"I'm nearly as old as you. I shall go soon. But I miss you ... you'd be yourself surprised if you knew how much!"
He took up the lamp and left her.... He said good night to Mrs. Newton and closed the door behind him.
Standing on the steps of the house he looked about him. Portland Place was like a broad river running silently into the dark trees at the end of it. There was a great rest and quiet here.
Southwards the sky flamed, the noise of a great multitude of people came muffled across space with the rhythm in it of a beating song. Rockets slashed the sky, broke into golden stars; the bells from all the churches in the town clashed and, from some great distance, guns solemnly booming rolled through the air.
Christopher, standing there, smiled as he thought of Brun's little picture.
Brun springing up, of course, at the right moment, to point his moral. Brun, who appeared, like some Jack-in-the-box, in city after city, with his conclusion, his prophecy, neat and prepared.
"And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's Wood..."
There was the Wood, there the mob, there the Grand Duke, dead and buried—
Christopher shrugged his shoulders; whatever Brun might say human beings were more than summaries, prophecies, conclusions.
As he looked towards the trees and felt a little breeze caress his face with, he could swear, some salt of the sea, he thought of the human beings who were his friends—Rachel, Roddy, Lizzie, Francis.