BOOK FOUR

Chapter Forty-Three

It would be illogical to conclude that Phillips had no Christian name because he was never known to produce it.

As a manservant, which had been his first occupation, and his father’s before him, he had no occasion for this distinction.

But even when his employer died, about two years before the period with which we are concerned, and he was persuaded by circumstance to take over the plumbing business of a deceased cousin in Cowley Thorn, he was never known to use it. He retained the business name of J. T. Couthlin and Co., and signed his letters and endorsed his cheques in a name which obviously was not his.

He was engaged to marry Betty Cotwin, Stacey Dobson’s housemaid, in the coming October, when it may be presumed that it would have been disclosed upon his marriage certificate, but even that occasion did not occur, for the flood came, and when the routine of the plumbing business departed he realized the necessity of extending his immediate protection to that young lady, and took up his residence with her on the following day, with Mr. Dobson’s decided approval.

Stacey Dobson had never been responsive to the pressure of outer circumstance. He had lived his own life in his own way and when the storm struck, and the news of flood and ruin assailed him from every side, he met the proposal of his frightened servants that he should join the discomforts of the northward flight with an indifferent but final negative.

His house was large, substantially built, isolated, and protected by the rising ground beyond Cowley Wood from the full force of the storm. It lost much of its roof: its upper rooms were damaged by falling timber. But beyond these injuries, and some internal displacements, it survived the fury of the first night, and it was from the window of an almost uninjured library (some plaster had fallen on his shoulder from a cracked ceiling, but it was nothing more than a clothes-brush would rectify) that he told the servants, who had spent a miserable night on the lawn, that they could please themselves, but that he would be obliged if they would not interrupt him further.

The fact was that he was composing a sonnet on Mutability, and the sonnet form is sufficiently exacting to make such interruptions almost intolerable.

Only Betty remained. She had already acquired a broken head, and some other damages, in attempting to rescue some of her master’s property from a roofless bedroom, and excused herself from joining the exodus of her fellow-servants by explaining that her head ached, and she did not feel fit to go.

Stacey Dobson did not fail to understand the loyalty of her decision. He even made a moderate protest against it. But it was somewhat perfunctory. He really doubted the wisdom of the wild migration which was proceeding around him. He was repelled by thoughts of the miserable conditions of food and shelter which this flying population must endure, if the floods should spare them. He could not understand anyone being willing to get hot and dirty today, to reduce the possibility of being drowned tomorrow.

He said, “What about lunch?” and Betty understood that the subject had left his mind. When the whole world is going mad around you, and the very earth seems shaky, it is very comforting to have such a master.

As Betty would not go, Phillips remained. He joined her under Stacey Dobson’s damaged roof nest day, and two young people were entirely happy.

The result showed how far it might still be possible to maintain the amenities of a drowned civilization under sufficiently favourable conditions.

Stacey was more than willing for these unpaid attendants to share the benefits of what remained of his roof, providing that his personal wants were satisfied as far as possible, as entirely reasonable—indeed, it was assumed on all sides, without the necessity for discussion arising.

Under Phillips’s efficient hands, and with the assistance of the knowledge which he had acquired in the course of his experiences as a master-plumber, the house soon became rainproof once again, though its upper story remained in a condition of partial wreckage. The drawing-room, which had suffered little, and which adjoined the uninsured library, was transformed into Mr. Dobson’s bedroom. Renovations of the dining-room were completed later, and when the events occurred with which we have been dealing it had been actually repapered and decorated and was ready to be used again, if there should be anyone who would require to occupy it.

Betty’s determination that her master should not be annoyed by any difference in the service which he received, whatever might be the extent of the surrounding confusion, would have been of little avail in itself without the assistance of Phillips, capable and experienced, anxious to please her own desires, and sharing her pride in the manner in which the house was still maintained.

Stacey Dobson was a reasonable man, and (in his own way) a good master. His debts, by the mercy of heaven, had disappeared in a night. He had no care in the world. He remained quietly among his books. His meals were still good and regular. If the menu showed an occasional monotony or omission, he was kind enough to pass it in silence. His bath was always ready when he required it, and he declined to notice that it was not filled in the old way.

So long as these conditions continued, he was not so foolish as to vex his mind by inquiring how soon they might collapse, or what might be the extent of the cellar-stores that Phillips’ foresight was industriously accumulating.

When the alarm of the approach of Cooper’s horsemen had reached them, he had insisted that Phillips should take his wife to a place of safe hiding without delay, even at the risk that the lunch should suffer.

When he had lazily refused to point out where they had gone to the impatient raiders, they had shot him in the garden-hammock in which he lay.

Tom heard of his murder while he was trying to persuade the inhabitants of a much inferior dwelling-place to vacate it, so that their new leader might be accommodated with an appropriate dignity, and being refused with some ingenuity of excuses, he lost no time in pursuing so desirable an alternative.

He found both Phillips and Betty were willing to accept a new service of such a character, and to acquire the reflected dignity of waiting upon the family of this newly elected ruler, and they were probably happier in so doing than had they asserted a right which could not easily have been disputed, and claimed the house and its contents, as its only remaining occupants.

Chapter Forty-Four

It was characteristic of Helen Webster that she had neither any disposition to avoid the subject of the woman who had shared the intimacy of her husband’s life, nor did she allow it to disturb her mind, during the first hours of their reunion. It was not merely that her joy was too great for the intrusion of any minor discords. It was rather, though not solely, because she had a confidence in Martin’s love too deep and well founded for any jealousy to disturb it. She had also acquired a habit of leaving the practical difficulties of life for him to deal with, which reassumed its influence now that they were again united. She had no doubt of his intention, nor of his capacity, to do whatever might be right, and as far as she spoke of Claire at all, it was to express the gratitude which she felt for her own and her children’s rescue, a realization of the hardship of the position, and of the generosity with which Claire had acted toward her. It was well, she felt, that she had been consolation and help to Martin when he had believed that she herself was dead. But as to any possibility of her own displacement, or of an enduring rivalry, the faintest, briefest doubt had found no entrance to disturb her mind.

If Martin saw farther, if he saw that a question might be approaching which it would be her part to answer, the fact that he was silent need not imply that her confidence in him was without foundation…

It was still early on the following morning, and she was occupied, with a natural delight, in taking stock, under Betty’s guidance, of the resources of her new home, when the sound of horse’s hooves on the road disturbed them with recollection of the alarms of yesterday.

Phillips went out quickly, to return with the news that it was only Claire who was approaching, with one of the children before her.

They met her at the gate, and with a laughing word she gave the child to her mother. She had one of the horses for Martin also. “A king can’t walk,” she said mockingly.

Phillips, who knew less of horses than of most things, held the offered bridle with a show of confidence which he scarcely felt. Martin took it from him with a query as to the suitability of the orchard, from various standpoints, for its temporary confinement. They went off together. Claire would not get down. She had promised to return quickly for Mary, and had been delayed already.

Helen, with a recollection of the Claire of her rescue of yesterday, and of eyes that had been hard and merciless as she had fired her automatic into the body of the falling Bryan, found her less formidable than she could have expected in this laughing mood.

As she went back into the house, with Mary in her arms, to be handed over to the admiration of the waiting Betty, it seemed a very quiet and happy world, in which summer was still supreme; and if there were a chill in the morning air to remind them of an approaching autumn it passed unnoticed.

The condition of the house of which she had become the mistress so easily, and the atmosphere in which it was still conducted, assisted to persuade her, even after the experience of yesterday, that the pictures of surrounding degradation which had been given to her had been too luridly painted, and of the stability of an established order in which competent ant deferential housemaids were still available.

Had Fate designed to mislead her, in a spirit of impish humour, it could scarcely have contrived a better method with its remaining material.

Betty, though with a wider knowledge, was conscious of a somewhat similar feeling. After the nightmare of the past few months, a mistress had appeared such as she had supposed to be no longer existing, one who seemed to have been kept aloof from the violences and vulgarities which had degraded the world around her—as, in fact, she had.

Phillips, using a file on the walk below for the discipline of a rebellious lawn-mower, was of a similar complacency. He regretted Stacey Dobson’s death—though less acutely than Betty, whose tears had only been restrained by the hurried requirements and excitements of this new service—but death had become a very frequent neighbour, and he admitted the kindness of a fortune which had brought him so promptly another master whom it would be an honour to serve.

Only Martin, clothed in a fortunately fitting suit of Stacey’s in place of the filthed and tattered apparel of yesterday, and seated at Stacey’s desk, which he had swept clear of its contents so that he might commence to use it for his own purposes, was already experiencing the unescapable penalty of any form of pre-eminence, in the anxiety of doubtful thought which might need, at any moment, to be translated into swift and confident action.

He was still seated at the desk, working with the brain-tiring speed and concentration with which he had once been accustomed to get up a complicated case, when time had seemed impossibly limited, and was making a series of rapid notes of the almost endless things which he would require to know, or on which action might be needed for the organization of a chaotic community which hesitated between an old civilization and a new savagery, when Tom came to make his report.

He was able to announce that a number of those who had not gone on the expedition, and had not promised Martin their support, had now been persuaded to do so by himself and others.

After many questions had been answered he took Martin’s instructions to canvass the remaining men, and to send any to him who might give service of particular kinds, as well as any who seemed to show an active hostility, if they could be so persuaded.

Martin told him that he proposed to work quietly there for the next three days, after which he would probably require a meeting of his supporters—if possible, of the whole community.

It was evident that Tom had done well, and that he was prepared to continue the service that he had offered. But when these matters were concluded, he did not go. He had still one subject which must be raised, but on which he did not feel it easy to speak.

Seeing Martin engaged as he was, and clothed from the resources of Stacey’s ample wardrobe, he was too strongly reminded of the lawyer who had put his briefs aside to defend him without hope of fee, for no better reason than that his mother had once been in the service of the family; and had saved his life, when such a result had seemed to be beyond reasonable anticipation.

This memory, and an honest belief that Martin was the one man who could rescue them from the disorders into which they were sinking, confused his resentment at that which he felt to be an injustice, but the nature of which, even in his own mind, he was unable to formulate.

“You’d better tell me,” said Martin, who could guess well enough what was coming.

It was Claire, of course. There had been reports at first that she was Martin’s wife, and as such she would have been secure from molestation. But then Helen had been seen as they had walked from the lodge last night.

Now they wanted to know which was his wife, and which wasn’t. Told that his real wife was Helen, they had concluded that Claire was unattached, and to be had by the promptest wooer. Butcher had been in Larkshill last night, which seldom happened. He said that he had come to see James Pellow about some smith’s work that he wanted. Probably he had really come to learn the truth about Cooper’s raid. Anyway, there he was. He had certainly made the trouble worse.

The fact was that the law which had been adopted at Tom’s suggestion was now working to its natural consequence. The available women having been definitely mated, those men who were left had a feeling of being permanently shut out, and it is a position which always improves the flavour of the forbidden fruit. They had been restrained from any violent reaction, in some cases by their own characters, and in others by the strength of opposition which would now be arrayed against them. It was a fact of few exceptions that the men who had secured the available women were those who were best adapted, in brain or muscle, for the conditions of the life around them.

The instinct to gain security for home and children, which is fundamental to women, had operated as it was bound to do, and they had chosen for the qualities which would give the greatest assurance of such protection.

The destruction of Bellamy’s gang, the repulse of Cooper, and the memory of Rattray’s end would give little encouragement to any thought of active rebellion against the law which had left so many with no hope of home or household, but this very condition must make them the more alert to any chance of altering the restriction under which they lived.

The appearance of Claire, and the news that she was apparently unattached, had caused an unprecedented excitement. Butcher himself was said to be a candidate, and one who, whatever his physical disadvantages might be, would not readily admit defeat. It was at his instigation that a meeting was to be held that afternoon, at which it had been proposed that Claire should be present, and should be pressed to make her choice from among them.

Martin listened to this tale, and said little. He saw that Tom might have influenced the matter differently, in view of his supposed relations with Helen—might, at least, have averted an immediate difficulty. But it was useless to say that now.

He only said that he would have no meeting called in the future, except by himself. As to Claire, Tom could tell them all that the law still held, and she should choose as she would. He would say no more, but he must have Tom’s promise to support that, wherever it might lead.

Somewhat reluctantly, being still mystified as to Martin’s ultimate purpose, as he had been from the first, Tom gave the required promise.

Having this, and judging that it would be kept, Martin dismissed him with few further words. If there were trouble about a meeting that afternoon, for whatever purpose, Tom was to get together those he could trust, and they were to disperse it, by force if necessary, referring to him only if the position should be sufficiently serious to require it.

Martin judged that it would be inexpedient to appear to take the possibility too seriously, or as something which he could not rely upon Tom to deal with, but he saw clearly enough that if his authority should be challenged, from whatever quarter, or on whatever issue, he must assert it promptly and absolutely, or his rule would be over before it had well begun.

As to this matter of Claire—well, he saw that much must depend upon her own intentions, which he could only guess, but he thought that he was acting rightly in a position which had no precedent.

His thought was interrupted by the sound of voices coming through the open window. He could see nothing, for they came from the front of the house, and the library window was on its southern side, but he heard the voice of Claire raised in an indignant anger, “Well, you can call it off,” and Tom’s reply in a tone of apologetic protest, the words of which did not reach him. She must have stopped Tom at the gate. The voices went on for some time, but softened somewhat, so that he could hear no more of what was said. He considered that Helen would be there. Claire was bringing Joan, and Helen would be certain to go out to receive her. He judged that the crisis had come, as he had supposed it would, but more quickly.

Then the voices died away, the library door opened, and the two women came in together.

Helen spoke with her usual quietness, but there was too full a sympathy between them for him to fail to recognize the controlled emotion which her words concealed.

“Claire is—is staying here. She wanted to go—but we owe—I owe her too much for that,” and then, with a quick instinct of error, “it isn’t what we owe, but what we need. Martin, I want her to stay with us.”

