had been prophesied to Griffiths in forcible language ten days before;
but my meagre powers of imagination and description never came within
miles of actuality. I had not realized the dishonour to humanity which a
man commits when he no longer hides a broken spirit; I had forgotten the
disfigurements of starvation and the sickly stench of neglect. The
policeman was entirely right: half these fellows were only boys; and I
felt the blood mounting to my head when I thought of the way they were
victimized and their ignorance exploited. During the war I had seen them
and their elder brothers trotting obediently to the slaughter-house and
bemusedly offering their lives for a cause that was never explained and
for objects that they never understood. Now, no less obediently, they
trotted in answer to a voice that promised them a quick millennium.
I should have caught some hope, for all my denunciation of violence, if
they had torn Griffiths limb from limb; but the patient credulity that
collected them under his leadership accepted uncomplainingly the fate to
which he led them. Griffiths, as he had boasted to me, could look after
himself; providence, the police or the devil might look after his
followers, who sprawled about the misty streets like slumbering cattle.
If I had expected to find Barbara sharing my own anxiety, I might have
known better than to expect any sign of it. She greeted me with faint
surprise because I had not warned her that I should be lunching at home;
then the surprise turned to relief as she recollected that she was a man
short.
“It’s a family party,” she explained. “Father and mother and Charles. I
asked the O’Ranes; but David can’t get away, so you must take his
place. . . . You’re not ill or anything are you, George?”
“Oh, no, thanks. _Depressed_, if you like. London’s a horrible sight
with all these hunger-marchers dropping down on every side from sheer
exhaustion. I don’t know what’s to be done about them. I only hope there
won’t be a scrap.”
Barbara looked out of window; but the fog was now so thick that she
could not see across the street.
“Was that why you came back?,” she asked with her head averted.
“I wanted to see that you were all right.”
“Thank you.” . . . As though afraid that I might take advantage of her
curt gratitude, she broke into a laugh. “Some one—I think it was
Jim—once said that, when the revolution came, there’d be keen
competition between Sonia and me for a place in the first tumbril. If it
begins to-day, we shall be able to drive down together. I suppose we
_are_ two of the most useless human beings in creation. . . . I hope the
mob doesn’t break in while father’s here: I know he’d struggle with the
executioner, and I think it’s unfair to hinder a man who’s simply trying
to do his duty.”
“I feel Robson would probably save us,” I answered. “He’d tell the mob,
very patiently, that it was out of the question for them to have a
revolution in Seymour Street.” . . .
“You don’t really expect any trouble, do you?”
As I believed Barbara to be entirely fearless, I did not mind speaking
frankly:
“It all turns on what’s likely to happen in the next few hours. The men
are too tired at present even to feel hungry. When they wake up, they’ll
be like ravening wolves.”
On Crawleigh’s arrival, I was distantly comforted to find that he shared
my own view and had indeed spent an hour trying to get it accepted in
Downing Street. During his viceroyalty he had been ultimately
responsible for the relief-works in two famines; and, for once, I found
him pregnant with constructive proposals. Three or four of the biggest
catering-firms, he urged, should set up kitchens in the London parks;
every public hall should be turned into a dormitory; and, if supplies
ran short in the shops, there must be a house-to-house visitation to
collect bread and blankets.
“I’d punish the ring-leaders without mercy,” he added, “but we must do
one thing at a time. This is December, these men are starving; and for
the next forty-eight hours we must simply suspend our ordinary laws. Why
the government ever _allowed_ such madness . . .”
We were still discussing emergency measures when Sonia came in very late
and apologetic. Every approach to Westminster, she reported, was barred
with lines of mounted police; St. James’ Park was closed, Whitehall and
Victoria Street were barricaded. She herself had crossed the river at
Lambeth and come by tube from Waterloo.
“Are things still quiet?,” Lady Crawleigh enquired nervously.
“I should think so; but the fog’s so thick that you can’t tell. . . .
Did David find you?,” Sonia asked me. “He wanted to talk to you about
soup-kitchens or something.”
“He hadn’t come when I left the office,” I answered.
As we went in to luncheon, Charles Neave, who had come up from the
country the day before, contributed some first-hand observations on the
march from Cumberland. It had been peaceful and orderly from the moment
when the marchers convinced their potential antagonists that they meant
to have what they wanted. Private property was scrupulously respected;
but, on the principle that churches and public buildings belonged to the
community, Griffiths’ ‘armies’ took possession of them as lodgings for a
night. I was given to understand that there had been one or two sharp
conflicts; but Crawleigh was expressing more than his own opinion when
he reminded us that this was December and that the men were starving.
