Helen saw that she would have no easy task; and there were the children to be considered. Anyway, she must wait till she should be stronger. Could she ask this man, who had done so much, to do more to help her? It was while she dwelt doubtfully on this thought that an accidental discovery unexpectedly assisted her. It was the back-sheet of a picture paper, such as had been produced daily in millions for a race which could afford to purchase them, but which could not exert itself sufficiently to feed its children.
Over the top were the words “The Watson Murder.” Beneath was a portrait of Martin as “Leading Counsel for the Accused,” and then, in the dock with a warder on either side, “Thomas Aldworth.” She had no doubt of the identity. The name and the likeness were sufficient evidence. She remembered that Martin, who had no regular criminal practice, had taken the brief because he had known the prisoner’s mother. He had told her that he had done it because the boy was worth saving, and there would be no chance for him whatever if he fell into the hands of Burtis Kennet, or any of the lawyers who made a reputation by defending clients who were almost always hanged at the conclusion of their eloquence.
Having this knowledge, she hesitated as to the use, if any, to which she could put it. She owed much to Tom Aldworth. She could not tell whether he knew that she was Martin’s wife, and was actuated by any motive of gratitude. She had told him her name casually, not supposing that it could have any significance. But that was after he had been waiting upon them through the first weeks of her illness, when he could have known nothing.
She knew that he had companions now, though she had seen nothing of them. They might know of his past. More probably (she supposed) they might not. He might not welcome the fact that she should be aware of it. Nor would she care to use it to coerce him to unwilling service. She decided to say nothing; but the knowledge made this difference, that she had the less scruple in asking him for any further help which he might be willing to render. This she resolved to do, but, with a fine instinct, she first destroyed the newspaper which provided evidence of his identity.
After she formed this resolution there was a second unusual interval of two or three days during which he did not come. When he came he appeared tired and preoccupied, but on her saying that she had decided to set out the next day to find the place from which the floods had driven her, or, at least, to see how nearly she could approach it, his reply was alert and decisive: “You cannot possibly do that now.”
She said: “I don’t see that it need be such a great matter. I know where we are now, and I don’t think my home could have been more than twenty miles from here—and perhaps not more than fifteen in a direct line. You have told me that at least several miles in that direction” (“More than that,” Tom interjected)—“is above water. I feel sure that my husband is living, and I know where to look for him. He could not suppose that I have escaped, nor would he search at this distance. I may be wrong in my hope, and he may have died, but if I see how far, and in what direction, the country was flooded, I can better judge whether this hope has any reason to support it, and if he be alive it should not be difficult to find him. Surely there must be some on that edge of the flood who have escaped, and they would know if he be living.”
Tom was not quick to speak. He had many things on his mind of which she knew nothing. He had no reluctance to serve her, but she was asking more than she knew.
He felt that there was much to explain. She had been living in a world of which she had no realisation. In. the eyes of this world, she was his woman, though she did not know it. He had only to say, “I do not want her,” and she would be very quickly taken by others. Even here, that was so. Farther south—
He felt that he must tell her all, but he found it hard to begin. He was not naturally eloquent. And there was a space between them that was not easy to overcome. The friendliness of her eyes was so remote. Even her gratitude came from a distance.
She was five years older than he, and he knew that she regarded him as a boy. The natures of men and women had not changed, though they were reacting differently to a new environment.
She saw that he was silent and embarrassed, which was significant of something exceptional, for his words and actions were usually of a direct simplicity.
They were standing outside the door of the lodge when she first spoke. She was of the same height as he, though she appeared taller. She looked at him in some wonder at his silence, and his eyes fell before hers. She saw a young man, short, but broad, strongly built, with a blunt-featured face, showing character rather than intellect. Not a weak face, but one that a child would trust in an instant, as her own children did trust. As she trusted.
He was conscious that here was the woman for whom he longed, of whom he dreamed, whom he had saved and guarded, standing before him in a recovered loveliness, in his power, and dependent upon him. His surely by the strongest rights, and his to take without restraint except only the restraints of his own nature if such there were.
His by every right! What would she say if he told her? And the time had come for the telling.
A fear struck her that he might know that Martin was dead.
She spoke in a voice that was low and troubled. “You have something to tell me. Shall we sit here?”
She led the way to a rustic seat by the gate, which he had repaired for her use.
It was afternoon, and the babies were asleep on the bed. The old woman dozed by the hearth. They were alone beneath the unchanging trees. Only the weed-grown drive showed that the hand of man had been lifted from the land that he had once tamed to his purpose.
Tom spoke awkwardly at first, not knowing how best to begin, but the woman he addressed was neither child nor fool, and she may have already guessed or imagined more than he supposed of that which he had to tell her.
“You couldn’t go alone,” he began. “You couldn’t go alone anywhere. I couldn’t take you safely into the part you came from, unless we were a large party. I’ll find him for you, if I can—if you really want him. I don’t suppose he’s alive. It isn’t likely. But he saved my life once, and now I’ve got to do this. But I hope he isn’t.”
The last expression burst out as though against his will, and he lifted his eyes suddenly and gave her a direct glance as he said it.
