by Elinor Mordaunt
People are accustomed to think
of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands,
but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a
mile and a half back from the sea, counting it all full tide; at low tide the
sly, smooth waters, unbroken by a single rock, slipped away for another mile or
more across a dreary ooze of black mud.
The village
lay pasted flat upon the marsh, with no trees worthy of the name in sight: a
few twisted black-thorn bushes, a few split willows, one wreck of a giant
blighted ash in the Rectory gardens, and that was all.
For months
on end the place swam in vapours. There were wonderful effects of sunrise and
sunset, veils of crimson and gold, of every shade of blue and purple. At times
the grey sea-lavender was like silver, the wet, black mud gleaming like dark
opals; while at high summer there was purple willow-strife spilled thick along
the ditches, giving the strange place a transitory air of warm-blooded life;
but for the most part it was all as aloof and detached as a sleep-walker.
The birds
fitted the place as a verger fits his quiet and dusky church: herons and waders
of all kinds; wild-crying curlew; and here and there a hawk, hanging motionless
high overhead.
There were
scarcely fifty houses in Hemerton, and these were all alike, flat and brown and
grey; where there had been plaster it was flaked and ashen. The very church
stooped, as though shamed to a sort of poor-relation pose by the immense
indifference of the mist-veiled sky—the drooping lids on a scornful face—for
even at midday, in mid-summer, the heavens were never quite clear, quite blue,
but still veiled and apart.
The Rectory
was a two-storied building, low at that, and patched with damp: small, with a
narrow-chested air, tiny windows, a thin, grudging doorway, blistered paint,
which gave it a leprous air; and just that one tree, with its pale, curled
leaves in summer, its jangling keys in winter.
It was
amazing to find that any creature so warmly vital as the Rector’s daughter,
Rhoda Fane, had been begotten, born, reared in such a place; spent her entire
life there, apart from two years of school at Clifton, and six months in
Brussels, cut short by her mother’s death.
She was
like a beech wood in September: ruddy, crisp, fragrant. Her hair, dark-brown,
with copper lights, was so springing with life that it seemed more inclined to
grow up than hang down; her face was almost round, her wide, brown eyes frank
and eager. She was as good as any man with her leaping-pole: broad-shouldered,
deep-breasted, with a soft, deep contralto voice.
Her only
brother, Hector, was four years younger than herself. Funds had run low,
drained away by their mother’s illness, before it was time for him to go to
school; he was too delicate for the second-best, roughing it among lads of a
lower class, and so he was kept at home, taught by his father: a thin trickle
of distilled classics and wavering mathematics; a good deal of history, no
geography.
He, in
startling contrast to his sister, was a true child of the marshes: thin light
hair, vellum-white, peaked face, pale grey eyes beneath an overhanging brow,
large, transparent ears: narrow-chested, long-armed, stooping, so that he
seemed almost a hunchback.
In all ways
he was the shadow of Rhoda, followed her everywhere; and as there is no shadow
without the sun, so it seemed that he could scarcely have existed apart from
her. Small as he already was, he almost puled himself out of life while she was
away at school; and after a bare week from home she would get back to find him
with the best part of his substance peeled from him, white as a willow-wand.
Different
as these two were, they were passionately attached to each other. The Rector
was a kind father when he drew himself out of the morass of melancholy and
disillusion into which he had fallen since his wife died, wilting away with
damp and discontent, and sheer loathing of the soil in which it had been his
misfortune to plant her. But still, at the best, he was a parent, and so apart,
while there were no neighbours, no playfellows.
Once or
twice Rhoda’s school-friends came to stay at the Rectory, and for the first day
or so it seemed delightful to talk of dress, of a gayer world, possible lovers.
But after a very little while they began to pall on her: they understood
nothing of what was her one absorbing interest—the natural life of the place in
which she lived: were discontented, disdainful of the marshland, hated the mud,
feared the fogs, shivered in the damp.
Anyhow, the
brother and sister were sufficient to each other, for they shared a
never-failing, or even diminishing, interest—and what more can any two people
wish for?—a passionate absorption in, a minute knowledge of, the wild life of
the marshland; its legends and folklore; its habits and calls; the mating
seasons and manners of the birds; the place and habit of every wild flower; the
way of the wind with the sky, and all its portents; the changing seasons,
seemingly so uneven from year to year, and yet working out so much the same in
the end.
They could
not have said how they first came to hear of the Forest: they had always talked
of it. To Hector, at least, it was so vivid that he seemed to have actually
struggled through its immense depths, swung in its hanging creepers, smelt its
sickly-sweet orchids, breathed its hot, damp air—so far real to both alike that
they would find themselves saying, ‘Do you remember?’ in speaking of paths that
they had never traversed.
Provisionally
they had fixed their Forest at the Miocene Period. Or, rather, this is what it
came to: the boy ceasing to protest against the winged monsters, the
rhinoceros, the long-jawed mastodon which fascinated the girl’s imagination;
though there was one impassioned scene when he flamed out over his clear
remembrance of a sabre-toothed tiger, putting all those others—stupid, hulking
brutes!—out of court by many thousands of years.
