Chapter V: Part 5

Now that she was admittedly his underling, subdued to his authority, he found it infinitely easier to be patient with her many blunders; and though there were still moments when her brainlessness and limitations galled him to anger, on the whole he grew fonder of her—with a patronizing, kindly affection. He still cherished his plans of exploration unhampered by her company but, from pity for the fears she no longer dared to talk of, refrained from present mention thereof; while the nights were long and dark it would be cruel to leave her, and by the time spring came round again she might have grown less fearful of solitude.... Or, before spring came, the world might make a sign and plans of exploration be needless.

Meanwhile, resigning himself to his daily and solitary round, he worked hard and anxiously to provision his household for a second winter of loneliness.

* * * * *

It was when the days were nearly at their shortest that the round and tenor of his life was broken by the shock of a disturbing knowledge. Trudging homewards toward sunset on a mild December evening, he came upon his wife sitting groaning in the path; she had been on her way to the stream for water when a paroxysm of sickness overtook her. Since the days of starvation he had never seen her ill and the violence of the paroxysm frightened him; when it was over and she leaned on him exhausted as he led her back to their camping-place, he questioned her anxiously as to what had upset her—had she pain, had she eaten anything unwholesome or unusual? She shook her head silently in answer to his queries till he sat her down by the fire; then, as he knelt beside her, stirring the logs into a blaze, she caught his arm suddenly and pressed her face tightly against it.

“Ow, Theodore, I’m going to ’ave a baiby!”

“What?” he said. “What?”—and stared at her, his mouth wide open.... Perhaps she was hurt or disappointed at his manner of taking the news; at any rate she burst into floods of noisy weeping, rocking herself backwards and forwards and hiding her face in her hands. He did his best to soothe her, stroking her hair and encircling her shoulders with an arm; seeking vainly for the words that would stay her tears, for something that would hearten and uplift her. He supposed she was frightened—more frightened even than he was; his first bewildered thought, when he heard the news, had been “What, in God’s name, shall we do?”

He drew her head to his shoulder, muttering “There, there,” as one would to a child, till her noisy demonstrative sobbing died down to an intermittent whimper; and when she was quieted she volunteered an answer to the question his mind had been forming. She thought it would be somewhere about five months—but it mightn’t be so long, she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t know enough about it to be sure—how could she, seeing as it was her first?... She had been afraid for ever so long now—weeks and weeks—but she’d gone on hoping and that was why she hadn’t said anything about it before. Now there wasn’t any doubt—she wondered he hadn’t seen for himself ... and she clung to him again with another burst of noisy weeping.

“But,” he ventured uncertainly, reaching out after comfort, “when it’s over—and there’s the baby—you’ll be glad, won’t you?”

His appeal to the maternal instinct had no immediate success. Ada protested with yet noisier crying that she was bound to die when the baby came, so how could she possibly be glad? It was all very well for him to talk like that—he didn’t have to go through it! Lots of women died, even when they had proper ’orspitals and doctors and nurses....

He listened helplessly, not knowing how to take her; until, common sense coming to his aid, he fell back on the certainty that exhausting, hysterical weeping could by no possibility be good for her, rebuked her with authority for upsetting herself and insisted on immediate self-control. It was well for them both that wifely obedience was already a habit with Ada; by the change in his tone she recognized an order, pulled herself together, rubbed her swollen eyes and even made an effort to help with the preparing of supper—whining a little, now and again, but checking the whine before it had risen to a wail.

She was manifestly cheered by a bowlful of hot stew—whereof, though she pushed it away at first, she finished by eating sufficiently; and, once convinced that the outburst of emotion was over, he petted her, though not too sympathetically, lest he stirred her again to self-pity. She was not particularly responsive to his hesitating suggestions anent the coming joys of maternity; more successful in raising her spirits were his actual encouraging pats and caresses, his assumption of confidence greater than he felt in the neighbourhood of men and women whose hands were not turned against their fellows.... He realized that, as the suspicion of her motherhood grew to a certainty, she had spent long, lonely hours oppressed by sheer physical terror; and he reproached himself for having been carelessly unobservant of a suffering that should long ere this have been plain to him.

He was longing to be alone and to think undistracted; it was a relief to him therefore when, warmed, fed, and exhausted by her crying, she began to nod against his shoulder. He insisted jestingly on immediate bed, patted and pulled at her moss-couch before she lay down, kissed her—whereupon she again cried a little—and sat beside her, listening, till her breathing was even and regular. Once sure that she slept, he crept back to the fire to sit with his chin on his hands; outside was the silence of a still December night, where the only sound was the rush of water and the hiss and snap of burning logs.

* * * * *

With his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, he stared into the fire and the future ... wondering why it had come as a shock to him—this natural, this almost inevitable consequence of the life he shared with a woman? He found no immediate answer to the question; understanding only that the animal and unreflecting need which had driven them into each other’s arms had coloured their whole sex-relation. They had lived like the animal, without any thought of the future.... Now the civilized man in him demanded that his child should be born of something more than unreasoning lust of the flesh and there stirred in him a craving to reverence the mother of his son.... Ada, flaccid, lazy, infantile of mind, was more, for the moment, than her prosaic, incapable self. A rush of tenderness swept over him—for her and for the little insistent life which might, when its time came, have to struggle into being unaided....

