18 - Evacuation of England- The Twist in the Gulf Stream by Louis Pope Gratacap

This intriguing book begins with a theoretical exploration of a catastrophic geological event but quickly evolves into a profound reflection on the essence of English identity. As it unfolds, it culminates in a passionate defense of America, offering readers a unique perspective on both nations. (Summary by Judi Mason)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eight, Part two of the Evacuation of England by L. P. Gratacap.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. As leir
Craft was driven eastward in the swinging vehicle, he flung
himself against its cushions and again thought of the monstrous
and incredible metamorphosis in the fortunes of his people. The

(00:23):
vigorous life of ten centuries, with all its memories, the
heaped up riches of its achievements, the splendid literary legacy
of the past, with its art, its lineaments of beauty,
its dusky shadows, the solicitous charm of its contrasted periods
of history. The deep incrustation, nay rather, the unfathomable deposits

(00:47):
of character and accomplishment which overlaid the Kingdom of England,
and in this city of London, the beating heart of
its vast interests thickly choked each avenue and current of it.
To abandon all this at the summons of a temperatural caprice,
at the tempestuous whim of an earthquake. Before the blind

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violence of frost and snow and ice was the most
unendurable of humiliations. It bit too deeply at the generalized
assumption of the whole world that man ruled the earth.
It soured the contentment of his avid vanity, and to
the Englishman it assailed the hitherto impregnable fortress of his

(01:32):
heroic conceit. And yet the old dream of a greater
England arose, as it had arisen a hundred times before,
in all these troubling and disconcerting months in England, leaping
forward as an exultant youth, bearing in his hands the
trophies of new and brighter conquests, flushed under changed environments,

(01:56):
with the inspiration of new ambitions and new powers of creation,
issuing into a greater chapter of human growth than had
ever before been conceived or written. And yet what an eviction,
this glorious old England, with its sweet homes, its innumerable beauties,
its convincing happiness of downs and glade and gardens flowering

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into clouds of blossoms, its lakes, its gentle streams, its
esthetic softness and dimness, its manifold and opulent charm of landscape,
the hurrying and constant kisses of its moist skies, in
league with all the graces of the seasons, to cast
this aside and begin again elsewhere in regions drear and sterile.

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Of all these things, Ah, that was too hard, too hard,
And as he had often done, Liacraft covered his face
with his hands and sobbed amid these fluctuating thoughts and feelings.
The handsome swung with vehement oscillations along the streets in

(03:06):
the more deserted parts of London, and brought its occupant
in sight of the Bethnal Green Museum, from which a
diversion along old Ford Road and Approach Road flung him
into Victoria Park, the huge playground of the poorer eastern
section of the city. He was driven to the eastern
part of the immense reservation and was gratified to find

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a public meeting in progress, the exact thing he most
wished to be present at and to estimate. In a
broad and treeless area of the park, with the grass
showing hesitatingly after the long winter, but vivid also in
spots in the strong light of the afternoon, with an
atmosphere strangely variant from the traditional and to Layocraft much loved,

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velvety softness and mellowed obscuration of former days were gathered
among ultitude of people. They surrounded a speaker, who, on
some sort of improvised platform with a knot of associated leaders,
with a swaying body and occasionally outstretched hands, was engaged
in a harangue which was received with attention, unattended by

(04:17):
the slightest demonstration of assent or disapproval. It looked, from
a short distance almost like a devotional assembly. It seemed
so reverently silent, and as Leocraft approached, this impression was
partially at least verified, for the speaker's hands ceased their
agitated appeal, the occasional higher cries proceeding from his lips

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died away, and a song or hymn burst suddenly from
the still motionless multitude. It lasted for an instant, perhaps
a single verse, and as Loocraft drew near, another man
from the platform group stood up and stepped to the
front of the small stand. At that precise moment, the
cannonading agreed upon as a signal, announced the starting of

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the Royal Cortege and the sad beginning of the Imperial
evacuation of England. It was heard with far away reverberations
as it was repeated from other nearer points, and this vagueness,
by a congruity of effect with the dull misery weighing
on Leacraft's heart, seemed to give to it a deeper

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poignancy of grievous import. It produced the impression of an
irrevocable doom. As the sounds were heard by the assembled crowds,
the speaker lifted his hand and raised his face skyward,
as if in supplication. The heads were all uncovered by
one spontaneous impulse, and caught in the same wave of feeling.

