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Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

TRUE/FALSE
1. The indexed variables (members) of an array must be integers.
ANSWER: FALSE
2. The locations of the various indexed variables in an array can be spread out all
over the memory.
ANSWER: FALSE
3. The following array declaration is legal
double scores[]={0.1,0.2,0.3};
ANSWER: true
4. Arrays can be passed to functions.
ANSWER: TRUE
5. Arrays can be returned from a function.
ANSWER: FALSE
6. If a function is expecting a pass by reference parameter, you can pass an index
variable from an array of the same base type to that function.
ANSWER: TRUE
7. When you have a function that expects an array, it should also expect the size of
the array or the number of indexed variables with valid data.
ANSWER: TRUE
8. The following function declaration guarantees the values in the array argument
are not changed.

void function1(int array[], int numElements);

ANSWER: FALSE
9. The following function will work with any size integer array.

void function1(int array[], int numElements);

ANSWER: TRUE
10. If you use the const modifier in a function declaration, you do not include it in the
function definition.
ANSWER: FALSE
Short Answer
1. Write the code to declare a two dimension array of integers with 10 rows and 20
columns.
ANSWER: int array[10][20];
2. Write the code to declare an array of 10 doubles named list;
ANSWER: double list[10];
3. The modifier that guarantees that an array argument will not be changed is called
______.
ANSWER: const
4. How many indexed variables does the following array have?
int myArray[]={1,2,3,6,5,4,7,1,2};
ANSWER: 9
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

5. How many indexed variables does the following array have?

int myArray[12]={1,2,3,6,5,4,7,1,2};
ANSWER: 12
6. Write the declaration for a function named funct1 that expects an array of floats,
the number of elements in the array and does not return any value.
ANSWER: void funct1(float myArray[], int numElements);
7. If you put a value in the square brackets of a one-dimension array parameter, this
value is _________ by the compiler.
ANSWER: ignored
8. If your index used to access the indexed variables of the array has the value of a
non-existent index, this is called _________
ANSWER: Index out of range, Index out of bounds, or illegal.
9. The computer remembers the address of which indexed variable(s) in an array?
______
ANSWER: the first
10. A computer's memory consists of numbered locations called __________.
ANSWER: bytes
11. In the expression
double score[10];
double is called the ___________ of the array
ANSWER: base type
12. In the expression
cout << score[i] << endl;
i is called the
ANSWER: index or subscript
13. An _______ is used to process a collection of data all of which is the same type
ANSWER: array
14. The individual variables that comprise an array are called __________
ANSWER: indexed variables, subscripted variables, or elements.
15. Indexes are numbered starting at _________
ANSWER: 0
Multiple Choice
1. What are the valid indexes for the array shown below?
int myArray[25];
a. 0-25
b. 0-24
c. 1-25
d. 1-24
ANSWER: B
2. What is wrong with the following code?
float scores[10], total;
a. Cannot declare regular and array variables together.
b. Arrays must be integers
c. The 10 should be replaced with a variable name, whose value is input
from the user
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

d. Nothing.
ANSWER: D
3. Given an array named scores with 25 elements, what is the correct way to access
the 25th element?
a. scores+25
b. scores[24]
c. scores[25]
d. scores[last]
ANSWER: B
4. Why should you use a named constant for the size of an array?
a. Readability of code
b. Makes changes to the program easier
c. Helps reduce logic errors
d. All of the above
ANSWER: D
5. Given an array of integers of size 5, how does the computer know where the 3rd
indexed variable is located?
a. It adds 3 to the base address of the array
b. It adds space for 3 integers to the base address of the array
c. It remembers where all the indexed variables of the array are located.
d. None of the above
ANSWER: B
6. What is wrong with the following code fragment?
const int SIZE =5;
float scores[SIZE];
for(int i=0; i<=SIZE;i++)
{
cout << "Enter a score\n";
cin >> scores[i];
}
a. Array indexes start at 1 not 0
b. Arrays must be integers
c. Array indexes must be less than the size of the array
d. Should be cin >> scores[0];
ANSWER: C
7. Which of the following declare an array of 5 characters, and initializes them to
some known values?
a. char array[5]={'a','b','c','d','e'};
b. char array[4]={'a','b','c','d','e'};
c. char array[5]={''};
d. char array[]={'a','b','d','e'};
e. A and C
f. B and D
g. all of the above
ANSWER: E
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

8. If you declare and initialize an integer array of size 10, but only list 5 values, what
values are stored in the remaining 5 indexed variables?
a. 0
b. garbage
c. 0.0
d. '0'
ANSWER: A
9. Arrays are always passed to a function using
a. pass by value
b. pass by reference
c. pass by array
d. you cannot pass arrays to a function
ANSWER: C
10. Give the following declarations, which of the following is a legal call to this
function?
int myFunction(int myValue);

int myArray[1000];
a. cout << myFunction(myArray);
b. cout << myFunction(myArray[0]);
c. myArray = myFunction(myArray);
d. myArray[1] = myFunction(myArray[0]);
e. A and B
f. A and C
g. B and D
ANSWER: G
11. Which of the following function declarations correctly expect an array as the first
argument?
a. void f1(int array, int size);
b. void f1(int& array, int size);
c. void f1(int array[100], int size);
d. void f1(float array[], int size);
e. All of the above
f. C and D
g. A and B
ANSWER: F
12. Which of the following function declarations correctly guarantee that the function
will not change any values in the array argument?
a. void f1(int array[], int size) const;
b. void f1(int array[], int size);
c. void f1(int &array, int size);
d. void f1(const int array[], int size);
e. void f1(int array[], const int size);
ANSWER: D
13. The following function definition has an error in it. What line is this error on?
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

0. void f1(const double array[], int size)

1. {
2. int i=0;
3. while(i< size)
4. {
5. array[i] += 2;
6. cout <<array[i];
7. i++;
8. }
9. }
a. 0
b. 2
c. 5
d. 6
e. 2
ANSWER: C
14. Which of the following function declarations could be used to input data from the
keyboard into the array?
a. void input(int array[], int &numElements, int MAX_SIZE);
b. void input(int array[], int numElements, int MAX_SIZE);
c. void input(int &array[], int numElements, int MAX_SIZE);
d. int array[] input(int array[], int &numElements, int MAX_SIZE);
ANSWER: A
15. If we want a search function to search an array for some value and return either
the index where the value was found, or -1 if not found, which of the following
prototypes would be appropriate?
a. void search(const int array, int target, int numElements);
b. void search(const int array, int target);
c. int search(const int array[], int numElements);
d. int search(const int array[], int target, int numElements);
ANSWER: D
16. Given the following function definition for a search function, and the following
variable declarations, which of the following are appropriate function
invocations?

const int SIZE=1000;

int search(const int array[], int target, int numElements);

int array[SIZE], target, numberOfElements;

a. search(array[0], target, numberOfElements);
b. result=search(array[0], target, numberOfElements);
c. result=search(array, target, numberOfElements);
d. result=search(array, target, SIZE);
ANSWER: C
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

17. Given the following function definition, will repeated calls to the search function
for the same target find all occurrences of that target in the array?
int search(const int array[], int target, int numElements)
{
int index=0;
bool found=false;

while((!found) && (index < numElements))

