Then she came. A dark-haired woman, good-looking in a quiet way, with gentle, rather wistful eyes. Her clothing, which had once been good, was weather-soiled and stained, but it was tidy and clean. She looked well. She did not look very unhappy. She greeted Muriel with a quiet cordiality. Gumbo, looking up inquisitively, thumped an appreciative tail on the cushions.
“I hope you don’t mind the broken windows. There seems to be no means of mending them now…. I must introduce myself. I am Mary Graham…. Muriel Temple? What a pretty name. I shall be so glad to have you with me. I ought to have been here to welcome you when you came, but I couldn’t leave Janet. I never do leave her till she goes to sleep. I expect they told you that. They think I’m crazy about her. But I can’t break a promise like that, can I?”
“They didn’t tell me anything,” Muriel answered. “But I should be glad to hear.”
Mrs. Graham sat down as she answered, “There’s nothing really to tell. I just sit with her till she goes to sleep. I always used to do that…. But I didn’t think it would be so long.”
And then the sympathy in Muriel’s eyes reached some chord of suppressed sorrow, and her expression altered. She flung herself down upon the cushions in a passion of weeping. “Oh, God, if she would only speak! I didn’t think it would be so long.”
Muriel was too wise to question her further. She crossed the narrow space that divided them, and soothed her with words which have comforted a million sorrows, till she went to sleep against the shoulder of her new companion.
In the morning she waked cheerfully, and went out almost at once, saying that she “must be there before she wakes,” and shortly afterward Tom Aldworth appeared, having a natural curiosity to make the acquaintance of the colleague which his two companions had thrust upon him, and seeing the necessity of some previous understanding, if she were really to join the proposed conference.
Tom came to the point shortly enough, after outlining the position of which Muriel had gained some knowledge already.
“So we’ve agreed to meet them,” he concluded, “to see whether we can save a worse row than we’ve had yet. They’ve asked four of us to go. There’ll be Jack and Ellis, and they said you might make a fourth.”
Muriel was pleased, and somewhat startled by the suggestion.
“If there’s no one else who understands better,” she said doubtfully. “You see, I don’t know them. I don’t even know the facts properly…. But if you really ask me, I won’t refuse. I’ll do what I can.”
Tom felt that this new ally was something less than enthusiastic.
“I suppose you don’t think we ought to give way, whatever they ask? You wouldn’t tell us to hand over those women to Rattray and Bellamy?”
He felt that to be a test question. He didn’t want any doctrine of non-resistance to be preached at the conference to such men as those.
Muriel answered him frankly. “No, I couldn’t say that. Perhaps I ought to say that it’s always wrong to fight, but there are some times when you can’t really feel like that. I don’t know that killing or being killed matters as much as we sometimes think”—she thought of the millions of lives that had been surrendered so easily to the indifferent floods—“but I think there’s something wrong in ourselves, if we can’t stop a thing like this.”
Tom thought that was likely enough. He was quite aware of his own deficiencies. Muriel, who never worried an exhausted subject, changed the topic by asking, “What’s the trouble with Mrs. Graham?”
Tom told it awkwardly. Even amid the deadening horrors of the last few weeks it was something of which he would not willingly speak, and he was shy of any verbal emotion.
She had been a passenger in one of the rear carriages of the first of the wrecked trains, with her daughter Janet, a child of eight or ten years. She had escaped uninjured, but the child had been crushed very badly in the lower part of its body. It had seemed unaware of its injury, but while she had nursed it on the bank-side it had kept repeating, “Oh, mother, I’m so frightened. You won’t leave till I’m asleep?”
They were the words, he understood, that she had used on the previous night, while the storm had beaten upon their falling home, and her mother answered them with repeated promises, till she had died in her arms.
She had sat for three days on the bank-side, nursing the dead child, little noticed amidst the conditions that were then prevailing, and when at last it had been forcibly taken from her, and carried up to the field above the cutting, where a shallow trench had been dug for such bodies as had escaped unburnt, she had followed it, and had sat ever since, from dawn to dusk, on that common grave.
There had been attempts, at first, to reason with her, and to divert her mind from a grief so useless, but when it was found that she was beyond the reach of argument, that her mind was obsessed by the dying promise, and that she talked as though she sat beside a child who must not be left till sleep had come, she had been left to herself, though food had been provided for her.
“And you can see a thing like that, and still say there’s a God,” said Tom, with unusual bitterness. He had his own losses, darkening the recesses of his mind, as most of the other men had.
“It just proves it all the more.”
“I don’t see that,” said Tom.
“Perhaps you don’t try,” said Muriel.
Tom, who was never eloquent, left her the last word.
He was, in fact, in some haste to be gone. He had a private expedition to make to Hallowby Lodge, which he realized that he might not be able to visit regularly during the next few days, and there were many things on his mind which were needing attention, and were unlikely to get it if he should leave them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jerry Cooper was destined to go to the conference with only two companions. He failed to secure Butcher’s support, and was annoyed at the miscalculation.
