CHAPTER THREE
“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”S. Matthew: XXIV, 40.
“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”S. Matthew: XXIV, 40.
“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”S. Matthew: XXIV, 40.
“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”S. Matthew: XXIV, 40.
“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”
S. Matthew: XXIV, 40.
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.”
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?”
The constable levelled the beam of his lamp on us again, this time with marked indecision. O’Rane’s voice had a ring of authority; and the key which he held was superficial evidence of good faith.
“Are you Mr. O’Rane, sir?,” asked the constable. “The inspector’s been trying to get hold of you. Maybe . . . you haven’t heard, sir?”
“Haven’t heard what?”
“The place has been smashed about, sir. Them hunger-marchers . . .”
“Any one hurt?”
“None of your people, sir; but we had to take our truncheons to the others. If you’ll see the inspector, sir . . .”
O’Rane bent his head and passed through the doorway, dragging me behind him by the wrist. Our path lay through an overgrown clump of evergreens; and, when we came into the open, on a strip of blighted lawn, it was my turn to catch O’Rane’s wrist while I surveyed the damage. So far as I could see in the uncertain light, there was not one whole pane of glass in the place; a door, torn from its hinges, lay athwart one of the trampled flower-beds; and under the boarding of the penthouse that did duty for a waiting-room there trickled a thin stream of black water. The lawn was carpeted with files and ledgers; the doorways were blocked with broken chairs; and the air was heavy with the smell of wet ashes.
“The place is wrecked?,” O’Rane broke in on my description. “That’s enough for the present. Find me the man in charge.”
In a corner of the main office we came upon a group of three constables, one inspector and two unexplained men in plain-clothes. They were talking in undertones round a table on which O’Rane’s secretary lay in a dead faint. Another clerk, white-faced and tremulous, sat in another corner with a telephone; a third wandered distractedly about the room, tidying books into place and sobbing gently to herself.
“This is Mr. O’Rane,” I told the inspector. “We understand no one’s been killed. That’s all we know.”
“It’s not the fault of those others that some onewasn’tkilled. Excuse me, sir, she’s coming to,” he added in an undertone. “Don’t hurry her! Stand back there and give her room.”
Five minutes later we began to build up a composite explanation from the inspector’s report and the evidence of the three eye-witnesses. Shortly after one o’clock a man had called to see Mr. O’Rane; he gave no name, but said that he had been sent to the office from Westminster. On hearing that Mr. O’Rane was not yet arrived, he explained that he was spokesman of a deputation and would like to wait for an interview. The one clerk who was on duty during the luncheon-hour then tried to make an appointment for the next morning on the ground that Mr. O’Rane had said he would not be at the office until late, if indeed he came at all that day. The spokesman of the deputation replied that he had heard that story before and enquired sarcastically if he should lead his men back to Westminster.
“He said he’d come all the way from the north,” interposed O’Rane’s secretary. “I guessed then he was one of the hunger-marchers; and I . . . didn’t like the way he spoke. So, when he turned to call the others, I gave him a push and slammed the door behind him. Then . . . then . . . then . . .”
O’Rane patted the girl’s hand while the inspector resumed his narrative. Barred from one entrance, the rioters attacked the other and succeeded in wrenching the door down. Inside, their conduct at first was orderly: some stretched themselves on the floor, others collected round the fires; when the police arrived, however, one or two got out of hand: tables were overturned, drawers ransacked and the safe bombarded, ineffectually enough, with sticks and stones. Then two arrests were made; and the crowd settled down to fight in earnest. Those who were outside shattered the windows with every missile that came to hand; those within overturned the furniture, flung the books from their shelves and kicked burning coals into the midst of the wreckage. When the truncheons came into place, the attack collapsed; but, with half-a-dozen exceptions, the invaders had made good their escape.
“Which way did they go?,” asked O’Rane.
“Every way, sir, as far as we could see. They were lost in the fog before they were out of the garden.”
“I understand. Well, they’re not likely to come back, but I suppose you’ll leave some one to look after the place. I shall be here first thing to-morrow morning, but I’ve rather a lot to do now. Can you arrange for some one to take these ladies home? I don’t like them to wander about unprotected. George, I want you.”
