Dead Man Leading

by V. S. Pritchett

  ‘What are they saying, Silva?’ Phillips asked.

  ‘It is the boots. And their pay.’

  Phillips said to Johnson, ‘They’ll dig him up for those boots.’

  Johnson had spoken very little, and he seemed to add this remark, in his quietly listening manner, to the stock of his thoughts. Gilbert above all wanted to talk. To discuss again Harry’s account of how it happened, to talk of death and Wright’s life, writing to his family, the future of the expedition. He assumed that all this was Harry’s responsibility. Harry did not talk. A feeling arose in the camp that Johnson must take responsibility for Wright’s death. He lay apart and everyone watched him. The smoke of his pipe rising up from the hammock showed them he was at least not sleeping.

  If by chance they came together, they were conscious that Wright ought to be among them. Gilbert thought, ‘That is what might have happened to Johnson’s father—an accident with a gun.’

  As the vacant day passed among too much greenness the huddled crew grew sullen and noisy. The lack of drama in the death and the burial, the absence of some outlet for their feeling about death, gave them a blunt anger. If Gilbert gave them an order, they lowered their eyes. Presently their murmuring grew louder. Silva awoke from his diffident, passionless trance; he had heard the word ‘murder.’ He mused about this. Then he came and sat beside Phillips.

  ‘It is possible,’ he said, ‘that this was not an accident. Perhaps he killed Wright.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Is that what they’re saying?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Yes.’

  Gilbert, hungry and yet without appetite, felt sick and looked with disgust at Silva.

  Silva shrugged his shoulders.

  On the previous night when they had gone to search for Harry they had turned back to the wide creek where he had ultimately seen them. They had heard loud reports which had sounded like gun shots and when they got nearer they had discovered that the forest had been fired. Perhaps Indians watching the camp had fired the bush.

  It was Silva, theatrically carried away by the thought of fire and Johnson and Wright perhaps trapped by it, who had insisted on going up the creek. The fire was not at the water’s edge, but the reports of the burning wood, the wind roar and hum of the ascending flame, were loud. They had drowned the distant sound of Johnson’s signals. And then Silva’s imagined picture had proved to be wrong—perhaps fatal. Phillips blamed himself and blaming, despised Silva.

  But it was the peculiar faculty of Silva to infect others with suggestion from his fantasies. He had infected the easy Calcott, he had gained the confidence and awakened the imagination of Johnson—now, once more, he insinuated doubt into the ready imagination of Phillips.

  Phillips did not believe him, nevertheless the suggestion remained.

  ‘He could have killed him,’ said Silva. ‘He was in love with Mr Wright’s wife. He told me. That is why he ran away.’

  Phillips listened with astonishment.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense. Mrs Wright is a woman of fifty.’

  Phillips saw that Silva had mistaken Lucy for Mrs Wright.

  ‘When she had a baby Mr Wright would know.’

  Phillips smiled at Silva’s story.

  ‘When did he tell you all this?’ he said.

  ‘He told me,’ Silva waved back down the river.

  Gilbert’s amour propre was injured because Harry had confided in Silva and not in him.

  ‘He was ill,’ said Silva. ‘He would not speak and then he told me. I told him about my wife.’

  ‘You’re not married?’

  ‘Yes. She is blind. She lives with her family in Portugal.’ The misfortune of Silva gave him seriousness.

  ‘Listen,’ said Gilbert. ‘It’s all nonsense about Mr Johnson killing Mr Wright. We don’t do those things and he was his greatest friend and he is engaged to be married to Mr Wright’s daughter. Look,’ said Gilbert, as if talking to a child. He pulled a note-book out of his pocket. It was his diary. ‘I’ve written down exactly what happened. You are to tell the men and stop this. D’you see?’

  ‘All right,’ said Silva dispassionately.

  ‘Why,’ said Gilbert, ‘Mr Johnson did his best to save Mr Wright’s life. We shall be going back tomorrow, I expect. You can tell the men that.’

