Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

It rose upon the old grey church where Muriel and the child still slept—where Muriel, exhausted by exertions far beyond her normal endurance, might have slept for many further hours, had she not been wakened by the weak reiteration of the cry for water from the dying child.

  For she saw that the child must die unless some skill beyond her Own could be brought to aid her—would probably die in any case, as her experience told.

  She hesitated as to what it might be best to do. She might find medical aid—if she sought it. She could not tell how far the settled order of civilization had left the world, or how few might be those who were still alive around her.

  But when she tried to rise she found that the question was already answered. Exposure and exhaustion had left her too full of pain and weakness for any thought of walking farther than along the side of the field to the river below, from which she had been fetching the water that they required

  Well, if it were God’s will…. She tried to talk to the restless child when she had done what little was in her power for its physical comfort, but she could not reach its mind. It gazed at her with dull, unheeding eyes, or turned away its head in a sharp impatience.

  Later in the day it was in a delirium of fever, from which it had little respite till its life was closing.

  In the afternoon Muriel heard voices with a sudden hope. They were the voices of approaching men. They passed the door of the church, but did not enter.

  She supposed rightly that they had gone on to the Rectory ruins. They would return, she supposed, by the same path. Here she was right again, but her purpose to call them changed as they passed beneath the broken windows of the church and she heard their voices in an interjected narrative which it seemed that two or more were giving to the other members of the party:

  “If the…hadn’t been standing underneath the crane.…”

  “Fetched him a wipe over the jaw, and he fell….”

  “She’d got two ducks hidden under the seat….”

  “Told him to…the skulking hound….”

  It was too fragmentary for any meaning to emerge, but neither tones nor words gave expectation of any useful succour.

  The next minute she knew that the party had turned in at the church door.

  She heard rough voices and the stamp of heavy boots on the stones. She lay quiet, and saw them as they straggled up the aisle, though, as yet, she was unobserved. She recognized them as a group of miners—doubtless from the Larkshill collieries, which she knew to be no more than three or four miles away.

  She saw the foremost man very clearly. Not tall. A blunt-featured face, not uncomely. He was looking right and left in the empty pews as he advanced. She thought of the basket of food which lay near to her hand, and wondered how much, if any, would be left when these unwelcome visitors had departed. But she was not greatly perturbed, having an invariable formula for such emergencies. It was a case for prayer. After that the control of the situation was in very capable hands.

  The man looked straightly at the place where she lay beneath the wall with the child beside her. He looked her straight in the face, and then turned a rather broad back between her and his advancing companions.

  “Nothing here, Jim,” he said, to a tall, loose-jointed man, with a half-filled sack over his shoulders.

  The man answered thickly, with an indication that he was something less than sober, but with a surprising fluency. The substance of his contention was that there was never any good to be got from a blasted church. He spat on the stones to emphasize his opinion concerning it.

  A small man with a weak face and a goatish beard rebuked him with drunken solemnity. He appeared to suggest a possible connexion between the recent catastrophe and the infidelity of Jim Rattray. He also suggested that those who had escaped might reasonably be expected to show some gratitude for their Creator’s favour.

  Rattray’s reply was again too picturesque for a literal reproduction. Its substance was that a Creator who preserved Monty Beeston, while disposing of so many millions of better men, must be weak in the head.

  There was an uncertain murmur from the little crowd behind them. An uneasy murmur, from which emerged a desire that there should be less talk, and that they should ‘get a move on’ in some more profitable direction.

  “Yes, we’re best out of here,” said the man whose back was offering a precarious shield to the woman and child who lay beneath the shadowed wall.

  Jim Rattray turned with a sudden anger which may have been prompted rather by a personal antagonism than by the words of the speaker.

  “I’m not taking orders from you, Tom Aldworth.”

  He took a step forward, steadily enough, with a threat of ultra-sanguinary intentions in regard to his antagonist’s interior organs.

  Tom Aldworth stood his ground, but declined the quarrel.

  “I don’t fight a man when he’s in beer,” he remarked, as one who mentions something too obvious for discussion.

  Jim Rattray looked dangerous for a moment, and then pulled himself together with an apparent effort. He said something indistinctly that sounded like “All pals here,” and turned to follow his retreating comrades.

  Tom Aldworth went also, without looking round at those whom he had interposed to shelter.

  Chapter Nine

  Muriel Temple would certainly not have lain silent had she been possessed of her normal strength, nor was she restrained by any fear of the rough group that had approached so nearly.

  She had walked unmoved through a kraal of hostile and rebellious Zulus to reason with a blood-drunken king, and been unconscious of heroism. If it were God’s will that she was to be murdered (which she thought unlikely), there was no more to be said. If it were not His will, the heathen might rage and imagine a vain thing, but as to doing her any injury they had just no power at all. A (Christian) child could see that. She played a game in which she held continual trumps, and the fault was hers if she lacked the necessary faith to play them victoriously.

  But she thought of the child, and of the faintness which had come to her when last she had risen, and she lay still, and left the situation for her Master to deal with.

