The Dawn of Reckoning (13 page)

Stella interrupted her. “I haven’t any yet, it’s true, but I’m going to
have—in a few months.”

She smiled as she said it. This rough working-woman whom she hardly knew
was the first person besides Philip to whom she had confided her secret.
After all, why not? She wanted to tell somebody; better this stranger woman
than Mrs. Monsell or any of her friends.

The woman seemed surprised, almost shocked by the sudden intimacy of the
confession. Talk went on, less smoothly, until at last Stella, feeling that
she might as well make use of the opportunity in Philip’s interest, remarked:
“Well, I’m very glad to have had a chat with you. My husband will be a
candidate at the next election; perhaps, if your sympathies are that way,
you’ll give him your vote?”

The woman’s mouth closed like a vice.

“Oh, we’re for Grainger,” she said, sharply. “And it’s no use canvassing
anybody in these houses. They’re all for Grainger.”

No more to be said. There was a calm, cold and accurate hostility in the
woman’s eyes. Stella went back to the car feeling that she had committed a
number of indiscretions.

What was this “politics” that Philip bothered about so much?
For all the speeches she had listened to, the explanations Philip had given
her, and the constant political atmosphere in which she had lived, she was
very hazy about the meaning and significance of the word. She could not have
argued with the woman at Firs Cottages, because she did not know a single
reason why anybody should vote for Philip rather than for Grainger, except
the, to her, all-satisfying reason that Philip was Philip. She remembered
that once Ward had remarked that if he ever stood for Parliament he should
call himself an Anti-Tuberculosis candidate. There seemed sense in that, at
any rate.

Yet to Philip the difference between one party and another had a spiritual
as well as an intellectual value. He wrote out his speeches and memorised
them as an enthusiastic missionary might have prepared sermons. Every morning
for three or four solid hours he worked hard and alone; two or three evenings
a week he went out to various meetings in the district and addressed them. He
was an indefatigable candidate, and perhaps it was because of his willingness
to spend time, energy and money without stint that the local Association
continued to support him.

To Stella those evening meetings were sudden nightmares breaking in upon
the cairn dream of her home life. The halls, very often the schoolroom or
church-hall of the villages, were either stuffy or draughty; the men smoked
strong tobacco and smelt heavily of the sodden earth amidst which most of
them had worked all day. Some dull uncouth fellow was chairman; the
interruptions were lively and frequent; Philip faced them with a pained
equanimity born of experience, but without any real verve or readiness. The
measure of his improvement seemed to be that he was no longer panic-stricken,
no matter what anybody did or said. A sharp question that he could not answer
as sharply, a senseless interruption, an abusive epithet—whatever was
flung at him made no difference; he stood his ground with dignity, but
somehow without credit.

To Stella the whole business was shameful. Why didn’t he leave that sort
of work to the type of man that knew how to tackle it?—Why didn’t he
come back to Chassingford and lead the quiet, cultured life that would earn
him repose and the respect of others?

In his own words the answer. “I
will
succeed, Stella. Perhaps not
soon. Perhaps not till everybody thinks I am a failure past hope. I will
succeed in
something
—some day—you wait…”

She waited. She observed all the patient, pathetic neatness
of his habits; his careful docketing and newspaper-cutting; his calm
accumulation of facts and figures; his passionless plodding from day to day,
despite the jeers and laughter of others. He found time to write (and publish
at his own expense) a book entitled “Twentieth-Century Unrest”; she glanced
at it in proof, and felt a certain oddity in the notion that he, her husband,
had written stuff so entirely beyond her comprehension. The book was
still-born; received one or two unkind reviews; and sold exactly fifty-four
copies.

His patience almost revolted her at times. She longed for him to lose his
temper, tear up as many important papers as he could get hold of, and
exclaim: “To hell with all this—I’m fed up with it!” That, she felt,
would have been an action at once human and in a way heroic. To remain calm,
to accept each rebuff as imperturbably as the one before it, and as the one
that would follow it, touched very near the inhuman extremity where bravery
became cowardice. She felt that Philip was a coward before his ambition; he
dared not overthrow it and escape; he was a slave, bound hand and foot to a
duty that his reason could not sanction.