  When the chance came, Gilbert said to Harry:

  ‘It would be a good thing to write down your story because we shall have to report this when we get back.’

  Harry said that he had not thought of that. What was he going to write to Mrs Wright? And to Lucy? When was he going to write? Now, or in a fortnight’s time when they got back to Calcott’s?

  Harry blinked in bewilderment.

  Phillips saw that he had not been thinking of these things. Phillips was moved by the state of Johnson. The death of Wright had frightened Phillips, it had shrivelled his heart, made him look with apprehension at the country, with nausea at the changeless brilliance of the sunlight on the river and metalled on the trees. But he saw that Johnson was moved by sorrow for Wright’s death and Phillips was suddenly shaken by his own lack of grief, his concern only with himself. Yet he could feel, beneath the shining glacial surface of his mind, the movement of grief. He grieved rather for Wright’s wife and for Lucy.

  He said to Johnson:

  ‘It was not your fault. You did all you could. A wound like that—it’s a wonder you got him as far.’

  (Only much later on, weeks later, did the story of the second appearance of the jaguar accidentally escape from Johnson.)

  ‘It was my fault,’ Johnson said, ‘because I came up here.’

  ‘An accident could happen anywhere,’ said Phillips.

  They felt the absence of Wright on this first night.

  It was a bad night. The stars were wiped out between two and three in the morning by a black cloud and lightning sheeted the river and lit flares in the trees, but there was only one abortive crack of thunder, a peal split and cut short like wood splitting. But rain came down straight and dense, hissing in the fire and soaking them, and the wind moved like a heavy sea in the trees. The rain washed away some of the earth from Wright’s grave, making his body nearer as if he were trying to return to them, and uprooted the cross. Hurriedly in the morning they piled on the earth once more when they discovered this, and Johnson made them collect stones and build a low cairn on top. The work made them forget their soaking and the steam rising from their soaked equipment; and the physical labour gave them an escape from their horror.

  With the job done, a feeling of expectancy arose. The feeling of suspicion against Johnson seemed to have subsided. Each man was concerned with himself, drying his things and thinking of the future, although when Phillips and Johnson came together they would pause and both feel the incredible absence of Wright. They had lost their sense of time. Their minds were always drifting back and living in the days they had been with him and had heard his voice and had seen him walk along the shore or step into the boat or dip his bare arms into the water. They remembered his extraordinary youthfulness, his way of treating the country as a playing field.

  It was strange to them that the sun still rose and the days continued, that time went on. And it seemed that the country and themselves lived in different periods of time, they in the past days with Wright and particularly in the day when Wright had landed at the camp. When the men looked at them from the fire where they were cooking, they too seemed to be in a different period of time.

  And Silva stood half-way between them, belonging to neither period completely.

  The death of Wright had done one thing which, much later on, was to have its consequences. It had broken the intimacy between Johnson and Silva. Silva, on his side, had his new fantasy. Johnson, on his, saw in Silva the figure of his guilt, since Silva had been his companion in the flight; but the main reason for the ceasing of the intimacy was the simple one that misfortune brought the two Englishmen together b
ecause they were Englishmen and left Silva with his own people. The two Englishmen were too dazed by the tragedy to observe that this had happened, but Silva had observed it and, since it was natural, it seemed admirable to him. His companionship with Johnson had come to an end. He had no malice, no disappointment, no disillusion. It was like a work of art in the rough, essentially finished but which now needs the refinement of meditation, the suppressing of some details, the elaboration of others. Already he saw himself at home, telling the story. And since he was not at home yet, he was impatient and bored, waiting for the order to pack up and depart.

  After the cairn had been built, Gilbert said to Harry:

  ‘When are we going back?’

  Harry said:

  ‘Do you want to go back?’

  The shock of this question showed Gilbert how deeply Wright’s death had made him long for safety and return, how acutely he felt that to go on now was to be unprotected and vulnerable. They were like a holed vessel.

