WHEN he recovered consciousness it was but to awake to an incomprehensible dream condition. Of his whereabouts he had no notion. An attempt to move caused him such hideous pain in his head as almost to render him again unconscious. His limbs, too, seemed under the control of dream paralysis. He lay for a while co-ordinating his faculties, until he arrived at the definite conviction that he was awake. His eyes rested on ashlars of granite which, as he lay on his left side, continued in a long line; also, cast downwards, they rested on rough grass. Gradually he realized that he was in the open air, that the stones were part of his wall. What he was doing there he could not tell. He felt sick and faint. By an effort of will he moved a leg. The movement revealed unaccustomed stiffness of limb: it also reawakened the torture of his head. Again he stayed motionless. Yes, it was daylight. It was sunlight; some twenty feet further down the wall cast a shadow. Presently over his recovering senses stole an abominable stench. He sniffed, jerking his head to its intolerable agony. Cautiously he lifted his right hand to the seat of pain. His fingers dabbled in something like thick glue. Bringing them down before his eyes, he saw they were covered with coagulated blood. He felt again, and realized, in stupid amazement, that his hair was stuck to a stone. The first thing to be done was to liberate himself. He remembered afterwards that he said: “Let us concentrate on this: nothing else for the moment matters.” He concentrated, and at last, after infinite suffering that made him cry aloud, he freed his hair from its glutinous imprisonment and, spent with the effort, rolled over on the flat of his back and gazed upwards into the blue sky. A faint breeze swept over him. But the breeze was laden with the same abominable stench. As soon as he could gather sufficient physical energy he rose to a sitting posture, supporting himself on his hands, and gazed spellbound and stupefied on a scene of unimaginable disaster. Where once stretched the familiar long-lying homestead, there was nothing but an inchoate mass of stones, from the midst of which eddied and swirled columns of black smoke. And the wind blew the smoke towards him. Looking down, he found himself begrimed by it. He sat forward, staring, and, secure of balance, withdrew his hands and put them up to his brow, seeking a clue to the mystery. Memory, stage after stage, returned. He had been sitting at night with Quong Ho. They had heard a strange noise. They had gone out to discover what it was. Then——? What had happened then? Just a terror of Hell opening—and nothingness. Yes, he remembered. It was dense mist when they went out. Now it was clear, beautifully clear. The sun was shining; but it was low on the horizon; so it must be early morning.
What could have happened? A thunderstorm? The place struck by lightning? He gripped his temples. He had never heard of a thunderstorm in a dense fog. Besides, thunder never occurred in the long, continuous, rhythmical acceleration of volume of sound. Yet what else but thunder and lightning could account for the blasted homestead that reeked before his eyes?
He looked around. The stone enclosure was strewn with unspeakable wreckage; great blocks of masonry, unrecognizable shafts of timber, bits of twisted iron railing, ashes, charred wood. . . . He rose dizzily to his feet. His head was one agony. He felt something wet on his neck, and realized that the wound evidently caused by the concussion of his head against a stone, had begun to bleed afresh. Before he could tie around his brows the handkerchief which he mechanically drew out, he saw, close by, the dead body of the dog Brutus, and he returned the handkerchief to his pocket. The dog seemed to have been killed outright by a great piece of granite that had been hurled upon him. Then for the first time his mind grew quite clear. The unknown convulsion had dealt not only destruction but death. Where was Quong Ho?
He started forthwith on an agonized search. They had been standing together a few paces away from the front door. Thither he went, but could find no trace of him among the wreckage. From the roofless enclosure of granite and through the windows poured black volumes of smoke. It was useless, even impossible, to look inside. Baltazar called out loudly the Chinaman’s name, as he made a circuit of the devastated house, only to find fresh evidences of complete catastrophe. Here and there lay fragments of iron, unfamiliar to him, which in his anxiety for Quong Ho’s safety he did not speculate on or examine. He nearly tripped over something by the burned-down stable. Looking down, to his sickening horror, he found it to be the head of the old grey mare. He went on. No sign of Quong Ho. In the little enclosed grass patch, now foul with rubbish, the very goats lay dead, mostly dismembered. He stared at them stupidly. A sudden shrill noise caused him to jump aside in terror. A second later he realized that it came from a solitary cockerel, strutting about in the sunshine, the sole survivor of the poultry-run, cynically proclaiming his lust of life.
