CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEA Run for Life
THE shock of his escape had left Mr. Trimblerigg dazed and tremulous. He went feebly, not yet quite reawakened to the world which, in that moment of exaltation, he had thought to be leaving behind him. But instinct, and the loud jolly sounds of his fellow-creatures drew him toward the glaring lights and bustle of the fair-ground. An illuminated crowd was a refuge from his condition; amid the flare of those naphtha lamps his radiance would be unapparent.
But while he thus moved toward the light, he forgot that his back was to darkness, and as he skirted the outer circle of the booths, standing shoulder to shoulder with their farther sides dressed to the staring crowd in gaudy habiliments of painted canvas, he was startled to hear a voice exclaim, ‘What’s that bloody sunset doing there?’ and to perceive that it was directed at him.
The showman, jumping down from the back door of his van, ran hastily towards him, thrust a bewildered face at him, and stopped amazed. ‘Well, of all blinking wonders,’ he cried, ‘you take the cake!’
Mr. Trimblerigg, trying by superior calmness to control the awkward situation, wished him a good evening, and was for passing on.
The man caught him by the arm. ‘Here! which of the blooming shows d’you belong to? I hadn’t heard tell of you.’
Mr. Trimblerigg replied that he did not belong to any show. The man was dumbfounded.
‘You don’t mean to say you’re going about here givingyourself away for nothing?’ he managed to say at last. ‘You ain’t advertising anything, are you?’
‘No; I’ve just been taking a turn,’ said Mr. Trimblerigg. ‘Now I’m going home.’
‘You aren’t!’ cried the showman, with an eagerness that was almost like agony. ‘Here, come along into my show, and you shall have half the takings. Honest, I mean it! And you shall have a money-box of your own to pass round too, if that ain’t enough,’ he added, seeing that his first offer had failed in attraction.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Mr. Trimblerigg, assuming a mild dignity which he did not feel: ‘This is entirely my own affair. I’m not a show.’
Stupefied, bewildered, outraged, the man stood and looked at him for a moment, to see whether he really meant it. Then, his admiration turning to hate: ‘You aren’t?’ he shouted, ‘Then what the blooming hell are you? If you aren’t a show, what did you come ’ere for? Got a game of your own on, have you? We’ll soon see to that. Hi!’
He shouted with all the strength of his lungs, and continued to shout, waving his arms to attract the attention of the crowd. ‘Here’s an escaped lunatic!’ he cried.
Mr. Trimblerigg started to run. He heard the shouts of others gathering behind him, dodged round a canvas obstruction, doubled back, made a bolt through a hedge, and thus securing a good start made off across the open in the direction of home.
But in less than a minute he knew that the crowd was after him; jovial, but excited,—for the mere fact that there is something to chase kindles the blood—it hurled after him heavy-footed, a little slow in the uptake, but warmingto its task at the sight of its quarry half a field away, a blister of red bouncing through the starlit night, and under it showing dimly a man’s form.
As the crowd neared him, its uncouth epithets assailed his ears. ‘Holy Moses!’ was the cry of one; ‘Go up, Elijah!’ of another. Then as they got near him and marked how desperately he ran, ‘Hullo, old fire-escape!’ gave the more modern touch which the situation required.
Mr. Trimblerigg could not run nearly so fast as the crowd; but at the level-crossing fate was kind to him. An arriving luggage-train—not without some risk—allowed him to pass in front of it, and then with its slow length held up his pursuers. But the more active ones, running down the line turned the tail-light of the guard’s van, broke fence, cut a slant and were on him again.
Once more fate favoured him. At the home stile the cow which had interrupted his prayer had couched itself for the night. Perceiving the recumbent obstruction too late, he planted his foot on it; with a spasmodic heave she hurled him across quicker than he could have vaulted, and plunging about broke momentarily the head of the oncoming crowd.
