Devils' Spawn

by Charles Birkin

  Henry shot out his arm and dragged him to his feet by his coat collar. “You little rat . . . what are you skulking here for? Didn’t I tell you to clear out and keep out?” He looked with contempt at the miserable specimen before him. “Didn’t I? Answer me.”

  Still Joe remained silent, staring at his captor. How he hated his strong, broad-shouldered figure . . . his swagger . . . the unconscious arrogance that Henry felt in his strength.

  “I warned you once,” Henry went on, “and that should have been sufficient.” His right leg in its heavy boot shot out and caught the boy squarely on the back of his thigh. “Now get out and don’t let me find you on my land again.”

  Joe winced a little, but refused to move. Henry laughed mockingly. “Well—what do you want?”

  “You stole my girl.”

  “Stole your girl, did I? Say that again and I’ll knock your teeth down your scrawny neck.”

  “You stole my girl.” There was panic in Joe’s whispered defiance.

  Henry slapped the boy’s face with the open palm of his hand, with a sound like the crack of a whip, and a flush stained the pallor of the half-wit’s skin.

  “Stole your girl! You haven’t got a girl and never will have. You . . . looney!”

  He turned on his heel and strode away. Joe stood where he was, watching the sturdy tweed-clad figure receding in the distance. Tears of fury smarted in his eyes; tears of which he felt mortified, for they were no fit accompaniment for the rage and hatred that were burning him.

  Henry felt ashamed of his loss of temper. After all, the little runt wasn’t quite right in the head, and perhaps he shouldn’t have hit him. Uneasily he decided to tell Doris nothing of the incident. He swung along, searching the well-ordered fields for any signs of neglect.

  “You’ll never have a girl, you . . . looney!” The taunt rang in Joe’s ears. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. The filthy swine . . . he’d been lying. Doris was his girl. Blindly he climbed the fence that divided Henry’s land from George Isham’s, and stumbled back towards his cottage.

  “Is there anything you want from the village, mother? I’m meeting Henry at six and staying to supper at the farm; but I can call on my way.”

  “Nothing, thank you, dear. Will you be late?”

  “About ten, I should think. Henry will drive me back.”

  “Very well. Good-bye, my dear, and enjoy yourself.” Mrs. Carson kissed her daughter, and watched her hurrying down the street. Three more days and she would lose her. She felt a sentimental lump rise in her throat, and sternly told herself not to be an old fool. Doris was marrying a rich and steady man, and one who would make a good husband. “Tho’ no man could wish for a better or prettier wife than my Doris,” she added loyally.

  Half-way to the farm the girl met Henry. At the sight of her his eyes lit up. Doris felt a warm glow of pleasure. She realised she looked her best in her new dress of flowered silk.

  “Do I look nice?” she inquired a little archly. In answer Henry caught her to him, straining her body to his.

  “Oh, Henry! Not here! Behave yourself!”

  “I can’t, Dot . . . you look so beautiful.”

  They went on their way in companionable silence. As they neared the house, Doris said, “Let’s go for a walk before supper. It’s such a lovely evening, and we’ve heaps of time.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “The quarry?”

  Henry hesitated and pulled out his watch. “It’s rather a long way. . . . Still, we’ve got nearly an hour and a half.” He snapped the case shut, and thrust it back into his pocket.

  Too late Doris remembered her new finery and her thin shoes.

  “Perhaps it is rather far,” she faltered.

  “Nonsense. We’ll do it in half an hour easily.”

  The sun had lost its heat and the summer evening was pleasantly cool. Ten minutes’ walking brought them to a stile whence a footpath ran to the stone quarry, from which a dark green granite had been obtained that had been, in the past, much favoured by local builders. Its jagged and sombre face was brightened by wildflowers and grasses bewitching in their fresh greenery, while brambles luxuriated in pleasing disarray. Moss and short sweet grass carpeted the floor of the earlier workings, long since abandoned. And on this sun-washed evening the quarry was a lovely place—a rugged pit of lights and shadows, where bees made their music and birds throbbed their inconsequent chorus. Far above, creepers softened the outline of the rim, and fell in delicate tracery down the rough hewn stone. They came to a patch of grass, more vivid perhaps than the rest of the carpet. She sat down, carefully arranging her dress so as not to crumple it. Henry flung himself on the ground beside her.