‘They
couldn’t have been there, couldn’t—not with us and with ‘It’—I saw it, I tell
you—I tell you I saw it!’ His pale face flamed, his eyes were as bright as
steel. ‘The mastodon! That’s nothing—nothing! But the sabre-toothed tiger—I
tell you I saw it. What are you grinning at now?—in our Forest—ours, mind
you!—I saw it!’
‘Oh,
indeed, indeed!’ Suddenly, because the day was so hot, because they were bored,
because she was unwittingly impressed, as always, by her brother’s heat of
conviction, Rhoda’s serene temper was gone. ‘And did you see yourself? and what
were you doing there, may I ask—you! Silly infant, don’t you know that there
weren’t any men then? Phew! Everyone knows that—everyone. You and your old
tiger!’
There was
mockery in her laugh as she took him by the lapels of his coat; shook him.
Then, next
moment when he turned aside, sullen and pale, his brows in a pent-house above
his eyes, she was filled with contrition. The rotten, thundery day had set her
all on edge; it was a shame to tease him like this; and, after all, how often
had she herself remembered back? Though there was a difference, and she knew
it, a sense of fantasy, pretending; while Hector was as jealous of every detail
of their Forest as a long-banished exile over every cherished memory of his own
land.
Though, of
course, there were no men contemporary with that wretched tiger: he knew that;
he must know.
Lolling
under their one tree, in the steamy, early afternoon, she coaxed him back to
the subject, and was beaten upon it, as the half-hearted always are.
He was so
amazingly clear about the whole thing.... Why, it might have happened
yesterday!
He had been
up in the trees, slinking along—not the hunting man, but the hunted—watchful,
furtive; a picker-up of what other beasts had slain and taken their fill of:
more watchful than usual because he had already come across a carcass left by
the long-toothed terror, all the blood sucked out of it. Swinging from bough to
bough by his hands—which, even when he stood upright, as upright as possible,
dangled far below his knees—he had actually seen it; seen its gleaming tusks,
its shining eyes; seen it, and fled, wild with terror.
Was it
likely that he could ever forget it? ‘It and its beastly teeth!’ he added; then
fell silent, brooding; while even Rhoda was awed to silence.
It was that
very evening that they found their Forest, or, rather, a part of it. They had
gone over to the shore meaning to bathe, but for once their memories were at
fault; and they found that the tide was out, a mere rim of molten lead on the
far edge of the horizon.
They were
both tired, but they could not rest. They cut inland for a bit, then out again;
crossing the mudflats until the mud oozed above their boots and drove them back
again.
They must
have wandered about a long time, for the light—although it did not actually
go—became illusive; the air freshened with that salty scent which tells of a
flowing tide.
Hector
insisted that they ought to wait until it was full in, and have their bath by
moonlight; but, as Rhoda pointed out, that would mean no supper, dawdling about
for hours. After some time they compromised: they would go out and meet the
tide; see what it was like.
Almost at
the water’s edge they found It—their Forest.
There it
was, buried like a fly in amber: twisted trunks and boughs, matted creepers,
all ash-grey and black.
How far it
stretched up and down the shore they could not have said, the time was too
short, the sea too near for any exploration; but not far, they thought, or they
must have discovered it before. ‘Nothing more than a fold out of the world,
squeezed up to the surface’; that was what they agreed upon.
They
divided and ran in opposite directions—’Just to try and find out,’ as Rhoda
said. But after a few yards, a couple of dozen, maybe, they called back to each
other that they had lost it.
The
darkness gathering, the water almost to their feet; they were bitterly
disappointed, but anyhow there was to-morrow, many ‘to-morrows.’
All that
evening they talked of nothing else. ‘It’s been there for thousands and tens of
thousands of years! It will be there to-morrow,’ they said.
It was
towards two o’clock in the morning that Hector, restless with excitement and
fear, padded into his sister’s room; found her sleeping—stupidly sleeping—with
the moonlight full upon her, and shook her awake; unreasonably angry, as
wakeful people always are with the sleepers.
‘Suppose we
never find it again! Oh, Rhoda, suppose we never find it again!’
‘Find what?’
‘The
Forest, you idiot!—our Forest.’
‘Hector,
don’t be silly. Go back to bed; you’ll get cold. Of course we’ll find it.’
‘Why of
course? I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. There wasn’t a tree or
bush or landmark of any sort: we had pottered about all over the shop:
supposing we’ve lost it for ever? Oh, supposing, Rhoda, Rhoda! What sillies we
were! Why didn’t we stay there, camp opposite it until the tide went out? I
feel it in my bones—we’ll never find it again—never—never—never! There might
have been skulls, all sorts of things—long teeth—tigers’ teeth! And now we’ve
lost it. It’s no good talking—we’ve lost it; I know we’ve lost it—after all
these years! After thousands and thousands and thousands of years of
remembering!’