(05:46):
Liocraft sought the invocation of his own blessing on the
King and all he stood for. The interrupted speaker began
his address. The man was a strong type. His face
was somewhat leisurely, framed in short whiskers confined to his cheeks.
His eyes were large, blue and unblinking, with a resolute

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look in them that had the merit of extorting at
least a respectful recognition. His complexion met all the requirements
of the English reputation for color, but it left no
impression of having attained its superior brilliancy through less innocent
means than exercise and personal care. His broad, high forehead

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a little heightened in its expansive effect through the faltering
recession of the iron gray hair that stood a little
stiffly above it rose above the admirably firm nose, whose
size and contour formed, to the reader of physiognomies, another
compelling admonition to give its wearer the rational allegiance of attention.

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The man's voice was musical, with a single intonation that
imparted to it much carrying power, and it yielded to
certain tendencies of relaxation in speaking that gave it all
most effeminine sweetness. Laocraft put him down for a labor
leader of a sort character and design, belonging to the
best elements of the current labor thought and organization, a

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man of that impressive stamp in modern adjustments of self
assertion of which John Burns was so extraordinary an example.
He had begun his speech as Laocraft, with insistent zeal,
pushed his way deeply toward the center and margins nearer
the stage of the attentive throng. My friends, we must

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think for ourselves. We are not likely to have our
thinking done for us to the best advantage. Now there
are some plain, undeniable facts. They are the kind effects
which cannot be hid under a bushel basket, nor for
that matter, under a king's crown. One of the most
intelligible of these facts, and it is fundamental, is that

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the number of individual heads apportioned to the same number
of paired legs make up the population, and units of
population make nations, and nothing else can An aggregate of
gentlemen dressed in wigs or holding truncheon sticking out of
purple and gold braided shawls never has and from sheer destitution,

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never could make a nation. By all the signs around us,
and I'm willing to accept them without any question. This
country of ours is going to move, is about to
begin housekeeping somewhere else. And I think it is an
imperative necessity for the success of such a change, that
everyone living now on this island and calling himself an

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Englishman must move also and move to the same place
here here. But that moving is conditioned. It is indispensably
necessary that we proclaim that condition and insist upon its acceptance.
We hold the situation in our own hands. We control
the key to the future, to make or mar to

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destroy the continuity of the English name. Why Because if
tomorrow the English workingman refused to follow the English flag
to Australia and took his wisdom, his tools, and his
savings somewhere else, that flag would lose twenty millions of
subjects and would wave over a remnant that could not

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ensure its protection or its support. Hear, hear, but the condition.
The speaker paused, sweeping his eyes over the sea of
upturned faces, as if he was hunting through the chaotic
assemblage for the disclosure of some particular visage which, either
as an ally or an opponent might receive the shock

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of his omnipotent secret. Whether he discovered the facial invitation
or not was not revealed in his subsequent action. He
wheeled sideways to the stiffened line of men behind him,
doubtless expectant and impatient number in the afternoon's program, and,
bringing his clenched hand into the hollowed palm of his

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left hand, shouted, and not discordantly, the condition is the
abolition forever of the law of entail that today makes
us a servile race. Again, he paused, as if so
ponderous a statement so fiercely declared would elicit a demonstration.
But to Leocraft's abounding wonder, not a sound arose from

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the vast audience. Whether it was appalled or thrilled, interested,
or pleased or dumbfounded, it gave no sign. Its immutable
decree for the speaker to go on was its very silence.
No public order could, conveniently, with respect to his own
sensitive needs for public encouragement, stop there. But he had

(10:52):
become cautious. He felt that perchance his auditors yet held
mental reservations in favor of things as they they were,
as they wished them to continue. I say, with all
my heart and soul, he went on, Stay with the flag,
stay with the King, Stay with our lords and ladies.