With the thought returned the dread which had flashed into his mind when Ada revealed to him his fatherhood. If their life in hiding were destined to continue—if all men within reach were as those they had fled from, there would come the moment when—he should not know what to do!... He remembered, years ago, in the rooms of a friend, a medical student, how, with prurient youthful curiosity, he had picked up a textbook on midwifery—and sought feverishly to recall what he had read as he fluttered its pages and eyed its startling illustrations.

As had happened sometimes in the first days of loneliness, the immensity of the world overwhelmed him; he sat crouched by his fire, an insect of a man, surrounded by unending distances. An insect of a man, a pigmy, whom nature in her vastness ignored; yet, for all his insignificance, the guardian of life, the keeper of a woman and her child.... They would look to him for sustenance, for guidance and protection; and he, the little man, would fend for them—his mate and his young....

Of a sudden he knew himself close kin to the bird and beast; to the buck-rabbit diving to the burrow where his doe lay cuddled with her soft blind babies; to the round-eyed blackbird with a beakful gathered for the nest.... The loving, anxious, protective life of the winged and furry little fathers—its unconscious sacrifice brought a lump to his throat and the world was less alien and dreadful because peopled with his brethren—the guardians of their mates and their young.

XV

It was clear to him, so soon as he knew of his coming fatherhood, that, in spite of the drawbacks of winter travelling, his long-deferred journey of exploration must be undertaken at once; the companionship of men, and above all of women, was a necessity to be sought at the risk of any peril or hardship. Hence—with misgiving—he broached the subject to Ada next morning; and in the end, with smaller opposition than he had looked for, her lesser fears were mastered by her greater. That the certain future danger of unaided childbirth might be spared her, she consented to the present misery of days and nights of solitude; and together they made preparations for his voyage of discovery in the outside world and her lonely sojourn in the camp.

As he had expected, her first suggestion had been that they should break camp and journey forth together; but he had argued her firmly out of the idea, insisting less on the possible dangers of his journey—which he strove, rather, to disguise from her—than on her own manifest unfitness for exertion and exposure to December weather. Once more the habit of wifely obedience came to his assistance and her own, and she bowed to her overlord’s decision—if tearfully, without temper or sullenness; while, the decision once taken, it was he, and not Ada, who lay wakeful through the night and conjured up visions of possible disaster in his absence. His imagination was quickened by the new, strange knowledge of his responsibility, the protective sense it had awakened; and, lying wide awake in the still of the night, it was not only possible danger to Ada that he dreaded—he was suddenly afraid for himself. If misfortune befell him on his journey into the unknown, it would be more than his own misfortune; on his strength, his luck and well-being depended the life of his woman and her unborn child. If evil befell him and he never came back to them—if he left his bones in the beyond.... At the thought the sweat broke out on his face and he started up shivering on his moss-bed.

He worked through the day at preparations for the morning’s departure which, if simple, demanded thought and time; saw that plentiful provision of food and dry fuel lay ready to his wife’s hand, so that small exertion would be needed for the making of fire and meal. For his own provisioning he filled a bag with cooked fish, chestnuts and the like—store enough to keep him with care for five or six days. All was made ready by nightfall for an early start on the morrow; and he was awake and afoot with the first reddening of a dull December morning. Fearing a breakdown from Ada at the last moment, he had planned to leave her still asleep; but the crackling of a log he had thrown on the embers roused her and she sat up, pushing the tumbled brown hair from her eyes.

“You’re gowing?” she asked with a catch in her voice; and he avoided her eye as he nodded back “Yes,” and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“Just off,” he told her with blatant cheeriness. “Take care of yourself and have a good breakfast. There’s water in the cookpot—and mind you look after the fire. I’ve put you plenty of logs handy—more than you’ll want till I come back. Good-bye!”

“You might say good-bye properly,” she whimpered after him.

He affected not to hear and strode away whistling; he had purposely tried to make the parting as careless and unemotional as his daily going forth to work. Purposely, therefore, he did not look back until he was too far away to see her face; it was only when the trees were about to hide him that he turned, waved and shouted and saw her lift an arm in reply. She did not shout back—he guessed that she could not—and when the trees hid him he ran for a space, lest the temptation to follow and call him back should master her.

He had planned out his journey often enough during the last few months; considering the drift of the river and lie of the country and attempting to reduce them to map-form on the soil by the aid of a pointed stick. His idea was to make, in the first place, for the silent village which had hitherto been the limit of his voyaging; and thence to follow the road beside the river which in time, very surely, must bring him to the haunts of men. Somewhere on the banks of the river—beyond the tract of devastated ground—must dwell those who drank from its waters and fished in them; who perhaps—now the night of destruction was over and humanity had ceased to tear at and prey upon itself—were rebuilding their civilization and salving their treasures from ruin!... The air, crisp and frosty, set him walking eagerly, and as his body glowed from the swiftness of his pace a pleasurable excitement took hold of him; his sweating fears of the night were forgotten and his brain worked keenly, adventurously. Somewhere, and not far, were men like unto himself, beginning their life and their world anew in communities reviving and hopeful. Even, it might be—(he began to dream dreams)—communities comparatively unscathed; with homes and lands unpoisoned, unshattered, living ordered and orderly lives!... Some such communities the devils of destruction must have spared ... if a turn in the valley should reveal to him suddenly a town like the old towns, with men going out and in!