She lied easily, as did most women of her social rank in the England that the seas had covered, but she may never have lied meanly, and she lied nobly now. And as she lied she realized that the lie might become truth. In such times as were before them she might yet be glad of such a comrade. And then—wondering if they understood all that she meant to give—she added, “I told Tom that you want us both…that we are equal in all things…. I think it’s the right way. It’s the only way now.”

Claire found no words in response. Offered all that she had instinctively felt her right, offered it so generously, against the whole weight of the traditions and customs of the race from which they came, and against the natural jealousy of her kind, she had a reluctance to take it, and in the pause Martin answered,

“Yes, it’s the only way…the only right one…. I think you both know that I couldn’t have foreseen this…but the old laws are gone.… I don’t mean that they were bad in that way…but we’ve got to think them out afresh.… I suppose, according to tradition, I ought to have chosen one of you and deserted the other—and the one might be happy afterwards, but I don’t think the two could—they would always have a consciousness of having acted basely to the one that was left. At its best, it could be no more than a cowardly way of avoiding a difficulty…unless either of you had wished to go…. I think you had the right to decide that.”

Then Claire spoke. “But I’m not sure that it is right to stay. It will bring trouble…. No, I’m not sure that it is…. You’ll have enough without this.”

Martin answered frankly, “Yes, it will bring trouble at first. I don’t know how much, but I think it will bring it quickly. After that we shall be stronger, if we survive. It will be best in the end.

“I’ve undertaken to rule this crowd, and I don’t mean to turn back now. And to do that I’ve got to fight them over something. It doesn’t much matter what. But I need a fight. I don’t mean violence. But I’ve got to show them who’s in control, and when they’ve learnt that they can have all the freedom they’re fit for.

“It’s not going to be easy. There’s so much to be scrapped, or rebuilt. But you can both help me immensely. I don’t think there’d have been much chance if you’d decided differently. It’s the only chance to face new conditions boldly, and we should have failed at the first fence.… But we should be able to do a great deal together, we three.”

Helen spoke again. She had adjusted the defensive armour which had seemed to slip for a moment, and had regained the self-control which had rarely failed her, in whatever emergency.

“It mayn’t always be easy, but I think it rests with ourselves. I think it’s hardest on Claire, in a way. We’ve got back what we thought we’d lost, and she’s got less than she thought she had.”

She was aware, as she spoke, that she thought of Claire as something that came in from outside. They might take it in, but it would be alien still. She and Martin were one. Martin knew that. Perhaps Claire knew it too. She recognized in Claire a large-natured generosity which would simplify the adjustments that they must face together. But primarily it would depend upon herself to make such a household happy, or even tolerable. With the mental aloofness which was of her nature, she tried to regard it as an experiment of unusual interest, at which she should be ashamed to fail. Surely her love for Martin should be sufficient to protect her from any risk of failure. She said, “It’s the eternal triangle in a new shape,” and was uncertain whether the metaphor were absurd or witty.

She looked at Stacey’s clock, still ticking over the fireplace. It was past midday. They had spoken slowly, with pauses pregnant of thought, and more had passed than the words would have held at a smaller time. She was relieved that they had understood each other so well without emotional expression, from which she always shrank. She said, “It must be time to see about lunch. I wonder what Betty’s doing,” and went out as she said it.

Left alone with Martin, Claire spoke with her usual directness. “I don’t know now that I’m right to stay. I don’t think I would, if I didn’t think of the child that I may have. But I don’t know even that. I could find somewhere to go to. I’m not bound to stay with this crowd. I found my way about a good bit before we met…. I’m sorry for Helen…. You love her better than you do me. It’s right you should.” Martin answered with the frankness which had become habitual between them. “Perhaps I do; and perhaps it’s natural I should. But I don’t know, and I don’t want to think. I know that what has been in the past cannot be altered, and ought not to be ignored—and I know that I need you both.”

“It may come right,” she answered, “if we all play fair, and I think we shall. We’re that sort, rather. Martin, you haven’t kissed me since—”

Helen, coming back, found them together, with Martin’s arm round her. They did not move as she entered, but Claire looked up, and said, “You know, Helen, he’ll never care for me as he does for you. I suppose it’s because you were first.… And because you’re different from me. But I’d rather have it so than have anyone else in the world—or what’s left of it.”

They were finishing a belated lunch, that drawled neglected as the talk swayed between narrations of their separate experiences and speculations of the future, when a noise of altercation arose in the hall, and three men, pushing past the protesting Phillips, entered the room together.

Chapter Forty-Five

The first of the three was a tall, thin, elderly man, very narrowly made, which gave his height a grotesque effect. He walked with a permanent stoop, as though to discount this effect of deformity, but this manner rather emphasized than concealed it, and gave him, as he moved, the appearance which Claire had recognized when she told him with more truth than courtesy, that she would remember him, should she wish to marry an eel. For this was Butcher, of whom we have heard more than once or twice already. Henry Butcher, once junior and acting partner in the firm of Butcher, Trent, and Butcher, stockbrokers, of Colmore Row, Birmingham.

He was accompanied by his son William, a young man of twenty-four, of too little individuality to merit a detailed observation, and James Pellow, a man of about the same age, or somewhat older, of a rather melancholy aspect, having a smear of coal on one side of his face, and wearing a soiled apron of basil skin, which suggested, truly enough, that he had been engaged in the work of a smithy before being called upon to join the deputation (if such it were) in which he now figured.

It had been a fiction of the old days that all men are equal. The belief (so far as any believed it) was pernicious in its fruits, as falsehood must be. It had not even resulted in giving men an equality of opportunity, to which equity would entitle them: it had not even given them equality of legal right, the scales of justice refusing to move except for those who could weight them with surrendered gold.

There were seven present here, including Phillips, who stood, passive but alert, at the open door, but none among them doubted that the issue of this invasion rested between Henry Butcher and Martin, who had risen to meet him.

Earlier experiences had taught them both to estimate position coolly and rapidly. Martin saw that the intruders were unarmed, and though he was aware of hostility, he felt no apprehension of an appeal to the argument of immediate force. Before Butcher could speak he had taken control of the situation.

“You needn’t wait,” he said to Phillips; and then, turning to Helen, “I don’t suppose you or Claire will want to, either. I suppose these gentlemen wish to talk to me. But there’s no reason that Betty shouldn’t clear the table.”

His tone was quiet and decisive, but Butcher broke in brusquely, though with a voice which was little louder than his own, “The women had better stay.”

Martin met his glance with one of courteous wonder. “The ladies will please themselves,” he said, as one who states the obvious. “Won’t you sit down?”

To be just, we must observe that the dead Stacey had his part in setting the tone of this interview. The room had an air of leisured dignity, such as was already fading from the memories even of those who had been accustomed to such surroundings. It was improbable that such another room existed in the houses which were now occupied, or which remained derelict and unplundered.

The men sat, though doubtfully. Helen and Claire went out.

Martin said, “Perhaps you’ll tell me why you’ve called so—abruptly.” His tone was light, but conveyed subtly that they had placed themselves in the wrong by their mode of entrance, as though they had advanced a plea of inferiority.

Butcher answered, unabashed, “We’ve come to find out who you are, and to take charge of the woman. We have come in the names of about ninety men by whom we have been nominated to see you. We don’t want any trouble, but the woman must come with us.”

The words were suave enough, but the tone was rasping. Martin did not reply instantly. He looked at his questioner. The scrawny throat worked curiously. The left hand appeared to be shrivelled, as by neuritis. The man’s clothing was soiled and slovenly, but Martin was too used to appraising his fellow-men not to know that he had been of some social status in the old days.

Physically, he judged him to be a wreck, as he was—and with additional infirmity arising from the exposures of the first days. Yet, like many others, he was finding a returned vitality. Hardship and exposure had killed many. In many they had developed latent diseases. But those who had not died were, in many instances, finding a degree of health beyond their previous imaginations.

Butcher, on his part, was aware of the atmosphere of the room, and of the quality of his opponent. He had not guessed that Stacey had a house like this. Even his old residence in Westfield Road had not contained a room of such quiet luxury—and now his headquarters were a range of cellars! Good cellars, no doubt. Light and dry. But cellars all the same. Martin, armed by old practice for a battle which must be of wits, not weapons, countered his attack with a curter query.

“Who are you?”

Butcher said, “I am Henry Butcher. This is my son. This is James Pellow, one of Tom Aldworth’s set.”

Martin recognized the hit. How much did Butcher know of the support that Tom had promised? Of the plan that had been based on so insecure a foundation? What was the significance of one of Tom’s party, if such he were, being a member of this intrusion?

Showing no sign of his thought, he answered in turn, “I am Martin Webster. I have been living farther south, where the land is deserted. I came here yesterday. Tom arrived very opportunely, when I was attacked by some lawless rogues that you had turned out of this part of the country. After that I took control of his party, at their own request. You seem to need someone to do that, judging by what was going on when I arrived.”

Butcher refused this gambit. He held to the object which had brought them.

“It’s the women we want,” he answered. “How many are there?”

“There are three women in this house,” Martin replied, with precision. “I understand that one has been here from the first. She is Phillips’s wife. I don’t suppose you want her. Of the two others, one came with me. The other has been my wife for many years.”

“Yes,” said Butcher, “I heard that. Well, you can take your pick. You can’t have both.”

“I hadn’t heard of that law,” Martin answered, smiling slightly. “I was told that the women chose. Now you say that I can pick which I will! Have you made a new law today?” He turned to the melancholy blacksmith, who had not spoken, and who now shook his head, without breaking his silence.

“No?” said Martin, smiling again. “Don’t you think you should know your own laws before you come to explain them to me?”

Butcher answered, with a higher note in his voice, for he was angered by the tone of banter that met him, “I haven’t come to argue here. You can do that tonight. You’ve got to bring her to Cowley Common—one or both—by two hours before sunset. If you’re not there, you’ll get fetched.”

“I shall not come tonight,” Martin answered coolly. “I am calling a meeting for Thursday. We shall all come to that. I shall have something to say then.”

James Pellow spoke for the first time. “Thursday?” he said vaguely. Like so many others, he had ceased the counting of either dates or days. After disputes, and confusions, and discordant reckonings, the attempt had been very generally abandoned. What need was there of such reckonings when no one recollected beyond yesterday, nor planned beyond tomorrow? And, apart from this, there was a feeling among many that they had been a part of the old servitudes. They had the taint of the compelling sound of the factory siren.

But Stacey’s calendar still hung on the wall, and it had been one of Betty’s duties to correct it daily. Otherwise Martin might have known no better than the men who faced him. But there was no need to mention that!

“Yes,” he said, “Thursday. It’s Monday now.”

He would have said more, but Butcher broke in.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but—”

Martin interrupted quickly. There was something in the working of that scrawny neck which had brought another scene to his mind.

“Oh, yes, you do. I was Courtfield Against Marlow. I cross-examined you about the date on which the transfers were executed.”

Butcher did not often show his thoughts, but he had been ruffled throughout by the tone which the interview had taken, as Martin may have meant that he should be, and he was now obviously startled by the unexpectedness of the retort. In the second of silence that followed Martin turned from him, and addressed himself to James Pellow directly.

“If you’re a friend of Tom’s, he’ll tell you that we’re not coming to any meeting tonight, because I’m not ready, and I’ve got other things to do. Thursday is three days from now—it’s Monday now—and on Thursday we shall come, and I hope every one else will be there. After that we shan’t waste much time in meetings, unless some of us want to starve when the cold comes.

“Tell Tom I depend on him to see that there’s no trouble tonight. As to that, he knows what he’s to do. But if anyone comes here to make it they’ll get plenty.”

He turned to Butcher as he continued, I don’t want to quarrel. It will be better for all of us if we can work together. It’s only Cooper who’ll profit if we fall out. Can’t you wait three days? I shall be ready then to discuss everything.”

Thus addressed, Pellow did not reply, but he looked round at Butcher, as though expecting him to do so. Butcher hesitated. He disliked Martin for several reasons. He thought him dangerous. He had never troubled about Tom. He considered that he was more astute, and that he had become more powerful, in his own way, than Tom was ever likely to be. It suited his plans quite well that Tom should busy himself in defence of the community. In fact, with his own defence, among others. And he was entirely pleased that Cooper should have his following also. There would always be such as these to keep the peace, or to quarrel between themselves, so that wiser men might prosper. But the real power was his. His more securely with every day that passed. The power of wealth.

He did not hesitate because Martin’s words were conciliatory, or his voice persuasive. He did not intend that Martin should control this community, unless he could control Martin, which he thought unlikely. Nor did his mind deviate from the object which had brought him there. Like his son, and Pellow, he had no wife. He bitterly resented, in his secret mind, that no woman had shown him favour, even with the solid advantages which he could offer. But he was not one to seek his ends by obvious or violent means. He had tried threats, which had failed. And he recognized that to threaten further would be of no avail, whatever might be the sequel. He thought that Martin would be beaten, and the wish went with the thought. But suppose he were not? There would be no advantage in having committed himself to an open enmity.

He rose slowly, signalling by a jerk of his hand for his son and Pellow to do the same.

“You’ll come today,” he said, “if you’re wise. If you don’t, it’s your risk, not mine. I’ll tell the men what you say, but it isn’t likely they’ll wait. We’ve warned you fairly.”

With these words they had reached the door, and with no further leave-taking they went out.

Martin followed to the outer door, and watched them go up the road together. He saw that Pellow had found a voice, and that Butcher gave him what appeared to be a facetious answer.

He went back into the house, and found the women together. Under Betty’s guidance, they were busily occupied in reviewing the resources of the establishment.

“Well?” said Helen, as he approached. She was interested, rather than concerned. She had an acquired confidence in Martin’s ability to deal successfully with any difficulty which might confront him—a confidence which he might not find it easy to sustain, under the conditions of life which were now before them.

“Only talk, so far. But we mustn’t take it too lightly. I want Phillips.” He went on to find him.

Chapter Forty-Six

“Phillips,” he said. “What’s Butcher?”

It appeared that Butcher was medicine and commerce. He was more than that. He was wealth and power. He had made his habitation in the ruins of Helford Grange. Fire had levelled it with the ground, but the cellars were dry and extensive, and in these he lived, with about a dozen followers, including his son, who had been a medical student in his third year.

