“I’m sorry,” said Dawkins still carefully, “but I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”
There was a trace of a flush on Gray’s cheeks, and he was speaking with the vehemence of sincerity.
“Confound it!” he said, “you’ve no idea what a handicap it is being a parson. I have to be on the watch all the time in case I start preaching. And I spend half my time with dear old ladies who are ready to take anything I say for Gospel. It’s a dreadful handicap when one has to talk to a man. But —oh, let’s come down to brass tacks—how does the idea of good works appeal to you?”
“Good works?” asked Dawkins vaguely, rubbing the back of his head.
“Yes. Visiting the poor, and all that sort of thing. You don’t believe in God, do you? I didn’t think you did—men with your look in their faces never do. I don’t even want to ask you to try to. It wouldn’t be fair. It’s not your soul I want to badger you about. It’s the rest of, you that I covet.”
Dawkins liked sincerity in a man.
“Well,” said Gray, “shall I go on, or shall I run for my train? Have you had enough already?”
“Oh, go on,” said Dawkins, and Gray resumed with more self-control.
“It’s like this,” he said. “I work in London all the week, except on Tuesday mornings when I come down here to play golf. I’m an organizer in a mission, and I’m the one lone male among a heap of women. Some women are jolly good, and all my lot are as sincere as—as—is the devil sincere? I suppose he is. But they’re only women, when all is said and done. The young varsity men I get who come down to go missioning aren’t the best kind of varsity men—at least not one in a hundred is. You know the kind of young man who goes in for settlement work. Sometimes he’s hysterical and sometimes he’s inquisitive, and nearly always he takes an unhealthy interest in religion. Oh, you know what I mean. It is unhealthy for a young man to worry about vestments and predestination. I want a man who isn’t a parson, and who doesn’t care tuppence about the souls of the people he’s talking to, and who doesn’t know an alb from a chasuble. And I want him to work.
“You’ve got money in your pocket and you’d give me some if I asked for it, and it would be useful, but it wouldn’t be nearly so useful as your time. I can get money any day of the week from fat sentimental women in the West End. But I can’t get good men anywhere. And I want ‘em—oh, so badly. There are people to visit and data to collect—some of my women can do that pretty well, but they’re all overworked—and there are swarms of boys and girls and young men to talk to and feed if necessary and encourage. It’s no good worrying them about their sins if their bellies are empty and they’ve lost their nerve.
“And the kids! I know you’re interested in kids—you see I made careful inquiries about you before I talked to you about this. You ought to see ours—four hundred or so of ‘em. The women all want to teach ‘em how to play brainy games and that sort of thing, and I can’t stop ‘em. I’m paid for that, too, if it comes to that, by my never-sufficiently-blessed trustees. What I want is a sane sensible man with no theories and a lot of sense, to do anything that wants doing barring preaching, to come along one or two days a week and an evening or two as well, perhaps. Well? Yes or no? Or do you want to think it over?”
“I don’t want to think it over,” said Dawkins. “I’ll come.”
Dawkins was terribly tired of golf and he liked Gray; and he had begun to chafe against inaction. And although his prejudices instinctively reacted against the idea of “good works,” the thought of having something definite to do was positively grateful to him.
That was Dawkins’ introduction to settlement work in the East End. He was a strange fish out of water there, among earnest young men and curate-worshiping young women. His grim face and his good clothes marked him out from his fellow workers, and he was conscious of his oddness in that environment, but he stood it out. He embarrassed the young women who talked theories to him by his complete ignorance of theories; he shocked the young men when unguarded conversation proved his ignorance of highly important tenets of the Christian religion—he was once even betrayed into asking whether a certain Dean was a Church of England man or a supporter of the Congregational mission round the corner.