“Tom!” she exclaimed, “why on earth—” and her eyes fell, and her voice sank into silence.
“You’ve got to understand,” he said doggedly. “If we leave here at all, you’ve got to go as my wife. It’s the only possible way. If you don’t want me, you must choose someone you like better. They wouldn’t help you to find a man that’s gone. It isn’t sense. You couldn’t expect it.”
“But,” she said, “I thought you told me—I know there’s no law now—but I thought you said that you had driven out the men who—”
He interrupted her. “So we have. So we did. Some of us got killed doing it. Some more of us may get killed tomorrow. We haven’t finished yet. That’s another tale that I’ve got to tell you. Then you’ll understand better. We’ve given the women more choice than we have ourselves. But they’ve got to choose. I’d better tell you how it began.
“When the earthquake came, the land broke north of here. It’s as though it broke across and was pushed up. If you go north, you come to a high cliff and look down on sea. Nothing but sea. If you go south, it’s mostly downhill until the land comes to the sea and goes under. It’s as though it was lifted sideways, although, of course, very slightly.
“When this happened there were still a lot of people on the roads that go north. When the roads were snapped off short they had to stop—if they hadn’t gone too far. Those behind came on to the same point, and so there were hundreds of people along the northern edge, but few left in the land behind them.
“Most of the people were in a state of panic. In the first weeks many died. Some from disease and exposure, some from violence, some because they just seemed too frightened to live. They robbed each other. They searched ruins fo
r plunder. It’s not much better now. But some of us are trying. We know there’s a winter coming.
“I was down a mine when the first trouble came. There was a fall and we thought we should never get out. But we did at last, along a disused working. I needn’t tell you about that. When we were out it took some time to find out what had happened, and longer for some of us to believe it.
“We were a mixed lot, but we had one advantage. We knew each other, and most of the other people were strangers.
“So we kept together more or less, and the others feared us, till we quarrelled among ourselves.
“Most of our men had lost their wives and families. If they weren’t killed in the ruins they had fled to the north and been drowned. When they understood that this thing had come to stay they wanted others. That was the trouble. There aren’t enough women to go round. Not nearly. There was quarrelling and fighting, and some women were taken by force from those who were weak or friendless. Some of them were very badly used.
“We got a meeting together to try to settle what should be done. It was proposed that things should be left to go on as they were, and if two men wanted the same woman they could fight it out. But most didn’t like that. The women were too few. It meant too much fighting—
“No one wanted you then. You were too ill. They didn’t think you would live. That’s why you were left alone. I asked whether they would listen to a proposal from me which would be fair to all. I said I shouldn’t claim anyone except you, anyway. So they supposed I should be fair, as it meant nothing to me, and a lot of them listened.
“I said the only peaceable way would be to let the women choose for themselves. I said that every woman could say which man she preferred, and if he were willing to have her, that ended it. If he were not willing, she must choose again. There weren’t many men that were unwilling. They were too much afraid of getting left altogether.
“But if a woman wouldn’t choose, I said she must take her chance. With only one woman to every four men, you couldn’t ask those men to fight for a woman to keep her unmarried, unless she’d a good reason to show for it. Anyway they wouldn’t have done it. I had done all I could.
“But a lot wouldn’t agree. There was a man named Rattray—he got killed—and Jerry Cooper, and a big brute named Bellamy. They wanted to dice for them, or to have them in turn, one way or other. We quarrelled over that, and drove them out. Some went with Bellamy, and a lot more with Cooper. We were all the better without them.
“But they are wandering about to the south, plundering what they can find. I don’t think they have any women at all. Certainly not many. We didn’t think they’d dare to come near us again, but last week some men from Bellamy’s gang came in the night and stole a girl from a place about a mile from here.
“We knew we’d got to stop that, so a number of us set out to search. I was one of those who found her. She was dead. But we know who did it.
“Tomorrow morning we’re going out to hunt them. There are about forty of us who are willing. We intend to kill the lot. They will be no loss, and there will be no safety for anyone till it’s done. We shan’t interfere with Jerry’s gang, unless they interfere with us, but I expect it will come to the same thing in the end. It must.
“We’ve got to make a new start, and we ought to make it a good one. “
“But,” she said, her mind striving honestly enough to visualise the things he told and to understand them fairly, and yet reducing them to the personal equation, as a woman will, “it doesn’t seem a good start to make women marry against their will. It seems savage to me.”
“It’s not much use saying that,” he answered shortly, “unless you can tell me a better way. A way that’d work. We haven’t tried it long, but it seems better than it used to be. Of course, it’s different from if there were more women. You’ve got to look at things as they are.”
“But what should you do if a woman refused to make a choice at all?” she asked anxiously.
“They don’t,” he said bluntly, and she fell silent. She thought that she must find Martin at any cost, at any risk; and to do this she had only the aid of the man beside her, to whom she owed so much, and to whom, in the eyes of all that remained of her civilisation, she belonged already.
Her mind went off on a fresh track. “I suppose,” she asked, “you let them be married properly? You haven’t abolished marriage as one of your improvements on the old order?”
