The Locusts' Years

by Mary H. Fee

He did not try to speak, but looked at her curiously, evidently wondering how he came to be lying on the ground with his head in her lap. He stared at her, nonplussed by her appearance, then slowly let his eyes travel about him. The wrecked houses, the general devastation had, apparently, significance but no recollection in his mind. He made a faint movement, but the pain stopped him, and then she saw that he desired to speak but could not.

Charlotte bent over him. “You are hurt, Mr. Kingsnorth. I don’t think you can remember all that happened. After you went home, the storm grew much worse, and finally Mrs. Maclaughlin and I perceived that our houses were doomed. We went to your house and broke in a window. You were asleep with a lamp burning on the table beside you; we had some difficulty in awakening you; and when we succeeded, and you roused yourself to come out, another blast of wind came. We had barely time to spring back; but you went down with the house. It caught fire from the lamp—but we got you out and dragged you here. I have done what I could for your wounds.” She stopped, a slight vibration in her voice, and glanced desperately across the still foaming sea. If help did not come to them, there was no hope for Kingsnorth.

The man himself knit his brows in a forceful attempt at remembrance. Little by little, the lines of effort gave way to lines of bitterness. His nostrils dilated, a slow painful flush deepened the pallor of his face, and his lips tightened in a smile of self-contempt. Her own eyes suffused with pity as she looked down on him, for she knew that he had pieced it all out, and that the self-consciousness of ultimate failure and debasement was overwhelming him. To be a man and yet to have been found wanting at the supreme hour to those with whose protection he had been charged was exceedingly bitter to John Kingsnorth. He closed his eyes, unable to look at her, but presently a tear forced its lonely way out, then another, and still another.

At the sight, the last shadow of her old distaste and resentment vanished from Charlotte’s mind. She saw in him only the creature maimed and suffering, dignified by the near approach to the supreme hour, a man weighted with the sense of failure, and the knowledge that his last chance had come and gone, and that it, too, had passed him unprofiting. With sudden tenderness,—a feeling that seemed to reach forth to the uttermost confines of desolation,—she gently wiped away the tears, and then, bending, kissed him on the brow. He smiled at her gratefully and spoke with painful effort.

“Ah that’s good. I’ve been lonely, I’ve wanted a human hand in mine, a woman’s of my own class. I’m not all hard and bad.”

The words came with the utmost difficulty, and she gently pressed her fingers on his lips to stop him. His hand sought hers weakly, and held her fingers there. Then he turned his face to her like a chidden child, and she spoke to him no more. Only occasionally she moistened his fevered lips or wiped away the bloody froth that lay upon them after a fit of coughing. His physical suffering was very great, great enough, she hoped, to dull the consciousness of his dangerous state.

Mrs. Maclaughlin, as the day grew apace, busied herself in erecting a low shelter over the dying man. She got some bamboo poles and stuck them up, and laid on them a roof of banana leaves. She tried to get a mattress out of one of the fallen houses, but was unable to do so. She lighted a fire of leaves and old cocoanut husks, over which she brewed a cup of strong coffee. Charlotte drank it gratefully and afterwards ate one or two of the long fragrant bananas called “boongoolan.” Although she was greatly fatigued, the hot drink and the food brought strength back to her, and new courage animated her.

Their servants and the village folk came in curious groups to inspect the ruined houses; but—sinister omen—they did not approach the whites, but eyed them curiously from a distance. Charlotte realized that, helpless as he was, Kingsnorth was still a protection to them; and he knew it too, for once, when the Japanese diver came too near, he motioned feebly for the revolver strapped at Charlotte’s waist. She gave it to him, smiling faintly. The Jap, however, beat a retreat as the revolver changed hands.

So the long morning wore away and the dying man still pillowed his head in Charlotte’s lap. Her mind, as she looked down upon him, was a-surge with crowding thoughts. Pity was foremost. It was indeed pitiful, this slow, painful ending, in desolation and loneliness, of a life that should have closed in dignity and peace. As the face grew whiter, and the pinched look of death stole upon his features, the bitterness and the degeneracy seemed to yield to what had been the once lofty spirit of manhood before the corroding acids of life had preyed upon it. Step by step he had moved on the narrowing path that ended in a cul de sac. He had declared that the fault was his, and that if he had had the right stuff in him, he could not have made the failure that he had made; but the poor fellow had not selected the elements of his nature. They had been forged and linked upon him by the wills and passions of others. Across the seas, the mother who had contributed perhaps to the poorer elements of his character, and who had chosen his father—that mother still lived an easy luxurious life. Did she really think as little of him as he had declared she did? Would no pangs of contrition for her selfishness strike deep at the roots of her complacency, when she should learn that her son had died an exile on the lonely island? The sisters who had played with him, and the woman whose faithless hand had given the impetus to his downward career—would no repentant pangs visit them when the news should come that he had lived? There were other women, too, as he had boasted; women who had loved him, in spite of his scorn. Where were they? What were they doing as this final hour pressed upon John Kingsnorth? Over in the Filipino village, the child who owed him life sported with his playthings, ignorant of the father who would never act a father’s part to him; and on the sunny hillside mouldered the remains of the broken-hearted girl who had been his wife. It was such a waste, such a pitiable, useless, extravagant waste of human desire, and of human happiness; a life that should have been filled with decency and respect and honor, ending so meanly, so sordidly, beneath the shelter of a mere leaf-roofed hutch. Her heart ached for the sufferer, ached for his isolation, for the final hopeless ending of what he had once hoped would be an honorable and happy career.

It was almost noon when Kingsnorth roused again and declared weakly that he desired to make his will. In the pockets of the coat which she had removed from him were a note book and pencil, and, at his dictation, Charlotte scribbled down his wishes concerning the child whom he at last stood ready to recognize. All his worldly possessions were left to the orphan, and Collingwood was named as guardian. Kingsnorth then signed the document, which both women witnessed. At his request Charlotte once again pillowed his head in her lap, and he kissed her hand feebly in gratitude.