Adventures of Working Men. From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon

“Then it all came back at once, and I shuddered as I turned my head and looked at the ruined works; for I knew what it was struck me down to the earth. I said before it was like a flash, and it was – it was one quick thought which came across my brain, for I knew that, being dinner-time, my little golden-haired gal would have brought my ’lowance tied up in a basin; and something told me that she had gone into the stoke-hole to find me when I had gone into the yard.

“‘Let me get up,’ I says, and I ran towards the ruins and began tearing away at the heap of brick rubbish, while the crowd now gathered together, hearing that there was some one underneath, began tearing away at the rubbish like fury.

“By-and-by the police came, and some gentlemen, and something like order was got at, and the people worked well to get down to where the stoke-hole had been. I had said that there was someone there, but I couldn’t shape my month to say who it was; and some said it was one man, and some another; but whoever they named seemed to come directly, back from his dinner, or because he had heard the explosion. So, by-and-by, people began to look from one to another, and ask who it was.

“‘Ask Wilum,’ says some one, ‘he was here at the time;’ and some one asked me. But I had no occasion to speak, for just then, alarmed at the child’s not going back as usual, the little gal’s mother came shrieking out and crying —

“‘Where’s little Patty? where’s little Patty?’ and then, when no one spoke, she gave a sort of pitiful moan, and sank slowly down – first on her knees, and then sideways on to a heap of bricks; and I remember thinking it was best, for I could not find it in my heart to go to her help, but kept on tearing away at the hot bricks and rubbish.

“It was puzzling and worriting; for one could not seem to be sure of where anything had once stood, in the horrible confusion before us. One said the stoke-hole had been here, and another there; but even I who had worked there two years, could not be sure.

“Hour after hour went by, and still we worked on; while as every big rafter or beam was lifted and dragged away, I was obliged to turn my head, for I felt sick, and the place seemed to swim, for I expected to see Patty’s little bright curls torn out and hanging to the jagged wood, and that underneath there would be something horrible and crushed.

“I know it wasn’t manly; but what can I say, when there was a little bright, blue-eyed child in the case – one of those little things whose look will make your great rough hand fall to your side when raised in anger, while the tiny thing can lead you about and do what she likes with you? P’r’aps I ain’t manly; but somehow, children always seems to get the upper hand of me.

“And so on we worked, hour after hour; men getting tired and dropping off, but always plenty more ready to take their places; while I – I never thought of it, and kept on tearing away till my hands bled, and the sweat ran down my face; but I turned away every time there was something large lifted, for I said to myself ‘She must be under that!’ And then again and again, in my mind, I seemed to see the torn and crushed face of my darling, and her long curls dabbled in blood.

“In the midst of the piled-up, blackened ruins – bricks, mortar, tiles, lead, and ragged and split beams, huge pieces of wood snapped and torn like matches – we toiled on hour after hour till the dark night came, when the gas pipes that had been laid bare and plugged were unstopped, and the gas lit, so that it flared and blazed and cast a strange wild light over the ruined place. There had been flames burst forth two or three times from parts of the ruins, but a few sprinklings from the fire engine in attendance had put them out; and as we worked on the rubbish grew cooler and cooler.

“Some said that the child could not have been there, but the sight of her mother tearing out was sufficient, when once she got away from the kind people who had her in their house – a house where but part of the windows had been broken by the explosion – and came running to where I was at work, snatching at the bricks and wood, till I got two or three to take her back for I couldn’t have left where I was to have saved my life. But I remember so well asking myself why it was that women will let down their back hair when they’re in a state of excitement, and make ’emselves look so wild.

“By-and-by someone came to say how bad my wife was, and that she wanted to see me; but I felt that I couldn’t go, and kept on in a fevered sort of way, work, work; and I’ve thought since that if she had been dying it would have been all the same. However, I heard soon after that she seemed a little better; and I found out afterwards that a doctor there had given the poor thing something that seemed to calm her and she went to sleep.

“It would have been a strong dose, though, that would have sent me off to sleep, as still on, hour after hour, I worked there, never tiring, but lifting beams that two or three men would have gone at, and tossing the rubbish away like so much straw.

