Yet when they saw the barrier being raised which would render it difficult for themselves and impossible for the trolley to pass out by that exit, they were disposed to regret that the risk, however great, had not been taken.
It was evidence of a settled purpose to besiege them, which was, in itself, daunting. It showed that their success in killing those who had invaded the tunnel had not been decisive in its results. They had only the vaguest knowledge of the number or personalities of their opponents. Others might have joined whom they had not seen at the camp. They realised that they might be attacked at any moment, either by night or day, or they might be merely blocked up until discomfort or starvation should dispose them to make terms with their besiegers. They must be incessantly alert for an attack that might never come.
To Reddy Teller the position was very simple, and he had no intention of prolonging it. Among those of the gang that still lived he was—apart from Joe, who was scarcely reckoned to be one of them—the most capable, the most resolute, and possibly the least scrupulous. It was his disadvantage that he was not popular. Yet the plan that he proposed—after Joe had left them—was adopted readily enough. It was simply that they should wait for the darkest hour of the coming night, and then creep in silently and without lights.
If their opponents should be awake and in equal darkness they would have the advantage of numbers, while being otherwise on an equality; if their opponents should have any light they would be at a disadvantage, and the man could be shot and the woman taken with little risk. It sounded simple, and Teller, though not otherwise an attractive character, was not lacking in the courage or resolution to carry it out, as we may judge from the promptness and accuracy with which he threw the stool when he first came under our notice.
He had been content for Joe to occupy himself in blocking the further end. It not only prevented the escape of their intended prey, but it removed Joe and four others from the scene of the successful action which he anticipated. Reddy planned to be on the spot when Claire was captured, and he did not mind how many should be absent. The fewer the better fare, was his motto.
Joe was equally assured of the superiority of his own strategy. He had acquired a wholesale respect for the prowess of those they sought, and he was well content that others should take the risk of the capture. He was not even disposed to think that the first attack would succeed. He might have countered his rival’s proverb with He laughs longest who laughs last.
No doubt Joe was underrated by his new companions. He was not a heroic figure. He never had been that, and his newly acquired obesity was of an undignified order. They knew nothing of the cool and skilful riding which had made his reputation in a world that was already losing reality. He might prove a Napoleon of the new days, but even Napoleon at Acre….It is so difficult to be wise before the event.
And even Napoleon might have failed to provide against a foe of the proximity of which he was entirely ignorant. Fate was unkind to the military dispositions both of Reddy and Joe in this particular.
Tom Aldworth, better informed of the position on the chessboard than were any of the four whom we have already considered, and having the further advantage that he was aware of the extent of his ignorance, was yet left by the scout’s report the victim of an indecision which he did not disclose to his companions.
It had been clear to his earlier mind that the whole gang must be destroyed, and that hesitation today would be the regret of tomorrow. He had influenced others to this opinion. Having a habit of thought which was direct rather than subtle, he told himself quite honestly that he still held to the same view. It was immaterial that all might not (indeed could not) be equally guilty of the outrage that had brought this verdict upon them. They had labelled themselves by the leader and companions that they had chosen. But the absence of Bellamy and of the one of whose guilt they were the most certain, the fact that the gang (as it appeared) were fighting among themselves, and the possibility (however unlikely) that the difference might be of the nature of a moral revolt against Bellamy’s leadership, disquieted his mind, because he felt unable to decide on the right course of action until he were more fully aware of the facts, and he had a reasonable conviction that their purpose would never be fully carried out should they commence to parley.
He sat silently facing this problem while his companions slept around him. They were tired after the day’s march. It had been understood that they would do no more till darkness came. Four of their number—condemned to vigilance by the verdict of a spun coin—were watching from the surrounding cover. They did well to sleep.
But Tom Aldworth, leader in fact if not in name, and therefore servant of all, must wake and think. After doing which he rose and walked over to Ellis Roberts, who opened his solitary eye and sat up as he approached.
Ellis Roberts was a spare, grizzled Welshman who had migrated from the Corris Valley to the Cannock coal-fields when the importations of Portuguese slate had resulted in the closing of many of the poorer mines in the former locality. He had lost his left eye, and had been fortunate to escape so lightly, when a comrade’s carelessness in the blasting operations in which they employed had endangered the lives of a dozen men, and he had risked his own to warn them.
“Ellis,” said Tom, “we ought to find out what’s going on in the tunnel. Could you get six of the boys to go with you—or more if you think you’d need them—and catch one of the men at the other end? I expect he’d tell us. There are only five men there, and it shouldn’t be difficult to surprise them. They’ll be watching the tunnel, not the bank above. If you catch one (or more, for that matter) and settle the rest, you’ll need to bring him back here, and leave enough of the boys to take their place. We mustn’t let Bellamy escape, or the others. But there can’t be many shut in or they’d need a larger force at that end to hold it. It looks like one, or two at most. But they must have some reason for wanting him, or them, very badly.”
“You mean catch one and kill the rest?” said Ellis. “Did Tolley see who they were?”