  “It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Pretty enough! Pleased you came?”

  “Yes.” Her feet ached a little, and she was grateful for the rest.

  His arm crept round her, drawing her to him. They lay, their heads pillowed on the grass, staring up into the sky, into the blue distance that the evening was turning to grey.

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes, Henry.”

  He raised himself on one elbow and gazed down into her face. Slowly his head bent until his mouth was on hers. Through half-closed eyes she saw the sky through the thickness of his dark hair; felt his hands moving over her.

  “Dot, my sweetest! I love you, darling . . . and you’re mine now.” He held her very tightly, crushing her in his strong arms.

  As the time for Doris’s marriage drew near, Joe became more and more restless. He took to watching the little house in Marling Lane, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Since his last encounter with Henry he had thought it wiser to keep out of the young farmer’s sight; but he frequently trailed him when he was certain that he could do so unobserved. Even his mother, drink-sodden slattern that she was, noticed his uneasiness, and chided him irritably for his “moping and carrying on,” saying that his “long face fair turned her stummick, so it did.”

  Joe had trailed Doris at a discreet distance as she went to meet Henry, intending, if he got the opportunity and at a safe distance from the village, to plead with her once more upon the question of her coming wedding; but once Henry was her escort he abandoned the idea, deciding instead, with jealous curiosity, to spy upon them and see where they went. After a while it became obvious to him that they were making for the old granite quarry, some two miles beyond the farm, and this gave the boy an idea. Should they decide to linger awhile in the quarry itself, he could climb to the lip, approaching his objective from the other side, and so observe, without fear of discovery, what might occur. Accordingly, panting slightly from his climb, he crawled to the edge of the cutting and peered over. Almost immediately below him he saw Doris. She lay in Henry’s arms, the sunlight gilding her hair. She appeared to Joe very desirable. He looked from her to Henry, and somewhere in his head a hammer seemed to beat the words, “He stole my girl. He stole my girl.” Unable to tear his glance away he watched them in impotent resentment. Doris was stirring; she was pushing Henry from her. Through the still air he heard her say, “We should be getting back or we’ll be late,” and Henry answered, “There’s no hurry, Dot.” But Doris stood up, brushing tiny fragments of grass from her skirt, moving away a few paces as she did so. Henry was still lying on his back, his arms crossed behind his head. Through narrowed eyes Joe stared at him with loathing. He hated Henry’s assurance. From his point of vantage he looked at his rival, envying his sleek, well-developed body. The slanting rays of the sun caught the polish on Henry’s neat, highly-polished leggings, buckled round the swelling calves of his legs; glinted on the thick gold watch-chain that stretched across his stomach, already, in spite of his active life, slightly curving, with a strong threat of future corpulence.

  Doris had walked away a little distance. “I want to go back,” she said. “Please come, darling.”

  They were leaving. Joe was panic stricken.

  “All right, one m
inute.” Henry was savouring his indolence. Lazily he lit a cigarette.

  Joe thought rapidly. If Henry were dead—then Doris would be his—there would be no further obstacle. But what chance had he, with his pitiful frame, against that bull of a man? He looked about him for a weapon of some kind. Only tussocks of grass grew in the scanty soil littered with a few scattered boulders far too heavy for him to lift. He must hurry; a minute more and it would be too late.

  Henry was stretching in preparation to rising to his feet; a little way to his left and directly above him was an enormous rock, man high, balanced near the edge of the quarry. Joe eyed it with longing. If he could only move it! “He stole my girl,” he muttered. He crossed to the stone and tested its strength, but it appeared to be embedded in the earth.

  “Oh, come on, Henry,” Doris’s voice floated up to him.

