Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

  Bill, having arrived at the idea, by whatever laborious mental process, that an extra hand might be useful to choke the struggling animal, made a grab at the collar. The dog, seeing his purpose, dodged, and tried to bolt, dragging Muriel along several paces. She stumbled over some impediment in the road, and came to her knees, her grip failing as she did so.

  The dog turned on her quickly, the wet jaws striking her throat as a rifle sounded, and he collapsed on the road. He rolled over, howling dismally, the sound sinking to a whimper, which was quickly silent. He twitched, and lay still.

  Muriel got up breathlessly from the dust. The two men were on their knees in the road, collecting an assortment of feminine garments which had scattered from the parcel which she had dropped when she went to the rescue of Gumbo, and over which she had fallen as the dog dragged her along. She looked ruefully at their condition, as she interposed to retrieve with more sympathetic and discerning hands than those which were operating upon them.

  “I must thank you both,” she said, as they rose and faced one another. Bill Horton grinned sheepishly.

  Jack said, “That’s nothing. But I’m glad we came. It was a nasty brute for you to tackle.”

  He looked with some respect at the woman before him. He thought vaguely that he had seen her somewhere. It was the voice of a cultured woman, quiet and musical. The figure was small and slight. He hesitated about her age. She was not young, but she had very clear grey eyes and a girl’s complexion, her natural paleness being overcome by the exertions of the last five minutes. She might be forty—probably less. (Actually, she was five years older.) No, he could not recollect where he had seen her previously.

  He said, “We came to tell you that it’s not safe here, and to ask you to go back with us. We thought there were two of you. Are you alone?”

  Muriel liked his directness. She answered frankly. “There were two. There was a child that died…. Why isn’t it safe here?”

  “I can’t tell you in a word. Can we sit somewhere?”

  Muriel hesitated. She did not care to introduce such strangers to her secret stores. Then the habit of a lifetime conquered.

  “Yes; you’d better come with me to the church. That’s where I’ve been living.”

  She turned her eyes to Gumbo, who sat licking his wounds, with as ecstatic a countenance as nature permits a smooth-haired terrier to exhibit. His tail thumped the ground in self-approbation as he saw that the attention of the party was directed upon him. He wasn’t quite clear how the dog had died, but he was quite sure that he had done well. He would always remember the instant chance of the passing paw, and how his teeth had snapped it….

  Bill Horton looked him over critically. “He won’t hurt,” he said, meaning something quite different.

  Gumbo supported the verdict by jumping up, briskly enough, as they commenced to move toward the church.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Muriel led her guests to the seats in the porch. She did not invite them farther.

  She said, “It’s pleasanter here than inside on a warm evening like this. If you’ll sit down, I’ll get you something to eat.”

  They sat down obediently, not saying that they had already explored her resources. She took the parcel from Jack, who had been carrying it since it had been reassembled from the dirt, and retreated into the church.

  “It’s a queer meal,” she said, as she returned with a supply of pancakes, which she had cooked the night before, and had meant to last her for the next three days. She was sparing of fires, which meant matches. She brought some of the Brazil nuts also, of which they had already observed her store, and a tin of pineapple. “You’re welcome to this if you can open it,” she added. “I didn’t make a very good job of the last.”

  Jack produced a large and complicated knife from a hip-pocket, which included a tin-opener among its numerous blades

  They commenced with appetite, but Jack looked with some anxiety at the declining sun, which still shone fitfully through the clouds of a summer storm, though the rain was beating heavily on the stone path.

  “We ought to start in half an hour,” he said, opening the subject which he knew had to be faced, and with as little delay as possible.

  “Do you live far from here?” Muriel inquired, speaking as casually as she might have done a month ago.

  “About four miles—perhaps more,” Jack answered. “But we came through the fields. It’s a bit risky by the road as things are just now.”

  “How are they ‘just now’?” Muriel queried. “Hadn’t you better tell me from the beginning? You see, I know nothing.”

  She recognized that Bill Horton was unlikely to contribute substantially to the conversation, and addressed herself to Jack Tolley accordingly. She was a good judge of men, and she felt some confidence in his probable character, but she had not the slightest intention of going anywhere with them that night without a better reason than he was at all likely to offer. She was unaccustomed to be led by anything other than her own conceptions of duty or obligation.

  Jack considered that she must know something. The events of the last month could hardly have escaped the notice of the least observant. He said, “It’s hard to know where to begin. I’d better introduce myself first. My name’s Tolley—Jack Tolley I’m always called. I was a clerk at the collieries.”

  “Yes, I remember you now. I thought I’d seen you before. I’m Muriel Temple. Don’t you—?”

  Yes, he remembered now. She had come to the colliery office, perhaps two months ago, with an introduction from one of the directors and a request that she might be shown over the mine. He had only walked across the yard with her, to introduce her to the foreman, but he did not easily forget faces. It was the difference in dress and circumstances. The unexpectedness.

  “Well, Miss Temple,” he went on, using a title which was already becoming obsolete in the chaos of the last few weeks, “it’s this way. When the trouble came there were a lot of men down the mine. Some of them got out at once, and went off with the crowd. I suppose they’re dead now. Some of them got caught down below. We got them out—at least, about eighty of them—by an old shaft which hadn’t been used for years. It was an old working that ran—but I needn’t go into that….

