1
WHEN Jeremy woke, the same panic terror of that transition seized him again for a moment and poised him on a razor’s edge between consciousness and unconsciousness. It passed. The clear morning light falling on his bed revealed to him that his humdrum existence in the new world began with that day. The surprises and the anxieties were over. All that remained was a process of adaptation and settlement; and, feeling a certain eagerness to begin, he began by scrambing out of bed.
There was, as he might have remembered, no bath in the room; and he decided that to search for one along these unknown corridors would be an enterprise not less chimerical than embarrassing. He looked about the room rather helplessly and lit at last on what he had not seen the night before, a metal ewer of water with a basin, standing behind the wooden chest. There was no soap with them, and the chest turned out to be locked. He was still revolving this problem in his mind, while the nightshirt flapped pleasantly round his legs in a light draught, when Roger came in, looking as placid and collected as he had been when he had shown Jeremy to bed.
“Are you well?” Roger asked; and, without waiting for a reply, he went on smoothly, “Of course you have nothing of your own for dressing. I’ve brought you my soap and a razor and a glass—and....” He hesitated a little.
“Yes?” Jeremy encouraged him.
“I thought perhaps it might be better if I were to lend you some of my clothes. You know, your own do look.... If you don’t mind....”
“Of course not,” Jeremy assented with pleasure. It was the last of his desires to be in any way conspicuous. “I should very much prefer it.”
When Roger had gone he examined with some interest the soap which had been given to him. It was a thin and wasted cake, very heavy, and of a harsh and gritty substance. But what was chiefly interesting was that it lay in a little metal casket which had a lock on it. This simple fact led Jeremy’s mind down a widening avenue of speculation. He dragged himself away from it with difficulty, and was in the middle of washing and shaving when Roger returned. It was at least a relief to find that the razor had a practicable edge.
Roger sat on the bed and watched Jeremy in silence. There was nothing specially perplexing in these new clothes, which comprised a thick woolen vest, a shirt, breeches, and a loose coat, and were obviously the garments of a race, or a class, used to a life spent largely out of doors. Jeremy put them on without difficulty until he came to the shapeless bunch of colored linen which served as a tie. Here Roger was obliged to intervene and help him.
“How absurd!” Roger exclaimed with satisfaction, standing away and regarding him when the operation was completed. “Now you look like anybody else. And yet yesterday, when I found you, you looked like some one out of one of the old pictures. It’s almost a pity....”
“That’s all right,” Jeremy sighed, still fidgeting a little with the tie and trying to see himself in a very small shaving-glass. “I want to look like anybody else. It’s a great piece of luck that only you and your uncle know that I’m not. I feel somehow,” he went on, with an increasing warmth of expression, “that I can rely on you. It would be unbearable if all these people here knew what I had told you.” He paused, while the vision thus suggested took definite shape in his mind. “You see,” he ruminated, lost in speculation and half-forgetting his hearer, “I know that nothing would ever make me believe such a story. I know they would look at me out of the corners of their eyes and wonder whether there was anything in it. They’d begin to take sides and quarrel. The fools would believe me and the sensible people would laugh at me. I should begin to feel that I was an impostor, a sort of De Rougemont or Doctor Cook ... only, of course, you don’t know who they were——” He might have rambled on much longer without realizing that there was a certain ungracious candor in these remarks if his interest had not been attracted by a change of expression, a mere flicker of meaning in Roger’s eyes.
“You haven’t told any one?” Jeremy cried with a sudden gust of entreaty.
“No—well ... no one of importance ...” Roger answered, averting his glance. “But I didn’t know—you didn’t say—— And there’s my uncle——” He paused and considered.
“But——” Jeremy began, and stopped appalled. The pressure of experience had taught him that it was not only an error but also gross ill-behavior to make large claims of any sort whatsoever. He strongly resented finding himself in the position of having to assert in public that he had lain in a trance for a century and a half. Surely Roger should have understood his feelings without warning, and should have respected his story as told in confidence under an obvious necessity. There flashed through his mind the question whether any newspapers still survived.
He burst out again wildly, fighting with a thickness in his throat. “Will your uncle have told any one? Isn’t it much better to say nothing about me? At least, until I can prove——”
“But what do you mean—prove?” Roger interrupted. “Why shouldn’t every one believe you as I did? There are some men who will believe nothing, but——” He shrugged his shoulders and dismissed them. “But, whatever you may wish, there’s my uncle.... He rises very early—I saw him here half-an-hour ago, after Mass.”
Jeremy opened his mouth to speak and forebore.
“Consider, my dear friend,” Roger went on persuasively, “we didn’t know your wishes, and it’s late in the day already. I’ve been up for some time; I’ve even begun my work. I didn’t want to wake you, because——”
“Do you mean that you’ve been talking to every one about me?” Jeremy demanded, almost hysterically.
“You speak as though you had done something that you were ashamed of. I cannot think why you should want to hide so wonderful a matter.”