That was one way of looking at it. Another way was to admire him simply
and wholly, not for anything that had to do with his ambition, but for a
certain wholesomeness of his nature, and for that deep charitableness to
others which even his outward manner could not entirely conceal. He was a
gentleman, she felt; and her English upbringing had made her quick to
recognise the peculiarly national variety. There were moments when her
affection for him almost froze into awe at something in him that, despite its
shackles, was
great
. She was glad that she was to bear him a
child.

Winter gave way to spring and spring to summer, and there
came a bright June morning when, because of her condition, she was taking
breakfast quietly on the verandah outside her bedroom. Scents of summer
flowers streamed up to her from the garden below, and the sun shone warmly on
the arm of the chair on which her elbow rested. She was glad to be married;
glad to be Philip’s wife; glad to be alive; above all, glad of the event that
was so soon to change her life.

After the meal she rose and made her way through her bedroom to the
landing at the head of the stairs. Philip was coming up to meet her,
newspaper in hand. The morning papers did not arrive at the Hall until ten
o’clock, and it was Philip’s habit, if they contained anything he considered
interesting to her, to bring them up. Too often what he considered
interesting was merely some item of political news that had no meaning for
her at all.

“Stella,” he began, calmly as usual, “I’ve brought you
The Times
.
There’s news in it about Ward’s expedition.”

Somehow it was the last thing she was prepared for. She started violently,
and felt herself beginning to shiver from head to foot. She had known that
news was expected, but her surprise was hardly less great than if she had
known nothing. A hot flush enveloped her cheeks; she felt her skin tingling
as the flush spread downwards over her body.

“Ward…” she gasped, steadying herself by holding on to the hand-rail of
the staircase. “Well, what’s happened?”

Still in the same calm voice Philip, went on: “There’s bad news, I’m
afraid. The party haven’t been able to reach the Pole, and out of the
twenty-four, eleven…”

She seemed to feel the floor and the hand-rail slipping away from her.

“Yes?” She forced herself to appear as calm as Philip. “Oh, how
dreadful—are they dead?”

“Eleven…yes, eleven of them are dead…”

The floor slipped entirely away, and she gave a little scream and felt
herself falling, falling, falling, and then a most awful head-splitting
crash…

An hour later she opened her eyes and found herself in bed
and Philip at her side, holding her hand tenderly. And behind Philip stood
Vaughan, the elderly, ordinary-looking medico who had succeeded to Doctor
Challis’s practice.

Vaughan smiled and twirled his grey moustache. “Ah, yes, we shall soon be
quite well again…oh, yes, very soon…No bones broken. I will call again
later, Mr. Monsell…”

When he had gone Philip spoke to her very softly. “I’m s-sorry,
Stella…It was m-my fault. I ought not to have s-startled you…M-my fault,
Stella darling…Oh, if you had been hurt I should never have c-ceased to
reproach m-myself…”

Then the recollection of it all began to dawn upon her slowly.

“I suppose I fainted,” she said casually.

“Yes. You fell forward over the stairs, and if I had been a strong m-man
instead of a l-little weakling I c-could have c-caught you.”

That seemed to put her in mind of something.

“But the paper,” she whispered eagerly. “The newspaper…About the
expedition…It failed, didn’t it? And eleven—”

She paused for breath, and then went on, almost inaudibly: “Was Ward one
of the eleven?”

And his answer came: “No. Ward was saved.”

Then she said: “Will you give me the paper and let me read about it? And
will you please go downstairs to your study and do your work as usual? I
don’t feel the least bit hurt, and I know you’re always busy in the
mornings.”

He handed her the paper; the maid had brought it in, all torn and crumpled
from having been trodden on.