  Joe put his thin shoulder to the rock and pushed with all his force. It moved slightly, tottered on the brink, and disappeared over the edge. At the same instant Joe felt an agonising twinge of pain in his right ankle, and his leg gave way beneath him, bringing him down on the very rim of the pit. He felt a wave of nausea, for he had always had a horror of heights. He thought that he was falling . . . his hands clawed the air, but by some miracle he saved himself. He hung half over the chasm watching the progress of his missile. Some ten feet below the edge a thorn-bush grew precariously, springing with tenacity from a narrow ledge; and this received the full force of the rock which it caused to jump several feet outwards and to the right before the final sickening plunge of sixty feet to the ground below. As it crashed Henry had just stood up. Doris at the same instant saw what was happening. She screamed a warning and turned to run. Very suddenly her scream stopped, cut off by a dull thud. There was silence, then a man’s hoarse anguished cry, “Doris. My God!”

  From high above the quarry came a piteous wail, falsetto and eerie in the quiet of the evening. Henry looked up and saw the imbecile boy, flattened to the ground; heard once again the throbbing cry. He ran towards the rock and tried to move it, but even his great strength was powerless. He pushed at the huge stone, his muscles knotting with the strain, his hands raw and bleeding in his frantic efforts; until at last he realised that even if he were successful there was nothing further that he or any power could do for Doris, lying crushed beneath that appalling weight.

  Grimly he ran for the mouth of the granite pit to a point where he could climb to the summit. Joe lay hugging the turf. Desperately he tried to stand, but his injured leg would not bear his weight. Wide-eyed he waited and listened. Henry was out of sight, but in a very little while he would be at the top. . . . Joe started to shriek, as a hare caught in a trap shrieks at the approach of death. He heard the thudding of heavy footsteps on earth, the laboured breathing, and Henry was upon him. He felt himself seized by a strong hand and jerked to his feet. A red-hot spasm shot through his leg. He found himself looking at a broad expanse of tweed waistcoat. Then he was lifted into the air. Seventy feet beneath him swayed the granite of the quarry floor. It seemed that he dangled over the abyss for æons. A moment of stark terror, and, released by the arm that held him, he fell. A final tortured whimper as he felt the grip relax. Then his feet scrabbled on a narrow ledge of loose chippings, a shallow scar on the rock, and his hands shot out and grasped a clump of bracken that overhung the ledge. He glanced up, and against the sky saw Henry towering immense, omnipotent. He tried to beg for mercy, but horrible sounds without meaning croaked from his throat. The bracken was snapping, frond by frond. He swayed back into space. Desperately his grime-etched hand shot out for a hold. His finger-tips touched the smooth hard leather of the farmer’s gaiters, but finding no hold clutched wildly at the air. He saw the leg in front of him recede, saw a massive boot drawn back, and hesitate a moment. Then it came forward and crashed into his face. A taste of blood was in his mouth and the sharp bitterness of broken teeth. The sky reeled drunkenly and he fell, spinning, to the rocks below, where he lay as if crucified, motionless upon the stones and grass; and only the low murmur of the bees filled the pit of beauty with a drowsy peace.

  THE HAPPY DANCERS

  A beam of pale gold light cut the blue, smoke-dimmed atmosphere of the Kasbek: a beam that was focused on the arched door set under the staircase through which the artistes of the cabaret made their entrance. The lights had been lowered, and from time to time a face was thrown into momentary prominence, as its owner drew at a cigar or cigarette. All eyes were turned expectantly towards the spot where Nikakova would appear. There was a rattle of drums; the orchestra struck up a wild tzigane melody, and suddenly Nikakova was before her audience, her gaily-coloured skirts whirling around her as she twisted and spun, the vivid ribbons that hung from her tambourine dancing in grotesque rhythm.

  Serge sat alone at his table, his eyes following every movement of the dancer before him; and as he watched the way in which she captured her audience, and as he joined in the salvo of applause that greeted the end of her performance, he remembered his first meeting with her three, no four, years previously.