Jeremy sat down on the wooden chest, unable to speak, but murmuring sullen protests in his throat. The face of the future had somehow changed since he had finished dressing; and he found himself unable to explain to Roger how important it was that his secret should be preserved, that he should slip into the strange world and lose himself with as little fuss as a raindrop disappearing in the sea. Besides, this young man was in a sort his savior and protector, to whom he owed gratitude, and on whom he certainly was dependent.... The anger which was roused in him by the placidly enquiring face opposite died away in a fit of hopelessness.
“What will happen to me then?” he muttered at last.
“You will be made much of,” Roger assured him. “Crowds will flock round you to hear your story. The Speaker and all the great men of the country will wish to see you. Now come with me and eat something. Perhaps no one knows anything about you yet, I said nothing clear. You must come and eat.”
“I don’t want to eat,” Jeremy mumbled, suffering from an intense consciousness of childish folly.
Perhaps Roger divined his feelings, for a slow, faint smile appeared on his face. “You must eat,” he repeated firmly. “You are overwrought. Come with me.” There was something in his serene but determined patience which drew Jeremy reluctantly after him.
The emptiness of the corridor outside did not reduce Jeremy’s fears of the peopled house beyond. He dragged along a pace behind Roger, trying vainly to overcome the unwillingness in his limbs. When, as they turned a corner, a servant passed them, his heart jerked suddenly and he almost stopped. But there might have been nothing in the glance which the man threw at them. They went on. Presently they turned another corner and came to a broad staircase of shallow steps made of slippery polished wood.
When Jeremy was on the third step he saw below a group of young men, dressed like Roger and himself, engaged in desultory morning conversation. Again he almost stopped; but Roger held on, and the group below did not look up. Their voices floated lightly to him and he recognized that they were talking to pass the time. He steeled himself for self-possession and cast his eyes downward, because his footing on the polished wood was insecure.
Suddenly his ear was struck by a hush. He lifted his eyes and looked down at the young men and saw with terror that the conversation had ceased, that their faces were turned upwards, gazing at him. He returned the stare stonily, straining his eyes so that the eager features were confused and ran into a blur. The stairs became more slippery, his limbs less controllable. Only some strange inhibition prevented him from putting out a hand to Roger for support. But Roger, still a step in front, his back self-consciously stiffened, did not see the discomfort of his charge. Somehow Jeremy finished the descent and passed the silent group without a gesture that betrayed his agitation. He fancied that one of the young men raised his eyebrows with a look at Roger, and that Roger answered him with a faint inclination of the head.
They were now in the wide passage which led to the dining-hall, and had almost reached the hall-door, when a figure which seemed vaguely familiar came into sight from the opposite direction. It was a man whose firm steps and long, raking stride, out of proportion to his moderate stature, gave him an ineffable air of confidence, of arrogance and superiority. He was staring at the ground as he walked; but when he came nearer, Jeremy was able to recognize in the lean, sharp-boned face, with the tight mouth and narrow nose, the distinguished person to whom Roger had alluded on the previous night as “that damned Canadian.” He was almost level with them when he raised his head, stared keenly at Jeremy, turned his eyes to Roger, looked back again.... Then with a movement almost like that of a frightened horse and with an expression of horror and dislike, he swerved abruptly to one side, crossed himself vehemently and went on at a greater pace.
Jeremy’s sick surmise at the meaning of this portent was confirmed by Roger’s scowl and exclamation of annoyance. Both involuntarily hesitated instead of going through the open door of the hall. At the tables inside four or five men were seated, making a late but copious meal. As Roger and Jeremy halted, a servant, dressed in a strange and splendid livery, came up behind them and touched Roger lightly on the shoulder. The young man turned round with an exaggeratedly petulant movement; and the servant, looking sideways at Jeremy, began to whisper in his ear. Jeremy, his sense of apprehension deepened, drew off a pace. He could see, as he stood there waiting, two other men, dressed in what seemed much more like a uniform than a livery, half concealed in the shadow of the further corridor.
The servant’s whispering went on, a long, confused, rising and falling jumble of sound. Roger answered in a sharp staccato accent, most unlike the ordinary tranquillity of his voice, but still beneath his breath. Jeremy, with the stares of the breakfasting men on his shrinking back, felt that the situation was growing unbearable. Suddenly Roger raised and let fall his hands in a gesture of resigned annoyance.
“Then will you, sir ...” the servant insisted with a deference that was plainly no more than formal.
Roger turned with unconcealed reluctance to Jeremy. “I am sorry,” he said in the defensive and sullen tone of a man who expects reproach. “The Speaker has heard of you and has sent for you. I have asked that I may go with you, but I am not allowed. You must go with this man. I ... am sorry....”
Jeremy faced the servant with rigid features, but with fear playing in his eyes. The man’s back bent, however, in a bow and his expression betrayed a quite unfeigned respect and wonder.
“If you will come with me, sir,” he murmured. Jeremy repeated Roger’s gesture, and advanced a step into the darkness of the passage at the side of his conductor. He felt, rather than saw or heard, the two men in the shadow fall in behind him.