1
And now the whole fabric1 of civilisation2 was bending and giving, and dropping to pieces and melting in the furnace of the war.
The stages of the swift and universal collapse3 of the financial and scientific civilisation with which the twentieth century opened followed each other very swiftly, so swiftly that upon the foreshortened page of history--they seem altogether to overlap4. To begin with, one sees the world nearly at a maximum wealth and prosperity. To its inhabitants indeed it seemed also at a maximum of security. When now in retrospect5 the thoughtful observer surveys the intellectual history of this time, when one reads its surviving fragments of literature, its scraps6 of political oratory7, the few small voices that chance has selected out of a thousand million utterances8 to speak to later days, the most striking thing of all this web of wisdom and error is surely that hallucination of security. To men living in our present world state, orderly, scientific and secured, nothing seems so precarious9, so giddily dangerous, as the fabric of the social order with which the men of the opening of the twentieth century were content. To us it seems that every institution and relationship was the fruit of haphazard10 and tradition and the manifest sport of chance, their laws each made for some separate occasion and having no relation to any future needs, their customs illogical, their education aimless and wasteful11. Their method of economic exploitation indeed impresses a trained and informed mind as the most frantic12 and destructive scramble13 it is possible to conceive; their credit and monetary14 system resting on an unsubstantial tradition of the worthiness15 of gold, seems a thing almost fantastically unstable16. And they lived in planless cities, for the most part dangerously congested; their rails and roads and population were distributed over the earth in the wanton confusion ten thousand irrevelant considerations had made.
Yet they thought confidently that this was a secure and permanent progressive system, and on the strength of some three hundred years of change and irregular improvement answered the doubter with, "Things always have gone well. We'll worry through!"
But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth century with the condition of any previous period in his history, then perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence. It was not so much a reasoned confidence as the inevitable17 consequence of sustained good fortune. By such standards as they possessed18, things HAD gone amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that for the first time in history whole populations found themselves regularly supplied with more than enough to eat, and the vital statistics of the time witness to an amelioration of hygienic conditions rapid beyond all precedent19, and to a vast development of intelligence and ability in all the arts that make life wholesome20. The level and quality of the average education had risen tremendously; and at the dawn of the twentieth century comparatively few people in Western Europe or America were unable to read or write. Never before had there been such reading masses. There was wide social security. A common man might travel safely over three-quarters of the habitable globe, could go round the earth at a cost of less than the annual earnings21 of a skilled artisan. Compared with the liberality and comfort of the ordinary life of the time, the order of the Roman Empire under the Antonines was local and limited. And every year, every month, came some new increment22 to human achievement, a new country opened up, new mines, new scientific discoveries, a new machine!
For those three hundred years, indeed, the movement of the world seemed wholly beneficial to mankind. Men said, indeed, that moral organisation23 was not keeping pace with physical progress, but few attached any meaning to these phrases, the understanding of which lies at the basis of our present safety. Sustaining and constructive24 forces did indeed for a time more than balance the malign25 drift of chance and the natural ignorance, prejudice, blind passion, and wasteful self-seeking of mankind.
The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and infinitely26 more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the people of that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an effective balance. They did not realise that this age of relative good fortune was an age of immense but temporary opportunity for their kind. They complacently28 assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no moral responsibility. They did not realise that this security of progress was a thing still to be won--or lost, and that the time to win it was a time that passed. They went about their affairs energetically enough and yet with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one troubled over the real dangers of mankind. They, saw their armies and navies grow larger and more portentous29; some of their ironclads at the last cost as much as the whole annual expenditure30 upon advanced education; they accumulated explosives and the machinery31 of destruction; they allowed their national traditions and jealousies32 to accumulate; they contemplated33 a steady enhancement of race hostility34 as the races drew closer without concern or understanding, and they permitted the growth in their midst of an evil-spirited press, mercenary and unscrupulous, incapable35 of good, and powerful for evil. The State had practically no control over the press at all. Quite heedlessly they allowed this torch-paper to lie at the door of their war magazine for any spark to fire. The precedents36 of history were all one tale of the collapse of civilisations, the dangers of the time were manifest. One is incredulous now to believe they could not see.
Could mankind have prevented this disaster of the War in the Air?
