Guy Thorne - The Socialist

"We are going to do what has never been really done before – we are going to be extraordinarily and mercilessly realistic. It will be called brutal. And our studies are going to be made at first hand. In attacking one class, we are also going to allow it to be known that all our actual scenes have been taken from life. The slums to the north of Oxford Street, all round Paddington, are hideous and dreadful. They all belong to one man, the young Duke of Paddington, a boy at Oxford; incredibly rich. The theatre itself is on his land. Well, we are going to go for this young man tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, because he is typical of the class we wish to destroy. We are going to let it be generally known that this is our object. It will be published abroad that the slum scenes in the play are literal reproductions of actual scenes on the duke's property. Our scene painters are even now at work taking notes. One by one all the members of the cast are going to be taken to see these actual slums, to converse with their inhabitants, to imbibe the frightful atmosphere of these modern infernos. We want every one to play with absolute conviction. I have arranged that a party shall leave this house in two days' time, a county council inspector and a couple of police inspectors are coming with us, in order to do this. You, I beg, Miss Marriott, will come, too."

He had been speaking for a considerable time with enormous earnestness and vivacity. Now he stopped suddenly and sank into a chair. His face became pale again, he was manifestly tired.

Some one passed him a box of cigarettes. He lit one, inhaled the smoke in a few deep breaths, and then turned to Mary.

"Well?" he said.

She answered him as simply, and many words would not have made her answer more satisfying or sincere.

"Yes," she said.

"Very well, then, that's settled," Rose replied in his ordinary voice. "Salary and that sort of thing we will arrange to-morrow through Mr. Seaton. I will merely assure you that we regard the labourer as worthy of his hire, and that we shall not disagree upon that sort of thing."

As he spoke a maid entered the room. "Mr. Goodrick is being rung up from the offices of the Daily Wire ," she said.

"Then there is something important," said the journalist, as he hurried to the telephone in an adjacent room. "When I left at five I said that I should not return to-night unless it was anything big. I left Bennett in sole charge."

He was away some minutes, and the conversation in the drawing-room became general, the high note being dropped by mutual consent.

"By the way," Mr. Conrad said suddenly, "what an odd thing it is that part of Paddington House was blown down this morning!"

"The poor boy will have to take arms against a sea of troubles," said Mrs. Rose sympathetically. "At any rate, we are law-abiding conspirators. It seems dreadful to think that there are people who will go these lengths. I'm sorry for the poor young duke. It isn't his fault that he's who and what he is."

"Of course," Rose replied. "I hate and deprecate this violence. It is, of course, a menace from the unemployed. But my heart bleeds for them. Think of them crouching in doorways, with no shirts below their ragged coats, with no food in their stomachs, on a night like this!"

He shuddered, and Mary saw, with surprise, another and almost neurotic facet of this extraordinary character.

Charles Goodrick hurried into the room. "I must say good-night," he said, in a voice which trembled with excitement. "A very big piece of news has come in. One of our men has all the details. It will be our particular scoop. No other paper to-morrow morning will have all that we shall."

"But what is it?" Rose asked.

"A big railway accident, but with an extraordinary complication, and – by Jove, what a coincidence! – it concerns the young Duke of Paddington!"

"Is he killed?"

"No. He was stunned for a time. The accident happened in the fog just outside Paddington Station. He was stunned, but soon recovered.

"Then what?" said the journalist.

"Why, the extraordinary thing is that he has totally disappeared!"

The Duke of Paddington lay stunned and unconscious beneath the wreck of the first-class carriage.

There had been the period of waiting outside Paddington Station – his own great-grandfather had sold the ground on which it stood to the company – in the black fog of the winter's night.

Then there had come the lengthening roar of the approaching train, the shouts, the horrid crash of impact, the long tearing, ripping, grinding noise – and oblivion.

How long he had been unconscious the duke did not in the least know. He came back to life with that curious growing, widening sensation that a diver has when he is once more springing up through the water towards the surface, air, and light.

Then quite suddenly full consciousness returned – rather, he arrived at full consciousness. Everything was dark, pitch dark. His ears were full of a horrid clamour. A heavy, suffocating weight was pressing upon him.

He lay perfectly still for some moments endeavouring to recollect where he was and what had happened. Finally he remembered and realised that he was actually – he himself – a victim of one of those terrible railway accidents of which he had read so often in the newspapers with a careless word of pity, or perhaps, no emotion at all.

Another train had crashed into the Oxford express in the fog.

The duke moved his right arm, and found he could do so freely, except above his body, where the heavy something which was lying upon him prevented its passage. He strove to dislodge the weight, but was utterly unable to do so. He was, in fact, pinned beneath a mass of woodwork, which, while not pressing on him with more than a little of its weight, nevertheless kept him rigid upon his back without possibility of movement. His left arm he could not move at all. Curiously enough, the sensation of fear was entirely absent.

"I am in a deuce of a tight place," he thought of himself, and thought about himself in a strangely detached fashion as if he was thinking of another person.

"I am in a deuce of a tight place. What is to be done?"

He tried once more to move the crushing roof. He might as well have tried to push down the Bank of England with an umbrella.

Next there came to him a sudden thought, a realisation that at least one thing was in his favour. As far as he knew he was perfectly unhurt. He felt fairly certain that no limbs were broken, and that he had no severe internal injury. He was cut and bruised, doubtless, and still giddy from the blow of the impact, but, save for this, there could be no doubt that he had been most mercifully preserved.

The air was full of confused noises, shouts, the roaring of escaped steam, cries of agony. The duke added his clamour to the rest. His voice was full and strong, and echoed and re-echoed in his ears.

Nothing happened, and now for the first time a sickening feeling of fear came to him and his cries sank into silence.

Almost immediately afterwards he heard a noise much nearer than before, much more distinct and individual. It was a crashing, regular noise, some one was working at the débris.

Once more he shouted, and this time an answering hail came to him.

"Is anyone there?"

"Yes," the duke called out. "I am pinned down here by a heavy mass of timber."

"Are you badly injured?"

"I don't think I'm much hurt, only it is impossible for me to move."

"Cheer up!" came back the voice. "We will soon have you out." And then the crashing, tearing noise went on with renewed vigour.

In a few minutes the duke found the pressure on his chest was much relieved and the noise grew infinitely louder. It was as though he was lying shut up in a box, at the sides of which half a dozen stalwart navvies were kicking. He thought that the drums of his ears were bursting. Then there was a chorus of shouts, a last tremble and heaving of the confining mass, a breath of cold reviving air, and strong hands withdrew him from his prison.