THE MARCH OF THE GOSLINGS
XI--THE SILENT CITY
1
July came in with temperate heat and occasional showers, ideal weather
for the crops; for all the precious growths which must ripen before
the famine could be stayed. The sudden stoppage of all imports,
and the flight of the great urban population into the country, had
demonstrated beyond all question the poverty of England's resources
of food supply, and the demonstration was to prove of value although
there was no economist left to theorize. England was once again an
independent unit, and no longer a member of a great world-body. Indeed
England was being subdivided. The unit of organization was shrinking
with amazing rapidity. The necessity for concentration grew with
every week that passed, the fluidity of the superfluous labour was
being resolved by death from starvation. The women who wandered from
one farm to the next died by the way.
In the Putney house, Mrs Gosling and her daughters were faced
by the failure of their food supply. The older woman had little
initiative. She was a true Londoner. Her training and all the
circumstances of her life had narrowed her imaginative grasp till
she was only able to comprehend one issue. And as yet her daughters,
and more particularly Millie, were so influenced by their mother's
thought that they, also, had shown little evidence of adaptability
to the changed conditions.
"We shall 'ave to be careful," was Mrs Gosling's first expression of
the necessity for looking to the future. She had arranged the bulk
of her stores neatly in one room on the second floor, and although
a goodly array of tins still faced her she experienced a miserly
shrinking from any diminishment of their numbers. Moreover, she had
long been without such necessities as flour. Barker and Prince had
not dealt in flour.
Returning from her daily inspection one morning in the second week of
July, Mrs Gosling decided that something must be done at once. Fear
of the plague was almost dead, but fear of invasion by starving women
had kept them all close prisoners. That house was a fortress.
"Look 'ere, gels," said Mrs Gosling when she came
downstairs. "Somethin' 'll 'ave to be done."
Blanche looked thoughtful. Her own mind had already begun to work
on that great problem of their future. Millie, lazy and indifferent,
shrugged her shoulders and replied: "All very well, mother, but what
can we do?"
"Well, I been thinking as it's very likely as things ain't so bad in
some places as they are just about 'ere," said Mrs Gosling. "We got
plenty o' money left, and it seems to me as two of us 'ad better go
out and 'ave a look about, London way. One of us could look after
the 'ouse easy enough, now. We 'aven't 'ardly seen a soul about the
past fortnight."
The suggestion brought a gleam of hope to Blanche. She visualized
the London she had known. It might be that in the heart of the town,
business had begun again, that shops were open and people at work. It
might be that she could find work there. She was longing for the
sight and movement of life, after these two awful months of isolation.
"I'm on," she said briskly. "Me and Millie had better go, mother,
we can walk farther. You can lock up after us and you needn't open
the door to anyone. Are you on, Mill?"
"We must make ourselves look a bit more decent first," said Millie,
glancing at the mirror over the mantelpiece.
"Well, of course," returned Blanche, "we brought one box of clothes
with us."
They spent some minutes in discussing the resources of their wardrobe.
"Come to the worst we could fetch some more things from Wisteria. I
don't suppose anyone has touched 'em," suggested Blanche.
At the mention of the house in Wisteria Grove, Mrs Gosling sighed
noticeably. She was by no means satisfied with the place at Putney,
and she could not rid herself of the idea that there must be accessible
gas and water in Kilburn, as there had always been.
"Well, you might go up there one day and 'ave a look at the place," she
put in. "It's quite likely they've got things goin' again up there."
In less than an hour Blanche and Millie had made themselves
presentable. Life had begun to stir again in humanity. The atmosphere
of horror which the plague had brought was being lifted. It was as if
the dead germs had filled the air with an invisible, impalpable dust,
that had exercised a strange power of depression. The spirit of death
had hung over the whole world and paralyzed all activity. Now the
dust was dispersing. The spirit was withdrawing to the unknown deeps
from which it had come.
"It is nice to feel decent again," said Blanche. She lifted her head
and threw back her shoulders.
Millie was preening herself before the glass.
"Well, I'm sure you 'ave made yourselves look smart," said their
mother with a touch of pride. "They were good girls," she reflected,
"if there had been more than a bit of temper shown lately. But, then,
who could have helped themselves? It had been a terrible time."
The July sun was shining brilliantly as the two young women,
presentable enough to attend morning service at the Church of St John
the Evangelist, Kilburn, set out to exhibit their charms and to buy
food in the dead city.
2
They crossed Putney Bridge and made their way towards Hammersmith.
The air was miraculously clear. The detail of the streets was so sharp
and bright that it was as if they saw with wonderfully renewed and
sensitive eyes. The phenomenon produced a sense of exhilaration. They
were conscious of quickened emotion, of a sensation of physical
well-being.
"Isn't it clean?" said Blanche.
"H'm! Funny!" returned Millie. "Like those photographs of foreign
places."
Under their feet was an accumulation of sharp, dry dust, detritus of
stone, asphalt and steel. In corners where the fugitive rubbish had
found refuge from the driving wind, the dust had accumulated in flat
mounds, broken by scraps of paper or the torn flag of some rain-soaked
poster that gave an untidy air of human refuse. Across the open way
of certain roads the dust lay in a waved pattern of nearly parallel
lines, like the ridged sand of the foreshore.
For some time they kept to the pavements from force of habit.
"I say, Mill, don't you feel adventurous?" asked Blanche.
Millie looked dissatisfied. "It's so lonely, B.," was her expression
of feeling.
"Never had London all to myself before," said Blanche.
Near Hammersmith Broadway they saw a tram standing on the rails. Its
thin tentacle still clung to the overhead wire that had once given
it life, as if it waited there patiently hoping for a renewal of the
exhilarating current.
Almost unconsciously Blanche and Millie quickened their pace. Perhaps
this was the outermost dying ripple of life, the furthest outpost of
the new activity that was springing up in central London.
But the tram was guarded by something that in the hot, still air
seemed to surround it with an almost visible mist.
"Eugh!" ejaculated Millie and shrank back. "Don't go, Blanche. It's
awful!"
Blanche's hand also had leapt to her face, but she took a few steps
forward and peered into the sunlit case of steel and glass. She saw a
heap of clothes about the framework of a grotesquely jointed scarecrow,
and the gleam of something round, smooth and white.
She screamed faintly, and a filthy dog crept, with a thin yelp,
from under the seat and came to the door of the tram. For a moment
it stood there with an air that was half placatory, wrinkling its
nose and feebly raising a stump of propitiatory tail, then, with
another protesting yelp, it crept back, furtive and ashamed, to its
unlawful meat.
The two girls, handkerchief to nose, hurried by breathless, with
bent heads. A little past Hammersmith Broadway they had their first
sight of human life. Two gaunt faces looked out at them from an
upper window. Blanche waved her hand, but the women in the house,
half-wondering, half-fearful, at the strange sight of these two
fancifully dressed girls, shook their heads and drew back. Doubtless
there was some secret hoard of food in that house and the inmates
feared the demands of charity.
"Well, we aren't quite the last, anyway," commented Blanche.
"What were they afraid of?" asked Millie.
"Thought we wanted to cadge, I expect," suggested Blanche.
"Mean things," was her sister's comment.
"Well! we weren't so over-anxious to have visitors," Blanche reminded
her.
"We didn't want their beastly food," complained the affronted Millie.
The shops in Hammersmith did not offer much inducement to
exploration. Some were still closely shuttered, others presented
goods that offered no temptation, such as hardware; but the majority
had already been pillaged and devastated. Most of that work had been
done in the early days of the plague when panic had reigned, and many
men were left to lead the raids on the preserves of food.
Only one great line of shuttered fronts induced the two girls to pause.
"No need to go to Wisteria for clothes," suggested Blanche.
"How could we get in?" asked Millie.
"Oh! get in some way easy enough."
"It's stealing," said Millie, and thought of her raid on the Kilburn
tobacconist's.
"You can't steal from dead people," explained Blanche; "besides,
who'll have the things if we don't?"
"I suppose it'd be all right," hesitated Millie, obviously tempted.
"Well, of course," returned Blanche and paused. "I say, Mill," she
burst out suddenly. "There's all the West-end to choose from. Come on!"
For a time they walked more quickly.
