Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

  But these speculations were most probably no better than an idle folly. The force of circumstance, and the conditions of the life before them, would be stronger than he. The problems which would arise with a daily urgency would be different from those of the old days, and experience might be of little use to decide them.

  Martin stood at the window as his thoughts wandered. He observed that Phillips had resumed his work on the lawn. He noticed that most of the garden was in a wild disorder. There had been no attempt to tame it. But there was a small portion round the house that he had kept under control, and there the order was absolute. There was no weed on the well-rolled gravel beneath the window. The edges of the smooth-cut lawn may never have been better trimmed…. To try too much, and to fail entirely.… He wondered if there might be any wisdom to be gained from this man who worked with so clear a purpose. He threw up the window.

  Phillips looked up as he did so.

  “Would you like Betty to get some tea, sir?” he inquired, in his usual deferential manner.

  “No, I wasn’t thinking about tea. I was wondering whether this life is better or worse than it used to be. I wondered what you’d say if I asked you. Was it better than it is now?”

  Phillips showed no surprise at the question. He thought silently for a moment, doing his best to satisfy his master’s requirement as naturally as though he had been asked to find him a corkscrew. But his reply was unexpected.

  “No, sir. I shouldn’t say that. There’s some things that’s better, and many worse. But I’ve noticed one thing. There haven’t been any suicides.”

  Martin looked at him in a momentary doubt whether the answer were to be taken literally. But Phillips was a man of a literal mind. Not at all one who would be likely to offer his master an untimely jest. Martin realized that he was merely stating a fact. It might not be one of any significance. The population was not large. Even in the older world it might have been possible to discover a district of some hundreds of inhabitants where there had been a period of several months without such an occurrence.

  But finding that his master was silent Phillips continued to develop the subject.

  “You see, sir, there was one last year in Cowley Thorn, and four in Larkshill. There was the girls that tied themselves together to drown in the round pool; and Dr. Raikes that shot himself from overwork, or so they said, and the grocer in Church Street that was hanging when they came together for the creditors’ meeting, and the bank cashier at the Midland and Southern; and the year before there was a young couple that gassed themselves at Larkshill, when it came out that they’d got no money left and weren’t married at all, and—well, there’d been others, more or less, all the time, and I just thought that there might have been more now that things are so much worse, as we all say; and so far there’s been none at all.”

  He paused, as though in some doubt whether he had said too much, in reply to a question which he should have answered more shortly.

  “Yes, Phillips, go on.”

  “Well, sir, I don’t rightly know why it is. Things are worse than they were, and there’s been wrong things done that couldn’t have gone on before, and them that do them just laugh, and do worse tomorrow. We’re not as safe as we were. But we’re not held down as we was.

  “I think that’s what makes it more worth while to keep alive. It’s not so easy to do, but, somehow, it’s more worth doing. We used to be held down till we couldn’t move. I don’t say we weren’t held down comfortable, but there it was. We was held down hard, and if we ached to move—well, there was only one way, and there was some that took it.”

  “But it was a free country, Phillips. The laws were made by the people themselves, for their own security and comfort.”

  “Yes, sir, they did all that. I don’t say they didn’t. But I shouldn’t call it free. Not when you couldn’t help having a summons sooner or later, try how you would…. I had one myself the week before the flood, and when I think of it, it makes me half glad it came, and I didn’t have to go, and my mother died without knowing. But you don’t want to hear all that.”

  “Yes, go on. What was the summons for? I shouldn’t have thought you’d have made a mistake of that kind in a century.”

  “It was the business I took over. It had been called J. T. Couthlin and Co. for fifty years, since my mother’s uncle started it; it’s he was J. T., and I kept it on, and used the same name, as Bill did before me, and thought no wrong—and what wrong was there? And then I was summoned because I wasn’t carrying it on in my own name.”

  “Oh, you mean the Business Names Act. You should have registered.”

  “Well, sir, I didn’t know, and I’d done no wrong, and I went and told them at the station, and they said, ‘Then you ought to have known. You’ll be fined five pounds, most likely.’ And my mother was too old to have understood. She’d have said I’d disgraced the family, and must have done something bad to be fined like that. She’d almost sooner have been seen in a pawnshop than had the police knock at her door.… No, sir, I shouldn’t call it a free country. It wasn’t bad in its way, and it was very safe if you kept quiet and went the way you were told—but I sometimes think it may have gone on about long enough.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Martin, turning from the window, observed that Betty had entered to lay the evening meal with the formality which Stacey had always exacted, even though there might be unavoidable variations in the nature of the fare provided.

  Claire and Helen came in together.

  Martin noticed with satisfaction that they appeared to be on terms of a very cordial intimacy, though his knowledge of the ways of women was sufficient to tell him that it was a fact of no certain significance.

  From a score of animated questions of contrivance and management which they were discussing as the meal proceeded, Claire turned to him to explain the nature of the defences which Phillips had provided against the emergency of attack, and which he had shown her with an evident deference, which had caused her some inward amusement.

