Ivor made an impatient gesture. He had heard that before.
“It’s got something to do with the will to enjoy,” she went on. “I heard some one say that....”
“And we did enjoy, too,” she added oddly, “just before the war and during the war—we and our lovely dead and dying men!”
And that is about the last word Virginia said. For Ivor talked—tremendously. Talk was seething darkly within him, and it had to come out—and this woman had asked for it! And so out came the “Ivory” intolerances and prejudices which Magdalen had used to tease and Rodney West to encourage, thinking that no man was good for anything if he wasn’t fierce about something. Here, in this animus of Ivor’s against the “young men of opportunity,” in that they strove to be so little worthy of it, spoke the Aunt Moira in him: “Whatever you do, you must do Something! For Heaven’s sake, Ivor, don’t be slack, don’t be shoddy, don’t be sodden! You must think Something, do Something!” That Aunt Moira who, ever mightily contradicting herself, had so efficiently helped that fine gentleman of promise, her younger brother, to do nothing at all, nothing but love....
And Ivor made a joke. The occasion, Virginia suggested, called for a little imagination on his part, so he had better imagine something. So Ivor imagined a revolution for her—oh, a very imaginary revolution! There was blood, of course. He told her how one day, with a crash and a bang and a mighty cry, the people of England rose in one body and hurled themselves at Whitehall. Of course there was a reason for this, as they tried to explain to Whitehall. They had come from factories and mills and mines and all the other places that rebels come from, all with the one mighty cry, “We’ll larn ’em to be gentlemen!” For this revolution was one of the people at last utterly sick of government by feeble gentlemen. A young man from Owens College headed the revolution, but he died soon after. And at that time the charming but sinister M. Caillaux was President of France....
“We are the New Gentlemen,” the rebels cried. Men of the lower sort had everywhere raised their heads, and behold! they had seen England as one vast knighthood, but what knights were those! Whereupon men made a great cry that the land of England was being sloppily governed and that something must be done about it. And of course there was no lack of agitators to point out, with plausible arguments, that the war had helped the British Lion to find out the British Ass—which last, the agitators insisted, was an immaculate man, hitherto known as a gentleman, with red tabs and gold braid about him, a long tradition behind him, and a bloody fine mess all round him. “It is up to you,” the agitators cried, “to put the lid on all that.” Which thing was done, so that traditions were instantly withered into offal, the mad dream of Master Jack Cade came true at last, and the hapless middle-class had more reason than ever to wail, “What shall we do with our sons?” for no one cared what they did with them so long as they made them work. And Chivalry, most shy and most beautiful of all the birds that grace the aviary of human virtues, was found at last with broken wings in the gutters of Fleet Street, was tenderly nursed back to life and on a memorable holy-day was released from Hyde Park Corner—a lovely thing to entrance the eye and stir the heart of Britain, from Cornwall to Aberdeen and even farther. The king was escorted in exceeding splendid state to Windsor, the route thither being lined by such a vast concourse of cheering people as had never before been seen gathered together but at a football match. And there was instantly begun the building of a National Opera House, in which Sir Thomas Beecham could conduct for evermore without breaking his heart or his purse. And there was organised a massacre of maîtres d’hôtel, who have gone so far in making English youth obsequious. Many of the old order were tried for their lives before an extraordinary tribunal especially got together to try people for their lives on the capital charge of whether they had or had not been gentlemen: of course there was the usual controversy as to the exact definition of a gentleman, and many suggestions were put forward, among which that “a gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude to any one,” was accorded the most favour; but in the end Mr. Bernard Shaw’s definition was unanimously adopted, as being both brief and practical, that “a gentleman is a man who puts more into life than he takes out.” Good old Shaw, people cried. Mr. Churchill and some few others were finally acquitted on their disarming plea, that they belonged to a different age from this, a feudal age, and were therefore not responsible for their actions in this; it was further pleaded on behalf of Mr. Churchill that he had been educated without heed to cost, in that England had spent more than a hundred million sterling in giving him a thorough working knowledge of geography alone, particularly as regards Gallipoli, Antwerp, Mesopotamia, and Russia; and that England could not afford to waste, but must rather reserve for the highest office, one to whom she had given the most expensive public-school education obtainable. But there were many who did not discover so much ingenuity, and were never heard of again. While there were some who proved their worth by banding themselves together with warlike cries, to the effect that though they might not have put more into life than they had taken out, they had taken out of their banks a good deal more than they had put in, and so did not mind dying. And these straightway entrenched themselves within Devonshire House and the Ritz, the last a very stout and solid building in the manner of the old Bastille, originally conceived, no doubt, with a fearful eye on class-prejudice. Devonshire House was stormed through a breach on the Stratton Street side, and many were killed but none taken, but the siege of the Ritz was long and bloody, as of course it would be. Both sides were fertile in invention, and Piccadilly was a shambles from Bond Street to Clarges Street; but both in bravery and invention the besieged had something of the advantage, for they were led by the men of White’s, the most gallant of all those who asserted their right to be gentlemen when and how they pleased: and were, moreover, greatly assisted by their exact knowledge of every corner of the building, which was of course known to the New Gentlemen only from passing buses or from the Green Park on Sunday afternoons. But one night Wimborne House, which lies behind the Ritz and was valiantly held by my lord Viscount Wimborne and his men, all veterans of his Irish vice-royalty, was betrayed by a Hebrew gentleman lately black-balled from the Royal Automobile Club: the New Gentlemen poured through the breach, and the defenders of the old order were slain to the last man—and he a gay and handsome man of stuttering speech and many parlour-tricks, now at last dying formidably on the steps of the foyer with a great laugh and a cry, “For King and Cocktail!” And when again the old order raised its head it was only to be finally crushed at the rout of Kensington, where the flower of Oxford and Cambridge, marching to the relief of London, was surprised and overthrown while awaiting the issue of a dog-fight at the corner of Church Street....
“At what time will you dine, sir?” Turner asked patiently from the door.
“Lord, it’s half-past eight!” Virginia cried.
“Do you think,” she asked shyly, “that I could share your homely kipper! ‘Now I’m here’ sort of thing, you know....”
“Turner,” cried Ivor to the man at the door, “you heard that? What are you going to do about it?... You see,” he explained, when Turner had gone out, “you are my first guest in this house.”