In Kensington High Street they had an adventure. They saw a woman
decked in gorgeous silks, strung and studded with jewels from head
to foot. She walked with a slow and flaunting step, gesticulating,
and talking. Every now and again she would pause and draw herself up
with an affectation of immense dignity, finger the ropes of jewels
at her breast, and make a slow gesture with her hands.
"She's mad," whispered Blanche, and the two girls, terrified and
trembling, hastily took refuge in a great square cave full of litter
and refuse that had once been a grocer's shop.
The woman passed their hiding-place in her stately progress
westward without giving any sign that she was conscious of their
presence. When she was nearly opposite to them she made one of
her stately pauses. "Queen of all the Earth," they heard her say,
"Queen and Empress. Queen of the Earth." Her hand went up to her head
and touched a strange collection of jewels pinned in her hair, of
tiaras and brooches that flashed brighter than the high lights of the
brilliant sun. One carelessly fastened brooch fell and she pushed it
aside with her foot. "You understand," she said in her high, wavering
voice, "you understand, Queen and Empress, Queen of the Earth."
They heard the refrain of her gratified ambition repeated as she
moved slowly away.
A long submerged memory rose to the threshold of Millie's
mind. "Thieving slut," she murmured.
3
As they came nearer to representative London the signs of deserted
traffic were more numerous. By the Albert Memorial they saw an
overturned motor-bus which had smashed into the park railings, and a
little further on were two more buses, one standing decently at the
curb, the other sprawling across the middle of the road. The wheels
of both were axle deep in the dust which had blown against them, and
out of the dust a few weak threads of grass were sprouting. There
were other vehicles, too, cabs, lorries and carts: not a great
number altogether, but even the fifty or so which the girls saw
between Kensington and Knightsbridge offered sufficient testimony
to the awful rapidity with which the plague had spread. For it seems
probable that in the majority of cases the drivers of these deserted
vehicles must have been attacked by the first agonizing pains at
the base of the skull while they were actually employed in driving
their machines. There were few skeletons to be seen. The lull which
intervened between the first unmistakable symptoms of the plague
and the oncoming of the paralysis had given men time to obey their
instinct to die in seclusion, the old instinct so little altered by
civilization. Those vestiges of humanity which remained had, for the
most part, been cleansed by the processes of Nature, but twice the
girls disturbed a horrible cloud of blue flies which rose with an angry
buzzing so loud that the girls screamed and ran, leaving the scavengers
to swoop eagerly back upon their carrion. Doubtless the thing in the
Hammersmith tram had been the body of a woman, recently-dead from
starvation. Even from the houses there was now little exhalation.
In Knightsbridge, a little past the top of Sloane Street, Blanche
and Millie came to a shop which diverted them from their exploration
for a time. Most of the huge rolling shutters had been pulled down
and secured, but one had stopped half way, and, beyond, the great
plate-glass windows were uncovered. One of ten million tragedies had
descended swiftly to interrupt the closing of that immense place,
and some combination of circumstances had followed to prevent the
completion of the work. The imaginative might stop to speculate on
the mystery of that half-closed shutter; the two Goslings stopped to
admire the wonders behind the glass.
For a time the desolation and silence of London were forgotten. In
imagination Blanche and Millie were once again units in the vast crowd
of antagonists striving valiantly to win some prize in the great
competition between the boast of wealth and the pathetic endeavour
of make-believe.
They stayed to gaze at the "creations" behind the windows, at dummies
draped in costly fabrics such as they had only dreamed of wearing. The
silks, satins and velvets were whitened now with the thin snow of dust
that had fallen upon them, but to Blanche and Millie they appeared
still as wonders of beauty.
For a minute or two they criticized the models. They spoke at
first in low voices, for the deep stillness of London held them in
unconscious awe, but as they became lost in the fascination of their
subject they forgot their fear. And then they looked at one another
a little guiltily.
"No harm in seeing if the door's locked, anyway," said Blanche.
Millie looked over her shoulder and saw no movement in the frozen
streets, save the sweep of one exploring swallow. Even the sparrows
had deserted the streets. She did not reply in words, but signified
her agreement of thought by a movement towards the entrance.
The swing doors were not fastened, and they entered stealthily.
They began with the touch of appraising fingers, wandering from room to
room. But most of the rooms on the ground floor were darkened by the
drawn shutters, and no glow of light came in response to the clicking
of the electric switches that they experimented with with persistent
futility. So they adventured into the clearly lit rooms upstairs and
experienced a fallacious sense of security in the knowledge that they
were on the floor above the street.
Fingering gave place to still closer inspection. They lifted the
models from the stands and shook them out. They held up gorgeous
robes in front of their own suburban dresses and admired each other
and themselves in the numerous cheval glasses.
"Oh! bother!" exclaimed Blanche at last, "I'm going to try on."
"Oh! B." expostulated the more timid Millie.
"Well! why to goodness not?" asked her elder sister. "Who's to be
any the wiser?"
"Seems wrong, somehow," replied Millie, unable to shake off the
conventions which had so long served her as conscience.
"Well, I am," said Blanche, and retired into a little side room to
divest herself of her own dress. She had always shared a bedroom
with her sister, and they observed few modesties before each other,
but Blanche was mentally incapable of changing her dress in the broad
avenues of that extensive show-room. It is true that the tall casement
windows were wide open and the place was completely overlooked by the
massive buildings opposite, but even if the windows had been screened
she would not have changed her skirt in the publicity of that open
place, though every human being in the world were dead.
When she emerged from her dressing-room she was transformed indeed. She
went over to her still hesitating sister.
"Do me up, Mill," she said.
Blanche had chosen well; the fine cloth walking dress admirably
fitted her well-developed young figure. When she had discarded her
hat and touched up her hair before the glass, only her boots and her
hands remained to spoil the disguise. Well gloved and well shod,
she might have passed down the Bond Street of the old London, and
few women and no man would have known that she had not sprung from
the ruling classes.
She posed. She stepped back from the mirror and half-unconsciously
fell to imitating the manners of the revered aristocracy she had
respectfully studied from a distance.
In a few minutes she was joined by Millie, also arrayed in peacock's
feathers and anxious to be "fastened."
Their excitement increased. Walking dresses gave place to evening
gowns. They lost their sense of fear and ran into other departments
searching for long white gloves to hide the disfigurements of household
work. They paraded and bowed to each other. The climax came when they
discovered a Court dress, immensely trained, and embroidered with gold
thread, laid by with evidences of tenderest care in endless wrappings
of tissue paper. Surely the dress of some elegant young duchess!
For a moment they wrangled, but Blanche triumphed. "You shall have
it afterwards," she said, as she ran to her dressing-room.
Millie followed in an elaborate gown of Indian silk; a somewhat
sulky Millie, inclined to resent her duty of lady's maid. She dragged
disrespectfully at the innumerable fastenings.
"My!" ejaculated Blanche when she could indulge herself in the glory
of full examination before a cheval glass in the open show-room. She
struggled with her train and when she had arranged it to her
satisfaction, threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin haughtily.
"I ought to have some diamonds," she reflected.
"It drags round the hips," was Millie's criticism.
"You should say 'Your Majesty,'" corrected Blanche.
"Oh! a Queen, are you?" asked Millie.
"Rather----"
"Queen of all the Earth," sneered Millie.
Blanche's face suddenly fell. "I wonder if she began like this,"
she said, and a note of fear had come into her voice.
Millie's eyes reflected her sister's alarm.
"Oh! let's get out of this, B.," she said, and began to tear at the
neck of her Indian silk gown.
"I wanted diamonds, too," persisted Blanche.
"Oh! B., it isn't right," said Millie. "I said it wasn't right and
you would come."
Silence descended upon them for a moment, and then both sisters
suddenly screamed and ducked, putting up their hands to their heads.
"Goodness! What was that?" cried Blanche.
A swallow had swept in through the open window, had curved round in
one swift movement, and shot out again into the sunlight.
"Only a bird of some sort," said Millie, but she was trembling and
on the verge of hysterics. "Do let's get out, B."
After they had put on their own clothes once more they became aware
that they were hungry.
"We have wasted a lot of time here," said Blanche as they made their
way out.
She did not pause to wonder how many women had spent the best part
of their lives in a precisely similar manner.
"And we ought to have been looking for food," she added.
"Come on," replied Millie. "That place has given me the creeps."
