Chapter 30

THE CHILD’S ARM

“You see,” he said to Christine, “it was not a Zeppelin....  We shall be quite safe here.”

But in that last phrase he had now confessed to her the existence of an air-raid.  He knew that he was not behaving with the maximum of sagacity.  There were, for example, hotels with subterranean grill-rooms close by, and there were similar refuges where danger would be less than in the street, though the street was narrow and might be compared to a trench.  And yet he had said, “We shall be quite safe here.”  In others he would have condemned such an attitude.

Now, however, he realised that he was very like others.  An inactive fatalism had seized him.  He was too proud, too idle, too negligent, too curious, to do the wise thing.  He and Christine were in the air-raid, and in it they should remain.  He had just the senseless, monkeyish curiosity of the staring crowd so lyrically praised by the London Press.  He was afraid, but his curiosity and inertia were stronger than his fear.  Then came a most tremendous explosion—­the loudest sound, the most formidable physical phenomenon that G.J. had ever experienced in his life.  The earth under their feet trembled.  Christine gave a squeal and seemed to subside to the ground, but he pulled her up again, not in calm self-possession, but by the sheer automatism of instinct.  A spasm of horrible fright shot through him.  He thought, in awe and stupefaction: 

“A bomb!”

He thought about death and maiming and blood.  The relations between him and those everyday males aloft in the sky seemed to be appallingly close.  After the explosion perfect silence—­no screams, no noise of crumbling—­perfect silence, and yet the explosion seemed still to dominate the air!  Ears ached and sang.  Something must be done.  All theories of safety had been smashed to atoms in the explosion.  G.J. dragged Christine along the street, he knew not why.  The street was unharmed.  Not the slightest trace in it, so far as G.J. could tell in the gloom, of destruction!  But where the explosion had been, whether east, west, south or north, he could not guess.  Except for the disturbance in his ears the explosion might have been a hallucination.

Suddenly he saw at the end of the street a wide thoroughfare, and he could not be sure what thoroughfare it was.  Two motor-buses passed the end of the street at mad speed; then two taxis; then a number of people, men and women, running hard.  Useless and silly to risk the perils of that wide thoroughfare!  He turned back with Christine.  He got her to run.  In the thick gloom he looked for an open door or a porch, but there was none.  The houses were like the houses of the dead.  He made more than one right angle turn.  Christine gave a sign that she could go no farther.  He ceased trying to drag her.  He was recovering himself.  Once more he heard the guns—­childishly feeble after the explosion of the bomb.  After all, one spot was as safe as another.