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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
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Pearson's Magazine, Feb 1926, with "Underground"
Headpiece from The World's News, Sydney, 5 Jun 1929
CUTTLE had a horror of going underground. His dread was a legacy of the war, when he had been buried in a bombed sap. Since then he had avoided, as far as possible, even tunnels and Tubes.
Yet now, of his own free will, he was on his way to visit a subterranean cave.
Old families and old countries suffer from gout; England's chalky deposits crop out from coast to coast and encrust her spine. The stalactite cavern to which Cuttle was bound was hollowed deep in the heart of a mountain, which, at one time, had been quarried.
Cuttle's host had been enthusiastic about the cave, which he compared to Cheddar, with an unfair bias in favor of his own locality.
"It'll never be opened to the public, like Cox's Cavern or Gough's Caves," he declared, "because it's too inaccessible; but it's well worth a visit. Suppose you folk take off some time to-day to see it."
IT was Tennis Week at the county town, and many of the players
were his guests. While the list of fixtures was being consulted.
Cuttle stood aloof and admired the clouds. But he pricked up his
ears as a girl, Shirley Charles, put a question.
"Is it a very stiff climb? You see, I've a touch of tennis-elbow, and I've got to save myself any strain."
Shirley took herself as seriously as a racehorse on the eve of the Derby. Wimbledon was her Mecca; but her immediate goal was the County Championship.
Her host hastened to reassure her.
"Anyone of sixty could tackle it with ease. It's a stiffish scramble down at its entrance, and the going's a little rough. But there's only one bad bit, and the air, considering all things, is sweet as milk."
"I'm on," declared Shirley.
"I'm off," murmured Cuttle, discreetly withdrawing a few paces.
He was recalled by Shirley's voice.
"The others have got to phone up the secretary of the association. I hate hanging about; suppose we go on ahead?"
Cuttle forgot his qualms. Before ever he met Shirley in the flesh he had worshipped her on paper. He had a bulging envelope of tennis snapshots cut from the daily press.
But, as a non-player, he had been outside her charmed tennis circle. This was his first opportunity to be alone with her.
"Great idea!" he said fervently.
She walked him at a regrettable pace through the village. It was a heavy day, with a spatter of rain in the breeze. The sky hung low and was the color of a bruise.
"How far is it?" asked Cuttle.
Shirley consulted an envelope, on the back of which their host had drawn a rough plan.
"About a mile and a quarter to the shaft. We follow old workings through to the cave. The General said we couldn't miss it. Wait a minute here."
She stopped outside the village shop.
"My torch needs a refill," she explained "We'll buy some candles and then well be on the safe side, whatever happens."
Cuttle reflected sadly that she seemed determined to forestall any emergency which might have saved him from the horrors of underground. But once they were out on the rough paths of the mountainside he forgot everything but Shirley.
She wore no hat, and the wind blew an enchanting golden cowlick over her eyes. Her cheeks were like ripe apricots. She had radiant youth and health. Better than all this, she was at the top of her form.
Cuttle decided that they were reaching the cave too quickly.
"Do you mind easing up a bit?" he asked, blowing ostentatiously.
"Oh, sorry! I forgot." Shirley's smile was sweet. "I'm in special training. I've even knocked off smoking until after the Championship."
She slackened her steps to a pace which made conversation possible. Cuttle yearned to exchange views about some of the things which matter; community singing, Vitamin B, and survival after death.
But Shirley knew a better subject than any of these.
Tennis.
Cuttle did his best. He talked of Tilden and Suzanne, of Borotra and Betty Nuthall; but chiefly about the local Tennis Week.
And, in particular, the form displayed by that promising young player, Miss Shirley Charles.
"Isn't it thrilling to have the crowd cheering you and asking for your autograph?" he asked.
Shirley tried to look stern.
"Applause shouldn't be allowed. It's apt to put you off your game."
"But does it?" persisted Cuttle.
"Well, to be frank, it does—but only when they're cheering your opponent. And I get very tired sometimes," she added.
CUTTLE rejoiced to hear it. He held Shirley the dearest girl
on earth, but it was plain that she possessed one grievous
fault.
Unless it were checked, a man might end in being known as the husband of Miss Shirley Charles.
"Tired of tennis?" he asked hopefully.
"No. Of wearing white. So insipid." She stopped to consult her envelope. "We must be nearly there."
