The Dawn of Reckoning

by James Hilton

  IV

  Meanwhile, Ward crossed the oceans with his party, fitted finally at Tasmania, and set sail for the frozen South. Newspaper cables gave graphic descriptions of the final send-off of the wanderers, and Ward’s photograph, along with those of others of the party, was in most of the English illustrated papers. Philip and Stella both followed his progress with great interest; then there came the last message from the southernmost outpost of civilization, after which there could be no more news until the expedition had either failed or succeeded.

  Two of the photographs Stella cut out and kept. One had been evidently posed for; it showed Ward leaning negligently on the deck-rail and smiling exactly as he had smiled during that rollicking election-campaign at Chassingford. The other, a snap-shot, showed him standing alone on deck, gazing Southward without the shadow of a smile, his face set in lines of grim determination. The two photographs presented a remarkable contrast for anyone who was interested enough in their subject to notice it. Stella pointed it out to Philip; he remarked, casually, “Yes, he’ll find it’s no laughing matter to get to the South Pole.”

  Something in his words stirred her to momentary irritation. “I should imagine he never thought it would be,” she answered quietly.

  V

  Autumn and winter swept by, with gales that drove in from the marshes and littered the Hall lawn with leaves. Happiness still lay over Stella like the misty fumes of a drug; a pleasure that was half-painful wafted her from day to day amidst a life that was dreamlike in its exquisiteness. Philip was an angel of kindness and consideration; his husband-love entranced her by its delicacy and sweetness; besides that, he was a child for her to care for and protect. The old Hall seemed to glow on those windy autumn days with the pure love of an almost perfect idyll. Philip at work in his study; Stella superintending the household, bustling into all the rooms (except the study), and telling Venner what wine to serve at lunch—such quiet, refined tastes, and money enough to satisfy all of them! Sometimes, Stella, driving past Firs Cottage in her car, caught sight of the woman to whom, at Ward’s request, she had given a lift; the woman sometimes cut her dead, and at other times offered a faint, reluctant smile. Once Stella, acting on momentary impulse, stopped the car at the house and enquired after the health of the little boy. She could be very charming when she set herself out to be so, and in a few moments she really thought she had begun to melt the woman’s rough exterior. They chatted desultorily, and at length the woman gave Stella a tedious and very detailed description of all the illnesses her Johnnie had ever had, concluding with the remark: “Ah well, you ain’t got any children yerself, ma’am, so I don’t suppose…”

  Stella interrupted her. “I haven’t any yet, it’s true, but I’m going to have—in a few months.”

  She smiled as she said it. This rough working-woman whom she hardly knew was the first person besides Philip to whom she had confided her secret. After all, why not? She wanted to tell somebody; better this stranger woman than Mrs. Monsell or any of her friends.

  The woman seemed surprised, almost shocked by the sudden intimacy of the confession. Talk went on, less smoothly, until at last Stella, feeling that she might as well make use of the opportunity in Philip’s interest, remarked: “Well, I’m very glad to have had a chat with you. My husband will be a candidate at the next election; perhaps, if your sympathies are that way, you’ll give him your vote?”

  The woman’s mouth closed like a vice.

  “Oh, we’re for Grainger,” she said, sharply. “And it’s no use canvassing anybody in these houses. They’re all for Grainger.”

  No more to be said. There was a calm, cold and accurate hostility in the woman’s eyes. Stella went back to the car feeling that she had committed a number of indiscretions.

  VI

  What was this “politics” that Philip bothered about so much? For all the speeches she had listened to, the explanations Philip had given her, and the constant political atmosphere in which she had lived, she was very hazy about the meaning and significance of the word. She could not have argued with the woman at Firs Cottages, because she did not know a single reason why anybody should vote for Philip rather than for Grainger, except the, to her, all-satisfying reason that Philip was Philip. She remembered that once Ward had remarked that if he ever stood for Parliament he should call himself an Anti-Tuberculosis candidate. There seemed sense in that, at any rate.

  Yet to Philip the difference between one party and another had a spiritual as well as an intellectual value. He wrote out his speeches and memorised them as an enthusiastic missionary might have prepared sermons. Every morning for three or four solid hours he worked hard and alone; two or three evenings a week he went out to various meetings in the district and addressed them. He was an indefatigable candidate, and perhaps it was because of his willingness to spend time, energy and money without stint that the local Association continued to support him.

  To Stella those evening meetings were sudden nightmares breaking in upon the cairn dream of her home life. The halls, very often the schoolroom or church-hall of the villages, were either stuffy or draughty; the men smoked strong tobacco and smelt heavily of the sodden earth amidst which most of them had worked all day. Some dull uncouth fellow was chairman; the interruptions were lively and frequent; Philip faced them with a pained equanimity born of experience, but without any real verve or readiness. The measure of his improvement seemed to be that he was no longer panic-stricken, no matter what anybody did or said. A sharp question that he could not answer as sharply, a senseless interruption, an abusive epithet—whatever was flung at him made no difference; he stood his ground with dignity, but somehow without credit.

