Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

  At Helford Grange—9/4/0

  Scattered—107/56/11

  Totals—308/155/31

  Martin left him congenially occupied in tabulating these records, with notes upon the past actions, characters, and capacities of each individual, and analyses of the support or hostility which they were likely to offer, while he rode over to the railway camp, the condition of which, and of the surrounding country, he was anxious to see.

  He went alone, having told no one of his intention, not even those of his own household, till the moment of starting. He realized that he must now move abroad at some personal risk, not knowing what secret enmities he might have excited, or what plots might be contrived against him. A shot from the hedge-side, finishing his activities, might be a welcome solution to others beside Butcher, of whom he did not judge that such a form of argument would be probable, unless at a more vital emergency. But such risks must be taken, and they would be lessened if he should make it a rule not to let his movements be known beforehand.

  The brown gelding on which he rode was Claire’s gift to him. He thought with satisfaction of her captures. Apart from Cooper’s gang, he had observed no use of horses for riding. It would give prestige, as well as mobility, for his own household to use them. He decided to secure one for Helen. Perhaps one of those captured in yesterday’s skirmish would be available.

  He kept to the main road through the ruins of Larkshill, meeting no one, and came to the fallen elm, where his horse took the jump well enough, though unwillingly. He passed the narrow, weed-choked entrance to Bycroft Lane.

  Beyond that point, where the Larkshill Road bent to southward, Jack had warned him that it was blocked by the fall of a factory, and other obstacles, and that he would make the better progress by a field-path which he would find on the west side of the road, and which he must cross again at a lower point.

  He found this path easily. It was narrow, but worn hard. There were no impediments of gate or stile. They had not been removed, but avoided by the more slovenly expedient of diverting the pathway through the broken hedges.

  Even to Martin, who had a trained faculty of observation, though he had not the eye of a farmer, the state of the fields was appalling.

  Had it been merely told, it might have sounded incredible. Four months ago they had been tamed and planted. The pastures had been grazed green and smooth, or enclosed for cutting. In the arable fields the roots were sown or the corn was springing. It did not seem possible that four months’ neglect could have made so great a difference. But they had been the four months of the year into which the most part of its growth is crowded. And hedge and fence, having been gapped and broken by the storm, and breached by the cattle, had ceased to give the old protection.

  Then it must be recognized that the land, for the most part, had’ been negligently farmed, and was far from having been ‘clean of weeds in the spring-time.

  The farmers of those last days had been dispirited, and many’ of them were too near the edge of insolvency to provide the minimum of labour which was still recognized as necessary. The standard of good farming had been reduced with the substitution of machinery for the men and horses of cleaner days. The fields were persuaded to a bare fertility by the use of chemical dressings. The crowded urban populations lived mainly on imported foods, and were governed by those who sought their votes rather than their security or their welfare, and were content for these conditions to continue.

  Faced by such a position, it could not be said that the farming community had done its best to overcome it. They remembered bitterly the brief years of war-time prosperity which they had been allowed to experience. By successive manipulations of a paper currency, the Government of that day (whether intelligently or under the blind control of those interests that would ultimately enrich themselves) had given a temporary prosperity to the farming and trading communities, which had been cynically withdrawn as soon as they had served their purpose. Many farmers had been induced by these conditions to purchase their farms with an inflated currency, and had mortgaged them to their bankers for a fraction of the cost, but which was really their entire value, to enable them to complete such purchases. They had mortgaged them at the price of a hundred head of cattle, not guessing that three years later it would require the sale of two hundred to repay the debt. They did not understand how they had been cheated. They looked upon it as on the operation of some obscure natural law beyond human control. And the banks thrived.

  It is to be said also that they did not work as their fathers had done. They talked more, while the land lay neglected. They crowded to the great shows, parking their motors in hundreds while they discussed their grievances and lamented their poverty—and the silent evidence of the motors condemned them. Vehicles for which few sections of the community had less real need, and which represented all the forces which were inimical to their prosperity, as well as a national waste of energy which had reached the verge of insanity.…

  It was not a summer that had lacked fertility. In the fields where Burman had toiled in Upper Helford, though he had been short-handed through the loss of his sons, and diverted by many urgencies, hay and corn had been heavy in yield beyond precedent—perhaps, in part, because the haze of dirt which had hung in the air of the English Midlands since his boyhood had at last been lifted, and the white clouds parted to skies of deeper blue than could have been seen before in ten years’ watching.

  Elsewhere they were fertile also, but they were weed-choked, trampled, and infested with vermin; and flocks of sea-birds, forsaking their accustomed diet, fed freely on the ungarnered grain….

  Martin got no sight of his goal till he came to the limit of a field which a tall hedge bounded. Even mounted as he was he could see little beyond it, except at one point, where it was broken at the top of a steep bank down which a man might clamber, but a horse could not easily be ridden. At the foot of the bank he saw that he was back again upon the edge of the Larkshill Road, with what had been a line of straggling cottages upon its farther side, on which the ground did not rise from the road-level.