4
Growing rather tired and footsore they made their way to Piccadilly
Circus, and so on to the Strand. Everywhere they found the same
conditions: a few skeletons, a few deserted vehicles, young vegetation
taking hold wherever a pinch of soil had found an abiding place,
and over all a great silence. But food there was none that they were
able to find, though it is probable that a careful investigation of
cellars and underground places might have furnished some results. The
more salient resources of London had been effectively pillaged so
far as the West-end was concerned. They were too late.
In Trafalgar Square, Millie sat down and cried. Blanche made no attempt
to comfort her, but sat wide eyed and wondering. Her mind was opening
to new ideas. She was beginning to understand that London was incapable
of supporting even the lives of three women; she was wrestling with
the problem of existence. Every one had gone. Many had died; but many
more, surely, must have fled into the country. She began to understand
that she and her family must also fly into the country.
Millie still sobbed convulsively now and again.
"Oh! Chuck it, Mill," said Blanche at last. "We'd better be getting
home."
Millie dabbed her eyes. "I'm starving," she blubbered.
"Well, so am I," returned Blanche. "That's why I said we'd better
get home. There's nothing to eat here."
"Is--is every one dead?"
"No, they've gone off into the country, and that's what we've got
to do."
The younger girl sat up, put her hat straight, and blew her
nose. "Isn't it awful, B.?" she said.
Blanche pinched her lips together. "What are you putting your hat
straight for?" she asked. "There's no one to see you."
"Well, you needn't make it any worse," retorted Millie on the verge
of a fresh outburst of tears.
"Oh! come on!" said Blanche, getting to her feet.
"I don't believe I can walk home," complained Millie; "my feet
ache so."
"You'll have to wait a long time if you're going to find a bus,"
returned Blanche.
Three empty taxicabs stood in the rank a few feet away from them,
but it never occurred to either of the two young women to attempt any
experiment with these mechanisms. If the thought had crossed their
minds they would have deemed it absurd.
"Let's go down by Victoria," suggested Blanche. "I believe it's
nearer."
In Parliament Square they disturbed a flock of rooks, birds which
had partly changed their natural habits during the past few months
and, owing to the superabundance of one kind of food, were preying
on carrion.
"Crows," commented Blanche. "Beastly things."
"I wonder if we could get some water to drink," was Millie's reply.
"Well, there's the river," suggested Blanche, and they turned up
towards Westminster Bridge.
In one of the tall buildings facing the river Blanche's attention
was caught by an open door.
"Look here, Mill," she said, "we've only been looking for shops. Let's
try one of these houses. We might find something to eat in there."
"I'm afraid," said Millie.
"What of?" sneered Blanche. "At the worst it's skeletons, and we can
come out again."
Millie shuddered. "You go," she suggested.
"Not by myself, I won't," returned Blanche.
"There you are, you see," said Millie.
"Well, it's different by yourself."
"I hate it," returned Millie with emphasis.
"So do I, in a way, only I'm fair starving," said Blanche. "Come on."
The building was solidly furnished, and the ground floor, although
somewhat disordered, still suggested a complacent luxury. On the floor
lay a copy of the Evening Chronicle, dated May 10; possibly one of the
last issues of a London journal. Two of the pages were quite blank,
and almost the only advertisement was one hastily-set announcement of a
patent medicine guaranteed as a sure protection against the plague. The
remainder of the paper was filled with reports of the devastation that
was being wrought, reports which were nevertheless marked by a faint
spirit of simulated confidence. Between the lines could be read the
story of desperate men clinging to hope with splendid courage. There
were no signs of panic here. Groves had come out well at the last.
The two girls hovered over this piece of ancient history for a few
minutes.
"You see," said Blanche triumphantly, "even then, more'n two months
ago, every one was making for the country. We shall have to go,
too. I told you we should."
"I never said we shouldn't," returned Millie. "Anyhow there's nothing
to eat here."
"Not in this room, there isn't," said Blanche, "but there might be
in the kitchens. Do you know what this place has been?"
Millie shook her head.
"It's been a man's club," announced Blanche. "First time you've been
in one, old dear."
"Come on, let's have a look downstairs, then," returned Millie,
careless of her achievement.
In the first kitchen they found havoc: broken china and glass, empty
bottles, empty tins, cooking utensils on the floor, one table upset,
everywhere devastation and the marks of struggle; but in none of the
empty tins was there the least particle of food. Everything had been
completely cleaned out. The rats had been there, and had gone.
Exploring deeper, however, they were at last rewarded. On a table
stood a whole array of unopened tins and in one of them was plunged
a tin-opener, a single stab had been given, and then, possibly,
another of these common tragedies had begun. Had he been alone,
that plunderer, or had his companions fled from him in terror?
Here the two girls made a sufficient meal, and discovered, moreover,
a large store of unopened beer-bottles. They shared the contents
of one between them, and then, feeling greatly reinvigorated, they
sought for and found two baskets, which they filled with tinned
foods. They only took away one bottle of beer--a special treat for
their mother--on account of the weight. They remembered that they
had a long walk before them; and they were not over-elated by their
discovery; they were sick to death of tinned meats.
In looking for the baskets they came across a single potato that the
rats had left. From it had sprung a long, thin, etiolated shoot which
had crept under the door of the cupboard and was making its way across
the floor to the light of the window. Already that shoot was several
feet in length.
"Funny how they grow," commented Millie.
"Making for the country, I expect," replied Blanche, "same as we
shall have to do."
It was a relief to them to find their way into the sunlight once
more. Those cold, forsaken houses held some suggestion of horror,
of old activities so abruptly ended by tragedy. From these interiors
Nature was still shut off. That ghostly tendril aching towards the
light had no chance for life and reproduction....
5
The two Gosling girls had yet one more adventure before they toiled
home with their load.
They were growing bolder, despite the gloom and oppression of those
human habitations, and some freakish spirit prompted Blanche to suggest
that they should visit the Houses of Parliament. After a brief demur,
Millie acceded.
That great stronghold was open to them now. They might walk the floor
of the House, sit in the Speaker's chair, penetrate into the sacred
places of the Upper Chamber.
Gone were all the rules and formulas, the intricacies and precedents
of an unwritten constitution, the whole cumbrous machinery for the
making of new laws. The air was no longer disturbed by the wranglings,
evasions and cunning shifts of those who had found here a stage for
their personal ambitions. The high talk of progress had died into
silence along with the struggle of parties which had played the supreme
game, side against side, for the prize of power. Progress had been
defined in this place, in terms of human activity, human comfort. The
end in sight had been some vague conception of general welfare through
accumulated riches. And from the sky had fallen a pestilence to change
the meaning of human terms. In three months the old conception of
wealth was gone. Money, precious stones, a thousand accepted forms
of value had become suddenly worthless, of no more account than the
symbol of power which lay coated with dust on the table of the House
of law-makers. Even law itself, that slow growth of the centuries,
had become meaningless. Who cared if some mad woman plundered every
jeweller's shop in the whole City? Who was to forbid theft or avenge
murder? The place of traffic was empty. Only one law was left and
only one value; the law of self-preservation, the value of food.
The sunlight fell in broad coloured shafts upon two half-educated
girls come on a plundering expedition, and they might sit in the high
places if they would, and make new laws for themselves.
Blanche sat for a few moments in the Speaker's chair.
"It's a fine big place," she remarked.
"Oh! come on, B., do," replied Millie. "I want to get home."
As they crossed the Square, Millie looked up at Big Ben. "Quarter-past
nine," she said. "It must have stopped."
"Well, of course, silly," replied Blanche. "All the clocks have
stopped. Who's to wind 'em?"
XII--EMIGRANT
1
For some time Mrs Gosling was quite unable to grasp the significance
of her daughters' report on the condition of London. During the past
two months she had persuaded herself that the traffic of the town was
being resumed and that only Putney was still desolate. She had always
disapproved of Putney; it was damp and she had never known anyone who
had lived there. It is true that the late lamented George Gosling had
been born in Putney, but that was more than half a century ago, the
place was no doubt quite different then; and he had left Putney and
gone to live in the healthy North before he was sixteen. Mrs Gosling
was half inclined to blame Putney for all their misfortunes--it was
sure to breed infection, being so near the river and all--and she had
become hopeful during the past month that all would be well with them
if they could once get back to Kilburn.
"D'you mean to say you didn't see no one at all?" she repeated in
great perplexity.