As I followed him into the ruins of his private office, he asked me if Sonia had mentioned where she was going that afternoon.
“I imagine, to The Sanctuary,” I answered. “She had tickets for a private view, but I heard her say it was too dark to do anything except go to bed.”
“And the best place too. Will you get hold of the other telephone and tell her to bar the door and put the shutters up in the library? All the ground-floor rooms without shutters must be locked on the outside. She’s not to go to the door on any pretext; and there must be no lights in any window. If I want to get in, I’ll use the fire-escape; so she must leave the nursery-window open. Tell her—without frightening her, if possible—that I’m asking the police to draft some additional men into the neighbourhood . . .”
“You think this gang has gone back?,” I interrupted.
This was the first time that I had engaged in any adventure with O’Rane; and I began to appreciate some of his qualities of leadership. Always knowing what he wanted, he made his followers want it with equal intensity; fearless himself, he subdued fear in others. I felt that he would stand back to back with me against an army corps; and it was only natural that I should wish to stand back to back with him.
“It’s more than likely. They’re out for blood now . . . thanks to Sonia’s damned folly in sending them here when I told her I shouldn’t be near the place. I should want somebody’s blood myself if I’d had a trick like that played on me.”
I sent O’Rane’s message in his own words, not caring greatly whether I frightened Sonia so long as she obeyed to the letter. Then I telephoned to Seymour Street to give a similar warning. I would not speak to Barbara for fear she should try to argue; but I instructed Robson to put the house in preparation for a siege. Griffiths had honoured me with one call; in his mind I was intimately associated with O’Rane; I did not want him to call a second time until I had prepared a suitable reception for him.
“Tell her ladyship that there’s a certain amount of rioting,” I said, “and it is my urgent wish that she shall not go out of doors. Mr. O’Rane’s office has been damaged, though—fortunately—no one has been injured. I’m going with him to his house in Westminster, just to see that everything’s all right there. Then I shall come straight home.”
As I finished speaking, O’Rane came into the room and asked if I had sent his message.
“Then I needn’t keep you, old man,” he added. “It was good of you to see me through. One’s sometimes extraordinarily helpless without one’s eyes.”
“I’m coming back with you,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because . . . one is sometimes extraordinarily helpless without one’s eyes.”
“But this isn’t your show. Sonia set the match to the fire; and I must put it out.”
“I may be able to lend a hand.”
O’Rane stood silent for a moment. Then he shook his head and turned to the door:
“I’m not going to let you in for this. You have . . . other responsibilities.”
“It’s as bad as that?”
“It may be. You’ve never seen a mob out of temper.” . . .
“If you’re right, I may see one to-day. I’m not going to let you go alone, Raney.”
“It’s . . . good of you; but I think you’re a fool.”
“Well, that’s as may be,” I answered. “Come on.”
As we hurried to the station, I told O’Rane that the approaches to Westminster had been barricaded earlier in the day and suggested that we should make for The Sanctuary by way of Waterloo and Lambeth. He nodded without speaking; and, after that, I left him undisturbed. I am not, I never have been, anything that could be called “a man of action”; I did not know whether we were hastening into the vortex of a revolution; and, if I had known, I should have had no idea what to do.
“I’m simply waiting for your orders,” I reminded him, as we struggled out of the lift.
“And I’m waiting for you to tell me what’s happening. How’s the fog?”
“I really believe it’s thicker than ever.”
“Good. Take my arm and come for all you’re worth. There’s no difference to me between night and day or fog and sunshine; but there’s all the difference in the world to these other fellows. I figure out that Griffiths’ gang ought to be arriving just about now, if they’ve come on foot. And if they’ve come at all. The police ought to be there before them, with luck. We’ve no idea of numbers on either side; but one policeman, attacking or defending, is a match for quite a few people who haven’t made up their minds how far they want to go. And it’s a trained against an untrained force. On the other hand, the police can’t go to extremes until they’re driven.”
“And in pitch darkness,” I added, “numbers and training and the majesty of the law don’t count for much.”
