He remembered very clearly a day when news that was authentic reached them from the outside world; an aeroplane came down with engine-trouble in a field on the edge of the camp, and the haggard-faced pilot, beset with breathless questions, laughed roughly when they asked him of London—how lately he had been there, what was happening? “Oh yes, I was over it a day or two ago. You’re no worse off than they are down south—London’s been on the run for days.” He turned back to his engine and whistled tunelessly through the silence that had fallen on his hearers.... Theodore said it over slowly to himself, “London’s been on the run for days.” If so—if so—then what, in God’s name, of Phillida?
Hitherto he had fought back his dread for Phillida, denying to himself, as he denied to others, the rumour that disaster was widespread and general, and insisting that she, at least, was safe. If there was one thing intolerable, one thing that could not be, it was Phillida vagrant, Phillida starving—his dainty lady bedraggled and grovelling for her bread.... like the haggard women who had beaten with their hands on the gate....
“It must stop,” he choked suddenly, “it must stop—it can’t go on!”
The pilot broke off from his whistling to stare at the distorted face.
“No,” he said grimly, “it can’t go on. What’s more, it’s stopping, by degrees—stopping itself; you mayn’t have noticed it yet, but we do. Taking ’em all round they’re leaving off, not coming as thick as they did. And”—his mouth twisted ironically—“we’re leaving off and for the same reason.”
“The same reason?” someone echoed him.
“Because we can’t go on.... You don’t expect us to carry on long in this, do you?” He shrugged and jerked his head towards a smoke cloud on the western skyline. “That’s what ran us—gone up in smoke. Food and factories and transport and Lord knows what beside. The things that ran us and kept us going ... We’re living on our own fat now—what there is of it—and so are the people on the other side. We can just keep going as long as it lasts; but it’s getting precious short now, and when we’ve finished it—when there’s no fat left!...” He laughed unpleasantly and stared at the rolling smoke cloud.
Someone else asked him about the rumour ever-current of negotiation—whether there was truth in it, whether he had heard anything?
“Much what you’ve heard,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders. “There’s talk—there always is—plenty of it; but I don’t suppose I know any more than you do.... It stands to reason that someone must be trying to put an end to it—but who’s trying to patch it up with who?... And what is there left to patch? Lord knows! They say the real trouble is that when governments have gone there’s no one to negotiate with. No responsible authority—sometimes no authority at all. Nothing to get hold of. You can’t make terms with rabble; you can’t even find out what it wants—and it’s rabble now, here, there, and everywhere. When there’s nothing else left, how do you get hold of it, treat with it? Who makes terms, who signs, who orders?... Meanwhile, we go on till we’re told to stop—those of us that are left.... And I suppose they’re doing much the same—keeping on because they don’t know how to stop.”
Theodore asked what he meant when he spoke of “no government.” “You can’t mean it literally? You can’t mean...?”