Wherever he turned was ruin utter and final. But where was Quong Ho? Had he not, after all, remained outside, but re-entered the house? If so—he shuddered. Creeping back, he peered through the windows on the windward side, as long as the smart in his eyes would allow him. There was nothing there but fragments of stone and smouldering, indistinguishable ash that mounted nearly to the sill. Whatever had been the cause, the dry thatch had been set alight—the roof had fallen in, and nothing of the interior remained save a few charred books on the upper shelves of blackened and crazily precarious sections of bookcase. He strode away, came to the front of the house again, and continued his search there, with horror in his soul. The front door had been blown out. On his first inspection he had passed it by. Now he stood wondering at the supernatural explosion that could have burst it from its hinges and thrown its great oaken weight bodily forth; and, looking at it, suddenly became conscious of a foot, shod in a Chinese shoe, protruding from beneath it. He bent down swiftly and touched the foot. Shouted “Quong Ho!” But there was no reply. He rose, remained for a moment with the horror of the old mare’s head, and other things he had seen in the goats’ enclosure, racking his nerves. Then he braced himself, bent and lifted the door, and under it lay the body of Quong Ho. To lever the heavy mass and set it upright without treading on the motionless man, taxed all his strength. At last he got a footing on the further side of Quong Ho, which enabled him to set the door on edge, and a push sent it clattering clear. Then he saw that the corner had rested on a stone by Quong Ho’s head and so had not crushed his face.
He bent down, made a rapid examination; then sank back on his heels, and thanked God that Quong Ho was still alive. There was a wound on his head, somewhat like his own, which until then he had all but forgotten. As far as he could make out the leg was broken in one or two places. Possibly ribs. He did not know. He took off his grey flannel jacket, the back of which was drenched in blood, and, rolling it up, put it beneath Quong Ho’s head. The obvious thing to do next was to fetch water, bandages, stimulant—there was a medicine-chest and brandy in the house. After a few impulsive strides he stopped short. There were no bandages, no brandy. What remained of them lay in the burning filth within the house walls. But water? He prayed God there might be some in the scullery. He found the pump that worked the well broken, but the blessed stream ran from the tap, showing that there was still some reserve in the fortunately undamaged cistern. As best he might he cleaned out and filled a pail; found an unbroken yellow bowl, and took them out to where Quong Ho lay. He went back to search for linen or rag; but in that welter of destruction he could find nothing. His own handkerchief was absurdly inadequate. Luckily, the day before being warm, he had changed before lunch into a thin undervest and a linen shirt. The latter he removed and tore into strips, and so he bathed and bandaged Quong Ho’s head. He also ripped up the man’s trousers and cut shoes and socks from the swollen feet, and with the remainder of the shirt made compresses. And all the time Quong Ho showed no sign of returning consciousness. Evidently he was suffering from severe concussion.
It was only when he had finished his rough dressings that the ghastliness of his isolation smote him. He must leave Quong Ho there alone, uncared for, and go across the moor in search of help. Suppose his own leg had been broken. The sweat stood on his forehead. They would have lain there and starved to death, like stricken animals in a wilderness. Meanwhile the sun was rising higher in the sky and was beating down upon Quong Ho. With a mighty effort he raised him in his arms and staggered with him to the other side of the house, where there would be shade for some hours: where, too, the evil smoke could not eddy over him. Placing the jacket again beneath his head and the bowl filled with fresh water by his side, on the off chance of his recovering consciousness, he left the scene of desolation and horror.
About a mile away he realized that he had not tended his own wounded head, which, without any covering from the sun, was throbbing in exquisite agony. His handkerchief he had left with the remainder of the shirt. He also realized that he was bare-armed, clad only in the summer undervest and flannel trousers and the light gym shoes in which he used to fence. He reeked all over, hands and arms and body, with soot and blood. All this soon passed from his mind. Things whirred in his brain, so that he feared lest he were growing lightheaded. Also, although he had drunk a little water before starting, he began to be tormented with a burning thirst. He lost sense of the vastness of the calamity that had befallen him, lost the power, too, of speculating on its cause. All his mind was concentrated on battling against tortured nerves and reeling brain, in order to achieve one object. He kept on repeating to himself what he should say to the first human being he should meet; fortified himself with the reflection: “Three miles to the road; three-quarters of an hour.” But only having traversed the barely distinguishable track thrice before, once when he made the return journey from Water-End to view the hermitage, and on the other occasion when he drove thither to take up residence, he missed it and strayed diagonally across the moor. At last, after a couple of hours wandering, he reached a ditch beyond which stretched the dazzling white ribbon of road. He fell into the ditch like a drunken man, managed to clamber out and, on the further side, stumbled and lay exhausted, unable to move. After a few minutes he staggered to his feet, and swayed down the road, which was as lonely as the moorland.