He quickened his pace at the thought and the miles went under him happily. He was no longer alone; even when he entered the long waste of coarse grass and blackened tree that lay around the dead village its dreariness was peopled with his vivid and hopeful imaginings ... of a crowd that hustled to hear his story, that questioned and welcomed and was friendly—and led him to a house that was furnished and whole ... where were books and good comfort and talk....

So, in pleasant company, he trudged until well after midday; when, perhaps discouraged by the beginnings of bodily weariness, perhaps affected by the sight of the stark village street—his unreasonable hopefulness passed and anxiety returned. He grew conscious, suddenly and acutely, of his actual surroundings; of silence, of the waste he had trodden, of the desolation about him, of the unknown loneliness ahead. That above all—the indefinite, on-stretching loneliness.... He hurried through the dumb street nervously, listening to his own footsteps—the beat and the crunch of them on a frozen road, their echo against deserted walls; and at the end of the village he turned with relief into the road he had marked on his previous visit, the road that turned to run by the stream a few yards beyond the bridge. It wound dismally into a scorched little wood—not one live shoot in it, a cemetery of poisoned trees; then on, still keeping fairly close to the stream, through the same long waste patched with grass and spreading weed. The road, though it narrowed and was overgrown and crumbling in places, was easy enough to follow for the first few hours, but he sought in vain for traces of its recent use. There was no sign of man or the works of man in use; the only token of his presence were, now and again, a fire-blackened cottage, a jumble of rusted, twisted ironwork or a skeleton with rank grass thrusting through the whitened ribs. When the river rounded a turn in the hills, the prospect before him was even as the prospect behind; a waste and silence where corn had once grown and cattle pastured.

As the day wore on the heavy silence was irksome and more than irksome. It was broken only by the sound of his footsteps, the whisper of grass in a faint little wind and now and again—more rarely—by the chirp and flutter of a bird. Long before dusk he began to fear the night, to think, with something like craving, of the shelter and the fire and the woman beside it—that was home; the thought of hours of darkness spent alone amongst the whitened bones of men and the blackened carcases of trees loomed before him as a growing threat. He pushed on doggedly, refusing himself the spell of rest he needed, in the hope that when night came down on him he might have left the drear wilderness behind.

It was a hope doomed to disappointment; the fall of the early December evening found him still in the unending waste, and when the dusk thickened into darkness he camped, perforce, near the edge of the river in the lee of a broken wall. The branches of a dead tree near by afforded him fuel for the fire that he kindled with difficulty with the aid of a rough contrivance of flint and steel; and as he crouched by the blaze and ate his evening ration he scanned the night sky with anxious and observant eyes. So far the weather had been clear and dry, but he realized the peril of a break in it, of a snowstorm in shelterless country.... If to-morrow were only as to-day—if the waste stretched on without trace of man or sign of ending—what then? Would it be wise or safe to push on for yet another day—leaving home yet further behind him? For the journey back the waste must be recrossed, in whatever weather the winter pleased to send him; traversed by day and camped on by night, in hail, in rain, in snow.... The thought gave him pause since exposure might well mean death—and to more than himself.

He slept little and brokenly, rousing at intervals with a shiver as the fire died down for want of tendance; and was on his feet with the first grey of morning, trudging forward with fear at his heels. It was a fear that pressed close on them with the passing of long lonely hours; still wintry hours wherethrough he strained his eyes for a curl of smoke or a movement on the outspread landscape.... The day was yesterday over again; the same pale sky, the dull swollen river that led him on, and the endless waste of shallow valley; and when night came down again he knew only this—a clump of hills that had been distant was nearer, and he was a day’s tramp further on his way. He settled at sundown in a copse of withered trees which afforded him plentiful firing if little else in the way of shelter from the night; and having kindled a blaze he warmed his food, ate and slept—too weary to lie awake and brood.

* * * * *

He had not slept long—for the logs still glowed redly and flickered—when he started into wakefulness that was instant, complete and alert. Something—he knew it—had stirred in the silence and roused him; he sat up, peered round and listened with the watchful terror instinctive in the hunted, be the hunted beast or man. For a moment he peered round, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but the whisper of the fire and the beating of his own heart ... then, in the blackness, two points caught the firelight—eyes!... Eyes unmistakable, that glowed and were fixed on him....