(11:13):
But on one condition, as freemen to whose keeping now,
in this hour of peril, they are wholly given into
your hands. The God of nations entrusts their fate. But
that fate can only be propitious as you are true
to yourselves, your children, and your children's children. Then came

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the long delayed approval. A wave of excited pleasure brushed
across the crowds, and the hand clapping begun. In many
separate centers ran together and with shouts of acquiescence with cheers,
with central and peripheral agitation, the huge aggregate expressed its
tumultuous adhesion. Laycraft felt that the loyalty of these people

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was not impaired, and that the logic of events would
still hold them united in a constantaneous allegiance, at least
to the idea of the English nation. Though it was
pretty evident that the democratic claims of a wider opportunity
for personal for family promotion levined all their feelings, and
that in the new regime it might be expected that

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a great deal of the present relation of the classes
would be swept away, and that the old time idolatry
of degree, the mere flunkyism of homage to name and
genealogical prestige among the masses had shrunken into nothingness. The
stage was again occupied by a speaker who was interested

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in very practical and urgent questions the how and where
and when the disposition of the emigrants to the new country,
and he reveled in plans, provisions, details of occupancy and employment.
He showed conclusively the power and effectiveness of organization and
the surprising accommodations that can be extracted from the most

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forlorn prospects. By a shrewd use of forethought and combination,
funds had been scraped together, settlements as yet in the
dream stage of realization created, and a practical socialism consummated
in the confederation of a large numbers In one common venture.
This aspect of the emigration was dwelt upon by the

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speaker with some rigor. It was a surprise to Laocraft
and lent a strange expression to the still irreconcilable spectacle
of Englishmen looking for a new home. Laocraft soon tired
of sums, schedules, names and lists, and wandered away over
the park through the scattered groups, many centered around one

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of those popular tribunes, who, by reason of a little
more leisure, perhaps a little more application, and always much
more labial facility, influenced their class profoundly. The broad lawns
were filled with these improvised parliaments, in which two banter argument, retort,
query admonition bore apart. The perplexing thing was the average

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satisfaction shown by the people, a kind of holiday anticipation,
as if they were off for an excursion. To them,
perhaps it seemed a new start in life with the
ground less, encumbered by rivals, by restrictions, less shadowed by
priority and favors for a few, and by the intimidation
of a necessary subserviency, they almost seemed happy in the

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thought of change. There was bitterness in this, and yet
to lay a craft with his undissembling and emancipated mind,
it was understood it meant chance to these people, this removal,
and to most of them chance never came, never could come,
as they were, and then to linger was starvation, loneliness, disuse.

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The business of the country had enormously shrunken, Its productive
power had been halved. Commerce was drifting in stronger and
steadier currence elsewhere, and nowhere so strongly as to Germany,
while the overmastering pre eminence of America loomed up in
proportions that paralyzed conjecture. Pondering on all these things, Liakraft,

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in his absorbed way, stumbled over a little girl on
the edge of one of the shaded walks. He quickly
stooped and picked her up, and confronted by the young
mother already hastening to the rescue of her child. I
should have been more careful, said the embarrassed, gentleman. Well, indeed,
we have all good reason to be thinking more than

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seeing these times, said the smiling mother. I wonder what
we'll all be like this time come twelvemonth, Oh, I
dare say that we shall be doing much the same
thing that we do here in a different place, and
then we shall be year older. The young woman laughed
and attested a complete willingness to talk more as she

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raised the ruffled child from the grass and moved nearer
to Leocraft. Nor was Loocraft indifferent. He felt nettled and wilful,
with a subconsciousness of disappointment and fear. This human and
healthy mother, with the fresh garden of her blushing youth
in her arms, was a helpful companion. And then she

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carried the solace of some new story, perhaps a new need.
And Liocraft was not averse to being sympathetic or helpful. Willie,
that's my man, sir, continued, The girl is right glad
to get away last candleness. His mother died and left
Willie her savings, and that and what we have will