An idle question that, as idle as to ask could mankind have prevented the decay that turned Assyria and Babylon to empty deserts or the slow decline and fall, the gradual social disorganisation, phase by phase, that closed the chapter of the Empire of the West! They could not, because they did not, they had not the will to arrest it. What mankind could achieve with a different will is a speculation37 as idle as it is magnificent. And this was no slow decadence38 that came to the Europeanised world; those other civilisations rotted and crumbled39 down, the Europeanised civilisation was, as it were, blown up. Within the space of five years it was altogether disintegrated40 and destroyed. Up to the very eve of the War in the Air one sees a spacious41 spectacle of incessant42 advance, a world-wide security, enormous areas with highly organised industry and settled populations, gigantic cities spreading gigantically, the seas and oceans dotted with shipping43, the land netted with rails, and open ways. Then suddenly the German air-fleets sweep across the scene, and we are in the beginning of the end.
2
This story has already told of the swift rush upon New York of the first German air-fleet and of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusive destruction that ensued. Behind it a second air-fleet was already swelling45 at its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italy showed their hands. None of these countries had prepared for aeronautic46 warfare47 on the magnificent scale of the Germans, but each guarded secrets, each in a measure was making ready, and a common dread48 of German vigour49 and that aggressive spirit Prince Karl Albert embodied50, had long been drawing these powers together in secret anticipation51 of some such attack. This rendered their prompt co-operation possible, and they certainly co-operated promptly52. The second aerial power in Europe at this time was France; the British, nervous for their Asiatic empire, and sensible of the immense moral effect of the airship upon half-educated populations, had placed their aeronautic parks in North India, and were able to play but a subordinate part in the European conflict. Still, even in England they had nine or ten big navigables, twenty or thirty smaller ones, and a variety of experimental aeroplanes. Before the fleet of Prince Karl Albert had crossed England, while Bert was still surveying Manchester in bird's-eye view, the diplomatic exchanges were going on that led to an attack upon Germany. A heterogeneous53 collection of navigable balloons of all sizes and types gathered over the Bernese Oberland, crushed and burnt the twenty-five Swiss air-ships that unexpectedly resisted this concentration in the battle of the Alps, and then, leaving the Alpine54 glaciers55 and valleys strewn with strange wreckage56, divided into two fleets and set itself to terrorise Berlin and destroy the Franconian Park, seeking to do this before the second air-fleet could be inflated57.
Both over Berlin and Franconia the assailants with their modern explosives effected great damage before they were driven off. In Franconia twelve fully58 distended59 and five partially60 filled and manned giants were able to make head against and at last, with the help of a squadron of drachenflieger from Hamburg, defeat and pursue the attack and to relieve Berlin, and the Germans were straining every nerve to get an overwhelming fleet in the air, and were already raiding London and Paris when the advance fleets from the Asiatic air-parks, the first intimation of a new factor in the conflict, were reported from Burmah and Armenia.
Already the whole financial fabric of the world was staggering when that occurred. With the destruction of the American fleet in the North Atlantic, and the smashing conflict that ended the naval61 existence of Germany in the North Sea, with the burning and wrecking62 of billions of pounds' worth of property in the four cardinal63 cities of the world, the fact of the hopeless costliness64 of war came home for the first time, came, like a blow in the face, to the consciousness of mankind. Credit went down in a wild whirl of selling. Everywhere appeared a phenomenon that had already in a mild degree manifested itself in preceding periods of panic; a desire to SECURE AND HOARD65 GOLD before prices reached bottom. But now it spread like wild-fire, it became universal. Above was visible conflict and destruction; below something was happening far more deadly and incurable66 to the flimsy fabric of finance and commercialism in which men had so blindly put their trust. As the airships fought above, the visible gold supply of the world vanished below. An epidemic67 of private cornering and universal distrust swept the world. In a few weeks, money, except for depreciated68 paper, vanished into vaults69, into holes, into the walls of houses, into ten million hiding-places. Money vanished, and at its disappearance70 trade and industry came to an end. The economic world staggered and fell dead. It was like the stroke of some disease it was like the water vanishing out of the blood of a living creature; it was a sudden, universal coagulation71 of intercourse72....
