in ever-larger proportions, so that it might be spent for them more wisely than they would be likely to do themselves.
It would be unjust not to recognize that there was often much of wisdom in the ways in which they were controlled and herded. We may say, as we please, either that they had been reduced or raised to the level of domestic animals. On the average they were better housed, better clothed, and better fed than their grandparents had been. Perhaps the advantages of liberty may be overrated. If they had sold their freedom to the bureaucrats for a mess of pottage it was a savoury mess,, and their bowls were filled very punctually.
But now they were faced with a calamity which could not be reported to the proper authorities, and their instinct to stand about and wait for the appearance of uniformed men, and for the appropriate relief fund to be opened, was obstructed by a cold, bewildering doubt as to whether there were any shepherds left for the sheep to look for. Even the Rector had disappeared.
A babble of voices broke out, foolish, exclamatory, or lamenting.
Two of the Rectory maidservants made their way up to the still smoking ruins. There was nothing left unburned except an old red-brick barn on the western side of the house, and that had fallen in ruin. It had contained nothing which would repay the toil of delving among the brick-heap—or so they thought. Later there might be others who would think differently.
Beside the barns were the pigsties, which were still standing. The Rector’s sow rose on her hind legs as their voices reached her, and put her snout over the top of the gate. In the later morning she would do so again, grunting angrily that her expected meal had not been brought with the usual punctuality. That evening she would make repeated useless efforts to jump the gate, and fall back baffled.
A day later men would come searching with murderous purpose for such as she, but would find the gate burst through, and the sty left empty….
The little crowd spread out from the church porch, the more robust leading their different ways to the ruins of their cottage-homes, and perhaps to find such food as the gardens offered—which was not much on the first of June—or to search apathetically, with stunned, bewildered minds, for those that the night had ended.
There was one man, Ben Millett, the local grocer, who found his wife lying in the little yard behind his burnt-out shop. She lay half dressed: a large, ungainly woman, who had stayed after he fled in an effort to save some of the stock. She had not entirely failed, for some cases of provisions had been piled against the farther wall of the yard, but it seemed that the storm had overcome her, and she had fallen with her head against the pump-trough.
Ben Millett did not attempt to raise, or even to touch her. He stood fascinated, observing the tyrant of twenty years so fallen. He noticed that her feet were charred, and the shoes partly burned away. Surely that would have roused her had there been any life remaining! He stood silent before a hope that he scarcely dared to rely on. But surely, surely she must be dead!
He only moved when young Rogers and his aunt and mother came into the yard together. They took no notice of the dead, but began to search among the boxes that she had salvaged at that fatal cost.
He heard the voice of the elder woman. “Sugar’s no good to we. Here, Harry, smash this one. It’s tins o’ something.”
He roused himself as from a dream, stepping over the burnt legs of the dead to protect his property.
“Look here,” he said angrily, “you mustn’t do that. They’re not yours. That salmon’s two-and-three-pence a tin.”
Harry Rogers, engaged in smashing one of them with a coal-hammer, remarked that he’d have some breakfast if they were four-and-six.
His aunt interposed civilly that “Of course, we’ll pay you, Mr. Millett.”
Mr. Millett said, “When?”
The women’s dresses had no pockets, and they had no money. It was not evident how or when such a debt could be settled. But Harry had some paper money in a trouser-pocket. At his aunt’s urgency he passed a ten-shilling note to the protesting grocer.
Mr. Millett, a very honest man, wished to give change correctly. He remarked that he had no money “on him.” He looked at his ruined store. A search for the cash-till did not seem a very hopeful project. He must go to the bank, where he had enough of savings to stock half a dozen of such shops, should he wish to do so. But the bank itself.… He looked down the wreckage of the once familiar street—the street in which he had lived since he was a child of three, when his father had come from Foxhill to take the position of ostler at the Ring o’ Bells—and he realized that the bank itself…and, perhaps, all his savings…suppose that his real wealth were in that heap of boxes?”
“Never mind the change now, Mr. Millett,” the elder woman remarked. “We can take it in groceries. I hope you’ve saved something good besides the salmon.”
“Oh, Harry, what are you doing?” his mother broke in plaintively. She had always hated waste, and he was smashing a second tin, and a third, recklessly open.
He had discovered a coal-hammer to be a form of tin-opener that causes spilling, and introduces dirt very freely. Never mind that. He would open one for each.
“There’s plenty here,” he said, pointing to the case, which still contained thirty-three tins of the same size.
Feeling an impulse of generosity at the sight of this plethora of a food which he rarely tasted, or enjoying the smashing of the tins, or from a mixture of these incentives—human motives are seldom easy to analyse—he burst another tin for their owner, and Mr. Millett, observing it, became conscious that he could also do with some breakfast.
He joined his customers very sociably, and as their appetites failed they had glances and words of pity for the dead woman three yards away. They almost forgot how she had been disliked when living. They became cheerful about the future with the consciousness of the food within them. Harry Rogers was a plasterer. There would be no lack of work for him. He could stay here, and make shift for himself. The women would go to their cousin’s in Wolverhampton. It did not occur to any of them that the elements would have the audacity to interfere with important towns. What were Town Councils and Chief Constables for?
A motor-cyclist hailed them from the road, inquiring whether they knew where he could get some more juice, and was he right for Codsall?
He seemed glad to stop and talk for a moment. He told vague, wild tale of spreading floods in the south. He should go back to America. He thought the blooming country was done for. Meanwhile he was going north for the safety of the Yorkshire moors—if not farther. No risks for him. But he had a married sister at Codsall, and he meant to take her, if she would come. No, no kids. Only married at Easter. Yes, very bad getting along. Two spills in the last ten miles. A streak of blood on his cheek supported the narrative. Well, he must get on. Hoped it would last. Didn’t look like getting any about here.
He gazed hungrily at the salmon-tins. Mr. Millett gave him his, which was nearly empty, his own appetite being satisfied, and was thanked for a welcome charity; but he had manœuvred, as the conversation proceeded, to conceal the reserves of food, and the skirts of Harry’s aunt had been used as promptly and more effectually for the same purpose.
The cyclist went on, cheerfully enough, to his destined end. They did not know that he was the first of thousands….
At midday Mr. Millett was burying a remnant of his often-plundered stock in a little coppice, a field’s-width from the road.
Five
