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Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house-roofs, with short towers here and there marking public buildings, from the Caterham district on the left to Croydon in front, all clear and bright in smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the low suburban hills against the April sky.
On the one hand those easy gigantic mail-clad figures of the morning one saw them now in a different light on the other this little black-clad gesticulating creature under the limelight, that pigmy thing with its ordered flow of melodious persuasion, its little, marvellously penetrating voice, John Caterham "Jack the Giant-killer."
And men took such happenings into their lives, and met them by the expedients of the moment, and told one another there was "no change in the essential order of things." After the first great panic, Caterham, in spite of his power of eloquence, became a secondary figure in the political world, remained in men's minds as the exponent of an extreme view.
Oh, they have no sex-pride, those upper-class women! 'Lady Caterham probably didn't understand. 'Perfectly. She asked questions. No, it just didn't matter much to her that a woman should suffer that sort of thing. She didn't feel the indignity of it. Perhaps if it had come to her, she wouldn't have suffered, said the critic, with a grim contempt.
Would he find them exhausted by the efforts of the battle, wounded, starving, on the verge of defeat, or would he find them still stout and hopeful, ready for the still grimmer conflict of the morrow? His son was wounded! But he had sent a message! His mind came back to his interview with Caterham. He was roused from his thoughts by the stopping of his train in Chislehurst station.
They clustered round the tape or talked in groups in their smoking-rooms. "He has no weapons. He would have gone to Sevenoaks if he had been put up to it." "Caterham will handle him...." The shopmen told their customers. The waiters in restaurants snatched a moment for an evening paper between the courses. The cabmen read it immediately after the betting news....
He was easy to draw was this man, and already the world had him to study at leisure on lamp chimneys and children's plates, on Anti-Boomfood medals and Anti-Boomfood flags, on the selvedges of Caterham silks and cottons and in the linings of Good Old English Caterham hats. He pervades all the caricature of that time.
He turned and met the expectation of the young man. "Yes," he said at last, "I will come." His encounter with Caterham was entirely different from his anticipation.
The young man looked interrogation. "The other Giants?" The young man made no further pretence of misunderstanding. His tone fell. "Thirteen, Sir, are dead." "And others wounded?" "Yes, Sir." "And Caterham," he gasped, "wants to meet me! Where are the others?" "Some got to the encampment during the fighting, Sir ... They seem to have known " "Well, of course they did.
Caterham keeps harping on what may happen if it gets loose again. I say over and over again, it won't, and it can't. But there it is!" And he bounced about the room for a little while as if he meant to reopen the topic of the secret, and then thought better of it and went. The two scientific men looked at one another. For a space only their eyes spoke.
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