“The all-wise one will pardon me. You keep the peace. Therefore we cannot stay in our own country. For we grow crowded and there is no food. In old times, when we were crowded and hungry, we went down into the plains and took the land and the wives of the people of the plains and killed the men. But the raj does not allow it. It holds a sword between us and the plains, a sword with the edge towards us. Neither, on the other hand, does it feed us.”
Mr. Endicott was aghast at the perverted views thus calmly announced to him.
“But we can’t allow you to come down into India murdering and robbing and taking the wives.”
The Asiatic shrugged his shoulders.
“It is the law.”
Mr. Endicott was silent. If it were not the law, there were certainly a great many precedents. The men of the hills and the people of the plains — yes, history would say it was the law. Mr. Endicott’s eyes were opening upon unknown worlds. The British Power stood in India then cleaving a law of nature?
“Also, you send your doctors and make cures when the plague and the cholera come, so that fewer people die. Also, when the crops fail and there is famine, you distribute food, so that again fewer people die. No, there is no room now for us in our own country because of you, and you will not let us into yours.”
“But we can’t do anything else,” cried Mr. Endicott. “We keep the peace, we feed when there is famine, we send our doctors when there is plague, because that is the law, also — the law of our race.”
Ahmed Ali did not move. He had placed the dilemma before Endicott. He neither solved nor accepted it. Nor Was Endicott able to find any answer. There must be one, since his whole race was arraigned just for what it most prided itself upon — oh, no doubt there was an answer. But Mr. Endicott could not find it. His imagination, however, grasped the problem. He saw those seven hundred tribesmen travelling down the passes to the rail head, loading the Bombay train and dispersing upon the steamers. But he had no answer, and because he had no answer he was extremely uncomfortable. He had lived for a year in the world of politicians where, as a rule, there are answers all ready-made for any question, answers neatly framed in aphorisms and propositions and provided for our acceptance by thoughtful organisations. But he could not remember one to suit this occasion. He was at a loss, and he took the easy way to rid himself of discomfort. He dived into his trouser-pocket and fished out a handful of silver.
“Here!” he said. “This’ll help you on a bit. Now go!”
He stood aside from the door and the Asiatic darted to it with an extraordinary eagerness. But once he had unlatched it, once it stood open to the hillside and the sky, and he free in the embrasure, he lost all his cringing aspect. He turned round upon Mr. Endicott.
“I go now,” he cried in a high arrogant voice. “But I shall come back very soon, and all our peoples will come with me, all our hungry peoples from the East. Remember that, you genelman!” And then he ran noiselessly out of the house and down the pathway to the gate.
He ran with extraordinary swiftness; so that Endicott followed him to the gate and watched him go. He flew down the road, his shadow flitting in the moonlight like a bird. Once he looked over his shoulder, and seeing Endicott at the gate he leapt into the air. A few yards farther he doubled on his steps, climbed down into the little stream beside the lane and took to the hills. And in another moment he was not. The broad and kindly fell took him to its bosom. He was too tiny an atom to stand out against that great towering slope of grass and stones. Indeed, he vanished so instantly that it seemed he must have dived into a cave. The next moment Endicott almost doubted whether he had ever been at all, whether he was not some apparition born of his own troubled brain and the Australian’s talk. But, as he turned back into the house, he saw upon the flags of the garden path the marks of the man’s wet, bare feet. Not only had Ahmed Ali been to the farm-house, but he had crossed the stream to get there.
Mr. Endicott went back to his table in the window and seated himself in front of his lighted candles, more from habit than with any thought of work. He felt suddenly rather tired. He had not been conscious of any fear while Ahmed Ali was in the room, or indeed of any strain. But strain, and perhaps fear, there had been. Certainly a vague fear began to get hold of him now. He had a picture before his eyes of the Asiatic leaping into the air upon the road, and then doubling for the hills. Why had he fled so fast?
“North of the Tropic of Capricorn!”