  “And there were people still going north when the land sank…. I didn’t see that. I was helping to get the cage to work at the old shaft…. But they say that the land just broke off and slipped away. They looked over the edges, and it was hundreds of feet below them, and they could see the people running about, and trying to get back, and it seemed hours before the water flowed over them. There must have been a great part of England that just settled down lower than it had been, and the water couldn’t flow over all of it in a minute. But I didn’t see that. I don’t really know.” He spoke with some irritation of mind. His mental operations were as precise and neat as his person. He had heard a dozen more or less hysterical accounts of that stupendous tragedy, and no two were alike.

  “Well, there were hundreds on the main road who had kept in front of the floods that followed them from the south, and only got here when the land had broken and they couldn’t go farther. They crowded the road beyond Cowley Thorn, and spread out along the cliff-side…. And there were those on the railway…. But I mustn’t go into detail. There were a lot that died…. Some of them fell ill, and some seemed to go mad…and there was quarrelling from the first…and there was no law.”

  “There was God’s law.”

  “Well, they didn’t worry much about that. Not all of them, anyway. They just saw that they could do anything if they were strong enough…and then they found ways to get food, if they didn’t trouble about tomorrow. We found a lot at Linkworth that wasn’t burnt. That’s why we haven’t come much this way. And some of them got arms.” Muriel glanced at the rifle, which lay across his knee as he talked, and he answered the unspoken comment. “Yes, we found some sporting-guns in a country house. I’m glad we did. It gave us a chance, or I mightn’t be here
now…. But the quarrels got worse. You see, it” mostly men that are left, and the women made trouble.”

  (Yes. It was an old tale. Women do make trouble. Muriel had observed that rather frequently.)

  And then there was the drink. Butcher’s got enough up at Helford Grange to keep them all drunk for a month, and he doesn’t care who gets it if they pay what he wants. That’s made the trouble worse.”

  (Yes. Drink does make trouble. Muriel knew that too. But she had not known how much trouble can be made either by women or drink when there are about four men to every woman, and there is no dread either of the annoying certainty of civilized law, or the deterrent severity of the administration of a savage chief.)

  “So there’s been a fair row,” Jack concluded briefly. “And we’ve turned Jim Rattray out.” (Muriel recollected the name, and then the man. She did not doubt that there had been good reason for his expulsion.) “And a lot of men have gone with him. They’re somewhere down this way…. And Tom Aldworth said he’d seen two women here, and we’d better look you up.”

  Muriel said, “You say Jim Rattray’s near here. Do you know where I could find him?”

  Jack Tolley, who was not easy to startle, looked his surprise at the unexpected query, and an expression of vague bewilderment spread over the vacuity of Bill Horton’s countenance.

  “You’d be sorry if you did. There’s some of the worst toughs you ever met in that lot. You wouldn’t be safe with them if there were a squad of police in the next street.”

  Muriel looked unimpressed. Her experiences of the toughs of various races during the last twenty years, and of the best methods of dealing with them, had been rather numerous.

  “It might do good, and it couldn’t do any harm,” she said thoughtfully. “But if you don’t know where he is…?”

  “I wouldn’t say if I did.”

  “I’m sure you’d tell me if I really wanted to know.” Muriel smiled “But I suppose there won’t be any more trouble, unless Rattray makes it, if you’ve turned him out.”

  It occurred to her that she might carry out her intention without seeking the lawless one through the wilderness. She had an attractive vision of two hostile camps, and of herself as an envoy of peace between them.

  Suddenly she decided that she would accept the invitation which she had received. It was what she would have been doing, in any case, in a few days. She had only put it off from day to day because there had always been something left over for the next morning’s occupation.

  “But I’m not coming tonight,” she added. “I’ll come tomorrow. And I shall want a cart. I know you’ve got one. Oh, yes, I’ve seen the wheel-marks. Are your people in need?”

  “Yes, the flour’ll be useful.”

  Muriel looked at him, and he felt the error of the “the.” He realized that she knew at once that they had explored her stores in her absence. His respect for Miss Temple’s capacity was increasing rapidly.

  “If we bring a cart we shall have to bring enough men to guard it. We don’t want them to collar everything you’ve collected here. But I wish you’d come with us tonight. It’s not safe here alone.”

  “Oh, I shall be safe enough,” she answered easily. “I’ve got Gumbo, and some good bolts.”

  Jack had the sense to see that it was waste of words to argue further. “Well,” he said, “you’ll see us again tomorrow.”

  He got up to go.

  When they were out of sight of the church he stopped.

  “Bill,” he said, “I think I’ll stay here tonight. It’s the safest way. Tell Madge I shall be back tomorrow. And ask Tom Aldworth to bring Steve’s cart, and about a dozen men, with the rifles. Tell him to come early; there’s a fair lot to load up.”

