Helbeck of Bannisdale, vol 2 | Page 2

recovered her power of action sooner than the men around her. They stared at the young lady for a moment; but no more. The one hideous fact that possessed them robbed all else of meaning.
"Did he see it?" said Laura to the man's friend. Her voice reached no ear but his. For they were surrounded by two uproars--the noise of the crowd of workmen, a couple of thousand men aimlessly surging and shouting to each other, and the distant thunder of the furnace.
"Aye, Miss. He wor drivin the tub, an he saw Overton in front--it wor the wheel of his barrer slipped, an soomthin must ha took him--if he'd ha let goa straight theer ud bin noa harm doon--bit he mut ha tried to draw it back--an the barrer pulled him right in."
"He didn't suffer?" said Laura eagerly, her face close under his.
"Thank the Lord, he can ha known nowt aboot it!--nowt at aw. The gas ud throttle him, Miss, afore he felt the fire."
"Is there a wife?"
"Noa--he coom here a widower three weeks sen--there's a little gell----"
"Aye! they be gone for her an t' passon boath," said another voice; "what's passon to do whan he cooms?"
"Salve the masters' consciences!" cried a third in fury. "They'll burn us to hell first, and then quieten us with praying."
Many faces turned to the speaker, a thin, wiry man one of the "agitators" of the town, and a dull groan went round.
* * * * *
"Make way there!" cried an imperious voice, and the crowd between them and the entrance side of the shed began to part. A gentleman came through, leading a clergyman, who walked hurriedly, with eyes downcast, holding his book against his breast.
There was a flutter of caps through the vast shed. Every head stood bared, and bent. On went the parson towards the little platform with the railway. The furnace had sunk somewhat--its roar was less acute---- Laura looking at it thought of the gorged beast that falls to rest.
But another parting of the throng--one sob!--the common sob of hundreds.
Laura looked.
"It's t' little gell, Ned! t' little gell!" said the elder workman to the youth he was supporting.
And there in the midst of the blackened crowd of men was a child, frightened and weeping, led tenderly forward by a grey-haired workman, who looked down upon her, quite unconscious of the tears that furrowed his own cheeks.
"Oh, let me--let me go!" cried Laura. The men about her fell back. They made a way for her to the child. The old woman had disappeared. In an instant Laura, as of right, took the place of her sex. Half an hour before she had been the merest passing stranger in that vast company; now she was part of them, organically necessary to the act passing in their midst. The men yielded her the child instinctively, at once; she caught the little one in her sheltering arm.
"Ought she to be here?" she asked sharply of the grey-haired man.
"They're goin to read the Burial Service, Miss," he said, as he dashed away the mist from his eyes. "An we thowt that the little un would like soom day to think she'd been here. So I found her--she wor in school."
The child looked round her in terror. The platform in front of the furnace had been hurriedly cleared. It was now crowded with men--masters and managers in black coats mingled with workmen, to the front the parson in his white. He turned to the throng below and opened his book.
"_I am the Resurrection and the Life._"
A great pulsation passed through the mob of workmen. On all sides strong men broke down and wept.
The child stared at the platform, then at these faces round her that were turned upon her.
"Daddy--where's Daddy?" she said trembling, her piteous eyes travelling up and down the pretty lady beside her.
Laura sat down on the edge of a truck and drew the little shaking creature to her breast. Such a power of tenderness went out from her, so soft was the breast, so lulling the scent of the roses pinned into the lady's belt, that the child was stilled. Every now and then, as she looked at the men, pressing round her, a passion of fear seemed to run through her; she shuddered and struggled in Laura's hold. Otherwise she made not a sound. And the great words swept on.
* * * * *
How the scene penetrated!--leaving great stabbing lines never to be effaced in the quivering tissues of the girl's nature. Once before she had heard the English Burial Service. Her father--groaning and fretting under the penalties of friendship--had taken her, when she was fifteen, to the funeral of an old Cambridge colleague. She remembered still the cold cemetery chapel, the gowned mourners, the academic decorum, or the mild regret