  To Stella the whole business was shameful. Why didn’t he leave that sort of work to the type of man that knew how to tackle it?—Why didn’t he come back to Chassingford and lead the quiet, cultured life that would earn him repose and the respect of others?

  In his own words the answer. “I will succeed, Stella. Perhaps not soon. Perhaps not till everybody thinks I am a failure past hope. I will succeed in something—some day—you wait…”

  VII

  She waited. She observed all the patient, pathetic neatness of his habits; his careful docketing and newspaper-cutting; his calm accumulation of facts and figures; his passionless plodding from day to day, despite the jeers and laughter of others. He found time to write (and publish at his own expense) a book entitled “Twentieth-Century Unrest”; she glanced at it in proof, and felt a certain oddity in the notion that he, her husband, had written stuff so entirely beyond her comprehension. The book was still-born; received one or two unkind reviews; and sold exactly fifty-four copies.

  His patience almost revolted her at times. She longed for him to lose his temper, tear up as many important papers as he could get hold of, and exclaim: “To hell with all this—I’m fed up with it!” That, she felt, would have been an action at once human and in a way heroic. To remain calm, to accept each rebuff as imperturbably as the one before it, and as the one that would follow it, touched very near the inhuman extremity where bravery became cowardice. She felt that Philip was a coward before his ambition; he dared not overthrow it and escape; he was a slave, bound hand and foot to a duty that his reason could not sanction.

  That was one way of looking at it. Another way was to admire him simply and wholly, not for anything that had to do with his ambition, but for a certain wholesomeness of his nature, and for that deep charitableness to others which even his outward manner could not entirely conceal. He was a gentleman, she felt; and her English upbringing had made her quick to recognise the peculiarly national variety. There were moments when her affection for him almost froze into awe at something in him that, despite its shackles, was great. She was glad that she was to bear him a child.

  VIII

  Winter gave way to spring and spring to summer, and there came a bright June morning when, because of her condition, she was taking breakfast quietly on the verandah outside he
r bedroom. Scents of summer flowers streamed up to her from the garden below, and the sun shone warmly on the arm of the chair on which her elbow rested. She was glad to be married; glad to be Philip’s wife; glad to be alive; above all, glad of the event that was so soon to change her life.

  After the meal she rose and made her way through her bedroom to the landing at the head of the stairs. Philip was coming up to meet her, newspaper in hand. The morning papers did not arrive at the Hall until ten o’clock, and it was Philip’s habit, if they contained anything he considered interesting to her, to bring them up. Too often what he considered interesting was merely some item of political news that had no meaning for her at all.

  “Stella,” he began, calmly as usual, “I’ve brought you The Times. There’s news in it about Ward’s expedition.”

  Somehow it was the last thing she was prepared for. She started violently, and felt herself beginning to shiver from head to foot. She had known that news was expected, but her surprise was hardly less great than if she had known nothing. A hot flush enveloped her cheeks; she felt her skin tingling as the flush spread downwards over her body.

  “Ward…” she gasped, steadying herself by holding on to the hand-rail of the staircase. “Well, what’s happened?”

  Still in the same calm voice Philip, went on: “There’s bad news, I’m afraid. The party haven’t been able to reach the Pole, and out of the twenty-four, eleven…”

  She seemed to feel the floor and the hand-rail slipping away from her.

  “Yes?” She forced herself to appear as calm as Philip. “Oh, how dreadful—are they dead?”

  “Eleven…yes, eleven of them are dead…”

  The floor slipped entirely away, and she gave a little scream and felt herself falling, falling, falling, and then a most awful head-splitting crash…

  IX

  An hour later she opened her eyes and found herself in bed and Philip at her side, holding her hand tenderly. And behind Philip stood Vaughan, the elderly, ordinary-looking medico who had succeeded to Doctor Challis’s practice.

  Vaughan smiled and twirled his grey moustache. “Ah, yes, we shall soon be quite well again…oh, yes, very soon…No bones broken. I will call again later, Mr. Monsell…”

  When he had gone Philip spoke to her very softly. “I’m s-sorry, Stella…It was m-my fault. I ought not to have s-startled you…M-my fault, Stella darling…Oh, if you had been hurt I should never have c-ceased to reproach m-myself…”

  Then the recollection of it all began to dawn upon her slowly.

  “I suppose I fainted,” she said casually.

  “Yes. You fell forward over the stairs, and if I had been a strong m-man instead of a l-little weakling I c-could have c-caught you.”

  That seemed to put her in mind of something.

  “But the paper,” she whispered eagerly. “The newspaper…About the expedition…It failed, didn’t it? And eleven—”

  She paused for breath, and then went on, almost inaudibly: “Was Ward one of the eleven?”

  And his answer came: “No. Ward was saved.”

  Then she said: “Will you give me the paper and let me read about it? And will you please go downstairs to your study and do your work as usual? I don’t feel the least bit hurt, and I know you’re always busy in the mornings.”

  He handed her the paper; the maid had brought it in, all torn and crumpled from having been trodden on.

