There was perhaps one second of profound silence.
"Fourteen hundred!" said an awed voice.
And then arose such a storm of shouting and of cheering as Denis had never heard in all his life; and he was roaring with the lustiest, roaring as if to expel his thoughts in sound. But in the first pause another voice said, "Fourteen hundred!" and the figure passed below the breath from lip to lip till one exclaimed, "The poor Guards!" Thereat the creases cut deep across Denis's forehead—so deep you might have looked for them to fill with blood—and he asked the man next to him if the Guards were in it.
"In it?" cried the man next Denis. "In the thick and the front of it, you may depend!"
The Lord Mayor had not finished. He was thanking one and all for their attendance. He was expressing a pious belief that this victory of the Alma would promote the civilization and happiness of the world more than anything that had happened for the last fifty years. He was bowing to the cheers that echoed his remarks. He was proposing the cheers for our soldiers. He was leading the cheers for the French. He was descending with dignity from the portico, with the policemen's lanterns still playing upon his great gold chain and rubicund face, a hearty figure in spirited contrast to the dark colonnade at his back.
But Denis bent glowering at the flag on which he stood. His neighbour's answer to his query about the Guards was still rattling in his head; he had heard nothing since with that part of the ear which communicates with the brain.
The group of gentlemen from the London Tavern followed the Lord Mayor down the steps; one of them passed close to Denis, waving a telegram as if it were a flag.
"He must have got it off with the dispatches," said he. "It has been delivered at my office this evening, but fortunately the housekeeper knew where I was."
"And your son-in-law has come through safe and sound?"
"Safe and sound, thank God!"