3
In Jermyn Street Thrale was arguing with Gurney, trying to persuade him into a philosophic attitude.
“Yes, I suppose there’s absolutely nothing to be done but sit down and wait,” said Gurney.
“Personally,” returned Thrale, “I have no intention of spending my time flying from country to country like a marked criminal. That way leads to insanity. I’ve seen men become animals before now under the influence of fear.”
“Yes, of course, you’re quite right,” agreed Gurney. “One must exercise self-control. After all, it’s only death, and not such a terrible death at that.” He got up and began to pace the room restlessly, then went to the window and looked out. Jermyn Street was almost deserted, but distant sounds of shouting came from the direction of Piccadilly. He left the window open and turned back into the room.
“It’s so infernally hard just to sit still and wait,” he said. “If only one could do something.”
“I doubt, now,” said Thrale, quietly, “whether one could ever have done anything. The public and the Government took my warnings in the characteristic way, the only possible way in which you could expect twentieth-century humanity to take a warning—a thrill of fear, perhaps, in some cases; frank incredulity in others; but no result either way that endured for an hour.... Belief in national and personal security, inertia outside the routine of necessary, stereotyped employment; these things are essential to the running of the machine.”
“I suppose they are,” agreed Gurney absently He had sat down again and was sucking automatically at an extinguished pipe.
“In a complex civilization,” went on Thrale “any initiative on the part of the individual outside his own tiny sphere of energy is just so much grit in the machine. There are recognized methods, they may not be the best, the most efficient, but they are accepted and understood. Every clerk who has to calculate twelve pence to the shilling knows how his work would be lightened if he had only to calculate ten, but he accepts that difficulty, because he can do nothing as an individual to introduce the decimal system. And that spirit of acceptance grows upon him until the individual has the characteristics of the class. Only when a man is stirred by too great discomfort does he open his eyes to the possibility of initiative; then come labour strikes. If labour had a sufficiency of ease and comfort, if its lot were not so violently contrasted with that of even the middle-classes, labour would settle down to complacency. But the contrast is too great, and to attain that complacency of uninitiative we must level down. That was coming; that would have come if this plague....”
“What was that?” asked Gurney excitedly, jumping to his feet. “Did you hear firing?” He went to the window again, and leaned out. From Piccadilly came the sound of an army of trampling feet, of confused cries and shouting. “By God, there’s a riot,” exclaimed Gurney. He spoke over his shoulder.
Thrale joined him at the window. “Panic,” he said. “Senseless, hysterical panic. It won’t last.”
“I think I shall go out of London,” said Gurney. “I’d sooner ... I’d sooner die in the country, I think.” He withdrew from the window and began to pace up and down the room again.
“Going to stampede with the rest of ’em?” asked Thrale. “Extraordinarily infectious thing, panic.”
“I don’t think it’s that exactly ...” hesitated Gurney.
“Animal fear,” said Thrale. “The terror of the wild thing threatened with the unknown. The runaway horse terrified and rushing to its own destruction. Fly, fly, fly from the threat of peril as you did once on the prairies, when to fly meant safety.”
“It’s so infernally depressing in London,” said Gurney.
“All right, go and brood on death in the country,” replied Thrale. “That may cheer you up a bit. But, take my advice, don’t run. Walk at a snail’s pace and check the least tendency to hurry. Once you begin to quicken your pace, you will find yourself hurrying desperately—and then stampede the hell of terror at your heels. After all, you know, you may survive. It isn’t likely that every man will die.”
Gurney caught eagerly at that. “No, no, of course it isn’t,” he said. “But wouldn’t one be much more likely to survive if one were living in the country, or by the sea—in some fairly isolated place, for example. I meant to go down to Cornwall for my holiday this year, to a little cottage on the coast about four miles from Padstow; don’t you think in pure air and healthy surroundings like that, one would stand a better chance?”
“Very likely,” said Thrale carelessly. “But don’t run. In any case you’d better wait till the middle of the week. The first rush will be over then.”
“Yes. Perhaps. I’ll go on Wednesday, or Tuesday....”
Thrale smiled grimly. “Well, good night,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”
When he had gone, Gurney went to the window again. The sounds of riot from Piccadilly had died down to a low, confused murmur. A motor-car whizzed by along Jermyn Street, and two people passed on foot, a man and a woman; the woman was leaning heavily on the man’s arm.
Gurney turned once more to his pacing of the room. He was trying to realize the unrealizable fact that the world offered no refuge. For a full hour he struggled with himself, with that new, strange instinct which rose up and urged him to fly for his life. At last weary and overborne he threw himself into a chair by the dying fire and began to cry like a lost child; even as Ernst, the waiter, had cried....