The boy’s
forehead was glistening with sweat; the tears were running down his face, white
as bone in the moonlight. Rhoda drew him into her bed, comforted him as best
she could, very sleepy, and unperturbed—for, of course, they would find it. How
could they help finding it? And after a while he fell asleep, still moaning and
crying, searching for a lost path through his dreams.
He was
right in his foreboding. They did not find it. Perhaps the tide had been out
further than usual: they had walked further than they thought; they had dreamt
the whole thing; the light had deceived them—impossible to say.
At first,
in the broad light of day, even Hector was incredulous of their misfortune.
Then, as the completeness of their loss grew upon them, they became
desperate—possessed by that terrible restlessness of the searcher after lost
things. Day after day they would come back from the sea worn out, utterly
hopeless; declaring that here was the end of the whole thing; sick at the very
thought of the secret mud, the long black shore.
They gave
it up. They would never go near ‘the rotten thing’ again.
Then, a few
hours later, the thought of the freshly-receding tide began to work like
madness in their veins, and they would be out and away.
It was
easier for Rhoda; for she was of those who ‘sleep o’ nights’; easier until she
found that her brother slipped off on moonlight nights while she slumbered:
coming back at all hours, haggard and worn to fainting-point.
He stooped
more than ever: his brow was more overhung, furrowed with horizontal lines.
Sometimes, furious with herself for her sleepiness, Rhoda would awake, jump out
of bed and run to the window in the fresh dawn, to see the boy dragging himself
home, old as the ages, his hands hanging loose to his knees.
At last the
breaking-point came. He was very ill: after a long convalescence, money was
collected from numerous relations, family treasures were sold, and he was sent
away to school.
He came
back for his holidays a changed creature, talking of footer, then of cricket;
of boys and masters; of school—school—school—nothing but school; blunt and
practical.
But all
this was at the front of him, deliberately displayed in the shop-windows.
At the back
of him, buried out of sight, there was still the visionary rememberer. Rhoda,
who loved him, realised this.
At first
she did not dare to speak of the Forest. Then, trying to get at something of
the old Hector, she pressed the point; pressed it and pressed it. It was she
now who kept on with that eternal, ‘Don’t you remember?’
The worst
of the whole thing was that he did not even pretend to forget. He did worse—he
laughed. And in her own pain she now realised how often and how deeply she must
have hurt him.
‘Oh, that
rot! What silly idiots we were! Such rot!’
And yet, at
the back of him, at the back of his too-direct gaze, his laughter, there
was something. Oh, yes, there was something. She was certain of
that.
Deep, deep,
hidden away at the back of him, at the back of that most imperturbable of all
reserves, a boy’s reserve, he remembered, felt as he had always felt. He shut
her out of it, that was all: her—Rhoda.
At the end
of a year they ceased to talk of the Forest; all those far-back things dropped
away from their intercourse. To outward seeming their love for the countryside,
their strange, unyouthful interest in geology, the age-buried world, seemed a
thing of the past.
Hector had
a bicycle now: he was often away for hours at a time. He never even spoke of
where he had been, what he had been doing. It was always: ‘Nowhere in
particular; nothing in particular.’
Then, two
years later, upon just such a breathless mid-summer day, he burst in upon his
sister, his face crimson with excitement.
‘I’ve found
it! I never gave up—never for a moment! I pretended—I thought you thought it
rot—were drawing me on—but it’s there. We were right. It’s there—there! Quick!
quick! Now the tide’s just almost full out.... Oh, by Jingo! to think I’ve
found it! Rhoda, hurry up—quick!’ He was dancing with impatience.
‘I can ride
the bike—you on the step,’ breathed Rhoda, and snatched up a hat.
They flew.
The village shot past them: the flat country swirled like a top. At last they
came to a place where there was a tiny rag of torn handkerchief tied to a stick
stuck upright in the ground. Here they left the road, laid the bicycle in a dry
ditch, and cut away across the marsh; guided by more signals—scraps of cambric,
then paper; towards the end, one every ten yards or less, until Rhoda wondered
how in the world had the boy curbed himself to such care!
Then—there
it was.
They
stepped it: just on fifty yards long, indefinitely wide, running out into
little bays, here and there tailing off so that it was impossible to discover
any definite edge, sinking away out of sight like a dream.
The sun was
blazing hot and the top of the mud dry. In places they went down upon their
hands and knees, peering; but really one saw most standing a little way off,
with one’s head bent, eyeing it sideways.
It was in
this way that Rhoda found It—Him!
‘Look—look!
Oh, I say—there’s something.... A thing—an animal! No—no—a—a——’
‘Sabre-toothed
tiger!’ The boy’s wild shriek of triumph showed how he had hugged that old
conjecture.
He came
running, but until he got his head at exactly the same slant as hers he could
see nothing, and was furiously petulant.
‘Idiot!