He stiffened and stared at them, open-mouthed; then, as a sudden flicker of the dying flame showed the outline of a bearded human face, he choked out something inarticulate and made to scramble to his feet. Swift as was the movement he was still on a knee when someone from behind leaped on him and pinned both arms to his sides.... As he wrestled instinctively other hands grasped him; he was the held and helpless captive of three or four who clutched him by throat, wrist and shoulder....

By that token he was back among men.

XVI

When they had him down and helpless at their feet, a dry branch was thrust into the embers and, as it flamed, held aloft that the light might fall upon his face. To him it revealed the half-dozen faces that looked down at him—weatherworn, hairy and browned with dirt, the eyes, for the moment, aglow with the pleasure of the hunter who has tracked and snared his prey. They held their prey and gazed at it, as they would have gazed at and measured a beast they had roped into helplessness. Satisfaction at the capture shone in their faces; the natural and grim satisfaction of him who has met and mastered his natural enemy.... That, for the moment, was all; they had met with a man and overcome him. Curiosity, even, would come later.

Theodore, after his first instinctive lunge and struggle, lay motionless—flaccid and beaten; understanding in a flash that was agony that men were still what they had been when he fled from them into the wilderness—beast-men who stalked and tore each other. In the torchlight the dirty, coarse faces were savage and animal; the eyes that glowered down at him had the staring intentness of the animal.... He expected death from a blow or a knife-thrust, and closed his eyes that he might not see it coming; and instead saw, as plainly as with bodily eyes, a vision of Ada by the camp fire, sitting hunched and listening for his footstep. Listening for it, staring at the dreadful darkness—through night after dreadful night.... In a torment of pity for his mate and her child he stammered an appeal for his life.

“For God’s sake—I wasn’t doing any harm. If you’ll only listen—my wife.... All that I want....”

If they were moved they did not show it, and it may be they were not moved—having lived, themselves, through so much of misery and bodily terror that they had ceased to respond to its familiar workings in others. Fear and the expression of fear to them were usual and normal, and they listened undisturbed while he tried to stammer out his pleading. Not only undisturbed but apparently uninterested; while he spoke one was twisting the knife from his belt and another taking stock of the contents of his food-bag; and he had only gasped out a broken sentence or two when the holder of the torch—as it seemed the leader—cut him short with “Are you alone?”... Once satisfied on that head he listened no more, but dropped the torch back on to the fire and kicked apart the dying embers. The action was apparently a sign to move on; the hands that gripped Theodore dragged him to his feet and urged him forward; and, with a captor holding to either arm, he stumbled out of the clump of stark trees into the open desert—now whitened by a moon at the full.

There was little enough talk amongst his captors as, for more than two hours, they thrust and guided him along; such muttered talk as there was, was not addressed to their prisoner and he judged it best to be silent. It was—so he guessed—the red shine of his fire that had drawn attention to his presence; and, the fear of instant death removed, he drew courage from the thought that the men who held and hurried him must be dwellers in some near-by village. Once he had reached it and been given opportunity to tell his story and explain his presence, they would cease to hold him in suspicion—so he comforted himself as they strode through the wilderness in silence.

After an hour of steady tramping they turned inland sharply from the river till a mile or so brought them to broken, rising ground and a smaller stream babbling from the hills. They followed its course, for the most part steadily uphill, and, at the end of another mile, the scorched black stumps gave place to trees uninjured—spruce firs in their solemn foliage and oaks with their tracery of twigs. A copse, then a stretch of short turf and the spring of heather underfoot; then down, to more trees growing thickly in a hollow—and through them a glow that was fire. Then figures that moved, silhouetted, in and out of the glow and across it; an open space in the midst of the trees and hut-shapes, half-seen and half-guessed at, in the mingling of flicker and deep shadow.... Out of the darkness a dog yapped his warning—then another—and at the sound Theodore thrilled and quivered as at a voice from another world. Now and again, while he lived in his wilderness, he had heard the sharp and familiar yelp of some masterless dog, run wild and hunting for his food; but the dog that lived with man and guarded him was an adjunct of civilization!

The warning had roused the little community before the newcomers emerged from the shadow of the trees; and as they entered the clearing and were visible, men hurried towards them, shouting questions. Theodore found himself the centre of a staring, hustling group—which urged him to the fire that it might see him the better, which questioned his guards while it stared at him.... Here, too, was the strange aloofness that refrained from direct address; he was gazed at, stolidly or eagerly, taken stock of as if he were a beast, and his guards explained how and where they had found him, as if he himself were incapable of speech, as they might have spoken of the finding of a dog that had strayed from its owner. Perhaps it was uneasiness that held him silent, or perhaps he adapted himself unconsciously to the general attitude; at any rate—as he remembered afterwards—he made no effort to speak.