And as the credit system, that had been the living fortress73 of the scientific civilisation, reeled and fell upon the millions it had held together in economic relationship, as these people, perplexed74 and helpless, faced this marvel75 of credit utterly76 destroyed, the airships of Asia, countless77 and relentless78, poured across the heavens, swooped79 eastward80 to America and westward81 to Europe. The page of history becomes a long crescendo82 of battle. The main body of the British-Indian air-fleet perished upon a pyre of blazing antagonists83 in Burmah; the Germans were scattered84 in the great battle of the Carpathians; the vast peninsula of India burst into insurrection and civil war from end to end, and from Gobi to Morocco rose the standards of the "Jehad." For some weeks of warfare and destruction it seemed as though the Confederation of Eastern Asia must needs conquer the world, and then the jerry-built "modern" civilisation of China too gave way under the strain. The teeming85 and peaceful population of China had been "westernised" during the opening years of the twentieth century with the deepest resentment86 and reluctance87; they had been dragooned and disciplined under Japanese and European--influence into an acquiescence88 with sanitary89 methods, police controls, military service, and wholesale90 process of exploitation against which their whole tradition rebelled. Under the stresses of the war their endurance reached the breaking point, the whole of China rose in incoherent revolt, and the practical destruction of the central government at Pekin by a handful of British and German airships that had escaped from the main battles rendered that revolt invincible91. In Yokohama appeared barricades92, the black flag and the social revolution. With that the whole world became a welter of conflict.
So that a universal social collapse followed, as it were a logical consequence, upon world-wide war. Wherever there were great populations, great masses of people found themselves without work, without money, and unable to get food. Famine was in every working-class quarter in the world within three weeks of the beginning of the war. Within a month there was not a city anywhere in which the ordinary law and social procedure had not been replaced by some form of emergency control, in which firearms and military executions were not being used to keep order and prevent violence. And still in the poorer quarters, and in the populous93 districts, and even here and there already among those who had been wealthy, famine spread.
3
So what historians have come to call the Phase of the Emergency Committees sprang from the opening phase and from the phase of social collapse. Then followed a period of vehement94 and passionate95 conflict against disintegration96; everywhere the struggle to keep order and to keep fighting went on. And at the same time the character of the war altered through the replacement97 of the huge gas-filled airships by flying-machines as the instruments of war. So soon as the big fleet engagements were over, the Asiatics endeavoured to establish in close proximity98 to the more vulnerable points of the countries against which they were acting99, fortified100 centres from which flying-machine raids could be made. For a time they had everything their own way in this, and then, as this story has told, the lost secret of the Butteridge machine came to light, and the conflict became equalized and less conclusive44 than ever. For these small flying-machines, ineffectual for any large expedition or conclusive attack, were horribly convenient for guerilla warfare, rapidly and cheaply made, easily used, easily hidden. The design of them was hastily copied and printed in Pinkerville and scattered broadcast over the United States and copies were sent to Europe, and there reproduced. Every man, every town, every parish that could, was exhorted101 to make and use them. In a little while they were being constructed not only by governments and local authorities, but by robber bands, by insurgent102 committees, by every type of private person. The peculiar103 social destructiveness of the Butteridge machine lay in its complete simplicity104. It was nearly as simple as a motor-bicycle. The broad outlines of the earlier stages of the war disappeared under its influence, the spacious antagonism105 of nations and empires and races vanished in a seething106 mass of detailed107 conflict. The world passed at a stride from a unity27 and simplicity broader than that of the Roman Empire at its best, to as social fragmentation as complete as the robber-baron period of the Middle Ages. But this time, for a long descent down gradual slopes of disintegration, comes a fall like a fall over a cliff. Everywhere were men and women perceiving this and struggling desperately108 to keep as it were a hold upon the edge of the cliff.
A fourth phase follows. Through the struggle against Chaos109, in the wake of the Famine, came now another old enemy of humanity--the Pestilence110, the Purple Death. But the war does not pause. The flags still fly. Fresh air-fleets rise, new forms of airship, and beneath their swooping111 struggles the world darkens--scarcely heeded112 by history.
It is not within the design of this book to tell what further story, to tell how the War in the Air kept on through the sheer inability of any authorities to meet and agree and end it, until every organised government in the world was as shattered and broken as a heap of china beaten with a stick. With every week of those terrible years history becomes more detailed and confused, more crowded and uncertain. Not without great and heroic resistance was civilisation borne down. Out of the bitter social conflict below rose patriotic113 associations, brotherhoods114 of order, city mayors, princes, provisional committees, trying to establish an order below and to keep the sky above. The double effort destroyed them. And as the exhaustion115 of the mechanical resources of civilisation clears the heavens of airships at last altogether, Anarchy116, Famine and Pestilence are discovered triumphant117 below. The great nations and empires have become but names in the mouths of men. Everywhere there are ruins and unburied dead, and shrunken, yellow-faced survivors118 in a mortal apathy119. Here there are robbers, here vigilance committees, and here guerilla bands ruling patches of exhausted120 territory, strange federations121 and brotherhoods form and dissolve, and religious fanaticisms begotten122 of despair gleam in famine-bright eyes. It is a universal dissolution. The fine order and welfare of the earth have crumpled123 like an exploded bladder. In five short years the world and the scope of human life have undergone a retrogressive change as great as that between the age of the Antonines and the Europe of the ninth century....
