Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

  These statements may have been something more (or less) than the outcome of a strict veracity, but Butcher had no means of checking their accuracy.

  He could not have slept had he tried, though mind and body were wearied by the experiences of the last two days. He could only sit and watch the face of Steve in the firelight….

  The night became very dark and still. There was a mist that hid the stars. The cold was cruel.

  He could see nothing now but the face of Steve, which seemed to be turned upon him all the time. He didn’t speak. He just looked…and looked.

  Watching Steve, and shivering with something worse than cold, he said, “I wonder what time it is.”

  It was a silly remark. He had one of the few watches which were still going accurately. But he must say something.

  Steve spoke then. But he spoke of time differently. He said, “I suppose it might have lived eighty years. Longer than you could now. You must be near thirty. It don’t seem fair somehow.”

  He did not appear to expect a reply. It was as though he thought aloud.

  He went on, still as though he followed his own thought only. “If that had been my kid—but, of course, it wasn’t She wasn’t my girl. But if it had been my kid, I should have killed you slow.”

  Butcher’s eyes were fixed upon him, as though fascinated, but he made no reply. He heard the slow, quiet voice, “I suppose you’re not afeard of Will Carless? He didn’t know, did he? No, you wouldn’t have told Will. And you’re not afeard of him, now you’ve killed his girl.… There’s no call to be afeard of Will. He’d just blubber, most like, and let you go…. Now if that had been my kid…but we know it ain’t…. I should have killed you slow.”

  The night got darker before the dawn, and Butcher slept at last, his head on a pack that he had been carrying, his body stretched before the fire, as Steve had considerately made space to allow him to do.

  Steve sat looking into the fire, and when the flames flickered upward they showed that he was smiling at his own thoughts. It was a cruel smile. The man that was stretched before the fire would have slept the worse had he seen it.

  The fire sank lower, but Steve did not rebuild it. It died to a glow of ash, and then to greyness.

  He rose at last. He groped in the pile of wood which was beside him, and lifted a heavy log. Butcher’s legs were between him and the dying fire. It was so dark that he had to feel for where they were, and pass a hand lightly along them. Then he brought the log down heavily. He heard the bone crack. His victim woke from sleep with a scream. He tried to rise, and he screamed again. He thought that the dogs had him by the leg. He called on Steve for help, but there was no answer.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  It was midday when Steve came to Jerry Cooper’s head-quarters, and he had travelled hard to reach them. He said that he had camped with Dr. Butcher, and taken the first watch, and had then slept, while the doctor watched in turn, but when he waked in the morning he was alone. He had searched for hours, and had then come on, thinking that the doctor must have preceded him.

  He led them back to the camp where he said that they had passed the night. The fire still burned. The camp was in a hollow thicket, between two oaks.

  When he had done all that he could to assist an unsuccessful search he went home.

  Four miles from home he went to look at a place where men had camped by a holly hedge. There was no one there now. But he looked farther, and found a dead man who had tried to force his way beneath a denseness of undergrowth, where he appeared to have stuck, or his strength had failed. It was a silly thing for a man to try with a broken leg.

  “He must have crawled half a mile,” Steve said slowly. “I’m glad I fed him. He’ll do now for the dogs to finish.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  There was trouble with Butcher. There was nothing fresh in that. There had been trouble from the first. But he had been careful, up to now, not to press any difference to a last extremity.

  He had been adroit to compromise, ingenious in producing such positions that Martin would see the expediency of settlement.

  Only on one point—an attempt that Martin had made to establish a system of banking credits, which would have taken the place of money, and adjusted the dealings of the community by book-keepings in the terms of the old coinage—had he definitely defeated Martin’s intention.

  Even in that he had not shown an open hostility. He hat merely expressed a doubt as to the practicability of the plan, and sneered at it where he could do so safely.

  The fact was that his own transactions were so large a part of the commercial dealings of the community that it was impracticable to continue a currency in any form that he declined to recognize—and he could not afford to do so, even had he favoured the method in itself, for it would have revealed the extent of his transactions, and the amounts of his debits, to the interested examination of Jack Tolley, who had been appointed to keep the projected books.

  But, apart from this matter, his opposition had never been pushed to extremity, and if it were a fact that those who were known to be unfriendly to the new rule had somewhat lower prices and easier credits, if there were subtle suggestions that the hardness with which Martin had driven the preparation for the winter months had not been really necessary, and that it would have been easier to have relied upon Butcher’s miscellaneous resources, they had been too indefinite either for reproof or reprisal.

  Yet this constant sapping had not been without its effect upon the less intelligent and more turbulent elements. And it would have been impossible, under any condition, for between two and three hundred men to be worked for three months, as Martin had done, without some discontents arising.

  There had been a particular irritation at his insistence that when the majority of the men were engaged in the raiding for food and stores which he had organized in a more regular way, and carried farther afield than had been done previously, those who remained should stand to arms in a perpetual vigilance against an enemy which never came.

