Nordenholt's Million

by J. J. Connington

  “What’s all that about?” I asked Glendyne. “It’s more than Greek to me.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t understand. I forgot that you people up in the North don’t know there’s a famine on. Don’t you see that when he gripped your sleeve he found a normal arm inside instead of a starved one; and he drew the natural conclusion.”

  “What natural conclusion?”

  “Really, Flint, you are a bit obtuse. You know that food here is almost unprocurable except by those who have rationed themselves carefully from the start and have still some stores to go on with. How do you think the rest of them live? Of course the poor beggar found you in normal condition and he jumped to the conclusion that you were a cannibal like a large number of the survivors. What else could he think? He imagined that we were holding him in talk until we could sandbag him or knock him out somehow for the sake of his valuable carcase. See now?”

  This seemed to be the last straw. Curiously enough, I had never given a thought to the food problem. I had simply assumed that these people in the streets were living on hoarded stores. Cannibalism! I had never dreamed of such a thing in London, even this London.

  Glendyne laughed sarcastically at the expression on my face. “Why, you are nearly as innocent as my poor clerical friend,” he said at last. “Can’t you understand that nothing counts nowadays. There isn’t any law, or order, or public opinion or anything else that might restrain brutes. You’ve got the final argument of civilisation in your pocket—a brace of them, besides the loose cartridges—and that’s the King and the Law Courts nowadays. The only thing left is the strong hand; everything else has gone long ago. For the most of the survivors there isn’t any morality or ethics or public spirit. They simply want to live and enjoy themselves; and they don’t care how they do it. Get that well into your head, Flint.”

  Over the next part of our exploration I may draw a veil. We traversed the stretch from Oxford Circus to Regent Circus, which was the centre of the remaining life of London in those days. One cannot describe the details of saturnalia; and I leave the matter at that. It surpassed my wildest anticipations. At Piccadilly Circus I found a gigantic negro acting as priest in some Voodoo mysteries. The court of Burlington House had been turned into a temple of Khama. I was glad indeed when we were able to make our way into the less frequented squares to the north. Even the quiet skeletons seemed more akin to me than these wretches whom I saw exulting in their devilry. Glendyne had under-estimated the thing when he said that there was no public opinion left to control men and women. There was a new public opinion based on the principle of “Eat, drink, for to-morrow we die”; and the collective spirit of these crowds urged humanity on to excesses which no single individual would have dared.

  We came to the Langham by Cavendish Square and Chandos Street. As we stood at the hotel door, I could see the lights of the bonfires and hear the yells and shrieks of the revellers at the Circus; but Langham Place was comparatively quiet. Eastward, the sky was ruddy with the flames of the burning city; southward, the bonfires shone crimson against the pale moonlight; to the north, up Portland Place, the streets were half in shadow and half lit up by the brilliancy of the moon.

  We walked northward, taking the unshadowed side of the road. Glendyne had shown me the worst now, and only the return to our car remained before us. I drew a breath of relief as we turned the bend of Langham Place and the bulk of the Langham Hotel cut us off from the sight of these lights behind us. Here, under the moon, things seemed purer and more peaceful.

  We came to the corner of Duchess Street without seeing anyone; but just as we reached the crossing, a familiar figure stepped out. It was Lady Angela. This time I could see her plainly in the moonlight; a tall, chestnut-haired girl, beautiful certainly, but with the beauty of an animal type, tigress-like. Her dress was torn and a splash of fresh blood lay across her breast. In her hand was the silver horn which I had noticed before. She started as she recognised Glendyne.

  “Well, Geoffrey,” she said; “we haven’t met for some time. You’re looking thinner than when I saw you last.”

  It was just as if she were greeting a friend whom she had lost sight of for a few weeks. She did not seem to see the incongruity of things. For all that her tone showed, they might have met casually in a drawing-room.

  “It’s no use, Angela, I saw you in Berners Street tonight, you and your beasts. I knew all about you long ago. You needn’t pretend with me.”

