Courtship -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Singers -- Fiction
"Iss. Us dunnaw wur er's tu; er's dade, I reckon. Aw, my li'l, li'l
chiel!" And she rocked to and fro, clutching her shawl more closely
round her.
Diana put a few brief questions and elicited that the woman and her child
had both been taken unhurt out of a third-class carriage--of the ten
souls who had occupied the compartment the only ones to escape injury.
"I'll go and look for him," she told her. "I expect he has only strayed
away and lost sight of you amongst all these people. Four years old and
wearing a little red coat, did you say? I'll find him for you; you sit
down here." And she pushed the poor distraught creature down on a pile
of shattered woodwork. "Don't be frightened," she added reassuringly.
"I feel certain he's quite safe."
She disappeared into the throng, and after searching for a while came
face to face with her fellow traveller, carrying a chubby, red-coated
little boy in his arms. He stopped abruptly.
"What in the world are you doing?" he demanded angrily. "You've no
business here. Go back--you'll only see some ghastly sights if you come,
and you can't help. Why didn't you stay where I told you to?"
But Diana paid no heed.
"I want that child," she said eagerly, holding out her arms. "The
mother's nearly out of her mind--she thinks he's killed, and I told her
I'd go and look for him."
"Is this the child? . . . All right, then, I'll carry him along for you.
Where did you leave his mother?"
Diana led the way to where the woman was sitting, still rocking herself
to and fro in dumb misery. At the sight of the child she leapt up and
clutched him in her arms, half crazy with joy and gratitude, and a few
sympathetic tears stole down Diana's cheeks as she and her fellow-helper
moved away, leaving the mother and child together.
The man beside her drew her arm brusquely within his.
"You're not going near that--that hell again. Do you hear?" he said
harshly.
His face looked white and drawn; it was smeared with dirt, and his
clothes were torn and dishevelled. Here and there his coat was stained
with dark, wet patches. Diana shuddered a little, guessing what those
patches were.
"_You've_ been helping!" she burst out passionately. "Did you want me to
sit still and do nothing while--while that is going on just below?" And
she pointed to where the injured were being borne along on roughly
improvised stretchers. A sob climbed to her throat and her voice shook
as she continued: "I was safe, you see, thanks to you. And--and I felt
I must go and help a little, if I could."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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