Restless Earth/Chapter 12

To James Harley, slumped in the front seat of the taxi, the night was a delirium of whistling wheels, blazing headlights, red tail-lights, blaring motor-horns, violent swerves which threw him from side to side, wakeful towns, shouting people, unwinding black roads and white roads, trees, hedgerows ​and bridges seen but for a flash, and whirling thoughts which were a never-ceasing agony.

Crushed! Buried! Burned!

He had sent his wife and child to a horrible death—sacrificed them upon the altar of a brief passion—upon the altar of a tinsel goddess, a creature without heart or sense of decency!

All through the night, overprinted upon every flitting scene, woven into the fabric of this appalling darkness, the terrible, accusing words sereamed into his brain———

Crushed! Buried! Burned!

****

“Hey!”

The first hail from a would-be passenger came before the car had left the suburbs of New Plymouth.

A tall man, in a weatherproof coat, leapt into the glare of the headlights and gesticulated furiously.

Roy swerved skilfully, missing the tall man by inches, and the vigorous hail was submerged in the shriek of skidding tyres.

“Nearly got that one,” he grinned.

Harley made no comment.

In the next ten miles as many people signalled the car hopefully, risking their lives on the chance of obtaining a passage to Hawke’s Bay. The avoiding of the curious, the anxious, the occasional Samaritan, who darted into the track of the racing car foolhardily and waved sticks, hats, or newspapers in the hope of a “lift,” became more of a strain than a sport.

Roy’s grin changed slowly to a frown.

“Get off the road!” he shouted angrily at a woman standing in the centre of the road outside Eltham, a woman who braved violent death and diverted the speeding traffic as effectively as a traffic-constable.

The woman screamed at him in return, but the epithet was lost in the roar of the engine.

​“Run the fools down!” flared Harley. “What do they think this is? An excursion?”

“We’ll be darned lucky if we get through without killing somebody,” returned Roy grimly. “Did you ever see such a lot of road-hoppers? And the roads alive with traffic! Everything that will run seems to be out, and every fool who can walk! Country’s gone crazy!”

The whole country had gone crazy indeed—crazy with anxiety and morbid curiosity.

The greater part of the population of the North Island seemed to be moving in a mad rush to the earthquake area.

From every town and hamlet in the North Island they came.

From every by-road, swelling the stream of traffic which flowed ever in one direction upon the main highways, came luxurious limousines; tradesmen’s vans; sports cars; lumbering tourers and miniature cars; smart demonstration cars and non-descript, dilapidated vehicles borrowed or resurrected for the occasion; all loaded to capacity and overloaded. A stream of traffic fed by numberless tributaries and flecking the land with moving light from one end to the other.

Here and there a truck, hastily-commissioned and laden with necessities gathered by generous and practical people, held the road steadily and proceeded in conscious virtue, unperturbed by the frantic honkings of impatient holiday-makers who sought to pass.

Motor-cycles, bearing one or more pillion riders, roared past the slower traffic, taking advantage of every opening which offered, speeding around corners and ignoring all traffic regulations, piloted with the audacity which belongs to youth.

Here and there a doctor, accompanied by nurses, drove in silence to the field of new endeavour, where ​the work would be arduous and the reward the lip-service of a nation momentarily grateful.

Here and there travelled people who spoke together in low tones, people who drove their cars to the limit of speed and who dreaded their arrival at what they feared would prove the death-places of their loved ones.

But the principal motive power which moved the stream of hastening humanity on this night had its spring in the primitive—in morbid curiosity, the love of tragic spectacle.

From the moment when the terrible tidings had been flung upon the air, an endless stream of sightseers had descended upon the shattered towns—like flies gathering upon a carcase.

Heedless of danger, careless that they obstructed the work of rescue, intent only on feasting their eyes upon a ravaged countryside and the spectacle of mangled human remains disentombed, they came in their thousands by day and by night.

It was such a mobilisation as might have rejoiced the heart of Nero.

****

Midnight had passed when the car pulled into a filling station in Palmerston North. Extra bowser attendants worked the pumps diligently. The town was as wide awake as it had been at noon.

“How long before we get there?” asked Harley, speaking for the first time in a hundred-and-fifty miles.

“Not before half-past three, at any rate,” answered Roy shortly. “Too many schoolboy drivers on the road to-night. It’s about time the driving tests were put through the mangle. Somebody’s going to crash me before I get to Hastings, or I’m a rotten guesser.”

Harley grunted, frowning impatiently at the delay caused by their necessary stop.

He felt for his pipe mechanically and placed it between his teeth. The pungent smell and taste of ​the briar revolted him. He tossed it through the open window at his side with a petulant gesture. It struck an elderly man, who, with two companions, was approaching the car with some diffidence.

Harley apologised shortly.

“It’s quite all right, sir,” the elderly man assured him, hooking his angular fingers over the window frame and peering into the back of the car. “Are you going—over there, sir, by any chance?”

“Yes,” Harley answered the timid questioner curtly. “But we are not taking any sight-seeing parties.”