The men and women who crowded round him, staring and murmuring, were in number, perhaps, between thirty and forty; women with matted hair straggling and men unshorn, their garments, like his own, a patchwork of oddments and all of them uncouth and unclean. One woman, he noted, had a child at her half-naked breast; a dirty little nursling but a few months old, its downy pate crusted with scabs. He stared at it, wondering as to the manner of its birth—the mother returning his scrutiny with open-mouthed interest until shouldered aside without ceremony by a man whom Theodore recognized for the leader of his band of captors. When they reached the shadow of the clump of trees he had stridden ahead and vanished, presumably to report and seek orders from some higher authority; and now, at a word from him, Theodore was again jerked forward by his guards and, with the crowd breaking and trailing behind him, was led some fifty or sixty yards further to where, on the edge of the clump of trees, stood a building, a tumbledown cottage. The moon without and a fire within showed broken panes stuffed with moss and a thatched roof falling to decay; inside the atmosphere was foul and stale, and heavy with the heat of a blazing wood fire which alone gave light to the room.

By the fire, seated on a backless kitchen chair, sat a man, grey of head and bent of shoulder; but even in the firelight his eyes were keen and steely—large bright-blue eyes that shone under thick grey eyebrows. His face, with its bright, stubborn eyes and tight mouth, was—for all its dirt—the face of a man who gave orders; and it did not escape the prisoner that the others—the crowd that was thrusting and packing itself into the room—were one and all silent till he spoke.

“Come nearer,” he said—and on the word, Theodore was pushed close to him. “Let him go”—and Theodore was loosed. Someone, at a sign, lit a stick from the heap beside the fire and held it aloft; and for a moment, till it flared itself out, there was silence, while the old man peered at the stranger. With the sudden light the hustling and jostling ceased, and the crowd, like Theodore, waited on the old man’s words.

“Tell me,” at last came the order, “what you were doing here. Tell me everything”—and he lifted a dirty lean finger like a threat—“what you were doing on our land, where you came from, what you want?... and speak the truth or it will be the worse for you.”

Theodore told him; while the steel-blue eyes searched his face as well as they might in the semi-darkness and the half-seen crowd stood mute. He told of his life as it had been lived with Ada; of their complete separation from their fellows for the space of nearly two years; of the coming of the child and the consequent need of help for his wife—conscious, all the time, not only of the questioning, unshrinking eyes of his judge but of the other eyes that watched him suspiciously from the corners and shadows of the room. Two or three times he faltered in his telling, oppressed by the long, steady silence; for throughout there was no comment, no word of interest or encouragement—only once, when he paused in the hope of encouragement, the old man ordered “Go on!”... He went on, striving to steady his voice and pleading against he knew not what of hostility, suspicion and fear.

“... And so,” he ended uncertainly, “they found me. I wasn’t doing any harm.... I suppose they saw my fire?...”

From someone in the darkness behind him came a grunt that might indicate assent—then, again, there was silence that lasted.... The dumb, heavy threat of it was suddenly intolerable and Theodore broke it with vehemence.

“For God’s sake tell me what you’re going to do! It’s not much I ask and it’s not for myself I ask it. If you can’t help me yourselves there must be other people who can—tell me where I am and where I ought to go. My wife—she must have help.”

There was no actual response to his outburst, but some of the half-seen figures stirred and he heard a muttering in the shadow that he took for the voices of women.

“Tell me where I am,” he repeated, “and where I can go for help.”

It was the first question only that was answered.

“You are on our land.”

“Your land—but where is it? In what part of England?”

“I don’t know,” said the old man and shrugged his lean shoulders. “But you haven’t any right on it. It’s ours.”

He pushed back his chair and stood up to his full, tall height; then, raising his hand, addressed the assembly of his followers.

“You have all of you heard what he said and know what he wants. Now let me hear what you think. Say it out loud and not in each other’s ears.”

He dropped his arm and stood waiting a reply—and after a moment one came from the back of the room.

“It’s winter,” said a man’s voice, half-sulky, half-defiant, “and we’ve hardly enough left for ourselves. We don’t want any more mouths here—we’ve more than we can fill as it is.” A murmur of agreement encouraged him and he went on—louder and pushing through the crowd as he spoke. “We fend for our own and he must fend for his. He ought to think himself lucky if we let him go after we’ve taken him on our land. What business had he there?”

This time the murmur of agreement was stronger and a second voice called over it:

“If we catch him here again he won’t get off so easily!”

The assent that followed was more than assent; applause that swelled and grew almost clamorous. The old man stilled it with a lifting of his knotted hand.

“Then you won’t have him here? You don’t want him?”

The “No” in answer was vigorous; refusal, it seemed, was unanimous. Theodore tried to speak, to explain that all he asked ... but again the knotted hand was lifted.

“And are you—for letting him go?”

The words dropped out slowly and were followed by a hush—significant as the question itself.... This much was clear to the listener: that behind them lay a fear and a threat. The nature of the threat could be guessed at—since they would not keep him and dared not let him go; but where and what was the motive for the fear that had prompted the slow, sly question and the uneasy silence that followed it?... He heard his own heart-beats in the long uneasy silence—while he sought in vain for the reason of their dread of one man and tried in vain to find words. It seemed minutes—long minutes—and not seconds till a voice made answer from the shadows:

“Not if it isn’t safe.”

