Читать книгу The Man Who Went Back - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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No one hindered my going, or flattered me by attempting to interfere with my freedom. I walked across the courtyard and out of the great gate into the village street, if one can call it a street. I suppose that to the people I was Pellias the coward, or Pellias the nit-wit, and that in such times as these tame lunatics are not given garlands.

I heard Niger the Smith hammering away in his smithy, and I imagined that he was beating out sword blades or spear-heads. Children were looking in at the door at the spark-spurting, roaring forge, and watching Niger hammering white-hot metal. One of the children, a boy, turned and saw me pass, and all he did was to put out his tongue at me. So that was that!

I had in mind the sunken lane that cut its way up out of the valley to the North Downs and Newland’s Corner. Was it there still? It was, though a much more shallow trackway, and its persistence cheered me. I felt that I was in a valley of dreams, Honey Valley was its name in those days, and that if I escaped from it I might shed my ghost-self. I wanted to run, but there was a cunning in me that remembered that I had a dozen or so miles to go across wild country and that I had better take the climb steadily. I passed a farm, and a large yellow dog came and barked at me. I was polite to him, for I had not so much as a stick in my hand.

“Hallo, old fellow.”

He was an unfriendly dog, and he barked the harder, adding growls to his get-off-my-earth warning.

It seemed dark and gloomy in this hollow way with its smother of bushes and trees, but when I came out on to the uplands I found that the sky had changed with that stealthy suddenness that is England. A wind had sprung up, and a greyness had spread over the landscape, though the distant hills retained a tinge of blue. How familiar was this clearness before rain, this grey and gusty sadness! I stood on the hill-side and looked at the familiar scene, Hascombe, Hazlemere, the three blobs that mark Hindhead. I could see Farley Heath, and the little temple very white against the gloom of heather and firs. No, there was no doubt about that temple, and the absence of Albury’s bald new church, and the uncrowned head of St. Martha’s. No silver smoke over Guildford, no trains running in the valley, the Weald a wilderness. I turned north, and saw the yews and thorns and scattered beeches, gorse, and the broad green ribbon of the Ridgeway. And there were those two white chalk knolls with a grass trackway running between them. I understood their significance now. They were great guide-posts that could be seen through the gap in the green-sand ridge and right across the Weald to the South Downs. They must mark the way over the chalk hills down into the Thames Valley, and the bridge at Staines, or the fords at Weybridge or Kingston. It was so. When I stood between the two tumuli I saw a trackway heading north, and following it found it becoming a gravelly lane that went down into the valley. I saw the low ground spread before me, not as I knew it, but wilder, more wooded, with no familiar blobs of tile and brick stippling it. No tall Woking chimney, no St. George’s Hill, no distant gasometers, no Newland’s Corner Hotel. The absence of that bizarre white building hurt me rather absurdly, for I was rather fond of the place. Lucy and I had dined and danced there.

I took a long look at the landscape, trying to find some marker for my route, and I saw one whitish building in the middle distance that seemed to lie in the way I should take. The rough road travelled in that direction, and it occurred to me that this track might head for the junction of the Wey and the Thames and a passable ford there. I did know that one main Roman road to the West had run from London to Staines, and so on to Silchester, and this track might cross the river and join it. I was going down hill now, and I started to trot. I was still buoyed up by the hope that now that I had escaped from that enchanted valley the landscape would suddenly revert to the landscape that I knew.

The trackway took me across the lower ground somewhere between the two Clandons, but most of it was wild country, all woods and heather. The only human being I met was a peasant boy leading a donkey with panniers full of charcoal. He smiled at me as though he knew me, but I, not knowing him at all, smiled back and trotted on. I passed two or three small farms, little secret places hidden in what were glades, but though I saw cattle grazing, no one came out to speak with me. My one duty lay in following this track, for had I tried to cut across country I should have lost myself. Whether it was my own feeling of suspense, or the sudden greyness of the day, but I got the impression that fear was abroad, and that the very clouds were heavy with menace.