He repeated the words to himself aloud. Was the Australian right after all? And would they come from the East — those hungry people? Mr. Endicott seemed to feel the earth tremble beneath the feet of the myriads of Asia. He bent his ear and seemed to hear the distant confusion of their approach. He looked down at his papers and flicked them contemptuously. Of what use would be his fine Bill for the establishment of a Minimum Wage? Why, everything would go down — civilisation, the treasures of art, twenty centuries of man’s painful growth — just as that Derby China teapot with its wonderful colour of dark blue and red and gold. The broken fragments of the teapot became a symbol to Endicott.
“And the women would go down too,” he thought with a shiver. “They would take the wives.”
He had come to this point in his speculations when the inner door opened, and the light broadened in the room. He heard Mrs. Tyson shuffle in, but he did not turn towards her. He sat looking out upon the fell.
“I found the lamp burning on the hall table by the letters, sir,” she said, “and I thought you might want it.”
“Thank you,” said Endicott vaguely, and he was roused by a little gasping cry which she uttered.
“Oh, yes! I am very sorry, Mrs. Tyson. Your teapot has been knocked down. I went out. There was a man in the room when I came back. He knocked it down. Of course I’ll make its value good, though I doubt if I can replace it.”
Mrs. Tyson made no answer. She placed the lamp on the table. Endicott was still seated at his table in the window with his back to the room. But he had thrown back his head, and he saw the circle of reflected light upon the ceiling shake and quiver as Mrs. Tyson put the lamp down. The glass chimney, too, rattled as though her hands were shaking.
“I am very sorry indeed,” he continued.
Mrs. Tyson dropped upon her knees and began to pick up the broken pieces from the floor.
“It doesn’t matter at all, sir,” she said, and Endicott was surprised by the utter tonelessness of her voice. He knew that she set great store upon this set of china; she had boasted of it. Yet now that it was spoilt she spoke of it with complete indifference. He turned round in his chair and watched her picking up the fragments — watched her idly until she sobbed.
“Good heavens,” he cried, “I knew that you valued it, Mrs. Tyson, but—” and then he stopped. For she turned to him and he knew that there was more than the china teapot at the bottom of her trouble. Her face, white and shaking and wet with tears, was terrible to see. There was a horror upon it as though she had beheld things not allowed, and a hopeless pain in her eyes as though she was sure that the appalling vision would never pass. But all she did was to repeat her phrase.
“It doesn’t matter at all, sir.”
Endicott started up and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
“What has happened, Mrs. Tyson?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you, sir.” She knelt upon the floor and covered her face with her hands and wept as Endicott had never dreamed that a human being could weep. Fear seized upon him and held him till he shivered with the chill of it. The woman had come in by the inner door. In the hall, then, was to be found the cause of her horror. He lifted the lamp and hurried towards it, but to reach the door he had to pass the screen which Elsie had arranged on the day of their coming. And at the screen he stopped. The terror which may come to a man once in his life clutched his heart so that he choked. For behind the screen he saw the gleam of a girl’s white frock.
“Elsie,” he cried, “you have been all this while here — asleep.” For
he would not believe the thing he knew.
She was lying rather than sitting in the low basket chair in front of the little table on which the chemicals were ranged, with her back towards him, and her face buried in the padding of the chair. Endicott stretched his arm over her and set down the lamp upon the table. Then he spoke to her again chidingly and shaking her arm.
“Elsie, wake up! Don’t be ridiculous!”
He slipped an arm under her waist, and lifting her, turned her towards him. The girl’s head rolled upon her shoulders, and there was a look of such deadly horror upon her face that no pen could begin to describe it. Endicott caught her to his breast.
“Oh, my God,” he cried hoarsely. “My poor girl! My poor girl!”
Mrs. Tyson had come up behind him.
“It was he,” she whispered, “the man who was here. He killed her!” And as Endicott turned his head towards the woman, some little thing slipped from the chair on to the floor with a tiny rattle. Endicott laid her down and picked up a small, yellow, round tablet.