And at the words, as a signal, came voices from this side and that—speech hurried, excited and tumultuous. It wasn’t safe—what did they know of him and how could they prove his story true? He might be a spy—now he knew where to find them, knew they had food, he might come back and bring others with him! When he tried to speak the voices grew louder, over-shouted him—and one man at his side, gesticulating wildly, cried out that they would be mad to let him go, since they could not tell how much he knew. The phrase was taken up, as it seemed in panic—by man after man and woman after woman—they could not tell how much he knew! They pressed nearer as they shouted, their faces closing in on him—spitting, working mouths and angry eyes. They were handling him almost; and when once they handled him—he knew it—the end would be sure and swift. He dared not move, lest fingers went up to his throat. He dared not even cry out.

It was the old man who saved him with another call for silence. Not out of mercy—there was small mercy in the lined, dirty face—but because, it seemed, there was yet another point to be considered.

“If they came again”—he jerked his head towards the open—“we should be a man the stronger. Now they are stronger than we are—by nearly a dozen....”

Apparently the argument had weight, for its hearers stood uncertain and arrested—and instinct bade Theodore seize on the moment they had given him.... What he said in the beginning he could not remember—how he caught their attention and held it—but when cooler consciousness returned to him they were listening while he bargained for his life.... He bargained and haggled for the right to live—offering goods and sweat and muscle in exchange for a place on the earth. He was strong and would work for them; he could hunt and fish and dig; he would earn by his labour every mouthful that fell to him, every mouthful that fell to his wife.... More, he had food of his own laid away for the winter months—dried fish and nuts and the store of fruit he had salved and hoarded from the autumn. These all could be fetched and shared if need be.... He bribed them while they haggled with their eyes. Let them come with him—any of them—and prove what he said; he had more than enough—let them come with him.... When he stopped, exhausted and sobbing for breath, the extreme of the danger had passed.

“If he has food,” someone grunted—and Theodore, turning to the unseen speaker, cried out—“I swear I have! I swear it!”

He hoped he had won; and then knew himself in peril again when the man who had raised the cry before repeated doggedly that they could not tell how much he knew....

“Take him away,” said the old man suddenly. “You take him—you two”—and he pointed twice. “Keep him while we talk—till I send for you.”

At least it was reprieve and Theodore knew himself in safety, if only for a passing moment. For their own comfort, if not for his, his guards escorted him to the fire in the open, where they crouched down, stolid and watchful, Theodore between them—exhausted by emotion and flaccid both in body and mind.... There was a curious relief in the knowledge that he had shot his last bolt and could do nothing more to save himself; that whatever befell him—release or swift death—was a happening beyond his control. No effort more was required of him and all that he could do was to wait.

He waited dumbly, in the end almost drowsily, with his head bent forward on his knees.

XVII

After minutes, or hours, a hand was laid on his shoulder and shook it; he raised his eyes stupidly, saw his guards already on their feet and with them a third man—sent, doubtless, with orders to summon them. He rose, knowing that a decision had been made, one way or another, but still oddly numb and unmoved.... The two men with him thrust a way into the crowded little room, elbowing their fellows aside till they had pushed and dragged their charge to the neighbourhood of the fireplace and set him face to face with his judge. As they fell back a pace or two—as far as the crowding of the room allowed—someone again lit a branch at the fire and held it up that the light might fall upon the prisoner.

To Theodore the action brought with it a conviction that his sentence was death and his manner of receiving it a diversion for the eyes of the beholders.... The old man was waiting, intent, with his chin on his hand, that he might lengthen the diversion by lengthening the suspense of the prisoner....

When he spoke at last his words were a surprise—instead of a judgment, came a query.

“What were you?” he asked suddenly; and, at the unexpected, irrelevant question, Theodore, still numb, hesitated—then repeated mechanically, “What was I?”

“In the days before the Ruin—what were you? What sort of work did you do? How did you earn your living?”

He knew that, pointless as the question seemed, there was something that mattered behind it; his face was being searched for the truth and the ring of listeners had ceased to jostle and were waiting in silence for the answer.

“I—I was a clerk,” he stammered, bewildered.

“A clerk,” the other repeated—as it seemed to Theodore suspiciously. “There were a great many different kinds of clerks—they did all sorts of things. What did you do?”

“I was a civil servant,” Theodore explained. “A clerk in the Distribution Office—in Whitehall.”

“That means you wrote letters—did accounts?”

“Yes. Wrote letters, principally ... and filed them. And drew up reports....”

The question sent him back through the ages. In the eye of his mind he saw his daily office—the shelves, the rows of files, interminable files—and himself, neat-suited, clean-fingered, at his desk. Neat-suited, clean-fingered and idling through a short day’s work; with Cassidy’s head at the desk by the window—and Birnbaum, the Jew boy, who always wore a buttonhole.... He brought himself back with an effort, from then to now—from the seemly remembrance of the life bureaucratic to a crowd of evil-smelling savages....

“You were always that—just a clerk? You have never had any other way of earning a living?”... And again he knew that the answer mattered, that his “No!” was listened for intently.

“You weren’t ever an engineer?” the old man persisted. “Or a scientific man of any kind?”

