“It’s quite evident I’m not the man I was, Jack. But somehow, in this affair we’re both in the same boat to some extent; and I let that slip out. You see that Elsa hasn’t the monopoly of an emotional temperament!”
All great undertakings with uncertain ends appear to run the same course. First there is the period of inception, a time of high hopes and eager toil and self-sacrifice; then, as the novelty wears away, there follows a stage in which the first enthusiasm has died down and an almost automatic persistence takes the place of the great emotional driving-force of the early days; later still, when enthusiasm has vanished, there comes a time when the meaner side of human nature reasserts itself. My narrative has reached the point of junction between these last two divisions; and the pages which I have yet to write must perforce deal mainly with the troubles which beset us in the period of lassitude and nerve-strain which followed naturally upon the other phases of the situation.
I have thrown this chapter into a series of isolated sections; for I believe that such a treatment best suggests the state of things at the time. We had lost the habit of connected thought, as far as the greater events were concerned. Our daily round absorbed our attention; and it was only occasionally that we were jarred out of our grooves by some event of salient importance.
The whole atmosphere which surrounded us was depressing; and it slowly and surely made its impression upon our minds and formed the background upon which our thoughts moved. The gloom of the smoke-filled sky had its reaction upon our psychology. The old sunlight seemed to have vanished from our lives. And at this time we were all beginning to pay the price for the feverish activity of the earlier days in the Area. Our work, whether mental or physical, wearied us sooner than before; and its monotony irritated our nerves. Such recreations as we had—and they were few enough at this time—failed to relieve the tension. Among the labouring classes, in particular, this condition of lassitude showed itself in a marked degree.
Nordenholt, with his finger on the pulse of things, grew more and more anxious as time went on. On the surface, he still appeared optimistic; but from chance phrases here and there I deduced that his uneasiness was increasing; and that he anticipated something which I myself could not foresee. Knowing what I do now, it seems to me that in those days I must have been blind indeed not to understand what was before us; but I frankly confess that I missed the many signs which lay in our path from day to day. When the disaster came upon us, it took me almost completely by surprise.
CHAPTER XVII
Per Iter Tenebricosum
After Elsa had rejected any further collaboration with me, I was forced at times to consult Nordenholt upon certain points in my schemes which seemed to me to require the criticism of a fresh mind; and I thus fell into the habit of seeing him in his office at intervals.
“Things are in a bad way, Jack,” he said to me at the end of one of these interviews. “You don’t see everything that’s going on, of course; so you couldn’t be expected to be on the alert for it; but it’s only right to warn you that we’re coming up against the biggest trouble we’ve had yet in the Area.”