4
Across this sombre spectacle of disaster goes a minute and insignificant124 person for whom perhaps the readers of this story have now some slight solicitude125. Of him there remains126 to be told just one single and miraculous127 thing. Through a world darkened and lost, through a civilisation in its death agony, our little Cockney errant went and found his Edna! He found his Edna!
He got back across the Atlantic partly by means of an order from the President and partly through his own good luck. He contrived128 to get himself aboard a British brig in the timber trade that put out from Boston without cargo129, chiefly, it would seem, because its captain had a vague idea of "getting home" to South Shields. Bert was able to ship himself upon her mainly because of the seamanlike130 appearance of his rubber boots. They had a long, eventful voyage; they were chased, or imagined themselves to be chased, for some hours by an Asiatic ironclad, which was presently engaged by a British cruiser. The two ships fought for three hours, circling and driving southward as they fought, until the twilight131 and the cloud-drift of a rising gale132 swallowed them up. A few days later Bert's ship lost her rudder and mainmast in a gale. The crew ran out of food and subsisted133 on fish. They saw strange air-ships going eastward near the Azores and landed to get provisions and repair the rudder at Teneriffe. There they found the town destroyed and two big liners, with dead still aboard, sunken in the harbour. From there they got canned food and material for repairs, but their operations were greatly impeded134 by the hostility of a band of men amidst the ruins of the town, who sniped them and tried to drive them away.
At Mogador, they stayed and sent a boat ashore135 for water, and were nearly captured by an Arab ruse136. Here too they got the Purple Death aboard, and sailed with it incubating in their blood. The cook sickened first, and then the mate, and presently every one was down and three in the forecastle were dead. It chanced to be calm weather, and they drifted helplessly and indeed careless of their fate backwards137 towards the Equator. The captain doctored them all with rum. Nine died all together, and of the four survivors none understood navigation; when at last they took heart again and could handle a sail, they made a course by the stars roughly northward138 and were already short of food once more when they fell in with a petrol-driven ship from Rio to Cardiff, shorthanded by reason of the Purple Death and glad to take them aboard. So at last, after a year of wandering Bert reached England. He landed in bright June weather, and found the Purple Death was there just beginning its ravages139.
The people were in a state of panic in Cardiff and many had fled to the hills, and directly the steamer came to the harbour she was boarded and her residue140 of food impounded by some unauthenticated Provisional Committee. Bert tramped through a country disorganised by pestilence, foodless, and shaken to the very base of its immemorial order. He came near death and starvation many times, and once he was drawn141 into scenes of violence that might have ended his career. But the Bert Smallways who tramped from Cardiff to London vaguely142 "going home," vaguely seeking something of his own that had no tangible143 form but Edna, was a very different person from the Desert Dervish who was swept out of England in Mr. Butteridge's balloon a year before. He was brown and lean and enduring, steady-eyed and pestilence-salted, and his mouth, which had once hung open, shut now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran a white scar that he had got in a fight on the brig. In Cardiff he had felt the need of new clothes and a weapon, and had, by means that would have shocked him a year ago, secured a flannel144 shirt, a corduroy suit, and a revolver and fifty cartridges145 from an abandoned pawnbroker's. He also got some soap and had his first real wash for thirteen months in a stream outside the town. The Vigilance bands that had at first shot plunderers very freely were now either entirely146 dispersed147 by the plague, or busy between town and cemetery148 in a vain attempt to keep pace with it. He prowled on the outskirts149 of the town for three or four days, starving, and then went back to join the Hospital Corps150 for a week, and so fortified himself with a few square meals before he started eastward.