“No, he didn’t,” he said with a queer eagerness in his voice. The tablet came from a small bottle on the table at the end of his row of chemicals. It was labelled, “Intensifier” and “Poison,” and the cork was out of the bottle. The bottle had been full that afternoon. There was more than one tablet missing now.
“No, she killed herself. Those tablets are cyanide of potassium. He never touched her. Look!”
Upon the boards of the floor the wet and muddy feet of the Asiatic had written the history of his movements beyond the possibility of mistake. Here he had stood in front of her — not a step nearer. Mrs. Tyson heard him whisper in her daughter’s ear. “Oh, my dear, I thank God!” He sank upon his knees beside her. Mrs. Tyson went out, and, closing the door gently, left him with his dead.
She sat and waited in the kitchen, and after a while she heard him moving. He opened the door into the hall and came out and went slowly and heavily up the stairs into Elsie’s room. In a little while he came down again and pushed open the kitchen door. He had aged by twenty years, but his face and his voice were calm.
“You found the lamp in the hall?” he said, in a low voice. “Beside the letters? Come! We must understand this. My mind will go unless I am quite sure.”
She followed him into the living-room and saw that his dead daughter was no longer there. She stood aside whilst, with a patience which wrung her heart, Endicott worked out by the footprints of the intruder and this and that sure sign the events of those tragic minutes, until there was no doubt left.
“Elsie wrote eight letters,” he said. “Seven are in the hall. Here is the eighth, addressed and stamped upon the table where she wrote.”
The letters had to be sent down the valley to the inn early in the morning. So when she had finished, she had carried them into the hall — all of them, she thought — and she had taken the lamp to light her steps. Whilst she was in the hall, and whilst all this side of the house was in darkness Ahmed Ali had slipped into the room from the lane by the brook. There were the marks of his feet coming from the door.
“But was that possible?” Endicott argued. “I was on the hillside, the moon shining from behind my shoulders on to the house. There were no shadows. It was all as clear as day. I must have seen the man come along the little footpath to the door, for I was watching the house. I saw the light in this room disappear. Wait a moment! Yes. Just after the light went out I struck a match and lit my pipe.”
He had held the match close to his face in the hollow of his hands, and had carefully lit the pipe; and after the match had burned out, the glare had remained for a few seconds in his eyes. It was during those seconds that the Asiatic had crossed the lane and darted in by the door.
The next step then became clear. Elsie, counting her letters in the hall, had discovered that she had left one behind, she knew where she had left it. She knew that the moonlight was pouring into the room; and, leaving the lamp in the hall, she had returned to fetch it. In the moonlit room she had come face to face with the Asiatic.
He had been close to the screen when she met him, and there he had stood. No doubt he had begun by asking her for opium. No doubt, too — perhaps through some unanswered cry of hers, perhaps because she never cried out at all, perhaps on account of a tense attitude of terror not to be mistaken even in that vaporous silvery light — somehow, at all events, he had become aware that she was alone in the house; and his words and his demands had changed. She had backed away from him against the wall, moving the screen and the chair, and upsetting a book upon the table there. That was evident from the disorder in this corner. Upon the table stood Endicott’s chemicals for developing his photographs. Endicott saw the picture with a ghastly distinctness — her hand dropping for support upon the table and touching the bottles which she had arranged herself.
“Yes, she knew that that one nearest, the first she touched was the poison, and meant — what? Safety! It’s awful, but it’s the truth. Very probably she screamed, poor girl. But there was no one to hear her.”
The noise of the river leaping from rock pool to rock pool had drowned any sound of it which might else have reached to Endicott’s ears. The scream had failed. In front of her was a wild and desperate Pathan from the stokehold of a liner. Under her hand was the cyanide of potassium. Endicott could see her furtively moving the cork from the mouth of the bottle with the fingers of one hand, whilst she stood watching in horror the man smiling at her in silence.
“Don’t you feel that that is just how everything happened? Aren’t you sure of it?” he asked, turning to Mrs. Tyson with a dreadful appeal in his eyes. But she could answer it honestly.