  The miners did not return, and three days later she found strength to dig a little churchyard grave for the body of Cora Walkley, who thus found a quieter resting-place than had come to most of those that sea and storm had ended.

  With reviving strength, and being freed of the encumbrance of the dying child, Muriel rose on the next morning with a determination to learn more of the condition to which her world had fallen.

  The leaden pall of damp and dirty air, which for a century had lain unlifting upon the English midlands, as it lay upon the valleys of the Tyne and of the lower Thames, and upon the industrial districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire, as though to hide their foulness from the indignant day, had disappeared, and the sky showed a blue depth such as the factory-worker had only seen when on excursions to the distant coast, and supposed with vague unreason to be a particular quality of the seaside air.

  Muriel, whose life had been largely spent elsewhere, might have been less quick to notice its difference from the sickly struggle of frustrated light which had been locally known as a sunny day, but she was conscious of another quality, which she had no difficulty in defining. The air was salt. A fresh and pleasant wind came from the north, and it brought a strong scent of the sea.

  “It can’t be a mile away,” she thought wonderingly. With all that she had heard and seen she had not realized until that moment how great might be the ruin that had overwhelmed the world.

  Among the unconscious springs of conduct which she had not disciplined, because she had not understood their existence, or had not regarded them as antagonistic to the spiritual experiences or service which she supposed to be the only purpose of earthly existence, one of the strongest was the desire of exploration. She had little imagination. She was impatient of romance, or of the invented tale. But she liked new facts that came to her own experience. She lik
ed to see and to know.

  She determined now that her first enterprise should be to discover the meaning of the salt taste of the northern wind, and in doing this she must learn something of the conditions on which human life was continuing around her.

  But first she made her way back to the ruins of the cottage where she had been living. She had seen, from the hillside, that it had escaped the destruction of fire, and she hoped to recover at least some of her personal possessions, and in particular the garments which she badly needed.

  But her search was useless. Others had been there before her. The little well-tended garden had been trampled by many feet. There were the marks of wheels and of a horse’s hooves in the soft soil. Beams had been dragged aside, and tiles and bricks were scattered.

  The body of John Wilkes, which had been exposed by these delvings (he had been smothered in the bed from which he had declined to rise), had been lifted, with that of his wife, into the ditch which bounded the garden on its lower side. There had been a rough attempt at burial, a few barrow-loads of earth and stones having been tipped over upon them. Muriel might not have observed the grave of her late landlord but for a liver-coloured, smooth-coated dog which was gnawing at an exposed foot, and lifted a snarling head as she made her way round the spreading débris of the fallen cottage.

  Everything had not been taken. She stepped among broken bedsteads and furniture, some tattered books, a washtub, and a dented bucket. But there was nothing left of personal clothing or bedding, of food, or tools, or utensils. She saw some of her private papers and letters blowing about the garden, but the box which had held them had disappeared.

  Here was at least sign of human life, and there was hope in the thought, though she would have preferred to find her possessions where she had left them.

  She reflected that there might be other houses down the village which remained unplundered, but before investigating further she was still resolved to explore the limit of the land, and the meaning of the salt wind that she had breathed that morning.

  She made her way back to the church. For the first time she entered the vestry.

  It contained little of value, a recent theft at a neighbouring church having made the Rector cautious about his own property; but there was an ancient chest containing surplices and other vestments, a few devotional books, and a wall-mirror with some brushes on a ledge beneath it. There was also an old brown jacket hanging behind the door, which the Rector had used when he busied himself with the church brasses, or on other matters of cleaning or decoration which he did not always delegate to others.

  Muriel hesitated to touch anything. The Rector might return, though it was strange that he had not done so earlier. Mrs. Walkley had not returned. No one returned. Of the little crowd that had gathered in the church a week ago there was no one left but herself and a dead child.

  Yet he might do so.

  She looked in the mirror, and it confirmed the earlier verdict of her own judgment. She had a comb which she had picked up from the rubbish-heap at the foot of the Rectory garden. A really excellent comb, with not more than a dozen teeth missing: a comb that had been well washed by months of rain. It was a rubbish-heap of further possibilities. Many things might have been thrown out by the careless servants of a rather absent-minded bachelor which would be useful now.

  She did what she could with this looted treasure. The Rector’s hair-brush assisted. But she had found no means of mending her tattered garments, and now that she was going in search of civilization she became increasingly conscious of their condition.

  She looked doubtfully at the old brown jacket. She felt that it would be a justifiable borrowing, but it did not attract her. She took it down, and was aware of a scent of stale tobacco which she disliked.

  She tried it on, and found that it came almost to her knees. Her hands did not emerge from the sleeves.

  There was a weight at one side. She discovered a pipe, a pouch of tobacco, a box of vestas about a third full, a stump of carpenter’s pencil.

  She emptied these out, except the matches, which were treasure not lightly to be cast aside.

