Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

  The sea does not seek its prey like a dog; it does not hunt as the wind hunts. It may crouch very still the while it waits for its victims. It can be quiet and swift in its treacheries. It can caress with smooth and deadly paws.

  It loves to lie in the sun’s warmth, purring lazily, and half asleep, till it has lured its victims to its reach, as a fly will settle within range of a lizard’s tongue.

  You may do well to love, but it is always folly to trust it. Even though it respond to your wooing with the surrenders which its lovers know, it will not be loyal. It will turn with cold and cruel teeth, even on those to whom it has bared its beauty. It has the heart of a harlot.

  Chapter Ten

  Muriel gazed at the ocean, which stretched northward to the horizon-limit, covering all the teeming life and wealth which had once been England to a depth which she could not estimate; and, though she pitied, it was without protest, as it was without fear.

  She did not think of the elemental forces of nature as operating with impartial and implacable obedience to blind and universal law. She looked upon them as the servants of an omniscient and omnipotent God, of Whose household she was a servant also—a servant of higher rank and of more assured position. She would not have put it in that way. She did not readily think in metaphor, unless it were in the Hebrew imagery to which she had been used from childhood. But she was assured that the sea was powerless to touch her, unless it were permitted to do so.

  She sat thinking for a long time, while the sun’s arc declined to the north-west, trying to understand the conditions under which life would continue, and to decide how best she could aid it. She was puzzled that her immediate surroundings should be so desolate, though the explanation was very simple. But she knew, by the men she had seen, that there were those who still lived in the Larkshill district. If they were of uncongenial types, the greater was the call upon her to join them. The greater, also, was the need for her to consider how she could serve them in practical ways, her missionary experiences having taught her the power of service and the methods by which she might stoop to conquer.

  She was not too ill to be of some use to God under these changed conditions. If it were not so, would He have preserved her when so many millions had perished?

  Surely not too ill; though she was aware of a lassitude which made her unwilling to face the return walk, in spite of the growing thirst from which she suffered…. Her thoughts were broken by a scrambling and scuffling sound in the gorse-bushes behind her, and by the stampede of a dozen sheep that had been feeding near them.

  She looked round, and caught a glimpse of a small white dog—a smooth-haired terrier—that was making excited rushes right and left at something that dodged it, but which she could not see.

  Then there came the agonized half-human cry of a captured rabbit, and a moment later the dog came out of the bushes, its prey hanging limp and dying in its mouth.

  Muriel could not know whether it had been previously aware of her presence, but now it came straight toward her, wagging a stump of tail in the excitement of its successful hunting, and laying the rabbit at her feet.

  Muriel loved dogs. The stranger was well satisfied with the praise she gave him. He sat down at her side, his stump still wagging on the ground, his head lifted sideways toward her caressing hand.

  The dog had a brass collar, with his name, and his owner’s, inscribed upon it: “Gumbo. Please return to George Hinde, The Ridge, Lower Helford.”

  Muriel was not very clear as to the position of Lower Helford, but she supposed (rightly) that it was covered by the placid ocean beneath her. She wondered whether the dog’s master would appear, or would she hear him whistle for the return of the wanderer. She resolved to introduce herself should the opportunity come. She felt that the owner of such a dog could not be an unwelcome acquaintance.

  But no call came, and the dog showed no inclination to leave her.

  Conscious of hunger, she began to think of the possibility of making a fire and roasting the unexpected meal. But there was little wood lying around, and she was unsure that the gorse-bushes would be dry enough to burn freely, even if she had had a knife to cut them.

  She must not come out without a knife again—it must surely be possible to find one somewhere.

  She decided to return at once; if the dog followed her she would conclude that he had lost his owner.

  So she picked up the rabbit and returned, with Gumbo trotting very contentedly at her heel.

  In spite of her physical weakness, it is probable that there were few survivors of flood and storm who were better fitted to face the altered conditions under which life must now be sustained. She had seen and shared so much of primitive living, had so often been reduced herself to crude expedient, that she was at once less perturbed by fear of privation, and better fitted to avoid its penalties.

  Arriving home, she soon had a wood fire blazing on the open ground. A splinter of wood proved adequate to the skinning and preparation of the rabbit, and when she slept that night, in the added security of the locked vestry, with the dog at her feet, she thanked God in her prayers for the companionship He had sent her, and for the provision of the needed meal, with a gratitude which was not faltered by undue thought of the fate of George Hinde, or his family, that the waves had covered.

  Chapter Eleven

  AS Muriel had watched the ocean that afternoon, and tried to imagine the conditions under which human life could be continuing, she had resolved to lose no time, as her strength had returned sufficiently, in joining herself to those who remained alive, and that she would set out the next morning to Cowley Thorn or to Larkshill, where she felt it to be most probable that her search would be successful. It was characteristic that she did not give any thought to her own safety or to her own advantage. It was the duty of service which called her. However limited her strength might be, she did not doubt that she could do something, in their emergency, to aid her fellows.

  But the next morning brought its own delays. She went farther among the ruins of Sterrington, and discovered, as she had expected, that there was much of probable or potential use which could still be salved from the ruins—much that weather and vermin were deteriorating, if not destroying.

