Section 4
The miracle of the awakening came to me in solitude, the laughter,and then the tears. Only after some time did I come upon anotherman. Until I heard his voice calling I did not seem to feel therewere any other people in the world. All that seemed past, withall the stresses that were past. I had come out of the individualpit in which my shy egotism had lurked, I had overflowed to allhumanity, I had seemed to be all humanity; I had laughed at Swindellsas I could have laughed at myself, and this shout that came to meseemed like the coming of an unexpected thought in my own mind.But when it was repeated I answered.
"I am hurt," said the voice, and I descended into the lane forthwith,and so came upon Melmount sitting near the ditch with his back tome.
Some of the incidental sensory impressions of that morning bit sodeeply into my mind that I verily believe, when at last I face thegreater mysteries that lie beyond this life, when the things ofthis life fade from me as the mists of the morning fade before thesun, these irrelevant petty details will be the last to leave me,will be the last wisps visible of that attenuating veil. I believe,for instance, I could match the fur upon the collar of his greatmotoring coat now, could paint the dull red tinge of his bigcheek with his fair eyelashes just catching the light and showingbeyond. His hat was off, his dome-shaped head, with its smooth hairbetween red and extreme fairness, was bent forward in scrutiny ofhis twisted foot. His back seemed enormous. And there was somethingabout the mere massive sight of him that filled me with liking.
"What's wrong?" said I.
"I say," he said, in his full deliberate tones, straining roundto see me and showing a profile, a well-modeled nose, a sensitive,clumsy, big lip, known to every caricaturist in the world, "I'm ina fix. I fell and wrenched my ankle. Where are you?"
I walked round him and stood looking at his face. I perceived hehad his gaiter and sock and boot off, the motor gauntlets had beencast aside, and he was kneading the injured part in an exploratorymanner with his thick thumbs.
"By Jove!" I said, "you're Melmount!"
"Melmount!" He thought. "That's my name," he said, without lookingup. . . . "But it doesn't affect my ankle."
We remained silent for few moments except for a grunt of pain fromhim.
"Do you know?" I asked, "what has happened to things?"
He seemed to complete his diagnosis. "It's not broken," he said.
"Do you know," I repeated, "what has happened to everything?"
"No," he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time.
"There's some difference------"
"There's a difference." He smiled, a smile of unexpected pleasantness,and an interest was coming into his eyes. "I've been a littlepreoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinarybrightness about things. Is that it?"
"That's part of it. And a queer feeling, a clear-headedness------"
He surveyed me and meditated gravely. "I woke up," he said, feelinghis way in his memory.
"And I."
"I lost my way--I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog."He stared at his foot, remembering. "Something to do with a comet.I was by a hedge in the darkness. Tried to run. . . . Then Imust have pitched into this lane. Look!" He pointed with his head."There's a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled overthat out of the field above." He scrutinized this and concluded."Yes. . . ."
"It was dark," I said, "and a sort of green gas came out of nothingeverywhere. That is the last I remember."
"And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In a state of great bewilderment.Certainly there's something odd in the air. I was--I was rushingalong a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. Igot down----" He held out a triumphant finger. "Ironclads!"
"NOW I've got it! We'd strung our fleet from here to Texel. We'dgot right across them and the Elbe mined. We'd lost the Lord Warden.By Jove, yes. The Lord Warden! A battleship that cost two millionpounds--and that fool Rigby said it didn't matter! Eleven hundredmen went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the NorthSea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroesfor 'em--and not one of 'em had three days' coal! Now, was that adream? No! I told a lot of people as much--a meeting was it?--toreassure them. They were warlike but extremely frightened. Queerpeople--paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Ofcourse! We had it all over--a big dinner--oysters!--Colchester.I'd been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. AndI was coming back here. . . . But it doesn't seem as though thatwas--recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!--it was. I got outof my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of walking alongthe cliff path, because every one said one of their battleships wasbeing chased along the shore. That's clear! I heard their guns------"
He reflected. "Queer I should have forgotten! Did YOU hear anyguns?"
I said I had heard them.
"Was it last night?"
"Late last night. One or two in the morning."
He leant back on his hand and looked at me, smiling frankly. "Evennow," he said, "it's odd, but the whole of that seems like a sillydream. Do you think there WAS a Lord Warden? Do you really believewe sank all that machinery--for fun? It was a dream. And yet--ithappened."
By all the standards of the former time it would have been remarkablethat I talked quite easily and freely with so great a man. "Yes,"I said; "that's it. One feels one has awakened--from somethingmore than that green gas. As though the other things also--weren'tquite real."
He knitted his brows and felt the calf of his leg thoughtfully. "Imade a speech at Colchester," he said.
I thought he was going to add something more about that, but therelingered a habit of reticence in the man that held him for themoment. "It is a very curious thing," he broke away; "that thispain should be, on the whole, more interesting than disagreeable."
"You are in pain?"
"My ankle is! It's either broken or badly sprained--I think sprained;it's very painful to move, but personally I'm not in pain. Thatsort of general sickness that comes with local injury--not a traceof it! . . ." He mused and remarked, "I was speaking at Colchester,and saying things about the war. I begin to see it better. Thereporters--scribble, scribble. Max Sutaine, 1885. Hubbub. Complimentsabout the oysters. Mm--mm. . . . What was it? About the war? A warthat must needs be long and bloody, taking toll from castle andcottage, taking toll! . . . Rhetorical gusto! Was I drunk lastnight?"
His eyebrows puckered. He had drawn up his right knee, his elbowrested thereon and his chin on his fist. The deep-set gray eyesbeneath his thatch of eyebrow stared at unknown things. "My God!"he murmured, "My God!" with a note of disgust. He made a big broodingfigure in the sunlight, he had an effect of more than physicallargeness; he made me feel that it became me to wait upon his thinking.I had never met a man of this sort before; I did not knowsuch men existed. . . .
It is a curious thing, that I cannot now recall any ideas whateverthat I had before the Change about the personalities of statesmen,but I doubt if ever in those days I thought of them at all astangible individual human beings, conceivably of some intellectualcomplexity. I believe that my impression was a straightforward blendof caricature and newspaper leader. I certainly had no respect forthem. And now without servility or any insincerity whatever, as ifit were a first-fruit of the Change, I found myself in the presenceof a human being towards whom I perceived myself inferior andsubordinate, before whom I stood without servility or any insinceritywhatever, in an attitude of respect and attention. My inflamed, myrancid egotism--or was it after all only the chances of life?--hadnever once permitted that before the Change.
He emerged from his thoughts, still with a faint perplexity inhis manner. "That speech I made last night," he said, "was damnedmischievous nonsense, you know. Nothing can alter that. Nothing. . . .No! . . . Little fat gnomes in evening dress--gobbling oysters.Gulp!"
It was a most natural part of the wonder of that morning that heshould adopt this incredible note of frankness, and that it shouldabate nothin
g from my respect for him.
"Yes," he said, "you are right. It's all indisputable fact, and Ican't believe it was anything but a dream."