Silly fool!—nothing but a bough. You——’ A lucky angle, and, ‘Oh, I say, by
Jove! I’ve got it now! A man—a man!’
‘A monkey—a
great ape; there were no men, then, with ‘It.’’ There, it seemed, she conceded
him his tiger. ‘A little nearer—now again, there!’
They crept
towards it. It was clear enough at a little distance; but nearer, what with the
blazing sun and the queer incandescent lights on the mud, they found difficulty
in exactly placing it. At last they had it, found themselves immediately over
it; were able, kneeling side by side, to gaze down at the strange, age-old
figure, lying huddled together, face forward.
It was not
more than a couple of feet down; the semitransparent mud must have been silting
over it for years and years: silted away again through centuries. And all for
them—just for them. What a thought!
Hector
raced off for his bicycle, and so on to the nearest cottage to borrow a spade.
The mental
picture of the ‘man’ and the sabre-toothed tiger met and clashed in his brain.
If he was so certain of the man he must concede the tiger, given in to Rhoda
and her later period. Unless—unless.... Suddenly he clapped his hands to his
ears as though someone were shouting: his eyes closed, shutting out sight and
sound. There was a tiger, he remembered—of course he
remembered! And if he were there, others were there also—not one tiger, not one
man, but tigers and men; both, both!
By the time
he got back to where he had left his sister, the water was above her knees, the
tide racing inwards.
They were
not going to be done this time, however.
It was five
o’clock in the afternoon, and their father was away from home. Rhoda went back
and ordered the household with as much sobriety as possible; collected a supply
of food and a couple of blankets—they had camped out before and there was
nothing so very amazing in their behaviour—then returned to the shore, the
shrine.
Hector was
sitting at the edge of the water, staring fixedly, white as a sheet.
Rhoda
collected driftwood and built a fire; almost fed him, for he took nothing but
what was put into his hand.
‘It will
still be there, even if we go to sleep,’ she said; then, ‘Anyhow, we’ll watch
turn and turn about.’
But it was
all of no use. The boy might lie down in his turn, but he still faced the sea
with steady, staring eyes.
Soon after
three he woke his sister, shaking her in a frenzy of impatience. Oh, these
sleepers!
‘Sleeping!
Sleeping! You great stupid, you! I never! I.... Just look at the tide—only
look!’
The tide
was pretty far out, the whole world a mist of pinkish-grey. Step by step they
followed the retreating lap of water.
⸙ ⸙ ⸙
By six o’clock they had the
heavy body out, and were dragging it across the rapidly-drying mud.
It was not
as big as Hector: five-foot-one at the most, but almost incredibly heavy, with
immense rounded shoulders.
By the time
they reached the true shore they were done, and flung themselves down, panting,
exhausted. But they could not rest. A few minutes more and they were up again,
turning the creature over, rubbing the mud away from the hairy body with
bunches of grass; parting the long, matted locks which hung over its lowering
face, with the overhung brow, flat nose, almost non-existent chin. The eyes
were shut, but oddly unsunken: it smelt of marsh slime, of decayed vegetation,
but nothing more.
Hector
poked forward a finger to see if he could push up one eyelid, and drew back
sharply.
‘Why—hang
it all—the thing’s warm!’
‘No wonder,
with this sun. I’m dripping from head to foot. Hector, we must go home. Matty
will tell; there’ll be the eyes of a row.’
For all her
insistence it was another hour before Rhoda could get her brother away. Again
and again he met the returning tide with her hat, bringing it back full of
water; washing their find from head to foot, combing its matted hair with a
clipped fragment of driftwood. But at last they dragged it to a dry dyke,
covered it with dry yellow grass, and were off, Rhoda on the step this time,
Hector draped limply over the handle of the bicycle.
He slept
like a dead thing for the best part of that day. But soon after three they were
away again: no use for Rhoda to raise objections; the unrest of an intense
excitement was in her bones as in his, and he knew it.
It had been
a cloudless day, the veil of mist fainter than usual, the sky bluer.
As they
left the bicycle and cut across the rough foreshore the sun beat down upon them
with an almost unbearable fierceness. There was a shimmer like a mirage across
the marshes: the sea was the colour of burnt steel.
They
dog-trotted half the way, arguing as they ran; Hector, still fixed, pivoting
upon his sabre-toothed tiger, and yet insistent that this was
a man—a real man—contemporary with it: the first absolute proof of human
existence anterior to the First Glacial age.
‘An ape—a
sort of ape—nearish to a man, but—well, look at his hair.’ She’d give him his
tiger, but not his man.
‘By Gad,
you’d grow hair, running wild as he did—a man——’
‘Hector,
what rot! Why, anyone—anyone could see—’ She thought of her father, the smooth
curate, the rubicund farmers.... A man!
‘Well,
stick to it—stick to it! But I bet you anything—anything....’
