Cards shouted something to him, suddenly the road was gone and Peter was in the water, fighting for his life. He felt all the breathless terror of approaching death—he was sinking—black, silent water rose above and around him. For an instant he caught once more the sight of sky and land. Cards was still on the road and beside him was a woman whose face Peter could not see. Cards was still laughing. Then in the darkening light the Grey Hill was visible against the horizon and instead of the Giant's Finger there was that figure of the rider on the lion.... The waters closed.... Peter woke to a grey, stormy morning. The sweat was pouring down his face, his body was burning hot and his hands were trembling.
II
When he came down to breakfast his head was aching and heavy and Mrs. Brockett's boiled egg and hard crackling toast were impossible. Miss Monogue had things to tell him about the book—it was wonderful, tremendous ... beyond everything that she had believed possible. But strangely enough, he was scarcely interested. He was pleased of course, but he was weighted with the sense of overhanging catastrophe. The green bulging curtains, the row of black beads about Mrs. Brockett's thin neck, the untidy egg-shells—everything depressed him.
“I have had a rotten night,” he said, “nightmares. I suppose I ate something—anyhow it's a gloomy day.”
“Yes,” said Miss Monogue, pinning some of her hair in at the wrong place and unpinning other parts of it that happened by accident to be right. “I'm afraid it's a poor sort of day for the Procession. But Miss Black and I are going to do our best to see it. It may clear up later.” He had forgotten about the Procession and he wished that she would keep her hair tidier.
He wanted to ask her whether she had seen Miss Rossiter but had not the courage. A little misty rain made feathery noises against the window-pane.
“Well, I must go down to the shop,” he said, finding his umbrella in the hall.
“I think it's superb,” she said, referring back to the book. “You won't be having to go down to the shop much longer.”
It was really surprising that he cared so little. He banged the door behind him and did not see her eyes as she watched him go.
Processions be damned! He wished that the wet, shining street were not so strangely like the sea-road at Treliss, and that the omnibuses at a distance did not murmur like the sea. People, black and funereal, were filling stands down Oxford Street; soldiers were already lining the way, the music of bands could be heard some streets away.