  She flushed, not with shame, I could guess, but with anger.

  “So you disapprove, do you, little man? You’re one of the kind that can’t understand a girl enjoying herself, are you? But if I were to whistle, you would come to heel quick enough. You were keen enough on me in the old days and I could make you keen again if I wished.”

  She drew herself up and, despite her tattered dress and disordered hair, she made a splendid figure. Her voice became coaxing.

  “Geoffrey, don’t you think you could take me away from all this? It isn’t my real self that does these things; it’s something that masters me and forces me to do them against my will. If you would help me, I could pull up. You used to be fond of me. Take me now.”

  Glendyne did not hesitate.

  “It’s no good, Angela. You’re corrupt to the core, and you can’t conceal it. I’ve no use for you. You couldn’t be straight if you tried. Do you think I want the associate of a nigger? And what a nigger at that!”

  She began to answer him, but her voice choked with fury. She raised the silver horn to her lips; blew shrilly for a moment and then cried: “Herne! Herne! Here’s sport for you! Here’s sport!”

  “I might have known that brute wouldn’t be far off if you were here,” said Glendyne bitterly. “Flint, use your shots in groups of three. It’s a signal to the patrol. We may pull out yet. Here they come, the whole pack!”

  There was a trampling of feet in Duchess Street and I heard quite close at hand the hunting-cries of the band of ruffians. Glendyne fired nine times into the darkness of the street and we turned to run. Lady Angela watched us at first without moving, brooding on her revenge. By the time we had gone fifty yards, the whole pack was in full cry after us up Portland Place.

  “We may run across Sanderson’s car before they get us,” Glendyne panted as he ran beside me. “The triple shots may bring him. Run for all you’re worth.”

  He had removed the empty magazine as he ran and now turned for a moment and fired thrice in rapid succession at our pursuers. I did the same. But there was no check in the chase. We still maintained our distance ahead of them, but we gained nothing. All at once I began to find that I was falling behind. I was hopelessly out of training; and my side ached, while my feet seemed leaden. I ran staggeringly, just as I had seen the other quarry run in the earlier part of the night; and I gasped for breath as I ran.

  I shall never forget that nightmare chase. Once I turned round and fired to gain time if possible. I heard Glendyne’s pistol also, more than once. But nothing seemed to check the pursuit. I felt it gaining on me; and the silver horn sounded always nearer each time it blew. It was no distance that we ran, but the pace was killing. I was afraid that we might be cut off by a fresh party emerging from Cavendish Street or Weymouth Street; but we passed these in safety. I learned afterwards that Herne’s band hunted like hounds, in a body, never separating into sections. Their pleasure was in the chase as much as anything; and they employed no strategy to trap their victims.

  Just south of Devonshire Street I stumbled and fell. Glendyne wheeled round at once and tried to keep off the pack with his pistols; but as I rose to my feet again I saw them still coming on. The moon showed up their brutal faces hardly twenty yards away. I had given myself up for lost, when Glendyne shouted: “Lie down!” and rolled me over with his hand on my shoulder while he flung himself face downwards on the road. A dazzling glare shone in my eyes and passed; and then I saw a motor swinging in the road and the squat shape of a gun projected over its side.

  I t
urned over and saw the pack almost upon us. Then came the roll of the gun and the maniacs stopped as though they had struck some invisible barrier. Herne crashed to the ground. Lady Angela staggered, stood for a moment fumbling with her horn, and then fell face downward. The remainder of the band turned and fled into Weymouth Street.

  Glendyne picked himself up and went across to Lady Angela’s body. She was quite dead, at which he seemed relieved. I understood better when I saw one of the men in the patrol car going round amongst the wounded and finishing them with his revolver.

  Sanderson, the patrol leader, spoke a few words to Glendyne; and then the car swung off into Park Crescent and disappeared. The whole thing had taken only a few seconds; and we were left alone with the dead.

