Chapter 16 - Page 2

sank. I drifted down to Etchingham that evening, I sent a
messenger over to Churchill's cottage, waited for an answer that told me
that Churchill was there, and then slept, and slept.

I woke back in the world again, in a world that contained the land
steward and the manor house. I had a sense of recovered power from the
sight of them, of the sunlight on the stretches of turf, of the mellow,
golden stonework of the long range of buildings, from the sound of a
chime of bells that came wonderfully sweetly over the soft swelling of
the close turf. The feeling came not from any sense of prospective
ownership, but from the acute consciousness of what these things stood
for. I did not recognise it then, but later I understood; for the
present it was enough to have again the power to set my foot on the
ground, heel first. In the streets of the little town there was a
sensation of holiday, not pronounced enough to call for flags, but
enough to convey the idea of waiting for an event.

The land steward, at the end of a tour amongst cottages, explained there
was to be a celebration in the neighbourhood--a "cock-and-hen show with
a political annex"; the latter under the auspices of Miss Churchill.
Churchill himself was to speak; there was a possibility of a
pronouncement. I found London reporters at my inn, men I half knew. They
expressed mitigated delight at the view of me, and over a lunch-table
let me know what "one said"--what one said of the outside of events I
knew too well internally. They most of them had the air of my aunt's
solicitor when he had said, "Even I did not realise...." their positions
saving them the necessity of concealing surprise. "One can't know
_everything_." They fumbled amusingly about the causes, differed with
one another, but were surprisingly unanimous as to effects, as to the
panic and the call for purification. It was rather extraordinary, too,
how large de Mersch loomed on the horizon over here. It was as if the
whole world centred in him, as if he represented the modern spirit that
must be purified away by burning before things could return to their
normal state. I knew what he represented ... but there it was.

It was part of my programme, the attendance at the poultry show; I was
to go back to the cottage with Churchill, after he had made his speech.
It was rather extraordinary, the sensations of that function. I went in
rather late, with the reporter of the _Hour_, who was anxious to do me
the favour of introducing me without payment--it was his way of making
himself pleasant, and I had the reputation of knowing celebrities. It
_was_ rather extraordinary to be back again in the midst of this sort of
thing, to be walking over a crowded,