“I’m banking on that. This may be a one-man show. Me. The fog’s still holding everywhere? Good again. We’re all blind for this evening, but I’ve had more than seven years’ start of the others. I haven’t bumped you once so far? I canfeelwhen people are near. And I’m coming to know London like my own bedroom. There’s a crossing here, with rather a high kerb. Left incline to the refuge! There’s a lorry feeling his way along . . . and getting tied up with a south-bound tram. We can go on now. People aren’t frightened of a fog nearly as much as I should have expected. When I remember the agony of fear I went through when I was blinded . . . The helplessness . . . Here’s Westminster Bridge, but I don’t think it’s the least use trying that.”
We hurried along the south bank of the river and only crossed when we were safely in the rear of all possible pickets.
“What happens if we get separated?,” I asked.
“Look after yourself as best you can, but don’t call me by name. D’you knowLilliburlero? Well, pretend you’re Uncle Toby and whistle that when you get a chance, just to shew me where you are. If you want help, whistleJohn Peel. I’ll get to you if I can . . . Of course, wemayfind everything as peaceful as the grave. If we do, I think I shall still take the precaution of moving Sonia and the boys to some other part of London.”
“Bring them to Seymour Street,” I suggested.
“I will, thankfully. If we find there’s a scrap in progress, we must arrange a retreat. There’ll be nobody on the west side of the house, because there are no windows for any one to break on the ground floor; and there’s a fairly high wall round the stable-yard. If you’ll keepcavé, I’ll slip in there and go up the fire-escape. I’ll give you the first line ofThe Campbells Are Comingto know if the coast’s clear; if you’ll reply withOver the Hills and Far Away, I shall know I can unlock the door. From there, the way is by Smith Square, Great College Street and Dean’s Yard. The gates will be shut against us; but the police will open them. . . . Are you feeling at all nervous?”
“A bit keyed-up. This damned fog . . .”
“You may live to bless it. If for any reason we don’t both get through, we’ll say good-bye now. Slow down a bit; we can’t be more than fifty yards from the corner.”
Though I fancied we were still half a mile away, I discovered—by the abrupt change from stucco to brick—that we had indeed reached the south side of the house. So far as I could see or hear, the neighbourhood was deserted; but a single distant thud, followed by a sharp tinkle, told me that some one on the other side of the house had broken a window and that the missile had been stopped by a shutter. I heard hurried footsteps and pulled up within an inch of colliding with a young policeman. His truncheon was drawn; and he had lost his helmet.
“You gentlemen had best keep out of this,” he warned us.
“What’s happening?,” I asked. “Are these the hunger-marchers?”
“I reckon so. And they’re out for mischief. If you could see them, it wouldn’t be so bad . . .”
He broke off as a fusillade of stones rattled against the house. A hollow ‘plump’, like the sound of a weight dropped into water, indicated another broken window; and in the moment’s silence that followed we heard another tinkle of glass.
“The house will stand a good deal of that,” O’Rane murmured. “They’ve had no luck with the door?”
“Two or three got in by the area window,” stated the constable. “Now they can’t get out again. There are two men waiting for them.”
O’Rane broke into an unexpected laugh:
“I’m afraid they’ll have a long wait. That’s the cellar; and the door’s sure to be locked. I hope they’ll find the wine to their taste.”
“Is this your house, sir?,” asked the policeman. “You’d best not let them see you, then. They’re after you.”
“So it seems,” O’Rane answered, as a new volley of stones rattled on to the pavement and a series of short scuffles gave place to the sound of running feet.
The battle, we were told, had been raging for half-an-hour. At first the assailants had concentrated on the front door; when that refused to yield, they began to break every window within reach until the police scattered them. Then the attack was transferred to a distance. On the Embankment twenty yards away, where the road was under repair, lay miscellaneous heaps of stones and granite blocks. By these the hunger-marchers collected and bombarded both the house and the newly formed cordon. It was a difficult attack to meet at any time, but the fog made it impossible. When the police charged, the assailants slipped between and round them, to reassemble in flank and to continue their bombardment of the house at close-quarters; when the police charged back, the hunger-marchers returned to their ammunition-dump and reopened a long-range fire. The present lull in the fighting was due to a change of tactics: half the police were stationed in open order round the house, while the other half encircled the granite piles to cut off supplies. Their numbers, however, were insufficient to hold either position effectively; and, though further reinforcements were reported to be on their way, there were enough stones lying loose about the house for a long spell of irregular practice.