The younger Butcher, and a woman who had gained some experience as a dispenser, and who was also of their party, were the only two known to be remaining alive who had any knowledge of medicine or surgery as it was practised in England in pre-deluge days. This fact alone gave him an assured status, and assisted to enable him to accumulate stores with impunity, which another might have found it difficult either to acquire or hold.

From the first, Butcher had set his mind to the cornering of various articles, mostly of the less bulky order, which he foresaw would be in demand after their supplies became restricted. He had traded these articles fairly enough, and had continued to accumulate with diligence. He had enlisted the help of several men, especially such as had particular knowledge which could be usefully employed, and who were of that order of mentality which can give good results under the influence of a stronger will, but is not separately formidable.

He claimed that there was nothing which could not be obtained from Helford Grange, if the price which he asked were paid—a price in other articles of his own naming.

He did not usually supply his customers’ requirements immediately, but would state a day on which they would be in readiness. This may have been unavoidable in some cases, and he may have gone to much trouble and search to maintain the reputation which he desired, but it is probable that it was more often the result of a policy of concealing the extent and variety of his accumulations.

His followers were quiet and industrious. They did not menace the interests of their fellows in any open manner. They carried no arms. They took no sides. They had declined, under his instructions, to take part in the conflicts which had resulted in the expulsions of Bellamy and Cooper. If there were any provision for the defence of the Grange itself, it was not outwardly visible, nor apparent to those who called there for advice or barter.

Neither he nor his followers produced anything. They lived by barter and acquisition. Under the conditions which had prevailed, they cannot be considered entirely predatory or parasitic. Their activities must have resulted in the conservation of many useful things which might otherwise have been destroyed or wasted.

Martin observed that an ascendancy was being established which was not based on physical force, and with which he might have to reckon seriously and promptly if another authority were not to be developed beside his own, which might ultimately prove the stronger, and of a very doubtful benevolence.

He reflected that the problems of government are always the same. The civil power and the power of finance are at perpetual issue. Here was the old power in a new form, and he must conciliate or uproot it.

He was aware that the repeated lesson of history is that autocracy cannot continue unless it be allied with those who govern in finance and commerce.

King John had drawn the teeth of financiers, but in the end they had accomplished his ruin.

The Tudors had allied themselves with finance, and had established an absolute monarchy. Was it not the power of finance alone which had delayed the Armada for twelve vital months, while the Spanish Philip had learnt in bewildered wrath that his orders for Baltic stores were refused, on a hint from the London merchants, until he should have paid in cash against a pro forma invoice?

When the Stuarts preferred the agricultural interest, had not finance turned and destroyed them?

It was a truth which could be illustrated from every chapter of the history of civilization.

If he would establish an autocracy of any kind, he must control or conciliate commerce, in whatever form he should meet it. But did he wish to do so? Should not his aim be rather to establish a freer democracy than the older world had known? But even so, was it not under such conditions that finance became the more intolerable menace the more dominant power?

Suppose that the better aim should be to establish a simpler form of living than had been the ideal of the earlier days? An agricultural community, in which the manufacturing and trading interests should be controlled, if not eliminated? Even then, would not the financier triumph?

Was not the Mosaic Law an example of the difficulty of formulating a code which could resist such dominance? There would, at least, be one of its provisions—the prohibition of usury—which he would do well to remember.

There were few of the drowned world from which he came who would not have mocked the thought. Its industrial and commercial systems had been built on that foundation, so that it might have become impossible that they should survive its withdrawal. Yet he saw it for what it had been, with all its splendour—a palace built on sand—or, rather, upon a swamp of more sinister potentialities.

So his mind wandered, and he must recall himself to the insistent needs of the moment. And yet the rapidity of thought is such that it had been but a passing minute, while Phillips stood, silent and deferential, awaiting his further questions.

But he only said, “Thanks, Phillips. That will do,” for the thought which was now in his mind was one which was best left unspoken. What was the significance of Pellow’s presence with Butcher? Pellow, who was said to be of Tom Aldworth’s party. Pellow, who could not be drawn into speech.

It might mean much or little, but he would ask nothing which might be construed into a doubt of Tom’s loyalty, or of his ability to influence his own party successfully. He was already realizing something of the isolation of those who rule: gaining something of their habit of reticence.

He was puzzled also as to the significance of Butcher having appeared as the leader of the deputation. He had kept himself aloof from all previous controversy, as the trader will, till he considers that his purse is jeopardized too seriously for further quietude.

Possibly his attitude might be still undecided. Possibly he had come to form his own opinion of the proposed ruler. Possibly he might have spoken differently if Pellow had not been present.

Martin considered that it was unlikely that he had been actuated by a simple desire that Claire should be surrendered. From her own account of her interview with him, it appeared improbable that he could hope that any personal advantage would follow. He might conceivably have been actuated by a desire to revenge the insult which he had received, but Martin judged that his feelings would not easily deflect his judgment on such a question.

But all this was speculation, and might be absurdly far from reality, though it might well be that by the success of such guessing he would stand or fall.

His mind faced an urgent issue, which might be vital. Was there cause to fear an immediate hostility from those whom he had refused to meet till his own time, and should he make defensive preparations of any kind against that contingency?

He had given instructions to Tom to deal with such a position, and he did not think he would fail him. But he might be finding an unexpected difficulty in keeping his party together.

Martin recognized that, by his own dispositions, he was alone, and almost defenceless, against a combined attack Alone with Phillips and three women and two children. Protected only by the prestige which he had established, and the improbability that such hostile elements as might be arraying themselves against him would act without the knowledge of those on whose support he must rely, and with such concerted promptitude.

He recognized that his attitude in regard to Claire had placed a ready weapon in the hands of all who might desire to oppose him.

More than that, it gave a motive for hostility to many who might otherwise have been well disposed to his cause. And even those who had given him their adherence had done so before this question had arisen to test them.

Yet he did not think it likely that there would be any attack to be feared that day, or that it would be made without warning. He trusted Tom. Besides, there was Jack Tolley, whom he had not seen since his coming to Stacey’s house. He did not think that Jack was very enthusiastic in his support, but he was one who would very certainly be loyal to the side he had taken, and he was one who could be trusted to watch, and to judge the position well, and to give warning, if it should be needed.

Finally, he decided that the probability of any danger threatening the women without sufficient warning was too slight for it to be expedient that he should be observed making preparation against it. Above all, he must show confidence…. It might have been better to go at once to this meeting that they had offered, and to have faced them at once, with Claire beside him, trusting to the ascendancy which he had already gained, and to his ability to control an audience.

But having decided differently, having challenged them at the outset by saying that they must meet him at his own time, it was essential that he should show no fear of the security of his own position.

Thinking thus, he let the hours pass. His mind was busy with many plans and speculations that jostled one another, so that he had an unaccustomed difficulty in keeping his thoughts on any single issue.

On two sides of Stacey’s library bookshelves rose from floor to ceiling. He began to examine these volumes. They had acquired an altered importance.

He could not tell how widely, or how utterly, his civilization had fallen. But it was at least probable that a thousand years of human effort had disappeared beneath Atlantic waves.

It might rest with him to decide how much or little should be done to conserve the wrecks of the old literatures, of the old sciences, of the old philosophies and religions…

Stacey’s library was as cultured and varied as had been the contents of his own mind. Fiction and belles-lettres predominated. In the bulk, these books appeared to Martin to have become of a doubtful value. Certainly the more modern fiction, with its morbid introspection, its lack of humour, and of any sane estimate of relative values, its assumption of the normality of vicious living, its lack of fortitude or of ideality, would have little to offer that men would longer care to read, or which could be worth their reading. At the best, they were unimportant. They could await the verdict of leisure.

There was some biography…. That could wait also.

There was a good deal of history. His eye fell on Motley’s Dutch Republic, on Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. He passed along the shelf in a thoughtful silence.

Then he came on a little group of scientific text-books. They may have been the best of their kind, but they could contain little beside the total of knowledge—physical, chemical, biological—that the ages had accumulated and the seas had covered. Still there could be no other end. It had been inevitable—always. It was only the date which had been unknown, which must always be uncertain. Did not every civilization that the earth had known begin with a tale of flood, and of the few that survived it?

It seemed pitiful, if this were all that remained from so large a harvest. But there must be other books elsewhere.… And yet, if all were gone, was it so entirely regrettable? They had held such power for good—and for evil also. It was hard to say.

And beyond these he came on a little group of the disciples of the hoary cult of the Witch of Endor. He read “Oliver Lodge,” “Arthur Conan Doyle,” on the covers. He did not doubt that they were well-meaning men, not intending harm to any. Men so much to the liking of their own time that they had both been knighted. Humble men, who accepted without protest the verdict that a knighthood is the fitting reward of their calling from politicians who would not have dared so to insult a successful brewer or barrister.

Martin was something other than a typical lawyer, but he could not avoid a flicker of contempt for the ineffectual. To refuse a title is one thing. To accept a fifth-rate article from a man who would have despised it for himself….

He became aware that he was wasting time on trivialities that the floods had ended.

As for the books, it seemed incredible that they should influence any but the feeble-minded; yet he knew in the past…. Well, Betty should burn them tomorrow.

But how, he wondered, could the best of the old knowledge, or at least some of it, be conserved, and its falsehoods ended? Who could be competent to discriminate? Could he claim such competence? Were he of the generation that would follow, would he not resent such action having been taken?

This last thought brought another. What could be the system of education on which the next generation would be reared? He saw that this would bear directly upon the earlier question. The peculiarity of recent years had not been the extent so much as the wide distribution of knowledge among those who had little inclination or capacity to digest or co-ordinate it. Many thousands who never exercised their minds at all…. The increased leisure that had been almost universal…. Not that they had lived quietly. Far from it. But the hours given to routine labour had been abnormally short—had been shortening continually, even as the labour itself had been specialized further into more intolerable monotonies.

Previously there had been a small section of the community who were expert in arts and sciences of which others were ignorant. The farther back we inquire, the more primitive the conditions we encounter, the more marked is this division, till we find, at the foundation of every civilization, a priestly order reserving to itself a body of inherited knowledge, which the general community is permitted to approach, if at all, only by the medium of allegorical tales, the true meaning of which is quickly lost, even if explanation be given.

Which was the better way? Martin saw that the question was not a simple one. A privacy of knowledge places a great power in hands that may abuse it. Against this was the fact that knowledge given out to a whole people becomes uncontrollable, either for good or evil. And how much knowledge there is, curious to acquire, which can be used for evil only! Even should a new poison be discovered, its nature and use would be made known to all men, even though the civil power, acting at a somewhat higher level of sanity, might make regulations to hamper its distribution.

Perhaps there was no absolute answer. The great error of the latest developments of Western civilization had been its tendency to treat all men as alike and equal. An equality of opportunity might be good—might be ideal—but it had gone beyond that. There were some volumes of The Golden Bough upon the shelves beside him. They brought recollection of a stray sentence of their author—he could not recall exactly where it occurred—“No abstract doctrine is more false and mischievous than that of the natural equality of men.” That, at least, was an error which he could avoid without difficulty. It is not one which finds nourishment in the soil of primitive circumstance.

He saw that knowledge had been made a fetish, so that those who pursued it were regarded as though they could do no wrong. Knowledge, under its new name of science, was a sacred thing, however foul or foolish, or by whatever cruelty it might have been obtained. Even the chemists who had increased the horrors of human conflict had not been reasonably exterminated when that conflict ceased….

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.

Martin felt that this man could help him in many ways, and that his goodwill would be worth getting. He wondered how he could win a similar confidence.

“We mustn’t ask you to stay now,” he said. “We know the tide won’t. But, if I may, I’ll come and call on you tomorrow. I should like another talk when we’ve more leisure.”

It had entered his mind that to offer to go alone into Burman’s territory, after what had happened to the adventurous Arter, would be a sign of confidence which might attain his end, but he quickly learnt his mistake.

Burman was half-way to the door when he spoke, and he swung round instantly.

“No,” he said, with a note of anger in his voice, for which there seemed little provocation. “I allow no one my side.” Then he paused abruptly, as though a new thought had entered his mind. He looked at Helen, who had risen courteously at his abrupt signal of departure.

When he spoke again the anger had left his voice, which had a note of hesitation, even of awkwardness, of which he had shown no sign previously. “If you like,” he said, “I’ll take the girl.”

“I think not,” Martin answered quietly. The proposal was as puzzling as it was audacious. It might be a jest, or a foolish insolence. But Martin did not judge the man as likely to err in such directions. In the present social disorder, it might even be taken as a serious offer of marriage. He might not understand the existing relationships.

Helen stood silent and self-possessed. A smile at the absurdity of the suggestion parted her lips. She was no more sure than Martin that she understood, but she felt no resentment. In fact, she liked being called a girl. She was proud of the youthful slimness which had survived the ordeal of motherhood.

Burman was quickly conscious of the ambiguity of his proposal. He added, “If you trust me, I’ll trust you. She shall come back tomorrow, if the calm lasts.”

“I think not,” Martin repeated. “I trust you well enough, but the suggestion is unreasonable. There is no occasion for hostages. It would mean possible discomfort to no good purpose. If you wish to work with us we shall be glad; but, if not, I think you will be the loser.”

“You offered to come yourself. I only want to be left alone.” He appeared to realize that the proposal was hopeless, and attempted no further argument, but he was plainly disappointed at the refusal.

“I don’t mind going,” said Claire.

She spoke impulsively. The love of experience, of adventure, may have impelled her, but she was aware also that the impulse sprang from that clear and sudden realization that Helen would always be the “official wife.” If she were to do her part to make a success of the strange ménage into which fate had thrown them, it was outside the house, rather than in it, that she must prove her value. It was fundamental that she thought less of what might be gained than given.

She had formed her own opinion of Burman, and did not fear him. Beyond that, she felt that there must be some reason for such a proposal, and she was of some curiosity to probe it.

Her words drew the glances of those around her in a surprise which was general.