Barns and warehouses were offered voluntarily as soon as their owners
were satisfied that they would not be damaged.
“How did they manage for food?,” I asked.
“The workhouse people did what they could. I think the rest was voted by
the different town-councils. There wasn’t enough to go round anywhere,
but a whole lot was given privately.”
“Were there any speeches or demonstrations?,” asked Crawleigh.
“I didn’t hear any. Everybody seemed to be on the side of the marchers.
They felt it was jolly hard lines and something ought to be done. Any
ass who calls it bolshevism doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“If we can only get them back as quietly as they’ve come . . .”
Crawleigh began and left his sentence unfinished.
I wondered whether he too was reflecting that the most dangerous
revolution is the one in which popular sympathy goes out to the
revolutionaries. In the last years of the eighteenth century the history
of the world would have been changed if Louis had not forbidden the
Swiss Guard to fire from the windows of the Tuileries; it was in fact
changed—and revolution died in giving birth to Bonapartism—when
Napoleon cleared the streets of Paris with a whiff of grapeshot. I would
more readily have turned a machine-gun on my own dining-room than have
harassed the spent men whom I saw collapsing on the doorsteps of Brook
Street; but I wondered how far the sympathy of the onlookers and the
kindliness of the police would paralyse vigorous action if the spent men
rose and had to be coerced.
“Is anybody in _fact_ taking any steps?,” I asked Crawleigh. “We’ve food
in the house, we can buy more.” . . .
“They’re collecting food and money as it is,” added Sonia. “Just before
I came here, that little red-eyed Welshman called to see David . . .”
“D’you mean Griffiths?,” I asked in surprise.
“Yes. That’s another reason why I was so late. He wouldn’t go. I told
him I’d nothing to give him.”
“Did he come alone?”
“Oh, no! There was a queue stretching farther than I could see. He told
me he was sure Mr. O’Rane wouldn’t refuse to help when he realized what
these men had been through to bring their grievances before the
government.” Sonia’s expression grew suddenly hard. “I told him we
weren’t the government; and I should be very glad if he’d take his army
to Hampstead and let me get to my taxi.”
Before I had time to warn her against such trifling, I was called to the
telephone and informed that O’Rane himself was in Fetter Lane and wished
to see me at once.
“Hullo? This is a private wire, isn’t it?,” he began. “Good! I came to
see you on quite other business. Then one of your people came in with
the latest news, and I felt I should have to borrow your eyes for the
afternoon. I’m afraid Griffiths’ people are getting out of hand. There’s
a certain amount of damage being done . . .”
“Whereabouts?,” I interrupted.
“In Hampstead. I’ve warned the police; and, of course, Hampstead is a
big place; but I couldn’t help wondering if they’d taken it into their
heads to loot my office. I’m afraid they won’t find more than about five
pounds in the till; but there are a lot of young clerks there, and I
don’t want them to have a scare. If you could pick me up here and come
to inspect the field of battle . . .”
“I’ll be with you as soon as I can get across London,” I answered.
6
As I hung up the receiver, I saw Barbara standing in the doorway. One
hand gripped the moulding of the frame; the other was pressed to her
side. I jumped up in sudden alarm and helped her to a chair, for her
lips were moving without giving forth any sound.
“Babs! Darling heart, what’s the matter?,” I asked.
“That’s what I came to find out,” she answered with an effort that
almost choked her. “George, you’re not going!”
“Not till you’re all right,” I promised. “Are you feeling faint? I shall
have to go out for a bit: a man who’s waiting to see me at the office
. . .”
“But you’re not going!,” she repeated frantically.
“It’ll only be for an hour or so . . .”
“It’ll be for all eternity! George, if you go, you won’t come back!
Can’t you _feel_ it? I know when death’s at hand! Have I ever been
wrong? Uncle Bertrand. Eric . . . Oh, before the war! Jack Summertown
and the other boys in Jim’s last party! I know, I _know_! You think I’m
mad . . .”
“But, my dear, who’s going to kill me?,” I asked. “I’ve been in too many
London fogs to fear them much; and, if you’re thinking of the
hunger-marchers, I’m afraid the poor devils couldn’t do any mischief
even if they wanted to. I made an appointment with a man . . .”
“With David. You put him before me?”
I was at a loss to think of anything that would calm her.