Suddenly he became aware of a difference; of trees and laurels and verdure on his left; and in the midst of them stood a couple of tall granite pillars with a gateway between. It was a house. He had won through. Inside was human aid. He made his way to the gate and clutched the top bar to steady himself and looked down a well-ordered drive. As he looked a man appeared from a side path, who, after regarding the haggard apparition grotesquely clad, covered with grime and blood, for a few gasping seconds, rushed up.
“Hello! Hello! What’s the matter? Why—I’m jiggered! It’s Mr. Baltazar!”
Baltazar swept a hand towards the moor, and said hoarsely:
“My Chinese friend is over there, dying. There’s been an accident. Explosion or something. He’s dying. You must send men and doctors at once.”
“Good Lord!” cried the man. “Of course I will. Come inside and tell me all about it. You don’t mean to say those bombs got you? You look in a damn fine old mess too.”
He opened the gate, clasped Baltazar round the waist, and supported him down the drive. Soon an old gardener came up and lent a hand, and between them they carried the half-fainting Baltazar into the house and laid him on a couch in the dining-room. The host poured out a stiff brandy and soda.
“Here, drink this.”
The cool bubbling liquid was a draught of Paradise to Baltazar’s parched throat. The unaccustomed stimulant, after a few moments, had its bracing effect.
“Now, what’s it all about? You remember me, don’t you? Pillivant’s my name. Came to call about eighteen months ago, and you turned me down. Anyhow that’s forgotten. I don’t bear malice, especially when a chap seems down and out. What can I do for you?”
Baltazar said: “There was an explosion last night. It knocked me out. I woke up this morning to find my house burned to the ground. My Chinese friend is there unconscious, with concussion of the brain and broken legs. I had to come for assistance. You must send at once.”
“All right,” said Pillivant. “You stay there. I’ll do some telephoning. Meanwhile I’ll send the wife to look after you. You want a wash and a change, and a doctor and bed.”
“Bed!” cried Baltazar. “I must go back to Quong Ho.”
He rose to his feet, as Pillivant left the room, and tottered after him. But he found himself foolishly lying on the floor. He said to himself: “He has given me brandy. He’s sending his wife. She’ll think I’m drunk.” And with a great effort he re-established himself on the couch.
In a few minutes Mrs. Pillivant entered. She was a faded, fair woman in the late thirties, wearing a cloth skirt and tartan silk low-cut blouse, and a string of pearls around a bony neck.
“So you’ve been Zepped, I hear,” she said. “No, don’t get up. Stay where you are. If you haven’t heard it already, you’ll be glad to know it came down in flames on the moor about twenty miles away, and all the brutes were burned alive.”
Baltazar set his teeth, monstrously striving to get his brain to work.
“Brutes? What brutes? What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
“Why, the crew of the Zeppelin. Where it came from or what it was doing about here, we don’t know—we’ll have to wait until news comes from London. It must have been badly damaged, and lost its way in the mist. They must have got rid of their bombs before trying to land, so my husband says—but before they had time to land the Zeppelin came to grief. We heard the bombs, but thought they had dropped on the moor. We’d no idea they had got anybody.”
“Zeppelin! Zeppelin!” murmured Baltazar. “I seem to have heard the name——”
“It’s pretty familiar, I should think,” said Mrs. Pillivant. “Don’t you think the best thing to do is to let us put you to bed, until the doctor comes?”
“The doctor must go to Quong Ho, at once. He’s dying,” said Baltazar.
“Then I’m sure I don’t know what to do,” said Mrs. Pillivant.
Baltazar closed his eyes. “I’ll be all right in a minute. It’s the knock on the head, and the long walk on an empty stomach.”
“Oh, I’ll get you something to, eat. What would you like?”
“Nothing,” said Baltazar. “Nothing. A bit of a rest and I must go back to Quong Ho. He’s the only creature I care about in the world. He was just alive when I left him.”
