“Orgy,” said Peter. “But they won’t.”...
Presently their note became graver.
“We’ve got to live like fanatics. If a lot of us don’t live like fanatics, this staggering old world of ours won’t recover. It will stagger and then go flop. And a race of Bolshevik peasants will breed pigs among the ruins. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the world to prevent that.”
“And we owe it to the ones who have died,” said Joan.
She hesitated, and then she began to tell him something of the part Wilmington had played in their lives.
They went through field after field, through gates and over stiles and by a coppice spangled with primroses, while she told him of the part that Wilmington had played in bringing them together; Wilmington who was now no more than grey soil where the battle still raged in France. Many were the young people who talked so of dead friends in those days. Their voices became grave and faintly deferential, as though they had invoked a third presence to mingle with their duologue. They were very careful to say nothing and to think as little as possible that might hurt Wilmington’s self-love.
Presently they found themselves speculating again about the kind of world that lay ahead of them—whether it would be a wholly poor world or a poverty-struck world infested and devastated by a few hundred millionaires and their followings. Poor we were certain to be. We should either be sternly poor or meanly poor. But Peter was disposed to doubt whether the war millionaires would “get away with the swag.”
“There’s too much thinking and reading nowadays for that,” said Peter. “They won’t get away with it. This is a new age, Joan. If they try that game they won’t have five years’ run.”
No, it would be a world generally poor, a tired but chastened world getting itself into order again.... Would there be much music in the years ahead? Much writing or art? Would there be a new theatre and the excitement of first nights again? Should we presently travel by aeroplane, and find all the world within a few days’ journey? They were both prepared to resign themselves to ten years’ of work and scarcity, but they both clung to the hope of returning prosperity and freedom after that.
“Well, well, Joan,” said Peter, “these times teach us to love. I’m crippled. We’ve got to work hard. But I’m not unhappy. I’m happier than I was when I had no idea of what I wanted in life, when I lusted for everything and was content with nothing, in the days before the war. I’m a wise old man now with my stiff wrist and my game leg. You change everything, Joan. You make everything worth while.”