The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories Read online

  THE CONE

  The night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with thelingering sunset of mid-summer. They sat at the open window,trying to fancy the air was fresher there. The trees and shrubs ofthe garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lampburnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening.Farther were the three lights of the railway signal against thelowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one another in low tones.

  "He does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously.

  "Not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritatedher. "He thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel.He has no imagination, no poetry."

  "None of these men of iron have," he said sententiously."They have no hearts."

  "_He_ has not," she said. She turned her discontentedface towards the window. The distant sound of a roaring andrushing drew nearer and grew in volume; the house quivered; oneheard the metallic rattle of the tender. As the train passed,there was a glare of light above the cutting and a driving tumultof smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight blackoblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of theembankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throatof the tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train,smoke, and sound in one abrupt gulp.

  "This country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "andnow--it is Gehenna. Down that way--nothing but pot-banks andchimneys belching fire and dust into the face of heaven . . . . .But what does it matter? An end comes, an end to all this cruelty. . . . . _To-morrow_." He spoke the last word in a whisper.

  "_To-morrow_," she said, speaking in a whisper too, andstill staring out of the window.

  "Dear!" he said, putting his hand on hers.

  She turned with a start, and their eyes searched oneanother's. Hers softened to his gaze. "My dear one!" she said,and then: "It seems so strange--that you should have come into mylife like this--to open--" She paused.

  "To open?" he said.

  "All this wonderful world--" she hesitated, and spoke stillmore softly--"this world of _love_ to me."

  Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They turned theirheads, and he started violently back. In the shadow of the roomstood a great shadowy figure--silent. They saw the face dimly inthe half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under the penthousebrows. Every muscle in Raut's body suddenly became tense. Whencould the door have opened? What had he heard? Had he heard all?What had he seen? A tumult of questions.

  The new-comer's voice came at last, after a pause that seemedinterminable. "Well?" he said.

  "I was afraid I had missed you, Horrocks," said the man at thewindow, gripping the window-ledge with his hand. His voice wasunsteady.

  The clumsy figure of Horrocks came forward out of the shadow.He made no answer to Raut's remark. For a moment he stood abovethem.

  The woman's heart was cold within her. "I told Mr. Raut itwas just possible you might come back," she said, in a voice thatnever quivered.

  Horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by herlittle work-table. His big hands were clenched; one saw now thefire of his eyes under the shadow of his brows. He was trying toget his breath. His eyes went from the woman he had trusted to thefriend he had trusted, and then back to the woman.

  By this time and for the moment all three half understood oneanother. Yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things thatchoked them.

  It was the husband's voice that broke the silence at last.

  "You wanted to see me?" he said to Raut.

  Raut started as he spoke. "I came to see you," he said,resolved to lie to the last.

  "Yes," said Horrocks.

  "You promised," said Raut, "to show me some fine effects ofmoonlight and smoke."

  "I promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight andsmoke," repeated Horrocks in a colourless voice.

  "And I thought I might catch you to-night before you went downto the works," proceeded Raut, "and come with you."

  There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thingcoolly? Did he after all know? How long had he been in the room?Yet even at the moment when they heard the door, their attitudes.. . . Horrocks glanced at the profile of the woman, shadowy pallidin the half-light. Then he glanced at Raut, and seemed to recoverhimself suddenly. "Of course," he said, "I promised to show youthe works under their proper dramatic conditions. It's odd how Icould have forgotten."

  "If I am troubling you--" began Raut.

  Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly come intothe sultry gloom of his eyes. "Not in the least," he said.

  "Have you been telling Mr. Raut of all these contrasts offlame and shadow you think so splendid?" said the woman, turningnow to her husband for the first time, her confidence creeping backagain, her voice just one half-note too high. "That dreadfultheory of yours that machinery is beautiful, and everything else inthe world ugly. I thought he would not spare you, Mr. Raut. It'shis great theory, his one discovery in art."

  "I am slow to make discoveries," said Horrocks grimly, dampingher suddenly. "But what I discover . . . . ." He stopped.

  "Well?" she said.

  "Nothing;" and suddenly he rose to his feet.

  "I promised to show you the works," he said to Raut, and puthis big, clumsy hand on his friend's shoulder. "And you are readyto go?"

  "Quite," said Raut, and stood up also.

  There was another pause. Each of them peered through theindistinctness of the dusk at the other two. Horrocks' hand stillrested on Raut's shoulder. Raut half fancied still that theincident was trivial after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husbandbetter, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in hermind took a vague shape of physical evil. "Very well", saidHorrocks, and, dropping his hand, turned towards the door.