“He is my best and oldest friend,” I said.
“You always _have_ put him before me,” she cried.
“My dear, you speak as if you were jealous! It’s absurd . . .”
“I heard what you said to him.”
“Then you couldn’t have heard more than about six words. I said I’d be
with him . . .”
“And wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t it enough when I knew he wanted you? I’m
not jealous; I’m terrified! Don’t I know what he said to you? He’s in
trouble and he wants to drag you into it. But he shan’t, he shan’t!”
I sat down by Barbara’s side and told her, so far as I could remember,
word for word all that O’Rane had said to me.
“You know what Fleet Street rumours are,” I ended, though I felt it was
unfortunate that this rumour of rioting in Hampstead had followed so
disquieting soon on Sonia’s jaunty account of her meeting with
Griffiths.
“If there weren’t danger, you wouldn’t think it necessary to go. It’s no
good lying to me, George. I’ve lived with you too long not to know
something about you. I ask you to stay.”
“If Raney could see for himself . . .,” I began.
“Let some one _else_ go!”
Though I could not tell Barbara, I remembered vividly the night when I
had sat alone in that room, begging O’Rane to come and keep me company.
I remembered, too, his characteristic promise that he would see me
through to the grave and beyond.
“He’s never asked me to do anything for him before. I’ve promised; and
I’m afraid I can’t go back on it.”
Barbara stood up as though she were going to rejoin her guests.
Physically she was in control of herself and could walk without
difficulty or apparent pain; mentally she seemed to be on the verge of a
collapse.
“Four and a half,” she muttered at the door.
“Four and a half what?,” I asked.
“Four and a half years since _you_ made certain promises to _me_. Four
and a half years since we were married. David has only to raise his
little finger . . .”
“This is hardly the time to hold a _post mortem_ on our marriage,” I
said.
“And I’m hardly the person?,” she taunted.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You wouldn’t! You made up your mind to be patient with me at all costs.
You just _wouldn’t_ lose your temper! Dear God, why didn’t you, George?
I deserved it. We could have been friends if you’d dropped your hateful
superiority for a moment, if you’d ever become human! You _can_ be! You
were marvellously sympathetic when all was going well; but, after the
crash, you behaved like a stone god. I was wrong. I _told_ you I was
wrong. You didn’t blame me. You know I’m jealous through and through,
but you wouldn’t punish me by falling in love with some one else. You
didn’t even complain of this ghastly two years’ imprisonment. Won’t you
ever meet me half way? I told you my love for Eric was dead; you know I
never loved any one else. What more do you want? Must I apologize? I
will! I’m sorry. I love you, I need you! I wouldn’t say it the other
night, because I was trying to hold together the rags of my pride. Isn’t
that enough? If you’ll stay, I’ll make up for all my wickedness and
cruelty. You’re all I have in the world. I didn’t know it before; but
now I can feel death hovering over you like some great black bird. If
you go . . . If you go . . .”
Suddenly turning, she clung to me, laughing and crying. I stood without
speaking because her intensity of feeling overwhelmed me. I remember
stroking her hands. I believe I told her that I should be back before
she had time to miss me.
“But you’re not going _now_?,” she cried.
“Darling, I must. I shan’t be in any more danger than I am now; but, if
it were a question of bombs and machine-guns, you wouldn’t ask me to let
Raney down. He wouldn’t have asked me if he didn’t need me.”
Barbara’s hands disengaged themselves from mine and rose to draw me into
her embrace. As our lips met, I felt that she belonged to me, at last,
heart and soul; but, when I looked into her eyes, I read her frantic
certainty that we should never kiss again.
“I’m coming back, sweetheart,” I promised her.
“Good-bye,” she whispered. Then, still gripping my shoulders, she looked
wildly about the room as though to face and drive away this black
presence of death that was haunting her. “It’s . . . come too late.
Good-bye . . . and forgive me.”
“I’m coming back,” I told her again; but Barbara was now kneeling with
eyes closed and folded hands.
If she heard me, she made no sign; I fancy she heard nothing but her own
passionate prayers. As I stumbled into the choking fog, the door slammed
behind me; and for the first time in these bewildering five minutes I
realized that I was awake.
CHAPTER THREE
TWO IN THE FIELD
“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”
_S. Matthew_: XXIV, 40.
1
In Seymour Street I could not distinguish the houses on the far side of
the road; at the Marble Arch I was unable to see from the one side of
the pavement to the other; and I made my cautious way to the tube
station chiefly by sense of touch.