The Welsh and English countryside at that time presented the strangest mingling151 of the assurance and wealth of the opening twentieth century with a sort of Dureresque medievalism. All the gear, the houses and mono-rails, the farm hedges and power cables, the roads and pavements, the sign-posts and advertisements of the former order were still for the most part intact. Bankruptcy152, social collapse, famine, and pestilence had done nothing to damage these, and it was only to the great capitals and ganglionic centres, as it were, of this State, that positive destruction had come. Any one dropped suddenly into the country would have noticed very little difference. He would have remarked first, perhaps, that all the hedges needed clipping, that the roadside grass grew rank, that the road-tracks were unusually rainworn, and that the cottages by the wayside seemed in many cases shut up, that a telephone wire had dropped here, and that a cart stood abandoned by the wayside. But he would still find his hunger whetted153 by the bright assurance that Wilder's Canned Peaches were excellent, or that there was nothing so good for the breakfast table as Gobble's Sausages. And then suddenly would come the Dureresque element; the skeleton of a horse, or some crumpled mass of rags in the ditch, with gaunt extended feet and a yellow, purple-blotched skin and face, or what had been a face, gaunt and glaring and devastated154. Then here would be a field that had been ploughed and not sown, and here a field of corn carelessly trampled155 by beasts, and here a hoarding156 torn down across the road to make a fire.
Then presently he would meet a man or a woman, yellow-faced and probably negligently157 dressed and armed--prowling for food. These people would have the complexions158 and eyes and expressions of tramps or criminals, and often the clothing of prosperous middle-class or upper-class people. Many of these would be eager for news, and willing to give help and even scraps of queer meat, or crusts of grey and doughy159 bread, in return for it. They would listen to Bert's story with avidity, and attempt to keep him with them for a day or so. The virtual cessation of postal160 distribution and the collapse of all newspaper enterprise had left an immense and aching gap in the mental life of this time. Men had suddenly lost sight of the ends of the earth and had still to recover the rumour-spreading habits of the Middle Ages. In their eyes, in their bearing, in their talk, was the quality of lost and deoriented souls.
As Bert travelled from parish to parish, and from district to district, avoiding as far as possible those festering centres of violence and despair, the larger towns, he found the condition of affairs varying widely. In one parish he would find the large house burnt, the vicarage wrecked161, evidently in violent conflict for some suspected and perhaps imaginary store of food unburied dead everywhere, and the whole mechanism162 of the community at a standstill. In another he would find organising forces stoutly163 at work, newly-painted notice boards warning off vagrants164, the roads and still cultivated fields policed by armed men, the pestilence under control, even nursing going on, a store of food husbanded, the cattle and sheep well guarded, and a group of two or three justices, the village doctor or a farmer, dominating the whole place; a reversion, in fact, to the autonomous165 community of the fifteenth century. But at any time such a village would be liable to a raid of Asiatics or Africans or such-like air-pirates, demanding petrol and alcohol or provisions. The price of its order was an almost intolerable watchfulness166 and tension.
Then the approach to the confused problems of some larger centre of population and the presence of a more intricate conflict would be marked by roughly smeared167 notices of "Quarantine" or "Strangers Shot," or by a string of decaying plunderers dangling168 from the telephone poles at the roadside. About Oxford169 big boards were put on the roofs warning all air wanderers off with the single word, "Guns."
Taking their risks amidst these things, cyclists still kept abroad, and once or twice during Bert's long tramp powerful motor cars containing masked and goggled170 figures went tearing past him. There were few police in evidence, but ever and again squads171 of gaunt and tattered172 soldier-cyclists would come drifting along, and such encounters became more frequent as he got out of Wales into England. Amidst all this wreckage they were still campaigning. He had had some idea of resorting to the workhouses for the night if hunger pressed him too closely, but some of these were closed and others converted into temporary hospitals, and one he came up to at twilight near a village in Gloucestershire stood with all its doors and windows open, silent as the grave, and, as he found to his horror by stumbling along evil-smelling corridors, full of unburied dead.
From Gloucestershire Bert went northward to the British aeronautic park outside Birmingham, in the hope that he might be taken on and given food, for there the Government, or at any rate the War Office, still existed as an energetic fact, concentrated amidst collapse and social disaster upon the effort to keep the British flag still flying in the air, and trying to brisk up mayor and mayor and magistrate173 and magistrate in a new effort of organisation. They had brought together all the best of the surviving artisans from that region, they had provisioned the park for a siege, and they were urgently building a larger type of Butteridge machine. Bert could get no footing at this work: he was not sufficiently174 skilled, and he had drifted to Oxford when the great fight occurred in which these works were finally wrecked. He saw something, but not very much, of the battle from a place called Boar Hill. He saw the Asiatic squadron coming up across the hills to the south-west, and he saw one of their airships circling southward again chased by two aeroplanes, the one that was ultimately overtaken, wrecked and burnt at Edge Hill. But he never learnt the issue of the combat as a whole.