But he did his work. His feats of brute strength in the gymnasium amazed all the slouching youths who came, and brought them back again next time with their friends. His beautiful motor-car, crammed with children, was to be seen nosing its way out through the suburbs in search of fresh air and a glimpse of the sea. Sometimes a hectic little party after a frantically exciting afternoon on Summer Hill would come back to the Other House for tea served by an exquisite Miss Lamb with the assistance of a decorous Nina in the background. When information had to be gathered in some especially unpleasant spot, or from particularly recalcitrant parents, it was Dawkins who was charged with the duty. His huge frame and smart clothes were in time quite well known in some of the more filthy blocks of tenements out Limehouse way. He learned to draw the necessary nice distinction between orderly disorderly houses and disorderly orderly houses, and there were times when the blazing wrath in his eyes effected what the pleadings and threats of the authorities had been unable to effect. It was not long before he made his one creative suggestion, whereby he employed for fortnightly stretches unemployed hobbledehoys from the settlement about his garden and garage. A fortnight of good food and spoiling by the maids, with just enough pottering work to keep them busy, and money in their pockets when they returned worked wonders with a good many of the slouching youths. The garden was not in Dawkins’ province; he had handed that over to Miss Lamb, who supervised its welfare as much as Harris, the daily gardener, would allow her to, and it is to be feared that the youths’ efforts were not of much use nor very welcome to either of them. But there was weeding and lawn-mowing to do; and it is rather to be fancied that Miss Lamb kept one special bed solely to be dug and redug by each new protege in turn. Dawkins found them car-washing and metal-polishing in plenty, and the experiment was successful from the start. As Mr. Gray said, a thousand men like Dawkins would solve all the problems of the settlement.
It is not to be imagined that Dawkins enjoyed his work at the settlement. He just did it and felt most uncomfortable in the doing of it because he had learned by experience that he had to have something to do to keep his mind occupied —and he found next that he was beginning to enjoy his golf on the days when the settlement and Nina between them allowed him time to play. Incidentally, as soon as that happened, his phenomenal rate of improvement slowed down considerably—Dawkins was not such a good player when he wanted to win. But he was growing popular among his fellow members.
Chapter XV
The Easter holidays at Gilding Girls’ High School came and went, spring changed gradually and perfectly into summer, and Nina and Mr. Dawkins grew steadily closer together. It was a queer bond which united those two, the more especially as it was largely wordless. Dawkins would hear from Nina, bit by bit, all the tale of her naughtinesses at school; he would share her indignation at some outrageous whim of one of the mistresses. Nina even brought to him her difficulties in her home work, despite the fact that Miss Lamb was in the house for that special purpose.
Dawkins came in time to expect and desire her knock upon his “study” door and the sight of her thin face (not so thin now, and with freckles here and there) looking round the corner to see whether his six hours’ golf had caused him to nod himself to sleep in the big leather armchair. She would climb up into the companion armchair on the other side of the fireplace and stare at him seriously as he puzzled over whatever difficulty she had brought him. Twenty years ago Dawkins had had a good secondary school education—than which England can provide no better, nor the whole world show—but he had since then done his best to forget it, and now he had to begin all over again. It was odd to see him knotting his brow over the elementary geometry and French which Nina brought him. He would puzzle and ponder and frown—he had never been blessed wi
th the mental agility elementary problems call for—but at last he would break through to the light.
“See here, old lady,” he would say, ”you remember——”
Dawkins had always to go back to the solid first principles, for he had forgotten the later dodges and formulae, and he would work out the problem starting from initial axioms —and that, of course, was very good for Nina. They would worry it out between them, and Nina would trot off at last with something more solidly grained into her. Some of her work, botany for instance, was quite new to Dawkins, and because of her he had to learn all sorts of new things about calyx and corolla, stamens and pistils, so that before long he had for his own sake to take an interest in the garden which Miss Lamb cherished so tenderly. Until then Dawkins hardly knew a carnation from a dahlia.