{
if(array[index] == target)
found=true;
else
index++;
}
if(found==true)
return index;
else
return -1;
}
a. Yes
b. No
c. Impossible to tell without looking at the values of the array
d. It depends on the value of target.
ANSWER: B
18. Given the following function definition, what modifications need to be made to
the search function so that it finds all occurrences of target in the array?
int search(const int array[], int target, int numElements)
{
int index=0;
bool found=false;

while((!found) && (index < numElements))

{
if(array[index] == target)
found=true;
else
index++;
}
if(found==true)
return index;
else
return -1;
}
a. Add another parameter to indicate where to stop searching
b. Add another parameter to indicate where to start searching
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

c. This already can find all occurrences of a given target

d. Have the function return the whole array
ANSWER: B
19. Which sort algorithm does the following outline define?
for i between 0 and number_used-1 inclusive
put the ith smallest element at array[i]
a. sequential
b. selection
c. bubble
d. swap
ANSWER:B
20. Which of the following array declarations are legal?
a. int array[10];
b. int size;
cin >> size;
int array[size];
c. int array[]={0,0,0};
d. const int size=9;
int array[size];
e. All of the above
f. All but C
g. All but B
ANSWER: G
21. Which of the following function declarations will accept the following two-
dimension array?
int pages[10][30];
a. void f1(int pages[][], int size);
b. void f1(int pages[][30], int size);
c. void f1(int pages[10][], int size);
d. void f1(int& pages, int size);
ANSWER: B
22. If you need a function that will handle multi-dimensional arrays, you must specify
the following sizes inside the square brackets.
a. All the sizes
b. All sizes except the last dimension
c. All sizes except the first dimension
d. None of the sizes
ANSWER: C
23. What is the output of the following code fragment?
int array[4][4], index1, index2;
for(index1=0;index1<4;index1++)
for(index2=0;index2<4;index2++)
array[index1][index2]=index1 + index2;
for(index1=0;index1<4;index1++)
{
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

for(index2=0;index2<4;index2++)
cout << array[index1][index2] << " ";
cout << endl;
}
a. 0 1 2 3
1234
2345
3456
b. 0 1 2 3
0123
0123
0123
c. 0 0 0 0
1111
2222
3333
d. 0 0 0 0
0123
0246
0369
ANSWER: A
24. Which of the following correctly declare an array that can hold up to 3 rows of 5
columns of doubles?
a. int array[3],[5];
b. int array[3][5];
c. float array[3][5];
d. float array[3,5];
ANSWER: C
25. Which of the following function declarations can be passed the following array?
char myArray[6][8];
a. void f1(char a[][], int sizeOfFirst);
b. void f1(char a[][8], int sizeOfFirst);
c. void f1(char& a, int sizeOfFirst);
d. void f1(char a[6][8], int sizeOfFirst);
e. B and D
f. A and D
ANSWER: E
26. A two dimension array can also be thought of as
a. a table
b. an array of arrays
c. a file
d. none of the above
e. A and C
f. A and B
ANSWER: F
Test Bank for Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, 9/e
Chapter 7 Arrays

27. Which of the following will correctly assign all the values in one array to the
other array? (Assume both arrays are of the same type and have SIZE elements)
a. array1=array2;
b. array1[]=array2;
c. for(i=0;i<SIZE;i++)
array1[i]=array2[i];
d. for(i=0;i<SIZE;i++)
array1[]=array2[];
ANSWER: C
28. Which of the following will read values from the keyboard into the array?
(Assume the size of the array is SIZE).
a. cin >> array;
b. cin >> array[];
c. cin >> array[SIZE];
d. for(i=0;i<SIZE;i++)
cin >> array[i];
ANSWER: D
29. Which of the following correctly uses C++11’s range-based for statement to
iterate through every element of the array variable arr?
a. for (auto x : arr)
b. foreach (x in arr)
c. for (auto x; x < arr.length; x++)
d. for x in arr
ANSWER: A
30. What is the output of this code?
int arr[] = { 1, 2, 3};
for (int &element : arr)
element+=10;
for (int element : arr)
cout << element << endl;
a. 1 2 3
b. 11 12 13
ANSWER: B
31. What is the output of this code?
int arr[] = { 1, 2, 3};
for (int element : arr)
element+=10;
for (int element : arr)
cout << element << endl;
a. 1 2 3
b. 11 12 13
ANSWER: A
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pace up and down the room again.

“Going to stampede with the rest of ’em?” asked Thrale. “Extraordinarily

infectious thing, panic.”

“I don’t think it’s that exactly ...” hesitated Gurney.

“Animal fear,” said Thrale. “The terror of the wild thing threatened with the
unknown. The runaway horse terrified and rushing to its own destruction.
Fly, fly, fly from the threat of peril as you did once on the prairies, when to
fly meant safety.”

“It’s so infernally depressing in London,” said Gurney.

“All right, go and brood on death in the country,” replied Thrale. “That may
cheer you up a bit. But, take my advice, don’t run. Walk at a snail’s pace
and check the least tendency to hurry. Once you begin to quicken your pace,
you will find yourself hurrying desperately—and then stampede the hell of
terror at your heels. After all, you know, you may survive. It isn’t likely that
every man will die.”

Gurney caught eagerly at that. “No, no, of course it isn’t,” he said. “But
wouldn’t one be much more likely to survive if one were living in the
country, or by the sea—in some fairly isolated place, for example. I meant
to go down to Cornwall for my holiday this year, to a little cottage on the
coast about four miles from Padstow; don’t you think in pure air and
healthy surroundings like that, one would stand a better chance?”

“Very likely,” said Thrale carelessly. “But don’t run. In any case you’d
better wait till the middle of the week. The first rush will be over then.”

“Yes. Perhaps. I’ll go on Wednesday, or Tuesday....”

Thrale smiled grimly. “Well, good night,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

When he had gone, Gurney went to the window again. The sounds of riot
from Piccadilly had died down to a low, confused murmur. A motor-car
whizzed by along Jermyn Street, and two people passed on foot, a man and
a woman; the woman was leaning heavily on the man’s arm.

Gurney turned once more to his pacing of the room. He was trying to
realize the unrealizable fact that the world offered no refuge. For a full hour
he struggled with himself, with that new, strange instinct which rose up and
urged him to fly for his life. At last weary and overborne he threw himself
into a chair by the dying fire and began to cry like a lost child; even as
Ernst, the waiter, had cried....

The panic emigration lasted until Monday evening, and then came news
which checked and stayed the rush for the ports of Liverpool, Southampton
and Queenstown. The plague was already in America. It had come, as
Thrale had prophesied from the West. At the docks many of those favoured
emigrants who had secured berths, hesitated; if it was to be a choice
between death in America and death in England, they preferred to die at
home.

Yet, even on Tuesday morning, when doubt as to the coming of the plague
was no longer possible, when Dundee could only give approximate figures
of the seizures in that town, reporting them as not less than a thousand,
when it was evident that the whole of Scotland was becoming infected with
incredible rapidity, and two cases were notified as far south as Durham,
there remained still an enormous body of people who stoutly maintained
that, bad as things were, the danger was grossly exaggerated, who believed
that the danger would soon pass, and who, steadfast to the habits of a
lifetime, continued their routine wherever it was possible so to do,
determined to resist to the last.