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guide us to America. And Willie, he says that he
can get a home and have a little land and
Willie will be better of his sickness. He's not here
the day because of his cough and the fever that
he has. Ah, Sir, it makes me chill at my
heart to see him and to think that we are
going so far. And the sweet face looked piteously at

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la Craft, and the tears overran the sad gray eyes.
Lay Craft saw it all, a consumptive father, poor out
of work, staking everything now to reach that bourne where
the hopeless of all nations saw the welcome light of opportunity.
As he thought of this, he saw how great this

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evulsion was, what a tearing up of the roots of
family and home life, and how ruthlessly they were to
be planted in all sorts of soils, under alien skies,
with inauspicious hands to tend and raise them. He turned
to the young mother and said, it won't seem so far.
If a face from the old home greets you there,

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I shall be there also, and I will not only
be glad to see you, but glad to help you
if you need it. Take the this, and opening his
card case, he wrote an address in New York City.
If he continued, you do not remain in New York
This will always find me good bye. He extended his
hand and shook with unaffected warmth the hand of the

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young englishwoman, to whom the future loomed up in misty
and insecure, perhaps menacing shadows how merciful is sympathy. With
what a solacing hand it soothes the ruffled brow of care,
and how genially it bids the springs of life still follow,
and for a moment at least flow too in the

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sunlight of affection. The englishwoman seized Leograft's hand and pressed
it tightly, and her face looked into his with almost
an enamored thankfulness. She raised the baby girl and held
it close to Leocraft, and the restrained Englishman kissed it
with quaint shyness. At the instant, all the shifting helplessness

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about him moved him in a expressibly. Again, they shook hands,
and the Englishmen, betrayed into emotional excess, walked rapidly away,
reassuring her at the last that he would indeed be
soon in America. A few feet away, a different encounter
swept him into a contrasted realm of emotional excitement. A rude,

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brawling loafer, none too sober and reckless in oaths and obscenity,
had seized the small flags of two little boys Union jacks, and,
throwing them down on the ground, with an outburst of profanity,
trampled and defaced them. The Englishman, inflamed and ardent, holding

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a wounded heart, stood stupefied and insulted. The next instant
he had snatched the flags from their degradation, and with
an instantaneous revulsion, struck the culprit of this outrage squarely
in the face. The blow was unmistakably adequate. The ruffian
re and fell and failed to regain his feet before

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a shout of applause greeted Leocraft, and a concourse of
men who had hastened to the spot on the outcry
of the children, surrounded him with welcome salutation. A fine blow,
well hit and straight as a gunshot, Nan, that was
the right medicine for his complaint. I'm thinking that a
little water might wash it down. I say, boys, lets

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duck him, sous him in the lake. A tubbing might
clean his sassy mouth. And a man is none too
good to be rolled in the mud himself who treads
on the English flag. The subject of this criticism was
on his feet again in a rather belligerent mood, blinking
and rolling his fists in a minatory fashion, and sputtering defiance,

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and presenting a transient spectacle of any briety and coarseness
that would have been ludicrous if the temper of the
men behind the new speaker had not seemed so hostile.
Loocraft felt that they would do some serious misas to
the miserable delinquent, and he stepped in front of them,
interposing his body between the foremost of the ranks and
the now somewhat intimidated drunkard. I think, my friends, that

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you should spare yourselves the trouble to punish this miscreant.
Just now let him alone. Neither he nor his kind
are likely to hurt our flag. He has learned his lesson. Today,
my friends, it becomes us to command ourselves and hold
ourselves above resentment. We are all sad. Our hearts are heavy.