Hector’s
words were jerked out of him as he padded on:
‘We’ll get
hundreds and hundreds of pounds for him! Travel—see the world—go to Java, where
that other chap—what’s his name—was found. Why, he’s older than the Heidelberg
Johnny—a thousand thousand times great-grandfather to that Pitcairn
thing—older—older—oh, older than any!’
Panting,
stumbling, half-blind with exhaustion, the boy was still a good six yards in
front of his sister as he reached the dry dyke where they had left their
treasure.
Rhoda saw
him stand for a moment, staring, then spin round as though he had been shot,
throwing up his arms with a hoarse scream.
By the time
she had her own arms about him, he could only point, trembling from head to
foot.
⸙ ⸙ ⸙
There was nothing there! Torn
grass where they had pulled it to rub down their find; the very shape of the
body distinct upon the sandy, sparsely-covered soil; the stick with the pennant
of blue ribbon which Rhoda had taken from her hat to mark the spot.... Nothing
more, nothing whatever.
Up and down
the girl ran, circling like a plover, her head bent. It must be somewhere, it
must—it must!
She glanced
at her brother, who stood as though turned to stone: this was the sort of thing
which sent people mad, killed them—to be so frightfully disappointed, and yet
to stand still, to say nothing.
She caught
at his arm and faced him, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘Oh, my
dear, my dear—’ she began, then broke off, staring beyond him.
‘Why ...
why—Hector—I say—’ Her voice broke to a whisper: she had a feeling as though
she must be taking part in some mad dream. Quite inconsequently the thought of
Balaam came to her. How did Balaam feel when the ass spoke to him? As she
did—with eye more amazed than any ears could ever be.
‘Hector—look....
It—It....’
As her
brother still stood speechless, with bent head and ashen face, she dropped to
silence: too terrified of It, of her plainly deluded self, of everything on
earth, to say more....
One simply
could not trust one’s own eyes; that’s what it came to.
Her legs
were trembling; she could feel her knees touching each other, cold and clammy.
It would
have been impossible to say a word, even if she had dared to reveal her own
insanity; she could only pluck the lapels of her brother’s coat, running her
dry tongue along her lips.
Something
in her unusual silence must have stirred through the boy’s own misery, for
after a moment or so he looked up, at first dimly, as though scarcely
recognising her. Then—slowly realising her intent glance fixed on something
beyond his own shoulder, he turned—and saw.
Twenty
yards or more off, on a mound of coarse grass and sand just above the high-tide
mark, ‘It’ was sitting, its long arms wound round its knees, staring out to
sea.
For a
moment or so they hung, open-mouthed, wide-eyed.
For the
life of her, Rhoda could not have moved a step nearer. The creature’s heavy
shoulders were rounded, its head thrust forward. Silhouetted against sea and
sky, white in contrast to its darkness, it had the aloofness of incredible age;
drawn apart, almost sanctified by its immeasurable remoteness, its detachment
from all that meant life to the men and women of the twentieth century: the web
of fancied necessities, trivial possessions, absorptions.
‘There was
no sea—of course, there was no sea anywhere near here then!’ The boy’s whisper
opened an incalculable panorama of world-wide change.
There had been
no sea here then; no Bristol Channel, no Irish Sea. Valley and river, that was
all!
This alien
being who had lived, and more than half-died, in this very spot, was gazing at
something altogether strange: a vast, uneasy sheet of water with but one
visible bank; no golden-brown lights, no shadows, no reflections: a strange,
restless and indifferent god.
‘Well—anyhow....
Oh, blazes! here goes! if—’ Young Fane broke off with a decision that cut his
doubts, and moved forward.
In a moment
the creature was alert, its head flung sideways and up, sniffing the air like a
dog.
It half
turned, as though to run; then, as the boy stopped short, it paused.
‘Rhoda—get
the grub—go quietly—don’t run.... Bread-and-butter—anything!’
They had
flung down the frail with the bottle of milk, cake, bread-and-butter that they
had brought with them—enough for tea and supper—heedless in their despair.
Rhoda moved a step or two away, picked up a packet, unfolded it and thrust the
food into her brother’s hand—cake, a propitiation!
The strange
figure, upright—and yet not upright as it is counted in these days—remained
stationary; there was one quick turn of the head following her, then the poise
of it showed eyes immovably fixed upon the male.
Hector
moved forward very slowly, one smooth step after another. Rhoda had seen him
like that with wild birds and rabbits. He wore an old suit of shrunken
flannels, faded to a yellowish-grey, which blurred him into the landscape. Far
enough off to catch his outline against the molten glare of the sea, she noted
that his shoulders were almost as bent as those of that Other.... Other
what?—man?—ape? The speculation zigzagged to and fro like lightning through her
mind. She could scarcely breathe for anxiety.
As the boy
drew quite near to the dull, brownish figure it jerked its head uneasily
aside—she knew what Hector’s eyes were like, a steady, luminous grey under the
bent brows—made a swinging movement with its arms, half turned; then stopped,
stared sideways, crouching, sniffing.
