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.
“I
s 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.
Dawn Page 27