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The old man's is to be left, and new conquests
across the waters made new homes. Oh, how large the
vision grows. The men had enclosed Laocraft in a dense circle.
He saw that he had their attention, while the stumbling
object of their first anger effected a shuffling retreat with

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ignominious haste. His ruse now was to entirely capture them. Thoughts,
it is a vision of a new England, one made
so by our devotion, the fixed quality of our patriotism,
an undeviating union among ourselves, and just pride in our history,
our race, our king. It may be a better England,

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it cannot be a more beautiful England. We are deeply stricken.
While we bow to this necessity. Let us make the
grandest display of fortitude, of resource, of hope, of courage,
of skill of judgment ever known in our disaster. We
shall again conquer the world and hold it submissive at

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our feet. Liocraft had enough disengagement of thought to half
smile to himself at this grandiloquent pretense. But he knew
his audience. He was quite British, imbued with that cloutish
conceit which all popular masses in every successful nation instinctively display.
He had appealed to their conceit, though not only to that,

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and they responded enthusiastically. As he finished this, mild Bancombe
not without some misgivings as to his own honesty, as
he intended at first to repair to the United States.
The men nearest to him grasped his hand, others shouted approbation,
and still others, in silence, moved away, shaking their heads.

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Leocraft talked with the men about him. He found that
they had been assigned places in the scheme of emigration.
Some were going to Australia with a systematic dispersion over
the region which most needed their labor, others to New
Zealand into socialistic farming, others to the Cape and Rosesia,
and still others to Canada, so that his exalted sentiment

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of solidarity lost a little of its impressiveness. Laocraft lingered
a while longer, and as the day ended in a
refulgent sunset, with church bells near and far, ringing to
the services that now for a week would be held
at all hours, inaugurating an unbroken intercession at the throne

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of Greece for the guidance and protection of the people.
He left his cordial acquaintances and went westward. He reached
Park Lane, near the Kensington Gardens, Gloucester House, and the
Fountain of Thornicroft, the region of Mayfair. The dazzling center,
the illustrious apse of English social splendor, where the inherited

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privileges of life were not discordantly blended with the no
less inherited gifts of fortune that spot in all London,
which to relinquish would seem to sound the depths of
national disgrace. The moon swam in the lucent sky, The
air was clear but cold, and the familiar ravishing softness

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of the June nights as London knew them once was gone.
Those illumined mists, the dooiness that spread from the ground
to the enveloping air and through veil over a veil
of shimmering opacity upon arch and tower, sward, tree Bridge
and storied palace was all gone too, And the beautiful

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neighborhood as lie of Graft wandered through it. From Cumberland Gate,
where he saw snow still resting in sheltered recesses, along
Park Lane to Hyde Park Corners, through Grosvenor Place to
Chapel Street to Belgrave Square, was revealed in an aerial
sincerity that gave its splendor and almost scintillent loveliness, and

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drove still deeper into Leocraft's heart. The sense of a
bewildering bereavement. The streets were filled with flying equipages, and
the mansions were ablaze. The sidewalks held few pedestrians, and
as Laografts sorrowfully moved through the stately purlieus. Music swept
out from open windows or swinging doors. Often he paused

(25:58):
and watched the descending occupant of the carriages. They were
entrancing women and peerless men. Their laughter was silvery and undismayed,
unchecked by tears. Could it be possible that these inner,
esoteric circles of London, high life and unimaginable wealth, indulged
in revelry, could not the crash and fall of empires

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turn the votaries of gaiety to soberer thoughts or stifle
the intoxicating voice of pleasure. Liocraft wondered, and the weariness
of a great suspense weighed him down. The ingrained puritanism
of his nature raged against this heartlessness, this indecent bravado,
a mockery of joy, where all should be shadowed with

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the size of penitence and supplication. Lacraft was bitterly offended
at this apparent heartlessness. It startled him beyond the limits
of endurance. He looked for some representative of this foolish
life upon whom to turn with rebuke and denunciation. Liocraft
wandered on in a disconsolate mood, and the growing indications

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with the falling night, that the fashionable world of London
was engaged in a preconcerted way to spend the last
hours of its metropolitan sojourn in a spendthrift vortex of
excitement and conviviality moved him to muttered objurgations. He had
slipped past Hide Corners, past the Apsley House, had glided

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with hastening steps, as his passion of revolt at this
unseemly loss of self respect rose toward towering indignation. Into
Grosvenor Square. He stood facing the Long Facade, where, in
repetitive elegance, with columned porches and mansard roofs and wall
like chimneys, the mansions of the very rich illumined at