To this body, possibly some two-fifths of the whole urban population, was
due the comparative maintenance of law and order. In face of the growing
destitution due to the wholesale closing of factories, warehouses and
offices, necessitated by the now complete cessation of foreign trade and to
the hoarding of food stores and gold which was already so marked as to
have seriously affected the commerce not dependent on foreign sellers and
buyers, a semblance of ordinary life was still maintained. Newspapers were
issued, trains and ’buses were running, theatres and music-halls were open,
and many normal occupations were carried on.

Yet everything was infected. It was as if the cloak of civilization was worn
more loosely. Crime was increasing and justice was relaxed. Robberies of
food were so common that there was no place for the confinement of those
who were convicted. Shopkeepers were becoming at once more reliant upon
their own defences, and less scrupulous in their dealings with bona-fide
customers. No longer could the protection of the State be exclusively relied
upon, the citizen was becoming lost in the individual. Public opinion was
being resolved into individual opinion; and with the failing of the great
restraint every man was developing an unsuspected side of his character.
Thrown upon his own resources, he became continually less civilized, more
conscious of possibilities to fulfill long-thwarted tendencies and desires; he
began to understand that when it is a case of sauve qui peut, the weakest are
trampled under foot.

So the cloak of civilization gaped and showed the form of the naked man,
with all its blemishes and deformities. And women blenched and shuddered.
For woman, as yet, was little, if at all, altered in character by the fear that
was brutalizing man. Her faith in the intrinsic rectitude of the beloved
conventions was more deeply rooted. Moreover woman fears the strictures
of woman, more than man fears the judgments of man.
 VIII—GURNEY IN CORNWALL

Gurney’s alternative to flying from the plague was to run away from
himself. He shirked the issue in his conversations with Thrale, shuffled,
sophisticated, and in a futile endeavour to convince his companion,
convinced himself that his reasoning was sound and his motive
unprejudiced.

It was not until the following Thursday, however, that he took train to
Cornwall. He had succeeded in realizing between two and three hundred
pounds in gold, and this he took with him. He intended to lay in stores of
flour, sugar and other primary necessities; to buy and keep two or three
cows, to rear chickens, to grow as much garden produce as possible,
especially potatoes; and generally to provide against the coming scarcity of
food and the cessation of transport.

The bungalow on the shores of Constantine Bay, to which he departed, was

a place well suited to the carrying out of these prudent arrangements. It
belonged to a friend of his, who was rich enough to indulge his whims, and
who had spent a considerable sum of money in building the place and
enclosing ground, but who rarely occupied the bungalow himself, and was
too careless to bother about letting it. Gurney had the keys in his
possession. When he had asked his friend for permission to spend his
summer holiday there, he had been told to use the place as if it were his
own. “Jolly good thing for me, you know,” his friend had said. “Keep it dry
and all that.”
Gurney was not an idle man. Arrived at his bungalow, he lost no time in
carrying out the arrangements he had schemed, and for nearly three weeks
he was so absorbed in this work, in learning new occupations and perfecting
his plan, that he did, indeed, achieve his purpose of running away from
himself.

He became imbued with a new feeling of security; he received neither

letters nor papers from the outside, and the old labourer who assisted him in
setting potatoes, who taught him to milk a cow and instructed him generally
in the primitive arts of self-supporting toil, seemed to regard all rumours of
the new plague which filtered through to the village of St Merryn as some
foreign nonsense which had little bearing on life in the county of Cornwall,
as represented by the twenty-five or thirty square miles which were to him
all the essential world.

Gurney began to believe that the plague would never cross the Tamar, and
one day in early May, when his provisions against a siege were practically
completed, he was stirred to attempt a journey across the peninsula in order
to visit an acquaintance in East Looe. Gurney had become conscious of a
longing for some companionship. Old Hawken was very good at cows and
potatoes, but he was rather deaf and his range of ideas was severely
restricted.

From Padstow to Looe is not an ideal journey by rail at the best of times,
involving as it does, a change of train at Wadebridge, Bodmin Road and
Liskeard; but Gurney was in no hurry, and the conversations he overheard
in his compartment were not destructive of his new-found complacency.
There was, indeed, some mention of the plague, but only in relation to the
scarcity of food supply and its effect on trade. One passenger, very
obviously a farmer, was congratulating himself that he was getting higher
prices for stock than he had ever known, and that as luck would have it he
had sown an unusual number of acres with wheat that year. “I’ll be gettun
sixty or seventy a quarter, sure ’nough,” he boasted.

Dickenson—Gurney’s friend in Looe—regarded the matter more seriously,

but he, too, seemed untouched by any fear of personal infection. He was an
ardent Liberal, and his chief cause for concern seemed to be that the plague
should have come at a time when so much progress was being made with
legislation. He was, also, very distressed at the reports of poverty and
starvation which abounded, and at the terrible blow to trade generally. But
he seemed hopeful that the trouble would pass and be followed by a new
era of enlightened government, founded on sound Liberal principles.

Gurney stayed the night and the greater part of the next day at Looe.

On his return journey he had to wait at Liskeard to pick up the main line
train for London, which would take him to Bodmin Road.

It was a glorious May evening. The day had been hot, but now there was a
cool breeze from the sea, and the long shadow from the high bank of the
cutting enwrapped the whole station in a pleasant twilight.

Gurney, deliberately pacing the length of the platform, was conscious of

physical vigour and a great enjoyment of life. He had an imaginative
temperament, and in his moments of exaltation he found the world both
interesting and beautiful, an entirely desirable setting for the essential
Gurney.

So he strolled up and down the platform, regarded any female figure with
interest, and was in no way concerned that the train was already an hour
late. He had expected it to be late. His own train from Looe, for no
particular reason, had been half an hour late. If he missed his connexion at
Wadebridge he would only have some seven or eight miles to walk.

Fifteen or twenty other people were waiting on the down platform, and
presently Gurney became conscious that his fellow-passengers were no
longer detached into parties of two and three, but were collected in groups,
discussing, apparently, some matter of peculiar interest.

Gurney had been lost in his dreams and had hardly noticed the passage of
time. He looked at his watch and found that the train was now two hours
overdue. The sun had set, but there was still light in the sky. A man
detached himself from one of the groups and Gurney approached him.

“Two hours late,” he remarked by way of introducing himself, and looked at

his watch again.

The man nodded emphatically. “Funny thing is,” he said, “that they’ve had
no information at the office. The stationmaster generally gets advice when
the train leaves Plymouth.”

“Good lord,” said Gurney. “Do you mean to say that the train hasn’t got to
Plymouth yet?”

“Looks like it,” said the stranger. “They say it’s the plague. It’s dreadfully
bad in London, they tell me.”

“D’you mean it’s possible the train won’t come in at all?” asked Gurney.

“Oh! I should hardly think that,” replied the other. “Oh, no, I should hardly
think that, but goodness knows when it will come. Very awkward for me. I
want to get to St Ives. It’s a long way from here. Have you far to go?”