He did not expect any assistance of military value from such a quarter, but Butcher was a gentleman (of a kind), and he was sensible that they would make a better show if he were present. He could not fail to realize that Rattray and Bellamy were not very savoury colleagues.
He even went himself to Helford Grange to solicit Butcher’s support, and interviewed him in the cellar from which he conducted his commercial enterprises. On the way there he heard of the barbed wire that had been supplied to his opponents.
When he met Butcher, he went straight to the point.
“I didn’t think you’d any use for Tom Aldworth.”
“Who says I have?”
“Well, you’ve sold him some barbed wire, which won’t help those on the other side.”
“It won’t do him any good. They couldn’t put it all round that sprawling camp in a week. Besides, there isn’t enough to go round—not to do any good…. You want horses, don’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“He’s to catch four of the kind you want, and hand them over to me within a month. You don’t suppose I gave him the wire, do you?”
“He won’t be catching horses a month from now. Not unless he changes his ways.”
“Well, that’s my risk, isn’t it?”
“I don’t really mind about the wire, but I want you to come in with us. You’d rather be on the winning side, wouldn’t you?”
“I haven’t heard of it yet,” Butcher answered sourly. “I don’t quarrel with anyone,” he added. “Quarrels don’t help business. That’s my motto.”
Cooper didn’t give up easily. “You’d find we could work together,” he said. “It isn’t really the women. I mean to boss this show. You’d never get on with that lot. They’ll clear you out as soon as look at you when they feel strong enough. You need protection.”
“I don’t need yours,” Butcher answered, unresponsively. “They wouldn’t quarrel with me, anyway. Nobody will. They’d lose too much if they did.”
“Lose?” said Cooper sarcastically. “You’ve got more stuff stored here than the lot of us p
ut together.”
Butcher grinned.
“The best of it isn’t here. It’s well hidden. No, they won’t quarrel with me.”
He got up, and went down the dark passage, leaving Cooper in some uncertainty whether the interview was over. But he was not easily beaten. He sat on stubbornly, and, in a few minutes, he was rewarded by Butcher’s return. He had a bundle of swords under his arm, a miscellaneous collection of small-sword, sabre, rapier, and cutlass.
“Rattray wants these,” he said, as he laid them on the table before him.
“Well, why not?”
“He can’t pay.” Butcher’s tone spoke his contempt for an impecunious customer.
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t care either way. I’ll take seven pounds of tea, if it’s clean. No dirt sweepings.”
“Seven pounds is a lot. You know everyone’s wanting tea.”
“It may seem a lot, because we’ve found so little, so far. But it’s a risk. Further on, the boys might find a warehouseful any morning. Anyway, that’s my risk. Seven pounds is the price, and a fortnight to find it. You know it’s to be got in small lots.”
Cooper saw that he could do no more. “You shall have the tea,” he said, as he got up, “if Rattray has the cutlery by the morning.” He counted the swords before he left. He didn’t trust Butcher, or any other man for that matter. But in that he was wrong. Butcher was quite straight in a bargain when it was made. He valued his reputation; though it was not one which every one would consider enviable.
Cooper was still anxious to secure support. He even tried Stacey Dobson, who had ceased to worry about anything if it were a fine day. He learnt, not for the first time, that the ways of wire-pullers are hard. He talked to many, and as he did so he adjusted his own position adroitly. He observed that the Rattray-Bellamy gangs were of a general unpopularity. He continued to represent himself as a restraining and (of course) dominating influence, where there was unreason on both sides, and where (he never omitted to emphasize this point) the scattered population of the north coastline and Cowley Thorn was getting badly left. If he gained little active support he created a general impression that he was working for the common good, and a vague suggestion of territorial unity, of which he well knew the value. It was Cowley Thorn against the railway camp, with Larkshill as a doubtful central constituency to be won by those who were the more expert at electioneering. Had he not cultivated the Bardsley ward of his native city for three years by such methods before he stood for the City Council, and was elected by a record majority?
He did not know what was going to happen, but he had some confidence that he would know how to turn events to his own advantage.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It is rarely that the course of any event can be pre-imagined with accuracy, and this is especially true of one to which the attitudes and intentions of many minds must contribute.
Tom Aldworth had imagined a table in the middle of the road, with a row of four delegates seated on each side, and behind each row a listening crowd of their followers, the lawless Bellamy and Rattray’s gangs restrained by the sight of the marshalled lines of his own adherents, and by the ready rifles which his followers could direct so quickly upon their leaders. The reality was somewhat different….
As to Muriel, if she imagined anything, it was of the nature of a public meeting which they would address in turn, and at which she could feel some confidence that she could do her part successfully.
She was one of those who can talk to a large assembly more effectively than to any single auditor. She spoke with a simple, clear directness, and an evident sincerity. She had a musical voice, which she controlled to the emotion which it conveyed, and she had the faculty of making every member of her audience feel that he was addressed directly….