The track dived into a deep wood, climbed out of it, and arrived at the edge of a low, flat hill. There were open fields here, and orchards, and I saw ahead of me the white house that I had spotted from the Downs. My mood was to avoid it, but the track ran directly past it, and the fields were hedged and ditched like English fields. Well, what had I to fear? Yet, as I neared the place I became aware of human activities, of clumsy wains and carts parked on a grassy space near the wall of this Surrey villa. Men were loading furniture and gear into these wagons with a furious haste that was significant. I saw a herd of cattle pour out of a big, walled yard, with drovers and dogs behind them. A man on a horse was riding hither and thither as though directing the men and urging them on. Women fluttered in and about, carrying things and passing them to the men who were loading. I stood under a tree and watched what was, obviously, a panic flight, a country exodus. These people were stricken with fear, fear of the Saxons.

Well, I did not want to be involved in their flurry, to be stopped and questioned. It was more than possible that Pellias of the Honey Valley was known to these people. There was some open woodland west of the estate, and cutting along a hedge I gained the wood and keeping just within the trees, cast a half circle round the place, and striking the track well beyond it, I ran. Some of those wagons might soon be on the road, and I did not want to be caught up by the fugitives. But their fierce, busy panic had infected me. God, into what a land of strange tragedy and terror my dream-state had landed me! I ran, as though those savage men from beyond the sea were close upon my heels.

There was more heathland interspersed with woods of birch and of Scotch fir. It was all so familiar in its colouring and its contours that I might have been on Ockham Common, or the heathland by Wisley, with the black band of the Portsmouth Road vibrant with traffic. What would I have given to have seen that stretch of tarmac, or heard the rumble of a lorry, but this country was silent, so silent that it made me more afraid. The track took me past a sheet of water that was very like the big pool by the Hut Hotel, and a little further on I sighted one or two familiar knolls capped with fir trees, knolls that are familiar to all those Londoners who picnic or pause and leave litter among the Ockham heather. Had I stumbled upon a Wall’s ice cream carton I think I should have gone down on my knees, picked the thing up and kissed it.

The track turned past one of these knolls, and taking me through a birch wood and across some rough grassland gave me a sudden glimpse of a river. My God, the Wey! But not the Wey as I knew it, a decorous little stream, but a more turgid affair swelling its way through boggy ground set with alders and willows, reeds and water-plants. The track kept away from it, turning right and edging along the shoulder of a low hill, with marshland and rough meadows on its left.

Where was I now? This might be St. George’s Hill on the right, and down there in the flats should be Brookland’s Track. I was beginning to feel horribly depressed. There was nothing here to shock me back into my own century. Trees, gorse, heather, soggy meadows, a grey and dolorous sky. I could not follow the river, for the land looked too marshy down there. It began to drizzle. The track brought me to a great heathy space that dipped to the north and the river, and the lie of the land here was so familiar that I stood under a thorn tree and looked and looked. Not a house was to be seen, and yet this heathy slope with its birches and thorns and patches of gorse was terribly mine. I was standing just below Weybridge Station, and gazing down towards what should be Weybridge, with that distant landscape much as I remembered it, and hanging like a backcloth across the horizon.

An anguish of suspense gripped me. I left the track which appeared to be making for the junction of the Wey and the Thames, and went charging through the gorse and heather. I was a little mad, and I ran downhill, seeing nothing but heather and gorse and birch trees, yet the sandy soil had a wounding intimacy. How many times had I walked from the Southern station down this heath to my home. I think that to the very last I hoped that my dream would suddenly dissolve, and that I should see the place as I knew it, the row of cottages, the red villas, the particularly hideous police station, Weybridge spire, the old group of cottages with their gardens on the edge of the Brooklands woods. There was nothing, nothing but trees and heather, gorse, rough grass and sand. I could see the Wey just across the flats, shaggy with alders, sallow and willows.

Sweating, and breathing hard, with my heart knocking against my ribs, I came to a gentle slope where the heath tailed out and became marsh grass. I was—here. I was sure of the place. This was where the white house was to stand fifteen hundred years hence. And there was nothing here, nothing, nothing, nothing. I flopped down on some rough grass under a young birch tree, and lay prone, and hid my face. I dug my nails into my throat. I was in such mental anguish that I wanted to hurt myself, to struggle like a man in deep water, to fight my way back to light, air, and reality.

Presently, I sat up and made myself look again at the scene, like a man preparing to be judged and condemned. There was no escape from this other reality, and yet the lie of the land was so terribly familiar that almost I could recreate the scene as I knew it. Yes, I must be sitting on the slope of turf between the loggia and Lucy’s particular parterre, that oblong bed which she had loved to crowd with colour. The house would be behind me. The big herbaceous border and the lawn would lie in front, shut in by the high holly hedge, with the flowering trees we had planted closing the vista. Yes, and the garage, and its screen of treillage covered with honeysuckle and ramblers. One ought to be able to see the big cedar in the cemetery.