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all their windows poured forth a torrent of light. Aggrieved
and stupefied, he shot into Berkeley Square, and still interruption
to the aspect of mad revelry. Could it be a
frenzied spasm of indulgence, before separation, forever from the bliss
of the West End, that terrestrial paradise of sweldom and

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financial and social glory, he wondered, And thus wondering, he
came to Devonshire House fronting Piccadilly, the comfortable home, with
its small brickwork, peaking chimney pots, the low entablature and
triple doors behind the iron gateway, and the unbroken watch
of the woman headed sphinxes on either side of the

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elevated discutcheon of the Kingdom was there encompassed by its
imprisoning walls, And here too the effrontery of lavish gayety
assaulted his eyes. The gates were flung wide open, Powdered
footmen were ranged before the doors. Arriving and departing carriages
threaded Piccadilly with consciousness celerity. Music uttered its delicious melodies,

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and in them was no requiem note, no throb of sorrow.
And the guests crowding into its dazzling halls seemed untouched
by thoughts, less careless than the joys of the fleeting moments,
whose hurrying steps were bringing the dawn of disaster to England.
Exasperated Laocraft turned on his heel in disgust and was

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going towards Leicester Square when a sharp report somewhere on
the side of the Geological Museum and ahead of his position,
startled him, and the next instant he saw a carriage
with prancing steeds plunging down the street, the swaying figure
of the driver denoting his complete loss of control, while
on one side of the equipage, that side toward Leocraft,

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the pale face of a gentleman was seen, and beside
him the distractive visage of an elderly lady. As the
carriage approached Leocraft, it crossed the street and the front
wheels collided with the curbing. This administered a slight detention,
and the struggling horses turned and again to the opposite
side of the thoroughfare. Quick to see his advantage, Loocraft

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sprang to the head of the nearer horse, and, exerting
all his strength, which was not inconsiderable, he succeeded in
tripping the beast, and as it fell, the traces holding
its companion broke, and the freed creature raced away down
the avenue. The driver leaped to the sidewalk and held
the now imprisoned horse, which, starting to its feet, stood

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trembling beside him. While Loocraft hastened to the door of
the vehicle to liberate its occupants, he had already been
forestalled by the gentleman himself, who pushed the door back
as Loocraft reached it and stepped to the walk, followed
instantly by the lady, in much commotion and disorder. Their

(30:48):
agitation was short lived and succumbed to the exercise of
their own self control. It was the gentleman who first spoke,
I am under the deepest obligation to you, sir, for
your quickness and your courage. You readily have saved us
from a miserable fate. And Laocraft interrupted, you were going

(31:08):
to some rendezvous of pleasure. This, sir, in my opinion,
on the eve of the nation's assassination, deserved punishment. The
speech was crude, rude perhaps, and the bitter taunt smote
the stranger like a physical blow. He recoiled from it
as if the sting of a cowhide had crossed his face.
His face itself was a study. He stared at Lakraft,

(31:31):
and as the latter met his gaze unflinchingly. The pale face,
distinguished in outline, feature and expression, flushed to the temples,
while the eyes, seated under bushy brows, gazed at Leocraft
with a peculiar earnestness, not relieved of the dangerous suggestion
of a rising passion. His companion understood his excitement. She

(31:54):
clutched his arm and seemed to apprehend a physical outbreak.
Then the mouth open and spoke, and the voice was
unexpectedly calm, and the utterances measured. We are under deep
obligation to you, sir, but it is difficult for me
to restrain myself before the false statements you have ventured

(32:15):
to make. Can you explain this insult? He moved nearer
to Liocraft, who did not budge, but inspired with an
increasing vigor of disgust, and eager to summarily remonstrate at
the seeming cruelty of the parade about him, its grotesque wickedness, said,
I do not wish to take advantage of the accidental

(32:37):
relations which have thus unexpectedly thrown us together. But surely
it is known among men, and known bitterly among Englishmen,
that the shadows of an awful twilight are falling about them,
and the nation's day is closing at such a crisis.
Can it be possible from men and women calling themselves English,