She said in a helpless sort of way: “I hope you’re not seriously hurt?”
He opened his eyes. “No, no. My head’s pretty thick. But I’m not as young as I was. By the way, you were talking of a Zeppelin. That’s a German airship, isn’t it?”
“Why—of course——”
He raised himself on his elbow, and his eyes flashed beneath his knit brows.
“Why should German airships be dropping bombs on the moor?”
Mrs. Pillivant regarded him uncomprehendingly.
“I’ve told you. They had to get rid of their bombs before they landed.”
“But what were they carrying bombs for?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that now,” she replied rather nervously. “I don’t think you realize how very ill you are.”
“I’m not ill—not out of my mind, at any rate. I want to know. Why should they carry bombs? Wait a bit. I’m all right now. My mind’s clear. You said the airship came down in flames and the brutes were killed. Tell me what it means.”
“Surely you’ve heard of the air raids? Read about them in the papers?”
“I see no newspapers,” said Baltazar. “Air raids? For God’s sake tell me what you mean?”
She glanced round to see that access to the door was clear. His aspect—his shaggy hair clotted with blood and dirt—his eyes gleaming from a haggard, grimed and bloody face—the filth of his half-nakedness—alone would have frightened a timorous woman. And his words were those of a madman. She giggled hysterically.
“I suppose you’ve heard there’s a European war on?”
He sat up. “War! What war?”
Mrs. Pillivant fled from the room. Baltazar rose to his feet.
War? War with Germany? Naturally Germany, because Zeppelins were German airships. A European war, the woman had said. His glance for the first time fell upon a newspaper on the dining-room table, open at the middle page. Forgetful of pain and exhaustion, he strode and seized it—and the headlines held him spellbound by their bewildering revelation.
Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria . . . all Europe at war. The basic facts stood out in great capital letters.
He was staring at the print, absorbed as never had he been in his life before, when a heavy hand on his shoulder aroused him. He turned to meet the fat and smiling face of Pillivant.
“I’ve fixed it all up—doctor, police, ambulance. I’ll take some in the Rolls-Royce, the doctor the others in his car. We’ll have the Chink back in no time.”
“The what?” asked Baltazar, with a swift glance.
“The Chink—the Chinaman——”
“Oh, yes. My friend, Mr. Quong Ho. If you don’t mind, I’ll come with you.”
“My dear fellow, that’s impossible. You must go to bed. It’s no trouble. There are fifteen bedrooms in the house. You can take your choice. Hasn’t Mrs. Pillivant been in to see you?”
“She did me that honour.”
“Then why the dickens didn’t she have you attended to? I’ll see about it.”
He was already at the door when Baltazar checked him.
“Stop. Don’t worry about me. Tell me one thing.” He smote the open newspaper with the palm of his hand. “How long has this been going on?”
“How long has what been going on?” asked Pillivant, returning.
“This war.”
“I don’t quite see what you’re driving at,” said Pillivant, puzzled.
“I want to know how long this war I’m reading about in the newspaper has been going on.”
Pillivant regarded him askance out of his little furtive eyes. He entertained the same suspicion as his wife.
“Look here, old man,” he said, taking him by the arm, “that knock on the head’s more serious than you think.” At the noise of a halting car he glanced out of window. “Ah! there’s Dr. Rewsby.”
“Never mind the doctor or my head,” cried Baltazar desperately. “Answer my question. How long have we been at war with Germany?”
“Why, since August, 1914.”
“For the last two years?”
“Do you mean to say you’ve been living eight or ten miles off and never heard of the war?” Pillivant stood bewildered.
“I never heard of it,” Baltazar answered mechanically, staring past Pillivant at terrifying things.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Pillivant, recovering his breath. “I’m just damned. Here, Doctor”—as a spare, grey-headed man was shown into the room—“here is a chap who has never heard of the war.”
Baltazar stepped forward. “That’s beside the question, Doctor. All that matters for the moment is my Chinese friend. I had to leave him at the farm unconscious, with, I should think, concussion. And his legs are fractured. We must go at once.”
“Excuse me,” said the doctor, “but that wound in your own head wants seeing to. Just a matter of cleaning and strapping. Only five minutes. Please let me have a look at it.”
“You can do that afterwards,” said Baltazar. “For God’s sake let us go.”