The boy’s
arm was held out at its fullest stretch in front of him. Heaven—the old, old
gods—only knew upon what beast-torn carrion the creature had once fed; but it
was famished, and some instinct must have told it that here was food, for it
snatched and crammed its mouth.
Hector
turned and Rhoda’s heart was in her throat, for there was no knowing what it
might not do at that. But as he moved steadily away, without so much as a
glance behind him, it hesitated, threw up its hand, as though to strike or
throw; then followed.
⸙ ⸙ ⸙
That was the beginning of it.
During those first days it would have followed him to the end of the world.
Later on, he told himself bitterly that he had been a fool not to have seen
further; gone off anywhere—oh, anywhere, so long as it was far enough—dragging
the brute after him while his leadership still held.
It was with
difficulty that they prevented it from dogging them back to the Rectory—just
imagine it tailing through the village at their heels! But once it understood
that it must stay where it was, it sat down on a grassy hummock, crouching with
its arms round its knees, one hand tightly clenched, its small, light eyes,
overhung by that portentous brow, following them with a look of desolate
loneliness.
Again and
again the boy and girl glanced back, but it still sat there staring after them,
immovable in the spot which Hector had indicated to it. They had left it all
the food they had with them, and one of the blankets which they had been too
hot to carry home that morning. As it plainly had not known what to do with the
thing, Rhoda, overcome by a sort of motherliness, had thrown it over its
shoulders. Thus it sat, shrouded like an Arab, its shaggy head cut like a giant
burr against the pale primrose sky.
‘A beastly
shame leaving it alone like that!’ They both felt it; scarcely liked to meet
each other’s eyes over it. And yet, pity it as they might, engrossed in it as
they were, they couldn’t stay there with it after dark. No reason, no fear—just
couldn’t! Why? Oh, well, for all its new-found life, it was as far away as any
ghost.
‘Poor
brute!’ said Rhoda.
‘Poor chap!’
Hector’s under-lip was thrust out, his look aggressive. But there was no
argument; and when he treated her—’Don’t be silly; of course it’s not a man;
any duffer could see that’—with contemptuous silence, Rhoda knew that he was
absolutely fixed in his convictions.
He proved
it, too, next morning, leading the creature out into the half-dried mud and
back again to where his sister sat, following his apparently aimless movements
with puzzled eyes.
‘Now, look,’
he crowed. ‘Just you look, Miss Blooming-Cocksure!’
He was
right. There was the mark of his own heavy nailed boot, and beside it the track
of other feet; oddly-shaped enough, but with the weight distinctly thrown upon
the heel and great-toe, as no beast save man has ever yet thrown it—that fine
developed great-toe, the emblem of leadership. Hardly a trace of such pressure
as the three greater apes show, all on the outer edge of the foot; not even
flat and even as the baboon throws his.
It was
after this that—without another word said—Rhoda, meek for once, followed her
brother’s example, and began to speak of the creature as ‘He.’
They even
gave him a name. They called him Hodge; only in fun, and yet with a feeling
that here was one of the first of all countrymen: less learned, and yet in some
way so much more observant, self-sufficing, than his machine-made successors.
He could
run at an almost incredible rate, bent as he was; climb any tree; out-throw
either of them, doubling the distance. It was there that they got at the
meaning of that closed fist; for at least three days he had never let go of his
stone—his one weapon.
‘He didn’t
trust us.’ Rhoda was hurt, her vanity touched; and when they had seemed to be
making such progress, too!
‘Not that—a
sort of ingrained habit; the poor devil didn’t feel dressed without it,’
protested Hector. ‘Of course he trusts us as much as a perfectly natural
creature ever trusts anything or anybody.’
⸙ ⸙ ⸙
The Rector had gone on a visit
to their only relative, an old aunt, who was dying in as leisurely a fashion as
she had lived, and was unable to leave her. A neighbouring curate took that
next Sunday’s service.
It had been
a Monday when Hector found Hodge, and a very great deal can happen in that
time.
From the
first it had seemed clear that nothing in the way of communicating with
authorities, experts, could be done until their father was there to back them,
adding his own testimony. It was no good just writing—Hector did, indeed, begin
a letter to Sir Ray Lankester, but tore it up, appalled by his own formless,
boyish handwriting. ‘He’d think we were just getting at him—a couple of silly
kids,’ was his reflection.
He knew a
lot for his age; was very certain of his own knowledge; felt no personal fear
of this wild man of his. But ordinary grown-up people! That was altogether a
different matter. And here he touched the primitive mistrust of all real youth
for anything too completely finished and sophisticated.
Of course,
from the very beginning, there were all sorts of minor troubles with Matty over
their continued thefts of food; difficulties in keeping the creature away from
the house and village.
But all
that was nothing to what followed.
The first
dim, unformulated sense of fear began on the night when Hector, awakened by a
loud rustling among the leaves of that one tree, discovered Hodge there,
climbing along a bough which ended close against Rhoda’s window.