“Jack Tolley got close enough to count them, and he says that he’s sure of Ted Watson and Navvy Barnes. There was one man that he didn’t know, and he thinks the fourth was Hodder. He’s not sure of him. He didn’t see any arms. These four were working—blocking the exit from the tunnel. There was a little fat man beside, but he’s sure that he hadn’t seen him before. He wasn’t one of those that were with Bellamy when we turned them out. He was sitting on the bank by himself.”
Ellis thought for a moment, and then said: “I think six ’ud do. If we surprise them, six is as good as sixty, and if we don’t they’ll run and be lost in the dark. Barnes wouldn’t fight, nor Watson. They’d scare too easy. Hodder might, if he’s there....Yes, I’ll do it.
He got up and went round the camp to pick the help he needed.
CHAPTER XXVII
Martin, his mind struggling to recover consciousness of its environment, was aware of Claire’s voice from the darkness. His head throbbed painfully, but she had drawn it to the comfort of her lap, and he had no disposition to move or speak. He did not understand clearly what she was saying. It was by an effort of reluctant will that he asked at last: “Is he dead?” He knew that there were many things of which he should be thinking, many things that he ought to do, but he did not want to remember them. He would face them at the next moment—and the moments passed. When he brought himself to speak he did not know that his voice was scarcely audible.
Claire answered quietly. “Yes, he’s dead. There’s no need to worry about him, or anything.”
He relapsed into silence, which she did not attempt to break.
When she had recovered from her own fainting—the first that her life had known—and had found Martin still unconscious as he had fallen, she had risen to the emergency, as some women will. She lost even the feeling of exhaustion which had previously overpowered her. She had located the injury more by touch than sight in the half-light of the tunnel, and had found means to
bathe and bandage it with clean linen from her store of clothes on the trolley. But first she had found and reloaded the pistol, which now lay near to her hand, and as she sat against the rails with Martin’s head on her lap, she watched and listened incessantly, her eyes on the arc of light at the entrance, her ears alert for any faintest sound that might come from the darkness behind her.
As she watched she thought. She saw with an increased clarity, in the light of her new experiences, that it was necessary to face the altered conditions of life without evasion or flinching, and that only those who could do so successfully would be likely to survive them.
Different though they were—widely different, both in characters and mentality—she and Martin were alike in this, that they could think honestly and were capable of acting without regard to prejudice or convention as their reasons prompted.
She knew that Martin had hesitated to shoot a fallen man, and that it was owing to that moment’s weakness that he himself was now helpless. She did not blame him. Far from it. But she recognised that it was an error for which the price must be paid. For this time she did not think the price would be heavy. She had gained an increased confidence now that Bellamy was dead. She was alert and cautious, but she was not fearful. She recognised that Martin’s need was time for recovery, and that every moment in which nothing happened was a moment gained on their side.
But for the future, if they desired life, they must learn to shoot first and to think afterwards. Ultimately she realised that force rules, under whatever guise.
Were they, then, to degenerate to conditions of savagery? Surely it did not follow. In material things, in most of the luxuries to which they had been used, there must be great changes if they were to live on this small and isolated territory. There must be hard work, hardships, privations. But she saw that this was an entirely separate question. Hardship and poverty are not inconsistent with nobility of life and conduct. Ultimately, that must depend upon the characters of the people concerned, upon the social order that they build, upon those whom they choose to regulate it, or who are imposed upon them by force or craft. In the next generation it must depend upon the children that they bear and upon the training they give them.
Somehow, from the survivors of the civilisation that had been swept away, a new tribe must be formed, a basis of mutuality established, and its nature would depend at the first upon the characters of those who had escaped the deluge. There must surely be some who were different from those that she had yet met—and the more of the higher and the fewer of the baser sort the better it would be. Her mind went over those that they had killed. So far as she could judge them they would have been little help for the new community. Her reason told her that Martin’s life and her own were the more valuable. Still, it was by successful violence, and through no other quality, that they were alive at the moment. She thought of those they had killed. Four. She did not include the man who had fallen into the fire. That was not their doing. For that matter, she did not know that he was dead. But there was the woman that she had killed, and there were the men that lay between them and the daylight.
Startled by the thought, she realised that of the four, three had met their deaths at her own hands. Was she stronger than Martin? She knew she was not. More capable? Not that either. Braver or cooler in danger? She did not think so. Was she more bloodthirsty, more merciless? She did not think that either. Even two days ago she would have regarded it as incredible that she should take life time after time. It was not significant that it had been her part to kill them. It was just how the cards had fallen.
Anyway it was loathsome work. She had seen enough of what hostile violence can do to the human body when she had been nursing in France, but those wounds had been almost all from the blind force of explosives, and she had never been on the actual scenes of hostilities. In books men fought and died with a discreet gentility. A sword went neatly through the body, a bullet entered the head, or the heart (for the fatal cases), or the lungs (for those that were to reach an interesting convalescence). It was all done with propriety. There was none of this ghastly scuffling, With confused noise, and garments rolled in blood. The old Hebrew poet who wrote that must have seen fighting.
