He wanted to join in. He saw, now, that he was drifting nowhere. He, too, wanted to share in the great game, playing a part that was not to be ignored, that was needful to the success of the game. Alone he brooded on it. Beaver chaffed him and asked him what was up. Impossible to explain the perplexities of his inmost mind to Beaver.
"I don't know," he said, "I've got the hump."
They were having breakfast in the common sitting-room.
"Well, what's up?" demanded the insistent Beaver.
"Everything!" said Humphrey, gloomily, looking round the room. The bulrushes were still there. "Everything. This ... I feel as we used to feel at Easterham!"
"I know what's the matter with you," said Beaver, folding his napkin, and pushing back his chair from the table. He regarded Humphrey with tremendous wisdom, and bit his nails. "You've got the hump," he said smiling at his inspiration. "Too many late hours."
"Well, look here, don't you get brooding. You want company. I vote we have lunch together to-day. You come and call for me at the office, at one."
"Right you are, I will if I can," Humphrey replied.
All the morning he remained in the same mood, grappling with the new aspect of things that had come to him. Alone he brooded on it: he heard Rivers running through the programme of the day's events--the King going to Windsor, a new battleship being launched, a murderer to be tried at the Old Bailey, a society scandal in the Law Courts--the usual panorama of every day, at which Rivers told his men to look. And it was a great thing for the people of Windsor that the King was coming; there would be flags and guards of honour, and the National Anthem; and the reputation of a ship-building firm, and the anxiety of thousands rested on the successful launch of the battleship, and a weary woman in a squalid slum was waiting tremblingly for the issue of the murder trial; but all these things, of such great import to those who played in the game, were not shared by those who looked on. And as Humphrey listened to Rivers, he realized that though they all moved with life, they were not of it.
He remembered a story that Willoughby told of a Salvation Army meeting in the Albert Hall, when General Booth had walked up and down the platform speaking of the glories of salvation, and, suddenly, he pointed a finger at the table below. "Are you saved?" he asked, with his finger shaking at a man who was looking up at him. "Me?" said the man, looking about him confusedly, and then, with a touch of indignation at being suddenly dragged into the game, "Me? I'm a reporter!"