5
They came upon a little row of cottages, standing back a few yards from the road. All three women had been engaged in pushing their trolly up an ascent, and with heads down, and all their physical energies concentrated upon their task, they did not notice the startling difference between these cottages and other houses they had passed, until they stopped to take breath at the summit of the hill.
Mrs Gosling had immediately seated herself upon the sloping pole of the trolly handle. She was breathing heavily and had her hands pressed to her sides. Millie leaned against the side of the trolly, her eyes still on the ground. But Blanche had thrown back her shoulders and opened her lungs, and she saw the banner of smoke that flew from the middle of the three chimney-stacks—smoke, in this wilderness, smoke the sign of human life! To Blanche it seemed the fulfilment of a great hope. She had begun to wonder if all the world were dead.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Look!”
They looked without eagerness, anticipating some familiar horror.
“Ooh!” echoed Millie, when she, too, had recognized the harbinger. But Mrs Gosling did not raise her eyes high enough.
“What?” she asked stupidly.
“There’s some one living in that cottage,” said Blanche, and pointed upwards to the soaring pennant.
Mrs Gosling’s face brightened. “Well, to be sure,” she said, “I wonder if they’d let me sit down and rest for a few minutes? And perhaps they might be willing to sell me a glass of milk. I’m sure I’d pay a good price for it.”
“We can see, anyway,” replied Millie, and they roused themselves and pushed on eagerly. The cottage was not more than thirty yards away.
Before they reached it, a woman came to the doorway, stared at them for a moment and then came down to the little wooden gate.
She was a thick-set woman of fifty or so, with iron grey hair cut close to her head. She wore a tweed skirt which did not reach the tops of her heavily soled, high boots. She looked capable, energetic and muscular. And in her hand she carried about three feet of stout broomstick.
She did not speak until the little procession halted before her gate, and then she pointed meaningly up the road with her broomstick and said: “Go on. You can’t stop here.” She spoke with the voice and inflection of an educated woman.
Blanche paused in the act of setting down the trolly handle. Mrs Gosling and Millie stared in amazement; they had been prepared to weep on the neck of this human friend, found at last in the awful desert of Middlesex.
“We only wanted to buy a little milk,” stammered Blanche, no less astonished than her mother and sister.
The big woman looked them over with something of pity and contempt. “I can see you’re not dangerous,” she sneered and crossed her great bare fore-arms over the top of the gate. “Only three poor feckless idiots going begging.”
“We’re not begging,” retorted Blanche. “We’ve got money and we’re willing to pay.”
“Money!” repeated the woman. She looked up at the sky and nodded her head, as though beseeching pity for these feeble creatures. “My dear girl,” she went on, “what do you suppose is the good of money in this world? You can’t eat money, nor wear it, nor use it to light a fire. Now, if you’d offered me a box of matches, you should have had all the milk I can spare.”
“Well, I never,” put in Mrs Gosling, who had feebly come to rest again on the handle of the trolly.
“No, my good woman, you never did,” said the stranger. “You never could and I should say the chances are that you never will.”
Millie was intimidated and shrinking, even Blanche looked a little nervous, but Mrs Gosling was incapable of feeling fear of a fellow-woman. “You can’t mean as you won’t sell us a glass of milk?” she said.
“Have you got a box of matches you’ll exchange for it?” asked the stranger. “I’ve got a burning glass I stole in Harrow, but you can’t depend on the sun.”
“No, nor ’aven’t ’ad, the last three weeks,” said Mrs Gosling. “But if you’ve more money a’ready than you know what to do with, I should ’ave thought as you’d ’a been willing to spare a glass o’ milk for charity’s sake.”
The stranger regarded her petitioner with a hard smile. “Charity’s sake?” she said. “Do you realize that I’ve had to defend this place like a fort against thousands of your sort? I’ve killed three madwomen who fought me for possession and buried ’em in the orchard like cats. I held out through the first rush and I can hold out now easily enough. You three are the first I’ve seen for a month, and before that they’d begun to get weak and poor. These are your daughters, I suppose, and the three of you had always depended upon some fool of a man to keep you. Yes? Well, you deserve all you’ve got. Now you can start and do a little healthy, useful work for yourselves. I’ve no pity for you. I’ve got a damned fool of a sister and an old fool of a mother to keep in there,” she pointed to the cottage with her broomstick. “Parasitic like you, both of ’em, and pretty well all the use they are is to keep the fire alight. No, my good woman, you get no charity from me.”