It was amazing with what spirit Mr. Trimblerigg—not being in running condition—had kept the pace; but he was a very spent man when he reached the narrow foot-bridge, and sped breathless to the crossing, his pursuers only a few yards behind. The tide was low: black glimmerings of mud stretched to right and left of him: he trod warily clutching at the hand-rail as he ran to stay the dizzying of his brain. Before he reached the end, a violent vibration told that his pursuers were now almost upon him; the bridge resounded to the weight and tread of alarger number than it was built for. Under Mr. Trimblerigg’s feet a plank started; the weight pressing it behind jerked it upwards. Somewhere with a sharp report a stay snapped, then another and another; and with a sense of general collapse going on behind him, from which he himself was immune, Mr. Trimblerigg felt himself precipitated through the air in a long gliding curve, up, out, forward, and down. A shallow mud-bank received him into its merciful embrace. He stumbled out of it unhurt, but in so dark a disguise, that all the mothers in the world would not have known him.
Leaving his enemies behind in far worse plight, he staggered up to the door which had already opened to those sounds of break-neck disaster borne upon the quiet air.
He saw Davidina standing dark against the light, and even in the desperation of his present condition he felt the shock of it, and shrank back from meeting her—not because of the mud which now encased him, but because of that other adornment, which he could explain so far less easily. But the relief he had longed for had already been brought about: the mere sight of her had made him a changed man; and though her greeting word, as she ran down the path to meet him was, ‘Jonathan, whatever is the matter?’ she made no further remark indicative of surprise. All about him the night was beautifully dark; there was no reflected light upon her face as she bent forward to kiss him. The shock of meeting her had done it. Mr. Trimblerigg had no longer anything to conceal.
They cleaned him of the mud which smothered him. ‘You don’tsmellof drink,’ said Davidina, ‘but you look like it. What’s this Caroline has been telling me about your head? What’s wrong with it?’
And, at the word, what he had already begun suspiciously to hope, he became sure of. Heaven was no longer making him conspicuous.
‘What did she tell you?’ he inquired defensively. ‘There’s nothing the matter with my head that I know of.’
‘Said you’d been striking sparks—having a vision that your head was a hayrick that had caught fire; and now she won’t tell me anything: says you’ve sworn her to secrecy.’
‘She must have dreamed it!’ said Mr. Trimblerigg.
He saw Caroline go white.
‘Dreamed it?’ exclaimed Davidina. ‘If she dreams things like that she wants a doctor.’
She did. On hearing that she must not believe the evidence of her senses, Caroline fainted.
*
Full many a rose, the poet tells us, is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness to the desert air. Mr. Trimblerigg’s rose had experienced a somewhat different fate; it may have wasted its sweetness, but it had not blushed altogether unseen; and though it died blushing for itself, it had not lived in vain. The conversion of Caroline to its spiritual significance had proved unimportant; the realization by Mr. Trimblerigg of its extreme inconvenience had made a temporary but not a permanent impression upon him, as further record will show. Davidina had not seen it at all, it had snuffed itself out at the sight of her. But somebody else had seen it, and had realized not merely its spiritual significance, but its potential value, which Mr. Trimblerigg had missed, or too hastily despaired of. And the person in question had seen it not once but twice, on two separate occasions.
When Mrs. James told Isabel Sparling that Mr. Trimblerigg was not at home and had already left town, Miss Sparling had either the sense or the instinct not to believe her. And being a determined character, she had hung about at a respectful distance, keeping her eye on the door, rather expecting him to come out of it than to go into it. Muffled in veil and cloak—the former to conceal her bandaged face—she had walked up and down the farther pavement, with her senses alert for the coming or going of that familiar figure, until in the early gathering dusk, the apparition passed her, going with haste along the verge of the pavement in the line of the lamp-lights.
Isabel Sparling had this advantage over others who had seen, or doubted that they could have seen, that same mystical appearance in the earlier hours of the day. She was herself a spiritualist and a visionary; she believed in things which the world in general did not, and was on the look-out for them. She had recently, among her other beliefs, become a Second Adventist, and was looking for the end of the world; this event was to be preceded by a great war, by earthquake, by things happening to the sun and moon; by the opening of the seven seals upon a certain box which had recently come into her custody, and by the reappearance of saints from their graves, preparatory to the reappearance of others who were not saints. And for all these things she was already hungrily expectant, when she met a halo walking down the street. It came upon her suddenly round a corner, and had passed before she fully realized that it encircled the head of the man whose false friendship had changed her feelings to enmity. Her intention, in seeking him out and lying in wait for him, had been to return in person the money hehad left for her; and though she had meant to thank him for his good services, she had not meant entirely to forgive him, but rather to explore his spiritual condition, and warn him, as she had begun warning the world at large, of the wrath that was to come.
