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.