He saw Butcher, with his household servants, marshalling themselves as near as possible to the place from which he would speak, as though to allow no oversight of the importance of the support they gave.
He saw Muriel Temple moving quietly from one to another doubtless making it clear that she would support him.
He felt a certainty of victory such as he had sometimes done as a difficult case approached its verdict, and which he had never known to mislead him.
He was glad that Helen was beside him, though he had discouraged her presence. But she did not lack courage, and she had felt that, in Claire’s absence, it might fall upon her to defend both herself and him, and to avow her own approval of the decision which had been made.
His only anxiety was that Claire had not returned. He felt that this might be misread, and, having ceased to doubt her safety, he would have preferred that there should be no possibility of the construction that he had not wished her to come.
But it was too late to alter that now.
Muriel came up to him. “I understand that Tom’s going to speak, and then Butcher. If there’s no one else, I should like to say a few words after. I don’t think Butcher ought to have the last word today. But I shall have to ask you to lend me your knoll. I’m too short to talk to people from the level.”
Martin did not speak very long. He felt as he commenced that the attitude of many of those who heard was anxious, critical, and non-committal, though there were few who were really hostile.
He reminded them that he stood there at no suggestion, as it was at no desire, of his own.
He had been asked to take control, and he had agreed to do so on one condition—that he should be obeyed without question.
He spoke of the prevailing state of disorder, and of the lack of forethought, or of any planning for the common good, and the murmurs of assent were frequent, but he felt that the tension of those who heard him was undiminished.
He went on to say that he did not intend to impose new laws which would reduce their freedom, but, for the time at least, till they had reached a more stable social condition, he asked only for obedience to the orders which he would issue—he asked only that they should all work heartily, as he should allocate their parts, so that they might take full advantage of such remains of the past wealth as were still available, and might provide for warmth and shelter, for food and clothing and comfort, during the winter which must now be near them.
If disputes should arise, they must be brought to him, and he would try to settle them fairly, and they must pledge themselves that in such cases they would accept his decision.
But it was no time for doubts and divisions. If any man would not work with them in this way, now was the time to speak, and he would be free to leave them, taking his possessions with him.
They must decide now—such as had not pledged themselves already—for there was little time for talk. There were a hundred things to be put in hand. They must give him their support today, or he might decline it tomorrow.
Before he reached this point he was aware that the feeling had changed. They did not want a repetition of the old organizations, the old bondages, the old bewildering weight of laws and restrictions, but they were conscious of the need of leadership.
Almost all the laws that they had had to learn in their previous lives—or to suffer for their ignorance of them—had been laws to restrict or to prevent. Laws that imposed burdens or restrained activities. They might have been good or bad, or composed of both elements. Few things are absolute. But whether they had been good or bad, whether they were wise or foolish now to contemn them, the feeling was there, and it was with the sensation as of a cloud that had passed that they recognized that their new leader was more concerned to stimulate than restrain.
Seeing that he had won the mood of those to whom he spoke, he ceased quickly, avoiding the peril of the further word.
Tom Aldworth followed. He had not the gift of public speech, and his words were halting and few, but the cheers that met them did not allow his pauses to show very awkwardly. There were many in the crowd of better education, men who were shrewder and cleverer than he, but he was the one who had thought from the first rather of the general welfare than of his own advantage, and he had won a confidence which such men as Butcher could never gain.
Butcher spoke easily and adroitly. He blessed the new start which was being made, but it was in a tone of benevolence rather than respect. There were subtleties that only Martin understood, and that may have been meant for him only:
His voice did not carry well, and all that was generally recognized was that he had given his support to Martin.
It was remembered that he had held aloof from Cooper, and it was regarded as evidence that he had decided that Martin would overcome whatever opposition he might encounter.
Muriel spoke briefly. She had the kind of voice which will carry far, even in open air, without apparent effort. She spoke as she would have done to a single auditor, with the simplicity beside which any artifice is a baffled inferior.
Martin had sat unmoved in the seat of honour while receiving the fulsome praise of after-dinner speakers who had been acknowledged masters of the art of oratory, but he found it less easy to maintain the mask of indifference while Muriel, having put the simple facts of the social and economic depths to which they had fallen, expressed her confidence in his ability to transform them. “I believe God’s sent him,” she finished simply, “and I’m going to help him all I can.”
The words did not reach more than half the audience, for attention was distracted by Claire’s appearance. She came through from the back of the crowd, drawing the eyes of many men, and of all of the women. She saw a vacant chair beside that on which Helen was sitting, and walked confidently toward it.
There was a silence so absolute that it had the effect of sound. It called the attention of those whose thoughts or eyes had wandered. This was a matter which had been forgotten—to which no speaker had alluded—but which had been represented as a vital issue only three days ago.