I got up and wandered over the ground, like some mad archæologist searching for fragments of the future instead of the past. I walked a little way up the heath, and down again. The drizzly rain grew heavier, and was wetting my hair and face, and suddenly an insufferable anguish smote me. I wanted to escape from this desolation, this inhuman wilderness that mocked me. I was a ghost, a frightened ghost, hunting for a home that was not there. I wanted to end this horror. I would go down to the river and drown myself.

Even that wishful exit from this dead world was denied me. I went plunging down over the rough grassland towards the Wey, only to find myself in a morass that sucked at my feet and legs, but was not sympathetic towards my thirst for deep water. There were shallow, stagnant pools, sinister oozy patches. I found myself up to my knees in slime, with the river eluding me. And if that desolate heath had scared me, this sour, bubbling morass scared me still more completely. I squelched and blundered out of it back to the solid earth, shaken and over-wrought. I realized that I did not want to die in that way, even as Pellias the Romano-Briton. It was both better to feel the wind and the rain in one’s face, and to struggle back—whither? Yes, where was I, a poor ghost, to go? Back to this other world into which the summersault of time had thrown me?

My legs were all black slime, and I pulled some grass and wiped myself down. I was like a sponge sodden with self-pity. I realized that I should have to go back to the one place where I was known, nor was that knowledge very consoling. I started to climb the heath, thinking of the boys who played football there, and of the various ladies with their various dogs. What if I met old Soper with his bowler hat and Pickwick face toddling down the sandy path and carrying the inevitable umbrella? A prim, dry, bumptious old bore was Soper, but had he appeared to me I should have kissed him. No umbrellas, no Chamberlain, no A.R.P. And then I caught my leg in the loop of a stout bramble, and the thing scratched and hurt me. I swore. I clutched at the bramble cane and gave it a savage tug, and the thorns dug into my hand. I was like an angry child, but anger was good for me. I was sodden with desolation and despair, and I needed pricking or scourging.

Something in me seemed to say: “Damn it, be a man.” I had a sudden vision of Meona in the chariot, leaning on the reins, and driving those white horses like a figure of Winged Victory. A strange, primitive thrill went through me. Was I man, or a poor sap of a creature who could neither love nor hate, dare nor forget? I became conscious of a sudden surge of emotion in me, a desire to swagger. I was thinking with my blood, as the Germans put it. In this other world, this world of old, dim, tragic things the vapourings of a cultured “Dreary” were of no account. Arms and the man! Had I no guts for this monstrous adventure? Could I not be man instead of ghost? If some fantastic, topsy-turvy trick of Time had tumbled me into this tragedy, could I not find the stuff in me to tackle it?

I began to draw deep breaths, put my head back, square my shoulders. I had gained the top of the heath and the trackway, and I turned to look back. I began to feel—Roman. I raised my arm and shouted.

“Vale.”

My shout sounded good. It was like a trumpet-cry to self. It tingled and gave out defiance. Damn it, why should I not be such a man as Festus, tough and lean, a dangerous fellow, a cool swordsman who could smile and kill. I had never killed anything but a marauding cat, and mosquitoes and green-fly. And suddenly, I wanted to kill. It was as though the primitive in me had pushed up through the thin, tame crust of custom. I was man.

I must be describing all this very crudely, but the fact remains that when I turned my face away from that which was in the future, I seemed to become more acclimatized to the past. As I followed the sandy track back towards the White House I remembered the exodus I had watched, those frightened folk loading their wagons and herding their cattle. If they were making for the ford across the Thames I might meet them, unless, of course, they had turned south to strike the North Downs and the Ridgeway. I did not meet them. I saw no live things but a yaffle, and a weasel that bolted across the track, and an occasional rabbit. The wind soughed in the trees. I was no more than a wild man in wild country, and my senses seemed to sharpen, for this was no country ramble, with one’s only possible peril that of being accused of trespassing. I began to wish that I had some sort of weapon. I found myself listening, and watching the ground ahead of me, and sometimes fancying that a figure flitted behind a tree. There were glooms in these woods where mystery was like the black mouth of a cave. When a jay scolded at me sharply and suddenly, my head went up with a jerk and my heart leaped in me.

