Wyndham Smith

by S. Fowler Wright

  He picked up a case which, under other circumstances, he would have unpacked for a double load, and dashed for the entrance passage. In it, he collided with Vinetta, who had decided that he delayed too long, and that her only course of safety was to join him within.

  The moment’s obstruction was almost fatal.

  “It’s too late. We’d better stay now,” she protested, for one delaying second.

  “Nonsense. It’s not moving yet. There’s time enough but there’s none to be wasted.”

  Wyndham had the advantage of the higher position in the sloping passage, and of the heavy case that burdened his arms. It was of such weight that he knew he could not continue to support it for more than a few seconds longer, and of such size that he had difficulty to avoid wedging it between narrow walls. His resolute advance bore her backward, hustling her, in fact, so roughly that she failed to turn, as she should have done, at the outer door. There were two steps thrust out from this, and below them a drop of about eighteen inches to the ground. Descending in awkward haste, she slipped upon sodden soil.

  Wyndham, close behind her, would have thrown out the heavy case, and followed it down the steps. There would have been time for that, before the plane had commenced to move, but that it would have fallen crushingly upon Vinetta as she was regaining her feet.

  Obviously, even in that emergency, he could not hurl upon her a crushing weight, nor could he balance himself with that burden to descend the steps. As she rose, he felt the plane move. It was its motion rather than hers which enabled him to loose the heavy case, which fell forward on to the steps, and rebounded to the ground, already six feet below, where it broke with a clattering distribution of quaint articles of several obsolete metals, aluminium, iron, and tin, on the rain-soaked earth.

  The next moment, Wyndham leaped. He landed on feet which slipped from beneath him, and rose limping on a sprained ankle, which would be more painful in the next hour.

  Vinetta ran to him. “You are not hurt?” she exclaimed, seeing him rise. “Oh, I am so glad!”

  She was met by a gust of anger, born of the pain he felt, and the moment of acute fear through which he had passed. “If,” he said, “you will not learn to do what you are told, you will wreck us both. It is no thanks to you that I am not up there now, or hurt worse than I am.”

  Her eyes followed the plane, which had already soared to a great height, seeking a field of flight which no mountains would obstruct, and was lost to sight, as she gazed, in the driving clouds. She was too glad that he was not there, and too conscious of her own fault, to reply with equal heat.

  “If you want to hit me,” she said, “I don’t mind. You are quite right as to what I deserve.” The answer amazed him by its accurate reading of his own mind, which it revealed to himself more clearly than he had understood before. Yes, he had felt that to strike her would bring relief. It had been no more than a moment’s impulse, but it had been there. Was the path of descent to primitive roughness of conduct as swift as this? And it so, what might he not be doing in a month—in a year—from now?

  Certainly, Colpeck-4XP would have been surprised at the acts and speech of the body which his ego had ruled no more than a few days before. Wyndham Smith’s surprise—he having the same experiences, the same traditions, the same body with which to deal—was but little less. But the Colpeck-4XP of a week before had never passed through a moment of such anxiety had never felt such pain as Wyndham was feeling now. Yet, however deeply anger had stirred his mind, Vinetta’s quieter answer enabled him to recover self-control, and with it he was aware of some measure of shame. “It was my fault,” he replied generously; “I stayed almost too long.” He regained complacency with the thought; that he had not failed. Pots, frying-pan, and other utensils of even vaguer purpose might be bruised in their abrupt descent, but would still be fit to remind them for years to come of the fact that he had succeeded in what he sought.

  “Anyway, I got them,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied, “you don’t often fail.”

  There was accord between them once more; and they had need of that, and of all the fortitude that they possessed, in the next hours. They stood soaked and cold beneath drenching rain amid the litter of food, clothes, and utensils which were all they had been able to save from the wreck of the world they knew. They were without shelter, and Wyndham walked already with a limp which was to become worse.

  “We’ve got to do something,” he said, “we can’t stand here. We should die of cold.”

  “We should be warmer if we were walking about.”

  “I don’t know how much I could. There’s something wrong with my leg.”

  “There’s the cave where the wolves are.”

  “They’re not wolves; they’re dogs.”

  Vinetta observed the irritation in his voice. Neither of them had yet experienced the moral degenerations that results easily from discomfort or pain. But she had sense to see that it was not a time for disputing on such questions as that.

  “We’ll call them elephants, if you like,” she replied equably. “It’s a long way off. But it looked like a good cave. And it’s the only one we know.”

  “How will the beasts take it?”

  “They seemed friendly enough. Anyway, we ought to be able to deal with them.”

  “We should be a long while getting everything up there.”

  “We shouldn’t want everything at once and we’ve got all the time there is.”

  Wyndham hesitated. His ankle was throbbing in an unpleasant manner, even though he leaned his weight on the other leg. It had taken hours, in better weather, to get up there. But he saw the proposal to be, in itself, not merely sound, but attractive. It had appeared to be a most desirable cave, and he saw a home—a lair which would be their own, and where there would be a sure meeting-place if they should wander apart—to be their most urgent need.

