Restless Earth/Chapter 22

“Here, you!” called a harassed clerk, as a telegraph messenger sauntered past the counter of Napier’s temporary central Post Office. “Take these wires and see if you can find this fellow Harley.”

​The telegraph messenger took the three telegrams reluctantly.

“Why pick on me?” he asked plaintively.

“Don’t argue the point. Go and see if you can find him. The other two idiots couldn’t.”

“That’s the writer chap who went off his rocker at the Masonic, isn’t it?”

“So would you go off your rocker, young fellow, if you found your wife and daughter as he did. Hop it! If he’s not in the camps you’ll find him up on the hill, likely as not. We can stretch a point and hunt for him a bit.”

“We?” snorted the telegraph messenger offensively.

“Go on! Quick and lively, before I come over there after you!”

“All right. I’m going. I’ll see you about August, if I’m lucky.”

The over-worked lad walked out leisurely. The clerk looked after him with murder in his glance.

“Hello, Whiskers!” the lad greeted an aproned individual over an hour later.

The aproned individual, who perspired as he wrote the mid-day menu in chalk upon a blackboard outside the cook-house which served one of the refugee camps, did not turn his head.

“Good-day, Cheeky,” he returned good-humouredly. “Who let you out?”

The lad ignored the question.

“Any idea where I’ll find a fellow named Harley?” he asked.

“’Arley?”

“Harley—with an aitch. James Harley.”

“Never ’eard of ’im. ’Ow do you spell ‘lentils’?”

“They told me he was in this camp.”

“Aw! They’d tell you anything, son. If there’s a wire for ’im ’e‘ll call for it—same as the rest of ’em. Are we getting back to normal again, or something? Running about with wires again?”

​“Whatever happens, Whiskers, the Post Office goes on,” said the lad proudly. “No bit of an earthquake can alter that.”

The aproned individual turned to smile upon the lad. He was a corpulent man who had lost his home and his razor in the disaster, and he seemed little troubled thereby. The recent beard, which earned him his soubriquet, grew in small patches of varied tints and was a marvel to behold.

“They’ve been stringing you, son,” he grinned. “Who learned you that piece of poetry?”

“It’s the slogan of the service, Whiskers.”

“Is it? You don’t say! Well, the Post Office can keep on going on, son. I don’t know any James ’Arley—or Harley—in this town; and I know most of the people what’s left in it.”

He turned to his blackboard again.

“’Ow do you spell ‘lentils’?” he asked.

“What are lentils?”

“Just lentils. ’Alf-brothers to split peas.”

“Well, put ‘peas.’”

“Boy,” chided the writer severely, “this ain’t a cheap eating ’ouse. All society comes ’ere with their little tin plates. We’ve got to be posh, boy, posh. It’s got to be lentils.”

“Here. Give me the chalk.”

The lad took the chalk and wrote “Pax Vobiscum” on the line devoted to soup; and, having written, he departed hurriedly.

The aproned individual understood neither the words nor the allusion.

“Hm!” he mused, squinting at the bold script. “We’re getting a bit uppish when we ’as our menus in French. No wonder the Post Office keeps going on.”

He wiped out the words with his apron and wrote “Pea.”

****

James Harley was on the hill.

​He was standing, bare-headed, looking over the ruined town to the distant sea. About him were the crowded monuments to the virtues of those who had died in the peace of home, where gentle hands had closed their eyes. At his feet was a low mound of freshly-turned earth which covered the blackened remains of a woman and child who had died in terror and loneliness.

He looked at the distant sea, but his thoughts were roving down the past years, recalling the days of happiness before his heart had played him false.

His hair ruffled in the clean westerly breeze. It was untidy and too long; and upon the nape of his neck and upon his temples the brown hue had faded to a grey which was almost white. His face was lined and gaunt, the features thin and refined through suffering. His eyes were deeply sunken and glittered strangely beneath his slightly frowning brows.

As he stood thus straightly, his clothing hung loosely upon his wasted body. His hands, clasped behind him, were almost fleshless.

Life had become worthless to James Harley. All mortal desires seemed dead in him, save alone the desire for death.