Yes, wild country, with wild men not so far away. What did these Saxons or Jutes look like? Blond, big, hairy men with fierce, bulging blue eyes? More and more did I wish that I had some sort of weapon, even a stout stick. I tried to break off an oak sapling, but it was too tough for me. Even a solid stone would be something to fling or to strike with, but I could not find such a stone. Also, I was feeling tired and hungry. The drizzle had ceased, and there was a break in the sky above the tree-tops. Sunlight splashed here and there upon the young green of the birches and the oaks. I passed a big thorn that was in blossom, and the smell of it was sweet.

I came at last to the more open and gentle country where the white house stood. There were no fresh wheel-tracks in the sand, and no hoof slots, so I could suppose that the fugitives had trekked south or west. I worked my way into the open wood, and slipped from tree to tree, until I had a good view of the place. I leaned against the trunk of a beech.

Nothing can look more desolate than a deserted house, and this homestead had been stripped of men and beasts. It was a long, one-storied building with a high, thatched roof like the roof of a Devonshire cottage. The windows had shutters and the shutters were closed. No smoke rose from it, or any sound. The outbuildings and yard were as deserted as the house, and a patch of sunlight falling upon the place made its desolation seem more complete. I think the blind eyes and muteness of this homestead made me realize the nature of the tragedy that was menacing this island world. I felt drawn towards that abandoned house. I wanted to explore it, though the shuttered windows promised to keep me out. Moreover, I was hungry and thirsty, and in need of some sort of weapon. I walked out of the wood and across the meadowland to this Romano-British farmstead.

The one live thing I saw about the place was a brown hen scratching in the yard. She paid no attention to me, nor did she appear worried by the late exodus and her abandonment. A fence of wattles surrounded the white house and its garden, separating it from the farmyard and outbuildings, and I passed through the open gate of this fence, and found myself in the middle of a grass-plot that was edged with herb-beds and roses that were not yet in flower. I saw lavender, sage, mint, tansy and southern-wood in this deserted garden. The rose bushes looked like the old-fashioned cabbage rose, rather pale of leaf, with a few fat flower-buds showing.

The house had a thatched portico sheltering the door, which was of oak, and studded with nails like an old church door. I walked up and gave the door a push, not for a moment expecting that it would open, but open it did and with a melancholy creaking. I was so surprised that I just stood and stared into the vestibule with its floor of worn red tesseræ. The walls were plastered and coloured an ochrish yellow, and hanging on the left hand wall I saw a hunting-spear. Strange that they should have forgotten that spear, but here was a weapon with which I could arm myself. I took the spear and wandered down a darkish corridor with rooms opening from it. The doors were open, and I could see that the rooms had been stripped of most of their furniture, but in one dim room I saw a table standing, with the remains of a meal on it, bread, a meat bone with some meat left on it, a large brown pitcher. Plates, dishes, cups, knives had disappeared.

Well, here was food of a sort. I was about to walk into that silent and almost sinister room when something rubbed against my leg. I let out a hiss like a snake, and jumped to one side, which only goes to show how over-wrought I was and not yet hardened to strange places and strange perils. I looked down and saw a cat, a very ordinary tabby cat. It mewed up at me, and went on rubbing round my legs. Obviously, it was more dependent upon human associations than was that hen!

I laughed at myself, and then bent down to stroke the cat, and the beast purred round me with tail erect. Then, I went into the room. The shutters were pierced with round holes which let in pencils of light, but I asked for more light, and I turned the shutter-bar back and opened the two leaves. I remembered that I had not shut the oak doors, and since I was both trespasser and thief, and did not wish to be surprised in this deserted house, I walked down the corridor and shut and barred the door. The cat followed me, still rubbing against my legs. Now, for an uninterrupted meal. Since there was no stool or bench to sit on, I sat side-saddle on the table, and inspected the remains of the meal. The bread was brown and fresh, but the meat did not look appetising; it suggested the scrag-end of a leg of mutton, but I was hungry, much more hungry than I had ever known myself to be as modern man. I tore off a piece of bread, and placed it on my knee, and picking up the meat-bone, gnawed at the meat. I had no knife, and nature’s knives had to serve. I found that the jug was a quarter full of some sort of beer. I drank from the jug, and found the stuff warming and pleasant, if a little sweet. The cat rubbed against my left leg and set up a meowling that reminded me that she, too, was hungry, though why the beast had not jumped on the table and welshed that meat I cannot say. I tore off a strip near the bone end and threw it on the floor, and the cat, head down and paws tucked in, fell to chewing it.

