Passing the tent sacred to the President and Committee, it gave him one more thrill to mark the bearing of the grandees. The famous white hat no longer adorned the head of the President. The great man nursed it upon his fat loud-checked knees. All the reluctant geniality a public function had inspired had passed from his ugly face. Yet in the purview of his son-in-law it looked a little less ugly at that moment than he ever remembered to have seen it. Those fierce eyes were not occupied now with the narrow round of their own affairs, nor with a swelling vision of self-importance. The world was on fire. He was simply a man among his fellow men; and like them he was wondering what ought to be done.
At seven o'clock a vaguely excited but profoundly depressed William Hollis made his way out of Jubilee Park. He turned down Short Hill in the direction of his home. But by the time he had reached the foot of that brief declivity, and was involved in an airless maze of bricks and mortar, the thought of his home grew suddenly intolerable. He needed freedom and space, he needed an atmosphere more congenial. Melia would not understand. Or if she did understand she would be dumb and just now he simply longed for a little human intercourse.
At the end of Love Lane, a mean and crooked little street debouching from the Mulcaster Road which wound a somber trail to the very heart of the city, he stood a moment gazing at the dingy sign a few doors up on the left, W. Hollis, Fruiterer. The obvious course was to go and deposit the prize he had won on the dresser in the back sitting room, or still better, give it into the personal care of Melia. But instead, he wrapped up the trophy a little more carefully, resettled it under his arm, and then allowed himself to drift slowly with the throng in the direction of the Market Place.
As was usual with him now, his actions were aimless and uncertain. There was no particular reason why he should be going to the Market Place beyond the fact that other people seemed to be going there, as somehow they always did seem to be going there at great moments in the national life. The factories and warehouses who happened to be working that day had disgorged their human cargoes and these under the stimulus of hourly editions of the _Evening Star_ were moving slowly and solemnly towards the nodal point.