Helen made an exclamation of protest. It sprang not only from a generous objection to an ambiguous and perhaps dangerous enterprise, but from a sudden realization that she wished to keep Claire beside her, that she was already relying, in an atmosphere of dimly apprehended dangers, upon the more buoyant and vigorous personality of this strange protagonist.

Claire looked to Martin as she spoke, and saw the assent which quickly followed his first surprise and reluctance. He would much rather have gone himself. He would have rejected the thought of Helen going alone, even had she been willing—which it would be difficult to imagine—with an abrupt finality. But Claire was different. He did not think that any treachery was intended, though there was an impression of mystery, which might prove to be of much account or of little.

The thought was in his mind that they had taken hands at a game which could not be played without risks, and that these risks would be greater should they hesitate to meet them boldly.

Burman looked directly at Claire for the first time. Previously, his attention had been directed to Martin: his admiration to Helen. His offer had been deliberate, with a motive which they could not know. It had been to take Helen. Not any woman who might offer.

Claire was conscious of a glance that was shrewd and penetrating. She felt that she was being comprehensively appraised, as might have been a heifer at Helford market six months ago. But it was too impersonal for resentment.

“I can’t wait more’n a minute,” he said, and Claire, rightly taking this for assent, answered, “I shan’t be half,” and went out of the room.

Helen followed her at once. They heard her voice, “You’ll need—” as the door closed.

“She’ll be quite safe?” Martin asked.

“Yes—if the calm lasts.”

Martin said no more on that point. He had not been thinking of the danger of water.

A minute passed, and Burman glanced restlessly at the door. He was clearly uneasy at the delay.

“Sister?” he said abruptly.

In a few words Martin told him the true position, including the claim upon Claire which was being made by the rest of the community. He felt he could judge the man by how he accepted the confidence.

Burman gave no indication of his thoughts. “You won’t loose her?” he queried.

“No. What I have, I hold. It is how they wish it to be…. I shall meet them with their own law ‘The women choose.’ We did not intend the position, but, it having arisen, it seems the only right thing to do.”

Burman offered no opinion on the ethical aspects of the problem.

He said, “I’d back you’d come to in a scrap.”

It was not all that was in his mind. He would have congratulated Martin on the fortune which had given him not merely a plurality of wives when his neighbours lacked them (which might not be universally regarded as an unmixed advantage), but upon the more evident fact that they both appeared to be of more than average quality.

But he was not a man of fluent speech, except upon farming topics. Had he attempted it, he would probably have remarked that they were both cup-winners, or commented favourably upon their potentialities of procreation. Which is not to say that he was a fool, which he certainly was not; nor that he was not a gentleman, on which it may be best to reserve opinion, but he had not, like Martin, made an occupation of the use of words.

He was an expert farmer—which is one of the most difficult and exacting of human occupations—and his vocabulary, like his seed-corn, was chosen for utility only….

Claire, being a woman, was more than the half-minute she promised. Had it been otherwise it would have been useless to write it, being incredible.

But, though she was more than half a minute, she was less than ten, which may be accounted for righteousness.

She had, in fact, little preparation to make, having improved her garments earlier in the day, to the extent that either Helen’s or Betty’s resources, and the extremity of her own needs, had rendered possible, and had had a moment’s annoyance that Martin had not noticed the change.

During her present retirement she appeared to have done no more than to resume the belt of yesterday, with the knife and pistol which she had used to such good purpose in the tunnel fight of two days ago.

If she had made other provisions for the night’s absence, they were not outwardly visible It must have been some months since her head had known anything but its natural covering against either rain or sun.

Burman looked at her belted ironmongery with more interest than satisfaction.

“If you don’t come friendly—” he began.

“It’s not for you, it’s before,” Claire answered, with sufficient clarity.

Burman nodded. “We’d best be moving,” he said restlessly.

Claire followed him through the door, waving a hand of casual parting. “Back tomorrow…. Take care of the chestnut,” her voice came back cheerfully through the closing door.

Chapter Forty-Eight

“Will she be safe?” Helen said doubtfully, as the sound of their steps receded. She was not quite easy in mind, feeling obscurely that Claire had taken a risk to which she had been invited, and which she should therefore have accepted if anyone were to do so.

This was unfair to herself, for there was no necessity for anyone to have done it, and it had been Claire’s own proposal that she should go; but feelings are not logical. She was aware also, that Claire was better able to protect herself than she would have been in any possible complications.

Martin answered, “I think she’ll be safe enough. It’s queer that he should refuse my offer, and yet be willing to take a woman. There’s something we don’t understand yet…. I don’t suppose she gave it a thought, but it’s a fact that it removes her from the scene for the time, if Butcher or the others should try to make any trouble.”

Helen recognized the cool quickness of mind which seemed to give Martin time for analysis and decision under any urgency of circumstance. She did not think of this, it was a familiar knowledge. It gave serenity to her own mind, though the “two hours before sunset” were already passing, and Butcher’s threat was upon them.

Then Jack Tolley came, bringing a pheasant which he had shot, and this being delivered into Betty’s capable hands, he came into the library.

“There’ll be no trouble today,” he reported. “There’s been a heap of talk, and some quarrelling, but our lot knew their own minds, and the rest didn’t. Briscoe talked big about what he’d do, and Pellow keeps quiet, and Butcher’s trying to make all the trouble he can, without coming into the front row, but I think they mostly mean to wait to hear what you’ve got to say.… I think you’ll get them all to the meeting…. It’s what happens then that’s going to settle it.… Pellow may need watching. He’s quiet, and stubborn. His sister’s married to one of Butcher’s men.… He helped us turn Bellamy out. He’s a good fighter.… But he wouldn’t come with us this last time. I don’t know why. He’s hard to drive, but if he trusts you he’ll come willing…. Tom’s been after Burman. He thinks he might help.”

He began to explain about Burman. Martin stopped him to tell him of what had happened, and of Claire’s going.

Jack made no comment, being unsure whether he had been told all the truth, or what else might underlie her departure.

Martin asked if he could stay for a time. He had a project of compiling a complete register o£ the population of his new dominion, with details of each individual. In particular, what occupations they had previously followed, so that he could have a comprehensive knowledge of the human material at his disposal.

This was work to Jack’s liking. He was used to the pen. He liked method. He would willingly stay for an hour, though he must then return to his own concerns.

They were on this work together, when Phillips announced that Butcher was again requesting an interview.

It was sunset without, and the shadowing of the room was already warning them that the work could not be continued much longer. The resources of the house did not include any provision for artificial lighting under the new conditions of life. It was a problem which was only beginning to become serious as the days were shortening.

“Yes, I’ll see him,” Martin answered. “I expect we’ve done for tonight,” he added to Jack. “No. Don’t go. You’d better hear what he’s got to say this time.… Yes, of course you’ll stay.”

The last words were to Helen, who was reknitting a damaged garment for one of the children.

Butcher entered without formality. He pulled a chair up to the table, and sat down so that Martin was opposite him. He ignored the others.

“May I see you alone?”

The tone was something less than rude, but it lacked courtesy. It was not a command, but it assumed that assent would follow.

“I don’t see any need for that.”

“I think it would be better. There are one or two personal matters which I should like to talk over.”

“I am willing to hear them.”

“I would prefer to see you privately.”

“I never see anyone alone now.”

It was a decision made as it was spoken. Martin guessed that the man had come to propose some form of alliance, whether in good faith or treachery, and he had no mind that such a bond should be suspected between them. It was best that Jack should hear.

He thought that Butcher was annoyed and disconcerted, though he was too practised in control of voice and expression to disclose his feeling.

“Just as you like,” he said easily. “I only thought you might prefer it, as it’s a business talk. It doesn’t matter on my side. I ought to tell you first that I succeeded in getting you the extra time you wanted. Though it wasn’t easy.”

He turned his eyes to Jack, who had made a half-articulate exclamation at this version of the events of two hours ago, but Jack’s face was expressionless as he bent over his work, and he said nothing.

“I’ve got you the time you want,” he repeated, with added emphasis. “But what happens when we meet can best be settled beforehand. If you want the girl, I don’t say that it couldn’t be managed. Or if you want to settle Cooper, and control things here in your own way, I don’t say that mightn’t be managed either. It needs someone. But if you want both, you’ll ask too much, and you’ll get nothing. If Tom’s lot stand for it, there’s too many others that won’t.”

He paused, as though for Martin to answer, seeking to gauge the effect he had produced. But Martin only said, “Well?” as though discussing a matter in which his interest was perfunctory.

Butcher went on, “You’ve got one chance. If it were known that Tom and I would both support you, you wouldn’t have much trouble. Not at first, anyway. If you’ll say what you really mean, I may find I can make a deal. I’ve come in a friendly way to talk it over.”

“And if I won’t deal you think you can head the opposition successfully?” Martin suggested.

Butcher shook his head.

“No, I don’t quarrel,” he said, “I’ve too much to do. But you’ll fail without me. You can try if you like. You’ll learn when it’s too late.”

“I shall not fail,” Martin assured him confidently. “Don’t let that idea mislead you. It might be a dear mistake.… What do you want?”

“I want to know what you mean to do,” Butcher answered, with some reason behind him.

“I will tell you on Thursday.”

“It won’t do then. We must know before that.”

“Tell me what you want.”

Butcher did not find this easy to do. He really wanted an alliance with Martin which would have secured his commercial activities—an alliance preferably to be made in secret. But he was not yet willing to propose it plainly.

“If we were assured of peace and security—” he began.

“For what?” Martin interrupted curtly.

The interruption confused Butcher for an evident second. Then his practised suavity in negotiation resumed, and he answered readily.

“For our lives and property, and—”

“I couldn’t promise you that. As for your lives, there may be men among you who may be needed, should I decide to deal with Cooper, or should he attack us again. There will be no security till he’s finished, one way or other. And there’ll certainly be no promise of security for those who don’t help. Besides, there may be risks of other kinds to be undertaken.”

“Then you would destroy all individual freedom? Do you think you can make military service compulsory? Even service for other purposes?” Butcher shook his head sagely. “Believe an older, and perhaps a wiser, man when he tells you that it couldn’t be done. Even as things are, it couldn’t last for a week.”

Martin smiled slightly “You assume too much. I don’t intend to make anything compulsory. You can join Cooper tomorrow if you prefer. The roads are open. But I’m not going to have my best men risk their lives, and perhaps lose them, for the benefit of those who do nothing. They’ll do their part, or clear.

“Then as to property. How do I know what you have, or how you have gained it, or for what purpose it may be needed by others? Take an extreme possibility. Suppose the spring should come, and I should find that all the available seed for some necessary crop should be in your hands. What do you suppose I should do?”

“But if that were so, I should be prepared to sell it. It would not be reasonable to suppose that I should be holding it for any other purpose. Surely you would not support any man who would take it from me without payment? That would be anarchy. If you allow such things as that, no man will save anything. There will be no incentive to labour. You would reduce every man in the end to a common poverty. I suppose that you would support me in selling it at a fair price to those who would require it.”

“At a price of your fixing?” Martin answered “Not for a moment.” He leant forward, and spoke slowly and decisively: “Mr. Butcher, I would sooner hang you. If we are to work together at all, we must understand each other clearly. There will be no lack of incentive to work if I have my way. Every man shall have the fruit of his labour, and shall sell it at the highest price he can get. I have watched the other incentive—the incentive of starvation. I will have no man working on such terms that he has a scanty margin for himself after he has handed the bulk to others.

“You may sell your corn at your own price if you have grown it with your own labour. You may sell fish at your own price if you have caught it with your own nets. But not otherwise.

“That, at least, is how it seems to me that it will be best to have it.… But I may see reason to change my view. I cannot tell. You may barter for your own need, and I will protect you to hold what you gain, even though it may be coveted by others. But if you gain by barter that which you do not need, so that you may take a later advantage of the necessity of others, I may interfere to protect them…. And there is one change about which there is no doubt at all.

“There will be no charging of usury. Not even though you label it ‘interest,’ and profess that its moderation renders it harmless. A spade today has the same value as a spade three years hence. To think otherwise is to support the subtlest and most devilish slavery that the world has known.”

Butcher did not appear to resent this plain speaking, nor to regard its personal aspect. Rather, he appeared interested. He was adept at concealing his thoughts.

He said: “I have heard that kind of talk before, and it sounds well, but it won’t work. You’ll find you can’t go far without capital in some form, and you can’t use capital without some risk of loss, and you can’t have risk of loss without some prospect of gaining. You’ll find that’s the real point, and I don’t know how you’ll get over it. But perhaps you do. I shan’t interfere.”

He spoke as one who listens to a youthful folly, such as can only be taught by experience. He did not oppose. He only advised—and smiled.

Martin did not answer directly. “There is a form which all who joined us agreed to sign.” He saw that Jack had it in readiness. He passed it over.

Butcher’s face was expressionless as he read it—twice, and very carefully.

At last he said, “If I sign this, does it mean that I adopt your views, or believe in the possibility of their success?”

“No. Naturally it cannot. I cannot control your beliefs, nor could you do so yourself. But you can control your conduct—as I might do; were it necessary. It means obedience. Neither more—nor less.”

“And if I decline?”

“I shall do nothing till Thursday. After that, those who do not sign will go—how far I will tell you then. I may put them afloat.”

“You can’t do that; there are no boats.”

Martin, who, for once in his life at least, had said more than he meant, thought it best to pass the retort in silence.

Butcher made no further comment. He wrote with practised ease a somewhat illegible signature, beneath the neat regularity of Jack’s handwriting.

He rose immediately. He said, “You can have my name now. I won’t wait till Thursday. You can tell the others I’m with you. You’ll find my support’s worth having. I’ll say good-day now.”

With no further ceremony, and giving no time for reply, he turned, and went.

Helen looked at Martin with troubled eyes. “Do you trust him?” she said doubtfully.

Jack was silent. His thoughts were on the implications of what Martin had said. Was it practical? He was more concerned with immediate troubles and necessities. Much of what Butcher had said sounded reasonable enough. What they wanted was order, forethought, and industry. Martin’s ideas seemed too remote. He was not disloyal, but his mind remained open. He became aware that Martin was speaking.

