I seem to remember I was surprised at it. I don’t know why. Perhaps the lingering effect of the ruin in the dream, which had involved sunshine itself. I liked it though, and lay for a time enjoying the—what shall I say?—usualness of it. The sunshine of yesterday—of tomorrow. It occurred to me that the morning must be far advanced, and I got up briskly, as a man rises to his work. But as soon as I got on my legs I felt as if I had already overworked myself. In reality there was nothing to do. All my muscles twitched with fatigue. I had experienced the same sensations once after an hour’s desperate swimming to save myself from being carried out to sea by the tide.
No. There was nothing to do. I descended the staircase, and an utter sense of aimlessness drove me out through the big doors, which swung behind me without noise. I turned toward the river, and on the broad embankment the sunshine enveloped me, friendly, familiar, and warm like the care of an old friend. A black dumb barge drifted, clumsy and empty, and the solitary man in it wrestled with the heavy sweep, straining his arms, throwing his face up to the sky at every effort. He knew what he was doing, though it was the river that did his work for him.
His exertions impressed me with the idea that I too had something to do. Certainly I had. One always has. Somehow I could not remember. It was intolerable, and even alarming, this blank, this emptiness of the many hours before night came again, till suddenly, it dawned upon me I had to make some extracts in the British Museum for our Cromwell. Our Cromwell. There was no Cromwell; he had lived, had worked for the future—and now he had ceased to exist. His future—our past, had come to an end. The barge with the man still straining at the oar had gone out of sight under the arch of the bridge, as through a gate into another world. A bizarre sense of solitude stole upon me, and I turned my back upon the river as empty as my day. Hansoms, broughams, streamed with a continuous muffled roll of wheels and a beat of hoofs. A big dray put in a note of thunder and a clank of chains. I found myself curiously unable to understand what possible purpose remained to keep them in motion. The past that had made them had come to an end, and their future had been devoured by a new conception. And what of Churchill? He, too, had worked for the future; he would live on, but he had already ceased to exist. I had evoked him in this poignant thought and he came not alone. He came with a train of all the vanquished in this stealthy, unseen contest for an immense stake in which I was one of the victors. They crowded upon me. I saw Fox, Polehampton, de Mersch himself, crowds of figures without a name, women with whom I had fancied myself in love, men I had shaken by the hand, Lea’s reproachful, ironical face. They were near; near enough to touch; nearer. I did not only see them, I absolutely felt them all. Their tumultuous and silent stir seemed to raise a tumult in my breast.
I sprang suddenly to my feet—a sensation that I had had before, that was not new to me, a remembered fear, had me fast; a remembered voice seemed to speak clearly incomprehensible words that had moved me before. The sheer faces of the enormous buildings near at hand seemed to topple forwards like cliffs in an earthquake, and for an instant I saw beyond them into unknown depths that I had seen into before. It was as if the shadow of annihilation had passed over them beneath the sunshine. Then they returned to rest; motionless, but with a changed aspect.
“This is too absurd,” I said to myself. “I am not well.” I was certainly unfit for any sort of work. “But I must get through the day somehow.” Tomorrow … tomorrow. … I had a pale vision of her face as it had appeared to me at sunset on the first day I had met her.
I went back to my club—to lunch, of course. I had no appetite, but I was tormented by the idea of an interminable afternoon before me. I sat idly for a long time. Behind my back two men were talking.
“Churchill … oh, no better than the rest. He only wants to be found out. If I’ve any nose for that sort of thing, there’s something in the air. It’s absurd to be told that he knew nothing about it. … You’ve seen the Hour?” I got up to go away, but suddenly found myself standing by their table.
“You are unjust,” I said. They looked up at me together with an immense surprise. I didn’t know them and I passed on. But I heard one of them ask:
“Who’s that fellow?” …
“Oh—Etchingham Granger. …”
“Is he queer?” the other postulated.
I went slowly down the great staircase. A knot of men was huddled round the tape machine; others came, half trotting, half walking, to peer over heads, under armpits.
“What’s the matter with that thing?” I asked of one of them.
“Oh, Grogram’s up,” he said, and passed me. Someone from a point of vantage read out:
“The Leader of the House (Sir C. Grogram, Devonport) said that. …” The words came haltingly to my ears as the man’s voice followed the jerks of the little instrument “… the Government obviously could not … alter its policy at … eleventh hour … at dictates of … quite irresponsible person in one of … the daily … papers.”
I was wondering whether it was Soane or Callan who was poor old Grogram’s “quite irresponsible person,” when I