“Well, Padstow,” said Gurney.

“Padstow!” echoed the stranger. “That’s a good step.”

“Further than I want to walk.”

“I should say. Thirty miles or so, anyway?”

“About that,” agreed Gurney. “I wonder where one could get any
information.

“It’s very awkward,” was all the help the stranger had to offer.

Gurney crossed the line and invaded the stationmaster’s office. “Sorry to
trouble you,” he said, “but do you think this train’s been taken off, for any
reason?”

“Oh, it ’asn’t been taken off,” said the stationmaster with a wounded air. “It
may be a bit late.”

Gurney smiled. “It’s something over two hours behind now, isn’t it?” he
said.

“Well, I can’t ’elp it, can I?” asked the stationmaster. “You’ll ’ave to ’ave
patience.”

“You’ve had no advice yet from Plymouth?” persisted Gurney, facing the
other’s ill-temper.

“No, I ’aven’t; something’s gone wrong with the wire. We can’t get no
answer,” returned the stationmaster. “Now, if you please, I ’ave my work to
do.”

Gurney returned to the down platform and joined a group of men, among
whom he recognized the man he had spoken to a few minutes before.

The afterglow was dying out of the sky, in the south-west a faint young
moon was setting behind the high bank of the cutting. A porter had lighted
the station lamps, but they were not turned full on.

“The stationmaster tells me that something has gone wrong with the
telegraphic communication,” said Gurney, addressing the little knot of
passengers collectively. “He can’t get any answer it seems.”
“Been an accident likely,” suggested some one.

“Or the engine-driver’s got the plague,” said another.

“They’d have put another man on.”

“If they could find one.”

“If we ain’t careful we shall be gettin’ the plague down ’ere.”

After all why not? The horrible suggestion sprang up in Gurney’s mind with
new force. That remote city seemed suddenly near. He saw in imagination
the train leaving Paddington, and only a journey of six or seven hours
divided that departure from its arrival at Liskeard. It might come in at any
moment, bearing the awful infection. Why should he wait? There was an
inn near the station. He might find a conveyance there.

“Constantine Bay?” questioned the landlord.

“It’s near St Merryn,” said Gurney, but still the landlord shook his head.

“Not far from Padstow,” explained Gurney.

“Pard-stow!” exclaimed the landlord on a rising note. “Drive over to Pard-

stow at this time o’ night?” He appeared to think that Gurney was joking.

“Well, Bodmin, then,” suggested Gurney.

“Aw, why not take the train?” asked the landlord.

Gurney shrugged his shoulders. “The train doesn’t seem to be coming,” he

said.

“Bad job, that,” answered the landlord. “Been an accident, sure ’nough; this
new plague or something.” He was evidently prepared to accept the matter
philosophically.

“You can’t drive me then?” asked Gurney.

The landlord shook his head with a grin. He was inclined to look upon this
foreigner as rather more foolish than the majority of his kind.

Gurney came out of the little inn, and looked down into the station. The
number of waiting passengers seemed to be decreasing, but the light was so
dim that he could not see into the shadows.

“I must keep hold of myself,” he was saying. “I mustn’t run.”

A man was coming up the steep incline towards him, and Gurney moved
slowly to meet him. He found that it was the stranger he had spoken to on
the platform.

“Any news?” asked Gurney.

“Yes, they’ve got a message through from Saltash,” replied the stranger.
“It’s the plague right enough. They say they don’t know when there’ll be
another train....”

Days grew into weeks, and still there were no trains. Trade was at a
standstill, and the prices of home produce mounted steadily. Fish there was,
but not in great abundance, and the towns inland, such as Truro and
Bodmin, organized a motor service with coast fishing villages, a service
which only lasted for a week, by reason of the failure of the petrol supply.
After that there was a less effective horse service.

Within three weeks after that last train arrived from outside, a new system
of exchange was coming into vogue. In this little congeries of communities
in Cornwall, men were beginning to learn the uselessness of gold, silver and
bronze coins as tokens. Credit had collapsed, and a system of barter was
being introduced, mainly between farmer and fisherman. In time it was
possible that Cornwall might have become a self-supporting community, for
its proportionately few inhabitants were rapidly being depleted by want and
starvation; but, although it was the last place in the British Isles to become
infected, the plague came there, too, in the end.

A steamer sent out from Cardiff on a plundering expedition carried the

plague to the Scillies, and a fishing vessel from St Ives carried it on to
Newlyn....
 IX—THE DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING

The progress of the plague through London and the world in general was
marked, in the earlier stages, by much the same developments as are
reported of the plague of 1665. The closed houses, the burial pits, the
deserted streets, the outbreaks of every kind of excess, the various
symptoms of fear, cowardice, fortitude and courage, evidenced little change
in the average of humanity between the seventeenth and the twentieth
centuries. The most notable difference during these earlier stages was in the
enormously increased rapidity with which the population of London was
reduced to starvation point. Even before the plague had reached England,
want had become general, so general, indeed, as to have demonstrated very
clearly the truth of the great economist’s contention that England could not
exist for three months with closed doors.

The coming of the plague threw London on to its own very limited
resources. That vast city, which produced nothing but the tokens of wealth,
and added nothing to the essentials that support life, was instantly reduced
to the state of Paris in the winter of 1870–71; with the difference, however,
that London’s population could be decreased rapidly by emigration, and
was, also, even more rapidly decreased by pestilence. Yet there was a large
section of the population which clung with blind obstinacy to the only life it
knew how to live.

There was, for instance, George Gosling, more fortunate in many respects
than the average citizen, who clung desperately to his house in Wisteria
Grove until forced out of it by the lack of water.
On the ninth day after the first coming of the plague to London—it
appeared simultaneously in a dozen places and spread with fearful rapidity
—Gosling broke one of the great laws he had hitherto observed with such
admirable prudence. The offices and warehouse in Barbican had been shut
up (temporarily, it was supposed), and the partners had disappeared from
London. But Gosling had a duplicate set of keys, and, inspired by the
urgency of his family’s need, he determined to dare a journey into the City
in order to borrow (he laid great stress on the word) a few necessaries of
life from the well-stored warehouse of his firm.

In this scheme, planned with some shrewdness, he co-operated with a

friend, a fellow-sidesman at the Church of St John the Evangelist. This
friend was a coal merchant, and thus fortunately circumstanced in the
possession of wagons and horses.

These two arranged the details of their borrowing expedition between them.
Economically, it was a deal on the lines of the revived methods of exchange
and barter. Gosling was willing to exchange certain advantages of
knowledge and possession for the hire of wagons and horses. It was
decided, for obvious reasons, to admit no other conspirator into the plot,
and Boost, the coal merchant, drove one cart and Gosling drove the other.
Perhaps it should rather be said that he led the other, for, after a preliminary
trial, he decided that he was safer at the horses’ heads than behind their
tails.

