Tales of Space and Time
upon a penetrating conversation. Denton, he remarked, had been a swell,
and he wanted to know how he had come to wear the blue. He clearly
expected an interesting record of vice and extravagance. Had Denton ever
been at a Pleasure City? Denton was speedily to discover how the
existence of these wonderful places of delight permeated and defiled the
thought and honour of these unwilling, hopeless workers of the
underworld.
His aristocratic temperament resented these questions. He answered "No"
curtly. The man persisted with a still more personal question, and this
time it was Denton who turned away.
"Gorblimey!" said his interlocutor, much astonished.
It presently forced itself upon Denton's mind that this remarkable
conversation was being repeated in indignant tones to more sympathetic
hearers, and that it gave rise to astonishment and ironical laughter.
They looked at Denton with manifestly enhanced interest. A curious
perception of isolation dawned upon him. He tried to think of his press
and its unfamiliar peculiarities....
The machines kept everybody pretty busy during the first spell, and
then came a recess. It was only an interval for refreshment, too brief
for any one to go out to a Labour Company dining-room. Denton followed
his fellow-workers into a short gallery, in which were a number of bins
of refuse from the presses.
Each man produced a packet of food. Denton had no packet. The manager, a
careless young man who held his position by influence, had omitted to
warn Denton that it was necessary to apply for this provision. He stood
apart, feeling hungry. The others drew together in a group and talked in
undertones, glancing at him ever and again. He became uneasy. His
appearance of disregard cost him an increasing effort. He tried to think
of the levers of his new press.
Presently one, a man shorter but much broader and stouter than Denton,
came forward to him. Denton turned to him as unconcernedly as possible.
"Here!" said the delegate--as Denton judged him to be--extending a cube
of bread in a not too clean hand. He had a swart, broad-nosed face, and
his mouth hung down towards one corner.
Denton felt doubtful for the instant whether this was meant for civility
or insult. His impulse was to decline. "No, thanks," he said; and, at
the man's change of expression, "I'm not hungry."
There came a laugh from the group behind. "Told you so," said the man
who had offered Denton the loan of an oil can. "He's top side, he is.
You ain't good enough for 'im."
The swart face grew a shade darker.
"Here," said its owner, still extending the bread, and speaking in a
lower tone; "you got to eat this. See?"
Denton looked into the threatening face before him, and odd little
currents of energy seemed to be running through his limbs and body.
"I don't want it," he said, trying a pleasant smile that twitched and
failed.
The thickset man advanced his face, and the bread became a physical
threat in his hand. Denton's mind rushed together to the one problem of
his antagonist's eyes.
"Eat it," said the swart man.
There came a pause, and then they both moved quickly. The cube of bread
described a complicated path, a curve that would have ended in Denton's
face; and then his fist hit the wrist of the hand that gripped it, and
it flew upward, and out of the conflict--its part played.
He stepped back quickly, fists clenched and arms tense. The hot, dark
countenance receded, became an alert hostility, watching its chance.
Denton for one instant felt confident, and strangely buoyant and serene.
His heart beat quickly. He felt his body alive, and glowing to the tips.
"Scrap, boys!" shouted some one, and then the dark figure had leapt
forward, ducked back and sideways, and come in again. Denton struck out,
and was hit. One of his eyes seemed to him to be demolished, and he felt
a soft lip under his fist just before he was hit again--this time under
the chin. A huge fan of fiery needles shot open. He had a momentary
persuasion that his head was knocked to pieces, and then something hit
his head and back from behind, and the fight became an uninteresting, an
impersonal thing.
He was aware that time--seconds or minutes--had passed, abstract,
uneventful time. He was lying with his head in a heap of ashes, and
something wet and warm ran swiftly into his neck. The first shock broke
up into discrete sensations. All his head throbbed; his eye and his chin
throbbed exceedingly, and the taste of blood was in his mouth.
"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
requires 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 disarray. "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 here was
enormous matter for thought, and 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
Underworld 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 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 came 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.