Tales of Space and Time
And in the evening they came to the deserted village, with its houses
that seemed so small and odd to them: they found it golden in the glory
of the sunset, and desolate and still. They went from one deserted house
to another, marvelling at their quaint simplicity, and debating which
they should choose. And at last, in a sunlit corner of a room that had
lost its outer wall, they came upon a wild flower, a little flower of
blue that the weeders of the Food Company had overlooked.
That house they decided upon; but they did not remain in it long that
night, because they were resolved to feast upon nature. And moreover the
houses became very gaunt and shadowy after the sunlight had faded out
of the sky. So after they had rested a little time they went to the
crest of the hill again to see with their own eyes the silence of heaven
set with stars, about which the old poets had had so many things to
tell. It was a wonderful sight, and Denton talked like the stars, and
when they went down the hill at last the sky was pale with dawn. They
slept but little, and in the morning when they woke a thrush was singing
in a tree.
So these young people of the twenty-second century began their exile.
That morning they were very busy exploring the resources of this new
home in which they were going to live the simple life. They did not
explore very fast or very far, because they went everywhere
hand-in-hand; but they found the beginnings of some furniture. Beyond
the village was a store of winter fodder for the sheep of the Food
Company, and Denton dragged great armfuls to the house to make a bed;
and in several of the houses were old fungus-eaten chairs and
tables--rough, barbaric, clumsy furniture, it seemed to them, and made
of wood. They repeated many of the things they had said on the previous
day, and towards evening they found another flower, a harebell. In the
late afternoon some Company shepherds went down the river valley riding
on a big multicycle; but they hid from them, because their presence,
Elizabeth said, seemed to spoil the romance of this old-world place
altogether.
In this fashion they lived a week. For all that week the days were
cloudless, and the nights nights of starry glory, that were invaded each
a little more by a crescent moon.
Yet something of the first splendour of their coming faded--faded
imperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, and
lacked fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march from
London told in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered from
a slight unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupied
time. In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber of the old times
he found a rust-eaten spade, and with this he made a fitful attack on
the razed and grass-grown garden--though he had nothing to plant or sow.
He returned to Elizabeth with a sweat-streaming face, after half an hour
of such work.
"There were giants in those days," he said, not understanding what wont
and training will do. And their walk that day led them along the hills
until they could see the city shimmering far away in the valley. "I
wonder how things are going on there," he said.
And then came a change in the weather. "Come out and see the clouds,"
she cried; and behold! they were a sombre purple in the north and east,
streaming up to ragged edges at the zenith. And as they went up the hill
these hurrying streamers blotted out the sunset. Suddenly the wind set
the beech-trees swaying and whispering, and Elizabeth shivered. And then
far away the lightning flashed, flashed like a sword that is drawn
suddenly, and the distant thunder marched about the sky, and even as
they stood astonished, pattering upon them came the first headlong
raindrops of the storm. In an instant the last streak of sunset was
hidden by a falling curtain of hail, and the lightning flashed again,
and the voice of the thunder roared louder, and all about them the world
scowled dark and strange.
Seizing hands, these children of the city ran down the hill to their
home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was
weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and
brittle and active with the pelting hail.
Then began a strange and terrible night for them. For the first time in
their civilised lives they were in absolute darkness; they were wet and
cold and shivering, all about them hissed the hail, and through the long
neglected ceilings of the derelict home came noisy spouts of water and
formed pools and rivulets on the creaking floors. As the gusts of the
storm struck the worn-out building, it groaned and shuddered, and now a
mass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some
loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty
greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his
gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the
darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more
lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness
the steaming, dripping room in which they sheltered.
Never before had they been in the open air save when the sun was
shining. All their time had been spent in the warm and airy ways and
halls and rooms of the latter-day city. It was to them that night as if
they were in some other world, some disordered chaos of stress and
tumult, and almost beyond hoping that they should ever see the city ways
again.
The storm seemed to last interminably, until at last they dozed between
the thunderclaps, and then very swiftly it fell and ceased. And as the
last patter of the rain died away they heard an unfamiliar sound.
"What is that?" cried Elizabeth.
It came again. It was the barking of dogs. It drove down the desert lane
and passed; and through the window, whitening the wall before them and
throwing upon it the shadow of the window-frame and of a tree in black
silhouette, shone the light of the waxing moon....
Just as the pale dawn was drawing the things about them into sight, the
fitful barking of dogs came near again, and stopped. They listened.
After a pause they heard the quick pattering of feet seeking round the
house, and short, half-smothered barks. Then again everything was still.