  “Now will you please go away, Philip,” she repeated, taking it from him. “To please me, Philip…I’m really all right, I assure you.”

  He looked at her. “If you wish me to, I will,” he answered simply, and walked out of the room without another word.

  X

  The newspaper report was an official cable transmitted by wireless from the base-camp. It told in simple, unliterary language, moving by its very lack of artifice, how the party had set out at the beginning of the Antarctic summer, with the intention of making a quick dash to the Pole and back again before the winter set in. It went on to describe, from the scribbled diary of the party, how blizzards and glaciers had delayed them so much on the outward journey that when they were four hundred miles from the Pole they decided that the only chance of saving their lives lay in an immediate return. “In this decision all concurred save one: Ward, the physician of the party.” The cable gave no details of what might or might not have been a dramatic argument fought out amidst the frozen splendour of the South.

  It was on the return journey that the loss of life occurred. All the party were affected more or less with frostbite, and the position became serious when they were no more than eighty miles from the camp, where those left behind, owing to the sudden change of plans, were not expecting their return so early. Several of the party could go no farther, and began to give up hope. Food and fuel were both running short, and there seemed no chance of anyone surviving unless help were sent from the base-camp. “One of the party, Ward the physician, who was less unfit than the others, volunteered to attempt the eighty miles journey alone. He set out with food enough for six days, and was within twenty miles of the camp when a severe blizzard began, and lasted three days. By that time his food and fuel had run out. Struggling on, however, he arrived at the camp in the last stage of exhaustion. A relief party set out immediately, and on locating the rest of the party, found that nine out of the remaining twenty-three lead died. Two others died during the journey back to the camp. The physician Ward is recovering.”

  It was all curiously simple and straightforward, the language of men of action, not of literary artists. Only in the newspaper’s headlines was there any sign of writing-up, and also in a short leading-article in which “the physician Ward” was held up as the type of man who had helped to build up the greatness of England.

  Stella read it through with intense eagerness, trying to see behind the words, to visualize the hard majestic drama that had taken place on the other side of the world, and the part that Ward had played in it. She realized only very gradually that he had performed a deed of incomparable bravery.

  * * *

  After a little while there came a knock at the door and Philip entered again. There was something strange and anxious about his face; something that made her immediately sorry for him.

  “Come in, Philip,” she said in a kindly tone. “I’ve read the account in the paper.”

  He sat down at her bedside and began to speak very slowly and quietly. “It must be a dreadful thing to go out all those thousands of miles and then have to turn back without reaching the place you’re aiming at. It is Ward’s first failure in anything he has tackled.”

  “Failure” The word seemed to her astounding. “Failure?—Would you call it a failure?—Anyhow, it’s the most magnificent failure I’ve ever heard of.”

  He looked at her and was silent.

  She was no longer sorry for him, but indignant—indignant because he had not commented generously on Ward’s bravery. If he had done so she would have loved him passionately, and thought how unfair it was that bodily strength was given to one man and not to another.

  XI

  There came a warm summer midnight when Philip sat in his revolving desk-chair and clasped his hands nervously in, front of his knees. Vaughan stood by the mantelpiece, suave even amidst his breathlessness. He looked as if he had come through some gory affray; his hair was ruffled, his forehead smeared with sweat, and on his collar and tie were red-brown bloodstains. Philip faced him white as chalk, and with a look in his eyes of almost uncanny horror.

  He could not speak. When Vaughan spoke he looked at him as a dumb animal looks at his master. And Vaughan spoke icily, almost casually, as if emphasising his own composure.

  “A very difficult case, Mr. Monsell…One of the worst I have ever had…”

  “Is she dead?”

  The question came out like a shot from a gun-barrel, with the same quality of irrepressible explosive force. Having spoken, the bloodless lips were set firm as before, and the eyes stared
forth again with their dumb half-babyish appeal.

  “No, she is living, and will, I think, recover. But the baby is dead…She had a fall some weeks ago, if I remember rightly…”

  “Well?”

  “Undoubtedly that was the reason. Most unfortunate…Otherwise…”

  XII

  When he went upstairs to her all he could do was to kneel down at the bedside and press his lips to her outstretched hand.

  “Stella—dear—Stella, my dearest darling—What a shame! What a shame…”

  She stroked his forehead, comforting him.

  XIII

  Yes, it seemed to him that he had failed. He sat in his study during the long lonely hours of the early morning; the nurse had sent him away from Stella’s room, not wishing her to be kept awake. He sat in his old arm-chair, surrounded by the books he loved; he loved them, but they had played him false; they had not taught him how to do the ordinary simple things of the world that needed doing. Written up across almost everything he had ever tackled he could read in his mind’s eye the verdict: This man did the wrong thing, said the wrong word…meant well, poor fool, but made a hash of everything…

  Whereas others in their very blindness did right, and by their very failures were made heroes.

  Dawn found him still there in the quiet book-lined room, pondering on a strange perverted twist in his soul. Some day, he told himself again and again with unrelenting confidence—some day he would succeed, would snatch victory, if need be, from the very jaws of death…