(32:57):
in whom the memory of English fame and English glory
is still a present pride? Can it be possible that
at this moment they still consort for amusement, for display,
for the fugitive follies of mutual admiration. This aristocracy is
the head and forefront of the nation, and it should
now be bowed in penitence, in supplication, in the agony

(33:22):
of self inquiry. And it stupefies me to find them
gay when the heart of England is breaking with grief.
A curious metamorphosis worked in the lineaments of the gentleman.
He was addressing, the hard lines relaxed, and a wistful
smile that drew its occult meaning from the man's interior.
Sadness stole softly over his face. He put out his hand,

(33:46):
which Liocraft accepted, and he returned Leocraft's pressure. There was
an instant's silence, and then the stranger spoke, still holding
Leocraft's hand and retaining his undeviating inspection of Leocraft's face,
as if he would force upon himself the recognition of
a friend. These are just words, sir, he began. But

(34:09):
how much you misunderstand what is going on here. This
apparent revelry is an effort to keep from swooning. It
is the forced continuance of a life familiar to us,
when that life is to be crushed into nothingness. It
is the defiance of habit, the revolt against extinction, the
mortal protest against the infamous tyranny of circumstances. It is

(34:32):
a delirium of indulgence to forget what is coming upon us,
a moment's arbitrary refusal to think of the future, a
dance in whose whirl we shall remit the impulses of suicide.
It is unreasonable, But its monstrous unreasonableness, to you, sir,
measures our appalling sense of the disaster. We cannot stop

(34:54):
to think of measures the intensity of the recoil from obliteration.
Like the dressed and garlanded victim of an Aztec immolation,
we taste again the festive sweets upon which perhaps our
cloyd appetites are no longer to feed. We are the
sufferers in this eviction. The greatest, the poor, the artisan laborer,

(35:16):
the vast mediocrity lose something, But it amounts a little
more than the exchange of one station here for another
of the same sort somewhere else. In a material sense,
our loss is incalculable. Half our riches disappears. But with
that loss goes social prestige, title, and the moral consciousness

(35:38):
of elevation, the breadth of our nostrils. I Sir m
Liircraft did not move. His astonishment was too sharply focused
upon all the astounding previous confession, and continued the man.
The ruin of worldly fortune seems small, after all, compared

(35:59):
with the sacrife of that dignified and sheltered life, which
moved serenely with every accompaniment of joy, in these delightful abodes,
and under the protecting aegis of an inexpressible separation from
the rest of the world. But he seemed to wish
to justify himself somehow, as he noticed the still petrified

(36:20):
stare of Laocraft. We have not been neglectful of the
matters of adjustment. Committees have been appointed, plans laid funds, appropriated,
agents dispatched for the selection of our new homes, and
though we take our flight with lopped wings, our plumage
may in time resume its former beauty. Do not misunderstand

(36:41):
us because of these assemblies, we too carry deeper than
you the pain of an unutterable grief. He finished, and
Laocraft drawn into a reverie over the singular confession, which
was anything but reassuring, and partook to his mind of
the dementia of the foolish victim of a depraved Habit

(37:01):
was silent. He felt the imperious requirements of speech, but
he could say nothing. He felt pity. He was not
without sympathy, though perhaps in that matter a certain savor
of self denying control and a practical judgment interfered with
his approval of the hyperbole of the speaker, And almost dreaming,

(37:22):
he stood there while the stranger and his lady re
entered their carriage, to which the runaway horse had been reattached,
and drove off. Leocraft watched them mechanically, and then turned,
walked down Piccadilly, crossed Green Park and looked at Buckingham Palace.
The huge structure was partially illuminated, and the square in

(37:44):
front of it was filled with soldiers, many of whom
were at rest around the Victoria Memorial. To an officer
lounging nearby, Loocraft said, can you tell me where the
king is? Tonight? He sleeps at Saint Leonard's in Shoreditch.
Was the laconic reply, end of Chapter eight, Part two,