Mary was left at home alone, to wipe her eyes with a wet handkerchief, and to sniff and sob herself into physical calm, with the aid of repeated journeys to the sideboard cupboard. She had the afternoon to herself, during which she could turn over in her mind all the cruel things which Pethwick had said to her; things which hurt her the more, now that she brooded over them, because of the truth they contained. She knew now that her husband did not love her, and, what was far worse, she knew that he regarded her with as much contempt as his nature allowed him to feel towards any human being. She might have borne with his hatred; it was the contempt that rankled, and her vague feeling that the contempt was justified was the poison on the barb. There were strange thoughts, and strange resolutions forming in Mary’s mind, all clouded and muddled with whisky as it was.
The instinct of self-assertion grew up in the maudlin reaction from tears. If he did not love her, then he must fear her. She would hurt him, the beast, worse than he had hurt her. He might despise her, but she would show him that she was not one to be despised. She would queer his pitch for him, put a spoke in his wheel, ruin all those fine schemes of his. And she would show him if he could go to Paris when she did not want him to. Under the quick stimulus of whisky plans began to grow up in her mind to give effect to the resolutions already formed. They were still there next morning, when Mary came round from the stupor into which the whisky had plunged her—the stupor in which Pethwick had found her on his return from the visit he had made to Chelsea, whither he had gone to inspect the lie of the land round about Lots Road power station.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bank Holiday dawned bright and fair. There had never been a summer like this in human memory. Every day for weeks now there had been blue skies and scorching sunshine. Despite—or perhaps because of—all the uncertainty in the air, despite the wobbling foreign exchanges, and the menacing political outlook; despite unemployment and financial stringency, people were spending more money on holidays and amusements than they had ever spent before. The call of the seaside had become, under the influence of that beneficent sunshine, too insistent to resist. Every day there had been a stream of motor-cars pouring out of London seeking the sea, and on this day, the height and summit of the holiday season, the stream was redoubled.
Not merely on the roads was this the case. The railways, too, were doing better business than they had known for years. On Bank Holiday evening there were tens of thousands of people pouring back into the London termini. There were all the day trippers, to start with. Then there were the people who had been away for the week-end. Then there were all the canny people who had chosen their week’s holiday or their fortnight’s holiday so that it terminated at Bank Holiday weekend and thereby gained an extra precious day.
As darkness fell all these hosts of people, encumbered with tired, whimpering children, with trunks and suitcases, with spades and pails and golf clubs and tennis rackets and bags and bundles and baskets, all came back to London. At the termini the lucky ones with a few shillings to spare, the careful ones who had made provision for this in their budget for the holiday, climbed into taxicabs. Others got into trams and buses. But the larger half used the underground trains; the underground management’s passenger graphs showed a most unusual ‘peak’ at nine-thirty on Bank Holiday evening.
When at first the trains stopped and the lights went out the crowds displayed in nearly every case a praiseworthy freedom from panic. They endured the darkness and the stuffiness with British stolidity. But the hold-up was quite general. Throughout the London district there was not an underground train in motion, not a glimmer of light, not a lift nor escalator working. The railway staff rose to the emergency as far as was in their power. In the stations emergency lamps were lit, and in the places where trains had stopped in or very near stations the crowds were extricated without much damage and guided in the glimmer of the oil lamps and electric torches up the never-ending stairs to the surface, dragging their suitcases and their babies and their golf clubs with them. There were a good many pockets picked, and everyone was exasperated—infuriated—by this climax to a tiring day.
But in two trains far from stations the business was very much worse indeed. It was stifling hot in the trains, and pitchy dark—darker, perhaps, than those town-bred people had ever known in all their experience. Here and there in the darkness voices made themselves heard—the voices of those inevitable people who always arise in an emergency and shout out, ‘Keep calm! Keep calm!’ and do nothing else to allay the panic such cries are bound to arouse. Sometimes women fainted, and anxious husbands began to elbow in the crowd in order to find room to administer to them. Sometimes frightened, overtired children began to cry, and from crying passed on to screaming, when their mothers had not the nerve and tact to comfort them by an apparent freedom from anxiety.
So in these two trains there was disgraceful panic, during which in the pitch darkness maddened crowds surged up and down the long carriages. Nobody could have said what he was frightened about, but everyone was pushing, fighting, scrambling to get out of the trains. There were children trampled to death in those carriages—pitiful little things who stood no chance once they were caught in the alley-way between the seats. There were mothers who died there, too, trying to hold the madmen back from the bodies of their children. In places people tore open the doors and fell to the ground with others piling on top of them; ribs and legs were smashed, and the long dark tunnels were filled with screams of agony.
It was only for an hour that the trouble endured, but in that hour four lives were lost and a hundred people were injured. At the end of that hour the lights suddenly came on again, and the trains began to pick their way cautiously along the lines, as soon as the heaps of injured had been cleared from the way, while Pethwick, ignorant of the deaths he had caused, drove the Morris away slowly from Tadema Road and over Battersea Bridge.