Her mind reverted to the man whose head was on her knees. It was true that he had hesitated where she would not have done so. It seemed that the event had proved him wrong. She did not avoid the issue, nor did she doubt him. She was content—more than content—with the man she had found and chosen. She would be true to him till life failed her, as he would be true to her. She was as sure of him as of herself, and she was glad of her choice. She did not doubt that he was wiser, as she knew that he was stronger than she. Perhaps he saw more broadly, more truly, than she was able to do. To see all sides does not conduce to prompt action. She had seen that force was the ultimate court of appeal. But was it the ultimate height, or the ultimate depth only? And yet show I you a more excellent way. That was also a thought that must be faced without flinching.
Her mind attacked the problem from a different angle. Why was there the need for violence? What induced or required it?
She saw herself clearly as the cause of these deaths. She had brought death when she landed. It was incidental that any of them should have come from her hand. But they were hers equally, whoever might deal the blow. And why was it?
They fought because they were men and they wanted the same woman. That was natural. In a way it seemed right. She fought for her own choice among them. That seemed right, too. It was right that the best man should succeed among those who desired her. It was not only best for the individual, it was best for the race. There was the mystery of the further life. Of children that would or would never be.
Among all the impulses that urge mankind there can be none where the stake is greater than that.
It was right that the best man should have her, be the price what it might.
But if one of them should have killed Martin would she not be his by the same law? What was best, and by what standard of judgement? There was confusion here. Confusion of two ideals. The right of the man’s strength and the right of the woman’s choice. Could they accord, and, if not, which was the higher.
It would be interesting to talk it all over with Martin at another time. His mind was better than hers. He could analyse more clearly, perhaps more coldly, than she. She had learnt that already.
Thinking of this, she realised another aspect of the problem of life which confronted her. She knew quite well that Bellamy had not seized her with any purpose of comradeship or permanent union, of mutual obligation or ultimate parenthood. He had obeyed a fierce instinct which worked without thought of her welfare, or any further purpose than to satisfy its own craving. Having done this, and being of a kind that takes no thought for the future, he would have passed her over to his companions for the same purpose. They would have pursued their purpose, though she should have been injured by their collective brutality. She might have died. She had heard of what had happened to another unhappy woman a few days before.
But this horror was not natural. It was incidental to the fact that the men who had survived appeared to be so much more numerous than the women. Even so, she knew that all men would not act in the same way.
Martin would not. Yet she remembered that he had taken her himself very promptly, not without violence, and it was to hold her that he had been fighting. What was the ultimate distinction?
Love and lust—in the language of Victorian subterfuge. But she knew that that distinction was less than honest. Martin had not desired her less than those men. She would have instinctively resented the supposition. Nor was it for love of Martin, whom she had never met, that she had risked her life in the waters. She saw clearly that if she had not met Martin—if he had never lived—she would have sought another, and probably found him. That was no cause for shame.
It was in the free choice of mating, the acceptance of its obligations, the loyalty that held as fast in distress as in pros
perity, that the difference lay. She saw clearly that the desire of man for woman, or of woman for man, is not a base thing that can be sanctified with difficulty, but a sacred thing that can be too easily degraded.
It was while she thought thus in the darkness that Martin stirred and spoke again, his voice stronger and clearer than it had been previously. “I don’t think I’m much hurt. What happened?”
She told him briefly. He answered: “I was a fool—a slow fool. But he didn’t seem dangerous. I shan’t make that mistake again. You did well.” He fell silent. He went over all that happened. He recognised that the woman which the sea had given him was one that might not be equalled among a thousand. One fit to survive while millions round her had perished. He saw that she was one of those who had come through, not by blind chance that saves or slays as it will, but by her own strength and courage. Many of the unfit might still be living, but there should be enough of those who had survived by their own exertions to improve the race of the future. One of these was surely the woman that now was his. Was he such a one? He was less sure. Anyway, he was very fortunate in having gained her.
It was natural, from such a thought, that his mind reverted to Helen. Suppose she had lived….He knew that she could not have come through their recent perils as Claire had done. She had not the physical strength of the woman who had trained herself in battle with the power of the waters that were destined to overwhelm her race. She had not the courage. She had not the nerve—not, at least, of the same kind.
There was no disloyalty in his thought. Only a sharp pang of regret for the days that were gone forever, for the lost love, the lost comradeship. Suppose that she were still living? It was a fantastic thought. His reason told him that it could not be. But if she were? Would he not rise to seek her at the first hint of such a possibility? He knew that he would, and that Claire would have no power to stay him. Would she wish to? Would she come with him on such an errand? He wondered. He looked up to eyes that could be dimly seen in the shadows. Eyes that he had already learned to trust and know. Grey eyes, wide and clear, under brows that were black and heavy. Eyes that were not looking at him now, but gazing watchfully at the arc of light where the tunnel opened.
Deluge: A Novel of Global Warming Page 21