My back was to the window, with the sunlight shining in and through into the corridor and painting an oblong patch on the yellow wall and red floor. I had left the hunting-spear leaning against the end of the table, and I remember noticing a little patch of rust on its blade that might have been dried blood. I was feeling much less jumpy, and rather pleased with myself and my wild-man meal, and the cat was as busy as I was, when I heard that sound which brought me up taut on the table. Voices, but not very near, voices that seemed to drift from the distance and into the open window.

Were those fugitives coming back? Had they repented of their panic or gathered reassuring news upon the road? I got off that table with a chunk of bread in my hand, and keeping close to the wall, slipped along it to the window. I wanted to see without being seen, and it was fortunate for me that I showed such caution.

I saw three men standing on the edge of the open wood under the young green selvage of the beeches. They were tall men, bare legged, with long fair hair and portentous moustachios. In fact, they were so hairy that they made me think of sheep-dogs. They wore conical steel caps on their heads, and they carried shields and spears. The shields were round, painted in bright colours, blue and white and red, with metal bosses. I stared at these men, flattening myself against the wall, and not showing more than the edge of a face. Who the devil were these fellows? And then it dawned on me with shattering suddenness. These men were sea-pirates, savages, Saxons.

I saw one of the three, a huge fellow with legs like bolsters, raise his spear and point. Had he seen my face at the window? The three of them set up a fierce shouting which sounded to me like the sharp baying of dogs. The sound was savage enough to scare me, more especially so as their howling seemed to echo in the wood and to produce an answering uproar. I thought of a pack of wolves suddenly giving tongue. The dark wood became alive; I saw figures moving among the trees, with bits of sunlight splintering upon their metal head-pieces and their spear-points. Their coloured shields were like great round flowers. But I did not wait for more. I swung round, picked up the spear, and dived for the door, feeling myself trapped in the house. If I bolted from the front door, they would see me. I ran down the corridor, and found a passage leading to what were the kitchen quarters on the other side of the house. I found a door, but it was barred. I flung the bar back, and emerged into a walled yard. Beyond it I saw the trees of an orchard. I was over that wall in double quick time, and sprinting through the orchard. A thorn hedge enclosed it, and I saw a gate in the hedge and a meadow beyond it. Not till I had got through that gate did I stop to look back, peering through the thorn hedge. I saw nothing but the orchard trees and the back of the white house, but I could hear those heathen giving tongue like a pack in full cry. I did not think they had seen me. The house and possible plunder were causing all this ululation.

I turned again and ran, and as I ran I remembered that Pellias must have run as I was running. The dastard! But, he, at least, had taken one blow, and here was I running like a hare! But, damn it, I could not have fought a whole boat-load of those savages even if I had possessed all the prestige of an Achilles. Legs, not arms, were the members of a wise virtue. I ran until I had gained the shelter of a grove of yews, and then I leaned panting against a tree, and looked back.

I could see no sign of the Saxons, though I could hear them shouting, and since their voices were less sharp, I gathered that they were in the great house, rummaging for plunder or for food. Well, they would not get much of either, which might not make them any less savage and dangerous, and my considered impulse was to put more space between us. I worked through the grove of yews, meaning to strike the track again at a safe distance from the villa. I came to a field of young wheat, and trotting along the hedge, reached some open grassland dotted with trees. I could see the thatched roof in the distance but no marauders. I took to the open and ran for the heath and the woods, and in a little while I came upon the trackway. I was not chased, and so could infer that I had not been seen.

Well, what next? Obviously, it was my business to get back to Honey Valley and warn Aurelius and his people. I was feeling pretty tired now, but I raised a trot, and kept it up steadily through that wild country. My new shoes had begun to chafe me, and I was glad when I saw the Downs rising against the sunset. It was a strange and fiery sunset, and somehow sinister and prophetic. Twilight was falling when I reached the ridge. I turned, stood and looked back.

I saw something burning in the distance, a knot of yellow flame, or petals of fire licking at and lighting up a cloud of smoke. I understood its significance. Those savages, finding neither food, plunder, men to slay or women to ravish, had set fire to the white house.

I turned, and crossing the dark Ridgeway, went down into that dim and silent valley.