"Those three we've told you about, that's all," said Blanche.
"Well, o' course, they're all shut up in the 'ouses, still; afraid
o' the plague and 'anging on to what provisions they've got put by,
same as us," was the hopeful explanation Mrs Gosling put forward.
"They ain't," said Millie, and Blanche agreed.
"Well, but 'ow d'you know?" persisted the mother. "Did you go in to
the 'ouses?"
"One or two," returned Blanche evasively, "but there wasn't no need
to go in. You could see."
"Are you quite sure there was no shops open? Not in the Strand?" Mrs
Gosling laid emphasis on the last sentence. She could not doubt the
good faith of the Strand. If that failed her, all was lost.
"Oh! can't you understand, mother," broke out Blanche petulantly,
"that the whole of London is absolutely deserted? There isn't a soul
in the streets. There's no cabs or buses or trams or anything, and
grass growing in the middle of the road. And all the shops have been
broken into, all those that had food in 'em, and----" words failed
her. "Isn't it, Millie?" she concluded lamely.
"Awful," agreed Millie.
"Well, I can't understand it," said Mrs Gosling, not yet fully
convinced. She considered earnestly for a few moments and then asked:
"Did you go into Charing Cross Post Office? They'd sure to be open."
"Yes!" lied Blanche, "and we could have taken all the money in the
place if we'd wanted, and no one any the wiser."
Mrs Gosling looked shocked. "I 'ope my gels'll never come to that,"
she said. Her girls, with a wonderful understanding of their mother's
opinions, had omitted to mention their raid on the Knightsbridge
emporium.
"No one'd ever know," said Millie.
"There's One who would," replied Mrs Gosling gravely, and strangely
enough, perhaps, the two girls looked uneasy, but they were thinking
less of the commandments miraculously given to Moses than of the
probable displeasure of the Vicar of St John the Evangelist's Church
in Kilburn.
"Well, we've got to do something, anyhow," said Blanche, after a
pause. "I mean we'll have to get out of this and go into the country."
"We might go to your uncle's in Liverpool," suggested Mrs Gosling,
tentatively.
"It's a long walk," remarked Blanche.
Mrs Gosling did not grasp the meaning of this objection. "Well,
I think we could afford third-class," she said. "Besides, though we
'aven't corresponded much of late years, I've always been under the
impression that your uncle is doin' well in Liverpool; and at such a
time as this I'm sure 'e'll do the right thing, though whether it would
be better to let 'im know we're comin' or not I'm not quite sure."
"Oh! dear!" sighed Blanche, "I do wish you'd try to understand,
mother. There aren't any trains. There aren't any posts or
telegraphs. Wherever we go we've just got to walk. Haven't we, Millie?"
Millie began to snivel. "It's 'orrible," she said.
"Well I can't understand it," repeated Mrs Gosling.
By degrees, however, the controversy took a new shape. Granting for
the moment the main contention that London was uninhabitated, Mrs
Gosling urged that it would be a dangerous, even a foolhardy, thing
to venture into the country. If there was no Government there would
be no law and order, was the substance of her argument; government in
her mind being represented by its concrete presentation in the form of
the utterly reliable policeman. Furthermore, she pointed out, that they
did not know anyone in the country, with the exception of a too-distant
uncle in Liverpool, and that there would be nowhere for them to go.
"We shall have to work," said Blanche, who was surely inspired by
her glimpse of the silent city.
"Well, we've got nearly a 'undred pounds left of what your poor father
drew out o' the bank before we shut ourselves up," said her mother.
"I suppose we could buy things in the country," speculated Blanche.
"You seem set on the country for some reason," said Mrs Gosling with
a touch of temper.
"Well, we've got to get food," returned Blanche, raising her voice. "We
can't live on air."
"And if food's to be got cheaper in the country than in London,"
snapped Mrs Gosling, "my experience goes for nothing, but, of course,
you know best, if I am your mother."
"There isn't any food in London, cheap or dear, I keep telling you,"
said Blanche, and left the room angrily, slamming the door behind her.
Millie sat moodily biting her nails.
"Blanche lets 'er temper get the better of 'er," remarked Mrs Gosling
addressing the spaces of the kitchen in which they were sitting.
"It's right, worse luck," said Millie. "We shall have to go. I 'ate
it nearly as much as you do."
The argument thus begun was continued with few intermissions for a
whole week. A thunderstorm, followed by two days of overcast weather,
came to the support of the older woman. One thing was certain among
all these terrible perplexities, namely, that you couldn't start off
for a trip to the country on a wet day.
Meanwhile their stores continued to diminish, and one afternoon Mrs
Gosling consented to take a walk with Blanche as far as Hammersmith
Broadway.
The sight of that blank desert impressed her. Blanche pointed out
the house in which she had seen the two women five days before, but
no one was looking out of the window on that afternoon. Perhaps they
had fled to the country, or were occupied elsewhere in the house,
or perhaps they had left London by the easier way which had become
so general in the past few months.
When she returned to the Putney house, Mrs Gosling wept and wished she,
too, was dead, but she consented at last to Blanche's continually urged
proposition, in so far as she expressed herself willing to make a move
of some sort. She thought they might, at least, go back and have a
look at Wisteria Grove. And if Kilburn had, indeed, fallen as low as
Hammersmith, then there was apparently no help for it and they must
try their luck in the waste and desolation of the country. Perhaps
some farmer's wife might take them in for a time, until they had a
chance to look about them. They had nearly a hundred pounds in gold.
The girls found a builder's trolley in a yard near by, a truck of
sturdy build on two wheels with a long handle. It bore marks of
having held cement, and there were weeds growing in one end of it,
but after it had been brought home and thoroughly scrubbed, it looked
quite a presentable means for the transport of the "necessaries"
they proposed to take with them.
They made too generous an estimate of essentials at first, piling
their truck too high for safety and overtaxing their strength; but
that problem, like many others, was finally solved for them by the
clear-sighted guidance of necessity.
They started one morning--a Monday if their calculations were not
at fault--about two hours after breakfast. Mrs Gosling and Millie
pushed behind, and Blanche, the inspired one, went before, pulled by
the handle of the pole and gave the others their direction.
It is possible that they were the last women to leave London.
By chance they discovered the Queen of all the Earth on a doorstep
near Addison Road. She was quite dead, but they did not despoil her
of the jewels with which she was still covered.
2
Mrs Gosling was a source of trouble from the outset. She had lived
her life indoors. In the Wisteria Grove days, she never spent two
hours of the twenty-four out of the house. Some times for a whole
week she had not gone out at all. It was a mark of their rise in the
world that all the tradesmen called for orders. She had found little
necessity to buy in shops during recent years. And so, very surely,
she had grown more and more limited in her outlook. Her attention
had become concentrated on the duties of the housewife. She had not
kept any servant, a charwoman who came for a few hours three times
a week had done all that the mistress of the house had not dared, in
face of neighbourly criticism--in her position she could not be seen
washing down the little tiled path to the gate nor whitening the steps.
The effect of this cramped existence on Mrs Gosling would not
have been noticeable under the old conditions. She had become a
specialized creature, admirably adapted to her place in the old
scheme of civilization. No demand was ever made upon her resources
other than those familiar demands which she was so perfectly educated
to supply. Even when the plague had come, she had not been compelled
to alter her mode of life. She had made trouble enough about the lack
of many things she had once believed to be necessary--familiar foods,
soap and the thousand little conveniences that the twentieth century
inventor had patented to assist the domestic economy of the small
householder; but the trouble was not too great to be overcome. The
adaptability required from her was within the scope of her specialized
vision. She could learn to do without flour, butter, lard, milk,
sugar and the other things, but she could not learn to think on
unfamiliar lines.
That was the essence of her trouble. She was divorced from a permanent
home. She was asked to walk long miles in the open air. Worst of all,
she was called upon for initiative, ingenuity; she was required to
exercise her imagination in order to solve a problem with which she
was quite unfamiliar. She was expected to develop the potentialities
of the wild thing, and to extort food from Nature. The whole problem
was beyond her comprehension.
The sight of Kilburn was a great blow to her. She had hoped against
hope that here, at least, she would find some semblance of the life
she had known. It had seemed so impossible to her that Aiken, the
butcher's, or Hobb's, the grocer's, would not be open as usual, and
the vision of those two desolated and ransacked shops--the latter with
but a few murderous spears of plate-glass left in its once magnificent
windows--depressed her to tears.