“Would you mind giving us a lift, sir?” pleaded the other, apparently unaware of the rebuff. “Just my wife and daughter and myself? I will pay all expenses of the journey willingly. We really must get to Napier to-night. We must!”

His voice shook, and his eyes reflected the bright lights of the pumps in a curious manner.

Harley found that he had no sympathy with another’s trouble.

“Sorry,” he growled, turning to look in another direction. “Afraid we can do nothing for you.”

The old man sighed and removed his fingers from the window frame slowly. The younger of the two women sank down upon the low brick curbing of the station and sobbed silently, while her mother leaned above her and whispered comforting words.

Roy saw the latter movement. He turned and leaned over across Harley’s back, and, with something of a flourish, threw open the car door.

“Hop in, dad,” he invited heartily, pointedly avoiding Harley’s frowning glance. “Plenty of room for all of you. We need something to hold the car down at the back; but I’m warning you, you’ll be taking risks. We’re in a hurry.”

The elderly man thanked him in a stifled voice and hurried away to apprise the women of his good fortune.

“What’s the idea?” demanded Harley in a low ​voice, ashamed of his lack of charity and striving to hide it with fictitious fury.

“Too dangerous, travelling light at the speed we’re doing,” lied Roy, preparing to move forward at the wave of a bowser attendant. “Must have somebody, or something, in the back.”

“I’m paying you for this trip———.”

“I know you are, Mr. Harley, but you haven’t bought the car!”

The car moved forward to the pump.

“Besides, if you don’t mind me saying so,” continued Roy, placatingly, “it’s not good for a man to sit and imagine things———.”

“How many?” demanded the bowser attendant.

“Fill her up,” ordered Roy, fumbling in his pocket for money. “And have a look at the oil, will you?”

“Right-o.”

“———that haven’t happened, ten to one,” Roy continued, as though no interruption had occurred. “No sense in it, at all. There’s more than a chance that Mrs. Harley is quite all right———.”

“There’s no chance, Roy. I know it. I feel it.”

“Oh, rats! You don’t know anything. Nobody knows anything. Wait and see. That’s my advice.”

“I ought never to have let her go.”

“That’s what we all reckoned,” agreed Roy unguardedly.

Harley stiffened.

“We?” he questioned sharply.

“You’ve been a damn fool, you know,” was the blunt answer. “Any man is who plays around with a woman like Pat Weybourn.”

The man who had so recently expressed his scorn of the opinions of local society experienced an odd sense of dismay. For a moment he was taken aback by the condemnation in the frank words, then a defensive anger surged over him.

“What do you know of Pat Weybourn?” he demanded harshly. “What have my private affairs to do with you?”

​Before Roy could reply the elderly man and the two women appeared at the open door of the car.

“This is most kind of you, gentlemen. Most kind,” quavered the elderly man, as he helped his wife and daughter into the car. “We had almost given up hope———.”

“Mind the handle on that side,” Roy warned, cutting short the thanks decisively. “It’s a bit loose.”

He turned to the elder of the two women.

“Not afraid of a bit of fast going, madam?” he asked, with a smile.

The younger woman answered him.

“You cannot go too fast for us,” she said, in a low, strained tone, as she sank back in the seat between her parents.

Roy nodded appreciatively and looked at her with frank admiration.

“That suits me,” he said, then turned about in embarrassment as her head dropped upon her breast.

Harley curbed his anger with the greatest difficulty. He felt that he was being deliberately cheated by the driver: and the thought that Patricia should be the subject of ribald comment in the idle moments of taxi-drivers infuriated him. The knowledge that his domestic affairs were the common property of the town filled him with a desire to murder.

“O.K.!” said the bowser-hand, as Roy paid him. “Keep a sharp look-out this side of Waipukurau. The road begins to break somewhere on the hill, I believe.”

“Thanks,” replied Roy.

He started the engine and let in the clutch.

“What do you know of Pat Weybourn?” Harley demanded again, as the car swung out of the Square.

He spoke in a low, tense voice. Roy pretended that he had not heard, and continued to drive with his gaze fixed upon the road ahead. Harley repeated the question a little louder.

​“Only what all New Plymouth knows about her,” answered the driver coldly.

“And what’s that?”

The other ignored the question.

“What’s that?” Harley asked again, when the car had travelled another mile.

“Nothing,” admitted Roy. “But it says a lot.”

“What does it say of her?”

“Calls her names.”

“What names?”

“‘A good sport,’ is the best of ’em. You can guess the worst.”

There was another lengthy silence, then Roy, chafed by the strain of the awkward pause, sought to excuse his attitude.

“Only know her by sight, myself,” he said.

“What do you say of her?” was the sharp demand.

Roy considered for a moment before he answered.

“Me? Well—if she were my girl, I’d be everlastingly afraid of the other fellow. All the same, I’d be glad to take the risk. But she’s got more brains than to pick on a taxi-driver. She doesn’t have to, anyhow.”

Harley gripped his clenched fist between his knees.

“Everybody talks about her, eh?” he asked savagely. “Every Tom, Dick and Harry, eh?”

