"A few days ago," said Mr. Britling, trying to make things concrete for her, "you and I together were worth five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Now we don't know what we are worth; whether we have lost a thousand or ten thousand...."
He examined his sovereign purse and announced he had six pounds. "What have you?"
She had about eighteen pounds in the house.
"We may have to get along with that for an indefinite time."
"But the bank will open again presently," she said. "And people about here trust us."
She did not trouble about the hypothesis. "And our investments will recover. They always do recover."
"Everything may recover," he admitted. "But also nothing may recover. All this life of ours which has seemed so settled and secure--isn't secure. I have felt that we were fixed here and rooted--for all our lives. Suppose presently things sweep us out of it? It's a possibility we may have to face. I feel this morning as if two enormous gates had opened in our lives, like the gates that give upon an arena, gates giving on a darkness--through which anything might come. Even death. Suppose suddenly we were to see one of those great Zeppelins in the air, or hear the thunder of guns away towards the coast. And if a messenger came upon a bicycle telling us to leave everything and go inland...."
"I see no reason why one should go out to meet things like that."
"But there is no reason why one should not envisage them...."
"The curious thing," said Mr. Britling, pursuing his examination of the matter, "is that, looking at these things as one does now, as things quite possible, they are not nearly so terrifying and devastating to the mind as they would have seemed--last week. I believe I should load you all into Gladys and start off westward with a kind of exhilaration...."
She looked at him as if she would speak, and said nothing. She suspected him of hating his home and affecting to care for it out of politeness to her....
"Perhaps mankind tries too much to settle down. Perhaps these stirrings up have to occur to save us from our disposition to stuffy comfort. There's the magic call of the unknown experience, of dangers and hardships. One wants to go. But unless some push comes one does not go. There is a spell that keeps one to the lair and the old familiar ways. Now I am afraid--and at the same time I feel that the spell is broken. The magic prison is suddenly all doors. You may call this ruin, bankruptcy, invasion, flight; they are doors out of habit and routine.... I have been doing nothing for so long, except idle things and discursive things."