He had pushed his way cautiously through the Bank Holiday traffic in the failing light. It had occurred to him that he must not on any account whatever risk a smash with its subsequent disclosure of the contents of his motor-car. The weight of the accumulators on the floor-boards made the car sluggish in its acceleration although easier to handle in other respects, and overtaking was consequently difficult to him. Most of the way to Battersea Bridge he was crawling behind motor-buses, only passing them at the stops, and then only occasionally.
Tadema Road was the site he had chosen for his motor-car; from there he could rake the whole long line of generators, whose position could easily be deduced from the lay-out of the power-station. It was almost dark when he reached the place he had in mind, and halted the car as far as possible from the nearest street lamp. Kneeling on the front seat he leant over into the body of the car and made the final connections. He trained the emitter upon the power-station, and closed the switch. The make-and-break began its gentle buzz, but that sound was drowned in the roar which went up from the power-station, audible even in Tadema Road.
For under the influence of the Klein–Pethwick Effect the huge magnets in the dynamos lost their magnetism, and instantly the armatures ceased to experience the retarding drag upon them caused by the magnetic field—the drag which is overcome in doing the work which is converted into electricity. Freed from this load, the armatures raced round; the steam engines began to race too. At each generator the automatic governors, spinning round at twice their designed speed, began to lift the safety valves. In the instant the whole power-station was plunged into darkness and bathed in escaping steam, through which the thunderstruck staff tried to grope their way. They were trained to deal with emergencies, but they were not prepared for this total complete failure, not for this crippling darkness. And however good their training, there was nothing they could do now, with every single generator as useless as scrap metal. The engineers discovered the cause of the trouble almost instantly; indeed, no one could very well miss that complete lack of magnetism in the dynamos. Immediately they began to try to telephone�
��but most of the telephones were useless, caught in the all-embracing sweep of the Klein–Pethwick Effect. Even telephones contain magnets. The management sent messengers on foot helter-skelter through the streets. Pethwick saw them go by, running madly along the dark pavements, but they paid no attention to the shabby old Morris car waiting beside the kerb, nor to the driver sitting immobile at his wheel; the quiet running of the engine quite drowned the purr of the make-and-break in the body of the car behind him.
At the end of an hour Pethwick switched off his instruments, put the Morris into gear, and drove slowly towards home. It was late now, and he was mortally tired. He had no knowledge of how much harm he had done; he could only guess that he had caused a complete suspension of traffic on the underground. His imagination had not been extensive enough to visualise the dead children and the injured women. He crept over Battersea Bridge and plunged into the suburban main roads on his way back to the garage. His fatigue was such that he had to be even more careful than usual in the traffic and it was with pathetic relief that he swung the Morris up the alley-way at the back of Lenham’s Service Station.
Perhaps it was fatigue; perhaps fatigue merely accentuated the sheer unhandiness of the motoring beginner, but Pethwick got himself into a terrible muddle while trying to induce the Morris to go into that garage. The car behaved with the maddening obstinacy of mechanism in unskilful hands. Pethwick backed and went forward; he sawed the wheel round first this way and then that, but do what he could he could not prevail upon the car to make a neat clearance of the side of the garage doorway.
In the end—it was really only to be expected—there came the moment when he trod heavily on the accelerator instead of on to the brake, and with a rasp and a crackle the side pillar crumpled up the near-side wing and bit into the running-board. It was not a very bad scrape, but it made matters hopeless for Pethwick. It seemed as if he would never free the car. Whether he tried to go back or forward the door-post jarred up against the side and stopped the engine. Pethwick was nearly frantic with mortification and fatigue.
Then, while he was out of the car trying to rally himself and to work out scientifically how to set about the job there came a blaze of light round the corner of the alley-way and another motor-car halted at the sight of the tangle.
‘You seem to have hit a spot of trouble, sir,’ said Lenham’s voice.
Pethwick heard Lenham’s car door slam as he got out to inspect, and Lenham came striding up.
‘Oh, it’s not as bad as it looks,’ said Lenham. ‘That running-board will spring straight as soon as it’s free. Here—’
Before Pethwick could stop him—presumably Pethwick’s reactions were slowed up by his fatigue—Lenham had pulled open the door and sat himself in the driver’s seat. He started the engine, put pressure on the steering-wheel, let in the clutch, and lo! the car swung away from the door-post. A second later it was gliding into the garage as if it had never displayed a trace of mulish obstinacy in its life.
There was an odd look on Lenham’s face as he climbed out of the car again. Pethwick was staring at him in fascinated horror. No one sitting in that car in a lighted garage could have missed seeing the contents and no one of Lenham’s training could have seen the accumulators ranged on the floor and the instruments on the back seat without guessing their purpose. And Lenham had heard already that the Peacemaker had been at work that evening at Lots Road, although he had heard no details. Pethwick knew now the sick fear of discovery.