“Yes, sir, that is how it all happened,” and for a moment Mr. Endicott was comforted. But immediately afterwards he sat down on a chair like a tired man and his fingers played upon the table.
“It would all be over in a few seconds,” he said lamentably to Mrs. Tyson. “But, oh, those seconds! They would have been terrible — terrible with pain.” His voice trailed away into silence. He sat still staring at the table. Then he raised his head towards Mrs. Tyson, and his face was disfigured by a smile of torment. “Hard luck on a young girl, eh, Mrs. Tyson?” and the very banality of the sentence made it poignant. “Everything just beginning for her — the sheer fun of life. Her beauty, and young men, and friends and dancing, the whole day a burst of music — and then suddenly — quite alone — that’s so horrible — quite alone, in a minute she had to — —” His voice choked and the tears began to run down his face.
“But the man?” Mrs. Tyson ventured.
“Oh, the man!” cried Endicott. “I will think of him to-morrow.”
He went up the stairs walking as heavily as when he had carried his daughter in his arms; and he went again into Elsie’s room. Mrs. Tyson blew out the candles upon his writing-table and arranged automatically some disordered sheets of foolscap. They were notes on the great principle of the Minimum Wage.
ONE OF THEM
AT MIDNIGHT ON August 4th, Poldhu flung the news out to all ships, and Anthony Strange, on the Boulotte, took the message in the middle of the West Bay. He carried on accordingly past Weymouth, and in the morning was confronted with the wall of great breakers off St. Alban’s Head. The little boat ran towards that barrier with extraordinary swiftness. Strange put her at a gap close into the shore where the waves broke lower, and with a lurch and a shudder she scooped the water in over her bows and clothed herself to her brass gunwale-top in a stinging veil of salt. Never had the Boulotte behaved better than she did that morning in the welter of the Race, and Strange, rejoicing to his very finger-tips, forgot the news which was bringing all the pleasure-boats, great and small, into the harbours of the south, forgot even that sinking of the heart which had troubled him throughout the night. But it was only in the Race that he knew any comfort. He dropped his anchor in Poole Harbour by mid-day, and fled through London to a house he owned on the Berkshire Downs.
There for
a few days he found life possible. It was true there were sentries under the railway bridges, but the sun rose each day over a country ripe for the harvest, and the smoke curled from the chimneys of pleasant villages; and there was no sign of war. But soon the nights became a torture. For from midnight on, at intervals of five to ten minutes, the troop-trains roared along the Thames Valley towards Avonmouth, and the reproach of each of them ceased only with the morning. Strange leaned out of his window looking down the slopes where the corn in the moonlight was like a mist. Not a light showed in the railway carriages, but the sparks danced above the funnel of the engine, and the glare of the furnace burnished the leaves of the trees. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers on the road to France. Then there came a morning when, not a hundred yards from his house, he saw a string of horses in the road and others being taken from the reaping-machines in a field. Strange returned to town and dined with a Mrs. Kenway, his best friend, and to her he unburdened his soul.
“I am ashamed ... don’t know how to look people in the face.... I never thought to be so utterly unhappy. I am thirty and useless. I cumber the ground.”
The look of surprise with which his friend turned to him hurt him like the cut of a whip. “Of course you can’t help,” it seemed to say. “The world is for the strong, this year and the next, and for how many more?”
Strange had to lie on his back for some hours each day, and he suffered off and on always. But that had been his lot since boyhood, and he had made light of his infirmity and grown used to it until this 4th of August. He had consoled himself with the knowledge that to the world he looked only rather delicate. He was tall, and not set apart from his fellows.
“Now,” he said. “I wish that everybody knew. Yes, I wish that I showed that service was impossible. To think of us sitting here round a dinner-table — as we used to! Oh, I know what you’ll think! I have the morbid sensitiveness of sick men. Perhaps you are right.”
“I don’t think it at all,” she said, and she set herself to comfort him.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 786