H.G. Wells Short Stories, page 60
“He’s all right,” said a voice. “He’s opening his eyes.”
“Serve him – well right,” said a second.
His mates were standing about him. He made an effort and sat up. He put his hand to the back of his head, and his hair was wet and full of cinders. A laugh greeted the gesture. His eye was partially closed. He perceived what had happened. His momentary anticipation of a final victory had vanished.
“Looks surprised,” said some one.
“’Ave any more?” said a wit; and then, imitating Denton’s refined accent: “No, thank you.”
Denton perceived the swart man with a blood-stained handkerchief before his face, and somewhat in the background.
“Where’s that bit of bread he’s got to eat?” said a little ferret-faced creature; and sought with his foot in the ashes of the adjacent bin.
Denton had a moment of internal debate. He knew the code of honour required a man to pursue a fight he has begun, to the bitter end; but this was his first taste of the bitterness. He was resolved to rise again, but he felt no passionate impulse. It occurred to him – and the thought was no very violent spur – that he was perhaps after all a coward. For a moment his will was heavy, a lump of lead.
“‘Ere it is,” said the little ferret-faced man, and stooped to pick up a cindery cube. He looked at Denton, then at the others.
Slowly, unwillingly, Denton stood up.
A dirty-faced albino extended a hand to the ferret-faced man.
“Gimme that toke,” he said. He advanced threateningly, bread in hand, to Denton. “So you ain’t ‘ad your bellyful yet,” he said. “Eh?”
Now it was coming. “No, I haven’t,” said Denton, with a catching of the breath, and resolved to try this brute behind the ear before he himself got stunned again. He knew he would be stunned again. He was astonished how ill he had judged himself beforehand. A few ridiculous lunges, and down he would go again. He watched the albino’s eyes. The albino was grinning confidently, like a man who plans an agreeable trick. A sudden perception of impending indignities stung Denton.
“You leave ’im alone, Jim,” said the swart man suddenly over the blood-stained rag. “He ain’t done nothing to you.”
The albino’s grin vanished. He stopped. He looked from one to the other. It seemed to Denton that the swart man demanded the privilege of his destruction. The albino would have been better.
“You leave ’im alone,” said the swart man. “See? ‘E’s ’ad ‘is licks.”
A clattering bell lifted up its voice and solved the situation. The albino hesitated. “Lucky for you,” he said, adding a foul metaphor, and turned with the others towards the press-room again. “Wait for the end of the spell, mate,” said the albino over his shoulder – an afterthought. The swart man waited for the albino to precede him. Denton realised that he had a reprieve.
The men passed towards an open door, Denton became aware of his duties, and hurried to join the tail of the queue. At the doorway of the vaulted gallery of presses a yellow-uniformed labour policeman stood ticking a card. He had ignored the swart man’s haemorrhage.
“Hurry up there!” he said to Denton.
“Hello!” he said, at the sight of his facial disarry. “Who’s been hitting you?”
“That’s my affair,” said Denton.
“Not if it spiles your work, it ain’t,” said the man in yellow. “You mind that.”
Denton made no answer. He was a rough – a labourer. He wore the blue canvas. The laws of assault and battery, he knew, were not for the likes of him. He went to his press.
He could feel the skin of his brow and chin and head lifting themselves to noble bruises, felt the throb and pain of each aspiring contusion. His nervous system slid down to lethargy; at each movement in his press adjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour – that too throbbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened in the last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that there was enormous matter for thought, he could not think save, in disordered snatches.
His mood was a sort of stagnant astonishment. All his conceptions were overthrown. He had regarded his security from physical violence as inherent, as one of the conditions of life. So indeed, it had been while he wore his middle-class costume, had his middle-class property to serve for his defence. But who would interfere among Labour roughs fighting together? And indeed in those days no man would. In the under-world there was no law between man and man; the law and machinery of the state had become for them something that held men down, fended them off from much desirable property and pleasure, and that was all. Violence, that ocean in which the brutes live for ever, and from which a thousand dykes and contrivances have won our hazardous civilised life, had flowed in again upon the sinking underways and submerged them. The fist ruled. Denton had come right down at last to the elemental – fist and trick and the stubborn heart and fellowship – even as it was in the beginning.
The rhythm of his machine changed, and his thoughts were interrupted.
Presently he could think again. Strange how quickly things had happened! He bore these men who had thrashed him no very vivid ill-will. He was bruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness, now the reasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool. Disdain, seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat still clinging to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitiful creature of pretence in all this clamant universe. Good heavens! What was there for him to despise in these men?
What a pity he had not appreciated all this better five hours ago!
What would happen at the end of the spell? He could not tell. He could not imagine. He could not imagine the thoughts of these men. He was sensible only of their hostility and utter want of sympathy. Vague possibilities of shame and violence chased one another, across his mind. Could he devise some weapon? He recalled his assault upon the hypnotist, but there were no detachable lamps here. He could see nothing that he could catch up in his defence.