“No,” Theodore repeated, “I have never had anything to do with either engineering or science. When I left the University I went straight into the Distribution Office and I stayed there till the war.”

“University!” The word (so it seemed to him) was snatched at. “You’re a college man?”

“I was at Oxford,” Theodore told him.

“A college man—then they must have taught you science. They always taught it at colleges. Chemistry and that sort of thing—you know chemistry?”

In the crowd was a sudden thrill that was almost murmur; and Theodore hesitated before he answered, his tongue grown dry in his mouth.... Were these people, these outcasts from civilization, hoping to find in him a guide and saviour who should lighten the burden of their barbarism by leading them back to the science which had once been a part of their daily life, but of which they had no practical knowledge?... If so, how far was it safe to lie to them? and how far, having lied, could he disguise his dire ignorance of processes mechanical and chemical? What would they hope from him, expect in the way of achievement and proof?... Miracles, perhaps—sheer blank impossibilities....

“Science—they taught it you,” the old man was reiterating, insisting.

“Yes, they taught it me,” he stammered, delaying his answer. “That is to say, I used to attend lectures....”

“Then you know chemistry? Gases and how to make them?... And machines—do you know about machines? You could help us with machines—tell us how to make one?”

The dirty old face peered up at him, waiting for his “Yes”; and he knew the other faces that he could not see were peering from the shadow with the same odd, sinister eagerness. All waiting, expectant.... The temptation to lie was overwhelming and what held him back was no scruple of conscience but the brute impossibility of making good his claim to a knowledge he did not possess. The utter ignorance betrayed by the form of the old man’s speech—“You know chemistry—do you know about machines?”—would make no allowance for the difficulty of applying knowledge and see no difference between theory and instant practice.... In his hopelessness he gave them the truth and the truth only.

“I have told you already I am not an engineer—I have never had any training in mechanics. As for chemistry—I had to attend lectures at school and college. But that was all—I never really studied it and I’m afraid I remember very little—almost nothing that would be of any practical use to you.... I don’t know what you want but, whatever it is, it would need some sort of apparatus—a chemist has to have his tools like other men. Even if I were a trained chemist I should need those—even if I were a trained chemist I couldn’t separate gases with my bare hands. For that sort of thing you need a laboratory—a workshop—the proper appliances.... I’ll work for you in any way that’s possible—any way—but you mustn’t expect impossibilities, chemistry and mechanics from a man who hasn’t been trained in them.... And why should you expect me to do what you can’t do yourselves—why should you? Is it fair?...”

There was no immediate answer, but suddenly he knew that the silence around him had ceased to be threatening and tense. The old man’s eyes had left his own; they were moving round the room and searching, as it seemed, for assent.... In the end they came back to Theodore—and judgment was given.

“If you are what you say you are, we will take you; but if you have lied to us and you know what is forbidden, we shall find you out sooner or later and, as sure as you stand there, we will kill you. If you are what you say you are—a plain man like us and without devil’s knowledge—you may come to us and bring your woman, if she also is without devil’s knowledge. That is, if you can feed her; we have only enough for ourselves. And from this day forward you will be our man; and to-morrow you will take the oath to be what we are and live as we do, and be our man against all our enemies and perils. Are you agreed to that?”

He was saved and Ada with him—so much he knew; but as yet it was not clear what had saved him. He was to be their man—take an oath and be one with them—and there was the phrase “devil’s knowledge,” twice repeated.... He stared stupidly at the man who had granted his life—realizing that his ordeal was over only when the packed room emptied itself and the old man turned back to his fire.

XVIII

It was the phrase “devil’s knowledge” that, when his first bewilderment was over, gave Theodore the clue to the meaning of the scene he had lived through and the outlook of those whose man he would become on the morrow. That and the sudden memory of Markham ... on the crest of the centuries, on the night when the crest curled over...

He was so far taken into tribal fellowship that he had ceased to be openly a prisoner; but the two men who, for the rest of the night, shared with him the shelter of a lean-to hut, took care to bestow themselves between their guest and the entrance. He got little out of them in the way of enlightenment, for they were asleep almost as they flung themselves down on their moss; but for hours, while they snored, Theodore lay open-eyed, piecing together his fragmentary information of the world into which he had strayed.

“Without devil’s knowledge”—that, if he understood aright, was the qualification for admission to the life that had survived disaster. “Devil’s knowledge” being—if he was not mad—the scientific, mechanical, engineering lore which was the everyday acquirement of thousands on thousands of ordinary civilized men. The everyday acquirements of ordinary men were anathema; if he was not mad, his own life had been granted him for the reason only that he was unskilled and devoid of them. Ignorant, even as the men who spared him, of practical science and mechanics—a plain man, like unto them.... Ignorance was prized here, esteemed as a virtue—the old man’s query, “You’re a college man?” had been accusation disguised.