  ‘We can’t go on. The men won’t go.’ Gilbert could not tell Harry of the word ‘murder’ but he said: ‘They think this is bad luck.’

  ‘They think I have brought them bad luck.’

  ‘We know that’s nonsense, but . . . go on where? Back to the river?’

  Gilbert knew that Wright would not have stopped because one of them had died. Harry and Wright were the same. They did not think of others or of themselves, but of their purpose.

  ‘You mean,’ said Gilbert, ‘you mean that we must go on with his job.’

  Gilbert was to have a shock. He had been so used to feeling his own isolation from the traditions which Johnson and Wright took for granted, that he had argued that only himself acted individually. Harry said:

  ‘No, there is no point in that. The men won’t go. We must send them back.’

  All this, Gilbert saw, was difficult for Johnson to say. Gilbert knew him well enought to know that he disliked giving reasons for his actions, but this was obviously not all of Johnson’s difficulty now. The obstinate look was on his face, the visionary light was in his half-lowered eyes, the distant preoccupation with a purpose he was set on and which he could abandon only if he had to, with regret.

  ‘I mean we will go up this river. I wanted to go up this one.’

  ‘Change the whole plan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the men?’

  ‘Send the men back, I said.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot.’ Gilbert was bewildered, startled by the definiteness, the decision of Harry’s purpose. Harry seemed not to be suggesting, but to be deciding.

  ‘You mean,’ Gilbert said more hopefully, ‘just go up for a few days until you get to—where were you proposing to go? A week up the river and then back?’

  ‘No. Go up there. Not come back this way. Go across,’ Harry said vaguely.

  ‘With Silva and me? Silva won’t go. He’s bored. He wants to go back.’

  ‘I don’t want Silva.’

  They spoke in lowered voices, murmuring and whispering; if one raised his voice in the discussion, the other glanced at him pleadingly and the voice was lowered. Wright was too near.

  ‘But we can’t go on alone. No maps. No guide. And what about food?’

  ‘Live on the country. There was never any need for all this stuff.’ He pointed to the cases and bags in the camp. ‘It hampers you. You can’t move. You’re tied to the crew and the river. We’ve got Wright’s map—it isn’t much good. It’s been no good so far. This river wasn’t marked on it. Still, if you want a map I’ve got one. I’ve studied this. I know the way I want to go.’

  Gilbert argued that the planned expedition would be better than an unplanned, casual escape into the wild like this. ‘And without an object,’ he said emphatically.

  He was incredulous. He was thinking too of the Indians. This wild proposal of Harry’s would mean the death of them if they were fools enough to undertake it. He knew Johnson’s recklessness, how out of periods of torpor and laborious, lazy, routine plodding it woke up; he had seen it in England when sailing—he refused to go out more than a mile or two on a fair fine day and then when half a gale was blowing, he was restlessly standing at the window, thinking, pretending to agree with people that it was impossible, and at last slipping out on his own.

  ‘I’ve got an object,’ Harry said. And now the resolute sullenness appeared to thicken his shoulders and put weight in his stance. ‘I want to chuck all this and find out about my father. He came up here and I know all about the way he went. I’ve been studying it.’ He hesitated and added with candour:

  ‘I wouldn’t care to do Wright’s show now, though it looks like letting him down. It was my fault he died.’

  The illogicality did not strike Phillips at the moment but afterwards he thought: ‘If he wishes to make amends why doesn’t he propose to finish the job Wright had set his heart on?’

  But Gilbert was so distressed by the prospect of going on at all, he had, in the panic caused by death, so set his heart on returning, that he argued forcibly that Wright’s plan, if any, was the only one: and the more he argued with Harry about it, the clearer it became that Harry was possessed by the flight impulse again. Yet it did seem to Gilbert that there was a kind of respect to Wright in continuing up this river. If Harry’s flight up this, the wrong river, could be construed as a contributory cause of Wright’s death, then you could wipe out that by making this the right river. It made Wright’s death on it in some way less futile.