“Is that fellow Griffiths in charge?,” asked O’Rane.
“I’ve heard so,” answered the constable.
“I want to get hold of him. This must be stopped, but it’s no good breaking heads and putting people under arrest. We must stop it before the reinforcements come up and the whole thing starts again. There’s a lot to be said for these fellows: they’re hungry, to begin with, and they’ve been fooled by everybody, Griffiths most of all. The first thing they need is a meal; and I’m going to promise them that, if they’ll stop this stone-throwing business. And after that we must find ’em a place for the night; but I must promise them there’ll be no arrests. Where’s the inspector?”
“He’s guarding the area window, sir.”
“I hope to God I can make my voice heard,” O’Rane muttered, as he vanished from my side to be swallowed up in the fog.
I waited with the constable because I had been given no orders. He had been on duty for little more than half-an-hour and could tell me nothing of the battle’s beginning. On the other hand, he told me much about the rest of London: my premonition of a duel between Griffiths and the O’Ranes had come true; in every other part, the hunger-marchers were being peacefully conducted to makeshift kitchens and dormitories; Hampstead was quiet again; and this brawl, between unknown numbers on either side, was the nearest approach—as Philip Hornbeck might have said—to barricade-fighting.
Only a brawl, but an unpleasant brawl. I do not remember feeling unusually frightened, though I was more than usually helpless. From time to time a stone hurtled over my head or skated along the pavement at my feet; of all futile precautions, I pulled my hat over my eyes and turned up my coat-collar; also, I heard a sustained cursing of this Egyptian darkness and was surprised to recognize my own voice behind it. I could not see my watch; I have no idea how long it was before the next fusillade was followed by the now inevitable scuffling rush. Then came the sound of O’Rane’s voice from the front of the house. He called several times for Griffiths; and, when no answer came, he began to talk to the crowd and at their leader in the same breath.
Only once before had I heard O’Rane address a mass-meeting: that was in the early days of the war, when he came to gather recruits and wagered light-heartedly that he would stampede the meeting in five minutes. He won his bet; but then he had been able to see his audience, and his audience yielded to the double hypnotism of his voice and eyes. Now he was talking to a blind tent of darkness. I could not watch the effect; I could not tell how many heard him nor how many were present to hear. It was something that they listened in silence; but, until the speech was over, neither he nor I could tell for certain whether any one was in earshot.
There was little more in what he said now than in what he had rehearsed to me. After telling the crowd his name—which was received in silence—, he explained that, when the deputation called earlier in the day and at the moment when it was marching on his office in Hampstead, he had been taking steps to procure food for men whose only fault at that time was that they had listened to promises which could not be kept. If they did not know that, Griffiths did; the government had stated a dozen times that it would not receive their leaders; and the sympathy which the hunger-marchers had aroused on their way to London would vanish in a moment if they destroyed houses and helped themselves to private property. Though it was too late to undo the harm already done, it could be overlooked. If the rioting stopped instantly, no steps would be taken against the rioters, with the exception of Griffiths himself, against whom the police already held a warrant for inciting to crime. Further, immediate steps would be taken to provide shelter and food; but the stone-throwing must stop. Those who came forward empty-handed would be marshalled and led to Millbank Gardens, where supplies had already been collected.
The speech was over in three minutes; but twice that time passed before any answer came. I moved round to the front of the house, but the place from which O’Rane’s voice had issued was occupied by a single policeman. There was no more stone-throwing, but I could see nothing of the besieging army. Once I whistled a few bars ofLilliburlero, but they passed unacknowledged. Then I walked in a wider compass towards the battlefield on the Embankment. Everything was silent, every one was still; and each man suspected his neighbour. I could see neither policemen nor rioters until I was within a yard of them; then a face would leap at me out of the grey fog. Usually it was frightened, sometimes it was angry; always it seemed thin, hopeless and bewildered. The stench was oppressive; the sense of silent numbers suffocating.
As I turned back towards the house, I felt a slight tremor among the men who surrounded me. Perhaps my own aimless movement had given them the lead they were awaiting. Those ahead of us were pushed forward; those behind hurried to catch up. Suspicion seemed to die down; and I heard a hoarse murmur of conversation. Finding myself alone, I triedLilliburleroagain; and with an answering whistle O’Rane slipped like a snake through the intervening ranks and stationed himself at my side.
