THE ACCIDENT.
In Throgmorton Street John Cleaver, richest among the rich, had the reputation of being the keenest of the keen. The world beyond the Street said that this square-jawed, tight-lipped, steel-eyed man, never known to say a word when silence would serve the purpose, was hard and heartless. He had never taken the trouble to judge himself. Certain it was that, if anything was to be made, John Cleaver was up rather early of a morning to make it. "The world is full of blackberries," he once said, "and I'm in it to pluck them."
The only holiday he ever allowed himself was once a year. He took it in late September, after his managers and clerks had finished theirs. He occupied it in walking, with a knapsack on his back and a thick stick in his hand. This year he had planned a tour of the Yorkshire coast, and in due course arrived at the Point.
He wandered round the bend when the tide was low, allured by the rocks and the smooth, firm sands beneath his feet. He walked on and on, further and further, peering wonderingly into the caves, watching the churning and curling of the foam on the great sea, sniffing the tonic breezes into his lungs. Not a soul was within the range of his vision. Nowhere could he hear a human voice. All that came to his ears was the hissing of the sea-froth on the sands and among the rocks.
He looked up and down, before and behind. Still no sound of a voice. Not a footprint of man or beast. Neither house nor hut was visible. He could not see even the sail of a fisherboat. He kicked up a heap of sand and sat down upon it. He lighted a pipe and commenced to smoke.
"A village of the dead," he exclaimed to the silence as the rings and chains of rings floating above him.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe and replaced it in his pocket as he saw the great curling waves rushing with ominous swiftness over the sands. Once more sweeping sea and land with his eyes, he made stumbling headway up the only path which, as it seemed to him, offered a chance of reaching the cliff top. The first few yards of good climbing deceived him. Now he saw that the cliff rose above him almost as straight as a wall, with uncertain, but always possible, grip and foothold.
He made fair headway until, suddenly, he beheld at the extreme edge of the cliff, a few hundred yards away, a bootless and stockingless girl. She was standing as still as a statue, shading her eyes as she looked over ruined crops and broken fences.
The sight of that girl amid the loneliness was John Cleaver's undoing. He lost his foothold. As he fell, his right foot caught in a crevice filled with slippery seaweed and shingle, which broke his fall. It also broke his ankle. Glad he was that he had not broken his neck. The pain was excruciating. He could not walk. He could not even limp.
He sank on a merciful ledge of rock, and shouted. No answer reached him. He shouted again and again. His shouts came back to him as echoes.
He could see the spray splashing up the cliff beneath him as the waves thudded against them. He watched them, helpless, as they hissed away, vaguely wondering what kind of death drowning was.
Once more he took out his pipe, lit it with a fúsee, and commenced to pull hard at it. He gripped his ankle with both hands, to ease the pain. He looked out across the sea, keeping his eyes fixed upon one particular wave till it broke, rushed up the sands, impacted on the cliff, and tossed the spray on his face.
Now he set himself to shout with all the force of his lungs. He shouted till he grew hoarse. He shouted till his "Halloa!" cracked at the back of his throat, and no sound came.
But for the last minute or so the girl on the cliff top had heard the cries. Hastily she slipped on her stockings, one inside out; then her boots, which she did not trouble to lace. She rushed across thistle beds and trailing wild convolvulus, following the sound of the voice. Then she clambered down carefully.
■ ■ ■
THE RESCUE.
She was young, and flushed, and pretty. John Cleaver saw her before she saw him. She seemed to grow prettier and fresher the nearer she approached him. When she reached him she started at the sight of his keen, drawn features.
"Were you a-calling, sir?" she questioned.
"Yes," said John Cleaver. "I've broken my ankle on this confounded—I beg your pardon–on this cliff. I can't move. What's your name?*
"Kathleen—Kitty, sir."
"Kathleen—Kitty what?" he asked, with the ghost of a smile.
"Brearton, sir."
"Thanks," he replied, looking straight at her eyes, till they were veiled from him by drooped lashes. "I'll make a note of it. I'm John Cleaver of Throgmorton Street. Don't let me drown because you don't happen to have seen me before. It would be horrible all among the crabs and fishes."
"What a queer man," thought Kitty, and she had to laugh. "You'll have to make haste," she said. "Can you walk if I pull you up and you lean upon my shoulder do you think?"
"I'll borrow the shoulder and try," answered John Cleaver.
He attempted to smile again. The spasm of pain which shot across his face would not let him.
She pulled one hand, while he raised himself with the other. He stood upon one foot, and leant heavily on her shoulder. He tried to put down the other foot. He drew it up again with something like a moan as it touched ground and twisted over.
"It's impossible," she said, and she steadied him down on the ledge of rock again: "Shut your eyes," she was saying the next moment, "and don't open them till I tell you."