But Lenham apparently had noticed nothing. After the first glance he looked away until Pethwick had time to compose his expression. Maybe Lenham approved of the Peacemaker’s aims and methods; it might merely be that Lenham was too fond of Pethwick to accuse him; conceivably Lenham was one of those people who can mind their own business. However it was, Lenham said nothing whatever about the contents of the car. He peered down at the running-board.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, and shook it. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any real damage done. You’ve spoilt that wing, of course, but you must expect to spoil a wing or two while you’re learning. Just remember, sir, don’t go more than a foot at a time until you’re quite sure what the car’s going to do. Well, good night, sir.’
‘Good night,’ said Pethwick.
He stood still in the lighted garage; he heard Lenham start up his car again, run it in, and slam and lock the door. Only when his footsteps died away down the alley did he break again into activity, dismantling his apparatus and packing it away hurriedly in the suitcase which had stood there ever since he had brought it down from Hammer Court. Then, bending under its weight, he started to carry it home.
There could be no using his apparatus in his motor-car again until he had the accumulators charged up, which he would have to have done two by two as he had bought them; and that would have to wait until his return from Paris. Despite his sick apprehension he could not force his mind to think about whether or not Lenham would betray him. All he could do was to go on doggedly with the plans he had laid.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Pethwick had been right in his assumption that The Times would penetrate into whatever recess in Norway that the Laxtons had chosen for their holiday. Four copies together reached Mr. Harry Laxton and his daughter as they sat together at supper-time.
Mr. Laxton had a keen appetite for supper, which was sharpened rather than dulled by the knowledge of what he was going to eat—the trout which he had caught that afternoon, and a loin of delicious mountain mutton. He had already made the remark on sitting down to table which he had made eight times before, that the flat biscuits of Norwegian rye bread were the ideal accompaniment to fresh caught trout, and he was about to make the remark he had made seven times before, to the effect that he could not understand how English biscuit manufacturers could dare to charge the prices they did for the inferior substitutes which they made in England and advertised so extensively.
What saved Dorothy from having to listen to this and express the polite surprise which she had expressed seven times already was the arrival of the day’s mail, brought by the postman on his bicycle with the clanging bell; and included in the mail were those four copies of The Times. Mr. Laxton fell upon them with the ardour of an exile.
He was not selfish with his newspapers, either. Although he liked to have an untouched newspaper to open, and to feel quite sure that his were the first eyes to rest upon the print inside, he did not mind Dorothy picking up the copies as he discarded them after a first hurried skimming through. A fussier father might have insisted on her waiting until he had completed the serious reading of them, which he proposed to carry out after supper.
‘It’s extraordinary the things even The Times publishes nowadays,’ said Mr. Laxton, testily putting down the first copy and reaching for the second.
Dorothy said nothing—it was the sort of remark to which it is hard to find a reply—and took up the discarded paper.
‘It’s perfectly fantastic,’ said Mr. Laxton. ‘It just shows where pacifism leads to.’
But Dorothy said nothing at all. She had sat up rigid in her chair, for the headlines in her copy of The Times were those which announced the Peacemaker’s ‘manifesto.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Mr. Laxton, quite exasperated. He put his copy of The Times down beside him with a smack; the gesture was doubly à propos, because the loin of mutton was brought in at that moment, and besides expressing his amazement at the condition of the world, it enabled him to attend to the carving.
‘Good gracious!’ said Mr. Laxton. ‘Haven’t you finished your trout yet?’
There was no answer; all Dorothy did was to drop the first copy of The Times in a muddle on the floor and reach for the second. Mr. Laxton regarded these actions with distaste.
‘No,’ said Dorothy, still reading The Times.
Mr. Laxton smacked the loin of mutton with the flat of the carving knife.
‘Dorothy!’ he said. ‘Put that paper down and attend to your supper.’
Dorothy dropped the second number of The Times in a muddle on top of the first, and took up the sacred unopened third one. Mr. Laxton eyed her as though he could not believe what he saw. He was on the point of an explosion, but his good sense restrained him. The only Englishman in a village of foreigners, cooped up in a three-roomed inn, will not readily quarrel with the only Englishwoman, even if she is only his daughter. He gesticulated to the maid to take away Dorothy’s plate with the neglected trout, and addressed himself in silence to carving the joint. Dorothy dropped the third copy of The Times in a muddle upon the second and took up the fourth. Mr. Laxton carved her portion, and his own, and began philosophically to eat the latter in silence. Then Dorothy dropped the fourth copy of The Times upon the muddle on the floor, and then made the muddle worse by snatching up a page of it again to see the date.
‘What’s the date to-day?’ snapped Dorothy, her eyes looking straight through her father’s head and through the wall behind him. ‘The sixth?’
The Peacemaker Page 18