Rhoda’s,
not his—that was the queer part of it!
The boy
felt half huffed as he drove him off. But when he came again, some instinct,
something far less plain than thought, began to worry him: something which
seemed ludicrous, until it gathered and grew to a feeling of nausea so horrible
that the cold sweat pricked out upon his breast and forehead.
At the
third visit the fear was more defined. But still.... That brute ‘smitten’ with
Rhoda! He tried to laugh it off. Anyhow, what did it matter? And yet.... Hang
it all! there was something sickening about it all. It was impossible to sleep
at night, listening, always listening.
He was only
thirteen. Of course he had heard other chaps talking, but he had no real idea
of the fierce drive of physical desire. And yet it was plain enough that here
was something ‘beastly’ beyond all words.
He told
Rhoda to keep her window bolted, and when she protested against such ‘fugging,’
touched on his own fears, tried, awkwardly enough, to explain without
explaining.
‘I’m funky
about Hodge—he’s taken to following us. He might get in—bag something.’
‘The
darling!’ cried Rhoda. ‘Look here, old chap. I really believe he’s fond of me;
fonder of me than of you!’
She
persisted in putting it to the test next day; left ‘Hodge’ sitting by her
brother, and walked away.
The
creature moved his head uneasily from side to side, glanced at Hector, and his
glance was full of hatred, malevolence; then, scrambling furtively to his feet,
helping himself with his hands, one fist tight-closed, in the old fashion, he
passed round the back of the boy, and followed her.
For a
minute or two Hector sat hunched together, staring doggedly out to sea. If
Rhoda chose to make an ass of herself—well, let her. After all, what could the
brute do? She was bigger than he was, had nothing on her worth stealing;
nothing of any use to Hodge, anyhow, he told himself.
Then, of a
sudden, that half-formulated dread, that sick panic seized him afresh. He
glanced round; both Hodge and his sister were out of sight, and he started to
run with all his might, shouting.
There was
an answering cry from Rhoda, shriller than usual, with a note of panic in it.
This gave him the direction; and, plunging off among a group of shallow
sand-dunes, he found himself almost upon them.
Rhoda was
drawn up very straight, laughing nervously, her shoulders back, flushed to the
eyes, while Hodge stood close in front of her, gabbling—they had tried him with
their own words, but the oddly-angled jaw had seemed to cramp the tongue beyond
hope of articulate speech—gabbling, gesticulating.
‘Oh,
Hector!’ The girl’s cry was full of relief as she swung sideways toward him;
while Hodge, glancing round, saw him, raised his hand, and threw.
The stone
just grazed the boy’s cheek, drawing a spurt of blood; but this was enough for
Rhoda, who forgot her own panic in a flame of indignation.
The
creature could not have understood a word of what she said: her denunciation,
abuse, ‘the wigging’ she gave him. But her look was enough, and he shrank
aside, shamed as a beaten dog.
They did
not bid him good-night. They had taught him to shake hands; but now that he was
in disgrace all that was over, and they turned aside with the set severity of
youth: bent brows and straightened, hard mouths.
Rhoda was
the first to relent, half-way home, breaking their silence with a laugh: ‘Poor
old Hodge! I don’t know why I was so scared—I must have got him rattled, or he’d
never have thrown that stone. Why, it was always you he liked best, followed,’
she added magnanimously.
And yet she
was puzzled, all on edge, as she had never been before. The look Hodge had cast
at her brother was unmistakable; but why?—why? What had changed him? She never
even thought of that passion common to man and beast, interwoven with all
desire, hatred—the lees of love—jealousy.
All that
evening Hector scarcely spoke. He was not so much scared as gravely anxious in
a man’s way. If that brute got him with a stone, what would happen to Rhoda?
Even supposing that there had been anyone to consult, he could not, for the
life of him, have put his fear into words. So much a man, he was yet too much a
boy for that. Terrified of ridicule, incredulity, he hugged his secret, as that
strange man-beast hugged his—the highest and lowest—the most primitive and the
most cultured—forever uncommunicative; those in the midway the babblers.
He was so
firm in his insistence upon Rhoda changing her room that night that she gave
way, without argument, overawed by his gravity, by an odd, chill sense of fear
which hung about her. ‘I must have got a cold. I’ve a sort of feeling of a
goose walking over my grave,’ was what she said laughingly, half-shamefaced,
accustomed as she was to attribute every feeling to some natural cause.
That night,
soon after midnight, the brute was back in the tree. Hector heard the rustling,
then the spring and swish of a released bough. Before he lay down he had
unbolted one of the long bars from the underneath part of his old-fashioned
iron bedstead; and, now taking it in his hand, he ran to Rhoda’s room.
The
white-washed walls and ceiling were so flooded with moonlight that it was
almost as light as day.
Hodge was
already in the room: the clothes were torn from the bed; the cupboard doors
wide open; the whole place littered with feminine attire.