So shaken was she by the sight of these horrors that Blanche and
Millie raised no objection to sleeping that night in the house in
Wisteria Grove. Indeed, the two girls were almost tired out, although
it was yet early in the afternoon. The truck had become very heavy
in the course of the last two miles; and they had had considerable
difficulty in negotiating the hill by Westbourne Park Station.
Mrs Gosling was still weeping as she let herself in to her old home,
and she wept as she prowled about the familiar rooms and noted the
dust which had fallen like snow on every surface which would support
it. And for the first time the loss of her husband came home to
her. She had been almost glad when he had vanished from the Putney
house--in that place she had only seen him in his new character of
tyrant. Here, among familiar associations, she recalled the fact that
he had been a respectable, complacent, hard-working, successful man
who had never given her cause for trouble, a man who did not drink
nor run after other women, who held a position in the Church and was
looked up to by the neighbourhood. According to her definition he had
certainly been an ideal husband. It is true that they had dropped any
pretence of being in love with one another after Blanche was born,
but that was only natural.
Mrs Gosling sat on the bed she had shared with him so long and hoped
he was happy. He was; but if she could have seen the nature of his
happiness the sight would have given her no comfort. Vaguely she
pictured him in some strange Paradise, built upon those conceptions
of the mediæval artists, mainly Italians, which have supplied the
ideals of the orthodox. She saw an imperfectly transfigured and still
fleshly George Gosling, who did unaccustomed things with a harp,
was dressed in exotic garments and was on terms with certain hybrids,
largely woman but partly bird, who were clearly recognizable as the
angelic host. If she had been a Mohammedan, her vision would have
accorded far more nearly with the fact.
3
The successful animal is that which is adapted to its
circumstances. Herbert Spencer would appear foolish and incapable in
the society of the young wits who frequent the private bar; he might
be described by them as an old Johnny who knew nothing about life. Mrs
Gosling in her own home had been a ruler; she had had authority over
her daughters, and, despite the usual evidences of girlish precocity,
she had always been mistress of the situation. In the affairs of
household management she was facile princeps, and she commanded
the respect accorded to the eminent in any form of specialized
activity. But even on this second morning of their emigration it became
clear to Blanche that her mother had ceased to rule, and must become a
subordinate. A certain respect was due to her in her parental relation,
but if she could not be coaxed she must be coerced.
"She'll be better when we get her right away from here," was Blanche's
diagnosis, and Millie, who had also achieved some partial realization
of the necessities imposed by the new conditions, nodded in agreement.
"She wants to stop here altogether, and, of course, we can't,"
she said.
"We shall starve if we do," said Blanche.
From that time Mrs Gosling dropped into the humiliating position of
a kind of mental incapable who must be humoured into obedience.
The first, and in many ways the most difficult, task was to persuade
her away from Kilburn. She clung desperately to that stronghold of
her old life.
"I'm too old to change at my age," she protested, and when the
alternative was clearly put before her, she accepted it with a
flaccidity that was as aggravating as it was unfightable.
"I'd sooner die 'ere," said Mrs Gosling, "than go trapesing about the
fields lookin' for somethin' to eat. I simply couldn't do it. It's
different for you two gels, no doubt. You go and leave me 'ere."
Millie might have been tempted to take her mother at her word,
but Blanche never for a moment entertained the idea of leaving her
mother behind.
"Very well, mother," she said, desperately, "if you won't come we
must all stop here and starve, I suppose. We've got enough food to
last a fortnight or so."
As she spoke she looked out of the window of that little suburban
house, and for the first time in her life a thought came to her of
the strangeness of preferring such an inconvenient little box to the
adventure of the wider spaces of open country. Outside, the sun was
shining brilliantly, but the windows were dim with dust and cobwebs.
Yet her mother was comparatively happy in this hovel; she would
find delight in cleaning it, although there was no one to appraise
the result of her effort. She was a specialized animal with
habits precisely analogous to the instincts of other animals and
insects. There were insects who could only live in filth and would die
miserably if removed from their natural surroundings. Mrs Gosling was
a suburban-house insect who would perish in the open air. After all,
the chief difference between insects and men is that the insect is
born perfectly adapted to its specialized existence, man finds, or
is forced into, a place in the scheme after he has come to maturity....
"I can't see why you shouldn't leave me behind," pleaded Mrs Gosling.
"Well, we won't," replied Blanche, still looking out of the window.
"It's wicked of you to make us stop here and starve," put in
Millie. "And even you must see that we shall starve."
Mrs Gosling wept feebly. She had wept much during the past twenty-four
hours. "Where can we go?" she wailed.
"There's country on the other side of Harrow," said Blanche.
The thought of Harrow or Timbuctoo was equally repugnant to Mrs
Gosling.
Then Millie had an idea. "Well, we only brought four bottles of water
with us," she said, "where are we going to get any more in Kilburn?"
Mrs Gosling racked her brain in the effort to remember some convenient
stream in the neighbourhood. "It may rain," she said feebly at last.
Blanche turned from the window and pointed to the blurred prospect
of sunlit street. "We might be dead before the rain came," she said.
They wore her out in the end.
4
With Harrow as an immediate objective, they toiled up Willesden Lane
with their hand-cart early the next morning. Blanche took that route
because it was familiar to her, and after passing Willesden Green,
she followed the tram lines.
As they got away from London they came upon evidences of the exodus
which had preceded them. Bodies of women, for the most part no longer
malodorous, were not infrequent, and pieces of household furniture,
parcels of clothing, boxes, trunks and smaller impedimenta lay by the
roadside, the superfluities of earlier loads that had been lightened,
however reluctantly.
Mrs Gosling blenched at the sight of every body--only a few of them
could be described as skeletons--and protested that they were all
going to their death, but Blanche kept on resolutely with a white,
set face, and as Millie followed her example, if with rather less show
of temerity, there was no choice but to follow. When the gradients
were favourable the girls helped their mother on to the truck and
gave her a lift. She was a feeble walker.
Not till they reached Sudbury did they see another living being of
their own species, or any sign of human habitation in the long rows
of dirty houses.
The great surge of migration had spread out from the centre and become
absorbed in circles of ever-widening amplitude. The great entity of
London had eaten its way so far outwards in to arable and pasturage
that within a ten-mile radius from Charing Cross not a thousand women
could be found who had been able to obtain any promise of security
from the products of the soil. And although there were great open
spaces of land, such as Wembley Park, which had to be crossed in the
journey outwards, the exiles had been unable to wait until such time
as seed could be transformed into food by the alchemy of Nature. So
the pressure had been continually outwards, forcing the emigrants
toward the more distant farms where some fraction of them, at least,
might find work and food until the coming of the harvest. In Kent,
vegetables were comparatively plentiful. In Northern Middlesex and
Buckinghamshire the majority had to depend upon animal food. But in
all the Home Counties and in the neighbourhood of every large town,
famine was following hard upon the heels of the plague, and 70 per
cent of the town-dwelling women and children who had escaped the latter
visitation died of starvation and exposure before the middle of August.
In the first inner ring, still sparsely populated, were to be found
those who had had vegetable gardens and had been vigorous enough to
protect themselves against the flood of migration which had swept up
against them.
It was the first signs of this inner ring that the Goslings discovered
at Sudbury.
5
They came upon a little row of cottages, standing back a few yards from
the road. All three women had been engaged in pushing their trolly
up an ascent, and with heads down, and all their physical energies
concentrated upon their task, they did not notice the startling
difference between these cottages and other houses they had passed,
until they stopped to take breath at the summit of the hill.
Mrs Gosling had immediately seated herself upon the sloping pole
of the trolly handle. She was breathing heavily and had her hands
pressed to her sides. Millie leaned against the side of the trolly,
her eyes still on the ground. But Blanche had thrown back her shoulders
and opened her lungs, and she saw the banner of smoke that flew from
the middle of the three chimney-stacks--smoke, in this wilderness,
smoke the sign of human life! To Blanche it seemed the fulfilment of
a great hope. She had begun to wonder if all the world were dead.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Look!"
They looked without eagerness, anticipating some familiar horror.
"Ooh!" echoed Millie, when she, too, had recognized the harbinger. But
Mrs Gosling did not raise her eyes high enough.