  Of these cottages nothing now remained but scattered mounds of bricks, where the searchers for any likely plunder had turned them over. Beyond them the country was flat, and he could see over it for some distance. At one point he thought that there was a glint of sea.

  Four months ago the scene on which he looked had been one of the saddest products of the folly and greed of man that have ever repulsed the light on which our lives depend. Ruined ironworks showed ahead: a pit-head or two to the northward. Ground spread with the unseemly entrails of earth responded slowly, even now, to the wooing of sun and rain, and only patches of the coarser weeds had attempted its conquest. The bricks of fallen buildings, even though they had escaped the flames, were so blackened by the dirt to which they had become native that they showed as though charred by fire. Between the ruins of the ironworks and the nearest pit-head—perhaps half a mile away—he thought he recognized signs of the encampment to which Jack had directed him. A trodden path which showed in that direction, straight ahead, and almost at right angles to the road beneath him, confirmed this supposition.

  He turned his horse to the right, seeking a place at which he could descend to the road in safety.

  The hedge was high in places, but lower at others, so that there were times when he could see the road, as he kept closely beside it.

  Looking down thus, he saw a man standing. He could not see his face. He was well grown, but he gave an impression of youth. He was standing in an obvious uncertainty He went a few paces along the road, and then returned. His foot kicked the ground on which he gazed. He twisted in his hands a stick of some pliable wood, which bent without breaking.

  Farther down the road there came the lilting sound of a banjo.

  Martin continued his way. He stopped again when he came to the spot from which the music proceeded. Here there was a green recess in the bank, and the hedge was gapped, as though some creatures, man or animals,
had found that the side was not too steep to clamber.

  In the hollow, half sitting, half lying, was a young woman, with a banjo on her lap.

  She did not see Martin, who looked down on her at leisure.

  The sight was pleasant enough. She was of attractive aspect, and she was evidently well content both with herself and the world.

  She wore no hat, and showed a head of black and glossy curls, lightly restrained by a green ribbon.

  Her dress, though not innocent of crease and stain, was very brightly coloured. Slim, extended legs were silk-stockinged, and her shoes however acquired) were neat and new.

  She strummed the banjo idly, humming snatches of song between which she bit into an apple which lay half eaten beside her. Footsteps sounded on the road, and she looked up doubtfully As she recognized them a frown darkened her face, and her lips set sullenly.

  “So you’re here,” said the youth that Martin had seen already, pausing at the gap

  The needless information obtained an answer of equal brevity. “And here I’ll stay.” She touched the banjo to a defiant note.

  Martin saw his face. A mere boy. He was five years younger than she—perhaps more. He had a face which was naturally good-tempered, but was now distorted by a combination of anger and misery.

  He stood irresolutely, and she added, “You’d better clear. You won’t get much if you stay.” Then, as he stood silent, he added, “You get me what I told you, and then we’ll talk.”

  “You know I’ve—” he began.

  “Ada’s got two,” she answered.

  “I don’t know why you chose me, and treat me like—” he began again. “

  Those that choose can change,” she interrupted quickly.

  “I’d see you dead first.”

  “You’re the kid!” she mocked.

  His glance fell on her left arm. She drew it back quickly. It had three bracelets on it, of which the lowest flashed with a setting of diamonds. He stepped forward and seized the retreating arm, drawing it roughly upward.

  “Stop it, Will! You’re hurting!” she said angrily.

  He took no notice. His fingers went under the bracelet, breaking it off her arm in two pieces, and the next moment the fragments of the gaudy toy were flung over the road into the farther ditch.

  “You can tell Steve he’ll go the same—” he began, but did not finish, for she had swung round her other arm and struck him on the face.

  “And now you’ll get it,” he said.

  He had got a good grip of her before she guessed his purpose, but, when she did, there was a moment of furious struggling, with screams of protest. “Will, you brute! I’ll tell Tom Aldworth!”

  The invocation was unfortunate.

  “Tom told me to do it. He said, ‘Do it well, if you don’t want it to end in murder’.” His voice, though somewhat breathless, was almost apologetic, but he had got her well over his knees, and the stick was descending.

  Martin did not move. He was not at all sure that there would be wisdom in interference. In the end he might be thanked by neither.

  The woman was now screaming abuse and protest, mingled with shrill cries as the strokes caught her.

  But he only held her down the harder and pulled her farther over, to operate on the back of the stockinged legs.

  “Tom said, ‘Do it well’,” he repeated, with the same note of apology to her protests. But when her tone changed to a note of pleading, and “I didn’t mean it, Will. I didn’t mean anything.… I won’t do it again. I won’t really,” and the blows paused, Martin judged it time to leave the scene unnoticed.

  If they might not have thanked his intervention, still less would they have been likely to welcome the knowledge that there had been a spectator of this domestic difference.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Martin rode on thoughtfully. Here was another aspect of the dearth of women and its results. “Those that choose can change.” He; wondered whether Tom’s legislative wisdom had provided for that contingency. The young man known as Will was a stranger to him, though he judged that he was one of Tom’s party. He had not joined the expedition against Bellamy. Probably he had been among those who had feared to leave their women unguarded—not, it seemed, without reason.