He—It—the
impersonal pronoun slid into its place in the boy’s mind, and no words of
self-reproach or condemnation could have said more—stood at the foot of the
empty bed, with something white—it might have been a chemise—in its hand, held
up to its face. Hector could not catch its expression, but there was something
inexpressibly bestial in the silhouette of its head, bent, sniffing; he could
actually hear the whistling breath.
He would
have given anything if only it had stayed, fought it out then. But it belonged
to a state too far away for that—defensive, at times aggressive, but forever
running, hiding, slinking: a thrower from among thick boughs behind
tree-trunks—and in a moment it was out of the window, bundling over the sill,
so clumsy and yet so amazingly quick.
He could
hear the swing of a bough as it caught it. There was a loud rustle of leaves,
and a stone hurtled in through the window; but that was all.
Hector
tidied the room, tossed the scattered garments into the bottom of the wardrobe,
and re-made the bed in his awkward boy-fashion, moving mechanically, as if in a
dream; his hands busied over his petty tasks, his mind engrossed with something
so tremendous that he seemed to be two separate people, of which the one, the
greater, revolved slowly and certainly in an unalterable orbit, quite apart
from his old everyday life, from that Hector Fane whom he had always known,
thought of, spoken of as ‘myself.’
He went to
his own room, put on his collar and coat—for he had lain down upon his bed
without undressing, every nerve on edge—laced up his boots with meticulous
care. He was no longer frightened or hurried; he knew exactly what he was going
to do, and that alone hung him—moving slowly, surely—as upon a pivot.
The
moonlight was so clear that there was no need for a candle, flooding the
stairway, the study with its shabby book-shelves.
Easy enough
to take the old shot-gun from the nails over the mantelshelf; only last
holiday—years and years ago, while he was still a child—he had been allowed to
use it for wild-duck shooting—and run his hand along the back of the
writing-table drawer in search of those three or four cartridges which he had
seen there a couple of days earlier.
The
cartridges in his pocket swung against his hip as he mounted his bicycle and
rode away—guiding himself with one hand, the gun lying heavily along his left
arm; it was like someone nudging, reminding.
The scene
was entirely familiar; but what was so strange in himself lent it an air of
something new and uncanny. The winding road had a swing, drawing him with it;
the mingled mist and moonlight were sentient, watchful, holding their breath.
Once or
twice he seemed to catch sight of a low, stooping figure amid the rough grass
and rush-tufted hollows to the left of him; but he could not be sure until he
reached the very shore, left his bicycle in the old place.
Then a
stone grazed his shoulder, and there was a blurred scurry of brown, from
hummock to hummock, low as a hare to the ground.
Once in the
open he got a clear sight of Hodge. The far-away tide was on the flow, but
there was still a good half-mile of mud, like lead in the silvery dawn.
The
man-beast bundled down the sandy strip of shore and out on to the mud:
ungainly, stumbling; the boy behind it—’It.’ Hector held to that: the pronoun
was altogether reassuring now—something to hold to, hard as a bone in his
brain.
On the edge
of the tide it tried to turn, double; then paused, fascinated, amazed: numb
with fear of the strange level pipe pointing, oddly threatening, the first ray
of sunlight running like an arrow of gold along the top of it.
There was
something utterly naïve and piteous in the misplaced creature’s gesture: the
way in which it stood—long arms, short, bandy legs—moving its head uneasily
from side to side; bewildered, yet fascinated.
‘Poor
beggar!’ muttered Hector. He could not have said why, but he was horribly
sorry, ashamed, saddened.
Years later
he thought more clearly—’Poor beggar! After all, what did he want but life—more
life—the complete life of any man—or animal, either, come to that!’
As he
pressed his finger to the trigger he saw the rough brown figure throw up its
arms, leap high in the air, and drop.
Something
like a red-hot iron burnt up the back of his own neck; his head throbbed. After
all, what did death matter when life was so rotten, so inexplicable? It wasn’t
that, only—only.... Well, it was beastly to feel so tired, so altogether gone
to pieces.
With bent
head he made his way, ploughing through the mud and sand, back to the shore;
sat down rather suddenly, with a feeling as though the ground had risen up to
meet him, and winding his arms round his knees, stared out to sea; washed
through and through, swept by an immense sense of grief, a desperate regret
which had nothing whatever to do with his immediate action—the death of Hodge.
That was
something which had to be gone through with; it wasn’t that—not exactly
that.... But, oh, the futility, the waste of ... well, of everything!
‘Rotten
luck!’ He shuddered as he dragged himself wearily to his feet. He could not
have gone before, not while there was the mud with ‘that’ on it; not even so
long as the shining sands were bare. It would have seemed too hurried, almost
indecent. But now that an unbroken, glittering sheet of water lapped the very
edge of the shore, the funeral ceremony—with all its pomp of sunrise—was over;
and, turning aside, he stumbled wearily through the rough grass to the place
where he had left his bicycle.
.jpg)
Posts