  “It’s all right now, Flint,” said Glendyne. “They won’t dare to come back. Besides, the leaders are gone”—he kicked the negro’s body—“and they were the worst. I’ll take this as a souvenir, I think.”

  He picked up the little silver horn; and I wondered what it would remind him of in later days.

  It was in Park Crescent that I got my last glimpse of the new London. On the pavement, half-way round to Portland Road Station, I saw something moving; and on examining it closely I found that it was a dying man. All about him were rats which were attacking him, while he feebly tried to keep them at bay. He was too weak to defend himself and already he had been badly bitten. There was nothing to be done; but Glendyne and I stood beside him till he died, while the rats huddled in a circle about him, waiting their chance. Glendyne kept them back by flashing his electric torch on them when they became too venturesome.

  That was my last sight of London in these days; and looking back upon it, I cannot help feeling that this squalid tragedy was symbolical of greater things. The old civilisation went its way, healthy on the surface, full of life and vigour, apparently unshakable in its power. Yet all the while, at the back of it there lurked in odd corners the brutal instincts, darting into view at times for a moment and then returning into the darkness which was their home. Suddenly came the Famine: and civilisation shook, grew weaker and lost its power over men. With that, all the evil passions were unleashed and free to run abroad. Bolder and bolder they grew, till at last civilisation went down before them, feebly attempting to ward them off and failing more and more to protect itself. It was the dying man and the rats on a gigantic scale.

  I came back to the Clyde Valley a very different being. Now I knew what had to be fought if our Fata Morgana was to rise on solid foundations; and the task appalled me.

  CHAPTER XIII

  RECONSTRUCTION

  WHEN I saw Nordenholt again after my return, I found that I had no need to describe my experiences. He seemed to know exactly where I had been and what had happened to me. I suspect that Glendyne must have furnished him with a full report of the night’s doings.

  “Well, Jack,” he greeted me; “what do you think of things now?”

  “I’m down in the depths,” I confessed frankly. “If that’s what lies at the roots of humanity, I see no chance of building much upon such foundations. The trail of the brute’s over everything.”

  “Of course it is! The whole of our machine is constructed on a brute basis. Did you need to go to London to see that? Why, man, every time you walk you swing your left hand and your right foot in time with each other; and that’s only a legacy of some four-footed ancestor which ran with the near fore-leg and off hind-leg acting in unison. Of course the brute is the basis. A wolf-pack will give you a microcosm of a nation: family life, struggles between wolf and wolf for a living, co-operation against an external enemy or prey. But don’t forget that humanity has refined things a little. Give it credit for that at least. People laugh at the calf-love of a boy; but in many cases that has no sexual feeling in it; it has touched a less brutal spring somewhere in the machine. There’s altruism, too; it isn’t so uncommon as you think. And patriotism isn’t necessarily confined to a mere tooth-and-claw grapple with a hated opponent; it might still exist even if wars were abolished. I know you’re still under the cloud, Jack; but don’t think that the sun has gone down for good simply because it’s hidden. All I wanted you to see was that you must be on your guard in your reconstruction. You and Elsa were planning for an ideal humanity. I want you to make things bearable for the flesh-and-blood units with which you have to work. Don’t strain them too high.”

  “I wish I could find my way through it all,” I said. “But anyway I see your point. What you wanted was to let me know which was sand and which was rock to build on, wasn’t it? You were afraid I was mistaking it all for solid ground?”

  “That’s about it. Remember, with decent luck you ought to have a clean slate to start with. Most of our old troubles have solved themselves, or will solve themselves in the course of the next few months. There’s no idle class in the Nitrogen Area; money’s only a convenient fiction and now they know it by experience; there’s no Parliament, no gabble about Democracy, no laws that a man can’t understand. I’ve made a clean sweep of most of the old system; and the rest will go down before we’re done.”

  “I know that, but to tell the truth I don’t know where to begin building. It seems an impossible business; the more I look at it the less confidence I have in myself.”