At the reminder Cuttle felt the working of an internal churn.
Their path had led them directly under the brow of the mountain, which hung over them in massive rocks superimposed on raw earth. While Cuttle viewed it with a sink-ing heart, Shirley ran ahead with a scream of delight.
"Here!"
She stopped before a gash in the ground which sloped steeply to unseen depths.
"Doesn't it look like the beginning of an adventure?" she asked joyfully.
Cuttle leant over the side and was met by a whiff of decay, as though the mountain suffered from foul breath.
"Such a lovely earthy smell," declared Shirley. "Makes one think of Pan."
"Pan stuck to the woods, like a sensible chap," dissented Cuttle. "And—if this is the entrance—I've the deepest respect for the age of sixty. But I'm positive it is not."
Shirley merely consulted her miserable plan.
"Of course it is. It's marked here. Oh, do let me go first!"
Cuttle saw that there was to be no reprieve, as she leapt into the chasm as nimbly as a chamois. He took a last look at the world, lying below him in dark laps of bracken and heather. Then, gritting his teeth, he followed Shirley down the shaft.
The sides were slippery and draped in sappy greenery, which he was positive oozed verdigris within his grip. Worse still, it proved to be of unexpected depth. The slice of livid sky at the top grew narrow and pale as he wormed his way down into twilight gloom.
HE felt his feet slipping on the base of a slimy rock as he
dropped a good five feet down to the bottom.
In the darkness Shirley's torch glimmered like a glow-worm. Looking up he could no longer see his crack of blessed daylight.
"How on earth shall we get up that last bit again?" he inquired.
"Pick-a-back," said Shirley. "Isn't it a thrill? Aren't you just loving it?"
Cuttle declared that he loved it—just.
"And now," he said, "I think we'll pick-a-back up again. This is the wrong hole. Now, please, don't tell me to find a better hole. At certain times I abominate humor."
Shirley stood firm.
"My dear man, what's all the fuss about? It wasn't half so stiff a scramble down as the General led me to expect. Come on!"
Cuttle saw that she had not turned a hair. She seemed endowed with joints of India-rubber and unpuncturable wind. So he cursed himself for a club-footed craven as he stumbled after her along the bed of a miniature moraine.
However, he had one ray of light in his darkness, for it was evident that Shirley had accepted him.
"I'm glad we two got off alone," she said frankly. "In conversation we make quite a good doubles, don't we? We seem to think alike."
"About tennis?" observed Cuttle bleakly.
"Yes. But, competition play apart, you play tennis, of course?"
"I'm only a rabbit," confessed Cuttle.
He could guess that he had shocked her, although her voice remained kind.
"I expect golf is your game?"
"I potter round and take my eye off the ball."
"Oh! Then what is your special line?"
"The line of mediocrity."
Shirley discreetly changed the subject.
"LET me get my bearings," she said. "We keep on turning to the
left. In that case we go down here."
She pointed to a cutting in the rocks.
As Cuttle looked through the narrow aperture he felt his old horror of underground suddenly weigh down on him like actual stricture. The back of his neck began to ache slightly, as though a heavy hand were forcing down his head.
"Nonsense!" he objected. "We keep on down the cave."
"But I can see the end of the cave," declared Shirley triumphantly. "So this must be the way. But, if you prefer it, we'll wait for the others."
Cuttle reminded himself that Fate had given him this hour. By the afternoon he would be again outside Shirley's circle, straining his ears to catch the magic sounds of cross-cut, volley and chop.
"It's not a pleasant spot to hang round in," he said. "We'd better go on."
The gallery was so narrow that they were forced to walk in single file. But it seemed lofty, although an occasional drop fell from its unseen roof. This moisture was responsible for a cold, dead odor, as of stagnant water.
CUTTLE tried to take as shallow breaths as possible, with the
result that an invisible finger began to tickle his throat.
"Talking about the electric hare," he began hurriedly. "What do you think—"
"Why are you coughing?" interrupted Shirley.
"This air. It strikes me as foul."
"But the General said it was sweet as milk."
"I never did have any opinion of milk," commented Cuttle, beginning to whistle "The Frothblowers' Anthem."
"Yet milk," said Shirley, "gave you your first start in life, and made you the man you are to-day."
Cuttle followed the glow-worm glimmer of her torch in silence. Presently he spoke.
"I don't quite like that remark, because I've an idea that you don't think me quite the world's model for a man."
