The Country of the Blind and Other Stories Read online

  II.

  THE CONE.

  The night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed with the lingeringsunset of midsummer. They sat at the open window, trying to fancy the airwas fresher there. The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff anddark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against thehazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railwaysignal against the lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one another inlow tones.

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

  "Not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. "Hethinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. He has noimagination, no poetry."

  "None of these men of iron have," he said sententiously. "They have nohearts."

  "_He_ has not," she said. She turned her discontented face towardsthe window. The distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer andgrew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of thetender. As the train passed, there was a glare of light above the cuttingand a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,eight black oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of theembankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of thetunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, andsound in one abrupt gulp.

  "This country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "and now--it isGehenna. Down that way--nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fireand 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 ina whisper.

  "_To-morrow,"_ she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staringout of the window.

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

  She turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another's. Herssoftened to his gaze. "My dear one!" she said, and then: "It seems sostrange--that you should have come into my life like this--to open--" Shepaused.

  "To open?" he said.

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

  Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They turned their heads, and hestarted violently back. In the shadow of the room stood a great shadowyfigure-silent. They saw the face dimly in the half-light, withunexpressive dark patches under the pent-house brows. Every muscle inRaut's body suddenly became tense. When could the door have opened? Whathad 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 the window,gripping the window-ledge with his hand. His voice was unsteady.

  The clumsy figure of Horrocks came forward out of the shadow. He made noanswer to Raut's remark. For a moment he stood above them.

  The woman's heart was cold within her. "I told Mr. Raut it was justpossible you might come back," she said in a voice that never quivered.

  Horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by her littlework-table. His big hands were clenched; one saw now the fire of his eyesunder the shadow of his brows. He was trying to get his breath. His eyeswent from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and thenback to the woman.

  By this time and for the moment all three half understood one another.Yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked 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 tothe last.

  "Yes," said Horrocks.

  "You promised," said Raut, "to show me some fine effects of moonlight andsmoke."

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

  "And I thought I might catch you to-night before you went down to theworks," proceeded Raut, "and come with you."

  There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thing coolly? Didhe, after all, know? How long had he been in the room? Yet even at themoment when they heard the door, their attitudes ... Horrocks glanced atthe profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. Then heglanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. "Of course," hesaid, "I promised to show you the works under their proper dramaticconditions. It's odd how I could have forgotten."

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

  Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly come into the sultrygloom of his eyes. "Not in the least." he said.

  "Have you been telling Mr. Raut of all these contrasts of flame and shadowyou think so splendid?" said the woman, turning now to her husband forthe first time, her confidence creeping back again, her voice just onehalf-note too high--"that dreadful theory of yours that machinery isbeautiful, and everything else in the world ugly. I thought he would notspare you, Mr. Raut. It's his great theory, his one discovery in art."

  "I am slow to make discoveries," said Horrocks grimly, damping hersuddenly. "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 put his big,clumsy hand on his friend's shoulder. "And you are ready to go?"

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

  There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness ofthe dusk at the other two.

  Horrocks' hand still rested on Raut's shoulder. Raut half fancied stillthat the incident was trivial after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew herhusband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion inher mind took a vague shape of physical evil. "Very well," said Horrocks,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 of hystericallaughter. Their hands came together on the back of the chair. "Here itis!" he said. She had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but shecould not frame a word. "Don't go!" and "Beware of him!" struggled in hermind, and the swift moment passed.

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

  Raut stepped towards him. "Better say goodbye to Mrs. Horrocks," said theironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before.

  Raut started and turned. "Good-evening, Mrs. Horrocks," he said, and theirhands touched.

  Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in himtowards men. Raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, herhusband followed. She stood motionless while Raut's light footfall and herhusband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passagetogether. The front door slammed heavily. She went to the window, movingslowly, and stood watching, leaning forward. The two men appeared for amoment at the gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and werehidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. The lamplight fell for amoment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale patches, tellingnothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and craved vainly to know.Then she sank down into a crouching attitude in the big arm-chair, hereyes-wide open and staring out at the red lights from the furnaces thatflickered in the sky. An hour after she was still there, her attitudescarcely changed.

  The oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon Raut. Theywent side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into thecinder-made byway that presently opened out the prospect of the valley.

  A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with mystery.Beyond were Hanley and Etruria, grey and dark masses, outlined thinly bythe rare golden dots of the street lamps, and here and there a gas-litwindow, or the yellow glare of some late-working factory or crowdedpublic-house. Out of the masses, clear and slender against the eveningsky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys, many of them reeking, a fewsmokeless during a season of "play." Here and there a pallid patch andghostly stunted beehive shapes
showed the position of a pot-bank or awheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked some collierywhere they raise the iridescent coal of the place. Nearer at hand was thebroad stretch of railway, and half-invisible trains shunted--a steadypuffing and rumbling, with every run a ringing concussion and a rhymthicseries of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steamacross the further view. And to the left, between the railway and thedark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal,inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the greatcylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices ofthe big ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy andthreatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molteniron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and thesteam-hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither andthither. Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of thegiants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and blackdust came boiling upwards towards the sky.

