Twenty minutes later William Hollis, feeling inches taller, and more in
harmony with himself than for many a day, went forth to grapple with
the situation in Europe.
Half Blackhampton, at least, if its streets meant anything, was bent on
a similar errand. From every part of the city, its people were slowly
filtering in twos and threes to the Great Market Place, that nodal
point of the local life and of the life of the empire. Blackhampton
claims to be the exact center of England, speaking geographically,
and its position on the map is reflected in its mental outlook. It
combines a healthy tolerance for the ways and ideas of places less
happily situated with a noble faith in itself. Time and again history
has justified that faith; time and again it has chosen the famous town
as the scene of a memorable manifestation, as its castle, its churches,
its ancient buildings, its streets and monuments bear witness. Here
an ill-starred king declared war on his people, here a great poet was
born, to give but a single deed and a single name among so much that
has passed into history. Many of its sons have shed luster on their
birthplace. Here is a street bearing the name of one who revolutionized
industry; yonder the humble abode of the prizefighter who gave his
name to one of the most important towns of Australia; over there the
obscure conventicle of the plain citizen who founded a world religion;
"up yond" the early home of one whose name is a household word on five
continents; across the road the public house where a famous athlete has
chosen to live in a modest but honored retirement.
Biologists say that all forms of organic life are determined by
climate. Blackhampton owed much, no doubt, to its happy situation as
the exact center of the Empire, but no city in the kingdom could have
lived more consciously in that fact. London was not without importance
as places went; the same might be said for New York; but in the eyes
of the true Blackhamptonian, after all, these centers of light were
comparatively provincial.
This evening the streets of the city were alive with true
Blackhamptonians. In the sight of these only Blackhampton mattered. Its
attitude was of decisive consequence in this unparalleled crisis. No
matter what other places were doing and thinking, Blackhampton itself
was fully determined to pull its weight in the boat.
The press of citizens was very great by the time Bill Hollis arrived
in the Market Place. In particular, they were gathered in serious
groups before the City Hall, the Imperial Club and the offices of the
Blackhampton _Tribune_, which continued to emit hourly editions of the
_Evening Star_ with fuller accounts of the proceedings in Parliament
and the latest telegrams concerning the fighting in Belgium.
The British Cabinet had given Germany until midnight, but Blackhampton
had fully made up its mind in the matter by five minutes past nine,
which was the precise hour that Mr. William Hollis arrived to bear
his part in the local witenagemot. His part was the relatively humble
one of standing in front of the Imperial Club and gazing with rather
wistful eyes into that brightly tiled and glazed and highly burnished
interior as it was momentarily revealed by the entrance of a member.
Even so early in the world's history as five minutes past nine it was
known to those privileged sons of the race who had assembled in front
of the sandstone and red brick façade of the Blackhampton Imperial
Club that Germany "was going to get it in the neck." There must be a
limit to all things and Germany had already exceeded it. The Cabinet
having unluckily omitted to provide itself with even one Blackhampton
man was yet doing its best to keep pace with informed Blackhampton
opinion, but events were moving very quickly in front of the Imperial
Club. At a quarter past nine Sir Reuben Jope, the chairman of _the_
Party, drove up in his electric brougham, a bearded fierce-eyed figure
whose broadcloth trousers allied to a prehistoric box hat seemed to
make him a cross between a rather aggressive Free Kirk elder and an
extraordinarily respectable pirate. At twenty minutes past nine Mr.
Whibley, the Club porter, an imposing vision in pale brown, gold braid,
and brass buttons, came down the steps and informed a friend on the
curb "that the Fleet was fully mobilized."
Other luminaries continued to arrive. It was like the night of a very
hotly contested election, except for the fact that every one of the
thousands of human beings thronging the Market Place were of one mind.
But there was neither boasting nor revelry. This was a sagacious, a
keen-bitten, a practical race. A terrible job was on hand, but it was
realized already that it would have to be done. The thing had gone
too far. There were no demonstrations; on the contrary, a quietude
so intense as to seem unnatural gave the measure and the depth of
Blackhampton's feeling upon the subject.
Had Bill Hollis used the forty-one years of his life in a way to
justify his early ambitions he would have been inside the Club on this
historical evening, sitting on red leather and smoking a cigar with the
best of them. As it was he had to be content with a foremost place in
the ever-growing throng outside the Club portals, from which point of
vantage he was able to witness the arrival of many renowned citizens
and also to gaze through the famous bow window which abutted on to the
Square at the array of notables within. In the intensity of the hour
the Club servants had omitted to draw down the blinds.
At ten minutes to ten Mr. Alderman Munt, sustained by roast saddle
of mutton and green peas, fruit tart and custard, appeared in the
embrasure with a large cigar. Seen from the street he looked a
tremendously imposing figure. Even in the midst of the men of light
and leading who surrounded him he was a Saul towering among the
prophets. Not even his admirers, and in the city of his birth these
were singularly few, ventured to call him genial, but there was power,
virility, unconscious domination in the far flung glance that marked
the press beyond the Club windows. Somehow there was a bulldog look
about him that was extraordinarily British. Somehow he looked a good
man in a tight place and a bad one to cross.
Had the question been asked there was not one among that throng of
hushed spectators who could have explained his own presence in the
Market Place, nor could he have said just what he was doing there. A
powerful magnet had drawn the many together into a limited space on an
airless evening in August to gaze at one another and to wonder what
was going to happen, yet well knowing that nothing could happen as
far as that evening was concerned. But in this strange gathering, in
the solemn hush that came upon it from time to time, was the visible
evidence that the people of Blackhampton were standing together in a
supreme moment. Perhaps it gave a feeling of security that each was
shoulder to shoulder with his neighbor in this hour so fateful for
themselves, for Blackhampton, for the human race.
Nothing happened, yet everything happened. The throng grew denser
inside and outside the Imperial Club, but casual remarks became even
less frequent, newsboys ceased to shout, and presently the hour of
midnight boomed across the square from the great clock on the Corn
Exchange and from many neighboring steeples. Nothing happened. But it
was Wednesday, August the fifth. The silent multitude began slowly to
disperse. A new phase had opened in history.
It was not until a quarter past one, by which time four-fifths of the
crowd had gone away as quietly as it had assembled, that Bill Hollis
slowly made his way home to Love Lane. In his hand was the prize he had
so unexpectedly gained, wrapped in the _Evening Star_, but somehow the
Show and all the other incidents of a crowded, memorable, even glorious
day seemed very far off as his boots echoed along the narrow streets.
An imaginative man in whom psychic perception was sometimes raised to
a high power, he was oppressed by a stealthy sense of disaster. It was
as if an earthquake had shaken the world from pole to pole. It was as
if all the people in it were a little dizzy with a vibration they could
hardly feel which yet had shivered the foundations of society.