Tales of Space and Time Part 20

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 lat.i.tude. 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 pa.s.sed--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; was 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 att.i.tude. "'Scuse me," he said. "Fact is, you done know _'ow_ to sc.r.a.p. 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 get 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 sc.r.a.p. Jest lemme. You're ig'nant, you ain't no cla.s.s; but you might be a very decent sc.r.a.pper--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 sc.r.a.pping 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 sc.r.a.pping," said the swart man. "Always. And, of course--if one gets waxy and 'its you vital ..."

"By G.o.d!" 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 sc.r.a.p?"

"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--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 s.p.a.ce 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 the 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 s.p.a.ce 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 the people with a turn that way have gone. We're going through with it--to the end."

Elizabeth thought grayly, 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--pa.s.sing it on.... And thousands more to come perhaps--thousands!

"Pa.s.sing it on. I wonder if they will thank us."

His voice a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sion had pa.s.sed. He lay still, and presently his breathing became regular and deep.

But Elizabeth remained with eyes wide open in the darkness, until the clamour of a bell and the sudden brilliance of the electric light warned them that the Labour Company had need of them for yet another day.