The raid was conducted with perfect success. Boost had a head for
essentials. The invaluable loads of tinned meats, fruits and vegetables were
screened by tarpaulins from the possibly too envious eyes of hungry
passers-by—quite a number of vagrants were to be seen in the streets on
that day—and Boost and Gosling, disguised in coal-begrimed garments,
made the return journey lugubriously calling, “Plague, plague,” the cry of
the drivers of the funeral carts which had even then become necessary.
Their only checks were the various applications they received for the
cartage of corpses; applications easily put on one side by pointing to the
piled-up carts—they had spent six laborious hours in packing them. “No
room; no room,” they cried, and on that day the applicants who accosted
Boost and Gosling were not the only ones who had to wait for the disposal
of their dead.

Gosling arrived at Wisteria Grove, hot and outwardly jubilant, albeit with a
horrible fear lurking in his mind that he had been in dangerous proximity to
those tendered additions to his load. His booty was stored in one of the
downstairs rooms—with the assistance of Mrs Gosling and the two girls
they managed the unpacking without interruption in two hours and a half—
and then, with boarded windows and locked doors, the Goslings sat down to
await the passing of horror.

Boost died of the plague forty-eight hours after the great adventure, but as
he had a wife and four daughters his plunder was not wasted.

For nearly a fortnight after the raid the Goslings lay snug in their little
house in Wisteria Grove, for they, in company with the majority of English
people at this time, had not yet fully appreciated the fact that women were
almost immune from infection. In all, not more than eight per cent of the
whole female population was attacked, and of this proportion the mortality
was almost exclusively among women over fifty years of age. When the
first faint rumours of the plague had come to Europe, this curious, almost
unprecedented, immunity of women had been given considerable
prominence. It had made good copy, theories on the subject had appeared,
and the point had aroused more interest than that of the mortality among
males—infectious diseases were commonplace enough; this new phase had
a certain novelty and piquancy. But the threat of European infection had
overwhelmed the interest in the odd predilection of the unknown bacterium,
and the more vital question had thrown this peculiarity into the background.
Thus the Goslings and most other women feared attack no less than their
husbands, brothers and sons, and found justification for their fears in the
undoubted fact that women had died of the plague.

The Goslings had always jogged along amiably enough; their home life
would have passed muster as a tolerably happy one. The head of the family
was out of the house from 8.15 a.m. to 7.15 p.m. five days of the week, and
it was only occasionally in the evening of some long wet Sunday that there
was any open bickering.

Now, confinement in that little house, aggravated by fear and by the

absence of any interest or diversion coming from outside, showed the
family to one another in new aspects. Before two days had passed the air
was tense with the suppressed irritation of these four people, held together
by scarcely any tie other than that of a conventional affection.

By the third day the air was so heavily charged that some explosion was
inevitable. It came early in the morning.

Gosling had run out of tobacco, and he thought in the circumstances that it
would be wiser to send Blanche or Millie than to go himself. So, with an air
of exaggerated carelessness, he said:

“Look here, Millie, my gel, I wish you’d just run out and see if you can get
me any terbaccer.”

“Not me,” replied Millie, with decision.

“And why not?” asked Gosling.

Millie shrugged her shoulders, and called her sister, who was in the
passage. “I say, B., father wants us to go out shopping for him. Are you
on?”

Blanche, duster in hand, appeared at the doorway.

“Why doesn’t he go himself?” she asked.

“Because,” replied her father, getting very red, and speaking with elaborate
care, “men’s subject to the infection and women is not.”

“That’s all my eye,” returned Millie. “Lots of women have got it.”

“It’s well known,” said Gosling, still keeping himself in hand, “a matter of
common knowledge, that women is comparatively immune.”

“Oh, that’s a man’s yarn, that is,” said Blanche, “just to save themselves.
We all know what men are—selfish brutes!”

“Are you going to fetch me that terbaccer or are you not?” shouted Mr
Gosling suddenly.

“No, we aren’t,” said Millie, defiantly. “It isn’t safe for girls to go about the
streets, let alone the risk of infection.” She had heard her father shout
before, and she was not, as yet, at all intimidated.

“Well, then, I say you are!” shouted her father. “Lazy, good-for-nothing
creatures, the pair of you! ’Oose paid for everything you’ve eat or drunk or
wore ever since you was born? An’ now you won’t even go an errand.”
Then, seeing the ready retort rising to his daughters’ lips, he grew desperate,
and, advancing a step towards them, he said savagely: “If you don’t go, I’ll
find a way to make yer!”

This was a new aspect, and the two girls were a little frightened. Natural
instinct prompted them to scream for their mother.

She had been listening at the top of the stairs, and she answered the call for
help with great promptitude.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Gosling,” she said, on a high note.

“The streets isn’t safe for gels, as you know well enough; and why should
my gels risk their lives for the sake of your nasty, dirty, wasteful ’abit of
smoking, I should like to know?”
Gosling’s new-found courage was evaporating at the attack of this third
enemy. He had been incensed against his daughters, but he had not yet
overcome the habit of giving in to his wife, for the sake of peace. She had
managed him very capably for a quarter of a century, but on the occasions
when she had found it necessary to use what she called the “rough side of
her tongue” she had demonstrated very clearly which of the two was master.

“I should have thought I might ’a been allowed a little terbaccer,” he said,

resentfully. “’Oo risked his life to lay in provisions, I should like to know?
An’ it’s a matter o’ common knowledge as women is immune from this
plague.”

“And Mrs Carter, three doors off, carried out dead of it the day before
yesterday!” remarked Mrs Gosling, triumphantly.

“Oh, ’ere and there, a case or two,” replied her husband. “But not one
woman to a thousand men gets it, as every one knows.”

“And how do you know I mightn’t be the one?” asked Millie, bold now
under her mother’s protection.

For that morning, the matter remained in abeyance; but Gosling, muttering
and grumbling, nursed his injury and meditated on the fact that his
daughters had been afraid of him. Things were altered now. There was no
convention to tie his hands. He would work himself into a protective
passion and defy the three of them. Also, there was an unopened bottle of
whisky in the sideboard.

Nevertheless, he would have put off the trial of his strength if he had had to
seek an opportunity. He was, as yet, too civilized to take the initiative in
cold blood.

The opportunity, however, soon presented itself in that house. The air had
been little cleared by the morning’s outbreak, and before evening the real
explosion came. A mere trifle originated it—a warning from Gosling that
their store of provisions would not last for ever, and a sharp retort from
Millie to the effect that her father did not stint himself, followed by a
reminder from Mrs Gosling that the raid might be repeated.

“Oh! yes, you’d be willing enough for me to die of the plague, I’ve no
doubt!” broke out Gosling. “I can walk six mile to get you pervisions, but
you can’t go to the corner of the street for my terbaccer.”

“Pervisions is necessary, terbaccer ain’t,” said Mrs Gosling. She was not a
clever woman. She judged this to be the right opportunity to keep her
husband in his place, and relied implicitly on the quelling power of her
tongue. Her intuitions were those of the woman who had lived all her life in
a London suburb; they did not warn her that she was now dealing with a
specimen of half-decivilized humanity.

“Oh! ain’t it?” shouted Gosling, getting to his feet. His face was purple, and
his pale blue eyes were starting from his head. “I’ll soon show you what’s
necessary and what ain’t, and ’oose master in this ’ouse. And I say terbaccer
is necessary, an’ what’s more, one o’ you three’s goin’ to fetch it quick!
D’ye ’ear—one—o’—you—three!”

