In the City some of the streets had that dismal Sunday appearance, while a few houses had been broken into; but in the main thoroughfares there was a dense mass of people, hurrying, it struck me, they knew not where. Some seemed dazed, others almost mad with terror. At the stations confusion reigned, and I heard there had been some terrible accidents. I went into my club, but the waiters had gone off without leave, and one had to help oneself.
As evening came on, I saw the lurid reflection of several fires, but, horrible to say, no one seemed to mind, and I felt myself that if the whole of London were burnt, and I with it, I should not care. For the first time in my life I no longer feared Death: I rather looked on him as a friend.
As the gas was not lit, and darkness came down upon us, one heard cries and groans. I tried to light the gas, but it was not turned on. I remembered there was a taper in the writing-room. I went and lit it, but of course it did not last long. I groped my way into the dining-room, and helped myself to some wine, but I could not find much, and what I took seemed to have no effect; and when I heard voices, they fell on me as if I were in a dream. They were talking of the Bible, though, and it now seemed the one book worth thinking of, yet in our vast club library I doubt if I should have found a single copy.
One said: “What haunts me are the words ‘Watch therefore.’ You can’t watch now.”
I thought of my dinner party. Little had I imagined a week ago, when I issued the invitations, how I should be passing the hour.
Suddenly I remembered the secretary had been a religious fanatic, and I made my way slowly to his room, knocking over a table, in my passage, with glasses on it. It fell with a crash which sounded through the house, but no one noticed it. By the aid of a match I saw candles on his writing table and lit them. Yes! as I thought, there was his Bible. It was open as if he had been reading it when called away, and another book I had never seen before lay alongside of it—a sort of index.
The Bible was open at Proverbs, and these verses, being marked, caught my eye:
“Because I have called and ye refused, I have stretched out My hand and no man regarded; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh.”
I had never thought before of God laughing—of God mocking. I had fancied man alone did that. Man’s laughing had ended now—I saw that pretty plain.
I had a hazy recollection of a verse that spoke of men wanting the rocks to fall on them; so looked it up in the index. Yes, there was the word “Rock,” and some of the passages were marked with a pencil. One was Deut. xxxii. 15: “He forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of our Salvation.”