"And do you think," said Lady Bell-Hall, "that the movement—taking Y.M.C.A. reading-rooms I mean—will spread quickly over London?"
"Dear Lady," said Mr. Light-Johnson, "I can't disguise from you that I fear the worst. It would be foolish to do any other. I have a cousin, Major Merriward—you've heard me speak of him—whose wife is a niece of one of Winston Churchill's secretaries. He told me last night at the Club that Churchill's levity!—well, it's scandalous—Nero fiddling while Rome burns isn't in it at all! I must tell you frankly that I expect complete Bolshevist rule in London within the next three months."
"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Lady Bell-Hall. "Do have a little of that turbot, Mr. Johnson. You're eating nothing. I'm only too afraid you're right. The banks will close and we shall all starve."
"For the upper classes," said Mr. Johnson, "the consequences will be truly terrible. In Petrograd to-day Dukes and Duchesses are acting as scavengers in the streets. What else can we expect? I heard from a man in the Club yesterday, whose son was in the Archangel forces that it is Lenin's intention to move to London and to make it the centre of his world rule. I leave it to you to imagine, Lady Bell-Hall, how safe any of us will be when we are in the power of Chinese and Mongols."
"Chinese!" cried Lady Bell-Hall. "Chinese!"
"Undoubtedly. They will police London or what is left of it, because there will of course be severe fighting first, and nowadays, with aerial warfare what it is, a few days' conflict will reduce London to a heap of ruins."
"And what about the country?" asked Lady Bell-Hall. "I'm sure the villagers at Duncombe are very friendly. And so they ought to be considering the way that Charles has always treated them."
"It's from the peasantry that I fear the worst," said Mr. Light-Johnson. "After all it has always been so. Think of La Vendée, think of the Russian peasantry in this last Revolution. No, there is small comfort there, I'm afraid."
Throughout this little conversation Duncombe had kept silent. Now he broke in with a little ironic chuckle; this was the first time that Henry had heard him laugh.