A London fog can be the completest insulator in the world. Paralysing
sight and muffling sound, it separates the individual from his fellows
in the densest part of a crowded street. As I walked up Great Cumberland
Place, there was no sound but my own faint footsteps; the whole city
belonged to me.
“‘_Dear God, the very houses seem asleep_’;” I murmured involuntarily:
“‘_And all that mighty heart is lying still._’”
Then, I am not ashamed to confess, I felt suddenly frightened, for I
knew that the mighty heart was beating, the houses which seemed asleep
were full of people peering into the darkness of the street as I peered
through the darkness at their windows. The street was full; at any
moment I might trample on the unseen; and the unseen that watched and
listened for my faint footsteps might spring out on me. I walked on
tiptoe . . . and could have sworn that some one or something laughed at
my futile caution.
At an unattainable distance, a haze of dirty-lemon light smeared the
darkness. I hurried forward six paces and bruised my knees against a
lamp-post. Pausing to pick up my hat, I saw a knot of motionless bodies
tangled on the doorstep at my feet. There was no word, no more laughter;
perhaps I had imagined that earlier laugh. The fog insulated me again as
though I had been thrust under an airless bell-glass with a pile of
dead. I dared not move for fear of treading on one of them. The lemon
light grew dim, as a thicker wave of fog floated silently from the
unplumbed reservoir in the park. I felt my fingers tightening round my
stick. Then one of the crumpled bodies moved in its sleep and broke the
spell. I walked on—slowly, because I was out of breath—and steadied my
nerves by speaking to the policeman on duty at the corner.
He too, I found, was insulated by the fog. Some one should have relieved
him hours ago; but every man in the force was required to regulate the
traffic and to shepherd the hunger-marchers. What had happened to them
he could not tell me. Whenever the fog lifted, he saw groups of them
drifting aimlessly about or camping wearily in the first resting-place
that they could find. As armies, they had either ceased to exist or had
transferred themselves to another part of London. I asked whether he had
heard of any trouble.
“Haven’t heard nothing, sir,” he answered. “Wish I had. No, there won’t
be no trouble. These chaps are too tired; and they’re all of them
strange to London.”
2
When I reached the light and warmth of the tube, I could analyse calmly
my curious surrender to panic on my way up Great Cumberland Place. A
London fog, as I had told Barbara, was no new phenomenon to me; apart
from its dirt, I rather enjoyed one for its mystery and romance. If the
order of interrogation had been reversed, I should have assured the
policeman that I anticipated no trouble and that the hunger-marchers
were too tired, too ill-acquainted with London to provoke a riot. I
believed every word that I had said to my wife; I am not more nervous
than most short-sighted and unadventurous men of forty; and yet for a
moment I had entirely lost my head. Was this due to Barbara’s sudden
collapse? Were my own nerves cracking?
In the familiar long car, staring up at the well-known advertisements, I
was myself again. I could dismiss all thoughts of imminent death,
hanging over the house like a bird of doom, as lightly as they would
have been dismissed by my stolid neighbours in the train. Barbara, for
some reason, was overexcited. In my uncle’s last illness she had
felt—or said she felt—the presence of death; she added then, with
something of the same terror, that, if she ever heard my life was in
danger, she would be dragged out of her indifference. We had been
talking, throughout luncheon, of possible riots; I had arrived
unexpectedly because I was anxious for her safety; a cell in her
unconscious mind might well have retained our conversation as I drove to
my uncle’s death-bed. Was it necessary to probe deeper than that?
What mattered, what I could not yet begin to realize was that Barbara
and I were at last one flesh and spirit. When I returned to her . . .
I wondered whether I had done wisely in leaving her. When I remembered
the last poignant attitude in which I had seen her, kneeling upright
with closed eyes and praying distractedly, I felt unforgivably callous.
“For a casual promise to a friend,” I told myself indignantly; “when
I’ve assured her he’s in no danger . . .”
As the train ran in to Oxford Circus, I rose from my seat. Then I sat
down again; rose again; sat down again . . . till the conductor called
sharply:
“Now, make up your mind, sir.”
I made up my mind and went on to Chancery Lane. I must keep my word to
O’Rane. Had I wished to break it, I could not; and, with this sense of
impotence, something of my old anxiety returned. Raney would not have
summoned me for a trifle; if he needed me, there was danger; yet I had
told Barbara that I should be as safe with him as if I stayed in Seymour
Street. . . .