  "Certainly you get some colour with your furnaces," said Raut, breaking asilence that had become apprehensive.

  Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down atthe dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning as if hewere thinking out some knotty problem.

  Raut glanced at him and away again. "At present your moonlight effect ishardly ripe," he continued, looking upward; "the moon is still smotheredby the vestiges of daylight."

  Horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has suddenlyawakened. "Vestiges of daylight? ... Of course, of course." He too lookedup at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. "Come along," he saidsuddenly, and gripping Raut's arm in his hand, made a move towards thepath that dropped from them to the railway.

  Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment thattheir lips came near to say. Horrocks's hand tightened and then relaxed.He let go, and before Raut was aware of it, they were arm in arm, andwalking, one unwillingly enough, down the path.

  "You see the fine effect of the railway signals towards Burslem," saidHorrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, striding fast and tighteningthe grip of his elbow the while--"little green lights and red and whitelights, all against the haze. You have an eye for effect, Raut. It's fine.And look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise upon us as we come downthe hill. That to the right is my pet--seventy feet of him. I packed himmyself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for fivelong years. I've a particular fancy for _him_. That line of redthere--a lovely bit of warm orange you'd call it, Raut--that's thepuddlers' furnaces, and there, in the hot light, three black figures--didyou see the white splash of the steam-hammer then?--that's the rollingmills. Come along! Clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor!Sheet tin, Raut,--amazing stuff. Glass mirrors are not in it when thatstuff comes from the mill. And, squelch! there goes the hammer again. Comealong!"

  He had to stop talking to catch at his breath. His arm twisted into Raut'swith benumbing tightness. He had come striding down the black path towardsthe railway as though he was possessed. Raut had not spoken a word, hadsimply hung back against Horrocks's pull with all his strength.

  "I say," he said now, laughing nervously, but with an undertone of snarlin his voice, "why on earth are you nipping my arm off, Horrocks, anddragging me along like this?"

  At length Horrocks released him. His manner changed again. "Nipping yourarm off?" he said. "Sorry. But it's you taught me the trick of walkingin that friendly way."

  "You haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," said Raut, laughingartificially again. "By Jove! I'm black and blue." Horrocks offered noapology. They stood now near the bottom of the hill, close to the fencethat bordered the railway. The ironworks had grown larger and spread outwith their approach. They looked up to the blast furnaces now instead ofdown; the further view of Etruria and Hanley had dropped out of sight withtheir descent. Before them, by the stile, rose a notice-board, bearing,still dimly visible, the words, "BEWARE OF THE TRAINS," half hidden bysplashes of coaly mud.

  "Fine effects," said Horrocks, waving his arm. "Here comes a train. Thepuffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye of light in front of it,the melodious rattle. Fine effects! But these furnaces of mine used to befiner, before we shoved cones in their throats, and saved the gas."

  "How?" said Raut. "Cones?"

  "Cones, my man, cones. I'll show you one nearer. The flames used to flareout of the open throats, great--what is it?--pillars of cloud by day, redand black smoke, and pillars of fire by night. Now we run it off--inpipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and the top is shut by a cone.You'll be interested in that cone."

  "But every now and then," said Raut, "you get a burst of fire and smoke upthere."

  "The cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced byan equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there'd be no wayof getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then the cone dips, and outcomes the flare."

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

  "Come along," said Horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulder again, andmoving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. And then came one ofthose swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave one doubtfuland reeling. Half-way across, Horrocks's hand suddenly clenched upon himlike a vice, and swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that helooked up the line. And there a chain of lamp-lit carriage windowstelescoped swiftly as it came towards them, and the red and yellow lightsof an engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon them. As he graspedwhat this meant, he turned his face to Horrocks, and pushed with all hisstrength against the arm that held him back between the rails. Thestruggle did not last a moment. Just as certain as it was that Horrocksheld him there, so certain was it that he had been violently lugged out ofdanger.

  "Out of the way," said Horrocks with a gasp, as the train came rattlingby, and they stood panting by the gate into the ironworks.

  "I did not see it coming," said Raut, still, even in spite of his ownapprehensions, trying to keep up an appearance of ordinary intercourse.

  Horrocks answered with a grunt. "The cone," he said, and then, as one whorecovers himself, "I thought you did not hear."

  "I didn't," said Raut.

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

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

  Horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned abruptly towards theironworks again. "See how fine these great mounds of mine, theseclinker-heaps, look in the night! That truck yonder, up above there! Upit goes, and out-tilts the slag. See the palpitating red stuff go slidingdown the slope. As we get nearer, the heap rises up and cuts the blastfurnaces. See the quiver up above the big one. Not that way! This way,between the heaps. That goes to the puddling furnaces, but I want to showyou the canal first." He came and took Raut by the elbow, and so they wentalong side by side. Raut answered Horrocks vaguely. What, he askedhimself, had really happened on the line? Was he deluding himself with hisown fancies, or had Horrocks actually held him back in the way of thetrain? Had he just been within an ace of being murdered?