Dawkins and Nina were learning other things besides school work. That Easter holiday they found out all sorts of things about England which they did not know before. From Gilding in its eligible situation in the heart of Surrey they pushed out in all directions, partly by car and partly, because Dawkins became cramped and fidgety in a car, on foot. They early discovered the glory of Hindhead and all the North Downs which heaved up their big green bulks about Gilding. They wandered round Winchester and they climbed the campanile of Chichester Cathedral. One never-to-be-forgotten day, after some intensive map reading by Dawkins, they penetrated into the hardly traveled area northwest of Arundel, where the huge downs, with scarcely a sign of humanity to be found on their high ridges, stretch in a vast bulk out to Petersfield. On one of those summits they sat for a whole glorious afternoon, with Mr. Dawkins luxuriating in the green splendor of the Weald, with its little red villages and white lanes spread out before them, while Nina was so filled with the beauty of it all and so exhilarated by the wind which blew past their ears that she could only hug herself round her stomach and say, “Oh, golly! Oh, golly!”—an expression of which Miss Lamb disapproved but which alone expressed her emotions adequately. Dawkins would freely have given all the Andes, from Panama to Patagonia, for those ten miles of downs between Petersfield and Arundel—and he could hardly be called a sentimentalist.
Then there were the rivers—the Wey at Guildford and Godalming, and a little venture or two upon the Thames, and, of course, experiments with their very own baby river in the garden. Dawkins and Nina were, both of them examples of the very common type for whom running water is an irresistible attraction. They were always building dams or sailing toy boats or rowing real ones.
One Saturday morning occurred the Great Adventure; Easter holidays were over and summer was fairly come. The preceding night, after Nina had gone to bed, Dawkins had arrived from London in the car, with a huge parcel at the back. So far he had said no word about it to Nina, and the parcel remained in the garage, but at breakfast he wriggled restlessly in his seat and could hardly eat any food, and kept looking at Nina’s plate to see when she had finished. The moment the last bit was eaten and Miss Lamb had given her permission to leave the table, Dawkins pushed his chair back, too.
“Come on, old lady,” he said, “I’ve something to show you.”
And Nina took his hand and they dashed out into the garden and round the corner to the garage and there beside the car was a most beautiful little boat, at the sight of which Nina could only clasp her hands and gasp. It was a collapsible canvas boat, so small that it hardly seemed big enough for Nina, but Dawkins assured her that it would carry both of them easily, thanks to its air-pockets round the gunwale —“And it will, too.” And there were two little oars which could be used as oars or paddles or could be screwed together to make a double paddle.
“We can find out now what lies beyond the ditch,” said Dawkins.
For although they knew the course of the little river all the way to Gilding where it ran into the Wey, they knew nothing about it above the Other House, because the banks there were interrupted by big ditches, and there were plowed fields to negotiate, and when they had tried to strike across the river from the road higher up they had been held up by barbed wire and notice boards and had never succeeded in penetrating through to the waterside, especially as it seemed that the river curved away from the road higher up. The source of the river, in fact, was as great a mystery as the source of the Nile once had been, and the two of them had often debated about it. Dawkins had religiously kept his eyes off that part of the ordnance map where the mystery would have been unromantically explained—his purchase of the portable boat had not been entirely spontaneous.
“M’m,” said Dawkins, “do we want hats? Don’t think we do—do you, old lady? I thought not. But we want soft shoes. Let’s see who’s ready first.”
Nina was ready first, of course, and she simply danced with impatience when Dawkins remembered something else and had to go back to the house again. But he was soon back, and between them they lifted the boat and carried it down under the little bridge and put it in the water, and it floated beautifully. Then Nina got in, so gently but so excitedly, and Dawkins lowered his huge bulk gingerly into the boat too. Nina had to sit between his knees. They each took a paddle and were off. And they looked out up the high green bank as they came out from under the bridge, and Miss Lamb was there in her coverall with her gloves on all ready for a busy hour in the garden, and Harris the gardener was there, and the new boy from London, and they stood and watched them as they made their way, rather uncertainly, against the moderate current up toward the unknown.
