into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,
Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the
pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and
staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains,
even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that
had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all
England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched
along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to
gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for the food! Across the
Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and
meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed
going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no memory. I
drifted a demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly people, who
had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and raving through
the streets of St. John s Wood. They have told me since that I was
singing some insane doggerel about The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah!
The Last Man Left Alive! Troubled as they were with their own affairs,
these people, whose name, much as I would like to express my gratitude
to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves
with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. Apparently they
had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse.
Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what
they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was
imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian.
He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any
provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness
of power.
I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely man
and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four days
after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing craving to
look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so
happy and bright in my past. It was a mere hopeless desire to feast
upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to divert me
from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the impulse no longer,
and, promising faithfully to return to them, and parting, as I will
confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I went out again into
the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty.
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