"But why?" he demanded.
Kitty was growing courageous. She was not at all afraid to talk to this grey-hued, keen-faced man now. The steel of his features and the tone of his voice had softened.
"Never mind why. Promise—and please be quick about it."
"All right," he said. "I can trust you." And he closed his eyes.
Kitty turned away from him: The next instant she was tearing away a generous width from the bottom of her white skirt. She tore the width into narrow strips. Then she went and dipped them in a pool of water, held in a cleft of the rock as in a great cup. Soon she stooped, drew down John Cleaver's stocking, and wound the strips of wet calico tightly round and round the ankle and under the arch of the foot. Then she pulled up the stocking again.
"You can open your eyes now," she said. "I'm going up the cliff again. You won't feel any pain for half-an-hour. Don't move. Remain quite still. I'll not fail you."
"I know you won't, little girl," responded John Cleaver.
"I'm not a little girl, not very," she responded, with a ringing laugh. "But I won't be angry with you for saying so, if you don't move. If you do—well, you've broken your ankle, and you may break your neck."
Used to the cliffs from a child, she clambered up them by a way easier than that on which John Cleaver had unfortunately lighted. Reaching the top, she ran at her utmost speed till she reached a swamped wheat field.
"Sandy Longbones! Sandy Longbones," she cried breathlessly, as she neared the figure of a middle-aged man glaring white-faced at his ruined crop. "I want you, and I want you quick!"
"All right, honey," cried the man, and he hastened out.
Seizing him by the arm, she hurried him forward in the direction of John Cleaver, telling him the story as she went along.
"I'd do owt for thee, honey," said Sandy. "Where is he?"
She pointed out John Cleaver to her companion, and presently they were both at the helpless man's side.
"It's a rum place to break ankles in, this, sir," was Sandy's greeting, "seeing there isn't a doctor nearer nor seven miles, and he won't be in the village again come Thursday next week. We doctor ourselves, mostly, an' I daresay Kitty's father, who keeps the "Havin o' Rest,' 'll be able to manage things if we can on'y get you there. I do believe he an' the butcher between 'em could mend the broken leg of a bluebottle."
John Cleaver, considering the peculiar sacrifice of the skirt and the skill with which Kitty had used it as first aid, was inclined to take her father, and the butcher, and the "Havin o' Rest," and Sandy Longbones, and all the rest of the village on trust.
"All right," he said. "I'll accept Kitty as pledge for the whole community. Take me to the 'Haven.'"
Longbones got down on all fours.
"Get a firm grip o' my neck, sir," he said, "an hold on as if you never intended to let go. I'm going to take you pick-a-back. It's the only safe way to get you to the top, as far as I can see, barrin a rope or a crane, an I ain't one or t'other."
Kitty looked on anxiously as John Cleaver mounted, exhorting him anxiously not to loosen his hold on any account. Then the anxious, difficult ascent began, and the three made slow progress to the top of the cliff. There John Cleaver dismounted to give Sandy breathing space. But presently the sturdy villager hoisted him up again, and thus he made his tragi-comic entry into the "Haven of Rest."
Kitty explained everything to her father, and soon John Cleaver was in bed, with the butcher and the innkeeper setting his broken ankle in plaster of Paris. It was an expert operation for amateurs. Whether it would have received the approval of the Faculty John Cleaver did not know, nor, in the excess of his pain, did he for the moment care, if only the ankle were set somehow. When the operation was over, he fell into a sound sleep.
■ ■ ■
THE CURE.
After a fortnight at the "Haven," with his leg in plaster and straightened out upon a chair, John Cleaver began to feel as if he had known Kitty Brearton all his days.
Gradually he learnt from her the story of the rains and the wreckage. She told him how the women and children, who had sparse living at any time, were often very hungry now; how the men went to their stricken fields tightening their belts; how at this house and that, the villagers, gripped by serious illness, could not obtain the nutriment which would help to win them back to life and health.
From his room window he watched her leave the "Haven" early every morning with a basket laden with food, drawn from her father's scanty store, to distribute it among the women according to their pressing necessities.
He began to see the village and its sorrow through Kitty's eyes, and he was troubled and perplexed as he thought of the struggles of this remote, homely people, of their brave hearts, of the sacrifices they made for each other. "What could he do for them?* he asked himself often. Clearly, he must do something.
"Kitty," he said one day, as she was going out with her basket of provisions—he had begun to call her Kitty because that was what everybody in the village called her—"Kitty, I would like to help in this. Hunger is a terrible thing. I would like the distressed people to have plenty of good food. I would like to tide the men over their present difficulties, so as to hearten them to build up their hopes again."
She remarked the strange eagerness in his face. A sad smile came over her own.