When she had finished her speech, which she delivered with a fluency and point that suggested familiarity with the platform, the stranger crossed her arms again over the gate and stared Mrs Gosling out of countenance.
“Come along, my dears,” said that outraged lady, getting wearily to her feet. “I wouldn’t wish your ears soiled by such language from a woman as ’as forgotten the manners of a lady. But, there, poor thing, I’ve no doubt ’er ’ead’s been turned with all this trouble.”
The stranger smiled grimly and made no reply, but as the Goslings were moving away, she called out to them suddenly: “Hi! You! There’s a witless creature along the road who’ll probably help you. The house is up a side road. Bear round to the right.”
“What a beast,” muttered Blanche when they had gone on a few yards.
“One o’ them ‘new’ women, my dear,” panted Mrs Gosling, who remembered the beginning of the movement and still clung to the old terminology. “’Orrible unsexed creatures! I remember how your poor father used to ’ate ’em!”
“I’d like to get even with her,” said Millie.
They bore to the right, and so avoided two turnings which led up repulsive-looking hills, but they missed the side road.
“I’m sure we must have passed it,” complained Mrs Gosling at last. Her sighs had been increasing in volume and poignancy for the past half-mile, and the prospect of uninhabited country which lay immediately around her she found infinitely dispiriting.
“There isn’t an ’ouse in sight,” she added, “and I really don’t believe I can walk much farther.”
Blanche stopped and looked over the fields on her right towards London. In the distance, blurred by an oily wriggle of heat haze, she could see the last wave of suburban villas which had broken upon this shore of open country. They had left the town behind them at last, but they had not found what they sought. This little arm of land which cut off Harrow and Wealdstone from the mother lake of London had not offered sufficient temptation to delay their forerunners in the search for food. Most of them, with a true instinct for what they sought, had followed the main road into the Chiltern Hills, and those who for some cause or another had wandered into this side track had pushed on, even as Blanche and Millie would have done had they not been dragged back by their mother’s complaints. The sun was falling a little towards the west, and bird and animal life, which had seemed to rest during the intenser heat of mid-day, was stirring and calling all about them. A rabbit lolloped into the road, a few yards away, pricked up its ears, stared for an instant, and then scuttled to cover. A blackbird flew out of the hedge and fled chattering up the ditch. The air was murmurous with the hum of innumerable insects, and above Mrs Gosling’s head hovered a group of flies which ever and again bobbed down as if following some concerted plan of action, and tried to settle on the poor woman’s heated face.
“Oh! get away, do!” she panted, and flapped a futile handkerchief.
“How quiet it is!” said Blanche; and although the air was full of sound it did indeed appear that a great hush had fallen over the earth. No motor-horn threateningly bellowed its automatic demand for right of way; there was no echo of hoofs nor grind of wheels; no call of children’s voices, nor even the bark of a dog. The wild things had the place to themselves again, and the sound of their movements called for no response from civilized minds. The ears of the Goslings heard, but did not note these, to them, useless evidences of life. They were straining and alert for the voice of humanity.
“I don’t know when I’ve felt the ’eat so much,” said Mrs Gosling suddenly, and Blanche and Millie both started.
“Hush!” said Blanche, and held up a warning finger.
In the distance they heard a sound like the closing of a gate, and then, very clear and small, a feminine voice. “Chuck! chuck! chuck!” it said. “Chuck! chuck! chuck!!!”
“I told you we’d passed it,” said Mrs Gosling triumphantly. They turned the trolly and began to retrace their footsteps. Their eager eyes tried to peer through the spinney of trees which shut them off from the south. Once or twice they stopped to listen. The voice was fainter now, but they could hear the squawk of greedily competitive fowls.