“I don’t trust him at all, beyond the point at which his interest may move with ours. I suppose he came here to insure his risk. That’s a good sign. I don’t think he’ll be dangerously treacherous—not unless he were quite sure of our weakness. He may hope to use us in the end. I should say that he has patience to wait his chance.… Probably when I’m murdered and half-forgotten he’ll still be trading…. But it’s a good sign that he came. I suppose Cooper helps he prefers the whips to the scorpions. And he probably thinks he can outwit anyone who talks as foolishly as I do.… Even Jack thought I had more sense.” He turned a sudden smiling glance to Jack Tolley with the last words. But though Jack may have been surprised to learn that his mind was read so clearly, he was not disconcerted.

He answered: “No, sir. Not quite. I’m not sure that I understood. But I expect you’re right. I only thought that there are a lot of things that want doing before such questions will matter, if they ever do.… But I think you’re right about Butcher. He thinks we shall have our own way, for a time, at least, and he didn’t mean to be the last to come on to the winning side.”

“What was my mistake about the boats?”

“Well, there aren’t any. There was the one that Mrs. Webster came in, but it disappeared. And there were two others—none of them was fit for the sea. They all disappeared the same night. Then there was a sailing-boat washed ashore, badly damaged. Dick Pugh patched it up, and it went also. Every one thinks that Burman steals them, but there’s proof.”

“He seems enterprising,” Martin commented. He would know more about him when Claire returned.

But the next day came, and though the sea was calm, Burman’s boat did not appear at the expected hour, and Claire did not return.

Chapter Forty-Nine

AS he went out of the gate Burman turned to the right. It was the opposite way from that which Claire had ridden in the morning, and she looked round with an alert inquiry as the walk proceeded.

The district had been well wooded, oak and ash lining the hedges, and copses of young timber and hazel-thickets filling the hollows.

Cottages had been scattered here and there, usually well back from the road, with occasional larger houses.

Now the trees were fallen or scattered, some of them still showing a valiant effort of green on their uprising branches, though their trunks were prone, and their roots were largely extruded.

They met a man of Butcher’s with a skip of fish on his back. He passed a word of civil greeting to Burman, and gave a look of silent curiosity to his companion.

Claire judged that her departure would soon be known to others. She wondered whether any effort might be made to prevent it.

“How far is it,” she asked, “to the boat?”

“Maybe a mile—maybe more,” he answered.

“It’s a pity we didn’t use the horses,” she said. “I suppose someone could have taken them back.” She assumed that he could ride.

“You might have said so earlier. I didn’t know you’d got any,” her companion answered.

His pace was fast, even for Claire, and he seemed disinclined to talk.

He turned off from the road to the right at a broken stile. They went by a well-trodden hedge-side path, on which a young bull confronted them. It showed a red wound where it had been gored in the shoulder.

Driven from the herd by a parent twice its weight, and having been chastised for its presumption, it was in a mood to make trouble.

Its front hoofs pawed as they approached, and its head moved threateningly. Claire saw a red and sullen eye, and would gladly have turned aside, but Burman did not change his pace or direction. He had sent too many of its kind to the butcher.

Before it had made up a sulky mind whether to contest the path or to yield, it was aware of a rough push from a gun-barrel in its ribs, and a voice that made no doubt of who was master here. It turned away with a new confusion in its mind having had reason to suppose that the human race was of a somewhat softer kind. It concluded that it was a bad day for young bulls, which would have been confirmed had it understood the farmer’s thought and the words that followed.

Claire was aware of some muttered contempt for the town-bred people who had made such an exhibition possible. Then he spoke aloud. “Understand cattle?”

“Not much,” said Claire. “They seem to understand you.”

“There’s two hundred,” he said, “to be found without going very far from here. Round them up. Keep the best through the winter. Kill and salt the others. Don’t keep more than you’ll feed when the snow comes.”

He walked on in silence.

On their right was a field of oats, wind-beaten, cattle-trampled, lifting bare stems from which the grain had already fallen.

From it there came the piteous squealing of a snared rabbit.

“I can’t stand that,” said Claire. She forgot the haste of their progress, and made her way toward it.

Burman looked at her curiously, and followed.

Birds rose as they advanced, rooks, gulls, and other sea-birds, and a pair of magpies. Burman cursed audibly, seeing the dropped grain on which the birds had been feeding.

The rabbit had been snared in a run which crossed the field. Its cries ceased as they approached. They came on a woman kneeling. She pulled it out of the snare, and broke its neck with a practised hand.

“Why don’t you catch them decently?” Claire asked.

She looked up startled. She had not heard them approach. “They’re no odds,” she said sullenly.

They looked down on a brown-skinned woman, with dark, furtive eyes. She wore a red silk skirt, very soiled and tattered. It was her only garment, unless a necklace of rubies could be said to increase the total. Her left hand had been injured, and three fingers were bent like a bird’s claws.

Still kneeling to replace the snare, she looked up at Claire. She had heard of her already, though she had not seen her. She guessed who she was at once. Strange women were not numerous.

“Did you really kill him?” she asked.

“Kill who?” said Claire.

“They say you killed Bellamy.”

“Yes, he’s dead. Did you know him?” She did not suppose that anyone would have had an affection for Bellamy.

After Bellamy had been driven out the woman had chosen a placid, fair-haired giant, a miner named Vincent. She had chosen him because she liked big men. She had taken longer but not much) to learn that she disliked placidity.

The man came up as they were talking, two dead rabbits dangling from his hand, and a cudgel under his arm.

“Treat ’er cruel, ’e did,” he said, pointing a thumb at the kneeling woman.

Stooping over the snare, she made Claire no answer. It was true that he had treated her cruelly. Her broken hand was his signature. Never would she forget the brutal strength which had subdued her, nor the sight of her weaker lover lying before them with a twisted neck, and the blood trickling from his mouth. The brutal strength that had held her…and she had his child in her body now…. How she hated the woman that had killed him!

Claire was sensitive of the unspoken antagonism. Conscious also of the falling twilight, and of Burman’s urgency, she turned back to the path.

They came to a place where the land sloped down to the water. Here there had been a plantation of young firs, which had met the full force of the gale. A path had been cleared through fallen trunks and broken branches; otherwise they must have waded among them, for the storm had literally flattened them against the hillside.

Looking over dead, upstanding boughs, and green, upthrusting saplings, and weeds that often grew beyond her height in this incredible chance of unobstructed sun, Claire had short glimpses of familiar sea, until they turned right-hand, to descend a narrow eastward hollow, in which some of the smaller trees were still standing, and, as it widened, they came to the water.

The tide had turned an hour ago, and the boat, moored to a tree that grew at the water’s edge, was straining on the rope that held it.

Two men rose as they approached, and began to haul her in. One of them was a stranger to Claire. The other was Monty Beeston.

They looked at Burman’s companion with a natural wonder. Every one knew that visitors were not welcomed at Upper Helford. Perhaps she had deserted Martin for a more exclusive companionship. So they speculated silently.

There was a husky whisper from Monty as Burman dropped into the boat before her.

“Going willing?” he asked anxiously.

“Quite,” she said. “Back tomorrow.” She judged that the woman-hater would have been pleased to attempt her rescue had she denied it.

She jumped into a boat that swayed two feet below her.

The boat was small for the open sea, but heavy for a single rower. Burman had strength, but little skill. In fact, he had never seen a stretch of water larger than the local reservoir till the ocean paid him this unexpected visit.

They were in an alley of water less than twenty yards across, with wooded banks on both sides, from which they ran out quickly, as the tide drew them.

Burman was none too quick in getting the boat’s head straight, and the sides of the narrow channel were perilous with up-jutting trees, which Claire could dimly see as she bent over the boat’s side in the deepening dusk.

That was their first trouble. The water was full of obstacles. Burman had learnt a way of safety at full tide, but the last hour made a difference.

He told this briefly as they came clear of a little headland and the open sea was before them.

“Oh, I expect we shall manage,” she replied, with unruffled cheerfulness.

“Can you swim?” he inquired.

“Yes—a little.” The dusk hid the smile with which she answered.

“I can’t,” he said. He pulled harder. He watched the receding shore, using his left only.

Claire shipped the rudder, which had lain in the well of the boat.

“Tell me where to steer for, and we shall get on better,” she suggested.

“Can you?” he answered, with relief in his voice, for which she could see no sufficient occasion.

She looked round. Behind them, the land they had left showed abrupt cliffs, amid which the little channel from which they had issued was no longer visible.

To north and east the falling night showed nothing but open sea.

On her left hand, as she sat at the tiller, was the peninsula, or island, of Upper Helford. At this state of the tide it was completely isolated.

Lower Helford was beneath their keel. At low tide it would be barely covered. Ruined buildings, not yet completely demolished, the broken spire of a chapel, and the head of a mine-shaft would show above the water.

The eastern shore of Upper Helford was steep, though its height was not great. The raw, new coasts that were being formed by sea and wind were very different from those that had endured for millenniums. There was no sand, no smoothness. Soft soils were still being subjected to swift corrosion. Their surfaces were fanged with numerous projections of wood and stone and metal from the remains of human activities, and with the stumps of broken trees.

He rested on his oars for a moment to give her the directions for which she asked.

It appeared that there was no place for landing on this side. They must go round the head of the peninsula, and land on its western coast.

Looking landward as he spoke, Claire noticed a herring-gull on the water, scarcely two oars’ length distant. It was not troubled by their presence. It was not troubled by the waves. One by one they seemed to slide beneath it, and pass on, and leave it serene and indifferent. The east coast of Upper Helford was about a mile in length. Already they were almost level with its northern limit. Beyond it the summer sunset had faded, and a planet brightened. Every second that Burman rested the position of this planet altered, drawing closer to the dim lift of the land’s edge.

“We are drifting fast—” she began.

“Yes,” he said. “We left it too late.” He started rowing again. “If you go for that star you’ll be about right now. We’ll have to keep close inshore as we go round, and risk it.”

The seagull had not greatly changed its position. Claire wondered whether her imagination had deceived her, and they were not really drifting so rapidly—but perhaps the current took the bird also, though the waves appeared to pass beneath it.

The water was rougher here, and they had taken a little over the side as they had lain broadside to the waves, but they rode better as the oars moved again, and the boat’s head came round to the rudder’s urging. The gull passed into the darkness behind them.

To steer toward the light of a setting star may be a sound enough method, for a time, on a still water, but with the side drift which was pulling them out to sea the proposition was different. Still, the directions were clear, and they needed no star to guide them. She must round the land as closely as she dared (or as she could), and when they were on the western side it would be time enough to ask for more definite directions as to their landing-place.

The sea was not really rough. As they came round the headland they met a breeze from the south-west, but it was not enough to disturb it greatly. But now and then they would pass through a space of more turbulent water, and once Claire thought she heard the noise of breaking waves on her right. It was too dark now to see more than a short space around them, the shadow of the coast they were passing, and a few stars that were brilliant overhead.

“Is there any land to the north?”

“You’ll see tomorrow,” was the only answer.

Burman pulled hard. He was not inclined to talk. He was, in fact, very frightened. To every man his own perils. He would rather have faced the fiercest bull that ever breathed, with a cudgel for his defence, than been here, on this night of waters, of which he had learned just sufficient to dread them.

Nor was his fear entirely unreasonable. He knew that when the tide was high there was little current, and he could keep a track of a proved depth, and make an easy landing. He had found that every minute of delay made the current stronger, and increased the hidden dangers beneath him. He knew little of the power of the helm, or of the assistance that Claire could render.

Had he been alone he might have failed in a very difficult struggle. As it was, they made their landing well enough, at a spot where a row of pollard willows showed dim heads above the water; and passing these, and crossing a submerged field, where the oars touched bottom more than once, they turned into the deep pool of a little land-locked bay, and were hailed, as they grounded on a gravel bank, by a boyish voice from the darkness.

Chapter Fifty

It is easier to pull down than to rebuild, easier to criticize the building of others than to erect a superior edifice. Martin Webster, considering his plans for the improvement of the community on the second morning of the short interval which he had claimed for thought and decision, became aware of these differences.

It was easy to see the defects of the civilization that the seas had covered.

Its laws, with which he had been exceptionally familiar, and of the administration of which he had had experience at close quarters, were too numerous, too complex, and too costly. Some of them were inequitable, and some were stupid. Their general nature was such as to enable the privileged class which administered them to grow wealthy at the expense of the state upon which it preyed—a greed which had become so arrogant that the very head of the English Government had been content or obliged to accept a lower rate of remuneration than that which was required by the law officers whom he employed.

At least, he resolved, there should be no lawyers in his new state, if he were really destined to found it. A man should bring direct complaint; and a law should be so published and so worded that all should know and should be able to understand it.

Every one conversant with litigation, as Martin had been, knows that the rights of any dispute are rarely all on one side, and that it is often of minor importance on which side the verdict falls. It is only important that the dispute shall be settled promptly, and without oppression of the losing side.

English justice had been fair enough (with some important qualifications), but it had been dilatory, operated with a routine publicity which was often regardless either of the feelings or the interests of those concerned, and always ruinously oppressive to the side against which the verdict fell.

But these were defects of procedure or administration rather than of the law itself. They were defects of age rather than youth. They were such as, having seen their evils, he could avoid very easily.

The question of the new laws which he must formulate was larger and more difficult.

There was the question of the social and political position of women, which had agitated the newspapers and tea-tables of the past civilization. Some of the political aspects of that controversy would not recur, for he had no intention of passing over the decision of any question of moment to the chance majority of a general vote.… He had not supposed when he supported their claims to increase of freedom and opportunity, from generous instinct rather than a considered judgment, that he would one day be in a position to legislate upon them.

Might there not be evidence of difference, if not of inferiority, in the fact that he was in a position to do it?

The men had chosen a leader. The women had made no effort to do so.… Possibly the whole question would resolve itself without difficulty. Yet he was unsure. He had been taught to suppose that women live subordinate or even servile lives under primitive conditions, and that this is at once a result of barbarism, and a cause from which it continues.