He would not have eaten at all had it not been for the fact that Roy and an Anglican minister had appointed themselves his guardians.

These two, so different in faith and temperament, had met upon the brink of the grave wherein were laid the bodies of fifty dead. Moved by a single impulse, they had united to endeavour to console the man who had seemingly become bereft of speech after his first blasphemous outburst over the charred bodies of his loved ones, and who had gazed down upon the plain coffins lying so closely together, unable to comprehend that his own surname was written upon two of them.

Harley had seemed asleep then. His mind had been fogged, and he had gazed around with childish ​wonder, unable to understand his surroundings or the solicitude of the stranger in clerical garb and his equally unfamiliar companion who uttered strange oaths.

He had moved in a long, weary dream, bewildered, speechless.

Later had come gradual and painful awakening. He remembered the events of his dream, and, as such assumed reality, his heart had become heavier and his silence had become conscious.

When, at last, had come the realisation that his loved ones had been laid in a common grave, side by side with the unidentified dead, unmourned, his horror lent him speech; so that his money, his repute, and men’s charity had procured exhumation and separate burial for Grace Harley and Joan Harley in this hallowed spot nearer the stars.

Then silence had fallen upon him once more—silence, and a desire to lie beside his dead.

“Mr. Harley?” asked the telegraph messenger diffidently, as he approached.

Harley turned listlessly and nodded.

“Telegram, sir.”

Harley took the folded scraps of paper and nodded the thanks he did not feel. He imagined that these were messages of condolence.

He tore one open because he saw that he was expected to do so. It was the third which had been sent from New Plymouth.

****

While, to James Harley, the events of these terrible days were merely background for his grief, to Roy, the taxi-driver, they were vivid events to be spoken of in reminiscent moments all the days of his life—events comparable with those of the Great War.

Where was the pacifist who would vote for a reduction in our naval strength now? he would ask of total strangers during the first days when the officers and men of H.M.Ss. Veronica, Dunedin and Diomede brought order out of indescribable chaos.

​“Dead!” he would answer himself triumphantly. “Dead and buried! For which, O Lord, make us truly thankful.”

By the mercy of Providence the Veronica had berthed at the Napier wharf almost at the moment of the shake. She had been severely shaken by the restless earth, but, in short order, landing parties were in the wrecked streets, medical and food supplies were made available, armed marines were policing the ruins, naval officers were giving orders and being obeyed by seaman and landsman. Everywhere incipient panic was quelled by the splendid efficiency of men trained to emergency.

Within twenty-four hours the Navy, the police force, and the Napier Relief Committee were acting in conjunction. Every park and open space in the town was occupied. Tarpaulin shelters did duty as casualty clearing stations; prominent red crosses adorned every available ambulance—improvised and otherwise—and many private cars; every care was being taken of the injured and the survivors.

The red capes of the nurses, the service uniforms of the marines, the smoke, the areas of blackened bricks and tottering walls, the tents on the beach, the occasional clear notes of a bugle, the battleships in the bay, the thunder and dust where naval parties demolished dangerous structures, the intermittent shuddering of the earth, all induced a not unpleasant excitement in Roy.

It all reminded him of the war. The only wrong thing about it was that the sun shone every day. No self-respecting war ever happened in such perfect weather. He missed the mud, the eternal mud of the trenches. Everything else seemed to be here; the thud of explosives, the rumble of lorries, the stretchers, and the smells. Here, however, Roy assisted in a task which had not fallen to him in all the horrors of war—the sniffing for the odour of charred flesh; the horrible business of stooping over piles of hot debris, quietly searching after the manner of a dog.

​Each day the odour of mortification became more pronounced. The decaying bodies of millions of fish upon the beach and upon the bed of the inner harbour, which had been lifted above sea-level; the indescribable odour of smouldering debris; the stench consequent on the wreck of the drainage system; the miasm of death, became more pestilential with every rising sun, and brought at last the inevitable order of evacuation.