“The owners were kind enough, and did all they could to encourage the men, sending out beer and other refreshments; but the heap of stuff to move was something frightful, and more than once I felt quite in despair, and ready to sit down and weakly cry. But I was at it again the next moment, and working with the best of them.

“‘Hadn’t you better leave now?’ said one of my masters; ‘I’ll see that everything is done.’

“I gave him one look, and he laid his hand kindly on my shoulder, and said no more to me about going; and I heard him say, ‘Poor fellow!’ to some one by him, as he turned away.

“We came upon the biler quite half-a-dozen yards out of its place, ripped right across where the rivers went; while as for the engine, it was one curious bit of iron tangle – rode, and bars, and pieces of iron and brass, twisted and turned and bent about, like so much string; and the great flywheel was broken in half-a-dozen places.

“This showed us now where the great cellar-like place – the stoke-hole – was; and we worked down now towards that; but still clearing the way, for how could I tell where the child might be? But it was weary, slow work; every now and then rigging up shears, and fastening ropes and pulley and sheaf, to haul up some great piece of iron or a beam; and willing as every one was, we made very little progress in the dark night.

“Once we had to stop and batter away a wall with a scaffold pole; for the police declared it to be unsafe, and the sergeant would not let us work near it till it was down; and all the while I was raging like a madman at the check. But it was of no use, and the man was right. He was doing his duty, and not like me, searching for the little crushed form of my darling in the cruel ruins. The people made me worse, for they would talk and say what they thought, so that I could hear. One would say she might still be alive, another would shake his head, and so on; when I kept stopping, in spite of all I tried not, listening to what they said, and it all seemed so much lost time.

“The engine-room was now cleared, and in spite of my trembling and horror, as every big piece was disturbed, nothing had been found; but all at once, as we were trying to clear behind the biler, and get down to the stoke-hole, one of the men gate a cry. I caught at the man nearest to me, and then lights, rubbish, the strange wild scene, all seemed to run round me, and I should have fallen only the man held me up, and some one brought me some brandy.

“I was myself again directly, and stumbling over the bricks to where a knot of men had collected, and a policeman had his bull’s-eye lantern open, and they were stooping to look at something that lay just under a beam they had raised – to the left of where I expected she would be found.

“‘Smashed,’ I heard some one, with his back to me, say; and then some one else, ‘Poor little thing, she must have run past here!’

“Then, with my throat dry and my eyes staring, I crept up and thrust two men aside, right and left, when the others made way for me without speaking, and, when I got close up, I covered my face with my hands, and softly knelt down.

“The policeman said something, and some one else spoke cheerily; but I couldn’t hear what they said, for my every thought was upon what I was going to see. And now, for the first time, the great, blinding tears came gushing from my eyes, so that when I slowly took down first one hand and then another, I was blinded, and could not see for a few moments; till, stooping a little lower, there, smashed and flattened, covered with mortar and dust, was my old red cotton handkercher tied round the basin and plate that held my dinner, dropped here by my little darling girl.

“For a few moments I was, as it were, struck dumb – it was so different a sight to what I had expected to see; and then I leaped up and laughed, and shouted, and danced – the relief was so great.

“‘Come on!’ I cried again; and then, for an hour or more, we were at it, working away till the light began to come in the east, and tell us that it was daybreak.

“Late as it was, plenty of people had stopped all the time; for, somehow or another, hundreds had got to know the little bright, golden-haired thing that trotted backwards and forwards every day with my dinner basin. She was too little to do it, but then, bless you, that was our pride; for the wife combed and brushed and dressed her up on purpose. And fine and proud we used to be of the little thing, going and coming – so old-fashioned. Why, lots of heads used to be thrust out to watch her; and seeing how pretty, and artless, and young she was, we used to feel that every one would try and protect her; and it was so. Time after time, that night, I saw motherly-looking women, that I did not know, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing and crying; and though I didn’t notice it then, I remembered it well enough afterwards – ah! and always shall; while the way in which some of the men worked – well-to-do men, who would have thought themselves insulted if you’d offered ’em five shillings for their night’s job – showed how my poor little darling had won the hearts of all around. Often and often since, too, I could have stopped this one, and shook hands with that one for their kindness; only there’s always that shut-upness about an Englishman that seems to make him all heart at a time of sorrow, and a piece of solid bluntness at every other time.

