Volume Ii Part 35 (1/2)
At the same moment a couple of heavily built men, evidently colliers, came down the road from the village. George at once called to them from across the palings.
”Here, you there! this young rascal has been throwing a lump of dirt at Lady Tressady, and has. .h.i.t her badly on the arm. Will you two just walk him up to the police-station for me, while I take my wife home?”
The two men stopped and stared at the lady by the railings and at Sir George holding the boy, whose white but grinning face was just visible in the growing dusk.
”Noa,” said one of them at last, ”it's noa business ov ourn--is it, Bill?”
”Noa,” said the other, stolidly; and on they tramped.
”Oh, you heroes!” George flung after them. ”Attacking a woman in the dark is about what you understand!--Madan!”
He whistled again, and this time there was a hurrying from overhead.
”Sir George!”
”Come down here, will you, at once!”
In a few more minutes the boy was being marched up the road to the police-station in charge of the strong-wristed Scotch manager, and George was free to attend to Letty.
He adjusted a sling very fairly, then made her cling to him with her sound arm; and they were soon inside their own gates.
”You can't climb this hill,” he said to her anxiously. ”Rest at the lodge, and let me go for the brougham.”
”I can walk perfectly well--and it will be much quicker.”
Involuntarily, he was surprised to find her rather belittling than exaggerating the ill. As they climbed on in the dark, he helping her as much as he could, both could not but think of another accident and another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more restlessly kind.
”What were you in the village for?” he asked, bending to her; ”I did not know you had anything to do there!”
”I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor,” she said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. ”Bessie begged, as usual.”
”That was very good of you. Have you been doing visiting, then, during all these days I have been away?”
”Yes--a few people.”
George groaned.
”What's the use of it--or of anything? They hate us and we them. This strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever.”
”You are sure they will be beaten?”
”Before Christmas, anyway. I daresay there will be some bad times first.
To think a woman even can't walk these roads without danger of ill-treatment! How is one to have any dealings with the brutes, or any peace with them?”
His rage and bitterness made her somehow feel her bruises less. She even looked up in protest.
”Well, it was only a boy, and you used to think he wasn't all there.”
”Oh! all there!” said George, scornfully. ”There'd be half of them in Bedlam if one had to make that excuse for them. There isn't a day pa.s.ses without some devilry against the non-union men somewhere. It was only this morning I heard of two men being driven into a reservoir near Rilston, and stoned in the water.”
”Perhaps we should do the same,” she said unwillingly.