The day opened very brightly, and her mood responded. She felt a renewed purpose in her life. God had still work for her to do. She felt as confident as when she had set out, after an older colleague had failed, to persuade a contemptuous Zulu chief to allow his wives to attend the Mission school. If only her voice…and God was quite equal to restoring that, if it should be needed. Song came as she thought.
Green pastures are before me
Which yet I have not been.
Blue skies will soon be o’er me
Where the lark clouds have been.
My joy may no man measure,
My path in life is free….
She made a prayerful effort for the humility which she was conscious that she too often lacked….
Even the disordered squalors of the camp gave her a subconscious satisfaction. It was all work for active hands and persuasive lips….
So she was quietly happy and confident when she set out with her new companions—a troubled Tom Aldworth, already aware that matters were not developing ‘according to plan’; an observant but not forecasting Ellis Roberts, who took events as they came, and countered them with a slow and serious equanimity, as character and conscience led; and Jack Tolley, loyal to but somewhat aloof from the others, having a mind which was critical of all disordered and imperfect things, and who was most conscious of the reluctance with which he had surrendered his cherished rifle to Harry Swain’s incompetent hands.
* * * * * * *
Of the scene which had been depicted in Tom Aldworth’s imagination there was little that was objectively realized.
There was the ruin of the Plasterers’ Arms, a comparatively static feature, and there was the expected table—Jerry Cooper, an efficient stage-manager, had seen to that. It stood in the middle road, opposite the turning of Sowter’s Lane, and there were four chairs, of sorts, on one side, and three chairs, or rather two and an upturned tub, on the other. Cooper had no intention of having an empty chair on his side, to suggest the defection of an expected supporter.
But the crowds were not there—and the meeting terminated in a way which might have been foreseen as quite probable but which had not entered into Tom’s somewhat worried calculations.
In fact, the event was a forcible illustration of the lack of leadership or cohesion which weakened the powers of any of the protagonists, either for good or evil.
Under the impulse of Tom’s report of his conversation with Jerry Cooper, and of the three days’ threat which he had received, and with the evidence of the two injured women that had fled to them for protection, the inhabitants of the railway camp had been roused to something approaching unity of action, which had expended itself upon the erection of the barbed-wire fence for which the material had arrived so promptly; but with the next day, and with the knowledge that their self-appointed leaders were meeting to negotiate a possible peace that afternoon, the impulse weakened, and the tendencies to wander out in little plundering companies, or to amuse themselves with their own occupations, or with the ubiquitous dice-box, reasserted themselves.
It was being said, and was not answered, that it was little use to fortify the canal-bank opposite the encampment, unless the same protection were carried north along the side of the line to where it disappeared beneath the waters, and south to the crossing stream, and then north-east till it came again to the seashore. That was not entirely true. If there must be a weak front, it is well to shorten it as much as may be, but it was sufficiently so to slacken the impulse of the previous day; and, anyway, there was no more wire.
The general feeling was that there was a day of respite, to be used by each for his own ends, and if there were to be trouble tomorrow, it would be time enough to think about it when tomorrow came.
If we analyse causes sufficiently, we shall find that the idea of the meeting would not have arisen at all but for Reddy Teller, a small, rat-faced man, a member of Bellamy’s gang, who has been mentioned as the messenger who brought Cooper’s invitation to Tom Aldworth.
Bellamy had no thought of any organized warfare, nor did he care a straw whether the remaining members of the community had no wives or twenty. He only knew that a woman whom
he regarded as his property had found shelter in the railway camp, and that he had been threatened with a rifle when he went to fetch her.
For this insult he was considering the opportunity for a violent vengeance, and hesitating between the idea of a night raid, which might be the easier way of securing the woman, and a murderous ambush of those who had given her their protection, when Reddy Teller made the suggestion that they should enlist Rattray’s support, and offered to seek him out with this object.
Bellamy was not enthusiastic. He liked doing such things in his own way, and without assistance. He had a brutal contempt for the men of the railway camp. He would have fought any three of them with his right arm pinioned. But he had a respect for their rifles. He gave a growling assent, and Reddy Teller, who hoped for trouble which would bring a more direct advantage to himself than the recapture of Bellamy’s woman (in which he could not be expected to take a lively interest), set out very promptly.
He found Jim Rattray without much difficulty. He was camping at a favourite spot about two miles to southward, where the river ran under the London road, and there was a gentle, shady slope from the road to the river level.
His camp was of a semi-permanent character, there being two small tents erected, and a spread of awning under the trees. There was much litter scattered about, but Jim was not without some instinct of tidiness, and most of their dirt was thrown Into the river from which they drank.
Teller found him seated with about a dozen companions, who were (for the moment) of a steadfast friendship, owing to the cementing influence of some bottles of whisky which they had secured.
They had also cooked a young pig, an old hen, and several rabbits of miscellaneous ages. Half a sheep could be seen hanging under the trees. Taking no thought for the morrow, they had good cause to be merry.
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