This inclusion of Mrs Gosling was, indeed, to declare war.

Millie and Blanche screamed and backed, but their mother rose to the
occasion. She did not reserve herself; she began on her top note; but
Gosling did not allow her to finish. He strode over to her and shook her by
the shoulders, shouting to drown her strident recriminations. “’Old your
tongue! ’old your tongue!” he bawled, and shook her with increasing
violence. He was feeling his power, and when his wife crumpled up and fell
to the floor in shrieking hysterics, he still strode on to victory. Taking the
cowed and terrified Millie by the arm, he dragged her along the passage,
unlocked and opened the front door and pushed her out into the street. “And
don’t you come back without my terbaccer!” he shouted.

“How much?” quavered the shrinking Millie.

“’Alf-a-crown’s worth,” replied Gosling fiercely, and tossed the coin down
on the little tiled walk that led up to the front door.
After Millie had gone he stood at the door for a moment, thankful for the
coolness of the air on his heated face. “I got to keep this up,” he murmured
to himself, with his first thought of wavering. Behind him he heard the
sound of uncontrolled weeping and little cries of the “first time in twenty-
four years” and “what the neighbours’ll think, I don’t know.”

“Neighbours,” muttered Gosling, contemptuously, “there aren’t any

neighbours—not to count.”

A distant sound of slow wheels caught his ear. He listened attentively, and
there came to him the remote monotonous chant of a dull voice crying:
“Plague! Plague!”

He stepped in quickly and closed the door.

Millie found the Kilburn High Road deserted. No traffic of any kind was to
be seen in the street, and the rare foot-passengers, chiefly women, had all a
furtive air. Starvation had driven them out to raid. No easy matter, as Millie
soon found, for all shutters were down, and in many cases shop-fronts were
additionally protected by great sheets of strong hoarding.

Millie, recovering from her fright, was growing resentful. Her little
conventional mind was greatly occupied by the fact that she was out in the
High Road wearing house-shoes without heels, in an old print dress, and
with no hat to hide the carelessness of her hair-dressing. At the corner of
Wisteria Grove she stopped and tried to remedy this last defect; she had red
hair, abundant and difficult to control.

The sight of the deserted High Road did not inspire her with self-
confidence; she still feared the possibility of meeting some one who might
recognize her. How could one account for one’s presence in a London
thoroughfare at seven o’clock on a bright May evening in such attire?
Certainly not by telling the truth.

The air was wonderfully clear. Coal was becoming very scarce, and few
fires had been lighted that day to belch forth their burden of greasy filth into
the atmosphere. The sun was sinking, and Millie instinctively clung to the
shadow of the pavement on the west side of the road. She, too, slunk along
with the evasive air that was common to the few other pedestrians, the
majority of them on this same shadowed pavement. That warm, radiant
light on the houses opposite seemed to hold some horror for them.

So preoccupied was Millie with her resentment that she wandered for two
or three hundred yards up the road without any distinct idea of what she
was seeking. When realization of the futility of her search came to her, she
stopped in the shadow of a doorway. “What is the good of going on?” she
argued. “All the shops are shut up.” But the thought of her father in his new
aspect of muscular tyrant intimidated her. She dared not return without
accomplishing her errand. “I’ll have another look, anyway,” she said; and
then: “Who’d have thought he was such a brute?” She rubbed the bruise on
her arm; her mouth was twisted into an ugly expression of spiteful
resentment. Her thoughts were busy with plans of revenge even as she
turned to prosecute her search for the tyrant’s tobacco.

Here and there shops had been forcibly, burglariously entered, plate-glass
windows smashed, and interiors cleared of everything eatable; the debris
showed plainly enough that these rifled shops had all belonged to grocers or
provision merchants. Into each of these ruins Millie stared curiously, hoping
foolishly that she might find what she sought. She ventured into one and
carried away a box of soap—they were running short of soap at home. A
sense of moving among accessible riches stirred within her, a desire for
further pillage.

She came at last to a shop where the shutters were still intact, but the door
hung drunkenly on one hinge. A little fearfully she peered in and discovered
that fortune had been kind to her. The shop had belonged to a tobacconist,
and the contents were almost untouched—there had been more crying needs
to satisfy in the households of raiders than the desire for tobacco.

It was very dark inside, and for some seconds Millie stared into what
seemed absolute blackness, but as her eyes became accustomed to the
gloom, she saw the interior begin to take outline, and when she moved a
couple of steps into the place and allowed more light to come in through the
doorway, various tins, boxes and packets in the shelves behind the counter
were faintly distinguishable.

Once inside, the spirit of plunder took hold of her, and she began to take
down boxes of cigars and cigarettes and packets of tobacco, piling them up
in a heap on the counter. But she had no basket in which to carry the
accumulation she was making, and she was feeling under the counter for
some box into which to put her haul, when the shadows round her deepened
again into almost absolute darkness. Cautiously she peered up over the
counter and saw the silhouette of a woman standing in the doorway.

For ten breathless seconds Millie hung motionless, her eyes fixed on the
apparition. She was very civilized still, and she was suddenly conscious of
committing a crime. She feared horribly lest the figure in the doorway
might discover Millicent Gosling stealing tobacco. But the intruder, after
recognizing the nature of the shop’s contents, moved away with a sigh.
Millie heard her dragging footsteps shuffle past the window.

That scare decided her movements. She hastily looped up the front of her
skirt, bundled into it as much plunder as she could conveniently carry, and
made her way out into the street again.

She was nearly at the corner of Wisteria Grove before she was molested,
and then an elderly woman came suddenly out of a doorway and laid a hand
on Millie’s arm.

“Whacher got?” asked the woman savagely.

Millie, shrinking and terrified, displayed her plunder.

“Cigars,” muttered the woman. “Whacher want with cigars?” She opened
the boxes and stirred up the contents of Millie’s improvised bundle in an
eager search for something to eat. “Gawd’s truth! yer must be crazy, yer
thievin’ little slut!” she grumbled, and pushed the girl fiercely from her.

Millie made good her escape, dropping a box of cigars in her flight. Her one
thought now was the fear of meeting a policeman. In three minutes she was
beating fiercely on the door of the little house in Wisteria Grove, and,
disregarding her father’s exclamations of pleased surprise when he let her
in, she tumbled in a heap on to the mat in the passage.

Gosling’s first declaration of male superiority had been splendidly

successful.

A few minutes after Millie’s return, Mrs Gosling, red-eyed and timidly
vicious, interrupted her husband’s perfect enjoyment of the long-desired
cigar by the announcement: “The gas is off!”

Gosling got up, struck a match, and held it to the sitting-room burner. The
match burned steadily. There was no pressure even of air in the pipes.

“Turned off at the meter!” snapped Gosling. “’Ere, lemme go an’ see!” He
spoke with the air of the superior male, strong in his comprehension of the
mechanical artifices which so perplex the feminine mind. Mrs Gosling
sniffed, and stood aside to let him pass. She had already examined the
meter.

“Well, we got lamps!” snarled Gosling when he returned. He had always

preferred a lamp to read by in the evening.