  He had tried to obtain such supplies as would make them independent of Butcher, but he had only partly succeeded. The time had been too short, the needs too many, and it was easy for Butcher to hint that had these stores been divided or retained according to the individualism of earlier days each man to whom he spoke could easily have purchased from him directly the requirements which could not now be supplied.

  Now there was friction over the cloth, of which Butcher had obtained a large supply in the earlier days; when his plunderings had been more discriminating, more farseeing, and more industrious than had been the short-distanced and spasmodic raidings of others.

  Martin was determined that the cloth should be handed over without such exchanges as must render them short of other needed things before the return of the warmer weather.

  It was at the acutest stage of this difference that another question had arisen, which Martin regarded as fundamental to the social order which he was endeavouring to establish.

  It was in a final effort to resolve this position that Butcher came to see him one winter evening, when there was no light upon the frozen roads but that of stars and snow. Yet he found his way without difficulty, for the roads between Larkshill and Cowley Thorn had been cleared by Martin’s orders before the commencement of the dangers of the early darkness, and Butcher himself had seen that the byway to Helford.

  The two men met with a sense of increasing antagonism, but with a common desire to avoid an open breach—if the other would only see the necessity of giving way!

  The subject of Butcher’s son had never been mentioned between them since the mystery of his disappearance a month ago.

  Martin had a private conviction that Steve was in some way responsible, but there was no evidence to support such a suggestion. Butcher’s thoughts might move in the same direction, but he could not suppose that Martin had any connivance with it. He knew how he had himself selected Steve as his son’s guide, and he knew also that Martin
was not of a kind to instigate a secret assassination.

  None the less, he regarded him as the primary cause of the resulting tragedy, of the nature of which there was no doubt for the bones had been identified, and were now buried in the garden of Helford Grange.

  It appeared that the man must have wandered, lost and perishing from cold and hunger, till he was within a few miles of his starting-point, and then fallen a prey, either before or after death, to the wandering dog-pack. They had picked him clean, and more than one bone had been broken in their hungry teeth.

  Yet, whatever hatred his mind concealed, Butcher came to compromise, as his nature was, and had Martin met him in the same way, the course of events must have been widely different, though they might have led to the same end by a longer path.

  “I’ve come to say,” he began, “that I want to work on a friendly footing, if we can. It does no good to anyone for it to be known that we can’t pull together. I don’t think you’re fair about the cloth. If I hadn’t taken my men six months ago, and dug it out, and carted it here, it’s most likely that it wouldn’t exist today. But I’ve come to say that you can fix your own price, if you’ll leave me to decide who’s to live in my own houses. You can’t say that that isn’t a fair offer.”

  “I’m glad you’ve given way about the cloth, because I couldn’t have had much further patience. We’d made up what we’d got by the end of last week, and it’s badly needed. But I’m sorry that I can’t make a bargain about it such as you suggest.

  “I can’t have Pellow moving into Pollock’s house, because he’s got a good enough one of his own, and because I want Ringwood in there. It’s convenient for what he’s doing, and he’s got a wife and two children and expecting another, and they’re all living now in a single compartment of a railway-coach. Surely you can see that there can’t be any doubt of what ought to be done.”

  Butcher looked unusually obstinate.

  “I’ve promised Pellow,” he said, “and I don’t trust Ringwood. I don’t trust him for the rent. His health’s bad, and it might break down any time….”

  He looked speculatively at Martin. He tried a final concession. “I’ll take Ringwood if you’ll tell Pellow that it’s your doing, and if you’ll guarantee the rent.”

  “Rent?” said Martin. “There won’t be any rent.”

  “But it’s my house,” Butcher protested, in a genuine bewilderment. “Every one knows that. Sims has paid me rent ever since I moved out of it to go to Helford.”

  “Then you can move back if you like.”

  “I don’t want to move back myself. I merely want a good tenant.”

  “I am sorry that these differences should arise, but I cannot allow the old system of renting houses to be re-established among us. I knew nothing of your arrangement with Sims…. Supposing, as you suggest yourself, that Ringwood couldn’t pay the rent you would fix, do you suppose that I should allow you to turn him out of the house?”

  Butcher hesitated in his reply. At last he said, “I can’t make out whether you mean to try to abolish private ownership or not. I know it can’t be done, and the attempt could only increase our difficulties; but I can’t even understand what you are aiming at. You appear to allow some forms of property. Do you mean that houses are to be an exception? And, if so, how are they to be built in future, and who will be expected to do it?”

  Martin answered, “It’s a fair question to ask, and I’ll answer it as far as I can.

  “I don’t propose to abolish private property, which is the natural incentive, as it is the natural reward, of individual effort. But I hope to avoid at least some of the resulting abuses which have been within our own experience.

  “I am aware that I am only experimenting, and I am aware that I may find cause to modify the position which I am now taking. But regarding houses and land (the original owners or occupiers of which are no longer among us), I am willing that every man should claim the one he occupies, or the land which he is able and willing to cultivate, or otherwise use. A house or field which is left vacant may be occupied by others, and if there be more than one who desire it, I will try to decide fairly between them.

