I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the
wrangle.
Of course I had to kill him. . . .
Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall at
all at that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances as
these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar and
our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world of
Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit
emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was taken
by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and the hard
implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the tumult of my
passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, confrontations,
deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things took possession
of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions.
There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd
came surging back. The fight had begun.
Lord Redcar, I believe, had jumped down from his car and felled
Mitchell, and men were already running out to his assistance from the
colliery gates.
I had some difficulty in shoving through the crowd; I can still
remember very vividly being jammed at one time between two big men so
that my arms were pinned to my sides, but all the other details are
gone out of my mind until I found myself almost violently projected
forward into the “scrap.”
I blundered against the corner of the motor-car, and came round it face
to face with young Verrall, who was descending from the back
compartment. His face was touched with orange from the automobile’s big
lamps, which conflicted with the shadows of the comet light, and
distorted him oddly. That effect lasted but an instant, but it put me
out. Then he came a step forward, and the ruddy lights and queerness
vanished.
I don’t think he recognized me, but he perceived immediately I meant
attacking. He struck out at once at me a haphazard blow, and touched me
on the cheek.
Instinctively I let go of the pistol, snatched my right hand out of my
pocket and brought it up in a belated parry, and then let out with my
left full in his chest.
It sent him staggering, and as he went back I saw recognition mingle
with astonishment in his face.
“You know me, you swine,” I cried and hit again.
Then I was spinning sideways, half-stunned, with a huge lump of a fist
under my jaw. I had an impression of Lord Redcar as a great furry bulk,
towering like some Homeric hero above the fray. I went down before
him—it made him seem to rush up—and he ignored me further. His big flat
voice counseled young Verrall—
“Cut, Teddy! It won’t do. The picketa’s got i’on bahs. . . .”
Feet swayed about me, and some hobnailed miner kicked my ankle and went
stumbling. There were shouts and curses, and then everything had swept
past me. I rolled over on my face and beheld the chauffeur, young
Verrall, and Lord Redcar—the latter holding up his long skirts of fur,
and making a grotesque figure—one behind the other, in full bolt across
a coldly comet-lit interval, towards the open gates of the colliery.