"What?" she asked stupidly.
"There's some one living in that cottage," said Blanche, and pointed
upwards to the soaring pennant.
Mrs Gosling's face brightened. "Well, to be sure," she said, "I wonder
if they'd let me sit down and rest for a few minutes? And perhaps
they might be willing to sell me a glass of milk. I'm sure I'd pay
a good price for it."
"We can see, anyway," replied Millie, and they roused themselves and
pushed on eagerly. The cottage was not more than thirty yards away.
Before they reached it, a woman came to the doorway, stared at them
for a moment and then came down to the little wooden gate.
She was a thick-set woman of fifty or so, with iron grey hair cut
close to her head. She wore a tweed skirt which did not reach the
tops of her heavily soled, high boots. She looked capable, energetic
and muscular. And in her hand she carried about three feet of stout
broomstick.
She did not speak until the little procession halted before her gate,
and then she pointed meaningly up the road with her broomstick and
said: "Go on. You can't stop here." She spoke with the voice and
inflection of an educated woman.
Blanche paused in the act of setting down the trolly handle. Mrs
Gosling and Millie stared in amazement; they had been prepared to
weep on the neck of this human friend, found at last in the awful
desert of Middlesex.
"We only wanted to buy a little milk," stammered Blanche, no less
astonished than her mother and sister.
The big woman looked them over with something of pity and contempt. "I
can see you're not dangerous," she sneered and crossed her great bare
fore-arms over the top of the gate. "Only three poor feckless idiots
going begging."
"We're not begging," retorted Blanche. "We've got money and we're
willing to pay."
"Money!" repeated the woman. She looked up at the sky and nodded
her head, as though beseeching pity for these feeble creatures. "My
dear girl," she went on, "what do you suppose is the good of money
in this world? You can't eat money, nor wear it, nor use it to light
a fire. Now, if you'd offered me a box of matches, you should have
had all the milk I can spare."
"Well, I never," put in Mrs Gosling, who had feebly come to rest
again on the handle of the trolly.
"No, my good woman, you never did," said the stranger. "You never
could and I should say the chances are that you never will."
Millie was intimidated and shrinking, even Blanche looked a
little nervous, but Mrs Gosling was incapable of feeling fear of
a fellow-woman. "You can't mean as you won't sell us a glass of
milk?" she said.
"Have you got a box of matches you'll exchange for it?" asked the
stranger. "I've got a burning glass I stole in Harrow, but you can't
depend on the sun."
"No, nor 'aven't 'ad, the last three weeks," said Mrs Gosling. "But
if you've more money a'ready than you know what to do with, I should
'ave thought as you'd 'a been willing to spare a glass o' milk for
charity's sake."
The stranger regarded her petitioner with a hard smile. "Charity's
sake?" she said. "Do you realize that I've had to defend this place
like a fort against thousands of your sort? I've killed three madwomen
who fought me for possession and buried 'em in the orchard like
cats. I held out through the first rush and I can hold out now easily
enough. You three are the first I've seen for a month, and before
that they'd begun to get weak and poor. These are your daughters,
I suppose, and the three of you had always depended upon some fool
of a man to keep you. Yes? Well, you deserve all you've got. Now you
can start and do a little healthy, useful work for yourselves. I've
no pity for you. I've got a damned fool of a sister and an old fool
of a mother to keep in there," she pointed to the cottage with her
broomstick. "Parasitic like you, both of 'em, and pretty well all
the use they are is to keep the fire alight. No, my good woman,
you get no charity from me."
When she had finished her speech, which she delivered with a fluency
and point that suggested familiarity with the platform, the stranger
crossed her arms again over the gate and stared Mrs Gosling out
of countenance.
"Come along, my dears," said that outraged lady, getting wearily to
her feet. "I wouldn't wish your ears soiled by such language from a
woman as 'as forgotten the manners of a lady. But, there, poor thing,
I've no doubt 'er 'ead's been turned with all this trouble."
The stranger smiled grimly and made no reply, but as the Goslings
were moving away, she called out to them suddenly: "Hi! You! There's
a witless creature along the road who'll probably help you. The house
is up a side road. Bear round to the right."
"What a beast," muttered Blanche when they had gone on a few yards.
"One o' them 'new' women, my dear," panted Mrs Gosling, who
remembered the beginning of the movement and still clung to the old
terminology. "'Orrible unsexed creatures! I remember how your poor
father used to 'ate 'em!"
"I'd like to get even with her," said Millie.
They bore to the right, and so avoided two turnings which led up
repulsive-looking hills, but they missed the side road.
"I'm sure we must have passed it," complained Mrs Gosling at
last. Her sighs had been increasing in volume and poignancy for the
past half-mile, and the prospect of uninhabited country which lay
immediately around her she found infinitely dispiriting.
"There isn't an 'ouse in sight," she added, "and I really don't
believe I can walk much farther."
Blanche stopped and looked over the fields on her right towards
London. In the distance, blurred by an oily wriggle of heat haze, she
could see the last wave of suburban villas which had broken upon this
shore of open country. They had left the town behind them at last,
but they had not found what they sought. This little arm of land
which cut off Harrow and Wealdstone from the mother lake of London
had not offered sufficient temptation to delay their forerunners in
the search for food. Most of them, with a true instinct for what they
sought, had followed the main road into the Chiltern Hills, and those
who for some cause or another had wandered into this side track had
pushed on, even as Blanche and Millie would have done had they not
been dragged back by their mother's complaints. The sun was falling
a little towards the west, and bird and animal life, which had seemed
to rest during the intenser heat of mid-day, was stirring and calling
all about them. A rabbit lolloped into the road, a few yards away,
pricked up its ears, stared for an instant, and then scuttled to
cover. A blackbird flew out of the hedge and fled chattering up the
ditch. The air was murmurous with the hum of innumerable insects,
and above Mrs Gosling's head hovered a group of flies which ever
and again bobbed down as if following some concerted plan of action,
and tried to settle on the poor woman's heated face.
"Oh! get away, do!" she panted, and flapped a futile handkerchief.
"How quiet it is!" said Blanche; and although the air was full of
sound it did indeed appear that a great hush had fallen over the
earth. No motor-horn threateningly bellowed its automatic demand for
right of way; there was no echo of hoofs nor grind of wheels; no call
of children's voices, nor even the bark of a dog. The wild things had
the place to themselves again, and the sound of their movements called
for no response from civilized minds. The ears of the Goslings heard,
but did not note these, to them, useless evidences of life. They were
straining and alert for the voice of humanity.
"I don't know when I've felt the 'eat so much," said Mrs Gosling
suddenly, and Blanche and Millie both started.
"Hush!" said Blanche, and held up a warning finger.
In the distance they heard a sound like the closing of a gate, and
then, very clear and small, a feminine voice. "Chuck! chuck! chuck!" it
said. "Chuck! chuck! chuck!!!"
"I told you we'd passed it," said Mrs Gosling triumphantly. They turned
the trolly and began to retrace their footsteps. Their eager eyes
tried to peer through the spinney of trees which shut them off from
the south. Once or twice they stopped to listen. The voice was fainter
now, but they could hear the squawk of greedily competitive fowls.
XIII--DIFFERENCES
1
The only side road they could find proved to be no more than a track
through the little wood. They almost passed it a second time, and
hesitated at the gate--a sturdy five-barred gate bearing "Private"
on a conspicuous label--debating whether this "could be right." They
still suffered a spasm of fear at the thought of trespass, and to open
this gate and march up an unknown private road pushing a hand-cart
seemed to them an act of terrible aggression.
"We might leave the cart just inside," suggested Blanche.
"And get our food stole," said Mrs Gosling.
"There's no one about," urged Blanche.
"There's that broomstick woman," said Millie. "She may have followed
us."
"I'm sure I dunno if it's safe to go foragin' in among them trees,
neither," continued Mrs Gosling. "Are you sure this is right, Blanche?"
"Well, of course, I'm not sure," replied Blanche, with a touch
of temper.
They peered through the trees and listened, but no sign of a house
was to be seen, and all was now silent save for the long drone of
innumerable bees about their afternoon business.
"Oh! come on!" said Blanche at last. She was rapidly learning to
solve all their problems by this simple formula....
In the wood they found refuge from those attendant flies which had
hung over them so persistently.