“No oil,” returned Mrs Gosling, gloomily. She’d teach him to shake her!
Gosling meditated. His parochial mind was full of indignation. Vague
thoughts of “getting some one into trouble for this”—even of that last,
desperate act of coercion, writing to the papers about it—flitted through his
mind. Plainly something must be done. “’Aven’t you got any candles?” he
asked.

“One or two. They won’t last long,” replied his studiously patient partner.

“Well, we’ll ’ave to use them to-night and go to bed early,” was Gosling’s
final judgment. His wife left the room with a shrug of forbearing contempt.

When she had gone, the head of the house went upstairs and peered out into
the street. The sun had set, and an unprecedented mystery of darkness was
falling over London. The globes of the tall electric standards, catching a last
reflection from the fading sky, glimmered faintly, but were not illuminated
from within by any fierce glare of violet light. Darkness and silence
enfolded the great dim organism that sprawled its vast being over the earth.
The spirit of mystery caught Gosling in its spell. “All dark,” he murmured,
“and quiet! Lord! how still it is!” Even in his own house there was silence.
Downstairs, three injured, resentful women were talking in whispers.

Gosling, still sucking his cigar, stood entranced, peering into the darkness;
he had ventured so far as to throw up the sash. “It’s the stillness of death!”
he muttered. Then he cocked his head on one side, for he caught the sound
of distant shouting. Somewhere in the Kilburn Road another raid was in
progress.

“No light,” murmured Gosling, “and no fire!” An immediate association

suggested itself. “By gosh! and no water!” he added. For some seconds he
contemplated with fearful awe the failure of the great essential of life.

In the cistern room he was reassured by the sound of a delicious trickle

from the ball-cock. “Still going,” he said to himself; “but we’ll ’ave to be
careful. Surely they’ll keep the water goin’, though; whatever ’appens,
they’d surely keep the water on?”
5

Nothing but the failure of the water could have driven them from Wisteria
Grove. Half-a-dozen times every day Gosling would climb up to the top of
the house to reassure himself. And at last came the day when a dreadful
silence reigned under the slates, when no delicious tinkle of water gave
promise of maintained security from water famine.

“It’ll come on again at night,” said Gosling to himself. “We’ll ’ave to be

careful, that’s all.”

He went downstairs and issued orders that no more water was to be drawn
that day.

“Well, we must wash up the breakfast things,” was his wife’s reply.

“You mustn’t wash up nothing,” said Gosling, “not one blessed thing. It’s
better to go dirty than die o’ thirst. Hevery drop o’ the water in that cistern
must be saved for drinkin’.”

Mrs Gosling noisily put down the kettle she was holding. “Oh! very well,
my lord!” she remarked, sarcastically. She looked at her two daughters with
a twist of her mouth. There were only two sides in that house; the women
were as yet united against the common foe.

When Gosling, fatuously convinced of his authority, had gone, his wife
quietly filled the kettle and proceeded with her washing up.

“Your father thinks ’e knows everything these days,” remarked the mother
to her allies.

There was much whispering for some time.

Gosling spent most of the day in the roof, but not until the afternoon did he
realize that the cistern was slowly being emptied. His first thought was that
one of the pipes leaked, his second that it was time to make a demonstration
of force. He found a walking-stick in the hall....

But even when that precious half-cistern of water was only called upon to
supply the needs of thirst, and the Goslings, sinking further into the
degradation of savagedom, slunk furtive and filthy about the gloomy house,
it became evident that a move must be made sooner or later. Two
alternatives were presented: they might go north and east to the Lea, or
south to the Thames.

Gosling chose the South. He knew Putney; he had been born there. He
knew nothing of Clapton and its neighbourhood.

So one bright, clear day at the end of May, the Goslings set out on their
great trek. The head of the house, driven desperate by fear of thirst, raided
his late partner’s coal sheds and found one living horse and several dead
ones. The living horse was partly revived by water from an adjacent butt,
and the next day it was harnessed to a coal cart and commandeered to
convey the Goslings’ provisions to Putney. It died half-a-mile short of their
destination, but they were able, by the exercise of their united strength, to
get the cart and its burden down to the river.

They found an empty house without difficulty, but they had an unpleasant
half-hour in removing what remained of one of the previous occupants.
Gosling hoped it was not a case of plague. As the body was that of a
woman, and terribly emaciated, there were some grounds for his optimism.

Gosling was in a state of some bewilderment. When water had been fetched
in buckets from the river, and the three women had explored, criticized and
sniffed over their new home somewhat in the manner of strange cats, the
head of the house settled down to a cigar and a careful consideration of his
perplexities.

In the first place, he wondered why those horses of Boost’s had not been
used for food; in the second, he wondered why he had not seen a single man
during the whole of the long trek from Brondesbury to Putney. By degrees
an unbelievable explanation presented itself: no men were left. He
remembered that the few needy-looking women he had seen had looked at
him curiously; in retrospect he fancied their regard had had some quality of
amazement. Gosling scratched the bristles of his ten-days’-old beard and
smoked thoughtfully. He almost regretted that he had stared so fiercely and
threateningly at every chance woman they had seen; he might have got
some news. But the whole journey had been conducted in a spirit of fear;
they had been defending their food, their lives; they had been primitive
creatures ready to fight desperately at the smallest provocation.

“No man left,” said Gosling to himself, and was not convinced. If that
indeed were the solution of his perplexity, he was faced with an awful
corollary; his own time would come. He thought of Barbican, E.C., of
Flack, of Messrs Barker and Prince, of the office staff, and the office itself.
He had not been able to rid his mind of the idea that in a few weeks he
would be back in the City again. He had several times rehearsed his surprise
when he should be told of the depredations in the warehouse; he had
wondered only yesterday if he dared go to the office in his beard.

But to-night the change of circumstance, the breaking up of old

associations, was opening his eyes to new horizons. There might never be
an office again for him to go to. If he survived—and he was distinctly
hopeful on that score—he might be almost the only man left in London;
there might not be more than a few thousand in the whole of England, in
Europe....

For a time he dwelt on this fantastic vision. Who would do the work? What
work would there be to do?

“Got to get food,” murmured Gosling, and wondered vaguely how food was
“got” when there were no shops, no warehouses, no foreign agents. His
mind turned chiefly to meat, since that had been his trade. “’Ave to rear
sheep and cattle, I suppose,” said Gosling. As an afterthought he added:
“An’ grow wheat.”
He sighed heavily. He realized that he had no knowledge on the subject of
rearing cattle and growing wheat; he also realized that he was craving for
ordinary food again—milk, eggs, and fresh vegetables. He had a nasty-
looking place on his leg which he rightly attributed to unwholesome diet.

After forty-eight hours’ residence in the new house, Gosling began to pluck
up his courage and to dare the perils of the streets. He was beginning to
have faith in his luck, to believe that the plague had passed away and left
him untouched.

And as day succeeded day he ventured further afield; he went in search of

milk, eggs and vegetables, but he only found young nettles, which he
brought home and helped to eat when they had been boiled over a wood
fire. They were all glad to eat nettles, and were the better for them.
Occasionally he met women on these excursions, and stayed to talk to them.
Always they had the same tale to tell—their men were dead, and themselves
dying of starvation.