“You all right?,” he whispered.
“Yes, thanks. It’s over, Raney. What d’you want me to do now?”
“Let’s be sure first that itisover. . . . I don’t like the sound ofthat.”
Taking my arm, he led me in the direction of a voice that seemed to be answering his own speech. I could not hear the words; and, if I suspected the voice to be Griffiths’, that was only because a curious snarl, passed from lip to lip, was taken up as a cry.
“They’re saying it’s a trap,” I told O’Rane.
“Trap . . . Trap . . . Trap . . .” came the snarl; and those who were nearest the house turned headlong till we were almost swept off our feet.
“Trap be damned,” shouted a voice; and in place of the mutters and snarls came the roar of two opposing armies.
It was very much as I had foreseen; very much as I had predicted to Griffiths himself. His men were turning against him.
When hunger first became unbearable, they soothed their anger with a dose of wholesale destruction. If Griffiths had not urged them to it, I have never heard any one suggest that he tried to restrain them; I should be sceptical if any one told me that he had marched them from Hampstead to Westminster with another thought than to offer them a further dose of the same sedative. By this time, however, the men were realizing that broken windows brought satisfaction to no one but the fortunate two or three who had dug themselves into the wine-cellar. I hoped they would remain there. In a lull between two bursts of shouting I heard a subterranean bellowing; one or two bottles were flung up and promptly smashed by the inspector of police. I did not want our complications to be increased by the madness that comes to starving men who have inflamed their aching stomachs with strong liquor. O’Rane, if he aimed at dividing the enemy, could not have chosen a happier moment for exposing Griffiths to his followers. Their resentment of that day’s leadership became lost in a greater resentment of the leadership that had dragged them to London. Fear sharpened the antagonism of those who had heard a moment before that they were being incited by Griffiths to crime; the police were still very near; and O’Rane had promised an amnesty to all who threw down their missiles and came forward peacefully.
Amnesty and immediate food. The collective cry of hunger was less than human; but, as I had predicted, the disappointed mob had vengeance to wreak on the author of its misfortunes before it could eat in comfort of mind. As though a barrier had fallen, there was a rush towards the corner of the street where an excited voice could still be heard haranguing of ‘traps’.
“That fellow will be lynched if we don’t get him away!,” O’Rane cried.
“You’ll be lynched yourself,” I answered, “if you get mixed up with his gang.”
Even as I spoke, the tide hung and turned. As I might have foreseen, as Griffiths himself had told me, he could look after himself. Again I could not hear his words; for part of the time I fancy he was speaking in Welsh; and he held his audience. The opposing clamour dwindled and died away. The hoarse cheers of his supporters spread until they were taken up all round us. There was a pause of perfect stillness, like the moment when a gigantic wave gathers before breaking; then the mob turned as one man upon the house.
Griffiths had won that round.
“I imagine this must be something like the storming of the Bastille,” O’Rane murmured coolly.
“They’re absolutely out of hand. The police are using their truncheons, too,” I added, as the sickening smack of hard wood on human flesh and bone was followed by yelps of rage and whimpering moans.
“I haven’t heard anything of our precious reinforcement . . . There’s a most awful reek of whisky.”
“They’re looting the cellar. Oncethatbegins . . .”
“If they’ll get drunk quietly, it will be the best thing in the world for everybody. . . . D’you smell burning?”
I sniffed; but my duller senses told me nothing till I saw a distant orange glow fainter than the reflection of a winter sunset.
“They’ve started a fire. I can’t see where.”
“Is it making any difference to the fog?”
“No, but I believe the fog’s lifting. I can see . . . oh, ten yards. Come out of the way: I think the police are going to charge again.”
Though I dragged at his arm, O’Rane stayed motionless.
“If the fog’s lifting . . .,” he murmured slowly. Then, for the second time that evening, he gripped my hand. “We must go while the going’s good. The stable-door. And afterwards by Smith Square and Great College Street.”
I found myself suddenly alone. The fog was certainly lifting, for I could see the concerted rush of the police, though I was not in time to get out of their way. It was a truncheon, I think, and not a stray stone that brought me down. I remember excruciating pain at the side of my head; I remember my knees giving slowly beneath me; and then, for a time, I remember nothing more.