  “I do not wish to take away the fair rewards of industry, nor do I suppose that we can avoid inequalities of wealth arising in future, but if we were to work together, with that object, we might do much to mitigate the resulting evils.

  “Regarding houses, I do think that it may be possible to make a simple rule that the man who occupies owns. There is no communism in that. So long as he occupies house, or cultivates land, he will have protection in the ownership which he exercises. I see no reason why it should not be passed on at his death to another member of his own family, but, beyond this, I am not yet prepared to go. I see that in avoiding one difficulty we may encounter another, but I regard a system under which one man may own the homes of a thousand of his neighbours as intolerable, and I am resolved that it shall not be re-established here.”

  “If you allow any right of transfer, at death or otherwise,” Butcher replied acutely, “it may be made conditional, and the principle of sale or letting is at once admitted.”

  “Possibly, though not necessarily. But, even so, the position created would be very different from that of the old landlord-and-tenant law, because there would be no right of distraint or ejection.”

  “It’s no use having claims that you can’t enforce.”

  “No?” said Martin. “Then how about the credits that you give, as far as I can understand, to about two hundred of our own people…? You know that there are no longer any legal means of enforcing payment of a debt, yet you continue to trade, in the assurance, I suppose, that most men are honest, or that the consequence would recoil upon themselves should they fail to maintain satisfactory business relations with you.”

  Butcher was silent. This was the unmentioned matter which had been at the back of his mind during the past months, and which, more even than Martin’s remote responsibility for his son’s death, caused him to weigh the risk of an alliance with Cooper, and the declaration of open war.

  Taking his silence as no more than an admission of the force of the illustration, Martin went on.

  “There is nothing really novel in that. The absence of any legal means of recovering a betting or alcoholic debt did not reduce those businesses to a universal cash basis, even under the old conditions; and it would be absurd to suggest that the betting or beer-drinking fraternities were of a higher commercial morality than the rest of the nation. But the debt of law was replaced by the debt of honour, and often received prior consideration in consequence.

  “It shows that, if men had had the courage to see it, the penalizing legislation for the enforcement of legal obligations might have been swept away, with all its cruelties, all its oppressions, all its waste of forced realizations, all its endless attendant parasites, and credit trade would still have continued upon a better economic basis, and in a cleaner atmosphere.”

  Butcher tried to speak temperately. He had realized, as Martin spoke, that it was war between them—war which could find no ground of compromise, and could give no quarter. Really, he had always known it. Only there had been the timidity of the trader. The reluctance to take a risk until there should be no means of avoidance. But he did not want Martin to read his mind. He must have time to think.

  He said, “It is a system—or a lack of system—which you propose, which appears to open the door to very great abuses. Abuses which would be inevitable.”

  “It would avert greater ones,” Martin answered. Did this man really think that he should be an instrument for the collection of his accounts? That he was going to re-establish all the old machinery of summonses, and executions, and distraints, the accumulation of ‘costs’ upon the poor, the foolish, and the unfortunate the sale of their possessions to others, who might not desire them, at any price they would bring? That he would degrade some of his people to be the tools of such methods?

  No. He might make many m
istakes. He had much to learn. Much that might only be discoverable by the test of experiment; but there were, fortunately, some things that he had learnt already. He had been a lawyer, and that road was closed. He knew already where it led.

  Almost at the same moment the realization that had come to Butcher came to him also. There could be no permanent peace between them. He must either break this man or let him break everything for which he himself was striving.

  They looked at each other in a silence that became more significant as the seconds passed.

  “You needn’t trouble about the house. I’ll tell Pellow that you want it for Ringwood,” Butcher said at last.

  It was a capitulation in words, but Martin did not fail to understand it. The time for compromise was over. In the future, it must be a condition of either secret or open war.

  “I’m sure it will be the best way,” he said coldly.

  Butcher went out.

  Martin passed into the next room, in which Jack was working. Helen and Claire were there also.

  “Jack,” he said, “who’s on the patrols for the next fortnight? Are they men you can trust?”

  “Mostly. Vincent’s doubtful. There’s no harm in him, but his wife hates you. That’s always dangerous.”

  “Any of Butcher’s men?”

  “There’d be three next week. He’s been keeping all his men at home lately. I meant to tell you. He says it’s the cold. He let me know so that I could use them while they’re about. It’s just the routine. Had I better tell them they’re not wanted?”

  “No. But don’t trust them. Set an independent patrol farther out on their nights. I don’t think it’s the cold. I think it’s war.”

  He added, “You’d better let Burman know quietly tomorrow that I want Tom back at once.”

  Tom had been at Upper Helford a great deal during the last few weeks. He seemed to like going there. He was superintending something which was going on there with the knowledge both of Burman and Martin, but of which nothing was spoken. Last week he had taken over two men that he could trust, and they had not returned.