He crossed the Thames from Eton to Windsor and made his way round the south of London to Bun Hill, and there he found his brother Tom, looking like some dark, defensive175 animal in the old shop, just recovering from the Purple Death, and Jessica upstairs delirious176, and, as it seemed to him, dying grimly. She raved177 of sending out orders to customers, and scolded Tom perpetually lest he should be late with Mrs. Thompson's potatoes and Mrs. Hopkins' cauliflower, though all business had long since ceased and Tom had developed a quite uncanny skill in the snaring178 of rats and sparrows and the concealment179 of certain stores of cereals and biscuits from plundered180 grocers' shops. Tom received his brother with a sort of guarded warmth.
"Lor!" he said, "it's Bert. I thought you'd be coming back some day, and I'm glad to see you. But I carn't arst you to eat anything, because I 'aven't got anything to eat.... Where you been, Bert, all this time?"
Bert reassured181 his brother by a glimpse of a partly eaten swede, and was still telling his story in fragments and parentheses182, when he discovered behind the counter a yellow and forgotten note addressed to himself. "What's this?" he said, and found it was a year-old note from Edna. "She came 'ere," said Tom, like one who recalls a trivial thing, "arstin' for you and arstin' us to take 'er in. That was after the battle and settin' Clapham Rise afire. I was for takin' 'er in, but Jessica wouldn't 'ave it--and so she borrowed five shillings of me quiet like and went on. I dessay she's tole you--"
She had, Bert found. She had gone on, she said in her note, to an aunt and uncle who had a brickfield near Horsham. And there at last, after another fortnight of adventurous183 journeying, Bert found her.
5
When Bert and Edna set eyes on one another, they stared and laughed foolishly, so changed they were, and so ragged184 and surprised. And then they both fell weeping.
"Oh! Bertie, boy!" she cried. "You've come--you've come!" and put out her arms and staggered. "I told 'im. He said he'd kill me if I didn't marry him."
But Edna was not married, and when presently Bert could get talk from her, she explained the task before him. That little patch of lonely agricultural country had fallen under the power of a band of bullies185 led by a chief called Bill Gore186 who had begun life as a butcher boy and developed into a prize-fighter and a professional sport. They had been organised by a local nobleman of former eminence187 upon the turf, but after a time he had disappeared, no one quite knew how and Bill had succeeded to the leadership of the countryside, and had developed his teacher's methods with considerable vigour. There had been a strain of advanced philosophy about the local nobleman, and his mind ran to "improving the race" and producing the Over-Man, which in practice took the form of himself especially and his little band in moderation marrying with some frequency. Bill followed up the idea with an enthusiasm that even trenched upon his popularity with his followers188. One day he had happened upon Edna tending her pigs, and had at once fallen a-wooing with great urgency among the troughs of slush. Edna had made a gallant189 resistance, but he was still vigorously about and extraordinarily190 impatient. He might, she said, come at any time, and she looked Bert in the eyes. They were back already in the barbaric stage when a man must fight for his love.
And here one deplores191 the conflicts of truth with the chivalrous192 tradition. One would like to tell of Bert sallying forth193 to challenge his rival, of a ring formed and a spirited encounter, and Bert by some miracle of pluck and love and good fortune winning. But indeed nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, he reloaded his revolver very carefully, and then sat in the best room of the cottage by the derelict brickfield, looking anxious and perplexed, and listening to talk about Bill and his ways, and thinking, thinking. Then suddenly Edna's aunt, with a thrill in her voice, announced the appearance of that individual. He was coming with two others of his gang through the garden gate. Bert got up, put the woman aside, and looked out. They presented remarkable194 figures. They wore a sort of uniform of red golfing jackets and white sweaters, football singlet, and stockings and boots and each had let his fancy play about his head-dress. Bill had a woman's hat full of cock's feathers, and all had wild, slouching cowboy brims.
Bert sighed and stood up, deeply thoughtful, and Edna watched him, marvelling195. The women stood quite still. He left the window, and went out into the passage rather slowly, and with the careworn196 expression of a man who gives his mind to a complex and uncertain business. "Edna!" he called, and when she came he opened the front door.
He asked very simply, and pointing to the foremost of the three, "That 'im?... Sure?"... and being told that it was, shot his rival instantly and very accurately197 through the chest. He then shot Bill's best man much less tidily in the head, and then shot at and winged the third man as he fled. The third gentleman yelped198, and continued running with a comical end-on twist.