In a flash it was clear to him, and he saw through the farce whereby he had been tested and tempted; understood the motive that had prompted its cruel low cunning and all that the cunning implied of acceptance of barbarism, insistence on it.... What these outcasts, these remnants of humanity feared above all things was a revival of the science, the mechanical powers, that had wrecked their cities, their houses and their lives and made them—what they were.... In knowledge was death and in ignorance alone was a measure of peace and security; hence, fearing lest he was of those who knew too much, they had tempted him to confess to forbidden knowledge, to boast of it—that, having boasted, they might kill him without mercy, make an end of his wits with his life. In the torments inflicted by science destructive they had turned upon science and renounced it; and, that their terrors might not be renewed in the future, they were setting up against it an impassable barrier of ignorance. They had put devil’s knowledge behind them—with intention for ever.... If when they questioned him and led him on, he had yielded to the natural impulse to lie, they would have knocked him on the head—like vermin—without scruple; and the sweat broke out on him as he remembered how nearly he had lied....

He sat up, sweating and staring at darkness, and thrust back the hair from his forehead.... He was back among men—who, of set purpose and deliberately, had turned their faces from the knowledge their fathers had acquired by the patience and toil of generations! Who, of set purpose and deliberately, sought to filch from their children the heritage of the ages, the treasure of the mind of man!... That was what it meant—the treasure of the mind of man! Renunciation of all that long generations had striven for with patience and learning and devotion.... The impossibility and the treason of it—to know nothing, to forget all their fathers had won for them.... He remembered old talk of education as a birthright and the agitations of reformers and political parties. To this end.

Who were they, he asked himself, these people who had made a decision so terrible—what manner of men in the old life? Now they were seeking to live as the beasts live, and not only the world material had died to them, but the world of human aspiration.... To this they had come, these people who once were human—the beast in them had conquered the brain ... and like fire there blazed into his brain the commandment: “Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge! Thou shalt not eat ... lest ye die.”

The command, the prohibition, had suddenly a new significance. Was this, then, the purport of a legend hitherto meaningless? Was this the truth behind the childish symbol? The deadly truth that knowledge is power of destruction—power of destruction too great for the human, the fallible, to wield?... Odd that he had never thought of it before—that, familiar all his life with a deadly truth, he had read it as primitive childishness!

“Of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat ... lest ye die....”

He sat numbly repeating the words half aloud till there flashed into his brain a memory, a vision of Markham. In his room off Great Smith Street on the night when war was declared—talking rapidly with his mouth full of biscuit. “Only one thing I’m fairly certain about—I ought to have been strangled at birth.... If the human animal must fight, it should kill off its scientific men. Stamp out the race of ’em!”... What was that but a paraphrase, a modern application of the command laid upon Adam. “Of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat ... lest ye die.”

To his first impulse—of amazement and shrinking, as from treason—succeeded understanding of the outlook of these men and their decision. More, he wondered why, even in the worst of his despair, he had always believed in the persistence, the re-birth, of the civilization that had bred him.... These people—he saw it—were logical, as Markham had been logical—were wise after the event as Markham had been wise before it; and it amazed him that in his porings and guessings at a world reviving he had never hit upon their simple solution of the eternal problem of war. Markham’s solution; which, till this moment, he had not taken literally.... “You can’t combine the practice of science and the art of war; in the end it’s one or the other. We, I think, are going to prove that—very definitely.” One or the other. The fighting instinct or knowledge!

Man, because he fights, must deny himself knowledge—which is power over the forces of nature; the secrets of nature must be veiled from him by his own ignorance—lest, when the impulse to strife wells up in him, they serve him for infinite destruction. These renegades, in agony, had made confession of their sin, of the corporate sin of a world; had faced the brutality of their own nature; had denied themselves the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and led themselves out of temptation. Since fight they must, being men with men’s passions, they would limit their powers of destruction.... So he read their strange self-denying ordinance.

The thought led him on to wonder whether they were alone in their self-denying ordinance.... Surely not—unless they lived hidden, in complete isolation, out of contact with others of their kind. And obviously they did not live isolated; they had spoken of others who were stronger, and of land that was theirs—implying a system of boundary and penalty for trespass and theft. Further, the phrase “against all enemies” indicated at least a possibility of the contact that was bloodshed—yet enemies who had not renounced the advantage of mechanical and scientific knowledge would be enemies who could overwhelm at the first encounter a community fighting as barbarians.... What, then, was their relation to a world more civilized and communities that had not renounced?...

In the end, from sheer exhaustion, he ceased to surmise and argue with himself—and slept suddenly and heavily, huddling for warmth on his moss-bed against the body of his nearest gaoler.

* * * * *

It was a thrust from a foot that awakened him, and he crawled out shivering into the half-light of dawn and the chill of a frostbitten morning; the camp was alive and emerging from its shelters, the women already occupied in cooking the morning meal. Theodore and his guardians shared a bowl of steaming mess; a mingling of potatoes, dried greenstuff and gobbets of meat which he guessed to be rat-flesh. They shared it wolfishly, each man eating fast lest his fellows had more than their portion; the meal over, the bowl was flung back to the women for washing, and his gaolers—his mates now—relaxed; there was no further reason for unfriendliness and they were willing enough to be communicative, with the slow uncommunicativeness of men who have little but their daily round to talk about.