"Oh, I'd like that, too," she said, "but the moon doesn't come down because you cry for it, does it! Now, if you were a duke, or somebody with ever so much money, why then—"
"I'm John Cleaver of Throgmorton Street," he interrupted. He thought that information was all-sufficient. In the City it was a name to conjure with. "So you told me when I found you lying on the cliff," she said, with a little laugh. "But John Cleaver's not the same thing as being a duke, or having lots of money and being willing to give it away, is it?"
"About the same thing," he replied quietly.
The smile faded from her face. A mist gathered about her lashes.
"Please—please don't make fun," she quavered. "I—I shan't like you if you make fun. . . . We shan't be friends any more, if you do."
John Cleaver reached out for her hands. She drew it away when she felt the touch of his fingers upon it.
"We shall always be friends, you and I, little girl," he said; "at least I hope so. I have lots of money, as you put it. I have more than I need; more than I shall ever spend. And you've made it hurt me. That's why I'm going to get rid of some of it."
So different was this plain-spoken, strong featured figure in the Norfolk suit from her conception of a rich man, that she could hardly believe what he was telling her. She stood quite still, her cheeks paled a little, her hands drawn down at her sides, her big, deep eyes searching the grey steel of his, luminous now with points of light she had not before noticed in them.
"I've never done any good in the world with it all, that I know of," John Cleaver went on. "Principal has gathered to principal and interest to interest. Yet it has not made me happy. It has not brought a note of music to my life. It has never lifted the burden from one suffering human creature—man, or woman, or child."
He drew some bank notes from a wallet in his pocket.
"Take this money now," he proceeded, holding them out to her. "Do with it what you think well. To-morrow give me a list of those who need help, and tell me what their need is. You shall have all you want for the work. I have never broken my word, little one."
He put the notes into her hand, and closed her fingers over them gently. She felt herself trembling before him as the notes crackled in her palm. For a while she stood silent, ashamed that she had doubted him, awed by this evidence of his wealth. Her world was the village in which she had been born and reared. He was the first rich man she had ever seen.
"Well?" John Cleaver questioned. "What do you say?"
"Say?" she repeated, looking at him with swimming eyes. "I—I think you must be the kindest man in all the world."
People had called John Cleaver many things. Kitty was the first who had ever called him kind. Her words sank into his heart like grateful music. The straight, firm line of his lips quivered. He bent his head before her. When he raised it again she was gone.
■ ■ ■
THE REVELATION.
John Cleaver would have hidden his philanthropic light under a bushel. But Kitty prevented that. At every house to which she carried her laden basket and gave his benefactions she uttered his praises. And the first morning he set out from the "Haven" to test his walking powers along the high road, the children of the village clustered about him and cheered him. The women stood at their doors to pour their gratitude into his ears. Men whom he had never seen before took off their caps to him and hailed him as they laboured in the field's. Others whom he met on the way compelled him to stop for a moment while they gripped his hand and thanked him for what he had done and promised to do for them. John Cleaver's life had never held such an hour of happiness. He felt a new man in a new world.
"I'm going away," he said to Kitty one evening suddenly, after they had talked over his scheme of assistance together.
"Going away?" she faltered. Her eyes were a-gleam.
"Yes. But I shan't forget the village. As long as you tell me there is need, I will give. You'll do better than I could do. My ankle is better, you see. I can walk. I—I suppose you wouldn't like me to go and break the other one, would you? That would keep me, of course, but—"
Her face was averted. His own smiled, and then twitched as he kept his gaze upon her. But she could not, dare not, meet it. She felt that something vital was going out of her life, that a great pain had come into it—a poignant sense of loss.
He waited for her to speak, and waited vainly. She had no art to hide her feelings. She had no voice to utter light words. She knew that the first word she uttered would break upon her lips.
"You're sorry I'm going?" he questioned presently, approaching nearer to her.
"Yes," she said at last in a low tone—"I'm very sorry."
"And you'd be glad if I stayed—if I went away to return again soon?"
She turned quickly, almost eagerly. Her eyes seemed to grow larger and deeper as they sought his for a second. Then they drooped under his steady gaze.
"I'd be very, very glad," she murmured. "We all should. You've—you've been so kind to us all."
Awhile he stood hesitating. He was so much older than she that she seemed almost a child to him. Presently he ventured to take one of her hands. She did not withdraw it. He felt it tremble in his own.
"Kitty," he said softly, "the word is with you. You have crept into my heart. Unknown to yourself, you have taught me how great a thing love is; how small a thing riches are by the side of it. You shall continue to teach me how to make them worthy, my dear, if you will. You shall take them into your care. Say, shall it be so?"
He dropped her hands gently. He raised his own till they reached her face, which he held between his open palms while he looked into it. Then he knew her answer before she spoke.
"Yes," she said, understanding.
And he drew her lips nearer, so near that they touched his own.