  “I think he was almost nervous, till he found that I really admired his ingenuities. He appeared to regard me as an expert on such questions, till I told him that we only specialize in tunnels.

  “But they seem to have had a bad time here during the first weeks—and, in a different way, later. He has got the kitchen separated from the rest of the house, and the windows barred and the doors. His arrangements for spraying unwelcome callers with boiling water, and keeping on the supply, are really remarkable. And there are relays of red-hot pokers for hand-to-hand fighting.

  “I wondered they didn’t retreat into the kitchen yesterday, and defend themselves there, but I suppose they didn’t know how many men Cooper was bringing, or how long they might stay…. Isn’t Phillips talking to someone?”

  Phillips was. The voices went on in the hall for some minutes. His own, quiet and deferential, broken occasionally by another, somewhat louder, and of a more open-air quality.

  Then he appeared at the door.

  “Mr. Burman, of Upper Helford, is waiting to see you, sir. I told him you were engaged, but he won’t go, and he says he doesn’t want to be long, because of the tide.”

  “Do you know him?” Martin asked.

  “Not well, sir. He supplies the fish.”

  “Then the fishmonger must wait.”

  “They’re good fish,” Helen remarked, with appreciation. “Don’t make him wait too long.”

  The fish which earned this commendation were a kind of sprat or pilchard, of which a liberal supply had been distributed on the evening before Cooper’s appearance had disturbed the routines of the district.

  Besides these fish, there were eggs on the table, milk, some unleavened cakes, butter of Betty’s making, some apples, and a weak solution of the precious tea. Certainly, Stacey had not starved, if this were an example of the fare that had been provided for him.

  “He isn’t exactly a fishmonger,” Phillips began, with some hesitation.


  “What is he?” Martin asked.

  “Well, sir, he was a farmer in Upper Helford, and his sons cleared out with the rest, but he wouldn’t leave. He’s got two or three men there. You can see them from the cliff. And he just goes on farming. He doesn’t let anyone go over, and when we’ve had a boat, once or twice, it’s disappeared in the night.”

  “Do you mean he’s on a separate island?”

  “It’s scarcely that, sir. Anyone might cross at low tide, if they could get through the mud, where Helford brook used to run, but there’s barbed wire now along the other side, and a stiff climb it would be.”

  “Isn’t Helford where Butcher is?”

  “No, sir. That’s Helford Grange, where old Mr. Carson lived, that owned Upper Helford; and Lower Helford too, for that matter. But the Grange is a mile or more to the south, the other side of Cowley.”

  “Don’t people go over at all?”

  “Well, sir, Jim Arter tried, and he was lying this side again the next morning with a charge of shot in his back. Mr. Burman had warned us what it would be, and he just went to find out.”

  This was the man who was now standing in the hall demanding an audience with Martin, with a shot-gun under his arm.

  Phillips mentioned the gun.

  “All the same,” Martin decided, “I think we’ll see him, even though the gun may be the one which was discharged into Mr. Arter’s anatomy. I don’t suppose he’s calling with a programme of promiscuous homicide. Apart from that, he sounds interesting.”

  It was the haystack which was mainly responsible for this decision. In the course of fuller explanations than there is space to chronicle, Phillips had mentioned that the top of one of these erections could be observed from the opposite shore, as an evidence of his farming activities. Martin felt that this placed him definitely on the side of those who would seek to conserve rather than to ruin. The fate of the investigating Arter was of a less certain significance. They knew from their own experience that he might have deserved his end.

  “All the same,” Claire remarked, “I shouldn’t care to sit with my back to him. Habits grow so easily now.”

  “Well, no one need,” Helen said, only half seriously. “There are four sides to the table.” She was less used than were the others to the proximity of potential violence, but she would have felt secure against more than one intruder in her present company. Yet she added, “Shall we go?” with a doubt whether Martin would prefer their absence, which would not have occurred to Claire.

  “No. Why should you?” And, while he answered, the question settled itself.

  “I’m afraid the tide won’t wait,” said the voice they had heard in the hall, and the door opened to admit a man rather largely made, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and garments that were consistent enough with the character of farmer-fisherman which had been attributed to him, terminating in a pair of brown leggings and substantial boots.

  He glanced round the well-appointed room and at the well-laid table with self-possession enough, but with an evident adjustment of mental perspective, which resulted in an apologetic, “Pardon, ladies,” and his hat came down in his hand.

  He showed a mass of shaggy, grizzled hair, merging into a beard that was full and brown. He may have been nearer sixty than fifty, but he looked ten years younger. His face was weather-beaten, but not showing any other signs of loss of vigour. His eyes were deep-set, beneath bushy brows, grey and keen, but not unkindly.

  He leaned his gun, an ancient muzzle-loader, but looking in as good condition as its owner, against the wall, as Martin asked him politely, “Won’t you sit down?” and indicated the farther side of the table.

  Phillips placed a chair and withdrew.

  “You will like something to eat after your voyage,” Helen said pleasantly. She was too practised a hostess not to deal with the situation easily, though she had some hesitation in placing this informal visitor socially, and her voice had that note of aloofness—remote rather than condescending—which came into it so easily.

