He came to himself in a bed in a little, bare, whitewashed room through the windows of which the westering sun was throwing a last golden flood. He sat up hastily, and saw that he was alone. At his side on a small table stood a metal dish holding a thick slice of bread and some leaves of lettuce; and by the dish there was a mug of rudely glazed earthenware. His mouth was dry and his tongue swollen; and he investigated the mug first. He was rewarded by a draught of thin but, as he then thought, delicious ale. He immediately set to on the bread and lettuce, and thought of nothing else till he had finished it. When he had scraped together the last crumbs and his first ravenousness had given way to a healthy and normal hunger, he looked about him with more interest.
The room, his first glance told him, was bare even to meanness. It held nothing but the bed in which he lay, the table and a large, cumbrously-made wooden chest which stood in the further corner. The walls, as well as the ceiling, were covered with a coarse whitewash which was flaking here and there; and there was a square of rough matting on the boards of the floor. Jeremy, quite awake and alert now, wondered whether, after all, he had not been taken to an asylum, perhaps—and this seemed most probable—to the infirmary of a workhouse. The sheets on the bed and the nightshirt in which he found himself, clean but of very coarse linen, seemed to support this theory. On the other hand, if it were correct, ought he not to be in a ward with the other patients? And was it usual in the workhouses of this age to have mugs of ale by the bedside of unconscious men?
Curiosity soon stirred him farther; and he put one foot cautiously to the ground. He was reassured at once by a sensation of strength and health; and he slipped out of bed and went to the window. Here he met with another surprise; for it was glazed with small leaded panes of thick and muddy glass, such as was becoming rare in his own time even in the remotest and most primitive parts of the country. And a brief examination showed that the window was genuine, not merely a sheet of glass cut up by sham leads to give a false appearance of antiquity. Puzzling a little over this, and finding that he could not see clearly through the stains and whorls in the glass, he undid the window, and thrust his head out. Below him stretched spacious gardens with lawns and shrubberies, fading in the distance among tall trees, through which buildings could just be discerned.
As he leant out he could hear the voices of persons hidden somewhere beneath; and he was straining forward to catch their meaning when a hand fell on his shoulder. He looked round with a start, and saw his friend carrying a pile of clothes over one arm, and smiling at him pleasantly.
“Well,” said the young man, “I’m relieved to find you awake again. Do you know that you’ve lain there since before noon, and that it’s now nearly six o’clock? I began to think that you’d fallen into another trance.”
“Where am I?” Jeremy asked bluntly.
And the young man replied with simplicity: “This is the Treasury. You know, I’m one of the Speaker’s Clerks.” And then seeing Jeremy’s stare of bewilderment, he went on: “Or perhaps you don’t know. We have apartments here in the Treasury during our term of service, and dine in the Great Hall. This room belongs to another of the Clerks. Luckily he’s away on a journey, and so I’ve been able to borrow it for you. And that reminds me that though you told me a great deal about yourself, you never told me your name.” Jeremy told him. “And mine’s Roger Vaile. Now I think you ought to get dressed, if you feel strong enough.”
But Jeremy’s bewilderment was by no means dissipated. “The Speaker? The Treasury?” he inquired disconnectedly.
The young man whose name was Roger Vaile laughed in a good-humored way. “Didn’t you have them in your time? It’s not much use asking me, I’m afraid. I know so little about the old times that I can’t tell what will be new to you, and what you know already. But you must know who the Speaker is?”
“Yes ... I suppose so ... the Speaker of the House of Commons,” Jeremy began. “But——”