“Well, it was now just upon morning, and we were all worked up to a pitch of excitement that nothing could be like. We had been expecting to come upon the poor child all the afternoon and night, but now there could be no doubt of it. She must be here; for we were now down in the stoke-hole, working again with more vigour than had been shown for hours. Men’s faces were flushed, and their teeth set. They didn’t talk, only in Whispers; and the stuff went flying out as fast as others could take it away.

“‘Easy, easy,’ the sergeant of police kept saying, as he and two of his men kept us well lit with the strong light of their lanterns.

“But the men tore on, till at last the place was about cleared out, and we had got to a mass of brick wall sloping against one side, and a little woodwork on the other side, along with some rubbish.

“And now was the exciting time, as we went, four of us, at the brick wall, and dragged at it, when some women up above shrieked out, and we stood trembling, for it had crumbled down and lay all of a heap where we had raised it from.

“‘Quick!’ I shouted, huskily. And we tore the bricks away till there was hardly a scrap left, and we stood staring at one another.

“‘Why, she ain’t here, arter all!’ says a policeman.

“‘I’m blest,’ says another.

“But I couldn’t speak, for I did not know what to do; but stood staring about as if I expected next to see the little darling come running up again unhurt.

“‘Try there,’ says the sergeant.

“Then he turned on his light in a dark corner, where the bits of wood lay, and I darted across and threw back two or three pieces, when I gave a cry, and fell on my knees again. For there was no mistake this time: I had uncovered a little foot, and there was the white sock all blood-stained; and I felt a great sob rise from my breast as I stooped down and kissed the little red spot.

“‘Steady,’ said the sergeant; and then quickly, as I knelt there, they reached over me, and lifted piece after piece away, till there, in the grey light of the morning, I was looking upon the little motionless figure, lying there with her golden hair, as I had fancied, dabbled in blood from a cut in her little white forehead, where the blood had run, but now lay hard and dry. Covered with blood and scraps of mortar, she lay stretched out there, and I felt as if my heart would break to see the little, peaceful face almost with a smile upon it; while, as if out of respect to my feelings, the men all drew back, till I knelt there alone.

“And now far up in the sky the warm light of the rising sun shone, and it was reflected down upon that tiny face, and as I knelt there in the still silence of that early morn I could hear again and again a half-stifled sob from those looking on.

“With trembling hands I leaned forward and gently raised her head; then, passing one beneath her, I rose on my knee to bear her out, when I stopped as if turned to stone, then left go, and clasped both my raw and bleeding hands to my blackened forehead, as shrieking out – ‘My God, she’s alive!’ I fell back insensible; for those little blue eyes had opened at my touch, and a voice, whispered the one word —

“‘Father!’

“That’s her, sir. Fine girl she’s grown, ain’t she? but she was beautiful as a child. Hair ever so many shades lighter; and, unless you went close up, you couldn’t see the mark of that cut, though it was some time before the scar gave over looking red.

“But really, you know, sir, there ought to be something done about these bilers; for the rate at which they’re a-bustin’s fearful.”

Chapter Twelve.

My Patient the Captain

Captain Greening as he was called was a curious old patient of mine whom I had to attend pretty regularly when I lived at Basingstoke. His title of captain was derived from the fact that he had in his younger days been captain of a barge plying along the canal. His was a chronic case that was incurable, so I rarely called upon him at a busy time, for nothing pleased the old fellow better than buttonholing me for a long talk.

“Look ye here, doctor,” he’d say, “I like you, and it’s a pleasure to be ill that it is, so as to have you to talk to.”

I believe that any good return would have done as well but I did not say so, and we remained the best of friends.

I called upon him one day at his cottage where he very comfortably enjoyed the snug winter of his days, and found him so excited over a newspaper that he forgot all about his asthma, and could only answer my questions with others.

“Have you seen about this Regent’s Park accident?” he exclaimed.