Under such conditions Roy’s war service stood him in good stead. When called upon to show why he should not be evacuated with the rest he lied with the assurance and ready wit of the trooper. He explained, with tears in his eyes, that he had come to Napier in company with his brother to search for his wife and two children. So far, these had not been found; but his brother’s wife and child had been found—dead. He referred, of course, to the Harleys. James Harley was his brother, and—well, they saw how it was? Poor old Jim’s brain had been a little unbalanced by the shock. He had not known that his wife and kiddie were in Napier. He gave no trouble. He spent every day at the graveside———

The officer in charge of the evacuation nodded. He made brief notes of the respective ages of Roy’s fictitious wife and children, together with the date they were supposed to have come to Napier. He did not hold out any hope that they would be found alive. The best he could do was to hope that they had not been in the town at the moment of the shake.

Roy left the office of the commandant apparently a broken, despairing man; and, once outside the range of the sympathetic eyes which watched him, hurried away cheerfully to inform his “brother” that he had fixed things.

“All the same, Mr. Harley,” he had added, with a touch of petulance, as his “brother” set out towards the grave on the hill, “I think it would be better if you went back home. This place will break your heart.”

​“My home is here, Roy,” Harley had replied in a lifeless tone. “All that is left of it. As for my heart —it is there.”

He waved his hand in the direction of the hill and moved away.

Roy watched him go, and, when he was hidden by the intervening trees, followed him.

There was something dog-like in the manner in which Roy chose to attach himself to a master. During the war he had attached himself to a burly, good-natured, profane captain, and had been immensely gratified when his master, in moments of expansion, had patted his head and called him Fido. When his hero had thrown himself upon a Mills bomb, which a nervous bomber had dropped at his feet, and had died to save his men, Roy had been inconsolable—until, in the confusion of an advance, he had taken the opportunity to shoot the nervous bomber in the back.

Now, he had a desire to shoot somebody else in the back; but, in this senseless affair, there seemed none responsible for the wreck of his new brother’s life.

Exactly how much of Roy’s new attachment was due to hope of ultimate reward it is impossible to say. He himself would have angrily scouted the idea that he looked after Harley for the sake of the money that might be in it. He would have argued that, although he were only a taxi-driver—a pretty hard-bitten one at that, and not much to look at—he was possessed of a larger proportion of common decency than many of the “flash” people who hired him. He had known Harley for years; had often had him as a fare. Harley was a gentleman, for all his education, and he, Roy, wasn’t the sort to desert a man like that at a time like this.

He would have pointed out that, in his earnest desire to wangle creature comforts for Harley, he had even encouraged the co-operation of a parson!

​Harley had become tractable in everything but the matter of leaving Napier and returning home. He would eat when he was told to do so. He would sleep, or appear to sleep, when ordered to bed by Roy. He smiled absently when he saw that he was expected to appreciate his guardian’s humour; but when it was suggested that he would be better elsewhere he became sullen and obstinate. And, with every passing day, he grew thinner and paler, the grey in his hair became more noticeable, his walk became a little more laboured.

“All he needs, parson, is something to wake him up,” Roy said, with exasperation, in the third week after the earthquake. “He’s walking in his sleep; and if he doesn’t soon wake up he’ll die on his feet.”

“Time heals all things,” the Anglican minister replied, shaking his head doubtingly nevertheless.

“What about God? Couldn’t you pray for him?”

“I have prayed for him; but God heals only those who believe in Him. Harley does not believe. It is his, and our, misfortune.”

“Well, he’s got to believe in me,” said Roy stoutly. “There’s a tombstone up on the hill that’s getting a polish on it where I sit; and I’m willing to wear the thing to a wafer with sitting before I’ll allow Harley to die on my hands.”

“You must be careful that he does not see you watch him,” cautioned the minister. “Men in his state of mind are very near dementia.”

“I’ll look out for that, parson. But, I’m giving you fair warning, we may have to feed him forcibly one of these days. What beats me, though, is that nobody’s been over here looking for him, or his wife. They must be orphans, the pair of them.”

“Communication is so disorganised. His wife and child have been reported dead.”

“That’s so. That accounts for it, I suppose. Do you think he’d wake up if I went for him? Sort of smacked him in the ear and asked about it afterwards?”