  “Don’t worry so much about that. You’ll see that it will solve itself step by step. It’s not so much cut-and-dried plans you need as a flexible mind combined with general principles. It’s the principles that will worry you.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said.

  “It’s obvious if you look at it. Your first stages will be the getting of these five million people into two sets: one on the land to cultivate it; the other still working on nitrogen. That’s evident. The whole of that part of the thing is a matter of statistics and calculation; there’s nothing in it, so far as thinking goes. After that, you have to arrange to get the best out of the people mentally and morally; and I think Elsa will be a help to you there. By the way, she refuses to leave me.”

  “Then how am I going to get her help?”

  “Oh, I’ve arranged that she is to have lighter work and she’ll have the evenings free; so you and she can consult then, if you will.”

  This seemed to be enough to go on with.

  “There’s another thing, Jack,” he continued, “I’ve got good news for you. It appears from the work that the bacteriologists are doing that B. diazotans is a short-lived creature. According to their results, the whole lot will die out in less than three months from now, as far as this part of the country is concerned. Apparently it combined tremendous reproductive power with a very short existence; and it’s now reaching the end of its tether. So in three months we ought to be able to get the nitrogenous stuff on to the fields without any fear of having it decomposed. That was what always frightened me; for if B. diazotans had been a permanent thing, the whole scheme would have collapsed. I foresaw that, but we just had to take the chance; and I always hoped that if the worst came to the worst, we might hit on some anti-agent which would destroy the brutes. You know that in some places it hasn’t produced any effect at all; the local conditions seem against it, somehow.”

  *****

  Reconstruction! I remember those early days when I sat in my office for hours together, making notes of schemes which I tore up next day with an ever-increasing irritation at my own sterility. Given a clean slate to start with, it seems at first sight the easiest thing in the world to draw the plans of a Utopia, or at any rate to rough in the outlines when one is not hampered by details. Try it yourself! You may have better luck or a greater imagination than I had; and possibly you may succeed in satisfying yourself: but remember that I had real responsibility upon me; mine was not the easy dreaming of a literary man dealing with puppets drawn from his ink-pot, malleable to his will; it was a flesh-and-blood humanity, with all its weaknesses, its failings, its meannesses, that I had to deal with in my schemes.

  I cannot tell how many sketc
hes I made and discarded in turn. Most of them I had not even courage to put upon the files; so that I cannot now trace the evolution of my ideas. I can recall that, as time went on, my projects became more and more modest in their scope; and I think that they seem to fall into four main divisions.

  At the start, I began by imagining an ideal humanity, something like the dwellers in our Fata Morgana; and from this picture I deducted bit by bit all that seemed un-realisable with humanity as it was. I cut away a custom here, a tradition there, until I had reduced the whole sketch to a framework. And when I put this framework together upon paper and saw what it contained, I found it to be an invertebrate mass of disconnected shreds and tatters with no life in it and no hope of existence. I remember even now the disappointment which that discovery gave me. I began to understand the gulf between comfortable theories and hard facts.

  In the next stage of my development, I leaned mainly upon the future. I was still under the sting of my disillusion; and I discarded the idea that existing humanity could ever enter the courts of Fata Morgana. I tried to plan foundations upon which the newer generations could rise to the heights. Education! Had we ever in the old days understood the meaning of the word? Had we ever consciously tried to draw out all that was best in the human mind? Or had we merely stuffed the human intellect with disconnected scraps of knowledge, the mere bones from which all the flesh had wasted away? We had a clean slate—how often my mind recurred to that simile in those days—could we not write something better upon it than had been written in the past? A chasm separated us from the older days; we need be hampered by no traditions. Could we not start a fresh line?

  I pondered this for days on end. It seemed to be feasible in some ways; but in other directions I saw the difficulties to the full. The clean slate was not a real thing at all. Environment counts for so much; and all the adult minds in the community had been bred in the atmosphere of the past. Their influence would always be there to hamper us, bearing down upon the younger generations and cramping them in the old ideas. There could be no clean severance between present and future, only a gradual change of outlook through the years.