The sun was rising, the keen still air had a tang of smoke from one
or two parishes sacked and burned over-night. Under the barricaded
windows of St. Stephen's Palace a starving street arab was at work
with a few grains of banana meal and a string noose, trying to snare
a pigeon. A man watched him furtively from beside one of the
buttresses of the Abbey. That man had been a barrister before the
World-Storm, now he was a tramp, and his coat was buttoned up because
his underclothes had been sold for a meal. All night he had been
with a crowd in the Strand wrecking the hotels in search of food. A
dog or two had been dragged out of the flames, and torn to pieces;
but the barrister won not so much as a taste of the blood, because
some stronger desperadoes charged in a body and carried the food
away. Now the Savoy district was a smouldering furnace, and the
barrister watched the street arab, intending robbery if the lad got
meat.
Something caught his wandering attention; the body of a man, which
lay at the base of the statue of Richard Cœur de Lion, out in the
bare paved square. The barrister stole across from the Abbey, but
when he bent over the man, hoping for plunder, he found he had made a
mistake. The supposed corpse proved to be alive, and remarked that
he had nothing worth stealing.
The barrister shrank back, smiling vaguely. "Watching that boy in
the hope of a pigeon, eh?"
"No," said the other; "it's better to rest and not use up one's
tissue. That's economy."
The barrister sat down beside him, produced a pipe, and demanded
tobacco.
The other shook his head, but the lawyer thought that a little
friendly conversation might win him a fill for his pipe. So he
looked at the starving wretch beside him.
"Oxford?" he ventured.
"Yes, Brasenose. Are you a college man, too?"
"Dublin," said the barrister. "I was a novelist."
"I was a curate; I used to preach about the Day of Judgment--but
d'you know, it's quite different. The canonists never suggested that
it would last so long, but it's extremely interesting, and I'm
planning a work on contemporary Eschatology."
"Judgment be blowed," the barrister snorted, "it's the usual cause
and effect, machinery broken down--passengers hungry. I'm beastly
pinched."
"Are you really?" The curate still had a trace of his pulpit manner.
"Now that is most curious. My hunger has gone away quite, but if my
mind seems to wander pray correct me. Am I talking nonsense now?"
"No; what was your last meal?"
"A portion of rat," said the parson, smiling at the pleasant
suggestion of memory. "But my landlady has taken to improper
courses, led away, poor thing, by her daughter. She has joined one
of the cannibal clubs. I felt that she was becoming untrustworthy,
and withdrew to the streets."
The barrister laughed wearily. "My wife and children--" he said; "I
shot them last night--well--who cares?"
"How shocking," said the curate. "Hope," he continued, "is dead, and
our prayers break upon the brazen echoing heavens. Who would have
supposed that the world would die so hard?"
"Don't preach," said the barrister, "it makes me sick."
The curate looked up with a vacant stare at the towering heights of
the Abbey. From far away came the rumble of the organ, for this was
the time for the early Celebration. By the calendar it was Monday,
the Twelfth Day of the Terror.
"I think I could have hoped," the parson wiped a tear away with his
torn sleeve, "only there's always such a crowd at the Government food
shops. The men trample the women and children to death, and that
takes away one's appetite."
"Yes, we're savages now," said the barrister, "we've shed our
infernal skin of gentility."
He looked away towards the street arab. The lad was rejoicing on the
verge of success, but rejoiced too early, for the pigeon flew clear
of the snare. Then the lad cursed.
"I watched all night," said the curate, "by the Palace. Our poor
little Queen works hard."