​The minister shook his head and smiled slowly.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. You wouldn’t hit a child?”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Leave the awakening to Time. It will not fail—if you do not.”

****

Now, watching from his hiding-place upon the polished tombstone, Roy saw that Harley had awakened.

He reached out and halted the scared messenger, “Ssh!” he hissed. “I’m not going to hurt you, son. Where was that wire from?”

“New Plymouth,” answered the lad, forgetting the tradition of his great office in his fright. “Let me go.”

Roy let him go. The lad hurried away, glancing fearfully over his shoulder every few yards.

Roy rose to his feet, hitched up his belt with a nautical gesture, and sauntered towards Harley, whose agitation was startling, but welcome.

“Hello, Mr. Harley,” he said, with simulated surprise. “Didn’t expect to find you here. Just thought I’d drop down this way to town.———”

Harley turned, and the other ceased speaking abruptly.

The man had awakened to some purpose. His features were a ghastly white and twitched as with a tic; his eyes glittered with the light of insanity; his lips were drawn back from his teeth, the grinding of which was audible. He seemed possessed of a wild animal ferocity. He panted noisily and his nostrils flared. His emaciated fingers looked like talons as they crushed the telegrams savagely. He crouched as though ready to spring. He was the picture of a madman.

Roy took two hasty steps backwards, tripped and sat heavily upon a flat headstone. Like a practised wrestler he rolled sideways and bounced to his feet, ready for the attack which he expected.

​Harley had not moved save to draw himself upright and expunge the startling expression from his face. Now he stood erect, and with one hand brushed the long hair from his forehead while he thrust the telegrams into his pocket with the other.

He spoke, and the listlessness had gone from his voice. His speech was harsh. He snapped his words.

“Sorry I scared you, Roy. Didn’t hear you approach.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Harley,” replied Roy with a beaming smile, dropping his hands. “I’m a bit on the jump these days. How are you feeling now?”

“Where’s the bus?” snapped Harley.

“Same old place. Over at the camp,” answered the other briskly, his eyes lighting with eagerness.

“Right. Fill her up. We’re leaving for New Plymouth this morning.”

Roy sprang forward and grasped the other’s hand.

“Gee! That’s the best thing I’ve heard you say for weeks! Come on! Let’s be legging it back!”

Harley snatched his hand free.

“Go on ahead. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Roy understood. He nodded and hurried away. He glanced back as he was taking a short cut by sliding down a bank beneath a picket fence. Harley was upon his knees at the graveside.

Roy whistled blithely as he descended the hillside. His gay music seemed strangely out of place to all who heard it.

Harley was upon his knees, but he was not praying. He was swearing an oath over the bodies of his wife and child—an oath to kill.

The telegram was spread upon the grave. The message was brief and, in his eyes, an abomination.

Harley, his head bowed upon his breast, was speaking softly, and the ferocity had come back to his features and sounded in his low tones.

​“Surely this woman is the foulest thing that walks the earth! She is without shame, without a vestige of honour! While I kneel here beside you, she waits in our home—in the place she has polluted—so sure is she that she holds me, body and soul! She is the snake which fouled our Eden, Grace, as she has fouled the Edens of others! And I? Am I so spineless that I will allow her to crawl over me to make fools of other men and women, to foul other Edens?”

He made no extravagant gesture. He spoke softly and his hands remained still, lying spread upon the earth.

“I have known Hell here, Grace; and, if I am to know Hell hereafter, I shall not be alone. Patricia Weybourn shall burn as I burn!”

He remained silent for some minutes then. His eyes, dry and burning between their twitching lids, seemed to memorise every particle of clay and rock which formed the mound before him.

At last he sat back upon his heels, folded the telegram and returned it to his pocket, entirely forgetful of the other two which remained unopened.

He rose, dusting his knees.

“Good-bye, Grace. Good-bye, Joan,” he said simply, and turned away.

He left the hill without a backward glance, moving with swinging, determined gait. His eyes gazed straight before him, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

He was going back to New Plymouth to kill.

Doubtless he was not wholly sane at this time.