  "My hat?" Raut looked round in the half-light.

  "That's my work-basket," said Mrs. Horrocks, with a gust ofhysterical laughter. Their hands came together on the back of thechair. "Here it is!" he said. She had an impulse to warn him inan undertone, but she could not frame a word. "Don't go!" and"Beware of him!" struggled in her mind, and the swift momentpassed.

  "Got it?" said Horrocks, standing with the door half open.

  Raut stepped towards him. "Better say good-bye to Mrs.Horrocks," said the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tonethan before.

  Raut started and turned. "Good-evening, Mrs. Horrocks," hesaid, and their hands touched.

  Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politenessunusual in him towards men. Raut went out, and then, after awordless look at her, her husband followed. She stood motionlesswhile Raut's light footfall and her husband's heavy tread, likebass and treble, passed down the passage together. The front doorslammed heavily. She went to the window, moving slowly, and stoodwatching--leaning forward. The two men appeared for a moment atthe gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and werehidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. The lamp-light fellfor a moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale patches,telling nothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and cravedvainly to know. Then she sank down into a crouching attitude inthe big arm-chair, her eyes wide open and staring out at the redlights from the furnaces that flickered in the sky. An hour aftershe was still there, her attitude scarcely changed.

  The oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily uponRaut. They went side by side down the road in silence, and insilence turned into the cinder-made by-way that presently openedout the prospect of the valley.

  A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valleywith mystery. Beyond were Hanley and Etruria, grey and darkmasses, outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the streetlamps, and here and there a gaslit window, or the yellow glare ofsome late-working factory or crowded public-house. Out of themasses, clear and slender against the evening sky, rose a multitudeof tall chimneys, many of them reeking, a few smokeless during aseason of "play." Here and there a pallid patc
h and ghostlystunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank, or awheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked somecolliery where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. Nearerat hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half invisible trainsshunted--a steady puffing and rumbling, with every run a ringingconcussion and a rhythmic series of impacts, and a passage ofintermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. Andto the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hillbeyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, andcrowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders ofthe Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the bigironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy andthreatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seethingmolten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills,and the steam hammer beat heavily and splashed the white ironsparks hither and thither. Even as they looked, a truckful of fuelwas shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out,and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwardstowards the sky.

  "Certainly you get some fine effects of colour with yourfurnaces," said Raut, breaking a silence that had becomeapprehensive.

  Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in his pockets,frowning down at the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworksbeyond, frowning as if he were thinking out some knotty problem.

  Raut glanced at him and away again. "At present yourmoonlight effect is hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward."The moon is still smothered by the vestiges of daylight."

  Horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who hassuddenly awakened. "Vestiges of daylight? . . . . Of course, ofcourse." He too looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummersky. "Come along," he said suddenly, and, gripping Raut's arm inhis hand, made a move towards the path that dropped from them tothe railway.

  Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a thousand things ina moment that their eyes came near to say. Horrocks' handtightened and then relaxed. He let go, and before Raut was awareof it, they were arm in arm, and walking, one unwillingly enough,down the path.

  "You see the fine effect of the railway signals towardsBurslem," said Horrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, stridingfast, and tightening the grip of his elbow the while. "Littlegreen lights and red and white lights, all against the haze. Youhave an eye for effect, Raut. It's a fine effect. And look atthose furnaces of mine, how they rise upon us as we come down thehill. That to the right is my pet--seventy feet of him. I packedhim myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his gutsfor five long years. I've a particular fancy for _him_. Thatline of red there--a lovely bit of warm orange you'd call it,Raut--that's the puddlers' furnaces, and there, in the hot light,three black figures--did you see the white splash of thesteam-hammer then?--that's the rolling mills. Come along!Clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor! Sheet tin,Raut,--amazing stuff. Glass mirrors are not in it when that stuffcomes from the mill. And, squelch!--there goes the hammer again.Come along!"

  He had to stop talking to catch at his breath. His armtwisted into Raut's with benumbing tightness. He had come stridingdown the black path towards the railway as though he was possessed.Raut had not spoken a word, had simply hung back against Horrocks'pull with all his strength.

  "I say," he said now, laughing nervously, but with anundernote of snarl in his voice, "why on earth are you nipping myarm off, Horrocks, and dragging me along like this?"

