The Country of the Blind and Other Stories Read online

  ‘I’m afraid it’s uncle,’ she said, holding the letter and staring with eyes wide open into Winslow’s face. ‘It’s a strange hand!’

  ‘The postmark’s Hull,’ said Winslow.

  ‘The postmark’s Hull.’

  Minnie opened the letter slowly, drew it out, hesitated, turned it over, saw the signature. ‘It’s Mr Speight!’

  ‘What does he say?’ said Winslow.

  Minnie began to read. ‘Oh!’ she screamed. She dropped the letter, collapsed into a crouching heap, her hands covering her eyes. Winslow snatched at it. ‘A most terrible accident has occurred,’ he read; ‘Melchior’s chimney fell down yesterday evening right on the top of your uncle’s house, and every living soul was killed – your uncle, your cousin Mary, Will and Ned, and the girl – every one of them, and smashed – you would hardly know them. I’m writing to you to break the news before you see it in the papers’ – The letter fluttered from Winslow’s fingers. He put out his hand against the mantel to steady himself.

  All of them dead! Then he saw, as in a vision, a row of seven cottages, each let at seven shillings a week, a timber yard, two villas, and the ruins – still marketable – of the avuncular residence. He tried to feel a sense of loss and could not. They were sure to have been left to Minnie’s aunt. All dead! 7 × 7 × 52 ÷ 20 began insensibly to work itself out in his mind, but discipline was ever weak in his mental arithmetic; figures kept moving from one line to another, like children playing at Widdy, Widdy Way. Was it two hundred pounds about – or one hundred pounds? Presently he picked up the letter again, and finishing reading it. ‘You being the next of kin,’ said Mr Speight.

  ‘How awful!’ said Minnie in a horror-struck whisper, and looking up at last. Winslow stared back at her, shaking his head solemnly. There were a thousand things running through his mind, but none that, even to his dull sense, seemed appropriate as a remark. ‘It was the Lord’s will,’ he said at last.

  ‘It seems so very, very terrible,’ said Minnie; ‘auntie, dear auntie – Ted – poor, dear uncle’ –

  ‘It was the Lord’s will, Minnie,’ said Winslow, with infinite feeling. A long silence.

  ‘Yes,’ said Minnie, very slowly, staring thoughtfully at the crackling black paper in the grate. The fire had gone out. ‘Yes, perhaps it was the Lord’s will.’

  They looked gravely at one another. Each would have been terribly shocked at any mention of the property by the other. She turned to the dark fireplace and began tearing up an old newspaper slowly. Whatever our losses may be, the world’s work still waits for us. Winslow gave a deep sigh and walked in a hushed manner towards the front door. As he opened it, a flood of sunlight came streaming into the dark shadows of the closed shop. Bandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, had vanished out of his mind like the mists before the rising sun.

  Presently he was carrying in the shutters, and in the briskest way, the fire in the kitchen was crackling exhilaratingly, with a little saucepan walloping above it, for Minnie was boiling two eggs, – one for herself this morning, as well as one for him, – and Minnie herself was audible, laying breakfast with the greatest éclat. The blow was a sudden and terrible one – but it behoves us to face such things bravely in this sad, unaccountable world. It was quite midday before either of them mentioned the cottages.

  THE CONE

  The night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed with the lingering sunset of midsummer. They sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air was fresher there. The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering 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 irritated her. ‘He thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. He has no imagination, nor poetry.’

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

  ‘He has not,’ she said. She turned her discontented face towards the window. The distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of the tender. As the train passed, there was a glare of light above the cutting and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs – eight trucks – passed across the dim grey of the embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of 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; ‘and now – it is Gehenna.1 Down that way – nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fire and dust into the face of heaven.… But what does it matter? An end comes, an end to all this cruelty.… Tomorrow.’ He spoke the last word in a whisper.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring out of the window.

  ‘Dear!’ he said, putting his hand on hers

  She turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another’s. Hers softened to his gaze. ‘My dear one!’ she said, and then: ‘It seems so strange – that you should have come into my life like this – to open’ – She paused.

  ‘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 he started violently back. In the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy figure – silent. They saw the face dimly in the half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under the penthouse brows.2 Every muscle in Raut’s body suddenly became tense. When could the door have opened? What had he heard? Had he heard all? What had he seen? A tumult of questions.

  The newcomer’s voice came at last, after a pause that seemed interminable. ‘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 no answer 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 just possible you might come back,’ she said, in a voice that never quivered.

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

  ‘Yes,’ said Horrocks.

  ‘You promised,’ said Raut, ‘to show me some fine effects of moonlight and smoke.’

  ‘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 tonight before you went down to the works,’ proceeded Raut, ‘and come with you.’

  There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thing coolly? 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 pallid in the half-light. Then he glanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I promised to show you the works under their proper dramatic conditions. It’s odd how I could have forgotten.’