Then Bert stood still meditating199, with the pistol in his hand, and quite regardless of the women behind him.
So far things had gone well.
It became evident to him that if he did not go into politics at once, he would be hanged as an assassin and accordingly, and without a word to the women, he went down to the village public-house he had passed an hour before on his way to Edna, entered it from the rear, and confronted the little band of ambiguous roughs, who were drinking in the tap-room and discussing matrimony and Bill's affection in a facetious200 but envious201 manner, with a casually202 held but carefully reloaded revolver, and an invitation to join what he called, I regret to say, a "Vigilance Committee" under his direction. "It's wanted about 'ere, and some of us are gettin' it up." He presented himself as one having friends outside, though indeed, he had no friends at all in the world but Edna and her aunt and two female cousins.
There was a quick but entirely respectful discussion of the situation. They thought him a lunatic who had tramped into, this neighbourhood ignorant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their leader came. Bill would settle him. Some one spoke203 of Bill.
"Bill's dead, I jest shot 'im," said Bert. "We don't need reckon with 'IM. 'E's shot, and a red-'aired chap with a squint204, 'E'S shot. We've settled up all that. There ain't going to be no more Bill, ever. 'E'd got wrong ideas about marriage and things. It's 'is sort of chap we're after."
That carried the meeting.
Bill was perfunctorily buried, and Bert's Vigilance Committee (for so it continued to be called) reigned205 in his stead.
That is the end of this story so far as Bert Smallways is concerned. We leave him with his Edna to become squatters among the clay and oak thickets206 of the Weald, far away from the stream of events. From that time forth life became a succession of peasant encounters, an affair of pigs and hens and small needs and little economies and children, until Clapham and Bun Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became to Bert no more than the fading memory of a dream. He never knew how the War in the Air went on, nor whether it still went on. There were rumours207 of airships going and coming, and of happenings Londonward. Once or twice their shadows fell on him as he worked, but whence they came or whither they went he could not tell. Even his desire to tell died out for want of food. At times came robbers and thieves, at times came diseases among the beasts and shortness of food, once the country was worried by a pack of boar-hounds he helped to kill; he went through many inconsecutive, irrelevant208 adventures. He survived them all.
Accident and death came near them both ever and again and passed them by, and they loved and suffered and were happy, and she bore him many children--eleven children--one after the other, of whom only four succumbed209 to the necessary hardships of their simple life. They lived and did well, as well was understood in those days. They went the way of all flesh, year by year.
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fabric
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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3
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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4
overlap
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| v.重叠，与…交叠；n.重叠 | |
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5
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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6
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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7
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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8
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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9
precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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10
haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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11
wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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12
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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13
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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14
monetary
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| adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的 | |
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15
worthiness
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| 价值，值得 | |
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16
unstable
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| adj.不稳定的，易变的 | |
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17
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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18
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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19
precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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20
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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21
earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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22
increment
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| n.增值，增价；提薪，增加工资 | |
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23
organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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24
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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25
malign
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| adj.有害的；恶性的；恶意的；v.诽谤，诬蔑 | |
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26
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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27
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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28
complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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29
portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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30
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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31
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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32
jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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33
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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34
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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35
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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36
precedents
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| 引用单元； 范例( precedent的名词复数 )； 先前出现的事例； 前例； 先例 | |
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37
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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38
decadence
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| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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39
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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40
disintegrated
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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42
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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43
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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44
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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45
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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46
aeronautic
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| adj.航空（学）的 | |
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47
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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48
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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49
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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50
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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51
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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52
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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53
heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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54
alpine
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|
| adj.高山的；n.高山植物 | |
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55
glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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56
wreckage
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|
| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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57
inflated
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|
| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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58
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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59
distended
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| v.（使）膨胀，肿胀( distend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
partially
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|
| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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61
naval
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|
| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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62
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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63
cardinal
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|
| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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64
costliness
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| 昂贵的 | |
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65
hoard
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|
| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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66
incurable
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|
| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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67
epidemic
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|
| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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68
depreciated
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|
| v.贬值，跌价，减价( depreciate的过去式和过去分词 )；贬低，蔑视，轻视 | |
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69
vaults
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|
| n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 )；地下室；撑物跳高；墓穴 | |
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70
disappearance
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|
| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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71
coagulation
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|
| n.凝固；凝结物 | |
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72
intercourse
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|
| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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73
fortress
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|
| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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74
perplexed
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|
| adj.不知所措的 | |
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75
marvel
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|
| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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76
utterly
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|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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77
countless
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|
| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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78
relentless
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|
| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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79
swooped
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|
| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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80
eastward
|
|
| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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81
westward
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|
| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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82
crescendo
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|
| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
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83
antagonists
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|
| 对立[对抗] 者，对手，敌手( antagonist的名词复数 )； 对抗肌； 对抗药 | |
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84
scattered
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|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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85
teeming
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|
| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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86
resentment
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|
| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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87
reluctance
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|
| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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88
acquiescence
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|
| n.默许；顺从 | |
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89
sanitary
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|
| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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90