When I came to, the fire was invisible; but the battle was still raging. My glasses were gone; my head ached savagely; and an ungentle foot had trodden my left hand to a bleeding pulp. I felt overpoweringly sick; and I wanted to crawl away from all this din till I had recovered my nerve. I did not know why I was there at all.
Then I remembered O’Rane and the stable-door.
During the war, I was told by many of my friends that, in the first moments after being slightly wounded, they became wholly demoralized: they might have been facing intensive fire for several hours on end without undue discomfort, but, when once they had been hit, they dodged and cowered their way back to the clearing-station as though the heavens were raining shrapnel upon them. My own demoralization, as I slunk away and made for the stable-door by the other side of the house, was more complete than I care to remember: I ducked, I sidestepped, I ran, I hid, everywhere pursued by the reek and roar of struggling humanity, convinced against all reason that I alone was visible in the darkness and that every missile was deliberately aimed at me.
The stable-door was locked; I could see no one near it; and I sank to the ground till I should faint again or be trampled to death. There was some challenge, some pass-word for me to remember; but, when I heard a whistle, I forgot my orders and called out: “Here I am! All clear.”
There was a precautionary pause before the door was opened. Then O’Rane pushed a small, muffled figure towards me and stepped into the road with a second figure, slightly larger and equally muffled, in his arms.
“Shut the door quietly and follow me,” he whispered. “It locks itself.”
“Where’s Sonia?,” I asked.
“I must go back for her. She’s rather rattled.”
I cannot say whether my recovery was the natural result of time or whether I was infected by O’Rane’s unruffled calm. His companionship meant much; his air of authority more; and, if I was still frightened, I hope at least that I did not shew it. A very few steps, moreover, brought us into comparative quiet; and I could forget the red-hot pain in my head.
“The fogislifting,” I told O’Rane.
“The deuce it is!” He stopped suddenly and lowered his burden to the ground. “You must take Daniel as well, while I go back. Sonia wouldn’t face the fire-escape; and I must carry her down. There’s no time to lose, because these fellows have been filling up on neat spirit; and I came across a dud incendiary-bomb . . . which doesn’t look like clean fighting. You’re in Smith Square now. Feel your way round the church railings, then straight ahead, then to the left as far as you can go. Knock up any of the Abbey people and say these children must be taken in. Give themyouraddress and beat it for home. We shall join you as soon as we can. Go carefully,” he added in a whisper. “There’s some one coming. Oh, it’s only a woman.Shewon’t hurt you.”
As he turned back to The Sanctuary, I gave Daniel my undamaged hand while I hoisted little David half on to my shoulder. I had heard no footsteps, but somewhere in this bewildering darkness I heard a woman’s light cough. Then a voice said:
“Don’t look round! I’ll take the baby as soon as we’re safe, but I want to keep my hands free just in case . . .”
Then we came into a narrow circle of lamp-light and I saw Barbara in tweed jacket and trousers. She had tidied her hair away under one of my hats; and the fingers of her right hand gripped a service revolver.
“When you didn’t come . . .” she began.
“You’ve no right to be here,” I exclaimed in horror.
“Just as much right as you, darling. I drove the car here in case any one was . . . hurt. It’s in that street by the Church House.”
“Then will you shew me the way and take these infants to Seymour Street? Raney will follow as soon as he can bring Sonia down.”
“And you?”
“I’m going back to give him a hand.”
“Must you?”
“There may be other people in the house. Servants.”
Barbara lifted the child off my shoulders into her arms and hurried down a side street. The fog was lifting rapidly, too rapidly; I could see across the street and I wondered how much could be seen on the battlefield outside The Sanctuary.
“If youmust. . .” Barbara murmured. “George, I told Robson I was coming to see if I could help you; but . . . I brought the car to take back your dead body.”
“I’ve no intention of being killed,” I said, “but we can’t leave people to be burnt alive.”
“Well, . . . take the revolver,” said Barbara helplessly.
