Читать книгу The Turnstile - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 8

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There were two more shocks that night, the first at five minutes past one, the second half an hour before sunrise. James Challoner sat in the centre of the most open space he could find, his overcoat drawn close about him and his daughter clasped tightly to his breast. But it was almost unconsciously that he held her so. His brain was dazed, and the only image at all clear in his mind was that of his dead wife's hand protruding beneath the great stone and directing against him its mute accusation. But, even so, it was the limp look of the fingers which chiefly troubled him, and that only troubled him from time to time. For the greater part of the interval before daybreak he sat watching the roofs of the buildings below him burst in tongues of fire and topple down with a clatter of slates in bright showers of sparks, much as a child sits open-mouthed at the fireworks. Now he huddled his coat close about him, now some spire of flame towering skyward more terribly beautiful than the rest, drew a cry from his lips; and now again, looking out over the quiet pond of the bay, he asked dully, "Why is there no tidal wave?"

Morning came at last over the hill behind him, gray and extraordinarily cold. All about him he saw people, huddled like himself upon the slopes, men, women, and children, shivering in their night-attire and their bare feet bloody from the stones. All at once Challoner was aware that he was hungry. His little daughter reached out her arms and wailed. Hunger, too, as the sun rose, mastered the fears of the refugees upon the hill-side. One by one, group by group, they rose stiffly and straggled down to the ruined ways by the water-side. Challoner went with the rest; and half-way down they all began to hurry, beset by the same fear. There would not be food enough for all. The thought seemed to sweep like a wind across the face of the hill, and the hurry became savage.

Along the open esplanade families were squatting side by side. A few of the more fortunate had somehow secured and erected tents; and others were crowded into storage sheds. But the most of them were sitting in the open waiting desolately for they knew not what. And already in that town, though the earthquake was barely six hours old, catastrophe had made its sharp division between the sheep and the goats. For whereas upon the esplanade men and women, and amongst them many unexpected figures, were already organizing succor for the outcasts, amongst the smoking ruins the marauders were already at work, robbing, murdering. There was no longer any law in Valparaiso.

Challoner made his way to the esplanade. A man whom he knew, the agent of a steamship company, hurried past him. Challoner stopped him.

"Where can I get food?" he asked.

Challoner was a strongly built, tall man, and the agent answered roughly.

"You? You will have to wait. You are able to;" and then he caught sight of the child in Challoner's arms, still wrapped about with her bedclothes. His voice changed to friendliness.

"Yours?" he asked.

Challoner nodded.

"Where's its mother?"

Challoner answered simply:

"Dead."

The agent took out a piece of paper and a pencil from his pocket. "Sorry," he said. "Of course, that alters the case." He wrote a line upon the paper and gave it to Challoner. Then he pointed to a tin shed, around which a crowd was already collecting.

"We are distributing a little food there. You'll be given your share, for you have a child to look after. But I should advise you to look slippy;" and the agent hurried off.

Challoner did look slippy. Because of his child he got food for himself as well as for his child; and as he sat on the ground, in the shadow of a low wall, after his meal, that fact set him thinking. There is much loving kindness for children in South America. From east to west it runs across the continent, just as from east to west human life is cheap, provided that it is grown up. You might, anywhere in those days, and, in some places you may still, slay your neighbor and avoid anything like excessive inconvenience as a result of your slaying. But if you kick a boy into the gutter because he refuses to desist from whistling, to your distraction, outside your office window, you are liable to be fined heavily, and you may be sent to prison. For you have hurt the dignidad del hombre. Challoner was aware generally of the consideration for children which prevailed. But now it was brought very practically home to him in the particular. His little daughter Doris was a definite asset to him. He looked down upon her with new eyes as she slept on the ground at his side, with a chubby hand thrown across his knee. She was no longer a nuisance. She was as good as money--better, indeed, since money could not buy food to-day in Valparaiso. And there had been a moment when he had stood, up there before the ruins of his house, doubting whether he should leave her behind or no. James Challoner was quite chilled by the thought of the mistake he had almost made, and the fool he had almost been.

Doris moved her head in her sleep.

"Precious one," he said affectionately; and he proceeded in his turn to sleep.

He woke up in time to see two great Chilian cruisers sweep round the point into the bay, and a stoutly built, square captain, whom he could have mistaken for an Englishman, come ashore with his sailors, to take command of the town. He obtained shelter in a hut for that night, and during the hours of darkness he thought out his own immediate problem.

Valparaiso was not, and for some months would not be. Even when it should be rebuilt there would be no work for him, since--in his thoughts he clung to euphemisms--his enemies had ruined his good name. Therefore he must get away and he had his daughter at his hand to assist him.

