LITMIR.BIZ

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more accustomed to the gloom, and helped him to understand what she told him. “Wait a moment, and listen. I am pinned under a beam. I don’t feel hurt at all, but I can’t move, and I don’t know whether I am really injured. I didn’t care to struggle hard till you came, because, as you can see, its full weight is not on me now, but if I moved I might bring it. I felt sure when you did not come, and I did not hear them cry, that you had got them safe. You wouldn’t all have been killed at once. So when I heard nothing I just waited. Where have you left them?”

      He answered briefly, his mind occupied in overcoming, without any resulting disturbance, the obstacles that still divided them The thoughts that the whole edifice might collapse at any moment; that a hasty movement might bring disaster, that the fire was advancing its own argument of urgency, and that the children would almost surely die unless he should return to them safely, left no mental leisure for the needless words which they had spent so much of their lives in exchanging.

      He was one who had lived by words, and he was to find their use again under very different conditions, but there was an earlier lesson to be learned of their more frequent futility.

      He saw that when the tree fell the first substantial impact had been given by a great lateral branch which grew toward the house, and which must have struck the roof and penetrated inward and downward as the tree leaned over.

      From this cause, as also from the fact that it was built less strongly, the partition wall had been broken down lower, as well as more widely, than the outer one, so that its ruins had given little support to the cataract of brick and slate, of board and rafter, which had descended through the broken floor of the bedroom.

      When the crash came, as she afterwards told him, Helen had been standing at an open wardrobe which was placed between the windows. A moment earlier these windows had been blown in on either side of her, with a rush of air which had nearly thrown her off her feet, but she had held her ground, and urged by this catastrophe, she had given up the attempt to clothe herself further, and had just gathered the contents of the wardrobe into her arms when the roof descended upon her. Blinded by dust and plaster, she continued to clutch the door of the wardrobe with one hand, the other arm being filled with the loose clothes she had gathered, while the floor gave way at the further end, causing the wardrobe to slide rapidly forward, carrying her before it; but, probably owing to the pull of her weight on the door, it swung round as it did so, so that it was beneath her as it was precipitated into the room below. It fell on its back which smashed very easily, as, like most of the furniture of those days, the parts which were usually hidden were made of thin and worthless wood.

      She found herself lying across it, with the loose clothes beneath her, feeling no pain, and thinking herself free to move when she would, but choked and blinded by the dust. A fresh fall of bricks and rubble came a moment later, at the further side of the room, and she lay awhile uncertain whether it would be more or less risky to remain still or to attempt escape.

      As the dust began to clear, and no further fall came, she attempted to rise, and was surprised to find her legs immovable. A heavy rafter lay across them, itself bearing a mass of debris, but so placed that its further end was supported upon the ruin of the inner wall, and holding her only, she thought, as in a gentle vice, with pressure rather than weight. Indeed, she found that with a little twisting she got one leg entirely loose, and would have drawn it from beneath the beam but for the discomfort of the position which would have resulted. But when she attempted to release the other, at the first pull there was a slight movement among the broken bricks on which the beam was resting, and it settled down more heavily, so that the leg which she had loosed before was held again, and the other felt the pain of an increasing weight and pressure. There was an ominous slipping also in the debris which the beam supported, and being confident that Martin would find her, she had decided to remain quiet for a time in the hope that he could co-operate in a safer method of release. After that she had felt faint, though she knew no cause, and had since been sleeping or half-conscious, so that the time had seemed but a few minutes till she was aroused by his coming.

      Martin could not tell what risk he took in the work of the next few moments. He tried to reach her with as little disturbance as possible, but as he did so an eddy of denser smoke rolled in from the hall, and he could see nothing clearly. The next moment it came more thickly in a pause of wind, with a blast of heat, and a flame glowed in the hallway.

      He felt along the beam to where her legs were beneath it. He said: “When I can I will lift with all my strength and you must pull them out instantly. I can’t say whether I shall be able to do it, or for how long, or what will follow, but it seems the best chance we have. Are you ready? Now.”

      Then the beam lifted, tilting somewhat from one end, with some noise and confusion of falling bricks.

      Helen said: “I think they are clear now,” and cautiously, not knowing how far its supports might have shifted, he lowered the beam. It rested much as before, and then her voice came again, with an undertone of fear for the first time: “I can’t get up. I am too weak. My legs are cramped, but I think there’s something else wrong. Could you lift me?”

      “Rather,” he said lightly, and indeed he was relieved so greatly that they could escape the fire, that he hardly felt the fear of what this incapacity might imply, as he would have done in other circumstances.

      The wind was blowing again with recovered force, and they were less choked and blinded than they had been, but the fire in the hall was closer, and a sudden spurt of flame from the stairs lit them, so that he saw her plainly for the first time, lying almost face-downward, on the heap of clothes she had been collecting.

      She tried to raise herself when she saw him: “Bring the clothes,” she began, and then her smile changed to an expression of sudden agony, and she sank forward in a faint from which she did not recover until he had carried her out of the burning building into a heavy rain which was now falling. The wind seemed more moderate, and though the rain was strangely cold for the season, it felt even pleasant as he left the stifling heat, the discomfort of which he had scarcely realised in the excitement of the rescue. He breathed deeply of the cooler air as he crossed the lawn, his relief that she was alive and recovered contending with fear as to the extent of her injury, anxiety to return to the children, and the consciousness that their food and all other necessities of life were lost within the burning building.

      CHAPTER II

      To the habits of those days, a marl-pit in a time of soaking rain was no fit place in which to lay an unconscious and injured woman, but he could think of no better resort, nor could he do other than unite her with the children if he were to go in search of food, as he surely must if their lives were to be long continued. He had realised already that they were faced by more than ordinary catastrophe, and that they must rely upon themselves if they were to find means to survive it.

      During this time, and for many hours afterwards, he was too occupied with their own immediate needs to concern himself with larger issues, except as they were thrust upon him, but he could not be unaware that the north-west sky was now a lurid height of flame, where the city burnt, in which a hundred of those whom he had known most intimately had been sleeping but a few hours before. The wind was no longer steady, but veered in sudden gusts, as though it were drawn at times by the rising of the heated air. When it blew in that direction it was cold enough, and the rain was mixed with sleet, but when it came straight from the north it felt as though it were too hot and dry for the rain to cool it, though it could but have passed at a mile’s distance the furnace of that appalling tragedy.

      But with the wind and the rain behind him, he made quick progress down the sloping field, and, reaching the pit, he went round to the easier side, and there sat and slid down it as best he could till they had reached the place where he had left the children.

      Hawthorn and undergrowth made an insufficient screen from the rain that was falling, and as they grew only on the steeper side of the pit it was not easy to find a place beneath them both dry and level. He could see nothing better than the elder bushes beneath which the children had retreated, and there at last he laid her as best he could, treading down a space of grass and nettles, and breaking away the lower branches that gave insufficient space to stoop beneath them.

      The

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