Mrs Gosling gave a final flick with her handkerchief and declared
her relief. "It's quite pleasant in 'ere," she said, "after the 'eat."
The two girls also seemed to find new vigour in the shade of the trees.
"We have got a cheek!" said Millie, with a giggle.
"Well! needs must when the devil drives," returned Mrs Gosling,
"and our circumstances is quite out of the ordinary. Besides which,
there can't be any 'arm in offerin' to buy a glass of milk."
Blanche tugged at the trolley handle with a flicker of impatience. Why
would her mother be so foolish? Surely she must see that everything
was different now? Blanche was beginning to wonder at and admire
the marvel of her own intelligence. How much cleverer she was than
the others! How much more ready to appreciate and adapt herself to
change! They could not understand this new state of things, but she
could, and she prided herself on her powers of discrimination.
"Everything's different now," she said to herself. "We can go anywhere
and do anything, almost. It's like as if we were all starting off
level again, in a way." She felt uplifted: she took extraordinary
pleasure in her own realization of facts. A strange, new power had
come to her, a power to enjoy life, through mastery. "Everything's
different now," she repeated. She was conscious of a sense of pity
for her mother and sister.
2
The road through the wood curved sharply round to the right, and they
came suddenly upon a clearing, and saw the house in front of them. It
was a long, low house, smothered in roses and creepers, and it stood
in a wild garden surrounded by a breast-high wall of red brick. At the
edge of the clearing several cows were lying under the shade of the
trees, reflectively chewing the cud with slow, deliberate enjoyment,
while one, solitary, stood with its head over the garden gate,
motionless, save for an occasional petulant whisp of its ropey tail.
"Now, then, what are we going to do?" asked Mrs Gosling.
The procession halted, and the three women regarded the guardian cow
with every sign of dismay.
"Shoo!" said Millie feebly, flapping her hands; and Blanche repeated
the intimidation with greater force; but the cow merely acknowledged
the salutation by an irritable sweep of its tail.
"'Orrid brute!" muttered Mrs Gosling, and flicked her handkerchief
in the direction of the brute's quarters.
"I know," said Blanche, conceiving a subtle strategy. "We'll drive
it away with the cart." She turned the trolly round, and the three of
them grasping the pole, they advanced slowly and warily to the charge,
pushing their siege ram before them. They made a slight detour to
achieve a flank attack and allow the enemy a clear way of retreat.
"Oh, dear! what are you doing?" said a voice suddenly, and the three
startled Goslings nearly dropped the pole in their alarm--they had
been so utterly absorbed in their campaign.
A young woman of sixteen or seventeen, very brown, hot and dishevelled,
was regarding them from the other side of the garden wall with a stare
of amazement that even as they turned was flickering into laughter.
"It's that great brute by the gate, my dear," said Mrs Gosling,
"and we've just----"
"You don't mean Alice?" interrupted the young woman. "Oh! you couldn't
go charging poor dear Alice with a great cart like that! Three of
you, too!"
"Is its name Alice?" asked Blanche stupidly. She did not feel equal
to this curious occasion.
"Its name!" replied the young woman, with scorn. "Her name's Alice,
if that's what you mean." She shook back the hair from her eyes
and moved down to the gate. The cow acknowledged her presence by an
indolent toss of the head.
"Oh! but my sweet Alice!" protested the young woman; "you must move
and let these funny people come in. It really isn't good for you,
dear, to stand about in the sun like this, and you'd much better go
and lie down in the shade for a bit!" She gently pulled the gate from
under the cow's chin, and then, laying her hands flat on its side,
made as if to push it out of the way.
"Well, I never!" declared Mrs Gosling, regarding the performance with
much the same awe as she might have vouchsafed to a lion-tamer in a
circus. "'Oo'd 'ave thought it'd 'a been that tame?"
The cow, after a moment's resistance, moved off with a leisurely walk
in the direction of the wood.
"Now, you funny people, what do you want?" asked the young woman.
Mrs Gosling began to explain, but Blanche quickly interposed. "Oh! do
be quiet, mother; you don't understand," she said, and continued,
before her mother could remonstrate, "We've come from London."
"Goodness!" commented the young woman.
"And we want----" Blanche hesitated. She was surprised to find that
in the light of her wonderful discovery it was not so easy to define
precisely what they ought to want. As the broomstick woman had said,
they were "beggars." Fairly confronted with the problem, Blanche saw
no alternative but a candid acknowledgment of the fact.
"You want feeding, of course," put in the young woman. "They all
do. You needn't think you're the first. We've had dozens!"
A solution presented itself to Blanche. "We don't really want food,"
she said. "We've got a lot of tinned things left still, only we're ill
with eating tinned things. I thought, perhaps, you might be willing
to let us have some milk and eggs and vegetables in exchange?"
"That's sensible enough," commented the young woman. "If you only
knew the things we have been offered! Money chiefly, of course"--Mrs
Gosling opened her mouth, but Blanche frowned and shook her head--"and
it does seem as if money's about as useless as buttons. In fact, I'd
sooner have buttons--you can use them. But the other funny things--bits
of old furniture, warming-pans, jewellery! You should have heard Mrs
Isaacson! She was a Jewess who came from Hampstead a couple of months
ago, and she had a lot of jewels she kept in a bag tied round her
waist under her skirt; and when Aunt May and I simply had to tell her
to go she tried to bribe us with an old brooch and rubbish. She was a
terror. But, I say"--she looked at the sun--"I've got lots of things to
do before sunset." She paused, and looked at the three Goslings. "Look
here," she went on, "are you all right? You seem all right."
Again Mrs Gosling began to reply, but Blanche was too quick for
her. "Tell me what you mean by 'all right'?" she asked, raising her
voice to drown her mother's "Well, I never did 'ear such----"
"Well, of course, mother'll give you any mortal thing you want,"
replied the young woman at the gate. "Dear old mater! She simply
won't think of what we're going to do in the winter; and I mean, if
you come in for to-night, say, and we let you have a few odd things,
you won't go and plant yourselves on us like that Mrs Isaacson and
one or two others, because if you do, Aunt May and I will have to
turn you out, you know."
"What we 'ave we'll pay for," said Mrs Gosling with dignity.
The young woman smiled. "Oh, I dare say!" she said; "pay us with
those pretty little yellow counters that aren't the least good to
anyone. You wait here half a jiff. I'll find Aunt May."
She ran up the path and entered the house. A moment later they heard
her calling "Aunt May! Auntie--Aun-tee!" somewhere out at the back.
"Let's 'ope 'er Aunt May'll 'ave more common sense," remarked Mrs
Gosling.
Blanche turned on her almost fiercely. "For goodness sake, mother,"
she said, "do try and get it out of your head, if you can, that we can
buy things with money. Can't you see that everything's different? Can't
you see that money's no good, that you can't eat it, or wear it, or
light a fire with it, like that other woman said? Can't you understand,
or won't you?"
Mrs Gosling gaped in amazement. It was incredible that the mind of
Blanche should also have been distorted by this terrible heresy. She
turned in sympathy to Millie, who had taken her mother's seat on the
pole of the trolly, but Millie frowned and said:
"B.'s right. You can't buy things with money; not here, anyway. What'd
they do with money if they got it?"
Mrs Gosling looked at the trees, at the cows lying at the edge of
the wood, at the sunlit fields beyond the house, but she saw nothing
which suggested an immediate use for gold coin.
"Lemme sit down, my dear," she said. "What with the 'eat and all this
walkin'----Oh! what wouldn't I give for a cup o' tea!"
Millie got up sulkily and leaned against the wall. "I suppose they'll
let us stop here to-night, B.?" she asked.
"If we don't make fools of ourselves," replied Blanche, spitefully.
Mrs Gosling drooped. No inspiration had come to her as it had come to
her daughter. The older woman had become too specialized. She swayed
her head, searching--like some great larva dug up from its refuse
heap--confused and feeble in this new strange place of light and air.
And as Blanche had repeated to herself "Everything's different," so
Mrs Gosling seized a phrase and clung to it as to some explanation
of this horrible perplexity. "I can't understand it," she said;
"I can't understand it!"