  There was, in particular, a detached bake house which had contained several sacks of flour, which had been only partially protected by the ruins under which they lay. The exposed portions had attracted the cow to which she had been previously introduced in Datchett’s paddock, the Rector’s wandering sow, and a young black pig with which we have not been previously acquainted; and when these marauders had made some tactical dispositions to rearward, in the face of Gumbo’s vociferous protests, he had dashed into the rubble of flour and tiles and mortar and scattered a score of busy rats, of which he had got a grip of the rearmost, and returned to his new mistress shaking the life out of it triumphantly.

  Muriel recognized that the flour ought to be salved, but she found it a laborious task. She emptied a sack which had been largely exposed and damaged, carried it up to the vestry, and then filled it, in the course of many journeys, by means of the basket which had been given her from the foundered motor; the dog keeping guard over the sacks in her absence. In the process of filling the sack she had emptied another, which was carried up and filled in turn, and this continued till she had salved nearly four sackfuls. After this the weather turned wet, and the remaining flour was largely spoiled, at least for any lengthened storage.

  Meanwhile there was other needed food for which to forage, cooking to be done, and many things that hindered, and made the days pass quickly.

  She had felt that Datchett’s cow should be captured, and that its milk would be welcome, but she had difficulty in finding any enclosure that could be sufficiently secured without labour which she felt to be beyond her capacity.

  In the end she got it into the Rector’s orchard, where she tethered it while she strengthened hawthorn-hedges which had suffered little, because they were already so old and
short, and thickly stemmed, and deep-rooted. The June grass was abundant among the uprooted orchard trees, and the cow settled down contentedly; but she gave little milk—little even for Muriel’s modest needs. She was near her time for calving again, and the interval during which she had been left unmilked had nearly dried her.

  Then there was no water in the orchard, and that meant a tub to be filled daily from a well in the rectory yard which still yielded freely.

  Meanwhile Muriel had tried to secure the two pigs, and had succeeded, with Gumbo’s energetic assistance, in persuading the Rector’s sow into a sty adjoining that from which she had escaped previously, but the young black pig had evaded all her efforts, and had finally disappeared.

  Having secured the sow, she became aware that she must release it again, or be content to remain sufficiently near the spot to feed it daily. And these things had not been done continuously, but between others, such as a determined search for sewing materials of any kind, on which she had been mainly occupied for three successive days before her efforts were substantially rewarded. And then there had been the work to do for which they were needed, the jacket sleeves, which impeded everything she did, to be shortened, and other tasks which it is needless to detail. And in that three days’ search she had come on so many things which she did not need at the moment, but which she knew might be of irreplaceable value, and which she must also try to secure from beast and bird and weather.

  And then the gardens. Already the weeds were rejoicing that the hoe had ceased to trouble them. They were beyond any possible effort from her; but on an impulse, one day, she had decided that she would at least save the patch of potatoes that Mr. Wilkes had been earthing-up on his last Saturday, and had spent the best part of the day in searching for a suitable tool before she could complete her labour.

  One afternoon, while she was engaged in retrieving the contents of one of her most desirable discoveries—a stout leather trunk, which had only burst on its under side, and containing a wealth of silk and linen garments, undamaged, except that a mouse had found them to be an ideal nesting-place—two men approached the church who did not walk openly down the road, as honest men should surely do, but came furtively through the ruined woods, among fallen trunks and half-uprooted trees that yet showed a valour of green leaves upon their skyward branches.

  They walked straight to the church, as men that had an assured object. The one who entered first was slim and rather short, young, and dressed with a surprising neatness, as though unaware of any change in the conditions of life around him. He carried a light sporting-rifle under his arm.

  He glanced round the empty church and whistled to attract the notice of any possible occupant.

  “Probably dead, or gone,” he remarked to his rearward companion, a fresh-coloured youth, who was rarely talkative. “But we’d better look thoroughly now we’re here. Tom was sure he saw them. And there’s been a fire outside not many days since.”

  Bill Horton said, “Ah,” and followed him up the church.

  Muriel had grown careless about locking the vestry door during the day. She was becoming used to solitude.

  Jack Tolley lifted the latch, and the two men gazed at a sight which left no doubt that they had found what they sought.

  “Here’s your chance, Bill, if you can’t get Bella. There’s one here that understands housekeeping. Ever seen so much flour in a church before? And here’s half a hundredweight of Brazil nuts. It’s like a harvest service.”

  Bill Horton said “Ah” again.

  Jack Tolley closed the door, and retreated down the church. “We’ve got to find them,” he said. “It’s not likely they’re far. But they might scare if they saw us.”

  He led the way to the Rector’s orchard. “Keeps a cow too,” he observed. “You’re in luck today, Bill.”

  Bill Horton said no more than before, but his fresh complexion was a shade deeper than usual.

  He knew well enough that he had no chance with Bella, and he had the desire for mating which is common to all healthy young animals.