  He had seen her as he was riding through the village at Zaramow—very proud and brave in his new uniform—and on his first leave from the military school in Petrograd. She was barely seventeen, and he some four years her senior. She was dancing, then, to a group of peasants; and he had been struck by her grace, and amazed that the village could have produced a daughter so delicately beautiful. He was used to the massive and comely buxomness of the country women; but this slender elfin charm, fragile as porcelain . . .

  And silently he had waited on his horse until she had looked up and caught his intent gaze. And then she had become confused and stopped abruptly, and her audience had looked up and seen the cause of her discomfiture, and an embarrassed hush had descended abruptly on the laughing group.

  He had beckoned to her to come to him, and had asked her name. She told him that she was Louba Kerensky, the daughter of Boris Kerensky; and Serge had frowned with displeasure, for her father was a man whose ideas were radical in the extreme—a surly drunken brute, always ready to stir up discontent and trouble. Serge’s father, the Grand Duke, had had him beaten some months before, and had threatened him with Siberia should further correction be necessary.

  Serge found it incredible that this frail girl could be his daughter. He smiled down at her. “You dance divinely—where did you learn?”

  Louba smiled. “Learn? Where should I have dancing lessons? I learned from the wind in the trees, and the streams dancing over their pebbled beds, and from the sun dancing on the surface of the lake; and from the butterflies dancing over the coloured flowers, and”—she glanced up at him—“from the laughter dancing in my Lord’s eyes.” And she threw back her head and laughed up at him, vital in her gypsy beauty.

  Serge was interested. She was clever, this girl—as well as attractive. He tapped his riding-boot with his cane.

  “The best of schools, my dear . . . but are all your teachers, then, so gay?”

  “No. . . . I learned also from the corpses dancing on the gallows, and the flies dancing on the dungheaps, and from Death dancing near starving men during the hard winters of my childhood.”

  “A thorough education!”

  Serge was intrigued. Well, he was home for six weeks, and a little diversion would help to bring nearer his return to Petrograd and the new friends he had made there.

  But when the time had come, he had taken Louba with him—to have her trained as a dancer; and also because he could not give her up.

  He noticed with surprise that his cigar had gone out, and as he struck a match he saw Louba threading her way through the tables towards him, eyes bright with the pleasure of success, lips parted in a smile as she received compliments from the officers and their friends seated in parties round the great semi-circle of the dance floor. Teeth flushed white under dark moustaches as heads turned to follow her.

  And as she came, Louba too remembered her first meeting with Serge, how, from
the depths that separated them, she had always admired him, and how she had been determined to make the most of her opportunity; and then how she had come to love him sincerely. When Serge had first taken her, Boris had threatened to kill him, had raved of the injustice of a world where the aristocrats ground down the peasants, bleeding them of their money, battening on their labours, raping their daughters. But the more level-headed of the villagers had restrained him from taking any such action that could only end in failure and disgrace, and that would mean for Boris the salt mines of Siberia.

  Louba had never seen her father these last four years, and he, she knew, had no knowledge of where she was, or of the high position she had gained for herself by her talent and with her lover’s help. Boris had loved her in a fierce incoherent way, with a passionate almost frightening love . . . but she was finished with the peasant life—thank God—with the filth and the squalor and the clumsy-handed oafs. She had Serge, admiration, money, comfort and success; and life was indeed good.

  Louba rested her hand lightly on Serge’s shoulder as she sank on to the chair by his side.

  “You liked my performance to-night?”

  “Magnificent as always, my darling. And your audience—they loved you.”

  “If I danced well it was for you—only for you. You still believe that?”

  “And when I’m not here?”

  “Your table is always empty. I will not allow others to occupy it!”

  Serge’s adoring smile was her answer. He poured her out a glass of champagne.

  “You look a little tired, my sweet. Drink this, it will do you good.”

  “You know I never drink. When I dance I cannot drink.”

  “I know, Louba. But you do not dance again to-night. Drink with me—to our future happiness.” She raised her glass, her exquisite brown eyes smiling into his, blue and steady.

  “To our future happiness!”

  But in his heart Serge was ill at ease. Who knew what was going to happen in the future? Even a day from that moment—to-morrow his leave was up, and he went back to the war.