When we had put the children inside the car, I went back at a run down Great College Street to Smith Square. The fog lay in pockets so that I could see thirty yards at one moment and less than three at another. I fancied, as I neared The Sanctuary, that the noise had diminished; I could see neither fire nor smoke; and, though my own road was deserted, I thought I could hear the patter of running feet. It was more than time for the reinforcements to have arrived; it was more than a likelihood that, with the increasing light, experience and discipline were favouring the police. I was halfway through Smith Square when I heard a sound of crying and saw a woman’s figure cowering against the railings. As I went forward, I was greeted with a scream of terror; the figure turned to run, and I recognized Sonia.
Calling her by name, I started in pursuit and brought her back from the scene of riot for which she was blindly heading. Her nerve was gone; and I had dragged and carried her halfway to the car before she could speak coherently. Then I learned that the battle was over, the fire out and Griffiths’ army in full flight; but all this was nothing to the unforgettable agony of the bombardment, and she sobbed hysterically as she tried to describe her own sufferings from the moment when she received my message from Hampstead to the moment when her husband climbed through the nursery-window.
“WhereisRaney?,” I asked.
“He’s following. He said it was dangerous for us to go together; and I should get along quicker without him. Oh, George, it was so awful! I believe I’m going to faint.” . . .
Though I tried to comfort her, I should have had an easier task if she had composed herself wholly or wholly collapsed. Though I had not shared her ordeal, I felt that Sonia was making rather a pitiful exhibition of herself. She was frightened, but so was I; so—under his Gasconnade—was O’Rane; so—without disguise—had Barbara been. When, however, an emergency wrested the direction of her daily life from her own hands, Barbara behaved as tradition and inherited instinct taught her. Though her body might play her false, the dauntless strength of breeding came out in her spirit; she might break down in private; but, once on the public scaffold, she shewed an Elizabethan daring and feared death less than the ague which might make her enemies think she feared death. Alone of us four, Sonia was more concerned for her personal alarms than for the dignity of the order in which we had been brought up.
“It’s only a few yards to the car,” I told her. “Barbara will look after you. And you’ll find the children quite safe. . . . D’you know which way David was coming?”
“No. . . . I just ran for my life. He said he’d follow.” . . .
I handed her over to my wife’s keeping with no more comment than that she was badly shaken in nerve. There might have been a noticeable contraction of sympathy if Barbara, who had superfluously ventured into this maelstrom through loyalty to me, heard that Sonia had run for her life and left her blind husband to extricate herself from the danger in which she had involved him.
“I’m just going to meet Raney,” I said. “He’s expecting us either in Dean’s Yard or Seymour Street.”
“If we’ve gone before you come back, it’ll mean that he’s found us first,” said Barbara. “Then you’ll come home independently. Take care of yourself.”
“It’s all over now. Even the fog’s almost gone.”
As I returned to The Sanctuary for the last time, I could see—even without my glasses—from one lamp-post to the next. The narrow streets north of Smith Square were almost empty; and I could hardly blame a routed enemy for shying from such sinister avenues of escape. There were more and more people as I drew nearer to the Embankment, all of them rather dazed and many wounded. I saw no dead, though stretchers were being hurried up as I came in sight of The Sanctuary; and of the battle there was no other sound than a rapid scurry of feet towards Westminster Bridge and Vauxhall.
At the corner of Sanctuary Road I was challenged and stopped by a policeman.
“I’m looking for the gentleman whose house has been attacked,” I explained. “I’ve got his family in a car near by; but he’s unfortunately blind, and I don’t want him to miss them.”
I was allowed through; and, a moment later, I stood in the midst of one of the strangest scenes that I have witnessed. To see, to smell and to touch, it was a blend of shambles and distillery under the combined influence of earthquake and fire. The ground was in places waist-deep with stones; for twenty feet round the house I heard the glass crackling as I walked. More than once I slipped in an ominous pool of blood; and the air was sickly with the smell of whisky and singed clothing.
I whistled and called O’Rane’s name, but there was no answer. Every approach was now guarded by police; and on either side of the cordon I heard scuffling as the last unyielding attackers were put under arrest. In the middle of the open square, the wounded were laid out to await the ambulances. I borrowed a lantern and flashed it down the lines, but there was no one remotely resembling Raney.