But seeing him there, with head clothed in light, her feelings toward him changed. She was seized with an instant conviction that she had misread his character, or that she had not made allowances for the difficulties of one destined to fulfil a high mission in the spiritual crisis which the world was now approaching. The sight of him thus augustly changed, speeding furtively along, avoiding human recognition, filled her with awe and humility; she could not go and return money to a head in a halo; she could not, with the emotion of that discovery fresh upon her, follow him, ring the bell and ask for him—perhaps only to be denied. But twenty-four hours later, after much spiritual wrestling with herself and him (for her thoughts thereafter were never quit of him) she did find courage to go and knock at the door of the Mollusc wherein he had secreted himself from the world—the knock which he had heard and thought might be Davidina; and when the dull Caroline, without recognition or inquiry, had told her, in the double sense, that he was not at home, she let herself be turned away without protest; and standing forlorn, contemplative of that quiet scene of shore, river and star-brimmed sky, saw away in the mid-distance a globed cluster of moving light crossing the small foot-bridge, and making for the fields beyond. Then to her also came the sense of a mission, and prevailing in weakness she stole after him.
Following at a devout, that is to say at more than arespectful distance, she saw him dimly by his light rather than by his form, cross the field and halt at the stile to pray.
Drawing nearer, she durst not then intrude on him; and when he had got upon his feet and passed on, she, following close after, found an impediment of an insuperable kind awaiting her.
Isabel Sparling was mortally afraid of cows; and there one stood in her way; and after standing for awhile and gazing at her with a munching movement of the mouth which she felt sure meant mischief, it lay down upon the footpath to wait for its prey to come over.
And thus it was that, without a full clue to its meaning, she became spectator to the unexplained scene of horror which followed after. She watched his light resting at the level-crossing to await the passing of a train, then saw it dwindle and merge in the broad band of fire amid which the junketing fair sat and bubbled; and wondered whether he had gone there to preach repentance like Jonah to the inhabitants of Nineveh. Her next sight of him was fleeing before a crowd that seemed thirsting for his blood, awhile holding his own, but presently losing ground, then by the intervention of Providence gaining more than he had lost. As he came headlong toward her, she nerved herself for his deliverance, was prepared to stand between him and the hungry crowd, declare his sanctity, die if need be instead of him; and so she would have done had not the cow got suddenly upon its feet—hind legs first in that horrible way which cows have when they intend to toss people.
That finished her, she saw the rest of the chase from a distance, heard the crash of the broken bridge, cries,curses; and presently met a crowd of maimed larrikins, muddy, drenched and miserable, carrying each other home. But even had she then dared to go further, and inquire for more news that the angry comments of the crowd gave of his escape, the broken bridge prevented her; and the next day, stealing by furtive ways to watch unobserved, she saw Mr. Trimblerigg clothed and in his right mind, tended by female relatives, accompanied by his children, and his glory all gone from him.
And that, for the time being, was the conclusion of the matter; but not the real conclusion, for then came war; and Isabel Sparling, girding up her spiritual loins, preached that the world was to end,—that her people and her native country were to be punished for their sins, but other countries much more. Gradually, swayed by the patriotic crowds which gathered to hear her and cheer on others to do their fighting, she became harder upon the other countries, and let her own and its allies off; and before the war had been on a twelvemonth they had all become angels of light, chosen vessels, ministering spirits and flames of fire. For that is what war does; while in a physical sense it paints most things red, in a moral sense it paints them black or white; and the black is the enemy, and the white is ourselves; and the neutral, if neutral there be, is a dirty tint which badly needs washing.
As for Mr. Trimblerigg, having found that there was no public for it, he relinquished goodness of the first water, and fell back upon relative goodness and relative truth, in which, as a matter of fact, he had a more instinctive belief.