  Harry went out of the camp to the place where he had wept after he had been caught by Wright. He saw the trees and the wheel of the river bend as he had seen them at that time. His misery had been enough then but it seemed pitiably small and self-regarding beside the emotion he felt now. Then he had committed some muddled misdemeanour, sunk into an inexplicable humiliation; but now—the life-long, guilty sensation of being different from other men had landed on its whisper from year to year until it had culminated in crime. He had committed crime. He had murdered Wright.

  You could argue you had not murdered him, that it was an accident, something coming haphazard out of the year, descending upon your shoulders by chance. You could argue that everyone feels this guilt towards the dead when a man or woman dies. You begin thinking of the things you could have done. You say, ‘If I had done this or if I had only spoken thus,’ and so on.

  But if this is so; this is to say, if everyone feels this, why do they feel it? Why this universal guilt? Why this desire to say, ‘I have committed a crime?’ Why, ‘I am in some obscure but ineradicable way, a murderer?’ Why, with the instinctive assumption of this guilt, is there mingled the intense and singular fire of an utterly distinguishing pride?—as if one said, ‘He’s dead, I killed him but I am alive, far more alive because of his death, and my remorse is like coals thrown on to the fire of my life making it burn unquenchably’?

  One has behaved badly; one has broken some not very important convention of one’s society, one has had a child by a woman one cannot marry and one has broken an agreement with a leader because of it. It would not look well, one’s pride would suffer, if one returned and this was said. And so he makes a life and death drama of it, magnifies the little muddle to the dimension of a great conflict. Out of a little fear is created a great God.

  This is one aspect of your case but you feel it’s too mean and local an interpretation of your life. The fear you have had is not small, it is not the product of the habits of the street you were born in: it is Fear itself, a great principle that feeds as it sows. You cannot face the criticism of your fellows, but this is because you have a remorse not merely for your breaches of their code but for the whole train of events issuing mysteriously from the lives of your parents and passing into you when they took their form. It is a remorse for living, and there is redemption only in resignation or in the pride of some surpassing pilgrimage.

  The pilgrimage which surpasses all others is the one from which all wish to return has been withdrawn. ‘I go un
to Him that sent me.’

  Uneasy in these days if Johnson left the camp, Phillips noted the way he went and followed him. Gilbert feared what might be in Harry’s thoughts. He watched Harry for a long time, respecting his meditation; then his desire not to be alone became too strong. He went up to him.

  But Harry could not or would not explain what had passed in his heart, and Gilbert was left to conclude that grief had strengthened Harry’s obstinacy. If they were to go on, surely it must be on Wright’s route. Convention demanded it. If you thought you had dishonoured Wright, then here was the obvious way of restitution. The alarming thing was that Gilbert knew Harry’s heart to be overwhelmed, and yet he saw him now beyond the promptings of the heart. There was an air of ‘Now I’m the leader and I’ll do my own show,’ which in some way was distasteful.

  Gilbert worked to talk Harry back to reason. After all, one may die but one doesn’t seek to die. And there way Lucy. Every time he thought of Wright the image of Lucy came into his mind. The image had broken through everything and stood pleading with him.

  ‘But I will only go if we take the men,’ said Phillips, in his exact harsh voice. ‘They were certain it was Indians who fired the trees the other night.’

  ‘They didn’t touch us. They won’t.’

  ‘But if we were attacked . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference if there are two or seven of us. A lot of rot is talked about Indians.’

  ‘It isn’t rot at all. You know that as well I do. Its absurd; two men can’t go for a country walk across God knows how many hundreds of miles of forest, where there are no towns, where there’s no food and only savages. You can’t do that. I refuse. I refuse to go or to let you. Unless you want to die.’

  Johnson gazed at him gravely.

  He did not appear to listen.

  ‘My father did it,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and he was killed. He was mad. Harry, my heart’s not in this now Wright has gone. He wouldn’t have let you do this. And I shan’t. I’ll do Wright’s plan properly if you insist because I said I would in England, but not yours.’