Yet even this did not stand out as a clear fact when he examined it closely.

The advance of civilization (if advance had been) did not show a progressive advance in the position of women which ran parallel with it.

He remembered that basic allegory of human fate in the opening chapters of Genesis, in which women were warned that the pursuit of wisdom, the advance of ‘civilization,’ would rob them of the physical equality of a savage mating, and of the intellectual precedence which is usual among all the mammalia who have the care of the young to stimulate their mental processes.

Probably the radical cause of all resulting difference was in the loss of physical equality. The women made the men work, and the men gained by losing, which is the constant equity of creation. There was no fundamental reason why the female should be physically inferior. It was not generally true of monogamous animals or birds—usually the reverse.

Then should he tell the women to dig their way to equality? He smiled at the whimsical fancy, and sighed for the futility of all efforts of government. He could think much, but he knew that he would be able to do little

Even thinking was of doubtful value.

The ideas which seemed so simple, the faiths which seemed so sure—they would recede as the mind approached to examine them—recede faster than it advanced, until they were in an atmosphere of doubt and shadow.

He knew that if he had asked a hundred people of the drowned world behind him they would have assured him that the women of their time, whether for good or evil, had advanced into a wider freedom, a greater responsibility, than had been known before to the civilization of Western Europe.

Yet when he examined this assumption it became less obvious than he had supposed.

It might be just possible to imagine a Joan of Arc in the twentieth century. It would be more difficult to imagine an Ethelfleda of Mercia. It was not a question of capacity, but of opportunity. As warrior or as administrator, the woman of a thousand years ago seemed to have had opportunities which had not been kept or recovered.

So he vexed his mind with these and a score of similar questions, and a score of times he reminded himself that they could not be of an immediate urgency, and that there were things that were. And then, when he had doubted whether the fact that he could consume the vital hours in such speculations did not demonstrate his unfitness for the position he had assumed, he became doubtful of his own doubt, reflecting that though the first steps may not go far in any direction, yet it may be everything, in the end, that they should have started in the right one.

As his thoughts wandered thus, he went on with his examination of the books around him….

He opened a book on physical jerks, which was eloquent upon the advantage of lying on the bedroom floor and waggling the legs in the air before dressing every morning. Probably it had done good in its time. But it could go to Betty now. He hoped to provide his new subjects with some more useful activities.

He came to a shelf of poetry, which included most of the acknowledged masters of English song. He had never taken poetry very seriously. He was surprised, as he opened volume after volume, to realize how little difference the floods had made to the value of these, and that there could be no thought of destruction here. His glance fell on one of Robert Browning’s lyrics, “Is she not pure gold, my mistress?” There was nothing obsolete here. “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” Yes, the poetry must remain, because it dealt with the unchangeable things.

Here was a business directory of the Midland Counties. Surely that was a book which had ended its utility. He paused in the act of consigning it to the condemned heap. Might not its tabulated list of civilized activities prove a guide by which he might avoid the oversight of any occupation which would conduce to the welfare of the new community?

He took the book to his desk, and settled to the task of analysing its contents.… It was startling to observe how few men had been engaged, even in the business circles with which it dealt, in actual production either of the necessities or comforts of life.

For this analysis, he divided them under general descriptive headings, such as Growers, Makers, Mongers, Feeders, Body-patchers, Housers, Furnishers, Heaters, Clothers, Movers, Teachers, Restrainers, Coercionists, Newsvendors, Assessors, Insurers, Stockbrokers, Bankers, Gamblers, Amusers, Lawyers, Credulity-profiteers. These main heading required much subdivision, as, for instance, the Body-patchers included Surgeons, Physicians, Chemists, Herbalists, Dentists, Chiropodists, Manicurists, Nurses, Oculists, Hairdressers, Makers of Pills and Rouges and Powders, and many others.

He had finished this, and was compiling a second and much shorter list of the occupations which were of a really useful character, when Phillips announced that Mr. and Mrs. James Hatterley had called, and that the gentleman appeared very anxious to see him.

“Show them in, Phillips,” he said, and the next moment found himself shaking hands with a small, wild-haired man, scantily and picturesquely attired, and wearing sandals of flexible leather, which he had made for his own use, with some demonstration of dexterity.

He introduced himself as a “Christian Socialist,” and by other names which indicated the birth-dates rather than the nature of his enthusiasms, and discovered a mind of somewhat confusingly contradictory beliefs and theories, and of a very angular surface.

He indicated that he had come to accept Martin’s authority, if he were satisfied of his spiritual soundness on various points of importance, but not otherwise.

Martin judged that he would himself have been quite willing to guide his neighbours to an earthly paradise, but had found them indisposed to take him seriously.

His wife was a vague-eyed woman, with untidy hair. They were one of the rare cases of a man and woman having survived the first catastrophe together, and both outliving the succeeding days of privation and violence. In this they must have shown some adaptability to circumstance, even though fortune may have done its share.

Martin let the man talk while he studied him, giving a sympathetic hearing, and, at times, acquiescence. Hatterley had a mind containing many ideas, with which it was littered untidily. He had intelligence without judgment.

Martin saw that he might be a very useful tool, if he could handle him successfully, but the handling might not be easy.

The man was of a perversely combative nature.

He had been a pacifist in the old days, ready to fight furiously for the right to deny the moral justification of fighting under any circumstances. He had abandoned this theory, under sufficient provocation; and one of Cooper’s inefficients, whose neck was permanently awry, and who trailed a damaged leg, had been a source of discouragement to any whose complexes might otherwise have prompted them to attempt the acquisition of Hatterley’s wife. That is how he would himself have stated the position. He had been the apostle of many crazes, and had believed that a study of complexes, and the interpretation of dreams with a fantastic grossness, could do something better than add a new jargon to European languages.

Martin found himself catechized as though he had been an election candidate—as, in fact, he was, though it was a candidature without a declared opponent, and one which it had been declared in advance would be asserted by force, if it should be necessary.

But force is clumsy and dangerous. To be obliged to appeal to it would be in itself a confession of failure. Martin preferred the mental weapons in which he had a trained efficiency. If he could make captures in single combats, such as this (for the lady was silent), he might hope to establish the new authority without serious opposition.

He learnt that his visitors slept in a hollow tree, and that they found it healthful. Mr. Hatterley was sure that a ‘return to nature’ would be equally beneficial for the rest of the community, who were showing a contrary tendency to re-erect their fallen dwellings, retarded only by indolence and incapacity.

Listening to the Hatterley gospel, Martin thought several things which he did not say. His mental processes were not eased by the happy faculty possessed by his visitor of confining his attention to one side of any subject with which he was occupied.

He knew that nature, having ruthlessly destroyed the more diseased or unadaptable of those that the floods had spared, was already giving a higher measure of health than they had previously known to those who had survived the ordeal. He could not tell that the same path might not be followed farther with advantage to the race, and perhaps to the individual also. But he was also aware that a king’s palace is no more ‘unnatural’ than is a bird’s nest or a fox’s earth. They are all departures from ‘nature.’ They are all artificial adaptations of environment. And an ant-hill may represent a more complex, as it certainly represents a more lasting, civilization than any which has resulted from human congregations.

It also occurred to him, though he did not say it, that the supply of hollow trees suitable for family life might be insufficient to accommodate the population for which he was assuming responsibility.

But he pleased his visitor by agreeing that wood is a better and cleaner fuel than coal, that hand-craft is better than machine-craft, both in the quality of its products and its reactions on the producers, and that many things had been wrong in the past which men of exceptional intelligence should now combine to alter.

He learnt that James had been an ardent believer in the advantages of a diet of bananas and nut-butter, of which the supplies had failed, but he was still an aggressive vegetarian. He suggested that the possibility of producing butter from hazel-nuts should be promptly investigated. He admitted that in the urgency of the interval he had become a drinker of milk, and had eaten eggs. Even fish at times…. But he appeared to look to Martin to save him from the necessity for any future depravities.

Martin replied that it was a subject to which Mr. Hatterley had probably given more thought than he had himself (James looked pleased), and he would always be glad to take it over with him as opportunity might allow. But he thought it would be inexpedient—indeed, impossible at the moment—to attach any penal consequence either to the consumption of milk, or the catching of rabbits. He pointed out that, while cows should remain, calves would continue to be a very natural consequence. About half of them would always have a radical incapacity for the production of milk, and they would almost certainly be destroyed at birth, were there no prospect that they would be eaten at a later stage of their existence, and—from their point of view—the advantage would be less than obvious.

As to the separate question of the suitability of flesh as an article of human diet, he pointed out that he was again confronted by the fact that it existed, for the moment, abundantly, whereas many alternative articles of diet were restricted or entirely lacking.

He concluded, “But I shall want your help in matters which are more urgent, and may be very difficult.”

If Mr. Hatterley were not entirely satisfied, he had the sense to see that he had got as much as he could expect, and a more open-minded reception than he could hope to meet from any other possible authority. Also, he did not like some aspects of the life of the last few months. He had felt rather hunted. He was about to say that Martin could enroll his support; when the lady spoke for the first time.

“We’re a lot better for the milk,” she said definitely.

Hearing the tone, and observing that the man accepted the dictum without protest, Martin modified his first impression. There might be more character here than was suggested by the surface indications of her colourless and rather loose-boned structure. He reflected also that few women are vegetarian at heart, whether because they are more sensible than men, less sensitive, more selfish, or more naturally carnivorous.

Perhaps it may only be that they are dominated more absolutely by the herd instinct. They are never quick to believe that a majority can be wrong. They are rarely willing to face singularity for a theory. Beyond that, they are less moved by generalities. To excite their sympathies you must not talk to them of cattle, but of a particular cow, and, if possible, it should be one which they have seen quite recently.

This difference may show that women have less imagination than men, or, at least, that some women, of one race, at one time, may have had less.

Whether this difference had been fundamental, or the result of lives of more limited opportunity, was a question on which civilization had been experimenting when the flood had offered its own solution to all its problems. Perhaps now.… Martin became aware that his thoughts had wandered.

His visitor was talking about cows.

“Not so much as you might suppose,” he was saying. “Some people have got cows that are milking well, but more of them are going dry because they haven’t been properly milked or fed. If they’re shut up in a byre they’re a lot of trouble to feed, and if they’re left in the fields they break out sooner or later and join the wild ones.… Most of the wild ones have got calves now, but it’s not safe to go near them…. Gerda can.” He looked at his wife with approval.

“They don’t mind me,” she said, with the same definiteness as before.

Martin felt that the subject of milk was exhausted.

He had a thought that he might find a use for these people, which would remove one from the list of the immediate things that he had resolved to put in hand.

He left his desk, and went over to the table, inviting his visitors to come forward also. He spread out a large-scale map of the county, with which the library had supplied him. He pointed to Helford and Cowley Thorn, indicating the coast as they knew it.

He went on, “We suppose, from many evidences, that we are on an island of very limited area, but even that we hardly know as a fact. Of this supposed island we are familiar with the north-east corner. Some of us have been down the east coast, the length of which is about sixteen miles in a straight line. From the south-eastern corner I know myself that the land is flooded as far as sight extends. There are some who have penetrated inland for ten miles or more, and have found little but deserted country, and the ashes that once were towns, but they have not reached a farther coast.

“The man we captured from Cooper’s gang says that they have gone farther in search of horses with the same experience.

“Now what I want is someone who will follow the coast completely round, and who will have sufficient intelligence to make a reliable report upon it.

“Would you do this?

“It may be difficult, or even dangerous.

“It seems unlikely that we are the only people living, particularly along the northern coast, of the extent of which we know nothing. But you will notice this. Beyond Helford there was the high common of Cranleigh Chase, extending for about seven miles, and for that distance there was no north-ward road. Beyond that, the principal main road runs east, north-east, and would not be generally chosen for a northward flight. But if the northern coast extends to, or beyond, that point, there may be as many people there, or more, than we have here.

“Anyway, it is best to know.”

James Hatterley looked at his wife. Evidently, he had no thought of going alone. But he looked eager. A new project excited him.

His wife said, “Yes, we’d do that.” She looked pleased also.

Martin was well content. They would do it more intelligently than most, and they might be a nuisance at close quarters during the next few weeks.

James Hatterley had a somewhat similar thought. He considered that Martin’s supporters might have some strenuous experiences before them, which he had no passion to share. But he understood wilderness living, and keeping to cover when safety required it

Let him have a tracing of the map, and he would mark the coast-line upon it. If it were no more extensive than they supposed, he should be back in a fortnight—perhaps sooner.

They went off in a very satisfied temper, leaving Martin to wish that he could find congenial work for all his new subjects with an equal ease.

Chapter Fifty-One

AS the boat grounded Claire saw a boy’s form appear vaguely out of the darkness, with an exclamation of reproach for the lateness of the return, which was checked abruptly—no doubt, she thought, as her presence was recognized.

“It’s all right, Chris. Tie her up now, and come on. We’ll talk at the house,” said Burman, as he lifted a small sack from the bottom of the boat and led the way into the darkness, with Claire behind him.

“Careful here,” he warned her, a moment later, as he began to mount some steps in a confronting wall of blackness. “There’s no rail, but you’ll be right if you follow close.”

She could scarcely see the steps, but she realized the advantage of ‘following close’ under such circumstances, and did her best to keep pace with one who climbed an accustomed way. It seemed that the steps, which were of wood, ran up the side of a cliff that rose like a wall, so that she could steady herself with a hand that pressed against it as she climbed.

It was lighter as they gained the top, and followed a narrow path between bushes of prickly gorse—a path that began to descend, after a stile had been crossed, and came to a field where cows bulked dimly, to some farm-buildings, and beyond these to the farmhouse itself.

It was not more than five minutes’ walk, and they were entering the kitchen as Chris joined them after securing the boat.

An oil-lamp was just alight on the table, and Burman turned it up, showing a low, oak-beamed room, with a large and ancient hearth.

“I thought you’d need it tonight, Dad,” said the voice behind them.

“We haven’t had a light yet. We go to bed when it gets dark,” Burman explained. “We save here.”