3
Aunt May appeared after a long interval--a thin, brown-faced woman of
forty or so. She wore a very short skirt, a man's jacket and an old
deerstalker hat, and she carried a pitchfork. She must have brought
the pitchfork as an emblem of authority, but she did not handle it as
the other woman had handled her broomstick. The murderous pitchfork
appeared little more deadly in her keeping than does the mace in
the House of Commons, but as an emblem the pitchfork was infinitely
more effective.
Aunt May's questions were pertinent and searching, and after a few
brief explanations had been offered to her she drove off the young
woman, her niece, whom she addressed as "Allie," to perform the many
duties which were her share of the day's work.
Allie went, laughing.
"You can sleep here to-night," announced Aunt May. "We shall have
a meal all together soon after sunset. Till then you can talk to my
sister, who's an invalid. She's always eager for news."
She took charge of them as if she were the matron of a workhouse
receiving new inmates.
"You'd better bring your truck into the garden," she said, "or Alice
will be turning everything over. Inquisitive brute!" she added,
snapping her fingers at the cow, who had returned, and stood within
a few feet of them, eyeing the Goslings with a slow, dull wonder--a
mournfully sleepy beast whose furiously wakeful tail seemed anxious
to rouse its owner out of her torpor.
The invalid sister sat by the window of a small room that faced
west and overlooked the luxuriance of what was still recognizably
a flower-garden.
"My sister, Mrs Pollard," said Aunt May sharply, and then addressing
the woman who sat huddled in shawls by the window, she added: "Three
more strays, Fanny--from London, Allie tells me." She went out quickly,
closing the door with a vigour which indicated little tolerance for
invalid nerves.
Mrs Pollard stretched out a delicate white hand. "Please come and sit
near me," she said, "and tell me about London. It is so long since
I have had any news from there. Perhaps you might be able----" she
broke off, and looked at the three strangers with a certain pathetic
eagerness.
"I'll take me bonnet off, ma'am, if you'll excuse me," remarked Mrs
Gosling. She felt at home once more within the delightful shelter of
a house, although slightly overawed by the aspect of the room and
its occupant. About both there was an air of that class dignity to
which Mrs Gosling knew she could never attain. "I don't know when
I've felt the 'eat as I 'ave to-day," she remarked politely.
"Has it been hot?" asked Mrs Pollard. "To me the days all seem so much
alike. I want you to tell me, were there any young men in London when
you left? You haven't seen any young man who at all resembles this
photograph, have you?"
Mrs Gosling stared at the silver-framed photograph which Mrs Pollard
took from the table at her side, stared and shook her head.
"We haven't seen a single man of any kind for two months," said
Blanche, "not a single one. Have we, Millie?"
Millie, sitting rather stiffly on her chair, shook her head. "It's
terrible," she said. "I'm sure I don't know where they can have all
gone to."
Mrs Pollard did not reply for a moment. She looked steadfastly out
of the window, and tears, which she made no attempt to restrain,
chased each other in little jerks down her smooth pale cheeks.
Mrs Gosling pinched her mouth into an expression of suffering sympathy,
and shook her head at her daughters to enforce silence. Was she not,
also, a widow?
After a short pause, Mrs Pollard fumbled in her lap and discovered
a black-bordered pocket-handkerchief--a reminiscence, doubtless, of
some earlier bereavement. Her expression had been in no way distorted
as she wept, and after the tears had been wiped away no trace of them
disfigured her delicate face. Her voice was still calm and sweet as
she said:
"I am very foolish to go on hoping. I loved too much, and this trial
has been sent to teach me that all love but One is vain, that I must
not set my heart upon things of the earth. And yet I go on hoping
that my poor boy was not cut off in Sin."
"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs Gosling. "You musn't take it to 'eart too
much, ma'am. Boys will be a little wild and no doubt our 'eavenly
Father will make excuses."
Mrs Pollard shook her head. "If it had only been a little wildness,"
she said, "I should have hope. He is, indeed, just and merciful, slow
to anger and of great kindness, but my poor Alfred became tainted
with the terrible doctrines of Rome. It has been the greatest grief
of my life, and I have known much pain...." And again the tears slowly
welled up and fell silently down that smooth, unchanging face.
Mrs Gosling sniffed sympathetically. The two girls glanced at one
another with slightly raised eyebrows and Blanche almost invisibly
shrugged her shoulders.
The warm evening light threw the waxen-faced, white-shawled figure
of the woman in the window into high relief. Her look of ecstatic
resignation was that of some wonderful mediæval saint returned from
the age of vision and miracle to a recently purified earth in which
the old ideas of saintship had again become possible. Her influence
was upon the room in which she sat. The sounds of the world outside,
the evening chorus of wild life, the familiar noise of the farm,
seemed to blend into a remote music of prayer--"Kyrie Eleison! Christe
Eleison!" Within was a great stillness, as of a thin and bloodless
purity; the long continuance of a single thought found some echo in
every material object. While the silence lasted everything in that
room was responsive to this single keynote of anæmic virtue.
Mrs Gosling tried desperately to weep without noise, and even the
two girls, falling under the spell, ceased to glance covertly at one
another with that hint of criticism, but sat subdued and weakened as
if some element of life had been taken from them.
The lips of the woman in the window moved noiselessly; her hands were
clasped in her lap. She was praying.
4
Firm and somewhat clumsy steps were heard in the passage, the door
was pushed roughly open, banging back against the black oak chair
which was set behind it, and Aunt May entered carrying a large tray.
"Here's your dinner, Fanny," she said. "We've done earlier to-night,
in spite of interruptions." She bustled over to the little table in the
window, pushed back the Bible and photograph with the edge of the tray
until she could release one hand, and then, having driven the tray into
a position of safety, moved Bible and photograph to the centre table.
There was something protestingly vigorous about her movements, as
though she endeavoured to combat by noise and energy the impoverished
vitality of that emasculate room.
"Now, you three!" she went on. "You had better come out into the
kitchen and take your things off and wash."
As the Goslings rose, Mrs Pollard turned to them and stretched
out to each in turn her delicate white hand. "There is only one
Comforter." she said. "Put your trust in Him."
Mrs Gosling gulped, and Blanche and Millie looked as they used to
look when they attended the Bible-classes held by the vicar's wife.
Blanche gave a shiver of relief as they came out into the passage. Her
mind was suddenly filled by the astounding thought that everything
was not different....
Supper was laid on the kitchen table--cold chicken, potatoes and
cabbage, stewed plums and cream, and warm, new milk in a jug; no bread,
no salt, and no pepper.
As the three Goslings washed at the scullery sink they chattered
freely. They felt pleasure at release from some cold, draining
influence; they felt as if they had come out of church after some long,
dull service, into the air and sunlight.
"I'm sure she's a very 'oly lady," was Mrs Gosling's final summary.
Blanche shivered again. "Oh! freezing!" was her enigmatic reply.
Millie said it gave her "the creeps."
They were a party of seven at supper--the meal was referred to as
"supper," although to Mrs Pollard it had been dignified by the name of
"dinner"--including two young women whom the Goslings had not hitherto
seen; strong, brown-faced girls, who spoke with a country accent. They
had something still of the manner of servants, but they were treated
as equals both by Allie and Aunt May.
There was little conversation during the meal, however, for all of
them were too intent on the business in hand. To the Goslings that
meal was, indeed, a banquet.
When they had all finished, Aunt May rose at once. "Thank Heaven
for daylight," she remarked; "but we must set our brains to work to
invent some light for the winter. We haven't a candle or a drop of
oil left," she went on, addressing the Goslings, "and for the past
five weeks we have had to bustle to get everything done before sunset,
I can tell you. Last night we couldn't wash up after supper."
"We know," replied Blanche.
Aunt May nodded. "We all know," she said. "Now, you three girls,
get busy!" And Allie and the two brown-faced young women rose a
little wearily.
"I'm getting an old woman," remarked Aunt May, "and I'm allowed certain
privileges, chief of them that I don't work after supper. She paused
and looked keenly at the three Goslings. "Which of you three is in
command?" she asked.
"Well, it seems as if my eldest, Blanche, that is, 'as sort o' taken
the lead the past few days," began Mrs Gosling.
"Ah! I thought so," said Aunt May. "Well, now, Blanche, you'd better
come out into the garden and have a talk with me, and we'll decide
what you had better do. If your mother and sister would like to go
to bed, Allie will show them where they can sleep."
She moved away in the direction of the garden and Blanche followed her.