  Suppose this slouching, scowling monster _did_ know anything? For aminute or two then Raut was really afraid for his life, but the moodpassed as he reasoned with himself. After all, Horrocks might have heardnothing. At any rate, he had pulled him out of the way in time. His oddmanner might be due to the mere vague jealousy he had shown once before.He was talking now of the ash-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 by moonlight andfirelight is immense. You've never seen it? Fancy that! You've spent toomany of your evenings philandering up in Newcastle there. I tell you, forreal florid quality----But you shall see. Boiling water ..."

  As they came out of the labyrinth of clinker
-heaps and mounds of coal andore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon them suddenly, loud, near,and distinct. Three shadowy workmen went by and touched their caps toHorrocks. Their faces were vague in the darkness. Raut felt a futileimpulse to address them, and before he could frame his words they passedinto the shadows. Horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: aweird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of thefurnaces. The hot water that cooled the tuyeres came into it, some fiftyyards up--a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose upfrom the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply aboutthem, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and rededdies, a white uprising that made the head swim. The shining black towerof the larger blast-furnace rose overhead out of the mist, and itstumultuous riot filled their ears. Raut kept away from the edge of thewater, and watched Horrocks.

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

  Raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastily to his watchon Horrocks. "Come along to the rolling-mills," said Horrocks. Thethreatening hold was not so evident that time, and Raut felt a littlereassured. But all the same, what on earth did Horrocks mean about "whiteas death" and "red as sin"? Coincidence, perhaps?

  They went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while, and thenthrough the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din the deliberatesteam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black,half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, betweenthe wheels, "Come on," said Horrocks in Raut's ear; and they went andpeeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw thetumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left one eyeblinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing across thedark, they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore and fuel and limewere raised to the top of the big cylinder.

  And out upon the narrow rail that overhung the furnace Raut's doubts cameupon him again. Was it wise to be here? If Horrocks did know--everything!Do what he would, he could not resist a violent trembling. Right underfoot was a sheer depth of seventy feet. It was a dangerous place. Theypushed by a truck of fuel to get to the railing that crowned the thing.The reek of the furnace, a sulphurous vapour streaked with pungentbitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moonwas riding out now from among a drift of clouds, half-way up the sky abovethe undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran awayfrom below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim hazeof the flat fields towards Burslem.

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

  Raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at the cone. The heatwas intense. The boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast made athunderous accompaniment to Horrocks's voice. But the thing had to be gonethrough now. Perhaps, after all...

  "In the middle," bawled Horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees. If_you_ were dropped into it ... flash into flame like a pinch ofgunpowder in a candle. Put your hand out and feel the heat of his breath.Why, even up here I've seen the rain-water boiling off the trucks. Andthat cone there. It's a damned sight too hot for roasting cakes. The topside of it's three hundred degrees."

  "Three hundred degrees!" said Raut.

  "Three hundred centigrade, mind!" said Horrocks. "It will boil the bloodout 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 momentthe two men stood swaying. Then suddenly, with a violent jerk, Horrockshad twisted him from his hold. He clutched at Horrocks and missed, hisfoot went back into empty air; in mid-air he twisted himself, and thencheek and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone together.

  He clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing sank aninfinitesimal amount as he struck it. A circle of glowing red appearedabout him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos within,flickered up towards him. An intense pain assailed him at the knees, andhe could smell the singeing of his hands. He raised himself to his feet,and tried to climb up the chain, and then something struck his head. Blackand shining with the moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose abouthim.

  Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on therail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in the moonlight, andshouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You hot-bloodedhound! Boil! boil! boil!"

  Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and flung itdeliberately, lump after lump, at Raut.

  "Horrocks!" cried Raut. "Horrocks!"

  He clung, crying, to the chain, pulling himself up from the burning of thecone. Each missile Horrocks flung hit him. His clothes charred and glowed,and as he struggled the cone dropped, and a rush of hot, suffocating gaswhooped out and burned round him in a swift breath of flame.

  His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red had passed,Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood,still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony--acindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing,intermittent shriek.

  Abruptly at the sight the ironmaster's anger passed. A deadly sicknesscame upon him. The heavy odour of burning flesh came drifting up to hisnostrils. His sanity returned to him.

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

  He knew the thing below him, save that it still moved and felt, wasalready a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling inhis veins. An intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, andovercame every other feeling. For a moment he stood irresolute, and then,turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the strugglingthing that had once been a man. The mass fell with a thud, and wentradiating over the cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and a boilingconfusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As itpassed, he saw the cone clear again.

  Then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the rail withboth hands. His lips moved, but no words came to them.

  Down below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour ofrolling in the shed ceased abruptly.