  He was reluctant to plead his own infirmity as an obstacle, and he was utterly ignorant of the nature of sprains, or the effect which prolonged exertion would have.

  Falling into the same scale, there was a strong reluctance to start out on a vaguer search: to limp about in the rain for a rest they might never find.

  “Anyway,” he replied, as though the proposal had been already agreed, “it’s no use standing here. The sooner we start the better.”

  “We must take some food,” she said, “but not much. Not till we know that we’re going to settle there. We should feel silly having to drag things back.”

  She looked at the way he moved, in a frowning doubt. It was no more than a slight limp, but there was a wide difference from yesterday’s easy stride. And it was her fault! There was no doubt about that. She added, “I’ll carry anything that we must. You’ll need to have that sword free, if the elephants want to argue it out.”

  He did not agree without protest, but she had her way in the end. He walked on as erect and free as his limp allowed, and she went beside with a burdened back. If the spirit of Munzo-D7D could behold them now, he might reflect that the punishment of their insurgence had been speedy to come. Avanah-F3B would have regarded them with different and more curious eyes. They had taught in their periodical schools, which were empty forever now, that all forces hostile to man, both animate, and inanimate had been exterminated or tamed; but here, in two days’ time, their boasted civilization had gone like a faded dream, and there was the sword at the man’s side, and the load on the woman’s back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  As they climbed, the skies cleared. They looked up to sunshine and windy clouds. Their clothes steamed in the pleasant heat of the sun.

  “To think,” Vinetta said, “that we have become glad of such weather as this!”

  It was a lesson they were re-learning at every hour. That which before had brought no discomfort had brought no joy. The weather had been the same from childhood to death, and they had regarded its controlled perfection with an indifference which did not change. So it had been in ever
y experience of life. Men had resolved that pain should be expelled from the world. They had had their way, and pleasure and pain had gone off together. Were men wrong to make war on sorrow and pain? That would be hard to believe. Yet was it not a fight which they must wage, but, at their peril, they must not win?

  Wyndham did not vex his mind with such questions as this. Pain had become a neighbour too close for his peace, and when men speak of its salutary nature it is usually farther away. He rested at times, but found little relief from that. His ankle had become hot and swollen, and it seemed to him that each time he rose it had become worse during those times.

  “What shall we do,” he said, “if it become worse? If my leg go bad? I must have broken something inside.”

  Their eyes met in troubled ignorance, from which came a greater fear than they would otherwise have had.

  Vinetta would have him stop more than once, but, as the pain became worse, so did the instinctive desire to have some sheltered place he could call his own, in which he could lie secure, either to recover or die.

  Once, while they sat by the side of the path, on rocks which were already hot and dried by the midday sun, they were soaked again by a sudden shower which, within five minutes, had passed away. Vinetta took little notice of that, having a greater trouble now, which she saw to have arisen from her fault; but Wyndham found actual comfort, his hot ankle feeling the relief of the cooling rain.

  “If the rain had not stopped,” he said, “it would have got well. It is that it needs.”

  Vinetta took what hope she could from this sanguine view. She looked up for clouds. But the wind came from the west, and in that quarter the sky was clear.

  When they were some distance below the cave, they paused at a wayside spring. Vinetta looked at many foot-marks in half-dried mud. “This,” she said, “is where the elephants drink.

  Very gladly they did the same, finding more pleasure in that than they could have supposed that drinking could ever give, for the afternoon had become very hot for those who climbed in the sun.

  Vinetta said, “If you will stay here, I will go on, and see whether there will be any trouble with the—dogs.”

  “I can’t let you go alone. If there’s fighting, it’s my place to do that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that. I want to make friends if I can.”

  “And if they don’t look friendly, you will come back without going close?”

  “Yes, of course. I don’t want to get hurt. I want you to rest, if you can.”

  Reluctantly he gave way. He was so lame now that every upward step was torture, and he was in no condition to enter into an argument of force with two active animals whose methods of warfare were unfamiliar.

  There was, to him, an even stronger inducement in that running spring, into which he had already plunged the throbbing foot, finding in its coolness, if not healing, a quick relief.

  Vinetta went on alone. She went with the feeling that she had taken a delicate mission, but without thought of using force or fear of attack. She blamed herself, with some reason, for the misadventures of the day. It was her carelessness that had started the plane. Her impatient fear that had obstructed Wyndham when he would have descended safely had she trusted him. She saw that it had become her part to retrieve the position as best she could.

  She came close to the cave without meeting either of the dogs, which was not how she would have preferred it to be. She judged soundly that to enter in their absence was not the road to a friendly understanding. But, when she was no more than ten yards away, the female dog came out, not as being aware of her presence, but as having other affairs on hand.

  She bounded two or three yards up the rocky face of the hill, ignoring the path, and then stopped abruptly as she became aware of Vinetta’s presence. Then her hairs bristled, and she uttered a low ominous growl.

  Vinetta had sense enough to stand still, and to speak in a friendly tone. Her voice had an instant effect. Bristles sank, and the growl changed to an uncertain bark.