  He was here with Jack because he liked him better than Rattray, and he hated Bellamy, but he hadn’t forgotten what they said…

  They lay for half an hour in the orchard grass, watching the churchyard path, and were then roused to alertness by a sound of furious barking in the road below.

  “That’s dogs,” said Bill, with more animation of voice than he had shown previously. He jumped the low hedge and ran down the field, followed by Jack Tolley at a more moderate pace. Jack did not approach anything, even a dog-fight, without circumspection—especially in such days as these.

  Chapter Twelve

  Muriel came up the road in excellent spirits, even more heavily loaded then usual, and with such articles as no woman, even an ex-Zulu missionary, can regard with indifference, especially one whose wardrobe was in the condition from which Muriel’s suffered.

  Even the dresses, of so little substance that they could have been concealed in a man’s hands, gave her more satisfaction than she would have cared to analyse, or why had she measured them against herself before she had chosen them for the parcel which she was making?

  She was walking as rapidly as she could—she tired less easily now than she had done three weeks ago—for there were heavy clouds coming from the direction of Cowley Thorn, and she was anxious to get ‘home’ before the storm should drench her plunder. Gumbo was trotting before her, equally impatient for his own reasons, thinking of the evening meal with the appetite of a young and healthy dog whose life had become an almost ceaseless rat hunt. He carried a salt cellar in his mouth, not because Muriel would have been unable to accommodate it in one of her ample pockets, but because it had become the custom for him to carry something, and there was nothing else on this occasion with which Muriel could content his urgency.

  They were clear of the village, and in sight of the church which they were approaching from the lower road, when a dog jumped up from the wayside ditch, where it had been occupied on some business best known to itself, and stood in the centre of the road, with a lifted tail and an air of dubious hesitation.

  Muriel recognized the dog. It was the liver-coloured mongrel that had growled at her from his interrupted meal in the cottage garden.

  Gumbo dropped the salt-cellar. The two dogs advanced slowly. Their noses touched. It is impossible to say how much was communicated between them. It is a thought which might bring some humility even to the colossal conceit of men that a dog may understand the methods of human intercourse far better than a man can understand those of a dog.

  But whatever passed it was a cause of instant antagonism. The dog that has taken to unmastered living will never tolerate those who are still content with a human servitude, and the ill-feeling is returned with even greater intensity.

  The two dogs backed from each other, growling deeply.

  There was the pause which often ends in one dog turning aside with an abstracted expression, as though occupied with other thoughts, or troubled by some uncertain recollection of a prior engagement: a movement which is commenced very slowly, but at a pace which increases as the distance widens.

  But the liver-coloured mongrel had no thought of retreating from an enemy less than half his size, and Gumbo, aware that he stood between his mistress and the forces of anarchy, was equally resolute.

  The rush of the bigger dog carried the terrier off his feet, and the two rolled together for some yards, a snarling, dust-hidden heap, from which they broke apart, with their positions reversed, Gumbo now facing his mistress, and the bigger dog between them.

  The terrier was shaken and breathless, but he had managed to avoid the grip of the white fangs which had sought his throat in the scuffle; he had also taken an instant advantage of opportunity when he had snapped at a hind paw as the heavier dog passed over him, and had assured that his opponent would continue the conflict with a limping leg.

  He had won the first round on points, but he badly lacked a referee who
would call time and give him the minute’s rest that he needed.

  The big dog had no such intention. He came again with a rush that Gumbo dodged with difficulty, and the next moment the two were in a struggling heap again, with a flurry of snapping jaws, and a pandemonium of outcry, sinking to one rumbling growl as the big dog got the choking grip that it sought upon the throat of its enemy.

  Muriel might be an exponent of the gospel of peace, but she was not of the kind to stand aside from a conflict of this character.

  The stick she had picked up from the roadside was little help, as it broke the first time she applied it accurately; but it was unfortunate for the strange dog that, like Gumbo, he was still encumbered by his late owner’s collar.

  In Gumbo’s case the broad metal band which prevented his opponent’s teeth getting a firm hold beneath the throat may have saved his life in the extremity of the next three minutes, but the other collar offered an inviting grip for Muriel’s hands, which became a choking one as her fingers worked in beneath it.

  Bill Horton, watching the fight from the side of the road, with an expert’s appreciation, was roused to unusual articulation at the lady’s temerity.

  “Don’t do that, miss. You’ll get bit for sure,” he protested, as he advanced to her assistance, with no clear purpose in his mind.

  Bill had no brains worth mentioning, but he knew a dog-fight as something very good to watch and very bad to join.

  The choking pull of Muriel’s hands in the mongrel’s collar, and Gumbo’s struggles beneath him, combined to free the latter animal from the grip that held him. The big dog, having his jaws free, became a greater menace to the woman whose hands were dragging at the tightened collar. For the moment he ignored the terrier, who had regained his feet, but was in poor condition to renew the conflict. He struggled savagely to twist free of Muriel’s hands and use his teeth upon her.

  “Don’t loose now, miss,” implored the anxious Bill, moving up to help, but uncertain how to begin. He saw that her peril would be increased at once should she loose her grip on the collar. She saw it too, and held on desperately.