Читать книгу Dawn - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 8

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The short night ended. From the unshaken tableland of Asia, from the heights of the Himalayas, from the unchanged enduring East, across the desolations of water that had been Europe, moved the regardless dawn.

It moved across a thousand leagues of new uncertain seas of no sure tides, where fierce and unchanging currents hurried the floating wreckage of a continent, now here, now there, hurried, and flung it back—the floating wreckage, and the floating dead.

It rose over some new-made islands in the western sea, islands with raw unsanded beachless coasts, islands on which some human life still endured among their storm-swept ruins—life that cowered terrified, or dazed, or maddened, by the sudden calamity that it had experienced and perhaps survived.

It rose upon the old gray church where Muriel and the child still slept—where Muriel, exhausted by exertions far beyond her normal endurance, might have slept for many further hours, had she not been wakened by the weak reiteration of the cry for water from the dying child.

For she saw that the child must die unless some skill beyond her own could be brought to aid her—would probably die in any case, her experience told.

She hesitated as to what it might be best to do. She might find medical aid, if she sought it. She could not tell how far the settled order of civilization had left the world, or how few might be those who were still alive around her.

But when she tried to rise, she found that the question was already answered. Exposure and exhaustion had left her too full of pain and weakness for any thought of walking farther than along the side of the field to the river below, from which she had been fetching the water that they required.

Well, if it were God’s will ... She tried to talk to the restless child when she had done what little was in her power for its physical comfort, but she could not reach its mind. It gazed at her with dull unheeding eyes, or turned away its head in a sharp impatience. Later in the day, it was in a delirium of fever from which it had little respite till its life was closing.

In the afternoon, Muriel heard voices with a sudden hope. They were the voices of approaching men. They passed the door of the church, but did not enter. They had gone on to the rectory ruins. They would return, she supposed, by the same path. But her purpose to call them changed as they passed beneath the broken windows of the church, and she heard their voices in an interjected narrative which it seemed that two or more were giving to the other members of the party. ... “If the ... hadn’t been standing underneath the crane ...” “fetched him a wipe over the jaw, and he fell....” “She’d got two ducks hidden under the seat.” “Told him to———the skulking hound.”

It was too fragmentary for any meaning to emerge, but neither tones nor words gave expectation of useful succor.

The next minute she knew that the party had turned in at the church-door. She heard rough voices, and the stamp of heavy boots on the stones.

She lay quiet, and saw them as they straggled up the aisle, though, as yet, she was unobserved. She recognized them as a group of miners—doubtless from the Larkshill collieries, which she knew to be no more than three or four miles away.

She saw the foremost man very clearly. Not tall. A blunt-featured face, not uncomely. He was looking right and left in the empty pews as he advanced. She thought of the basket of food, which lay near to her hand, and wondered how much, if any, would be left when these unwelcome visitors had departed. But she was not greatly perturbed, having an invariable formula for such emergencies. It was a case for prayer. After that, the control of the situation was in very capable hands.

The man looked at the place where she lay beneath the wall, with the child beside her. He looked her straight in the face, and then turned a rather broad back between her and his advancing companions.

“Nothing here, Jim,” he said, to a tall loose-jointed man, with a half-filled sack over his shoulders.

The man answered thickly, with an indication that he was something less than sober, but with a surprising fluency. The substance of his contention was that there was never any good to be got from a blasted church. He spat on the stones to emphasize his opinion concerning it.

A small man with a weak face and a goatish beard rebuked him with drunken solemnity. He appeared to suggest a possible connection between the recent catastrophe, and the infidelity of Jim Rattray. He also suggested that those who had escaped might reasonably be expected to show some gratitude for their Creator’s favor.

Rattray’s reply was again too picturesque for a literal reproduction. Its substance was that a Creator who preserved Monty Beeston, while disposing of so many millions of better men, must be weak in the head.

There was an uncertain murmur from the little crowd behind them. An uneasy murmur, from which emerged a desire that there should be less talk, and that they should “get a move on” in some more profitable direction.

“Yes, we’re best out of here,” said the man whose back was offering a precarious shield to the woman and child who lay beneath the shadowed wall.

Jim Rattray turned with a sudden anger which may have been prompted rather by a personal antagonism than by the words of the speaker.

“I’m not taking orders from you, Tom Aldworth.”

He took a threatening step forward. Tom Aldworth stood his ground, but declined the quarrel.

“I don’t fight a man when he’s in beer,” he remarked, as one who mentions something too obvious for discussion.

Jim Rattray looked dangerous for a moment, and then pulled himself together with an apparent effort. He said something indistinctly that sounded like “All pals here,” and turned to follow his retreating comrades.

Tom Aldworth went also, without looking round at those whom he had interposed to shelter.