wholesale
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|
| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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91
invincible
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|
| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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92
barricades
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| 路障，障碍物( barricade的名词复数 ) | |
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93
populous
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|
| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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94
vehement
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|
| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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95
passionate
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|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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96
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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97
replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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98
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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99
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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100
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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101
exhorted
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| v.劝告，劝说( exhort的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
insurgent
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| adj.叛乱的，起事的；n.叛乱分子 | |
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103
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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104
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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105
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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106
seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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107
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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108
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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109
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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110
pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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111
swooping
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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112
heeded
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 )；变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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114
brotherhoods
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| 兄弟关系( brotherhood的名词复数 )； （总称）同行； （宗教性的）兄弟会； 同业公会 | |
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115
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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116
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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117
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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118
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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119
apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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120
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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121
federations
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| n.联邦( federation的名词复数 )；同盟；联盟；联合会 | |
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122
begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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123
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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124
insignificant
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|
| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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125
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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126
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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127
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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128
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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129
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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130
seamanlike
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| 海员般的，熟练水手似的 | |
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131
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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132
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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133
subsisted
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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136
ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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137
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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138
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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139
ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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140
residue
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| n.残余，剩余，残渣 | |
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141
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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142
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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143
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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144
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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145
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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146
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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147
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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148
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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149
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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150
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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151
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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152
bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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153
whetted
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| v.（在石头上）磨（刀、斧等）( whet的过去式和过去分词 )；引起，刺激（食欲、欲望、兴趣等） | |
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154
devastated
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| v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的 | |
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155
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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156
hoarding
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| n.贮藏；积蓄；临时围墙；囤积v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的现在分词 ) | |
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157
negligently
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158
complexions
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| 肤色( complexion的名词复数 )； 面色； 局面； 性质 | |
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159
doughy
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| adj.面团的，苍白的，半熟的；软弱无力 | |
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160
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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161
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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162
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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163
stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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164
vagrants
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| 流浪者( vagrant的名词复数 )； 无业游民； 乞丐； 无赖 | |
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165
autonomous
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| adj.自治的；独立的 | |
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166
watchfulness
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| 警惕，留心； 警觉（性） | |
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167
smeared
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| 弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上 | |
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168
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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169
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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170
goggled
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| adj.戴护目镜的v.睁大眼睛瞪视， （惊讶的）转动眼珠( goggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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171
squads
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| n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍 | |
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172
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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173
magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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174
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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175
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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176
delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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177
raved
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| v.胡言乱语( rave的过去式和过去分词 )；愤怒地说；咆哮；痴心地说 | |
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178
snaring
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| v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的现在分词 ) | |
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179
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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180
plundered
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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181
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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182
parentheses
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| n.圆括号，插入语，插曲（ parenthesis的名词复数 ） | |
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183
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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184
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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185
bullies
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| n.欺凌弱小者, 开球 vt.恐吓, 威胁, 欺负 | |
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186
gore
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| n.凝血，血污；v.（动物）用角撞伤，用牙刺破；缝以补裆；顶 | |
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187
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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188
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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189
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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190
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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191
deplores
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| v.悲叹，痛惜，强烈反对( deplore的第三人称单数 ) | |
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192
chivalrous
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| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
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193
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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194
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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195
marvelling
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的现在分词 ) | |
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196
careworn
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| adj.疲倦的，饱经忧患的 | |
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197
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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198
yelped
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| v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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199
meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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200
facetious
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| adj.轻浮的，好开玩笑的 | |
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201
envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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202
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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203
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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204
squint
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| v. 使变斜视眼, 斜视, 眯眼看, 偏移, 窥视; n. 斜视, 斜孔小窗; adj. 斜视的, 斜的 | |
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205
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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206
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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207
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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208
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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209
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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