For a space he thought of a headlong bolt for the security of the public ways directly when the spell was over. Apart from the trivial consideration of his self-respect, he perceived that this would be only a foolish postponement and aggravation of his trouble. He perceived the ferret-faced man and the albino talking together with their eyes towards him. Presently they were talking to the swart man, who stood with his broad back studiously towards Denton.
At last the end of the second spell. The lender of oil cans stopped his press sharply and turned round, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes had the quiet expectation of one who seats himself in a theatre.
Now was the crisis, and all the little nerves of Denton’s being seemed leaping and dancing. He had decided to show fight if any fresh indignity was offered him. He stopped his press and turned. With an enormous affectation of ease he walked down the vault and entered the passage of the ash pits, only to discover he had left his jacket – which he had taken off because of the heat of the vault – beside his press. He walked back. He met the albino eye to eye.
He heard the ferret-faced man in expostulation. “’E reely ought, eat it,” said the ferret-faced man. “’E did reely.”
“No – you leave ’im alone,” said the swart man.
Apparently nothing further was to happen to him that day. He passed out to the passage and staircase that led up to the moving platforms of the city.
He emerged on the livid brilliance and streaming movement of the public street. He became acutely aware of his disfigured face, and felt his swelling bruises with a limp, investigatory hand. He went up to the swiftest platform, and seated himself on a Labour Company bench.
He lapsed into a pensive torpor. The immediate dangers and stresses of his position he saw with a sort of static clearness. What would they do tomorrow? He could not tell. What would Elizabeth think of his brutalisation? He could not tell. He was exhausted. He was aroused presently by a hand upon his arm.
He looked up, and saw the swart man seated beside him. He started. Surely he was safe from violence in the public way!
The swart man’s face retained no traces of his share in the fight; his expression was free from hostility – seemed almost deferential. “’Scuse me,” he said, with a total absence of truculence. Denton realised that no assault was intended. He stared, awaiting the next development.
It was evident the next sentence was premeditated. “Whad – I – was – going – to say – was this,” said the swart man, and sought through a silence for further words.
“Whad – I – was – going – to say – was this,” he repeated.
Finally he abandoned that gambit. “You’re aw right,” he cried, laying a grimy hand on Denton’s grimy sleeve. “You’re aw right. You’re a ge’man. Sorry – very sorry. Wanted to tell you that.”
Denton realised that there must exist motives beyond a mere impulse to abominable proceedings in the man. He meditated, and swallowed an unworthy pride.
“I did not mean to be offensive to you,” he said, “in refusing that bit of bread.”
“Meant it friendly,” said the swart man, recalling the scene; “but – in front of that blarsted Whitey and his snigger – well – I ’ad to scrap.”
“Yes,” said Denton with sudden fervour: “I was a fool.”
“Ah,” said the swart man, with great satisfaction. “That’s aw right. Shake!”
And Denton shook.
The moving platform was rushing by the establishment of a face moulder, and its lower front was a huge display of mirror, designed to stimulate the thirst for more symmetrical features. Denton caught the reflection of himself and his new friend, enormously twisted and broadened. His own face was puffed, one-sided, and blood-stained; a grin of idiotic and insincere amiability distorted its latitude. A wisp of hair occluded one eye. The trick of the mirror presented the swart man as a gross expansion of lip and nostril. They were linked by shaking hands. Then abruptly this vision passed – to return to memory in the anaemic meditations of a waking dawn.
As he shook, the swart man made some muddled remark, to the effect that he had always known he could get on with a gentleman if one came his way. He prolonged the shaking until Denton, under the influence of the mirror, withdrew his hand. The swart man became pensive, spat impressively on the platform, and resumed his theme.
“Whad I was going to say was this,” he said; he gravelled, and shook his head at his foot.
Denton became curious. “Go on,” he said, attentive.
The swart man took the plunge. He grasped Denton’s arm, became intimate in his attitude. “‘Scuse me,” he said. “Fact is, you done know ’ow to scrap. Done know ’ow to. Why – you done know ’ow to begin. You’ll get killed if you don’t mind. ’Ouldin’ your ’ands – There!”
He reinforced his statement by objurgation, watching the effect of each oath with a wary eye.
“F’r instance. You’re tall. Long arms. You got a longer reach than any one in the brasted vault. Gobblimey, but I thought I’d got a Tough on. ‘Stead of which ...’Scuse me. I wouldn’t have ’it you if I’d known. It’s like fighting sacks. ’Tisn’ right. Y’r arms seemed ’ung on ’ooks. Reg’lar –’ung on ’ooks. There!”
Denton stared, and then surprised and hurt his battered chin by a sudden laugh. Bitter tears came into his eyes.
“Go on,” he said.
The swart man reverted to his formula. He was good enough to say he liked the look of Denton, thought he had stood up “amazing plucky. On’y pluck ain’t no good – ain’t no brasted good – if you don’t ’old your ’ands.
“Whad I was going to say was this,” he said. “Lemme show you ’ow to scrap. Just lemme. You’re ig’nant, you ain’t no class; but you might be a very decent scrapper – very decent. Shown. That’s what I meant to say.”