One day at the beginning of June he went as far as Petersham, and there at
the door of a farmhouse he saw a fine, tall young woman. She was such a
contrast to the women he usually met on his expeditions that he paused and
regarded her with curiosity.

“What do you want?” asked the young woman, suspiciously.

“I suppose you ’aven’t any milk or butter or eggs to sell?” asked Gosling.

“Sell?” echoed the girl, contemptuously. “What ’ave you got to give us as is
worth food?”

“Well, money,” replied Gosling.

“Money!” came the echo again. “What’s the good of money when there’s
nothing to buy with it? I wouldn’t sell you eggs at a pound apiece.”

Gosling scratched his beard—it looked quite like a beard by this time.
“Rum go, ain’t it?” he asked, and smiled.

His new acquaintance looked him up and down, and then smiled in return,
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re the first man I’ve seen since father died, a
month back.”

“’Oo’s livin’ with you?” asked Gosling, pointing to the house.

“Mother and sister, that’s all.”

“’Ard work for you to get a livin’, I suppose?”

“So, so. We’re used to farm-work. The trouble’s to keep the other women
off.”

“Ah!” replied Gosling reflectively, and the two looked at one another again.

“You ’ungry?” asked the girl.

“Not to speak of,” replied Gosling. “But I’m fair pinin’ for a change o’ diet.
Been livin’ on tinned things for five weeks or more.”

“Come in and have an egg,” said the girl.

“Thank you,” said Gosling, “I will, with pleasure.”

They grew friendly over that meal—two eggs and a glass of milk. He ate
the eggs with butter, but there was no bread. It seemed that the young
woman’s mother and sister were at work on the farm, but that one of them
had always to stay at home and keep guard.

They discussed the great change that had come over England, and
wondered what would be the end of it; and after a little time, Gosling began
to look at the girl with a new expression in his pale blue eyes.
“Ah! Hevrything’s changed,” he said. “Nothin’ won’t be the same any
more, as far as we can see. There’s no neighbours now, f’rinstance, and no
talk of what’s going on—or anythin’.”

The girl looked at him thoughtfully. “What we miss is some man to look
after the place,” she said. “We’re robbed terrible.”

Gosling had not meant to go as far as that. He was not unprepared for a
pleasant flirtation, now that there were no neighbours to report him at
home, but the idea that he could ever separate himself permanently from his
family had not occurred to him.

“Yes,” he said, “you want a man about these days.”

“Ever done any farm work?” asked the girl.

Gosling shook his head.

“Well, you’d soon learn,” she went on.

“I must think it over,” said Gosling suddenly. “Shall you be ’ere to-
morrow?”

“One of us will,” said the girl.

“Ah! but shall you?”

“Why me?”

“Well, I’ve took a fancy to you.”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” said the girl, and laughed.

Gosling kissed her before he left.

7

He returned the next afternoon and helped to cut and stack sainfoin, and
afterwards he watched the young woman milk the cows. It was so late by
the time everything was finished that he was persuaded to stay the night.

In the new Putney house three women wondered what had happened to
“father.” They grew increasingly anxious for some days, and even tried in a
feeble way to search for him. By the end of the week they accepted the
theory that he too had died of the plague.

They never saw him again.

 X—EXODUS

In West Hampstead a Jewess, who had once been fat, looked out of the
windows of her gaudy house. She was partly dressed in a garish silk
negligé. Her face was exceedingly dirty, but the limp, pallid flesh was
revealed in those places where she had wiped away her abundant tears. Her
body was bruised and stiff, for in a recent raid on a house suspected of
containing provisions she had been hardly used by her sister women. She
had made the mistake of going out too well dressed; she had imagined that
expensive clothes would command respect....

As she looked out she wept again, bewailing her misery. From her earliest
youth she had been pampered and spoilt. She had learnt that marriage was
her sole object in life, and she had sold herself at a very respectable price.
She had received the applause and favour of her family for marrying the
man she had chosen as most likely to provide her with the luxury which she
regarded as her birth-right.

Two days ago she had cooked and eaten the absurdly expensive but
diminutive dog upon which she had lavished the only love of which she had
been capable. She had wept continuously as she ate her idol, but for the first
time she had regretted his littleness.

Hunger and thirst were driving her out of the house of which she had been
so vain; the primitive pains were awakening in her primitive instincts that
had never stirred before. From her window she could see naught but endless
streets of brick, stone and asphalt, but beyond that dry, hot, wilderness she
knew there were fields—she had seen them out of the corner of her eye
when she had motored to Brighton. Fields had never been associated in her
mind with food until the strange new stirring of that unsuspected instinct.
Food for her meant shops. One went to shops and bought food and bought
the best at the lowest price possible. With all her pride of position, she had
never hesitated to haggle with shopkeepers. And when the first pinch had
come, when her husband had selfishly died of the plague, and her
household had deserted her, it was to the shops she had gone, autocratically
demanding her rights. She had learned by experience now that she had no
longer any rights.

She dressed herself in her least-conspicuous clothes, dabbed her face with
powder to cover some of the dirt—there was no water, and in any case she
did not feel inclined to wash—carefully stowed away all her money and the
best of her jewels in a small leather bag, and set out to find the country
where food grew out of the ground.

Instinct set her face to the north. She took the road towards Hendon....

In every quarter of London, in every great town and city throughout

Europe, women were setting their faces towards the country.

By the autumn London was empty. The fallen leaves in park squares and
suburban streets were swept into corners by the wind, and when the rain
came the leaves clung together and rotted, and so continued the long routine
of decay and birth.

When spring came again, Nature returned with delicate, strong hands to
claim her own. For hundreds of years she had been defied in the heart of
this great, hard, stone place. Her little tentative efforts had been rudely
repulsed, no tender thread of grass had been allowed to flourish for an hour
under the feet of the crushing multitude. Yet she had fought with a steady
persistence that never relaxed a moment’s effort. Whenever men had given
her a moment’s opportunity, even in the very heart of that city of burning
struggle, she had covered the loathed sterility with grass and flowers,
dandelions, charlock, grounsel and other life that men call weeds.

Now, when her full opportunity came, she set to work in her slow, patient
way to wreck and cover the defilement of earth. Her winds swept dust into
every corner, and her rain turned it into a shallow bed of soil, ready to
receive and nurture the tiny seeds that sailed on little feathered wings, or
were carried by bird and insect to some quiet refuge in which they might
renew life, and, dying, add fertility to the mother who had brought them
forth.

Nature came, also, with her hurricanes, her lightnings and her frosts, to rend
and destroy. She stripped slates from roofs, thrust out gables and overturned
solid walls. She came with fungi to undermine and with the seeds of trees to
split asunder.

She asked for but a few hundred years of patient, continuous work in order
to make of London once more a garden; where the nightingale might sing in
Oxford Street and the children of a new race pluck sweet wild flowers over
the site of the Bank of England....

The spirit of London had gone out of her, and her body was crumbling and
rotting. There was no life in all that vast sprawl of bricks and mortar; the
very dogs and cats, deserted by humanity, left her to seek their only food, to
seek those other living things which were their natural quarry.

In her prime, London had been the chief city of the world. Men and women
spoke of her as an entity, wrote of her as of a personality, loved her as a
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