The Pomp of Yesterday Part 35

'You can hardly call it a body,' I replied; 'it is an organization representing the Christian spirit of the country.'

'All right, old man; call it what you like. Anyhow, I am jolly thankful to its promoters. What I should have done but for the Y.M.C.A., Heaven knows, I don't!'

'I know what you are going to do,' I replied.

'What?'

'You are coming with me to my hotel as a guest.'

'You are awfully good, old man, but I am afraid I can't. You see, this illness of mine has given me my opportunity, and I am going to take it.'

'Opportunity for what?'

'For seeing London, for studying its life. I mean to go everywhere, and I don't want to interfere with your liberty in any way.'

'Good,' I replied, 'I'll go with you; and as we shall be staying at the same hotel, it will be more convenient to both of us.'

'Do you really mean that, Lus...o...b..?'

'Of course I do. I, like you, am at a loose end, and I shall be only too glad to have a pal until I am sent back to the front again. Now not another word, Edgec.u.mbe. I am not a Rothschild, but I have no one dependent on me, and I have more money than I need to spend. So pack up your traps, and come with me.

'Have you seen Springfield since our meeting on Paddington station?' I asked, when presently we had removed to the hotel.

'Yes,' he replied; 'directly I got to the Y.M.C.A. Hostel, I wrote him at his club.'

'Well?' I asked.

'Oh, he was jolly friendly, and seemed anxious to take me around.'

'And have you been with him?'

'Yes,' he replied.

'With what results?'

He hesitated a few seconds before answering me, and then he said quietly, 'Oh, nothing much out of the ordinary. It--it was rather funny.'

'What was rather funny?'

'Our conversation. He hates me, Lus...o...b..; he positively loathes me; and he fears me, too.'

'You have discovered that, have you?'

'Yes, there is no doubt about it.'

'Did you go anywhere with him?'

'Yes, a good many places.'

'You ought not to have gone with him,' I said doubtfully.

'Perhaps not. But I was anxious to see the phases of life with which he is familiar; I wanted to know the cla.s.s of men he meets with,--to understand their point of view.'

'And what was your impression?'

'I am not going to tell you yet. During the four days I have been in London I have been looking around, trying to understand the working motives, the guiding principles, of this, the capital of the Empire. I seem like a man in a strange country, and I am learning my way round.

Oh, I do hope I am wrong!'

'Wrong,--how? What do you mean?'

'This war is maddening. Last night I couldn't sleep for thinking of it,--all the horror of it got hold of me. I fancied myself out at the front again,--I heard the awful howls and shrieks of the sh.e.l.ls, heard the booming of the big guns, smelt the acids of the explosives, heard the groans of the men, saw them lying in the trenches and on the No Man's Land, torn, mutilated, mangled. It is positively ghastly,--war is h.e.l.l, man, h.e.l.l!'

'Yes,' I said, 'but we must see it through.'

'I know, I know. But how far away is the end? How long is this carnage and welter of blood to continue?'

'Let's change the subject,' I said. 'We'll get a bit of dinner, and then go to a place of amus.e.m.e.nt.'

'I don't feel like it to-night. Do you know any members of Parliament, any Cabinet Ministers?'

'Yes, a few. Why?'

'I want to go to the House of Commons. I want to know what those men who are guiding our affairs are thinking.'

'Oh, all right,' I laughed. 'I can easily get a permit to the House of Commons. I'll take you. As it happens, too, I can get you an introduction to one or two members of the Government.'

Two hours later, we were sitting in the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons. I could see that Edgec.u.mbe was impressed, not by the magnificence of the surroundings, for, as all the world knows, the interior of the British House of Commons,--that is the great Legislative Chamber itself,--is not very imposing, but he was excited by the fact that he was there in the Mother of Parliaments, listening to a debate on the Great War.

'It's wonderful, isn't it?' he said to me. 'Here we are in the very hub of the British Empire,--here decisions are come to which affect the destiny of hundreds of millions of people. Here, as far as the Government is concerned, we can look into the very inwardness of the British mind, its hopes, its ideals. If this a.s.sembly were so to decide, the war could stop to-morrow, and every soldier be brought home.'

'I don't know,' I laughed. 'Behind this a.s.sembly is the voice of the country. If these men did not represent the thoughts and feelings of the nation, they'd be sent about their business,--there'd be a revolution.'

'Yes, yes, I realize that. And the fact that there is no revolution shows that they are doing, on the whole, what the country wishes them.'

'I suppose so,' I replied.

After that, he listened two hours without speaking. I never saw a man so intent upon what was being said. Speaker after speaker expressed his views, and argued the points nearest his heart.

At the end of two hours, there was a large exodus of members, and then Edgec.u.mbe rose like a man waking out of a trance.

'Have you been interested?' I asked.

'Never so interested in my life,--it was wonderful! But look here, my friend, do these men believe in Almighty G.o.d? Have they been asking for guidance on their deliberations?'

'I don't know. We English are not people who talk about that kind of thing lightly.'

'No, and I am glad of it,' he replied earnestly, 'but I must come again.

In a sense, this should be the Power-House of the nation.'