While thinking these thoughts he reached Charing Cross. Already he was weary with so small an exertion. He halted, debating whether he should struggle further. Then he became aware of wounded Tommies, chiefly Overseas troops, Canadians and Australians, who from their first landing in England had chosen this quarter of a mile as their happy hunting-ground. They stood propped up against the pavement; they sat among the pigeons on the parapets of Trafalgar Square. They were laughing and chaffing, those one-legged, one-armed, derelict crusaders in their atrocious hospital uniforms. They were thousands of miles from their one and only woman; but their drawn faces grinned cheerfully and their jaws were squared in the old, invincible, obstinate determination never to admit they were down-hearted. The sight of them filled him with strength. Though he saw them only fugitively through gaps in the tide of traffic, he felt their companionship. He would always feel it—the fine, shared courage of men out of sight, who had adventured for an ideal as his companions.
He crossed the top of Whitehall, passed beneath the Admiralty Arch and entered the garnished, graveled, tree-bordered spaciousness of the Mall. His old sense returned—the confidence which the Mall always gave to him—of Empire and world-wideness. As he strolled along, he noticed a board which in
formed the public that, by following a certain path, one would arrive at the Passport Office. Hidden in the greenness, set down in the bed of an ornamental lake which had been drained when the terror of air raids had threatened, he made out a low-built, sprawling shed. It was like a glimpse of romance. The path which led to its doorway was the first few hundred yards along the road that ran to Rio, Fiji and Tibet. One had but to enter and the journey was commenced. The sight reminded him of something which he had forgotten; that, though every other delight failed, he still possessed the wideness of the world. He could sail away. There were islands of the sea—Stevenson's Samoa, Conrad's Malay Archipelago. If people proved disappointing, there were always the painted solitudes which human disillusions had not withered and could not defile. It was a loophole worth remembering.
Outside Buckingham Palace he made an unpremeditated surrender. A taxi was prowling along by the curb as slowly as regulations allowed. He raised his stick automatically as he caught the driver's eye. When the cab had halted, again he procrastinated with the handle of the door in his hand.
"Where to?" the driver enquired for the second time.
"To Brompton Square," he ordered uncertainly.
The cab was already moving when he changed his mind. Standing up and leaning out of the window, "No. To Chelsea," he shouted above the throbbing of the engine. Then drawing out Maisie's crumpled letter, he read from it the address.