Bram Stoker: The Complete Novels. A to Z Classics

was over, Jerry had to hurry back to his work, and Parnell remained to talk with Katey. Katey did not delay, but proceeded to tell her trouble in full, Parnell listening quietly, and looking very grave. When she had finished, he took her hand in his and said —

      “I do not like Jerry’s keeping back anything from you, but this matter will be all right, I hope and believe.”

      He was interrupted by the voice of the landlady calling out, “Mrs. O’Sullivan, here’s a boy wants you to go down to the theatre as quick as ever you can, something has happened.”

      Katey, with a deadly fear in her heart, hurried with Parnell down to the theatre.

Chapter 7 — Katey’s Trials

      When Jerry had arrived at the theatre he had found visitors waiting to see him. They were none other than Mr. and Mrs. Muldoon, who had appeared just before. The bride had taken a fancy to see the inside of the theatre in which Jerry worked; and being certain of finding him at his business, the pair had come straight to the theatre instead of calling at his lodgings.

      A man is seldom so busy that he cannot spare a while to act as cicerone to his friends; and Jerry accordingly laid aside his hurry, and conducted the happy couple over the theatre. Both husband and wife took a great pleasure in everything, and insisted in going everywhere. Margaret would work the machines by which in the stage art the sounds of rain and wind and thunder are produced; and altogether the pair raised as pretty a storm as had been heard in the theatre for many a long day.

      In spite of her prejudice against going up corkscrew stairs and down into cellars, Mrs. Muldoon managed to poke her nose into every odd corner of the stage. She insisted on going up into the flies, where the dust lay in places almost inches thick, quite heedless of the state of dirt to which her clothing was reduced. This part of the sight-seeing did not please her husband much on account of several accidents which happened to him. In the first place, he slipped on a flight of stairs as steep as a ladder and “barked” his shin. Then he ran his head against a beam and utterly destroyed his new silk hat. Finally, he put his foot in a division between two boards and hurt his ankle, narrowly escaping a sprain. At all these calamities his wife laughed loudly except at the spoiling of the hat, for which she reprimanded him severely as being guilty of a needless piece of extravagance. Mr. Muldoon began to think that married life was not such a delightful thing after all.

      Then they all went down to the cellars, as Mrs. Muldoon wanted to see how the demons came up through the ground. Jerry explained to her the mechanism of the traps, how a sliding board was pulled away so as to leave an open space, into which fitted exactly a piece of flooring, on which stood the person or thing to be raised; that to this flooring were attached ropes which worked over pulleys and were attached to immense counter-weights, which, when suddenly released, shot up the trap swiftly between its grooves. Mrs. Muldoon wished to see it working, so Jerry drew away the slot, and released the counter-weights. She gave a little ecstatic laugh as the trap flew up, and then said to Jerry —

      “But surely it doesn’t work that way when there’s anything on it?”

      “Just the same.”

      “And how do you go up? Do you just stand on that and then up you go?”

      “Exactly.”

      “How do they stand? I suppose as stiff as pokers?”

      “This way,” said Jerry, getting up and standing on the trap.

      This was just what Mrs. Muldoon wanted. She had all along been watching for an opportunity of releasing the trap, and had purposely led Jerry to stand on it that she might see him shoot up through the opening in the stage. Without giving him warning she suddenly released the trap, which flew up. Jerry, to whom the experience was novel, for his business was to work the trap and not ascend on it, felt the ground flying up with him, and was horribly startled, for the idea of the trap working of its own accord never entered his head. With an instinctive movement he started back, and in doing so lost his balance. He was hurled against the groove in which the trap worked, and from the velocity with which he was moving received a desperate blow.

      When the trap was closed, Jerry lay on it perfectly insensible, and bleeding profusely.

      In the meantime Mr. Muldoon had been prowling about the cellar in a very bad humour, looking at the various appliances. When the trap flew up Margaret saw that Jerry was hurt, but did not know how much. She got afraid of something serious, and wished to avoid the consequences. Accordingly she ran over to her husband and said hurriedly —

      “John, dear, I think Jerry has hurt himself. He was standing on the trap and it flew up, and he struck something. They will lay the blame on us. Don’t you think we had better go?”

      “All right, but make haste,” said the husband. And so they found their way with some difficulty into the street.

      There was no one on the stage at the time, so Jerry’s accident was unnoticed. He lay there for some time, still senseless, and still bleeding, till Mr. Griffin saw him as he crossed the stage on his way to his own room. He thought it was a case of drunkenness and turned the man over with his foot, with that contemptuous “get up” which is used on such occasions. As he did so he saw the blood, and with an exclamation, bent over to look more closely. He saw that some accident had occurred and called for help. In a few moments the various employes began turning up, one by one, till quite a little crowd had assembled; the alarm penetrated to Grinnell’s and a large contingent arrived from that quarter.

      Jerry’s head was raised and the restoratives usual to such occasions applied, but all in vain. Accordingly, a doctor was sent for, and a boy despatched to tell Mrs. O’Sullivan.

      Katey and Parnell arrived before the doctor. When the former saw her husband, limp and senseless, with his pale face looking vacantly upward from the knees of the man who was supporting his head, and the stage floor round him stained with blood, she gave a low, startled scream, which subsided into a prolonged moan. For an instant or two she stood, as if petrified, holding her arms out — surprise in her attitude and terror in her looks. Then, with a little hoarse, sibilant moan, she drew her left hand across her eyes and forehead, as if to clear her brain and sight, and then she knelt beside her husband for an instant, with her hands tightly clenched. The crowd made way for her and stood a little aloof.

      When she recovered her shock sufficiently to understand what was before her, poor Katey’s grief was terrible. She threw herself on the body of her husband and passed her hands over his hands, his face, his hair, his bosom, whispering in a low, heartbreaking voice:

      “Jerry, Jerry, wake up; speak to me, Jerry, dear. Oh, Jerry, won’t you speak to me — to Katey, your wife, — your little wife that loves you? Oh, weirasthru, weirasthru, he’s dead, he’s dead! He won’t speak to me. He’ll never speak to me, again. Oh, Jerry, Jerry, asthore! — Jerry, Jerry.”

      The poor little woman’s voice died away into a long moan, as she buried her face in the bosom of her husband and wept.

      Many of those standing round were touched, and turned away their heads not to show their emotion.

      All were silent, and waited.

      The arrival of the doctor created a diversion. He was a fussy, good-humoured little man, who always looked at the bright side of things. His natural impulse on seeing a woman give way to violent grief was to think that it was without cause; and, as his impulse was supported by his experience, he generally continued so to think. When he bustled in and saw Katey stretched on the body of her husband, he spoke —

      “Come, come! what is all this? Who is crying? The man’s wife? Then the man’s wife has no right to cry. It is an insult to me — to science. The man’s wife thinks, I suppose, that Providence is very hard on her. What right, I say, has the man’s wife to judge Providence before science has spoken. The man is sure not to be dead. Why, the man’s wife ought to be ashamed of herself for not being thankful that he is not killed. Stand away and let me see the man, and we’ll very soon hear the man’s wife laughing instead