Denton hesitated. “But –” he said, “I can’t give you anything –”
“That’s the ge’man all over,” said the swart man. “Who arst you to?”
“But your time?”
“If you don’t get learnt scrapping you’ll get killed – don’t you make no bones of that.”
Denton thought. “I don’t know,” he said.
He looked at the face beside him, and all its native coarseness shouted at him. He felt a quick revulsion from his transient friendliness. It seemed to him incredible that it should be necessary for him to be indebted to such a creature.
“The chaps are always scrapping,” said the swart man. “Always. And of course – if one gets waxy and ’its you vital....”
“By God!” cried Denton; “I wish one would.”
“Of course, if you feel like that –”
“You don’t understand.”
“P’raps I don’t,” said the swart man; and lapsed into a fuming silence.
When he spoke again his voice was less friendly, and he prodded Denton by way of address. “Look see!” he said: “Are you going to let me show you ’ow to scrap?”
“It’s tremendously kind of you,” said Denton; “but –”
There was a pause. The swart man rose and bent over Denton.
“Too much ge’man,” he said – “eh? I got a red face ...By gosh! You are a brasted fool!” He turned away, and instantly Denton realised the truth of this remark.
The swart man descended with dignity to a cross way, and Denton, after a momentary impulse to pursuit, remained on the platform. For a time the things that had happened filled his mind. In one day his graceful system of resignation had been shattered beyond hope. Brute force, the final, the fundamental, had thrust its face through all his explanations and glosses and consolations and grinned enigmatically. Though he was hungry and tired, he did not go on directly to the Labour Hotel, where he would meet Elizabeth. He found he was beginning to think, he wanted very greatly to think; and so, wrapped in a monstrous cloud of meditation, he went the circuit of the city on his moving platform twice. You figure him, tearing through the glaring, thunder-voiced city at a pace of fifty miles an hour, the city upon the planet that spins along its chartless path through space many thousands of miles an hour, funking most terribly, and trying to understand why the heart and will in him should suffer and keep alive.
When at last he came to Elizabeth, she was white and anxious. He might have noted she was in trouble, had it not been for his own preoccupation. He feared most that she would desire to know every detail of his indignities, that she would be sympathetic or indignant. He saw her eyebrows rise at the sight of him.
“I’ve had rough handling,” he said, and gasped. “It’s too fresh – too hot. I don’t want to talk about it.” He sat down with an unavoidable air of sullenness.
She stared at him in astonishment, and as she read something of significant hieroglyphic of his battered face, her lips whitened. Her hand – it was thinner now, than in the days of their prosperity, and her first finger was a little altered by the metal punching she did – clenched convulsively. “This horrible world!” she said, and said no more.
In these latter days they had become a very silent couple; they said scarcely a word to each other that night, but each followed a private train of thought. In the small hours, as Elizabeth lay awake, Denton started up beside her suddenly – he had been lying as still as a dead man.
“I cannot stand it!” cried Denton. “I will not stand it!”
She saw him dimly, sitting up; saw his arm lunge as if in a furious blow at the enshrouding night. Then for a space he was still. “It is too much – it is more than one can bear!”
She could say nothing. To her also, it seemed that this was as far as one could go. She waited through a long stillness. She could see that Denton sat with his arms about his knees, his chin almost touching them.
Then he laughed.
“No,” he said at last, “I’m going to stand it. That’s the peculiar thing. There isn’t a grain of suicide in us – not a grain. I suppose all people with a turn that way have gone. We’re going through with it – to the end.”
Elizabeth thought greyly, and realised that this also was true.
“We’re going through with it. To think of all who have gone through with it: all the generations – endless – endless. Little beasts that snapped and snarled, snapping and snarling, snapping and snarling, generation after generation.”
His monotone, ended abruptly, resumed after a vast interval.
“There were ninety thousand years of stone age. A Denton somewhere in all those years. Apostolic succession. The grace of going through. Let me see! Ninety – nine hundred – three nines, twenty-seven – three thousand generations of men –! Men more or less. And each fought, and was bruised, and shamed, and somehow held his own – going through with it – passing it on ...And thousands more to come perhaps – thousands! Passing it on. I wonder if they will thank us.”
His voice assumed an argumentative note. “If one could find something definite ...If one could say, ‘This is why – this is why it goes on ...’”
He became still, and Elizabeth’s eyes slowly separated him from the darkness until at last she could see how he sat with his head resting on his hand. A sense of the enormous remoteness of their minds came to her; that dim suggestion of another being seemed to her a figure of their mutual understanding. What could he be thinking now? What might he not say next? Another age seemed to elapse before he sighed and whispered: “No, I don’t understand it. No!” Then a long interval, and he repeated this. But the second time it had the tone almost of a solution.
She became aware that he was preparing to lie down. She marked his movements, perceived with astonishment how he adjusted his pillow with a careful regard to comfort. He lay down with a sigh of contentment almost. His passion had passed. He lay still, and presently his breathing became regular and deep.