  He was glad that he had observed the incident and retired unnoticed. Knowledge is power. To those who rule it gives the power to act with wisdom. Accurate knowledge is the greatest need of those who would guide others wisely or rule with justice. And the more absolute the power the more difficult it is to obtain information which is accurate and unbiased.

  The power of knowledge is greatest when it is unsuspected. The realization of this was the second lesson in the isolation which he had chosen.

  He came to a place where field and road drew to a common level, and a fallen gate was little obstacle to his passage, though his horse must step with caution among its broken bars.

  He decided to ride back to the point at which he had first struck the road, and take the path which had shown on the farther side. It would be the quicker way in the end. He considered his horse’s feet.

  The pair whose vocal and physical arguments he had observed must have heard his approach before he could have seen them. He passed at a quick trot, not looking toward their retreat. But he was aware that they were close together, and he thought that the man’s arms were round the woman, whose face was hidden.

  He found the path easily, and walked his horse forward, for it was not wide or clear enough for any speed to be ventured.

  A short distance ahead he saw three men. They were not coming toward him. They were stooping round something at the side of the path.

  They rose as he approached, and he pulled up to speak to them. Two he knew already. They were out for a day’s shooting, or trapping, and had rifles under their arms. Martin wondered (as Jack had foretold) what reserves of ammunition were available, and if there had been any thought to conserve it. Suppose that the only remaining quantities should be in the hands of Cooper or Butcher? That, like a thousand other things, must be the subject of a prompt inquiry.

  The third man was a stranger. Hearing him called Steve, and supposing him to be the giver of the bracelet, Martin looked at him with speculation. He was a sallow-skinned man. Young enough, but a growing baldness had caused him to protect his head from sun and flies with a coloured handkerchief, knotted at the corners. With greater conventionality, but less evident reason, a similar handkerchief was round his neck. Below that he wore a fancy waistcoat and a pair of moleskin trousers. He did not indulge in a shirt—a garment which appeared to be falling into a very general disfavour. A fancy waistcoat may be left unwashed for a few months with a less evident protest.

  Steve had laid down an empty sack, and was occupied with a white smooth-haired terrier, of which he was the apparent master, whose eagerness for a rat, which had found precarious safety under some sheets of corrugated iron, had caused the halt.

  The sheets had been the roof of a shed which had been crushed beneath the weight of the falling stack of the iron-works. The stack had been large and very high. Its ruin lay stretched across a wide extent of waste land, hard trodden by many feet, and scattered with broken crocks and perforated buckets.

  The men had found that they could raise the sheets a little, but could not remove them without displacing a greater weight of bricks and mortar than they were inclined to attempt for such a purpose.

  The dog sniffed and barked round the edge, its stump of tail quivering with excitement.

  Martin considered the dog from a new, or rather from the old familiar, aspect, as the friend and comrade of man. He had become used to regarding them as a hostile menace. He did not like the man’s look. He thought his eyes to be cunning and shifty, but he wanted to know him, and he took the shortest route to his confidence when he asked, looking at the dog, “Are there any more like him?”

  “No,” said the man. “T’old bitch bolted. This one baint mine. It’s Miss Temple’s.” He sp
oke with some traces of the dialect of a northern county, but in a very soft and drawling voice, alien from its spirit, and giving an effect which it would be tedious, and probably vain, to attempt to interpret. His voice gave him an unexpected individuality. Martin understood how he might attract a dog—or a woman.

  Talking of dogs, he learnt that more than one of those that had, at first, attached themselves to human owners had heard the call of the wilderness and disappeared. The one that had belonged to Steve had become restless when a dog howled in the darkness, and had slipped away, and not returned.

  So they went; but for those that still preferred the abodes of men their wilder relatives were developing an implacable enmity. They fought at sight, and the wild dogs would unite to chase and kill their domestic cousins should they wander among them.

  Talking of this and of the possibility of preserving the purity of some of the old breeds led to the question of how much might be the extent of the remaining land, or of the men still living upon it.

  “I want two or three volunteers,” Martin added, “who will find out what Cooper’s doing, and how many are with him. I want them to go beyond him till they come to the water again, and let me know if there are any left alive who might be friendly, or needing help themselves.”

  He did not expect any immediate response, but Steve Fortune answered, “I’d do that,” in his soft drawl.

  Here was a man that would take some knowing. Martin wondered whether his voice would rise or quicken if he were told the fate of his gift, or the punishment that had followed.

  But he must not stay talking here. He had a further object. He asked if he were taking the right path, and the men looked at each other doubtfully. He was on the straight way right enough, but he couldn’t keep on it. At least, the horse couldn’t. There was the canal.

  He admitted that he didn’t want to swim the canal. He supposed there would be some other method of crossing. But they told him that it was no question of swimming. The canal was empty. But it was not easy for a horse to cross it, and the bridge was half a mile away.