“I’m going to try the house now,” I told the policeman nearest the stables. “If you’ll give me a leg up, I can get over the wall and up the fire escape.”
There was no one in the yard, no one in the house. As a last hope, I interrogated two or three of the constables; but, if any of them had found time to notice anything my description did not help to identify one half-seen figure in a surging crowd of many thousands.
“Well, if he turns up,” I said to the inspector, “will you tell him that all’s well and that his family has gone to Mr. Oakleigh’s house?”
Then, handing him a card, I bent my steps in the direction of the Church House.
The fog had lifted; and only a faint haze remained. For the first time in many hours I looked at my watch to explain what seemed to be stars. It was nine o’clock; and I became suddenly conscious of great hunger, great fatigue and almost unbearable pain in my head and hand. At the same moment I began to see the events of the afternoon in their perspective.
Nothing quite of this kind had happened for a hundred years. Barbara had confirmed what the policeman told me: this outbreak was isolated and unique. Within the next day or two I was to meet men who had driven unsuspectingly across the battlefield from luncheon-parties an hour before the battle; I was to meet others who drove across the same ground an hour after the surrender and only imagined that the road was under repair. It was local, it was brief; but it was new. Had I seen the beginning or the end? Sardou, I remember, makes one of his characters say: “Anémeuteis when the mob is conquered; then they are allcanaille;a revolution is when they are victorious; then they are all heroes.” Theémeuteof to-day, however, becomes not infrequently the revolution of to-morrow. I felt that, in history, this outbreak might mark a turning-point: it would be the first active step towards a social revolution, or it would be the last demonstration of turbulence before a great and orderly people, with a genius for self-government, adjusted itself slowly, pragmatically and irrationally to the new conditions.
I know now, I knew next day, that the collision which loomed so large to me would escape the notice of the most vigilant historian. The average headline in the average paper said no more than:Disorderly scenes in westminster. Feared loss of life.Then and now I felt and feel that what I witnessed was more than a “disorderly scene”. Little more than eight years had passed since the threat of a European war shook us to the foundations of our being. The ardent among us had vowed that, if we won, we would have an order of civilization for which any man would be proud to die. After eight years, the danger of a new war lowered more menacingly than in the summer months of 1914. And the civilization which we had set up to commemorate the war was to be judged on that afternoon’s encounter. Had the association of one human being with another, in his national and international grouping, grown so complex that no one could control it? Had the world become like the Roman Empire in its last days, when—for no reason that a statesman of the day or an historian of later days could enunciate—the mighty machine ceased to revolve? If the aim of government was to secure the life and liberty of the governed and to lead them towards prosperity and happiness, government had palpably failed in victorious England and France, in defeated Germany, in revolutionary Russia. My uncle warned me on his death-bed that we were back in 1914; had he been with me now, I must have told him that we were sunk to something incredibly lower than 1914. After the events of this afternoon I did not believe that even O’Rane would dispute that.
Of all the ironies that had chequered his life, I knew of none greater than that his should be the house to be attacked by the most downtrodden and hopeless section of the community. If their salvation could have been helped by his death, he would have given his life for them as lightly as another man might toss a coin to a beggar. Now, if any one had indeed been killed, he would be held indirectly responsible.
I had come to a halt till the pain which every step sent shooting through my head should abate. Looking again at my watch, I saw that I must hasten. By Great College Street, O’Rane had told me, and then into Dean’s Yard. As I turned the corner, I had to step aside to avoid an obstacle. Glancing back, I saw that it was a man. He lay stretched on his back, with his arms flung out, midway between two lamp-posts; and I could not be sure whether he was wounded or drunk. I called out to find if he wanted help; but there was no answer. Then I struck a match.
As it flared, I saw what—in some way that I shall never understand—I had been expecting to see. It was this that had sent me back to his side again and again; this, maybe, that had brought Barbara with her car; this, for all I know, that appeared to her in the semblance of black wings beating a prophetic message over the house. O’Rane’s hands were cold as ice; the back of his head was brutally smashed. His black eyes stared up to heaven in mild perplexity at the insoluble enigma of death and the eternal paradox of life.
He looked a boy of twenty.
I covered his face and mounted guard over my last and best friend. . . .
Waltham St. Lawrence,
Berkshire, 1923.
THE END