“You’re not fit to go. I won’t allow you to,” replied Dr. Rewsby with suave firmness.
Said Baltazar, with the hard gleam in his eyes, “I’m going. It’s my responsibility, not yours. I don’t care what happens to me. But I swear to God I neither wash nor eat nor drink until my friend Quong Ho is brought back, alive or dead. And it’s much better I should go with you than remain here and frighten your excellent wife, Mr. Pillivant, out of her wits.”
There was a moment’s silence. The grey-haired doctor glanced at Baltazar out of the corner of a shrewd eye and diagnosed an adamantine obstinacy.
“If you refuse to take me with you,” Baltazar added, “I’ll follow you on foot.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“As you will. But if anything happens—tetanus, blood-poisoning, collapse—I wash my hands of responsibility. Mr. Pillivant will bear me out. Let us go.”
In the hall Pillivant took down from the pegs of an alcove a cap and light overcoat.
“You don’t mind sticking on these, do you?” he said to Baltazar. “You’ll need them motoring, and besides, I don’t mind telling you, you’re not looking exactly like a candidate for a beauty show.”
“I thank you,” said Baltazar, accepting the proffered raiment.
They started. The doctor, Sergeant Doubleday and a constable, with a stretcher, in one car; Pillivant, Baltazar, and a chauffeur at the wheel, in the great Rolls-Royce.
“To carry through this,” said Pillivant, hauling out a thick gold watch, “in twenty minutes, shows what we English can do when we set our minds to it.”
“Twenty minutes?” said Baltazar. “It has seemed like three hours.”
“Twenty minutes since I went to the telephone,” Pillivant asserted triumphantly.
The cars raced on. For some moments Baltazar, huddled together in the comfort of the back seat, maintained a brooding silence, which Pillivant, glaring at him from time to time, did not care to disturb. There was something uncanny about this man who had to be bombed nearly to death in order to hear of the war.
They turned off the road on to the rough track across the moor along which Quong Ho had so often bumped his way in the old cart. The weather had been dry and the track was at its best. But the cars jolted alarmingly and at every quivering descent from a larger hummock than usual, Pillivant cried out in fear for the springs of his Rolls-Royce.
“If it busts up, there’s no earthly chance of getting another.”
“Why?” asked Baltazar.
“Because there’s a war on, old man. You don’t seem to understand.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Baltazar. “You must grant me your kind indulgence. I can’t immediately realize what is happening.”
They climbed the rise that brought them into view of the Farm. Pillivant pointed to the smoking ruins.
“That’ll help you to realize it. That’s what Belgium and the northern part of France look like.”
“When I have found my friend Quong Ho alive,” said Baltazar, “I may be able to think of things.”
They worked their way, Dr. Rewsby’s lighter car following, almost to the low enclosing wall, and drew to a halt. Viewed on the approach, the havoc loomed before Baltazar’s eyes even more appalling than when he had stood dazed and sick in the midst of it. The battered granite shell of the house stood absurdly low, and the rough gaping apertures of door and windows stared like maimed features hideously human. The wall of the scullery had been thrown down by the explosion, and the pump and cistern and a shelf or two of broken crockery were grimly exposed. He wondered why he had not noticed this when he went to fetch water for Quong Ho. The byre by the wrecked stable no longer existed. The white Wyandotte cockerel, the sole living thing visible, pecked about the ground in jaunty unconcern.
As soon as they dismounted the party followed Baltazar, who strode ahead with the air of a man about to denounce a ghost. At the turn of the ruined house they came in sight of Quong Ho, lying as Baltazar had left him, the bowl of water untouched. The sun had gradually encroached upon him, and now the shadow of the wall cut his body in a long vertical line. His yellow face looked pinched and ghastly beneath the pink and white cotton of his bandaged head.
Baltazar’s face was almost as ghastly, and horrible fear dwelt in his eyes. He pointed.
“There!” he said, and drew the doctor forward and motioned to the others to remain.
Together they bent down over Quong Ho. “If he’s dead,” Baltazar whispered in a hoarse voice, “it’s I who have murdered him.”
“He’s not dead yet,” replied the doctor.
“Thank God!” said Baltazar.
Sergeant Doubleday, surveying the scene of ruin with the eye of the policeman and the Briton, turned to Mr. Pillivant.
“This sort of thing oughtn’t to be allowed,” said he.