“So you don’t think much of me as a politician,” Churchill suddenly deduced smilingly. “You had better not tell that to my aunt.”
I went up to town with Churchill that evening. There was nothing waiting for me there, but I did not want to think. I wanted to be among men, among crowds of men, to be dazed, to be stupefied, to hear nothing for the din of life, to be blinded by the blaze of lights.
There were plenty of people in Churchill’s carriage; a military member and a local member happened to be in my immediate neighbourhood. Their minds were full of the financial scandals, and they dinned their alternating opinions into me. I assured them that I knew nothing about the matter, and they grew more solicitous for my enlightenment.
“It all comes from having too many eggs in one basket,” the local member summed up. “The old-fashioned small enterprises had their disadvantages, but—mind you—these gigantic trusts.... Isn’t that so, General?”
“Oh, I quite agree with you,” the general barked; “at the same time....” Their voices sounded on, intermingling, indistinguishable, soothing even. I seemed to be listening to the hum of a threshing-machine—a passage of sound booming on one note, a passage, a half-tone higher, and so on, and so on. Visible things grew hazy, fused into one another.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We reached London somewhat late in the evening—in the twilight of a summer day. There was the hurry and bustle of arrival, a hurry and bustle that changed the tenor of my thoughts and broke their train. As I stood reflecting before the door of the carriage, I felt a friendly pressure of a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ll see to that,” Churchill’s voice said in my ear. “You’ll set the copyists to work.”