  At length Horrocks released him. His manner changed again."Nipping your arm off?" he said. "Sorry. But it's you taught methe trick of walking in that friendly way."

  "You haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," saidRaut, laughing artificially again. "By Jove! I'm black and blue."Horrocks offered no apology. They stood now near the bottom of thehill, close to the fence that bordered the railway. The ironworkshad grown larger and spread out with their approach. They lookedup to the blast furnaces now instead of down; the further view ofEtruria and Hanley had dropped out of sight with their descent.Before them, by the stile rose a notice-board, bearing still dimlyvisible, the words, "BEWARE OF THE TRAINS," half hidden by splashesof coaly mud.

  "Fine effects," said Horrocks, waving his arm. "Here comes atrain. The puffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye oflight in front of it, the melodious rattle. Fine effects! Butthese furnaces of mine used to be finer, before we shoved cones intheir throats, and saved the gas."

  "How?" said Raut. "Cones?"

  "Cones, my man, cones. I'll show you one nearer. The flamesused to flare out of the open throats, great--what is it?--pillarsof cloud by day, red and black smoke, and pillars of fire by night.Now we run it off in pipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and thetop is shut by a cone. You'll be interested in that cone."

  "But every now and then," said Raut, "you get a burst of fireand smoke up there."

  "The cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, andbalanced by an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, ofcourse, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing. Everynow and then the cone dips, and out comes the flare."

  "I see," said Raut. He looked over his shoulder. "The moongets brighter," he said.

  "Come along," said Horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulderagain, and moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. Andthen came one of those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid thatthey leave one doubtful and reeling. Halfway across, Horrocks'hand suddenly clenched upon him like a vice, and swung him backwardand through a half-turn, so that he looked up the line. And therea chain of lamp-lit carriage-windows telescoped swiftly as it cametowards them, and the red and yellow lights of an engine grewlarger and larger, rushing down upon them. As he grasped what thismeant, he turned his face to Horrocks, and pushed with allhis strength against the arm that held him back between the rails.The struggle did not last a moment. Just as certain as it was thatHorrocks held him there, so certain was it that he had beenviolently lugged out of danger.

  "Out of the way," said Horrocks, with a gasp, as the traincame rattling by, and they stood panting by the gate into theironworks.

  "I did not see it coming," said Raut, still, even in spite ofhis own apprehensions, trying to keep up an appearance of ordinaryintercourse.

  Horrocks answered with a grunt. "The cone," he said, andthen, as one who recovers himself, "I thought you did not hear."

  "I didn't," said Raut.

  "I wouldn't have had you run over then for the world," saidHorrocks.

  "For a moment I lost my nerve," said Raut.

  Horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned abruptly towardsthe ironworks again. "See how fine these great mounds of mine,these clinker-heaps, look in the night! That truck yonder, upabove there! Up it goes, and out-tilts the slag. See thepalpitating red stuff go sliding down the slope. As we get nearer,the heap rises up and cuts the blast furnaces. See the quiver upabove the big one. Not that way! This way, between the heaps.That goes to the puddling furnaces, but I want to show you thecanal first." He came and took Raut by the elbow, and so they wentalong side by side. Raut answered Horrocks vaguely. What, heasked himself, had really happened on the line? Was he deludinghimself with his own fancies, or had Horrocks actually held himback in the way of the train? Had he just been within an ace ofbeing murdered?

  Suppose this slouching, scowling monster _did_ know anything?For a minute or two then Raut was really afraid for his life,but the mood passed as he reasoned with himself. After all,Horrocks might have heard nothing. At any rate, he had pulled himout of the way in time. His odd manner might be due to the merevague jealousy he had shown once before. He was talking now of theash-heaps and the canal. "Eigh?" said Horrocks.

  "What?" said Raut. "Rather! The haze in the moonlight. Fine!"

  "Our canal," said Horrocks, stopping suddenly. "Our canal bymoonlight and firelight is an immense effect. You've never seenit? Fancy that! You've spent too many of your eveningsphilandering up in Newcastle there. I tell
you, for real florideffects--But you shall see. Boiling water . . ."

  As they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps and moundsof coal and ore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon themsuddenly, loud, near, and distinct. Three shadowy workmen went byand touched their caps to Horrocks. Their faces were vague in thedarkness. Raut felt a futile impulse to address them, and beforehe could frame his words, they passed into the shadows. Horrockspointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking placeit seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. The hotwater that cooled the tuyeres came into it, some fifty yards up--atumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up fromthe water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply aboutthem, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the blackand red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim. Theshining black tower of the larger blast-furnace rose overhead outof the mist, and its tumultuous riot filled their ears. Raut keptaway from the edge of the water, and watched Horrocks.