Shirley laughed.
"Don't be silly! Your only trouble is you've far too much imagination. Now, I cough just like you before a match. It's just nerves."
Before Cuttle could reply, they were startled by a low, sullen boom, as of an explosion. It grew louder, throbbing through the narrow passage in a savage roar, like the stamping of a vast machine.
Cuttle's heart dropped a beat. He had a vision of a monstrous slice of the mountain peeling itself off and sealing their entrance-shaft with hundreds of tons of earth.
"What is it?" asked Shirley.
"Sounds rather like a landslip," he replied. "I think we'd better go back, just to see if the—the road is clear outside."
Shirley shook her head as a second boom followed on the echoes of the last.
"Why, it's thunder! Now I do call that luck to be out of the rain!"
Remembering the livid sky, Cuttle knew that she was right. But his nerve had de-finitely crashed, and he followed her with the uneasy sensation that every step brought them still farther from the safety of their base.
Although he made no further protest, he had hardly gone a few yards down the next passage when he recognised that he was in the grip of his old enemy, claustrophobia. The roof was so low that they had to stoop.
Cuttle felt as though the mountain itself were pressing down on his head. The ache at the back of his neck grew almost intolerable, while the air seemed to have thickened and to be clotted with the taint of decay. In his efforts not to breathe, his throat grew sanded.
He fought his sensations desperately as he remembered Shirley's charge of nerves. This was merely the aftermath of his experience in the bombed sap. They had the General's assurance that the air was technically pure.
AS he realised this fact he was conscious of relief. He
reminded himself that there was a time limit to everything.
Moreover, his sufferings were not comparable with his gain, if he
could only subdue his reactions to the discomfort of underground.
It was plain that Shirley liked him; the end of the morning might
find them closer friends.
Suddenly he burst out laughing.
"Oh. I'm so glad you're liking it at last," cried Shirley. "I thought you were horribly bored."
"You see, exclaimed Cuttle, I'm not used to pleasure. I'm one of the world's workers. I make marmalade."
"Of course," Shirley reflected. "'Cuttle's Crystal Cut.' I never connected it with you. Jolly good marmalade, too."
"Excellent. If you'll put that into writing, enclosing your signed photograph for publication, I am prepared to send you a whole pot gratis. I spare no expense in advertisement."
"If you'd really like my photograph," said Shirley, "I'll give you one in memory of this morning. Oo! My back is aching from stooping. Is yours?"
"No."
Cuttle spoke with truth. Every shred of discomfort had vanished at the prospect of Shirley's gift.
But his jubilation was of short duration. It vanished abruptly as Shirley dropped to her knees before an aperture not much higher than the entrance to a dog-kennel.
"Here comes the General's bad bit," she announced cheerfully. "It's evidently a working of the old chalk quarry. Come on! This is most exciting!"
Before Cuttle could protest, she had crawled through the hole. Although she managed to hold her torch in her left hand, she blocked its light, leaving Cuttle in darkness.
IN a panic he struck a match, all he could see was a long silk
stocking, grievously laddered, and a rubber sole.
The cutting was practically dark and very hot. He seemed again to be eating mouthfuls of curded air. They stuck in his throat and made him choke. He tried not to cough, and felt his heart protest in violent thumps. Lastly, his brow grew damply chill and he heard an ominous singing in his ears.
He pictured her plight at finding herself entombed in a burrow with an unconscious man. She could neither extricate him nor minister to him. She would never forgive him.
He told himself that this torture was worse than the agony of the bombed sap. After all, death exacts no ceremony; one can meet it as Nature in the raw and feel no shame. But now he had to remember that he was an English gentleman and a public schoolboy, and all the beastly things which he was not; that he made marmalade; and—worst of all—that Shirley was billed to appear at 3.30 on the centre court that afternoon.
Then he thought of the miners who had lain here, on their backs, all day, picking away at this very cutting; who took the job in their stride and never lost their joy in beer. Recalled by their heroism, his own manhood oozed back.
Shirley's voice broke through the buzzing of the bees which had hived inside his head.
"I'm through!"
In another second he was standing erect and wiping his brow.
He felt distinctly easier without his pull-over, which he tucked under one armpit. He reminded himself that, after all, his gallant miners worked, more or less, in the buff. With a fresh interest he examined his surroundings.