Claire was conscious that she was being inspected with some curiosity, and that introductions were lacking.

“I expect your son—” she began.

“Daughter,” Burman corrected.

“Your daughter is rather surprised that you’ve brought a visitor.”

“She’s very glad to see one,” said Chris. “I expect you’re hungry. Dad’s usually starved when he comes back.”

Claire explained that they had had a meal not very long before, but Burman dismissed the idea. Chris would fry them some ham and eggs. He sat down heavily in a fireside chair, after inviting Claire to one that was opposite. He had rowed hard, and was feeling exhausted by the physical effort, and by the strain of his fear that they would have been driven out to sea.

“We’ll leave talk till tomorrow,” he said, but whether he spoke to her or to his daughter Claire could not tell. She was content to be silent herself, and to observe the ways of her new acquaintances.

She watched Chris, adroitly active with the frying-pan, and decided that she would still have taken her for a boy, had she not been informed differently.

The girl may have guessed the observation which she was receiving, for she looked round at Claire, and saw her clearly for the first time in the light of the leaping fire. For the lamp only illuminated the table, and made the shadows visible round it.

Meeting Claire’s eyes, she broke into a moment of laughter.

“They’re Sam’s,” she said. “Some he left. I looked awful in them at first, but I’ve filled out since then.”

She still looked slim enough.

“I was just his height, so they don’t do so badly now…. I suppose you’re staying with us tonight, but I don’t know where we shall put you up. I don’t expect Dad thought of that.”

The words might have seemed inhospitable if spoken differently. But they held a light-hearted friendliness which robbed them of ungracious meaning.

Her father, who had been considering the problem for the last few minutes—it was true that he had not thought of it earlier—was relieved to hear it mentioned.

“There’s good straw over the hen-loft,” he ventured with some timidity.

“She can’t sleep there, Dad.”

“She’s slept on worse than straw,” said Claire. “It sounds heavenly.” She yawned as she spoke, for it had been a long day of some incident, and she was conscious of a healthy tiredness.

“We can’t do better for tonight, Chris. Now can we?” her father asked.

Claire thought of a time, not many months ago, when she had slept on a bare patch of land that the seas submerged daily—slept till she was washed by the returning waves, and had to leave her haven for that last swim that had so nearly ended…. She made it clear that the straw would not be unwelcome.

* * * * * * *

She had promised not to leave the loft before Chris should call her, lest the men should be surprised at her presence, but the undertaking was needless, for she was still sleeping when the noise of the pushing-up of the trap-door disturbed senses which had become alert, even in sleep, to the danger of surrounding movement.

She half rose from the depths of the clean straw in which she had buried herself as Chris advanced toward her.

“No, don’t get up. I want to talk to you here. I’ve got ten minutes. I’ve told Ned that I shan’t take him out today unless he does the pig-feeding. I shall have breakfast ready in half an hour. You won’t take that long to get ready. That’s the best of sleeping like that.”

She sat down on the floor, chin in hands, elbows on knees, and regarded Claire attentively. She gave a little sigh of relief.

“I’m not going to ask you anything now. I know Dad wants the first innings. But I want you to promise that you’ll tell the real truth, whatever Dad asks you to say.”

Claire said, “I don’t know what you mean, but that sounds easy to promise.”

“Then you do promise?”

“Yes, I’ll promise that.”

“Then that’s all right. Can you fish?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“Because I’ll take you out later on, and we can talk then. You’ll have to see Grandmother first…. I mustn’t stay now. Breakfast’s in the kitchen. I’ve told the men you won’t shoot them.”

“How many men are there?”

“Two. Three, if you count Ned.”

“Is that all there are of you?”

“Yes—except Grandmother. The boys wouldn’t stay. That’s why I’ve got Sam’s clothes. They’re better for some things—and they save mine. I don’t know when I shall get any more. We don’t get much for the fish besides tea and tobacco. Dad doesn’t mind—he says it’s safer.… But I mustn’t talk about that yet.… I really must go now.”

She jumped up lightly, and disappeared down the ladder. Then her head appeared again, as she called out, “Come inside in two minutes, and I’ll have some hot water ready. That’s what I came to say. We’re not really savages.”

Claire followed a few minutes later.

Chapter Fifty-Two

After breakfast, before the talk with John Burman which was to explain the purpose for which he had invited her, Claire had sat for more than an hour with his mother, a bedridden woman, obviously of great age, but with her faculties still clear, and had guessed something of the trouble from the anxious questioning which she had encountered, and the allusions to the granddaughter which had recurred continually.

Anyway, she was not kept in doubt when he began. He came to the point immediately.

“Well, ma’am, you’ve seen how we live, and how few we are. You can guess how we’d have fared if we’d not kept to ourselves. But it’s the girl that’s the trouble. No one knows that there’s one here, and I don’t mean that they shall. Not till times change, anyway. She’s quite safe here, though she’s a bit too free with that young lout she takes out to the fishing.”

“But she’s only a child,” said Claire.

“She’s not as young as she looks. She was at college last spring. Came home for Whitsunday, or she wouldn’t be here now. Her brothers cleared, but she chose to stay.… Well, she doesn’t like being cooped here.… The fishing kept her quiet for a time. That was her idea.… She used to go fishing in Cornwall.… So when I found a sailing-boat that we could patch up—I don’t let them keep any boats on the other side she started fishing with a net we used for the beasts.… But she’s done better than that now.… Well, she promised me she wouldn’t go over to the other side, nor be seen on this—not that that would matter so much in those clothes she’s wearing now, and she’ll keep her promise right enough while it lasts, but she’s saying every day now that it won’t last much longer.

“She knows there’s hundreds on the other side, and things happening, and she feels out of it all. When I tell her how things are, she thinks I just talk to scare her. I thought if she heard the same tale from you she might learn that older folk know best.

“She’s just a child, as you say, and I wouldn’t have her see what’s going on on that side, not if she were as safe as a church.… But you’ll know what to tell her better than I, and maybe she’ll hear reason from you.”

“You want me to tell her just how things have been, neither better nor worse?” asked Claire. “Well, I’ll do that. But I hope they’ll be better soon. You won’t want to keep her here alone if we get them straight? She can’t be here all her life, can she?”

John Burman did not look very pleased at this suggestion. The fact was that, real though his anxiety for his daughter might be, he valued his isolation on other grounds. He might value his daughter most, and he had no doubt of the sincerity of the motive which he expressed, but he also valued the farm which his ancestors had held for four hundred years. True, there had always been the obligation of the annual rent to be paid to the owner at Helford Grange, but it was centuries since there had been any difficulty about discharging that, or any thought of the possibility of being dispossessed from the property that they had held so long.

He answered, doubtfully, “We must talk of that when it’s done. We’d best take things as they are now. I’ll be glad enough to see them changed, but it’s not done yet.”

“I think there’s going to be a change, and I think it’s coming soon,” said Claire confidently. “But there may be trouble first, and I’m sure Chris is best out of it. I’m quite willing to tell her that. You’d better keep Ned ashore. I shan’t want him listening. We’ll have a good talk in the boat.”

“You think you’ll manage?” he said, rather doubtfully. “Ned’s a handy lad, and she’s taught him a good bit.”

He was not quite sure what the nature of this conversation, which required no auditor, was going to be.

“Yes, I can promise that. I’m quite used to boats,” she answered easily. She remembered the worry of the night before, which she had thought so needless.

He looked at her speculatively.

“Did you kill Bellamy, as the talk goes?” he surprised her by asking.

“More or less, I suppose. There wasn’t much choice,” she answered. Would everyone always look upon her, she wondered, as having blood on her hands? If they could only understand how easy—how inevitable—it had all been.

“I shouldn’t like her to get those kind of ideas,” he said vaguely, but Claire knew what he meant.

Chapter Fifty-Three

“You’d better let me steer, if you can manage the sail,” Chris said, “the wind’s right, but it’s only at one spot that we can get her over Low Meadow, even with a good tide.”

Seen by daylight, the little harbour, in which were moored the fleet of boats which Burman had collected, was a gravel-quarry, into which the seas had poured on its lower side, so that the water which it contained was much deeper than that of the flooded fields over which the waves had advanced to fill it—fields which Chris still called by the names which they had borne for a dozen generations in the mouths of her ancestors.

Claire saw the wooden steps which she had climbed in the darkness, an old disused flight to the level of the higher road, which had become the only means of reaching the part of the quarry-floor which remained unflooded.

The fishing-boat was small, but stoutly built, lugger-rigged, such as were common on the Welsh coasts, being hired to visitors for summer sails, and used for fishing at other seasons. It was not difficult to handle, but it drew more water than the one on which Burman was accustomed to visit the mainland, and there was reason for Chris’s sigh of relief as they left the willows behind them, and felt the stronger breeze of the open sea.

The wind blew from the south-west, scarcely enough to roughen the water, which lay to westward, with an unbroken surface sunlit and placid, but northward it showed ridges and knolls of land, too low and small and sea-swept for any human use.

The boat went smoothly onward, keeping to the edge of the shallower water, Chris talking all the time of the flooded land beneath them. “That’s the hundred-acre that we’ve just left. Dad’ll never forgive the sea for taking his two best meadows. You wouldn’t believe the amount of hay we used to get off them every summer. I don’t, anyway. It gets more every time Dad talks about it.

“There used to be three poplars,” she went on, “where it ended. They were in Barton’s field, not ours. I suppose they’re flat now. Sam climbed one, and carved his name on the top, one holiday. He said I daren’t, and I went half-way up, and came down again. I thought I should get blown off when the tree swayed. When he’d gone back to school, I tried again on a quieter day, and got up to where he had. The top looked farther off than it had done from the ground, but it was a good height. I meant to put my name over his, but it seemed mean when he’d gone back, and couldn’t try again, so I put it just level. They’re dirty trees to climb.… Yes, it’s quite safe. There’s quite a channel. It was all low along Bishop’s Lane.… I’ve promised Dad I’ll never go out where they could see us from Cowley Common.… Besides, it’s here I get the best fishing, where the level keeps changing.… I don’t know why, but I know where they come up…. Oh, it’s safe enough. I’ve been aground once or twice, but I’ve got off. Dad doesn’t worry. He thinks a boat’s safer with a sail.… But I wish I’d learnt to swim.… Could you really? I should love to learn.… We’re not going to fish today. We’ll just anchor, and talk.… Have you really had such ripping times? You looked as jolly as a pirate when you came in last night.”

“Some things are jollier to talk about than to live through,” Claire answered. “It’s been a hateful time, and it looks as though there’s more trouble ahead. You’ll never know how lucky you’ve been to be out of it. Fighting isn’t jolly, except in books. It isn’t jolly to get killed. It isn’t jolly to hurt others, and watch them die. And it isn’t jolly to know that your friends may be getting hurt or killed to protect you.”

“I don’t care,” said the girl; “it isn’t jolly to know things are going wrong, and not to be able to do anything to help, or to know what’s happening. You might better be dead than that. You’re just as dead as though you’d got killed, and you feel meaner.”

“I know how you feel, but I think your father was right, all the same. You couldn’t have done any good, and it’s he who might have been in danger, if they’d known you are here. I hope things are going to be better, but if you understood how they have been—”

“How can I, when Dad won’t say a word he can help, except ‘promise not to be seen’? They can’t be killing each other all the time; they’d be dead before now instead of eating a boat-load of fish every time I catch it.”

“I’ll tell you all I’ve seen, and all I’ve heard. You ought to know for yourself.”

“I thought you looked the right sort.… Luff a bit. We can anchor in that pool.… That’s about it.… There’s no hurry about getting back.… There’s some food under the seat.”

So they sat and talked—or rather Claire did—a narrative broken by a battery of eager questions, till she became uneasy at the sight of the waning day, and remarked that it must be time for them to return.

Chris assented easily, but her comment on the information she had received did not suggest that the desired impression had been very deeply made.

“Golly, what a lark it all is!” she said gaily, “But you don’t know everything. Nor Dad. I’ve got something to show you when we get back, if you’ll promise not to tell.”

“I’m afraid I shall have to go home when we get back. It’s getting late now.”

“You can’t get back tonight. It’s too late already.”

“I’m afraid I must. I promised definitely.”

“Well, you couldn’t. Not till tomorrow. It wouldn’t be possible for Dad to get the boat back. You don’t want him drowned, do you? Besides, I really have something to show you. Something you’d never guess.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

The following morning Burman came with the morning tide, which was not his custom, bringing a note from Claire.

DEAR MARTIN,

If I’m not needed, I may stay a day or two longer, but let me know if I am, and I’ll be back this afternoon. I’ve got something on here rather interesting, and it might possibly be important, but I’ll explain it when I get back. I am quite safe and well. Love to Helen, and, of course, to yourself. Kiss the babies for me.

CLAIRE

Martin sent a brief answer that there was no need for her to return till she wished. Perhaps, he thought, if she stayed away over Thursday it might not be a bad thing. The note was cheerful. He knew that she could take care of herself.… And he was finding already that he had little time to think of anything which was not forced upon him, little for his recovered children, little even for Helen….

Jack had come again, with a surprising amount of neatly tabulated information. He had prepared a census of the known population, with names and descriptions, and had found it to be somewhat larger than had been previously estimated, and even more disproportioned.

Excluding Cooper’s gang, who were regarded as outlaws, and those at Upper Helford, whose numbers were not certainly known, it summarized:

MEN*WOMEN*CHILDREN

In and round the Railway Camp—54/33/5

Larkshill and beyond—40/23/7

Cowley Thorn and the North Coast—98/39/8

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 spoke 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.

Steve said, “I’ll go. You won’t need the dog.” He passed the sack to one of the others. Martin understood that a guide had been provided.

As the man walked beside his horse, Martin questioned and listened, learning new things from the leisurely answers he received, as he always did when he approached a fresh mind, and the altered conditions were presented from another angle.

