One of Life's Slaves Part 8

She had gone up the street as far as the place where the stone pavement began, when she saw the green door open and slam quickly to again, as a bare-headed, half-dressed servant-girl ran out. Immediately after, a man came out in similar haste, and through the door which he left standing open behind him, a number of people, with and without hats, streamed out on to the steps.

Something was the matter!

Now a window was also opened, or rather hammered open, so that the pane clashed down on to the pavement.

Probably some drunken man or other, who could not stand any longer--it was Sat.u.r.day evening, you know--and who was making a row, and must be taken by the police.

She had often seen such sights before, and was quite accustomed to them.

She was not anxious about her father either: he never interfered in such matters.

But why did he not come out? Every one else had come out.

A faint, slanting gleam of evening light had fallen in through the empty square of window. Her father generally sat at the table just inside; he always kept the same place. And she went up and peered in between the flower-pots,--some half-stifled, dirty geraniums and hydrangeas, saturated with public-house effluvia.

Who was that--that man who was lying on the dirty counter, with his necktie and shirt unfastened and one arm hanging down--was it her father?

"If only some one had a lancet!--he moved just now--a lancet!"

What more they said on the steps she did not notice, except that some wanted to deny her entrance, and others again said that she was Holman's daughter.

She awoke, as if after a fall from a great height during which she had lost consciousness, to find herself sitting by the counter supporting her father's head. She thought she remembered clinging to his neck and begging him to answer her: but there was no rattling in his throat now.

They had placed an old, worn sofa-pillow and the seat of a chair under his head. Behind stood quart and pint measures, dram-gla.s.ses, tin funnels and beer-bottles pushed right up to the wall to make room. His wide-open eyes stared up at the once white-washed beams of the ceiling, and one side of his face was drawn up into a grin, which made him look as if he were unspeakably disgusted with the dirty ceiling.

A big man sat at the door. Silla knew him: he was the public-house bear, as he was called; he who turned people out for Mrs. Selvig. He was sitting silent on the bench.

There was perfect stillness in the room; she heard only the drip from the tap of the brandy-cask down into the dish beneath, and saw, through the half-open door to the inner room, Mrs. Selvig and her two daughters bustling about on tiptoe.

A young man in spectacles entered. He asked a few rapid questions, while he opened a case of instruments on the counter at the feet of the prostrate figure. He listened at its chest with the stethoscope and without it, and shook his head, pulled out a lancet, and pushed the shirt sleeve up the hanging arm.

"Hold the sleeve, so that it doesn't slip down!" he said with a glance up at Silla; he took her to be a member of the household.

The lancet pierced and pierced again. The ashen grey face of the girl looked into his, as if she would beg him for only one drop of that which was the life.

There came out something like a thick, dark syrup.

He listened again, felt again; one more trial with the lancet, and it was with an air of superiority, and a mouth drawn up like his professor's, that the young bachelor of medicine turned to those a.s.sembled and p.r.o.nounced his concise verdict:

"Stone dead! The man's stone dead!--from drink!"

His words were followed by a cry from Silla, who threw herself upon her father.

"Is that his daughter?" asked the young doctor. He carefully wiped his lancet at the light, and put his instruments together preparatory to going, but gazed at the same time over his spectacles at her. Heedless of everything, she cried incessantly over the body.

"You aren't dead, are you, father? Father!"

It was a wild sorrow, without consideration or bashfulness, and the young doctor felt that he was witnessing an unpleasant scene from life in the outskirts of the town. He had done his duty and hastened out.

A twenty-year-old workshop apprentice, pale and overcome, was standing behind Silla, trying to recall her to herself. He took her by the shoulder, and whispered repeatedly, as loudly as respect for the dead would allow:

"Silla! Silla! don't you hear? It's me--Nikolai!"

And he tried in vain two or three times to lift her up from the body.

Meanwhile a policeman stood and examined Mrs. Selvig and the girls. He made notes, and took down the particulars of the death.

Just finished his usual quant.i.ty, a bottle of ale and four drams. The girl at the bar saw him quickly stretch out his hand--had the impression that he wanted another dram--and when he slowly sank down from his chair, supposed that he was drunk. Used never to be so drunk that he could not walk or stand, at any rate by supporting himself or holding on to convenient, firm things.

This last piece of evidence was deposed to by several of the regular customers, or as they were described in the police report--"Several of the regular visitors to the refreshment-room, whose testimony may be considered as thoroughly reliable."

Several of these silent, somewhat tottering, figures who had been thus aroused from their dull, Sat.u.r.day evening drowsiness, had already disappeared from the scene. Bottles and gla.s.ses remained standing with their contents.

"Might there not possibly be some other direct or indirect cause?"

It was at first hesitatingly that Mrs. Selvig could think of anything of the sort.

Unwilling as she was to go to extremes with an old, regular customer, she yet had been obliged this evening to give him to understand that whatever he required in future must be paid for in cash. His bill had now, after all the years he had enjoyed credit in the tap-room, grown so enormous, that she, a widow with two daughters, could no longer feel justified in letting it run on. During all the years he had frequented her house, she had faithfully kept her word never to send a bill home to his house. But a bill cannot lie for ever on the threshold, as the police know. That is the way of the world: it is the same for one as it is for the other--so it must just be got by a distress warrant. That was what she had said to him, unwilling though she had been to do so, and so unpleasant, she could truthfully say, as it was to disturb such a quiet, decent man.

It was high time to rid the bar of its enc.u.mbrance. The public-house bear had hunted up a hand-barrow, but had to get a couple more men to help carry. And they must have a proper contrivance with a cloth over, so that the whole thing would look like a hospital stretcher--a dead man with nothing but a tablecloth over him would make too great a commotion out in the street!

It was something of this kind that Mrs. Selvig and her daughters were busy looking out and putting together, out of some green bed-hangings.

One's good name is dear to every one, and Mrs. Selvig felt that what had just taken place was a blow to the house.

It was now nearly dark in the tap-room. Holman's dark figure had been moved on to the stretcher, which stood on the floor ready to be lifted, and a message had been sent to Mrs. Holman.

Perhaps they delayed purposely; a little later in the evening when it was darker, and an undesirable sensation in the street would be avoided.

Silla's face was stiff with crying. There was no one in the room but her and Nikolai.

He stood by the counter, and she was sitting with her back to the window; there was no sound but the humming of a gnat in the half-darkness up under the curtain.

At last he broke the silence.

"He was kind, both to you and to me, as often as he dared be, you know."

Silla did not answer.

"He always dreaded going home at night so, you know. He'll be spared that now, and setting his foot inside this public-house again, too!"

"Father! Father!" broke from Silla, followed by a fit of violent sobbing.

"Listen, Silla!" he said, interrupted by the repressed weight on his own breast. "If you have no father, you have some one here who will take care of you, and knows what it is--I have never had any father either, nor ever seen any. And I _will_ be a smith, as there won't be any more block-making for you now. I only wanted to tell you, so that you can remember it afterwards," he added softly--it did not look as if Silla were listening to him.

"And this evening I'll follow you right to the corner, and I'll stand there until everything is in, and I shall be outside to-night; so you know it, if anything is wanted."

"Yes, stay outside, Nikolai!" she whispered.

The public-house bear and the two bearers came in. They lifted the stretcher out through the door, and, with a little difficulty at the turn, down the steps, where a few spectators stood.