Читать книгу Dawn - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 12

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Muriel led her guests to the seats in the porch. She did not invite them farther. She said: “It’s pleasanter here than inside on a warm evening like this. If you’ll sit down, I’ll get you something to eat.”

They sat down obediently, not saying that they had already explored her resources. She took the parcel from Jack, who had been carrying it since it had been reassembled from the dirt, and retreated into the church.

“It’s a queer meal,” she said, as she returned with a supply of pancakes she had cooked the night before, and had meant to last her for the next three days. She was sparing of fires, which meant matches. She brought some of the Brazil nuts also, and a can of pineapple. “You’re welcome to this, if you can open it,” she added. “I didn’t make a very good job of the last.”

Jack produced a large and complicated knife from a hip-pocket, which included a can-opener among its numerous blades.

They commenced with appetite, but Jack looked with some anxiety at the declining sun, which still shone fitfully through the clouds of a summer storm, though rain had begun beating heavily on the stone path.

“We ought to start in half an hour,” he said, opening the subject which he knew had to be faced, with as little delay as possible.

“Do you live far from here?” Muriel inquired, speaking as casually as she might have done a month ago.

“About four miles—perhaps more,” Jack answered. “But we came through the fields. It’s a bit risky by the road as things are just now.”

“How are they ‘just now’?” Muriel queried. “Hadn’t you better tell me from the beginning? You see, I know nothing.”

She recognized that Bill Horton was unlikely to contribute substantially to the conversation, and addressed herself to Jack Tolley accordingly. She was a good judge of men, and she felt more confidence in his probable character, but she had not the slightest intention of going anywhere with them that night without a better reason than he was at all likely to offer. She was unaccustomed to be led by anything other than her own conceptions of duty or obligation.

Jack considered that she must know something. The events of the last month could hardly have escaped the notice of the least observant. He said: “It’s hard to know where to begin. I’d better introduce myself first. My name’s Tolley—Jack Tolley I’m always called. I was a clerk at the collieries.”

“Yes, I remember you now. I thought I’d seen you before. I’m Muriel Temple. Don’t you—”

Yes, he remembered now. She had come to the colliery office, perhaps two months ago, with an introduction from one of the directors, and a request that she might be shown over the mine. He had only walked across the yard with her, to introduce her to the foreman, but he did not easily forget faces.

“Well, Miss Temple,” he went on, using a title which was already becoming obsolete in the chaos of the last few weeks, “it’s this way. When the trouble came there were a lot of men down the mine. Some of them got out at once, and went off with the crowd. I suppose they’re dead now. Some of them got caught down below. We got them out—at least, about eighty of them—by an old shaft which hadn’t been used for years. It was an old working that ran—But I needn’t go into that....

“And there were people still going north when the land sank.... I didn’t see that. I was helping to get the cage to work at the old shaft.... But they say that the land just broke off, and slipped away. They looked over the edges, and it was hundreds of feet below them, and they could see the people running about, and trying to get back, and it seemed hours before the water flowed over them. There must have been a great part of England that just settled down lower than it had been, and the water couldn’t flow over all of it in a minute. But I didn’t see that. I don’t really know.” He spoke with some irritation of mind. His mental operations were as precise and neat as his person. He had heard a dozen more or less hysterical accounts of the stupendous tragedy, no two alike.

“Well, there were hundreds on the main road who had kept in front of the floods that followed them from the south, and only got here when the land had broken, and they couldn’t go farther. They crowded the road beyond Cowley Thorn, and spread out along the cliff-side.... And there were those on the railway—But I mustn’t go into detail. There were a lot that died. Some of them fell ill, and some seemed to go mad. And there was quarreling from the first ... and there was no law.”

“There was God’s law.”

“Well, they didn’t worry much about that. They just saw that they could do anything if they were strong enough ... and then they found ways to get food, if they didn’t trouble about tomorrow. We found a lot at Linkworth that wasn’t burnt. That’s why we haven’t come much this way. And some of them got arms.”—Muriel glanced at the rifle, which lay across his knee as he talked, and he answered the unspoken comment: “Yes, we found some sporting guns in a country house. I’m glad we did. It gave us a chance, or I mightn’t be here now.... But the quarrels got worse. You see, it’s mostly men that are left, and the women made trouble.”

(Yes. It was an old tale. Women do make trouble. Muriel had observed that rather frequently.)

“And then there was the drink. Butcher’s got enough up at Helford Grange to keep them all drunk for a month, and he doesn’t care who gets it, if they pay what he wants. That’s made the trouble worse.

“So ... there’s been a fair row,” Jack concluded briefly. “And we’ve turned Jim Rattray out.” Muriel recollected the name, and then the man. She did not doubt that there had been good reason for his expulsion. “And a lot of men have gone with him. They’re somewhere down this way.... And Tom Aldworth said he’d seen two women here, and we’d better look you up.”

Muriel said: “You say Jim Rattray’s near here. Do you know where I could find him?”

Jack Tolley, who was not easy to startle, looked his surprise at the unexpected query, and an expression of vague bewilderment spread over the vacuity of Bill Horton’s countenance.

“You’d be sorry if you did. There’s some of the worst toughs you ever met in that lot. You wouldn’t be safe with them if there were a squad of police in the next street.”

Muriel looked unimpressed. Her experiences of the toughs of various races during the last twenty years, and of the best methods of dealing with them, had been rather numerous.

“It might do good, and it couldn’t do any harm,” she said thoughtfully. “But if you don’t know where he is——”

“I wouldn’t say, if I did.”

“I’m sure you’d tell me, if I really wanted to know,” Muriel smiled. “But I suppose there won’t be any more trouble, unless Rattray makes it, if you’ve turned him out.”

It occurred to her that she might carry out her intention without seeking the lawless one through the wilderness. She had an attractive vision of two hostile camps, and of herself as an envoy of peace between them.

Suddenly, she decided that she would accept the invitation which she had received. It was what she would have been doing, in any case, in a few days. She had only put it off from day to day because there had always been something left over for the next morning’s occupation.

“But I’m not coming tonight,” she added. “I’ll come tomorrow. And I shall want a cart. I know you’ve got one.... Oh yes, I’ve seen the wheel-marks ... are your people in need of flour?”

“Yes, the flour’ll be useful.” Muriel looked at him, and he felt the error of the “the.” He realized that she knew at once that they had explored her stores in her absence. His respect for Miss Temple’s capacity was increasing rapidly.

“If we bring a cart, we shall have to bring enough men to guard it. We don’t want them to collar everything you’ve collected here. But I wish you’d come with us tonight. It’s not safe here alone.”

“Oh, I shall be safe enough,” she answered easily. “I’ve got Gumbo, and some good bolts.”

Jack had the sense to see that it was waste of words to argue further. “Well,” he said, “you’ll see us again tomorrow.”

He got up to go.

When they were out of sight of the church, he stopped.

“Bill,” he said, “I think I’ll stay here tonight. It’s the safest way. Tell Madge I shall be back tomorrow. And ask Tom Aldworth to bring Steve’s cart, and about a dozen men, with the rifles. Tell him to come early; there’s a fair lot to load up.”

Jack went back to the orchard. When it was dark, and he judged that Muriel would be sleeping, he returned to the church-porch, where he made himself as comfortable as circumstances permitted. He did not trouble to keep awake. He calculated that the dog would give sufficient notice of any approaching danger, as he had rightly calculated that he would not disturb his mistress to announce the movements of one who had been recognized as a friend a few hours earlier.