“Now will you
please
go away, Philip,” she repeated, taking it from
him. “To please
me
, Philip…I’m really all right, I assure you.”

He looked at her. “If you wish me to, I will,” he answered simply, and
walked out of the room without another word.

The newspaper report was an official cable transmitted by
wireless from the base-camp. It told in simple, unliterary language, moving
by its very lack of artifice, how the party had set out at the beginning of
the Antarctic summer, with the intention of making a quick dash to the Pole
and back again before the winter set in. It went on to describe, from the
scribbled diary of the party, how blizzards and glaciers had delayed them so
much on the outward journey that when they were four hundred miles from the
Pole they decided that the only chance of saving their lives lay in an
immediate return. “In this decision all concurred save one: Ward, the
physician of the party.” The cable gave no details of what might or might not
have been a dramatic argument fought out amidst the frozen splendour of the
South.

It was on the return journey that the loss of life occurred. All the party
were affected more or less with frostbite, and the position became serious
when they were no more than eighty miles from the camp, where those left
behind, owing to the sudden change of plans, were not expecting their return
so early. Several of the party could go no farther, and began to give up
hope. Food and fuel were both running short, and there seemed no chance of
anyone surviving unless help were sent from the base-camp. “One of the party,
Ward the physician, who
was
less unfit than the others, volunteered to
attempt the eighty miles journey alone. He set out with food enough for six
days, and was within twenty miles of the camp when a severe blizzard began,
and lasted three days. By that time his food and fuel had run out. Struggling
on, however, he arrived at the camp in the last stage of exhaustion. A relief
party set out immediately, and on locating the rest of the party, found that
nine out of the remaining twenty-three lead died. Two others died during the
journey back to the camp. The physician Ward is recovering.”

It was all curiously simple and straightforward, the language of men of
action, not of literary artists. Only in the newspaper’s headlines was there
any sign of writing-up, and also in a short leading-article in which “the
physician Ward” was held up as the type of man who had helped to build up the
greatness of England.

Stella read it through with intense eagerness, trying to see behind the
words, to visualize the hard majestic drama that had taken place on the other
side of the world, and the part that Ward had played in it. She realized only
very gradually that he had performed a deed of incomparable bravery.

After a little while there came a knock at the door and Philip entered
again. There was something strange and anxious about his face; something that
made her immediately sorry for him.

“Come in, Philip,” she said in a kindly tone. “I’ve read the account in
the paper.”

He sat down at her bedside and began to speak very slowly and quietly. “It
must be a dreadful thing to go out all those thousands of miles and then have
to turn back without reaching the place you’re aiming at. It is Ward’s first
failure in anything he has tackled.”

“
Failure
” The word seemed to her astounding. “Failure?—Would
you call it a failure?—Anyhow, it’s the most magnificent failure I’ve
ever heard of.”

He looked at her and was silent.

She was no longer sorry for him, but indignant—indignant because he
had not commented generously on Ward’s bravery. If he had done so she would
have loved him passionately, and thought how unfair it was that bodily
strength was given to one man and not to another.

There came a warm summer midnight when Philip sat in his
revolving desk-chair and clasped his hands nervously in, front of his knees.
Vaughan stood by the mantelpiece, suave even amidst his breathlessness. He
looked as if he had come through some gory affray; his hair was ruffled, his
forehead smeared with sweat, and on his collar and tie were red-brown
bloodstains. Philip faced him white as chalk, and with a look in his eyes of
almost uncanny horror.

He could not speak. When Vaughan spoke he looked at him as a dumb animal
looks at his master. And Vaughan spoke icily, almost casually, as if
emphasising his own composure.

“A very difficult case, Mr. Monsell…One of the worst I have ever
had…”

“Is she dead?”

The question came out like a shot from a gun-barrel, with the same quality
of irrepressible explosive force. Having spoken, the bloodless lips were set
firm as before, and the eyes stared forth again with their dumb half-babyish
appeal.