There was no concerted cheering from the crowd below; but I had a curious feeling that the next man but one, down all that line from the Admiralty Arch to Buckingham Palace, had opened his lips and was waiting for a neighbour to cheer with him. Heads were turning in every direction; eyes were gazing upward, as though they expected to see “Peace” written across the sky in letters of flame; bodies, for a moment, were very still.
Then that vast sea of men and women gathered itself up and poured with a hoarse roar towards the Palace. There was a check, and I fancy the first-comers must have been pressed against the railings; I threw open my window in time to hear a mutter rolling from lip to lip: “The king! They’re calling for the king.” Later, though we could see and hear nothing of it, the word was passed: “The king! He’s speaking”; later still: “He’s finished! Give him a cheer! Hip, hip! Come on.”
The human sea must have eddied at the Palace. Five minutes later, as the crowd below my window surged forward, a returning stream poured down the Processional Avenue into Trafalgar Square; and a new current set in towards the Abbey. There was little cheering now, though every one made individual noises of greeting and laughter. A War Office car hooted its deliberate way across Horse Guards’ Parade and was promptly seized by three wounded soldiers and four girl-clerks, who ranged themselves along the running-boards and perched on the bonnet. As though all had been awaiting a signal, the crowd broke into little groups and swept like swarming bees upon every vehicle in sight. So long as all could move, it did not matter whither they hurried: something, all seemed to feel, must be happening somewhere else.
“The war’s over!,” some one cried; and mechanically, like hysterical children, a dozen others repeated uncomprehendingly: “The war’s over! The war’s over! The war’s over! The war’s over.” . . .
“And the funny thing,” said Raymond Stornaway, blowing his nose vigorously, “is that they don’t know what to do next.”
“Do we?,” asked Bertrand; and, for once, he seemed less anxious to instruct than to be instructed.
5
No one wanted to speak first. No one wanted to move. No one cared to look any one else in the eyes. Lady Crawleigh, I think, was the first to recover; and she was slipping out of the room, with a twisted smile, when Raymond put his back to the door and took the position in hand with a general invitation to lunch with him at the Carlton.
“No speeches or ‘celebrations’,” he promised. “If you’ll fight your way there as best you can, I’ll telephone for a table.”
With the exception of Violet, we were glad to have our minds made up for us. Bertrand was right: we none of us knew what to do next. The movements of the crowd had become rhythmical by the time that we set out. Every cab and bus was loaded with excited clusters of men and women who seemed ready to do anything but remain still. Boys with paper caps and empty tins marched aimlessly at the head of irregular battalions; overwrought girls and grave grey-beards tramped with arms linked, sublimely unselfconscious. The streets were carpeted with torn paper. An indistinguishable hum of voices floated over and about us, still seeming—as before—to come from our next neighbour but one; and on every face was written vague relief, vague good-will, dawning disappointment and vast perplexity.