They were not very good at it at first, because in places the water was not deep enough for them to paddle and they had to push against the bottom with the paddles instead, and they were not very used to it at present, and the river wound about so. But they learned quickly enough, and went on up the stream, sometimes with fields at the top of the banks at either hand, and sometimes with trees overhanging the water. At one place where the bank had given way a little there was a cow drinking with her fore feet in the water and her hind legs high up the bank in a remarkable attitude, and she was very surprised when the green boat shot round the corner close upon her.
“Fancy being wrecked on a cow!” said Nina.
But that indignity was spared them, for the cow, with a snort of surprise, heaved herself up the bank again and eyed them suspiciously as they went by. They pushed on steadily, following curve after curve of the river until Nina had quite lost her sense of direction. The sun climbed higher and higher overhead, and it grew hotter and hotter—the first really hot day of the summer, and the sky was blue and the grass was green and the trees were shady, and Nina, pottering away with her paddle (any one can guess who supplied most of the motive power) was as happy as a queen. The river was like a stream of diamonds and sapphires; liquid jewels dropped from Nina’s paddle as she lifted it from the water. Then they passed from sunlight into the dense shadow of a wood through which the little river wound a tortuous way.
To Dawkins, laboring in the stern, the sudden twilight and the stillness brought a whole rush of dark memories. For the moment he was not in England with Nina, but instead he was in the Andean foot-hills, admiral once more of the Hawk’s canoe navy on the Rainless Lake. Dimly in front of him he could see the laboring shoulders of Joaquin, the Mosquito Indian (how he had strayed from the Caribbean to the Rainless Coast was a puzzle), the finest canoeman in the country. Out across the little bay along whose edge they were paddling so cautiously was moored the terrible new motor-boat which Eguia at incredible cost of blood and treasure had brought up and launched upon the lake. Yesterday it had hunted down the canoes, spitting death from its machine-guns, leaving their riven hulks drifting amid a tangle of twisted bodies. One more day like that would see the command of the lake pass from the Hawk to Eguia, and that would be the beginning of the end. It was Dawkins’ duty to lead his last canoes under cover of night and capture the motor-boat by boarding. It was the last throw of the dice, the last effort left to the henchmen of the Hawk.
The paddles were dipping silently, and they were creeping alon
g without a sound. Dawkins, peering through the twilight, could just make out the loom of the motor-boat in the middle of the bay. He steadied the canoe on a fresh course toward her, and he could sense a corresponding change of direction in the rest of the little fleet, as they swung out from the shadow of the shore on to the open water. And then hell broke loose in a flash. A dazzling searchlight from the boat clove the twilight, and the machine-guns began their infernal loud-voiced chattering. Joaquin fell dead across Dawkins’ feet, the canoe lurched and swayed, bullets whipped the water to right and to left. Some one in another canoe screamed horribly. Dawkins set his teeth and lunged fiercely with his paddle in a mad effort to close with the clamorous motor-boat. But the hail of bullets tore through the sides of the canoe and flicked out the brains of the last two paddlers. There was a lurch as the canoe fell over and the water closed round Dawkins and the icy pang (for the lake was fed from the snow-covered Andes) seemed to sear him with pain as he swam blindly in the glare of the light. As he reached welcome darkness once more he could just make out the dim forms of two last canoes lurching toward the shore and safety.
Then came the swim to shore, and the desperate crawl past the outposts of Eguia’s land forces as the dawn caught the summits of the Cordilleras, and at noon he reached the camp of the Hawk and told him the dread news of the shattered navy and the ruined cause. And the Hawk had almost blanched before his fierce rage took hold of him again, and he issued the orders for the starving retreat which led him to two more battles, defeat, gangrene and death. Dawkins shuddered and writhed in his nightmare.
The Daughter of the Hawk Page 11