PART II
TROUBLED DAWN
CHAPTER XXII
THE BETRAYAL
The Ulster Campaign was moving forward now with something of the shabby and theatrical pomp of a travelling circus parading the outskirts of a sea-side town before a performance. A dromedary with an elongated upper lip, draped in the dirty trappings of a pseudo-Oriental satrap, led the procession, savage and sulking. Behind the dromedary came the mouldy elephant, the mangy bear, the fat woman exposing herself in tights on a gilt-edged Roman chariot, the sham cow-boys with gaudy cummerbunds, and Cockney accents, on untamed bronchos hired from the local livery stables, the horse that was alleged to have won the Derby in a by-gone century, etc. And the spectators gaped on the pavement, uncertain whether to jeer or to applaud.
As the Campaign rolled on its way, the wiser Conservatives shook their heads, openly maintaining that the whole business was a direct abnegation of everything for which their party had stood in history, while the Liberals became increasingly restive: Mr. Geddes, uneasy at the inaction of the Government, Mr. Geddes truculent to meet the truculence of the enemy. The only man who openly rejoiced was Joe Burt.
"The Tory Reds have lit such a candle by God's grace in England as'll never be put out," he said to Ernie.
The engineer had always now a newspaper cutting in his waistcoat pocket, and a quotation pat upon his lips.
"They're all shots for the locker in the only war that matters," he told the Colonel. "And they'll all coom in handy one day. A paste em into a lil book nights: Tips for Traitors; an ammunition magazine, A call it."
For him Sir Edward Carson's famous confession of faith, I despise the Will of the People—words Joe had inscribed as motto on the cover of his ammunition magazine—gave the key to the whole movement. And he never met the Colonel now but he discharged a broadside into the helpless body of his victim.
It was not, however, till early in 1914, just when his pursuit of Ruth was at the hottest, that he woke to the fact that the Tories were tampering with the Army. That maddened Joe.