Martin knew that he was already assured of the support of a majority of those around him, but that the extent of his triumph, the question whether the meeting could break up without a note of discord, would be decided now.
Helen saw it also, and she did not fail him.
There was a moment during which both she and Martin might have left the meeting, and none would have observed their departure.
Every eye was directed upon the advancing woman.
To those who had been with Tom on the Bellamy raid she was known already. They had known her as Martin’s wife, as his comrade in the tunnel fight.
There were others who had seen her riding recklessly through the débris of the Larkshill Road to the rescue of Helen’s child.
To most, she had been a name only, but of a mysterious quality. She was the woman had who killed Bryan in Bycroft Lane.
Had she come to make claim to Martin in this publicity? Would she challenge him to choose between herself and Helen? Were they on the threshold of some exciting drama? Was the automatic that was belted so conveniently to her hand to take a part in the argument?
Their eyes followed her till she gained the group that had risen as she approached.
They observed the meeting of the two women in a dramatic contrast.
Helen had used every resource available to maintain the standards of dress and appearance to which she had been used in the earlier days. It was by such means that she had supported Martin then, and she did not suppose that human nature had changed because the land had shifted beneath it.
So dressed, she had an aspect of delusive fragility: even of a loveliness which might have been thought to have left the world.
Claire had come straight from the landing-place. Whatever might have been the secret activity which had delayed her, it had not tended to the cleanliness of the clothes she wore.
But she had not known what might be happening in her absence. Sh
e knew that her presence had been promised at this meeting three days ago, and she had delayed for nothing:
They saw the hands of the two women meet. Helen said something, and they could hear the gay tone, though not the words, of a laughing answer.
They saw the quick movement (purposely delayed, as they could not guess, till their eyes were upon it) by which Helen adjusted her chair to make more room for the one beside it. They sat down together.…
Monty Beeston had brought his bill-hook to the meeting, in the vain hope that there might be a need for its service. It was an unpopular weapon in a crowd, and it had secured him a prominent isolation.
He had watched Claire’s approach in an agony of excitement, lest he should have to make election between two contending loyalties.
Now he leapt up, as he had not done since he had seen that shot that flashed obliquely across the goal-mouth from the foot of the outside-left, and rebounded from post to net, in that last minute’s play which had saved his club from the ignominy of the Second Division. He leapt up, in an uncontrolled excitement, waving his weapon round his head, and burst into a raucous cheer, which was lost next moment in the noise of four hundred voices.
For the moment courage—courage and character—had triumphed. If there were discontents and reluctancies among the crowd, they were silenced by the knowledge of their minority.
But Martin knew that his real trial was to come.
They left the common while the sun was still shining. But there was a cold wind from the north. The summer days were ended.
BOOK FIVE
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Doll Withlin lay dying. She was beyond any human help available, and would have been beyond the help of all the skill of the earlier days. But she did not feel very ill. And the pain was less.
She lay gazing out of the open door with frightened eyes at the frozen pathway and the cold sea-mist upon the whitened fields beyond.
A wood-fire blazed beside the foot of the bed, and Muriel Temple sat at the farther side and tried to give comfort where no comfort was possible.
“But you don’t really think I shall die?” came the plaintive, repeated question. “I want to live. And he told me there was no risk at all. He said he’d often done it before the flood. He said every one did it then. I’d always said I didn’t want any kids.… I don’t care what happens after you’re dead. I don’t believe anything does. I want to live…. Why don’t you make him come and do something? I don’t care what, if I don’t die.”
“Dr. Butcher said he can’t do anything more,” Muriel answered, thinking truth was best; “and, besides, the Captain has taken him.”
Butcher Junior was, in fact, sitting with his hands tied behind his back, a very frightened man, under the guard of Monty Beeston’s bill-hook, and knowing that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to have an excuse for using it.
“You don’t really think I shall go to hell?” the dying woman began again. “It can’t be very wrong if every one used to do it. He shouldn’t have told me if it was. It was he did it, not me.”
“I don’t think you knew how wrong it was,” Muriel answered gently. Who was she to say what the verdict of God would be upon this woman with the mind of a wilful child? Who had allowed the destruction of that which should have been most sacred, and could not see, even now, that it was anything serious, apart from any penalty which it brought upon her. Who was already sentenced to leave the life to which she clung so desperately.
There had been a time when she would have answered without hesitation, and her creed had not consciously changed But she had learnt that she was not God, and that His ways are past finding out, even by those who serve Him. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Faith may answer with an assured affirmative, but even faith may falter as to what that right may be.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
There was a very different scene in the house of “the Captain,” as Martin was now universally called, where Butcher was pleading for his son’s life.
Martin had declined to see him alone. Helen and Claire were present, and Jack Tolley, who was now fully employed as his secretary, and living with Madge in a house at Cowley Thorn which had been repaired for his use.
