“And I and my brothers,” Jeremy murmured to himself, “are going to get the dirty end of the stick.”
But as he looked about him and examined the crowd in which he was involved, he found some difficulty in connecting it with the fiery phrases of the speaker or with the impending Revolution which, until this moment, he had really been beginning to dread. Now a sudden wave of relief passed over his mind. These honest, blunt, good-natured people had expressed the subtle influence of the day, which he himself had felt, by putting on their Sunday clothes. They were not meditating bloodshed or the overthrow of the State. But for a certain seriousness and determination in their faces and voices one might have thought that they were making holiday in an unpremeditated and rather eccentric manner. Their seriousness was not that of men forming desperate resolves. It was that of men who, having entered into an argument, intend to argue it out. They believed in argument, in the power of reason, and the voting force of majorities. They applauded the speaker, but not when he became blood-thirsty; and time and time again he lost touch with them in his violence. At the most frenzied point of the oration a thick-set man, with a startling orange handkerchief round his neck, turned to Jeremy and said disgustedly:
“Listen to ’im jowin’! Sheeny, that’s what he is, no more than a—Sheeny.” Jeremy was neither a politician nor a sociologist. He did not weigh a previous diagnosis against this fresh evidence and come to a more cheerful conclusion; but he breathed rather more freely and relaxed his grip on his cane. He was not disturbed by the confused and various clamor which came from the crowd and in which there was a good admixture of laughter.
Just at this moment he saw on the lorry by which he had halted a face that was familiar to him. He looked again more closely, and recognized Scott—Scott who had been in the Divisional Office, Scott who had panicked so wildly in the 1918 retreat, though God knew he had taken a long enough start, Scott who had nearly landed him in a row over that girl in the estaminet at Bailleul, just after the armistice. And Scott, who never knew that he was disliked—a characteristic of his kind!—was eagerly beckoning to him.
He slid quietly through the fringe of the crowd and stood by the driving-seat of the lorry. Scott leant down and shook him by the hand warmly, speaking in a whisper:
“Tuft, old man,” he said effusively, “I often wondered what had become of you. What a piece of luck meeting you here!”
“I could think of better places to meet in,” Jeremy answered drily. He was determined not to encourage Scott; he knew very well that something damned awkward would most likely come of it. “This looks to me like a hold-up. What have you got in the lorries?”
“Sh!” Scott murmured with a scared look. “It’s bombs for the troops at Liverpool Street, but it’d be all up with us if the crowd knew that. No—why I said it was lucky was because I thought you might help me to get through.”
“I? How could I?” Jeremy asked defensively.
“Well, I don’t know.... I thought you might have some influence with them, persuade them that there’s nothing particular in the lorries, or....”