They were in what appeared to be a gigantic fissure in the mountain—rather like human flies in a crack. The walls on either side dripped with moisture, and he could hear subterranean gurgling. Although the roof was lost in shadows, he had the comforting idea that the chimney might open to the sky.
He followed Shirley with renewed confidence.
"These drippings suggest we are near the stalactite cave," he remarked.
"I've never been in one," confessed Shirley. "That's why I'm keen on this. What are the stalactites like?"
"Oh, bundles of carrots, and bits of drapery, and such-like. Requires an effort of imagination, to my mind."
Shirley was shaking with laughter. She turned to him, her eyes brimming with mirth.
"I've just been looking at the chart, and I find I took a wrong turning. That bit we crawled through was a little extra I threw in. Awful confession. But we're straight again, and this is the General's bad bit."
She pointed to a break in the path, where the rock narrowed to a ledge about a foot wide, above a deep cavity. It extended for about two yards, and could be crossed with ease by anyone who possessed a good head.
ALTHOUGH Shirley went over like a lamplighter, Cuttle followed
closely behind her in case of mishap. Near its end she leant over
the gap.
"Coo!" she cried. "I believe it goes down for miles. I can't see the bottom, and there's ever such a wind blowing up."
She broke off with a cry as her foot slipped on the ledge. Leaning forward too far for safety, she had lost her balance. But even as she staggered Cuttle's arm shot out and he dragged her across to safety.
As he did so the pullover which he was carrying fell into the depths. They could follow its passage by the magnified rattling of dislodged pebbles rebounding against the rocks.
After an interval there was a distant splash.
"It might have been me!" she said.
Cuttle saw that she was badly shaken by the incident. Her cheeks no longer looked like ripe apricots. When they left the fissure, to follow another cutting through the clay, he forgot his own discomfort in his concern for her.
"I'm feeling quite rotten," she said suddenly. "I'm sure this air is septic."
"Sweet as milk," he assured her. "Proof. It's not knocked me out."
"But you're a man."
"And you're a tennis champion."
"Not yet."
"No. Next week."
Cuttle felt that his own shadow must be standing by, laughing at the ironic twist to the situation, as he strove to interest Shirley in the supreme topic of tennis.
HE succeeded to a certain impersonal extent. She stopped him
in the middle of his description of a Wimbledon Final.
"Where are those candles? This torch is nearly done."
She recovered some of her complacency when Cuttle drew the bulky parcel from his trousers pocket.
"Lucky I thought of it, or we'd have been in the soup," she said, producing her matches.
There were but three in the box. One was already spent, and the heads of the other two blew off directly they were struck.
"That's the worst of cheap foreign matches," remarked Shirley. "Where are yours?"
Cuttle put his hand in his trousers pocket.
"Hurry up!" called Shirley. "The light's nearly gone."
He tried the other pocket.
"I know you've got a full box," said Shirley, "for I saw them."
"Only give me time," urged Cuttle.
He patted the breast-pocket of his shirt with fingers which were clay-cold. He knew that he had carried matches.
And he knew where he had put them. Shirley remembered, too.
"They were in the pocket of your pullover," she said. "Your pullover. Oh!"
She clapped her hand to her mouth to suppress her scream. Dimly Cuttle saw her face, white as ashes, with a damp golden cowlick clinging to her forehead.
Then the light went out.
"That's done it!" said Shirley, beginning to laugh.
"What's the next move?" she asked, taking great pains with her voice.
"Masterly inaction," replied Cuttle. "The others will soon be here. We've only to wait for them."
"Wait—in the dark?"
"It won't be long."
"But they may decide not to come."
"In that case," he said, "they'll certainly send out a search party for us."
"Of course. Let's sit down and be comfortable."
Her words were a mockery. The darkness was like an enemy which had already struck home, drugging their faculties.
Cuttle was blind, with no third eye to guide him. His ears were beginning to betray him, for he located Shirley's voice in a direction which he knew to be false. He found himself gasping for breath, as though he were being chloroformed by the black density.
It was like the Prelude to Creation, where there was neither form, nor light, nor tone.
Shirley had the same thought.
"It's horrible!" she cried. "It's like—nothing! I'm sorry, but I simply can't stay still, waiting in the dark. Let's go on."
Cuttle sprang to his feet. His belief in that rescue party was not as vital as he would have wished. It would be a relief to move.