Martin had found that Jack’s support was best secured by a position that enabled him to understand fully the motives that underlay his decisions, and it was a triumph of personality that he had now won an unquestioning and almost enthusiastic loyalty from this rather difficult supporter.
Butcher deserves some respect for his position, and some admiration for the self-control that he was exercising.
He was fighting for his son’s life. It would have been difficult for him to find words which would have exceeded the contempt he felt for Martin’s ethical standards, or the anger and hatred that raged within him. But he knew that Martin could not be moved by such expressions, and he was using every resource of his diplomacy to secure his purpose.
“I thought I’d heard it said that you didn’t hold with capital punishment, even for murder.”
“I’ve never gone that far,” Martin answered, “but I should never make a law by which it would be an ordinary penalty. Murders vary so greatly in culpability. There is no crime which requires so much to be left to the discretion of those who try it, as to what the penalty, if any, should be, if the fact be proved.”
“It isn’t as though he’d meant to kill her. He didn’t think he’d do her any harm—and you don’t know that she’ll die, even now.”
“I’m sorry,” Martin answered, “but I don’t follow your reasoning. What he has done cannot possibly be made better or worse by whether she dies or lives.
“You are thinking of the foolish laws of a past time, that were less concerned with motive than precarious consequence. Laws that would even treat a murderous attempt lightly if a man couldn’t shoot straight.
“But what you say is beside the point. I know he didn’t mean to kill her, and I shall not deal with him any differently from how I should do if she were well. I intend to execute him because he has killed a child.”
“But the child never lived at all.”
“Mr. Butcher, I am sorry for you, and I want to answer patiently, but I am not a fool. Whether the child had a separate life, or to what extent, we neither of us know—nor do we know what life is. To kill life, or to prevent it, is a distinction of doubtful reality, and of no practical importance…. But you mistake me further. I am not God. I do not propose to punish your son for any wrong he has done. As you sit there, you can see that Phillips is occupied in removing daisy-roots from the lawn. I am fond of daisies. I don’t like your son. But neither like nor dislike influences me in either case, nor does any question of punishment. There are reasons why they both need removal. I cannot have the idea of abortion alive among us.
“We have both lived in a time of pleasure and luxury, among people who employed others to spend their lives in their service, and who would say without shame that they bought their comfort at the cost of their children’s lives. Now we live hardly, and the lives of our children are recovering their natural value.
“I would rather see half the community dead tomorrow than that the seed of those evils should take root among us.”
“But there was nothing new in such practices. Intelligent people of all ages, even savages, have seen the necessity of regulating the population.”
“I did not say that it was new,” Martin answered patiently. “It might be difficult to discover a vice that is. The advocates of practices which were destroying the nations of Western Europe, when the waters intervened to do it more decently, would claim. the prestige of discovery and the authority of age in the same sentence. But that was only because they were weak-minded, when they were not actively vicious. The new thing was that in the absence of any government which was prepared to risk its popularity, or its existence, for the nation’s welfare, such, or similar, vices had become publicly advocated, and their methods explained. The
youth of the nation was urged towards them, even on the threshold of what might have been happy and natural marriages, in the endeavour to drag all down to a common level of degradation.… But we are not discussing European civilization. We have to build our own. So far as one man can, I will create a public opinion in which children shall be the honour of those who bear them, and their avoidable absence a woman’s deepest shame.”
“But what if, or when, the little island on which we live shall become overpopulated?”
“It is not an immediate question, and it would be as reasonable to let it influence our minds today as to commit suicide to save ourselves from the risk of dying of old age. But I can tell you what will happen if we have any success in rearing children of a sufficient vitality—they will take to the waters, to find what other lands will be open to them.”
Butcher had not exhausted his arguments. He knew every plea that had been urged by a generation which had been alert for its self-called ‘rights,’ and impatient of the suggestion of duty, but he was fighting for a life, not an argument, and he had the sense to see that he should make no progress in such direction.
He said, “I can’t agree, as you know; but I don’t wish to urge anything against your judgment. If you make such a law, I should advise my son to obey it, and I should expect him to take the consequences, should he fail. But you have agreed that beliefs and practices were different in the civilization in which we were reared. Is it right to exact a penalty beyond that which would have been a legal possibility in those days, and of which my son had no warning?”
“You are mistaken. I heard something which caused me to warn him two months ago. He appears to have thought it possible that Jack’s wife here, being now married to him, would not want to bear Ellis Roberts’s child, or that Jack would not wish her to have it. Anyway, he gave her some hint, of which I heard, and I warned him plainly.”
“There is another consideration,” Butcher replied, “which you may have overlooked. My son is the only man among us who has been trained for the profession. Without him, there is no expert advice available.”
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