From Chancery Lane I stumbled to my office at a pace that left no time
for morbid fancies. O’Rane was in my room, sitting by the fire and
slapping a stick lazily against his boot. I have never seen any one less
like a figure of destiny, urging me to an unknown doom. At the vaguest
hint, he would have insisted on my going back to Barbara.
“Is there any more news?,” I asked. “I came as soon as I could.”
“It’s very good of you. No, I’ve heard nothing since that first rumour,”
he answered. “If I had, I wouldn’t have bothered you; but I’ve been
trying for two hours to get through to my secretary, and the girl at the
exchange tells me every time that there’s no answer. I expect the
hunger-march has disorganized everything; and I can smell a pretty thick
fog even if I can’t see it. . . . Shall we start, or is there anything
you want to do here first?”
As we set out, I realized that in the darkness of night or the greater
darkness of a fog the blind man has an advantage over those who are
guided by their eyes. With a murmured “Chancery Lane Tube; and then
change at Tottenham Court Road”, O’Rane piloted me more surely and far
more quickly than I could have found my way unaided. The contents-bills
outside the station proclaimed—rather superfluously—“_Fog-Pall over
London_”; but, beyond one or two collisions and an accident with a
runaway horse on the Embankment, I could find no news. “_Griffiths’
Armies_” were given a headline of no more than medium size; and their
progress had been followed less far than Philip Hornbeck had carried it
that morning. The peaceful encounter with the police in Regent’s Park
was briefly described; but of the barricades which Sonia had seen at
Westminster there was no mention.
“By the way, you know Griffiths has turned up again?,” I said. “Your
wife was lunching with us; and I gathered that he’d called on you at The
Sanctuary. That was just before lunch.”
“What’s happened to him?,” O’Rane asked.
“Sonia told him you weren’t at home.”
“Did she send him to the office?”
“I believe she did.”
O’Rane’s face grew grave; but he only muttered a hope that he would be
in time to meet the deputation.
“This is a moment for desperate remedies,” he explained. “That’s why I
came to see you in the first place. Most of these fellows will starve,
and a fair number will go berserk if we don’t do something for them.
I’ve had leave to turn Millbank Gardens into a canteen; so we can look
after any one who comes to The Sanctuary. Only a few, though, will
penetrate into the heart of London; the main armies are still in the
suburbs; and if we can set up relief-camps at Wimbledon, Hounslow,
Hampstead, Epping . . . I wanted you to help me with the plans . . . Are
we nearly there yet?,” he enquired with sudden impatience.
“It’s the next station,” I answered.
On the high ground of Hampstead, the fog lay whiter, with a tantalizing
promise that it would clear at any moment. As we came out of the lift, I
could read without difficulty the shop-signs on the opposite side of the
street, though the higher ground of the Heath alternated patches of
afternoon light with pockets of mist as impenetrable as anything I had
seen at the Marble Arch. Of hunger-marchers I could find no trace; but
here, as everywhere in London, the police seemed to have been multiplied
a hundredfold.
“Take my arm,” O’Rane ordered. “I can shew you a short cut.”
Leaving the main road, I followed him through devious alleys until a
sense of open spaces hinted that we must be near the Heath. After the
noise of the train, the silence of these empty lanes was unearthly;
after the thronged street by the station, we seemed to be alone in the
world.
“This reminds me of a raid-night in the war,” I said, as we plunged into
a belt of fog. “Pitch-dark. Deserted. And all the time you feel there
are thousands of people within touching-distance of you.”
Before he could answer, we had come again into a broad street and were
within touching-distance of a crowd that seemed to number thousands,
though I could only see the first three or four ranks.
“Is this one of the armies?,” O’Rane asked, as he turned, almost without
checking, down a footway between two villas.
“Spectators, I think. It was more like a football crowd than a
demonstration.”
“What the devil’s a crowd doing here?,” he asked with the first note of
anxiety that I had heard in his voice. “There’s nothing to see, except
my office. . . . Hold on a minute while I find the key. I’m going to
take you in the back way.”
As we halted, I observed that the footway had brought us to a high brick
wall with a wooden door in the middle. O’Rane was fitting the key into
the lock when the door opened from the inside and a constable flashed
his bull’s-eye into our faces.
“Now then, what are you up to?,” he demanded truculently.
“This is my office,” O’Rane answered.
“Sorry, sir. My orders are not to let any one in.”
“But you can’t keep me out of my own house. Where’s the inspector?”