  Jack went back to the orchard. When it was dark, and he judged that Muriel would be sleeping, he returned to the church porch, where he made himself as comfortable as circumstances permitted. He did not trouble to keep awake. He calculated that the dog would give sufficient notice of any approaching stranger, as he had rightly calculated that he would not disturb his mistress to announce the movements of one who had been recognized as a friend a few hours earlier.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter Fourteen

  ON the second day of the deluge, when the floods still rose, but the first violence of the storm had fallen, and the people of Southern England, knowing vaguely that the south of Europe was beneath the waters, and that the Thames valley was filling, had fled blindly northward, it was natural that many of them had crowded to the railway stations, seeking a means of transit which might be preferable to the dangers of the congested roads.

  But the storm had left the lines in such condition that they would have been regarded as impossible under more ordinary circumstances. Viaducts had given way, and bridges had fallen in. Signal-boxes were wrecked, and signals had been swept away. Telegraph-poles and wires had fallen across the lines in many places. Gates and fences and blown wreckage of every kind had been scattered upon them.

  Yet in such emergency some attempt had been made to overcome these difficulties. From one of the Midland towns a crowded train had gone cautiously forward, its occupants swarming out from time to time to clear the line of the more serious obstacles. It proceeded on its northward course for about fifteen miles, and then came round a bend in the line where it was confronted by a final obstacle; for here a bridge which carried a road over the line had collapsed completely. The driver, having come round the curve at a cautious pace, was able to apply his brakes in time to avoid an accident, the engine stopping within a few feet of the obstacle; but, unfortunately, they were followed by another train, which had taken advantage of their previous labours, and had been able to make a better speed in consequence.

  Urged by the fear of the pursuing floods, it had run over a clear line at a steadily increasing speed, and with a correspondingly decreasing caution. It came round the bend at thirty miles an hour, and before its speed could be materially reduced it had crashed into the rear of the standing train which had preceded it.

  Had the line been clear ahead, the accident might have been less serious. The hinder coaches of the standing train might have been telescoped or derailed, but it is doubtful whether the impact would have done more to the farther coaches than to hurl them roughly forward upon the line on which they stood. But they were so placed that any advance was impossible. The ruin of the fallen bridge was piled within three feet of the engine’s buffers. The struck train rose like a caterpillar, while the other penetrated beneath it, the rearward coaches falling backward upon and around their assailant. Fire started among the wreckage.

  Even had the work of rescue been prompt and efficient, the loss of life must have been heavy, but there was none here to give aid, except such occupants of either train as had escaped serious injury. Some of them did what they could; others, oblivious of all but the desire to reach the imagined safety of the north, continued their flight on foot, without regarding horrors which they had little power to alleviate. Here were heroism and cowardice side by side; selfishness and self-sacrifice. But the greatest courage could do little under such conditions. The wreckage burnt swiftly, and with it those that were dead already, and those that were confined beneath it, or too badly injured to crawl away.

  The nest morning there had been about seventy people, injured and uninjured, still camping upon the scene of the disaster. The rear coaches of the second train had been uncoupled in time to escape the flames, and these supplied shelter. During the day they were joined by a number of the men that had escaped from the mine. Some of these gave what aid they could, which was little. The conditions were such that most of the injured died. As the days passed, others of the less fit succumbed to the combined effects of unaccustomed hardship and the shocks of personal loss and overwhelming catastrophe.

  Some wandered away. Some continued to make their homes in the standing coaches. There were about fifty of these, men, women, and children, previously strangers, drawn from every class an
d circumstance of life. Some of the better men among the miners who had first come to aid the misery of the injured and helpless remained among them. Some wandering strangers joined them. In spite of the addition of about twenty of the miners, the proportion of women remained higher in this community than it was among the derelicts of the road, of whom those who survived the first weeks of exposure and hardship were camping among the ruins of Cowley Thorn, in the mining village of Larkshill, or in isolated ruins, or erected huts, scattered over the countryside.

  North of where the land had fallen there had been the two parishes of Upper and Lower Helford. Of these, Lower Helford, a populous district devoted to the manufacture of locks and similar ironmongery, was under water. Part of the more agricultural parish of Upper Helford was still visible, but separated by a space of swampy ground which the tides swept over. But Helford Grange, an old country house occupied by a family which had owned the two parishes from Tudor times, lying two miles farther south, had suffered only from fire and storm, which had reduced it to a charred skeleton. Its cellars, which were extensive, remained undamaged, and in these a man named Butcher had established himself, of whom there will be more to say in his own place.

  As the survivors adapted themselves to their changed conditions they found that there was little difficulty in sustaining life during the summer days. Many previously domesticated animals wandered over the country. Many wild creatures and birds could be snared or hunted. Fruit was abundant in the neglected gardens.

  Being without ordered rule, security of property, or any settled leadership, they made little provision for the future, except in isolated instances, though they might talk of the necessity of so doing. They could acquire more for their immediate needs by random plundering, or by watching for the harvest that the tides would bring them, than by any productive industry. That for which there was no immediate need, or which was discovered in excessive quantity, was often flung aside or wasted. They found, as Muriel had done, that the days passed easily. If they found food for a few days, and were unmolested in its consumption, they would be likely to drowse in the sun, or take shelter from the rain, till the week was over.