He stared at her in a moment’s silence before he answered.
“We haven’t got any registrars, if you mean that, and the churches went with the rest. It’s not that that makes a marriage.” His meaning was, perhaps, more clear than his grammar. “And the clergy haven’t been very fortunate in surviving. There was one man who started preaching about hellfire, and Bellamy threw him over the cliff before anyone could interfere. It was one of the reasons for driving Bellamy out, though I don’t think any of us had enjoyed the preaching. We thought we had troubles enough. The flood’s rather washed religion out, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t know that,” she said quietly. “If it were true a year ago, it must be true today. A flood cannot change it—even such a flood as this. But I see how you felt. It wasn’t quite the right kind of preaching for those who heard it. But I think that men must always have a religion. They will rather have a bad one than none at all.”
“I don’t know,” he said, “I never had much. But things are all wrong as they are. And getting worse—and they’ll go on getting worse, unless we can find someone to boss them.”
He fell silent. Both of them had the same problem in mind behind the conversation that screened their dispositions for a battle that must be fought out before they parted.
As he did not continue, she asked a question natural to one of her social and political experiences. “If there’s so much confusion, why don’t you have a meeting, and choose someone to govern, someone to get things in order?”
He laughed shortly. “Yes, it sounds easy. We tried that. But how could people choose who were all strange to each other? And who was to say who was to vote and who wasn’t? Some said the women should vote, and some wouldn’t have it. We quarrelled over that, and got no further. You have to begin somewhere. We’ve got no start. And most of them didn’t come, and wouldn’t have cared what we voted. They were looking for food. But I’ve learnt one thing. It’s only strength that counts. Anyway, it’s only strength at the start. But they’ll most die when the cold comes, if nothing’s done. There’s a lot that are dying now. It isn’t all the best men that got saved. Votes? No, by God—!” His voice rose to a sudden energy that startled her, for she had never heard it from him before. “I’ll tell you this. There are forty chaps that are coming with me tomorrow, and if we knew of any man who was fit to boss this show, he’d have his chance, and if that damned Butcher tried to stop it, he’d go after his motor—”
“After his motor?” she inquired in some natural confusion, that did not pause to ascertain whether Butcher was a surname, or indicative of an occupation which had a necessary and honourable place in the social order from which she came.
“Oh yes,” he said, “the lads sent the motors over the cliff. Best thing, too.”
He did not explain why these evidences of the progress of civilisation had received such treatment.
“Now, he could have done it,” he began again, and she knew at once of whom he spoke, though no name passed between them. “I almost wish he were here.” He turned to her with the vigour of a sudden resolution, and she knew that the moment of decision was upon her. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, and I’ll tell you why. But I shall want a promise from you.
“He saved my life once. I was caught, and tried for murder. I’d done it, right enough. I told him that. I didn’t see I was much wrong. It was Dick Winter who started it. He asked me to join him for a lark in a burglary at a house near where we lived. Of course, I said ‘Yes’. I’d have said ‘Yes’ to anything. Life was so dull then. We didn
’t know what was coming. If I had, I’d have waited. And then I should have stayed at Tanner’s Green Colliery, and been drowned, and shouldn’t have been here now. Life’s a queer game, however we play it.
“We thought the place was empty, but when we got there Dick funked. He said he’d stay outside and watch. I never saw him again.
“I went in, and I hadn’t picked up anything before I had a pistol bullet by my ear, and a voice shouting to me to put my hands up. I put them up right enough, but there was a table by where I stood with a stick lying on it, and my hand went up with the stick in it, and came down just as he fired again. He didn’t hit me—I don’t know whether he meant to—I think he was too scared to know himself—but I hit him. He was dead next day. They said he had a very thin skull—and the stick was a loaded one. How was I to know?
“I got away, but they caught me. They proved there were two of us, and that one stayed outside. They proved that I was one of the two. They proved a lot, but they couldn’t prove who was with me, and they couldn’t prove which of us went in. I’d had the sense to wear gloves.
“So I was sent for trial. My lawyers wanted to defend it differently, but he had his own way. He wouldn’t trouble about anything except that they couldn’t prove it was I that went in. He just held on to the one point that even a murder case has to be proved, and it was their business to prove it, not ours to prove I didn’t. We didn’t trouble to dispute that I was one of the two.
“I didn’t think he’d win it, but he got the judge halfway with him, and the jury went the rest. I suppose they all thought I was guilty by the line we took, but it came off right in the end.
“Now I’m not going to take his wife if he’s alive and wants her. I’m not that sort.
“I’ll look for him where you say, and if he’s there I’ll bring him back. You can’t ask more than that.
“But if I can’t find him, you’re mine, and you’ve got to promise that first. I’ll look for him straight enough, and if he’s not found you’re mine in a month from now. I won’t ask whether you’d rather I found him. I’m doing this for him, not for you. I’ll never ask that. But you’ve got to promise first. I’ve done something for you already—I dare say I want you more than he ever did. And you can’t go now and pick up another girl in the next street. I think that’s a fair deal all round, and I hope you’ll say the same.”
Deluge: A Novel of Global Warming Page 19