  "Here it is red," said Horrocks, "blood-red vapour as red andhot as sin; but yonder there, where the moonlight falls on it, andit drives across the clinker-heaps, it is as white as death."

  Raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastilyto his watch on Horrocks. "Come along to the rolling-mills," saidHorrocks. The threatening hold was not so evident that time, andRaut felt a little reassured. But all the same, what on earth didHorrocks mean about "white as death" and "red as sin?"Coincidence, perhaps?

  They went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while,and then through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant dinthe deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulentiron, and black, half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, likehot sealing-wax, between the wheels. "Come on," said Horrocks inRaut's ear, and they went and peeped through the little glass holebehind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit ofthe blast-furnace. It left one eye blinded for a while. Then,with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went tothe lift by which the trucks of ore and fuel and lime were raisedto the top of the big cylinder.

  And out upon the narrow rail that overhung the furnace, Raut'sdoubts came upon him again. Was it wise to be here? If Horrocksdid know--everything! Do what he would, he could not resist aviolent trembling. Right under foot was a sheer depth of seventyfeet. It was a dangerous place. They pushed by a truck of fuel toget to the railing that crowned the place. The reek of thefurnace, a sulphurous vapor streaked with pungent bitterness,seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moon wasriding out now from among a drift of clouds, halfway up the skyabove the undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steamingcanal ran away from below them under an indistinct bridge, andvanished into the dim haze of the flat fields towards Burslem.

  "That's the cone I've been telling you of," shouted Horrocks;"and, below that, sixty feet of fire and molten metal, with the airof the blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water."

  Raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at thecone. The heat was intense. The boiling of the iron and thetumult of the blast made a thunderous accompaniment to Horrocks'voice. But the thing had to be gone through now. Perhaps, afterall . . .

  "In the middle," bawled Horrocks, "temperature near a thousanddegrees. If _you_ were dropped into it . . . . flash intoflame like a pinch of gunpowder in a candle. Put your hand out andfeel the heat of his breath. Why, even up here I've seen therain-water boiling off the trucks. And that cone there. It's adamned sight too hot for roasting cakes. The top side of it'sthree hundred degrees."

  "Three hundred degrees!" said Raut.

  "Three hundred centigrade, mind!" said Horrocks. "It willboil the blood out of you in no time."

  "Eigh?" said Raut, and turned.

  "Boil the blood out of you in . . . No, you don't!"

  "Let me go!" screamed Raut. "Let go my arm!"

  With one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then with both.For a moment the two men stood swaying. Then suddenly, with aviolent jerk, Horrocks had twisted him from his hold. He clutchedat Horrocks and missed, his foot went back into empty air; inmid-air he twisted himself, and then cheek and shoulder and kneestruck the hot cone together.

  He clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thingsank an infinitesimal amount as he struck it. A circle of glowingred appeared about him, and a tongue of flame, released from thechaos within, flickered up towards him. An intense pain assailedhim at the knees, and he could smell the singeing of his hands. Heraised himself to his feet, and tried to climb up the chain, andthen something struck his head. Black and shining with themoonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about him.

  Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuelon the rail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in themoonlight, and shouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter ofwomen! You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!"

  Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, andflung it deliberately, lump after lump, at Raut.

  "Horrocks!" cried Raut. "Horrocks!"

  He clung crying to the chain, pulling himself up from theburning of the cone. Each missile Horrocks flung hit him. Hisclothes charred and glowed, and as he struggled the cone dropped,and a rush of hot suffocating gas whooped out and burned round himin a swift breath of flame.

  His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary redhad passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its headstreaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain,and writhing in agony--a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrouscreature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek.

  Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. Adeadly sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of burning fleshcame drifting up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

  "God have mercy upon me!" he cried. "O God! what have Idone?"

  He knew the thing below him, save that it still moved andfelt, was already a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretchmust be boiling in his veins. An intense realisation of that agonycame to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. For a momenthe stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastilytilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been aman. The mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone.With the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke,dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As it passed, he sawthe cone clear again.

  Then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to therail with both hands. His lips moved, but no words came to them.

  Down below was the sound of voices and running steps. Theclangour of rolling in the shed ceased abruptly.