  The size of the coat was awkward, but the capacious pockets pleased her. They might be useful for many things. She was not only hunting her fellow-men. Her food was almost exhausted. And some covering she must have.

  She looked at the fastenings of the vestry doors. She did not know who might come in her absence. She already felt a sense of personal possession and responsibility. There was one door which opened into the churchyard: a strong door, locked and bolted on the inside. Clearly the Rector came in through the church. The door into the chancel was also strongly made—a thick oak door, heavily hinged. There was a key in the lock on the inside.

  She carried in a quantity of the hassocks and pew-coverings, which had been the only bedding she had known for the past week, and the food-basket, nearly empty now, locked the door, hid the key, and started out to seek her kind.

  She was aware that she must make a queer figure in the ungainly coat, but she was not greatly troubled. She realized sufficiently that others must be facing primitive necessities, and overcoming them as best they could.

  In fact, she need not have troubled at all, for she was not destined to meet either man or woman till she returned in the evening, except one doubtful distant sight of a laden figure which made haste to disappear as she sighted it, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Had she made her way eastward to Larkshill, or to Cowley Thorn, she would have had a very different experience, and there was a scatter of human life to south and west; but she went up through the Rectory grounds, where she almost trod on a sitting hen as she tried a short cut through the shrubbery—a hen that dashed off her nest and flew squawking across the drive, leaving Muriel to the sight of a dozen eggs, and to consider their possibilities for her empty larder. But her hand convicted them of the warmth of incubation. She decided that the hen had been sitting, not laying, when she disturbed her. They were useless now, but she considered that a hen with tiny chickens may be caught very easily. She would remember the spot.

  She went on by a field-path which went uphill in the direction she sought, and found an open gate into a larger field which had been ploughed but not planted. There was a cart-track by the hedge, and following this she came to another field in which oats were springing and a dozen sheep fed freely.

  Beyond that she came to an open heath, which she supposed to be part of Cannock Chase, though she was not sure, knowing little of the geography of the district. Here the sheep were many, of all breeds and ages. They had broken through gapped hedges and fallen gates, and congregated according to their ancient practice on high and open ground.

  Here Muriel turned and looked back. She could see for several miles, but there was no sign of ending land or of encroaching sea. South and east and west there must be a wide space of land which still endured above the water. She wondered whether there might yet be a further subsidence, but she was not greatly worried by the thought. After all that had happened the land yet seemed very solid, very firm. It is hard to distrust it.

  But looking north again she saw nothing but level heath, and feeding sheep, and the sky-line beyond. In the air a black-headed gull circled slowly. She could not doubt that she was near the sea.

  Yet it was farther than she had thought. She must have come two miles—perhaps more—and she was conscious of fatigue. She tired so easily now. Yet she realized, with a moment’s wonder, that she had had little of the old pains during the last week; had thought little of the doom under which she lived. Perhaps it was not wonderful that she should forget herself with such happenings round her.

  She would rest before she went farther. She lay on short, warm grass, and slept long in the sunlight.

  She waked refreshed, and with a feeling of healthful vigour such as she had seldom felt in recent years.

  She went on, singing:

  “Heaven above is fairer blue,

  Earth around is lovelier green,
/>   Something shines in every hue

  Christless eye have never seen.”

  It was a long time since she had thought of that hymn. She had heard it at a Convention for the Deepening of Spiritual Life which had been held in Birmingham over thirty years ago—before she had settled what her life would be—before Zululand had crossed her mind. But it was the clean, blue air and the pleasant sunlight which had brought it back.

  She went on a little way, and stopped abruptly. The land broke off beneath her feet—broke off as straightly as though a knife had severed it. She looked down a cliff-wall of red marl; thirty feet below the ocean purred lazily in the sunlight, its full tide about to turn.

  The sea was so quiet that a gull was sleeping on the gentle lift of the waves, its head beneath its wing.

  There was no sign of northern land, no sign of boat or sail. Only when she looked north-eastward was she in doubt whether the land curved outward or a separate island followed.

  Looking at the peaceful water, she might have forgotten the devastation that it had wrought, had she not seen a broken chair that floated almost beneath her feet. There was nothing else in sight to tell of all that the water covered.

  She had loved the sea. But she saw it now as the implacable enemy of her kind. They might surmount its division; they might boast that they had subdued it; and then it would lift its waves and overwhelm a continent, and stretch itself in the sun to doze like a fed lion.

  She saw the appalling cruelty of the waters. Her mind turned to the climax of the Apocalyptic vision—“and there shall be no more sea.” Words which had meant little in the ears of countless millions who had heard them since they were written—which must have wakened feelings of resentful protest in the minds of many. She had herself been conscious of regretting that condition of beatitude. Was its feline beauty to disappear forever?

  A man can learn to love the sea, as he loves a woman. He can love the wind also, but not quite in the same way. Air is not feminine, like water. The wind can be quiet and loving. It can be fierce and merciless as a wolf in its hunger. But not as a cat. It will not purr against your feet in the same way; it will not bite without barking.