He learnt, among other things, that Steve Fortune was satisfied. It was true that there had been bad times, with deaths and cruelties and disorders, but those were past. Those who remained alive were in very good health, and some of them—Steve, anyway—found it a much pleasanter life than he had spent under the industrial servitude from which it had rescued him. His first desire was that nothing should disturb or end it. Winter? Yes, but they would find food enough. Look at the cattle! Anyway, if they had to go short it wouldn’t be with shops of food all round them, and cops and jails for those who wouldn’t starve without protest.

Steve was a conservative. He had found it possible to live very comfortably, and he feared change.

He admitted that it would be an advantage if women were more numerous, but even on this point he gave no indication of any personal grievance.

Martin listening to this, and much else, was left in doubt of whether this man were a coward or a poseur, or of a selfishness too simple and absolute for any diffidence to disturb it.

As they followed the western bank of the canal-bed, Martin noticed that the opposite side had been fenced with barbed wire, but that this protection had been pulled aside in many places, where foot-tracks crossed the ditch.

He had not come to the bridge before he had seen many indications of the rough and sordid existence to which even these people, who had been represented to him as the best element of the population, had descended.

He passed four men and a woman, who sat on a patch of grassy ground, playing cards. The men played, the woman watched, looking over the shoulder of one of them.

She said something in the man’s ear, as Martin rode up. The man shot him a sudden glance from beneath a mass of shaggy hair that overhung his forehead. The glance was not friendly. He took no further notice, bending down to the game. Martin did not know any of them. He had a trained memory for faces. They gave him no greeting.

He saw that they were staking a few sticks of tobacco, and a heap of shining jewellery, among which some large diamonds glittered from ring and pendant. Probably the tobacco was the more highly valued now.

Gaining the camp, and inquiring first for Tom Aldworth, he learnt that he was away, and that there were few left in the camp that morning.

A large ship’s mast had been washed ashore, and Tom had got a party together to salve a quantity of wire rope and ladder which were attached to it. He had tried to get every one to join, but there had been many refusals, Steve and his friends among them. There were those to whom such a suggestion only meant that they must think of some more congenial activity, as an excuse for refusal, rather than spend the day with the laziness which they had intended.

The uses of wire rope are many, but there was no immediate individual urgency to prompt them to share in the rough and heavy labour which would be necessary to secure it.

A suggestion that the wire might be used for the more effectual blocking of the fords by which the cattle so often escaped across the river was met by the argument that the land on which they were confined was poor and exhausted, and that the real requirement was to move them out of, not to confine them in, the present area. So, as usual, there had been ready talk, and reluctant action.

Hearing this, Martin did not stay at the camp. He rode over the flat and barren waste that lay between it and the sea

It was true enough that the cattle needed removal. Such grass as grew in this area had been grazed bare, and it was too late in the season for further fertility. It would have looked even barer but for the fact that cattle cannot graze as closely as sheep or horses. But the urgent removal would require much repairing of fence and hedge, and the milking herd would be farther from the camp if they were put upon the richer pasture south of the river, and so nothing had been done, beyond the periodic expulsion of the less useful animals.

Martin rode along a beaten path, formed by the dragging of many heavy objects from shore to camp, and easily found the band of workers round the broken mast, which lay half covered by a falling tide.

He found Tom, and about a dozen helpers, who had already detached a quantity of wire rope and hempen cordage, and were now grouped round the cart which had been intended to assist its transport, but which was exhibiting a weakness in the felloes of one wheel, which foretold a breakdown in the first fifty yards to anyone who was not of an exceptionally sanguine temperament.

Neither horse nor cart appeared to have suffered from underwork on the rough tracks they followed, and the former, turning a patient head toward the arguing group of its masters, appeared to regard the difficulty with a quiet contentment.

There was a confused murmur of greeting as Martin rode up, not deficient either in respect or cordiality, and the group parted for Tom to advance to his horse’s shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Martin asked.

“More than we can put right here. We might patch the felloes, but the hub’s cracked, and that’s loosening the spokes, and that’s what’s making the trouble. The axle’s about done for too. Butcher’s got a spare wheel he wants to sell us…. But we can’t do anything here without Pellow.… And it’s a question whether he’d come. We miss Ellis Roberts with things like this.”

“Well, I want to talk to you. Why not walk back with me, and see Pellow yourself? They can go on stripping the mast as the tide falls, and getting ready to load.”

Tom agreed readily, and they walked back together.

“I suppose you’re fairly sure things will be right for tomorrow, or you wouldn’t have been busy on that?” Martin asked. “It didn’t look very urgent.”

“I’m not as sure as I’d like to be,” Tom answered. “There’s too much talk, and the more they talk, the less they’re sure about anything. I tried to get them on to that job to keep their mouths shut, and give them something to do. But they wouldn’t come, except those I’m sure of.”

“There’s no fresh trouble?”

“Not exactly. Only they’re wondering what you mean to do, and whether they’re not promising too much. They’re afraid of having to obey a lot of laws they won’t like. Miss Temple says the same.”

“Says the same? Says what?”

“She says it’s no use making a lot of laws.”

“I want to see Miss Temple. My—Mrs. Webster told me about her.” (Should he say “my wife” or “one of my wives” in the future?)

“I think you’d better.”

“Has she much influence?”

“She might about turn the scale. I don’t mean merely a majority. We shall have that, with Butcher’s lot coming in. Jack says that’s certain. But we want more than that, now you’ve said you’ll turn out those who won’t join. We couldn’t turn out nearly half.… And we couldn’t turn out the women.”

“But Miss Temple wouldn’t want to leave us? I thought she was about the best helper you’d got.”

“I don’t know. She’s the sort you can’t turn. I think she means to help us, in her own way. But she could get about half the women in this camp, or hold them off, and it’s not much use having the men alone.”

Martin saw that. The idea of the men having sufficient loyalty to him to turn their wives into the wilderness because they declined his authority was absurd.

In a rash moment he had said that the women, equally with the men, must pledge their support, and whatever difficulty followed must be overcome, if he were not to fall at the first fence.

“I don’t think there’ll be any trouble about that,” he said easily. “I expect they’ll vote together—the women and their men—when the time comes. Is it only with the women that Miss Temple’s influence counts?”

“No. There’s about ten men—perhaps twenty—here and round Larkshill, that will do anything for her. Men like Burke, some of them, that won’t for me…. And she can talk—especially when people get together. Straight, simple talk, that persuades. If she comes tomorrow, and says your way’s wrong, she’ll get every one who’s doubtful against you, and shake the rest.”

“Well, I don’t know that. I can talk a little myself,” Martin answered. “But it’s best done first, and alone. I’ll see her now, if I can. She seems to have some ideas. Is she the sort that won’t change?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. She won’t mind changing if you show her she’s wrong. But if she thinks you’re wrong, she’ll say what she thinks…. It’s all religion with her.… And getting people to clean the camp.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

Martin found Muriel busy with some domestic work at her own location. She offered him a small, work-hardened hand, and asked him to enter the compartment which was bed- and living-room combined, and was, even so, a more luxurious dwelling than was the portion of most of those round her.

She called Monty, who was somewhere near, and he took charge of the horse.

The sky had clouded, and a fine rain was commencing, so that he was glad to accept the offered shelter.

After a few words of initial courtesy, he said directly, “Tom Aldworth tells me that you don’t think these people need laws or is it only that you think they don’t want them?”

“I think they don’t need laws, they need leading.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning just that. They don’t need laws. They need decisions.”

They were both silent for a moment: Martin because she had expressed an idea which had been inarticulately present, but discouraged, in his own mind; and she because she waited for his response.

Seeing him silent, she went on.

“Mr. Webster, I’m not a lawyer, and I haven’t got your capacity. I know we need someone to take control, and I know I couldn’t. I’ve thought of every one here, and there’s no one really fit, or not that every one would obey. I want to help you if I can, but that’s what I think, and if you make a lot of laws and penalties—and I suppose laws must mean penalties—straight away, I think we shall have more trouble, and I don’t think even you—I don’t think anyone—could prevent it.

“It seems to me,” she went on, “that laws should come gradually. If you should make laws I for one shouldn’t promise that I should obey them. I should want to know what they would be, and then I should want to think.

“We’ve had one law already about the women. I told Tom that I shouldn’t take any notice of it, and fortunately no one’s made any trouble about that.” (Was there a tone of bitterness in her voice, that denied the smiling of lips and eyes? It was so slight, if so, that Martin could not detect it with certainty.) “The idea was good enough, but the law was silly. There were so many things that might happen that we couldn’t foresee. We’re not ready for laws yet. They’ll break themselves, or get broken. I don’t know whether you’ll understand, but I can’t put it plainer than that. We don’t want laws, we want leading.”

“I see what you mean quite clearly,” Martin answered. “You mean you want orders dealing with immediate needs, rather than permanent laws dealing with general principle of conduct or policy.

“It isn’t such a simple alternative as you might think. It will lead to something like what we used to call case law—that is, one thing at a time will be decided on its merits, and the next time there’s a similar difference, or anything like it, there will be an appeal to what was decided then; but it may be best to start in that way.”

“May I ask you this? If I begin in that way, will you come and speak in my support on Thursday?

“I’m going to ask a good deal, if you do. I don’t look upon it as a country that’s to be governed, but rather as a ship that’s to be steered to port—and a ship that’s among the rocks, if it isn’t on them.

“It’s not a case for arguing, or thinking that we can steer two ways at once. I’ll concede all you ask. You shall have leading, not law. Shall I have following, not argument?”

“I don’t like promising too much,” Muriel answered. “I shouldn’t do what I thought wrong, and I won’t promise blindly. But I think you’re right. I think it’s the only way we’ll succeed, and that I ought to agree.

“I’ll promise this now. As long as I’m here, I’ll give you all the help I can. If I can’t follow, I’ll come and tell you, and if you ask me to clear out—well, I’ll go.”

“I think that’s all I could ask, and more than I could expect,” Martin answered, “and I think it means that, with your help we shall succeed. I’m very glad I have seen you.”

“I don’t think,” Muriel answered, “that you’ll find that my help makes so much difference. But I don’t think that it matters so much whether we succeed or not. I know we can’t always feel like that, and we shouldn’t do much if we did. But I was sitting up most of last night—it was fine, and not very cold, and I was—not well enough to sleep. And I was watching the stars, and thinking how short our lives are, and how we are small and lost in the great space that we can see, but could never reach, and I thought of those terrible words of Paul: ‘without God in the world.’ I had never felt alone, as I did then.… And then I thought of all that the seas had covered, not the men and women only, but all that they had built and made—all the buildings, and the pictures and books that they thought so wonderful—and they just passed in a day, and the stars continued.… It was all so trivial that had gone.… And then faith came again, and I thought of the promises of God.… And it seemed that nothing that comes to us—nothing that we gain or lose—can matter, except how we face it.… And then I thought of the lines of an old hymn that you’ve probably never heard, or might think silly:

He hath His young men at the war,

His little ones at home,

and I thought that, if there’s nothing hard to face, it may be that God doesn’t think we’re worth trying. As though He knows we’ll break at any test, and He just leaves us in contempt….”

She stopped abruptly, and then added, in a different voice, “But you’ve got other things to think of. You must forgive me going on about my own thoughts. I suppose we all get these moods at times. And I’ve had no one to talk to lately…. But you won’t want to go through this rain. It won’t last much longer. It’s clearing now to the south.… You can depend on any help I can give. I believe you’ve been sent to help us.… There’s only one thing that could make me feel differently, and I feel sure I’ve no cause to doubt you there. But I hope you won’t mind telling me. I think we ought to know—and we’re bound to know, one way or other.”

She paused a moment, as though hesitating how to frame the question, and Martin said, “I’m sure you wouldn’t ask anything without reason.” His thought was, “Am I going to lose her support after all?” He did not doubt what was coming.

“It’s about Helen. You know I saw her before we knew that you were found—and then we heard that there was another. Of course, every one’s talking about it. Some say that you mean to keep one, and some the other, and some say that you want to give Helen up, but can’t because of the children, and some say you mean to go on as though you’d married them both—and I was thinking about this last night, and I saw how difficult it must be, and I thought, if you had the strength to do right in a position like that, you’d be the one to get things straight here. Would you tell me what you do mean to do?”

“Miss Temple,” he answered, “I can’t expect you to look at a matter of this kind quite as I do; and I can only say that if I lose your support I shall be sorry—I should be sorry even if it meant less than it does. I hoped that we should be friends, and it is a friendship that I should value. I hoped that you would be friends with—with Helen and Claire. But there can be no disguise about the decision that we have made. It didn’t rest with me only. I consider that I am bound to both, and to that we stand. It is Helen’s view, as well as mine. It was her independent decision, as I felt sure it would be. There is no law to guide us now, as you have said, and we had to think what was right in circumstances which could not have been foreseen.”

“I didn’t say there was no law. There is God’s law always to me.”

“Well we don’t think we are going against that.”

“And you thought I should?” Muriel frowned slightly, as though the implication were not too pleasing. “Well, perhaps it was natural. But I thought about this last night, and I couldn’t be sure. I thought you were bound to Helen. ‘Whom God hath joined’.… the words wouldn’t leave my mind. They’re not easy to understand. They were used to baffle a trap, and I suppose they’re not meant to be easy…. And then I saw suddenly that ‘God’ didn’t mean a priest. It meant something greater than that.… And I thought that, if you’d all meant to be loyal to one another, well, this was the test, and if you all came through the right way, it meant that there’s still something better left in the world than the hateful things that we’ve seen here.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

There were over four hundred people gathered on Cowley Common, sitting on grass or heather, or standing between the gorse-bushes in the background.

The sun shone warmly, though October was opening, and, except for a passing gull, there was no sign on that open heath of any change having come to the world since Cowley fair had been held on the same spot a year before.

Curiosity had proved more powerful than Tom’s earlier efforts for the common good, and there were not ten people absent who could, by any possibility, have been expected to come.

Martin spoke first, from a raised knoll of land which had often been a showman’s vantage-point for declaring the wonders which a penny would disclose to such as penetrated the entrance of his curtained booth.

He saw Tom’s supporters grouped together, and the gleams of a dozen rifle-barrels among them showed that he was leaving little to chance.

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. She 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.