He obtained, through his good Samaritan, the agent, a rough suit for himself and some clothing for his child and a parcel of food. He slung the parcel over his shoulders, lifted his child in his arms, and walked out that afternoon from Valparaiso up the great post-road toward the Andes. He was strong and his girl inherited of his strength. It was summer, a summer of no rain. He tramped along the valleys of Chile, and his daughter was his passport and franked his way. He secured a night's shelter at a farm-house here, food and a trifle of money there, a ride for Doris upon a mule one day, a lift for both of them in a cart the next. The valley narrowed, the green floor of it became stones, the trees thinned, the great barrier of the cordilleras closed in about James Challoner and towered higher and higher above his head. The road wound sharply upward, now backward, and forward in a desolate, wild country of gray rock splashed with orange and yellow and deep red. He started early one morning and stood on the top of the Cumbre Pass, thirteen thousand feet above the sea, by mid-day. On the very summit he was overtaken by the post and driven down at a gallop to Las Cuevas. From Las Cuevas he walked to Punta del Inca. And at Punta del Inca he took his ease for a week, with the great snow-mass of Aconcagua showing in a gap of the hills across the valley.

It was the season of the baths at Punta del Inca. The hotel was full and James Challoner prospered, as from the beginning he had thought that he would. He had reckoned upon Punta del Inca on that night in Valparaiso when he had determined upon his journey. He sat by the natural bridge, with his little daughter in his arms, a travel-stained and patient figure, and amongst those gigantic hills he told his moving story to such as passed and would listen. He went up to the hotel at night, and under the lights of the veranda he told it again. Amongst the many qualities which he misused was a vivid gift of narrative, and he possessed, at this time at all events, a gentle voice with an admirable note of emotion. Thus all was in his favor. The beauty and peace of the scenery, his manner, the prettiness of his child--even the story which he had to tell. But it was not quite the story which would have been told at Valparaiso where, to be sure, he had, as we know, enemies.

"Why did you come to South America?" some curious soul would ask.

"I was a younger son," he would answer; and then, with a charming modesty for the benefit of any English who might be present, "I am of the Dorsetshire Challoners. These old properties.... Land isn't what it was.... An estate mortgaged to the hilt. How could any one take an allowance that must be wrung from it at the cost of the very laborers? No, I thought I would make my own way in the new lands."

He spoke without any arrogance of virtue, any contempt for other younger sons who had not his own compunction, any consciousness of heroism. He went on to tell the romantic story of his marriage and elopement.

"I made my way," he continued, "at least I was making it. My wife, of course, helped me--" and perhaps here his voice would falter ever so slightly, he would turn his face aside and whisper to the stars, yet so that the whisper was audible to people nearer than the stars--"My God, how she helped me! We had dug out our little corner in Valparaiso. There was just room in it for a wife and a child and myself. And then the earthquake came and ruined all."

He made no complaint; he stated the simple facts; he was reticent concerning his wife's death. But by his reticence he managed to wring from it the last ounce of profit; he did not, for instance, describe how he had found her leaning upon her elbow in the darkness, with the walls of her room tottering about her. James Challoner had not forgiven her for that. She had made it so plain that she preferred for her child and herself an appalling death beneath the bricks than the slower decline into misery which awaited them. He tried to omit that remembrance from his mind, as he certainly did from his story.

A collection was made for him to send him on his way. He accepted it with dignity.

"I do not ask for your names," he said. "It would be the merest pretence. I cannot promise to pay you back. I take it as from one man to another." And so with his pocket full he journeyed downward to the vineyards of Mendoza.

At Mendoza he took the train and in a night and a day came to Buenos Ayres. It was in the cool of the evening that he stepped out upon the platform. He was in no doubt what he should do. He had stopped in Buenos Ayres for a month on his way out from England; and he had thought out his plan very carefully during his last night in Valparaiso. He took a train for Barracas, and in the train he tied an old bootlace about his daughter's arm. He left the train before it crossed the bridge, and walked up a hill where great houses stand back behind walls and gardens much as one may see them in Clapham. Some way up the hill he stopped in front of one of these houses.

It was noticeable amongst the houses, because a curious turnstile was let into the garden wall. The turnstile supported a small circular platform partitioned off with screens. James Challoner placed his child upon the platform, rang the bell, and turned the stile. The platform revolved, the child disappeared from view within the garden, and the screens were so arranged that those who received the child within could not see James Challoner outside.

James Challoner went back into the middle of the road, yawned, and stretched his arms above his head. To-day you may cross the Andes from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres in forty-eight hours. James Challoner had taken four months. He thought of his journey with a chuckle. His daughter had made his way easy.

"Nine hundred miles and I've done 'em on eiderdown," he said. "That's the only bit of comfort I've ever got out of my marriage."

He had left his child in a foundling hospital kept by some wealthy old ladies. He had tied a bootlace round her arm, rather because it was the conventional thing to do, than with any intention of reclaiming her. He was now a free man. He lit his pipe and stuck his hands in his pockets. With a pleasant sense of lightness, he strolled down to exploit his freedom in the bright streets of Buenos Ayres.