  Had Vinetta shown either anger or fear, it is likely that she would have had the fangs of a powerful animal at her throat. But she remembered the experience of the previous day. She thought that patience would win if only the other dog did not appear too soon.

  She was fortunate in this, and in the correctness of the judgment which she had formed.

  The animal, doubtless descended from ancestors which had been the friends and servants of men, proved to be of a timid friendliness, only anxious to know that she would be met in the same spirit. They were almost equally strange to one another, but there was nothing in the experiences of either to rouse distrust. The dogs had their own reason for fear, but their enemies had not a human smell.

  Tentative advances from either side came to close contact at last. Vinetta endured a cold nose on her naked leg. She stroked, for the first time in her life, the hair of a living quadruped. They entered the cave together, for Vinetta to be nervously introduced to three two-month-old puppies. Their occupation was repugnant to her, being the playful worrying of the fleshless remnant of a coney, on a floor that was not free either from bones or dung. But she saw that the cave was spacious, and with a plurality of chambers, some of them being lighted by high slits in the rock. It might be a better home than she had expected to find, and, if they could dwell together in peace, there would be room both for the dogs and them.

  But exploration could wait. Her present doubt was whether the absent dog would be as friendly as his mate had proved. Should she go back now, or wait to be introduced to him as an accepted guest in his own lair? With some doubt, and perhaps more courage than wisdom, she resolved to remain, and was justified by the event. The dog came in with a coney in his mouth, which it seemed to be his habit to provide for the family larder. After an uncertain moment he accepted the position, making no friendly advances, but confining himself to a watchful neutrality. Vinetta decided that the time had come to return to Wyndham, who had found her absence too long for his own peace, though he had had sufficient discretion to await her at the spot where they had parted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The dogs were together, and watched with a silent intentness, but made no hostile demonstration, as Wyndham, with some support from Vinetta’s arm, limped into the cave.

  He was anxious to rest, but went on to an interior chamber, separate from that which the dogs occupied. There was satisfaction in the spaciousness of this rock-hewn dwelling of prehistoric man, which offered a better home than they had thought, or could reasonably have expected to find, or to make with their own hands.

  But there was no place for rest better than the stone floor on which they sat, finding it dry but hard. It offered little comfort for the hours of darkness and sleep. No men, of any period or condition, would have viewed it with complacency in that particular, and to these two, who were only beginning to experience the annoyance of physical discomfort, it was impossible as a place of rest.

  “I must go down again,” Vinetta said, when they had eaten a meal together. “I can bring a bundle of clothes on which to lie, if nothing better than that.”

  “They will be wet now.”

  “They will have dried in the sun.”

  “I don’t want you to go alone.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  Wyndham did not know how to answer that. It was evident that if he should go alone, even if it should be a physical possibility, it would be dark long before he could struggle back. It would be the same if they should go together, and what protection or help could he be to her, lamed as he was?

  She added, seeing that her question had reduced him to silence, “The most important thing is that your leg shall get right again. You can see it’s the walking that makes it worse.”

  He could not deny that. He had dread, for her sake as much as his own, that it might get worse in some way that would cause his death. Or if he should be crippled, it would be poor prospect enough. Reluctantly he gave way, and she set ou
t alone, looking back as she went out with a glance of courage and love that haunted him during the long hours of her absence, as though it were the last he would ever see.

  His thoughts were sombre enough for this while. In the stress of accidents and misadventures which the day had brought, Vinetta appeared to have put the fear of Pilwin’s threat out of her mind, but it was easy to recall it now, and to remember that Munzo and he had had the resource of the whole earth under their control. Was it likely, with so much at stake, and with such power in their hands, they would have deceived themselves with a plan so futile that it would never even reveal itself to those whom they had so contemptuously warned? It was beyond reasonable hope.

  Even without that, might it not be thought that Pilwin’s confident prediction that his life would endure for ten days, or more probably less, was already being fulfilled? Surrounded by circumstances that they were unfit to face and inexperienced to control, were they not already blundering rapidly down their deathward way?

  He was in this mood when the female dog trod silently into the chamber, now darkening to a deeper gloom than the outer twilight, and came curiously towards, him. He felt a wet nose on his shin, and then a long, red tongue shot out, licking diligently the inflamed ankle. Wyndham had a moment of doubt as to the purpose of the active tongue. Did the animal confuse that injured leg with the flesh of the dead coney which the puppies worried in the outer cave? In a more combative mood he might not have allowed himself the second’s pause which showed the harmless nature of what she did.

  As it was, he took an unreasonable satisfaction from the contact of the licking tongue. “That,” he thought, “is the way in which they heal themselves, when they are damaged in the rough life they live. I will suppose she has healed me now.” Vinetta, entering with a burdened back in the deepening gloom, saw the animal lying close to Wyndham while his hand caressed a rough head, as no man had done for three centuries past—in fact, since the passing of the decree by which dogs and other domestic animals had been condemned to extermination, as being unsuitable for a highly civilized and mechanised world.