"Ssh!" whispered Elizabeth, and pointed to the door of their room.
Denton went half-way towards the door, and stood listening. He came back
with a face of affected unconcern. "They must be the sheep-dogs of the
Food Company," he said. "They will do us no harm."
He sat down again beside her. "What a night it has been!" he said, to
hide how keenly he was listening.
"I don't like dogs," answered Elizabeth, after a long silence.
"Dogs never hurt any one," said Denton. "In the old days--in the
nineteenth century--everybody had a dog."
"There was a romance I heard once. A dog killed a man."
"Not this sort of dog," said Denton confidently. "Some of those
romances--are exaggerated."
Suddenly a half bark and a pattering up the staircase; the sound of
panting. Denton sprang to his feet and drew the sword out of the damp
straw upon which they had been lying. Then in the doorway appeared a
gaunt sheep-dog, and halted there. Behind it stared another. For an
instant man and brute faced each other, hesitating.
Then Denton, being ignorant of dogs, made a sharp step forward. "Go
away," he said, with a clumsy motion of his sword.
The dog started and growled. Denton stopped sharply. "Good dog!" he
said.
The growling jerked into a bark.
"Good dog!" said Denton. The second dog growled and barked. A third out
of sight down the staircase took up the barking also. Outside others
gave tongue--a large number it seemed to Denton.
"This is annoying," said Denton, without taking his eye off the brutes
before him. "Of course the shepherds won't come out of the city for
hours yet. Naturally these dogs don't quite make us out."
"I can't hear," shouted Elizabeth. She stood up and came to him.
Denton tried again, but the barking still drowned his voice. The sound
had a curious effect upon his blood. Odd disused emotions began to stir;
his face changed as he shouted. He tried again; the barking seemed to
mock him, and one dog danced a pace forward, bristling. Suddenly he
turned, and uttering certain words in the dialect of the underways,
words incomprehensible to Elizabeth, he made for the dogs. There was a
sudden cessation of the barking, a growl and a snapping. Elizabeth saw
the snarling head of the foremost dog, its white teeth and retracted
ears, and the flash of the thrust blade. The brute leapt into the air
and was flung back.
Then Denton, with a shout, was driving the dogs before him. The sword
flashed above his head with a sudden new freedom of gesture, and then he
vanished down the staircase. She made six steps to follow him, and on
the landing there was blood. She stopped, and hearing the tumult of dogs
and Denton's shouts pass out of the house, ran to the window.
Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch;
and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers still
in the blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and running
across the garden space. And then she saw something that for a moment he
did not see. The dogs circled round this way and that, and came again.
They had him in the open.
In an instant she divined the situation. She would have called to him.
For a moment she felt sick and helpless, and then, obeying a strange
impulse, she gathered up her white skirt and ran downstairs. In the hall
was the rusting spade. That was it! She seized it and ran out.
She came none too soon. One dog rolled before him, well-nigh slashed in
half; but a second had him by the thigh, a third gripped his collar
behind, and a fourth had the blade of the sword between its teeth,
tasting its own blood. He parried the leap of a fifth with his left arm.
It might have been the first century instead of the twenty-second, so
far as she was concerned. All the gentleness of her eighteen years of
city life vanished before this primordial need. The spade smote hard and
sure, and cleft a dog's skull. Another, crouching for a spring, yelped
with dismay at this unexpected antagonist, and rushed aside. Two wasted
precious moments on the binding of a feminine skirt.
The collar of Denton's cloak tore and parted as he staggered back; and
that dog too felt the spade, and ceased to trouble him. He sheathed his
sword in the brute at his thigh.
"To the wall!" cried Elizabeth; and in three seconds the fight was at an
end, and our young people stood side by side, while a remnant of five
dogs, with ears and tails of disaster, fled shamefully from the stricken
field.
For a moment they stood panting and victorious, and then Elizabeth,
dropping her spade, covered her face, and sank to the ground in a
paroxysm of weeping. Denton looked about him, thrust the point of his
sword into the ground so that it was at hand, and stooped to comfort
her.
* * * * *
At last their more tumultuous emotions subsided, and they could talk
again. She leant upon the wall, and he sat upon it so that he could keep
an eye open for any returning dogs. Two, at any rate, were up on the
hillside and keeping up a vexatious barking.
She was tear-stained, but not very wretched now, because for half an
hour he had been repeating that she was brave and had saved his life.
But a new fear was growing in her mind.
"They are the dogs of the Food Company," she said. "There will be
trouble."
"I am afraid so. Very likely they will prosecute us for trespass."
A pause.
"In the old times," he said, "this sort of thing happened day after
day."