Chapter 17

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."

"I'll go to the Museum to-morrow," I said. There were certain extracts
to be made for the "Life of Cromwell"--extracts from pamphlets that we
had not conveniently at disposal. He nodded, walked swiftly toward his
brougham, opened the door and entered.

I remember so well that last sight of him--of his long, slim figure
bending down for the entrance, woefully solitary, woefully weighted;
remember so well the gleam of the carriage panels reflecting the murky
light of the bare London terminus, the attitude of the coachman stiffly
reining back the horse; the thin hand that reached out, a gleam of
white, to turn the gleaming handle. There was something intimately
suggestive of the man in the motion of that hand, in its tentative
outstretching, its gentle, half-persuasive--almost theoretic--grasp of
the handle. The pleasure of its friendly pressure on my shoulder carried
me over some minutes of solitude; its weight on my body removing another
from my mind. I had feared that my ineffective disclosure had chilled
what of regard he had for me. He had said nothing, his manner had said
nothing, but I had feared. In the railway carriage he had sat remote
from me, buried in papers. But that touch on my shoulder was enough to
set me well with myself again, if not to afford scope for pleasant
improvisation. It at least showed me that he bore me no ill-will,
otherwise he would hardly have touched me. Perhaps, even, he was
grateful to me, not for service, but for ineffectual good-will. Whatever
I read into it, that was the last time he spoke to me, and the last time
he touched me. And I loved him very well. Things went so quickly after
that.

In a moderately cheerful frame of mind I strolled the few yards that
separated me from my club--intent on dining. In my averseness to
solitude I sat down at a table where sat already a little, bald-headed,
false-toothed Anglo-Indian, a man who bored me into fits of nervous
excitement. He was by way of being an incredibly distant uncle of my
own. As a rule I avoided him, to-night I dined with him. He was a person
of interminable and incredibly inaccurate reminiscences. His long
residence in an indigo-producing swamp had affected his memory, which
was supported by only very occasional visits to England.

He told me tales of my