It Never Can Happen Again. William De Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ Steptoe allowed the shortness of her temper to get the better of her so completely, and on this occasion everything was against elasticity.

      Things were all so nightmare-like that nothing could well make them worse, or Lizarann might have been additionally terrified and oppressed when her aunt, before consigning her supper finally to her for consumption, looked it all over closely and said, more to herself than the public: "I don't see any things a-crawling." As it was, in the Valley of Shadows Life was passing through to-night, Lizarann merely said: "There ain't nuffint on the stoast," and began her supper off it sadly. Her daddy's great effort to speak against his pain, and his reassuring words about the doctor, had made that cheerless evening meal a possibility to his little lass. Full knowledge, and a year or so more of life, would have meant inability to eat. But Lizarann was very young, and, moreover, could not credit a possibility of mistake to her daddy. Had he not spoken confidently of the "ship's doctor" making a square job of his leg? She had certainly a slight misgiving that this pointed to his leg assuming a different shape after the operation. All sorts of contingencies hung about Hospitals. You never could tell what grown people wouldn't be at next. But whatever the outcome was, daddy would be there. And this black cloud would roll away.

      Aunt Stingy retired, and left Lizarann to herself and her supper with a final imputation of rebelliousness and disobedience that was quite groundless—so its object thought. "You do like I tell you, and go straight to bed when you've e't your supper. Burnin' the candle-ends for nothing!" She then did violence to the understanding, by adding: "The light won't last you out, except you look sharp; and then you'll be in the dark." If a rigid economy was compulsory, how could extravagance be possible? But menace without method was Aunt Stingy's attitude to-night.

      Lizarann, left alone, looked all round the tray and under the milk-jug, but could see nothing crawling. She was not so much concerned with the avoiding such things as articles of diet as a County Family would have been, or even the Upper Middle Class; her object was to throw light on her aunt's soliloquy, which she had not ventured to ask the meaning of. Getting no light, she ate the scrop o' bloater, and the stoast and butter, and drank the milk, and did very well, for her aunt was not christened Stingy from any tendency to cut down rations unduly. Only she would have done better still, had she been able to sob less, and if the resources of a pocket-handkerchief ten inches square had not required supplementing by sleeves, which can only be crudely engineered against tear-drops, or their reincarnations. But she got through her supper before ever the candle set alight to the paper, and flared. Then she got to bed before the flare became convulsive; not to be left in the dark with—who knows?—a nightgowned sleeve inside out and no finding where. Because we all feel that spectres are not to be trusted, unless you have something on. Indeed, timid persons are not happy till the whole thickness of the bedclothes is between them and possibly convincing phenomena.

      The candle died hard. But Lizarann knew that the longer it took, the less it would taint the atmosphere after its last convulsion, and left it to smoke in peace. So she watched it from her bed that stood in what was little more than a cupboard off the room her father slept in, and cried to think that his was empty. She watched, and wondered which would come first, the last flicker, or her last mouthful of chestnut. For she ate those chestnuts cold, and shoved the shells well under the bolster so Aunt Stingy shouldn't see. She was a very human little girl, was Lizarann, for all she was so devoted to her daddy.

      The candle outlived the last chestnut. Then consideration had to be given to the problem how to get to sleep afore the nasty smell come along the ceiling and down. Once asleep, you can ignore smells, even when sut. Sut is the worst, but candlegutter has a nasty flaviour with it. So Lizarann did wisely to go to sleep vigorously.

      She was succeeding, and beginning to dream a nice dream, though she wasn't getting warm yet, when her aunt made a tempersome re-entry on the scene. Lizarann woke with a start, and, remembering all the dreadful reality, broke out crying—she couldn't help it! Shaken by one arm, and told to wake up and have done with that petering noise, she recovered self-possession, except for a lagging sob at intervals, and sat up. Directed, inconsecutively, to lie down and go to sleep again, and no more nonsense, she was preparing to comply when her aunt gave a first beginning of a screech and stopped it short.

      "Whatever is it?... O Lard!..."

      "It's a ch-chestnut sell. I eated it." Confession proved good policy in this case, averting inquiry which would have revealed the hidden store under the bolster.

      "O Lard, what a turn it gave me!... he's made me as bad as himself...." The woman had a frantic look about her; her husband's horrors evidently had a sort of infection for her; though of course the child had little insight into this. "You bad child, you! You little good-for-nothing slut, lyin' in bed eating chestnuts, and your father in the Hospital!"

      This wounded Lizarann to the quick, and righteous indignation overcame both grief and fear. "I ain't," she shouted, and for the moment quite forgot that she was, or at least had been, the moment before.

      "Don't you tell me that, you ontruthful child, and your leavings staring you in the face! Now just you tell no more stories, but say where they've took your father, and what he's done to himself."

      This retrospective use of a conviction for untruth—and a morally unjust one—to suggest a course of antecedent misrepresentation on her part, seemed to Lizarann quite the worst piece of mendacity within her experience. But it got the conversation still further away from that nutshell deposit; and that was good, so far. "Father said he'd be took proper care on, and I w-wasn't to c-cry, and I shan't!"

      "Can't you tell me where they've took your father to, instead of vexin' me? Is he gone to the Station, or the Hospital?"

      "The Spoleece, they carried him off to the Sospital. Yass!" Then, sitting up in bed, a small monument of woe, for the moment tearless, Lizarann considered whether she had grounds for deciding which Hospital. She knew of three, the Smallporks, Guys's, and Bartholomew's, but she was very uncertain about the two last. She decided on denying the Smallporks, if asked. However, her aunt accepted the Hospital as sufficient. Let it go at that!

      "What did your daddy say he'd done to his leg? Now, no makin' up! Say the truth, like he told you." This would have been a signal to many children to strain hard to invent the truth out of their own heads. Goaded by stupid, unsympathetic people, they do this in self-defence. But Lizarann was honourable and clear-headed.

      "He only saided his leg—didn't say nuffint about it. Only the sip's doctor would make a square job of it. Yass!"

      "And what good's your schoolin' done you? Couldn't you have the sense to ask and find? What ever do you suppose God gave you your tongue for?—to set with your mouth wide open? Little plagues can talk fast enough when they ain't wanted to it!" She then suggested, most unfairly, that Lizarann was detaining her by holding out false hopes of information. "I should like to know how long you expect me to stand here askin' questions. This time o' night! And me wanted to look after your uncle! Get down into your bed and ha' done with it! I can't waste my time talkin' to you." After which she departed and locked the door; Lizarann could not imagine why. But there was something very queer with Uncle Bob, who had been audible all the time in fitful outbreaks, conveying a sense of his adjective applied as a stigma to many things, and as a refreshing emphasis to parts of speech.

      Lizarann's last impression—a hazy one, before deep sleep came, and total oblivion—was that her aunt went out from the house, leaving the street door on the jar, and that then she heard the voice of their neighbour Mrs. Hacker, saying, "He'll be all right by morning."

      Now this little maiden attached only two ideas to this husband of her aunt: one, that he was a painful concomitant of all their lives, who had to be put up with, and where was the use of complainin'?—the СКАЧАТЬ