"Heaven helps those who help themselves," he said cheerily. "I'll prod the wall, and we'll keep on turning always to the left. Give me your hand."
"I hope you realise this is your fault," he said. "See what comes of giving up the womanly habit of smoking."
"Yes," agreed Shirley. "Normally I carry tons of matches. Of course, too, if I'd not been curious to see the bottom of that crevasse you wouldn't have lost your pullover."
"Never mind. I saved something more worth while."
"I wonder. It might have been quicker—that way."
"Don't be a blooming sap."
Cuttle's rough words had their desired effect.
THEY wandered, because inaction was death to the spirit. While
they sat and waited, the Shadow which followed them swallowed
them up.
They wandered, although they had no goal. They could see no end, because they did not dare to look beyond the moment. Even if a false step brought death to the body, it was better to go out and meet it unafraid.
So they talked of marmalade.
"Of course I like making it," said Cuttle. "All but one part of it. It's a jolly good trade. Wholesome, refreshing food for the nation—made from the purest sugar and finest fruit. Nature's own remedy—"
"Don't!" pleaded Shirley. "You make me feel ashamed."
"Why on earth?"
"Because you work and I play."
"Now, don't be a sap again. I call your kind of tennis jolly hard work."
"It is, in a way. It's fine for lots of things. But I've thought far too much about it. Even when I was at school I wouldn't play with the other girls for fear of losing my form. You see, I'm not big, like the real champions, and I've lost my sense of proportion. I can see myself now. Just a fairly good amateur, with a swelled head."
IT made Cuttle long to justify her confidence, but he could do
nothing. They could only wander on until they crossed the
threshold of a still deeper darkness. "What's the part of your
work you don't like?" asked Shirley suddenly.
"The jokes," explained Cuttle. "People always asking you if you pick up the orange-peel in the gutter, and so on. And I've got to grin and pretend I like it."
Shirley actually laughed—and the Shadow shrank a little farther behind.
"That's weak," she declared. "You should either like it or let them see you don't like it."
"What—have people laughing at me?"
"Why not? What do people matter? People are only a lot of you's and me's. Why do you practically admit that every man is better than yourself?"
Although her words were a flame spurting in the gloom, Cuttle made no reply. He had gone past speech, as he pressed forward through the darkness, as though he were wading through a sluggish black lake. Only part of his brain seemed able to function, and he reeled slightly, like a man walking in his sleep.
All sense of time or direction slipped away. He might have been wandering for a minute, or a hundred years, when he felt Shirley's fingers tighten on his.
"Listen! Voices."
He strained his ears. There were gurglings and whisperings, chuckles and echoes everywhere.
"No," he said; "only water."
"But I can distinguish words," persisted Shirley. "Shout!"
They both shouted into the darkness. The echo sent back an independent reply:—
"Hullo! Where are you? Shout!"
They pressed forward, straining their eyes. A long way ahead there seemed to be a very faint sprayed light, like street illuminations seen through a window at the end of a black corridor.
Presently Cuttle gave a shout of surprise. They were poised upon the lip of a drop down to the cup of a huge cavern. Natural pillars and arches gleamed faintly in the light of electric torches, as though adorned with frosted icicles.
It was the General's famous stalactite cave.
Cuttle could distinguish moving figures and the white blurs of faces looking upwards to their gallery.
Illustration from The World's News, Sydney, 5 Jun 1929
Yet, even as he hailed his friends, he felt a sense of loss. This was the end of the adventure. Shirley's own special circle was here. Some of the tennis players were already clambering up the rocks to their aid. Shirley was carried off, surrounded, swallowed up. But in the midst of the excitement and confusion she looked across at Cuttle and smiled.
He knew then that his fears were vain. They had come too close together in the darkness, where they had not only found each other, but seen themselves.
He turned to the General, who received him with welcome brandy and profanity.
"Did we take a wrong turning?" asked Cuttle.
"Wrong turning?" roared the General. "You never were right. You only went down a derelict mine-shaft and wandered about in the old workings. Marvel is you escaped being gassed. The air must be foul as festering fish."
Cuttle smiled.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "we were both nearly bowled over. But we had your assurance that the air was pure, and we believed it. Auto-suggestion, I suppose. But it was pretty bad in the dark."
The General's face sobered.
"If you'd shown a naked light," he declared, "there would have been an explosion, probably, and a fall of earth. I believe that it was losing your matches that saved you both from being buried alive."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.