Roy shrugged.

“Ever know a woman of that type who wasn’t talked about by everybody?” he asked, smiling apologetically.

Harley turned his head to look at Roy. His face was white, and his eyes glinted dangerously.

“A woman of what type?”

The other answered nothing.

Harley released his fists.

“A woman of what type?” he repeated.

“Oh, for the love of Mike!” snapped Roy in disgust. “Talk of something else.”

​It is difficult to surmise what form Harley's fury might have taken had not he been checked by a burst of unrestrained sobbing behind him. Roy looked at him in a natural embarrassment at the sound, and instinctively lessened the speed of the car.

Harley’s fury vanished, He sat back in his seat and stared into the blackness outside the range of the headlights.

“There, there, my dear,” they heard the mother murmuring softly. “Don’t take on so. It is the will of God, my dear. He takes what is His. My dear, my dear———.”

“It isn’t right! It isn’t fair!” moaned the daughter. “What are we to do?”

“Hush, my dear. You know everything will be all right with father and me. Don’t take on so.”

“Let her have her cry out, mother,” put in the elderly man gently. ‘“She’ll be better for it afterwards.”

“Oh, daddy, what am I going to do?” came the despairing cry of the young woman.

“Hush, Grace, my lass,” begged the elderly man goftly. “You just have your cry out on my shoulder. We will speak about it afterwards.”

Roy pursed his lips and frowned in concentration upon his task, the light from the dash revealing the embarrassed colour in his hardened features.

Harley slumped in his seat afresh.

The coincidence in names struck him with the force of a blow, making him ashamed of his untimely desire to defend the woman who had robbed him of all honour.

He insisted to himself that he hated Patricia Weybourn, and despised himself utterly that he could have fallen victim to her obvious blandishments.

He was awake now—but he had awakened too late.

Grace and Joan were lying somewhere ahead—crushed, buried, burned—small heaps of scattered ​ashes beneath some ghastly heap of smouldering wreckage.

His mind refused to entertain the hope that they had survived the disaster. He was convinced that they were no more. He knew he would never see them again. He had bidden them farewell in his heart, and already he pictured the grave in which their ashes should lie—if they were found—a grave upon which Grace’s favourite roses should bloom in due season.

His abasement was abject.

He had sinned, and could never atone; but the grave of his loved ones should be the shrine to which his repentant feet should beat a path all the days of his life.

Not again for him were the temptations of the flesh. He would live alone. His work should reflect the deeper knowledge of life born of his association with tragedy. He would write, and the world would weep.

Even in this hour of anguish the ego of the writer was not silenced.

For many miles there was silence in the racing car. The sobs of the young woman were hushed. Oppressive thoughts filled the small enclosed space as with something substantial, tangible.

Through small towns, widely spaced over the undulating country, the car roared, following the procession of tail-lights, and urged forward by the glaring head-lights and honking horns behind—hurrying upon a mortal inferno.

They were nearing the hill of which they had been warned when Harley lifted his head.

“How much for the trip?” he asked coldly.

Roy started.

“Eh? Oh, we can settle that when we get back, Mr. Harley.”

“I may not be going back———.”

The elderly man, who had overheard, hastened to speak.

​“You must allow me to pay, sir,” he begged. Harley ignored him.

“How much?”

The driver seemed to be figuring out the mileage, when the elderly man tapped him upon the shoulder.

“Really, I insist, sir. It is very kind of you———.”

Harley interrupted him.

“Please. I have already arranged to pay for the car, and it is a privilege to give you and—and your people a lift, sir.”

“That is very kind of you, sir,” persisted the elderly man, “but, if you will not allow me to pay all, at least a share———”

“Hang on!” cried Roy, on a note of excitement.

“We’re coming to it!”

The car immediately ahead slowed suddenly, and a collision was avoided only by a swift application of the brakes, which threw all the passengers from their seats.

The interruption effectually checked the friendly dispute, which was not opened again.

Following the now creeping car ahead, Roy negotiated a wide crack in the road with extreme caution.

“If that’s a sample,” he remarked softly, when the danger was past, “what’s the rest of it like?”

None answered him.

Harley was barely interested. The elderly man had braced himself in his seat and was pretending to be unafraid. His wife clung to the window frame and prayed silently that the car be not swallowed in the yard-wide crack which, in her imagination, had assumed the dimensions of a yawning chasm and the character of snapping jaws. The daughter prayed for just such a calamity.

But at the top of the hill Harley saw that which claimed his interest and tore his heart afresh.

The sky to the north was red!

Swelling and waning in mighty billows above the outline of far black hills and the clustered lights

​in the valley immediately below, a dull red glow threw the scattered clouds into relief.

Napier and Hastings were burning!

Harley shuddered.

“Ashes! Black ashes, smooth to the touch! Horrible!”

The words broke from his white lips in a groan. He covered his face with his hands and leaned forward.

Roy glanced at him quickly, reached out and extinguished the light on the dash.

“Want all the light on the road now,” he explained.

The others were silent.