  The man hesitated, from whatever motive, and glanced keenly and thoughtfully round the little group before he answered. Then he said, “Thanks, ma’am. I’ve got half an hour,” and took the waiting chair.

  Claire thought, as she passed the apples, “She’ll always do the queen stunt better than I should.” If Martin were to be the king of an island state, she had no doubt of who would be better adapted for the part of official wife. But for John Burman’s presence she would, no doubt, have said it, with her usual frankness.

  Burman ate, and surveyed the fare. He was quite at his ease. “I see you’re careful with the tea,” he remarked, looking at Martin…. “I reckon that thief Butcher’s got plenty.”

  “Why do you call him a thief?”

  “You’re new here,” Burman answered. “Tom tells me you’ve settled Bellamy’s lot, and set Cooper on the run. I suppose Butcher’ll come next.”

  Martin declined to be drawn. He said, “It was really Tom who settled Bellamy’s lot, and saved our lives in doing it. We had been obliged to kill Bellamy before that.… I’m afraid there’ll be more trouble with Cooper.… Yes, they’ve asked me to take control. Are you with us?”

  Burman did not answer quickly. At length he said, “I’m not with you. I may be for you. That depends on what you mean to do. I’m not against you so far. I came to learn.… We shan’t quarrel if you leave Helford alone.”

  Martin considered. Here was another unforeseeable factor. A declaration of independence at his very door. Of independence, but not of active hostility. So he understood it. He might make himself lord of Cowley Thorn, if he would, and of the deserted mining village beyond it. He might take possession of all the wilderness miles to southward—and westward too if the same conditions prevailed. But he was to understand that Upper Helford was foreign ground.

  He did not know what other complications might follow should he accept this position. But he liked the man. And he needed friends. He answered diplomatically.

  “I don’t want to disturb you. From what I’ve heard, Upper Helford has been able to look after itself. But I think I can ask your help, because it seems to me that we shall be fighting your battles.… You’ve got a haystack.”

  Burman was not slow, but he did not follow this. He said, “It’s not for sale. We shall need it for our own stock in the winter.”

  “That’s what I meant,” said Martin. “What other stacks are there?”

  “There’s not one that I know of,” Burman answered.

  “Well, how long would they leave yours when they learn what winter means? There are cattle everywhere, running wild. You can judge what will happen to them when the frost comes. You’re a farmer. You can tell better than I can. I suppose it depends mainly on whether the season be severe or mild.

  “But it won’t be only the wild ones. There are cows fenced up, more or less, all over the place. Everyone seems to be living largely on the milk. I don’t know how it is that there has been so little forethought, except that there’s been so much to plunder, and so much quarrelling, and most of the men would have said that a cow just stood in a field and grazed all the year round if they’d been asked six months ago.

  “If we can do something to organize things now—if it’s not too late—I think you should be willing to help us.”

  “Maybe, yes,” was the cautious answer, “if that’s what you mean. But I can’t do much this side. I won’t risk—” He broke off abruptly. “I’m helping now with the fish. And a pinch of Butcher’s tea or a pound of tobacco is all I get back. But they mayn’t last. They come and go. There’s times when we catch none, and times when we bring up strange sorts that we daren’t eat. But there’s mostly a few congers. There must have been a fair upset down below. And we can’t fish when the weather’s bad. I won’t have any risks. The boat’s not fit…. But I think, maybe, you’ve come about the right time.”

  He sat silent for a minute or two, as though he were weighing Martin’s problem in his
own way, and then spoke again.

  “I’ll tell you all I can. You see I’ve watched it from the start, and held them off.

  “There was a crowd along the edge soon after the land broke. They came up for hours. They were all sorts, but most of them were crazy with fear. Some of them went mad. Most of them had no shelter. They fought over the food they found. They lay in the rain and died. There must be three or four hundred left alive, all told—maybe more. They’re well enough. I reckon the weak ones have died off. But some of the best died too—or got killed. They quarrelled over the women, when they’d found how to get food and to keep alive. There were things done that are best not told. But no one worked, except to make some shelter for themselves, and those that had the women wouldn’t leave them out of their sight. And if they weren’t fighting each other they’d be plundering in the ruined houses, or getting things from the old gardens, or catching rabbits, or watching the sea for what it leaves when the tide falls…. And the time soon goes, and when you plunder you have to take what you find, not what you want. And I reckon that most of them knew little of country ways.

  “If they’d made the hay, I don’t know that there’s one among them that would have known how to build a rick, let alone thatch it…. Butcher looks ahead, in his own way. He won’t starve. But he only plans for himself. He isn’t a shepherd. He’s what his name says…. Yes, I reckon it’s about the right time. There’s some decent ones among them, but they want leading. There’s that missionary woman ought to help, and there’s Ellis Roberts—you could trust him.”

  Martin said: “Ellis is dead. I didn’t see him alive.” He told briefly what he knew of the matter.

  “That’s bad luck,” said Burman. “There’s worse left.” He rose, saying that he would miss the tide.