  ‘If I am troubling you’ – began Raut.

  Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly c
ome into the sultry gloom of his eyes. ‘Not in the least,’ he said.

  ‘Have you been telling Mr Raut of all these contrasts of flame and shadow you think so splendid?’ said the woman, turning now to her husband for the first time, her confidence creeping back again, her voice just one half-note too high. ‘That dreadful theory of yours that machinery is beautiful, and everything else in the world ugly. I thought he would not spare you, Mr Raut. It’s his great theory, his one discovery in art.’

  ‘I am slow to make discoveries,’ said Horrocks grimly, damping her 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 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 of the dusk at the other two. Horrocks’s hand still rested on Raut’s shoulder. Raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after all. But Mrs Horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in her 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 hysterical laughter. Their hands came together on the back of the chair. ‘Here it is!’ he said. She had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she could not frame a word. ‘Don’t go!’ and ‘Beware of him!’ struggled in her mind, 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 the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before.

  Raut started and turned. ‘Good evening, Mrs Horrocks,’ he said, and their hands touched.

  Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him towards men. Raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her husband followed. She stood motionless while Raut’s light footfall and her husband’s heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage together. The front door slammed heavily. She went to the window, moving slowly, and stood watching – leaning forward. The two men appeared for a moment at the gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and were hidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. The lamplight fell for a moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale patches, telling nothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and craved vainly to know. Then she sank down into a crouching attitude in the big armchair, her eyes wide open and staring out at the red lights from the furnaces that flickered in the sky. An hour after she was still there, her attitude scarcely changed.

  The oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon Raut. They went side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into the cinder-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,3 grey and black masses, outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the street lamps, and here and there a gaslit window, or the yellow glare of some late-working factory or crowded public-house. Out of the masses, clear and slender against the evening sky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys, many of them reeking, a few smokeless during a season of ‘play’.4 Here and there a pallid patch and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank, or a wheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. Nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half invisible trains shunted – a steady puffing and rumbling, with every now and then a ringing concussion and a series of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the Jeddah5 Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the steam-hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither. Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwards towards the sky.

  ‘Certainly you get some fine effects of colour with your furnaces,’ said Raut, breaking a silence that had become apprehensive.

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

  Raut glanced at him and away again. ‘At present your moon-light 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 has suddenly awakened. ‘Vestiges of daylight?… Of course, of course.’ He too looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. ‘Come along,’ he said suddenly, and, gripping Raut’s arm in his hand, made a move towards the path that dropped from them to the railway.

  Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment that their 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, and walking, one unwillingly enough, down the path.

  ‘You see the fine effect of the railway signals towards Burslem,’ said Horrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, striding fast and tightening the grip of his elbow the while. ‘Little green lights and red and white lights, all against the haze. You have an eye for effect, Raut. It’s a fine effect. And look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise upon us as we come down the hill. That to the right is my pet – seventy feet of him. I packed him myself, and he’s boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. I’ve a particular fancy for him. That line 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 the steam-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 stuff comes from the mill. And, squelch! – there goes the hammer again. Come along!’

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

  ‘I say,’ he said now, laughing nervously, but with an undernote of snarl in his voice, ‘why on earth are you nipping my arm 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 me the trick of walking in that friendly way.’

  ‘You haven’t learnt the refinements of it yet then,’ said Raut, laughing artificially again. ‘By Jove! I’m black and blue.’ Horrocks offered no apology. They stood now near the bottom of the hill, close to the fence that bordered the railway. The ironworks had grown larger and spread out with their approach. They looked up to the blast furnaces now instead of down; the further view of Etruria and Hanley had dropped out of sight with their descent. Before them, by the stile, rose a noticeboard, bearing, still dimly visible, the words, ‘Beware of the trains’, half hidden by splashes of coaly mud.

  ‘Fine effects,’ said Horrocks, waving his arm. ‘Here comes a train. The puffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye of light in front of it, the melodious rattle. Fin
e effects! But these furnaces of mine used to be finer, 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 flare out of the open throats, great – what is it? – pillars of cloud by day,6 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 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 up there.’

  ‘The cone’s not fixed, it’s hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there’d be no way of getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then the cone dips, and out comes 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, and moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. And then came one of those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave one doubtful and reeling. Halfway across, Horrocks’s hand suddenly clenched upon him like a vice, and swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that he looked up the line. And there a chain of lamp-lit carriage windows telescoped swiftly as it came towards them, and the red and yellow lights of an engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon them. As he grasped what this meant, he turned his face to Horrocks, and pushed with all his strength against the arm that held him back between the rails. The struggle did not last a moment. Just as certain as it was that Horrocks held him there, so certain was it that he had been violently lugged out of danger.

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

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