“Low wages and sweated labour! That’s the watch-word now. No ‘Homes for Heroes,’ and other fine cries which went very well in war-time.”
Bertram thought it was unfair to the men.
“It’s a damned outrage!” said Christy.
For some time the two friends were silent. They knew each other well enough for long silences. Christy’s cheap clock on the mantelpiece ticked with a little staccato tattoo. They did not trouble to switch on the light, but sat smoking in low chairs on each side of the fire-grate in which a few coals burned in a heap of white ash. Christy drew hard at his pipe now and then, and a little red glow lit up his long, lean face with its deep sunken eyes and bulging forehead. Down below, in Adelphi Terrace, or its neighbourhood, some ex-soldier was playing a one-string fiddle, not badly, but with long-drawn melancholy. Cavalleria Rusticana—they all played that. Down the Thames, beyond the Tower Bridge, no doubt, a steamer was sounding its siren. The Batavia boat, off to Holland, or a river tug moving. The murmur of London, the voice of its enormous life and traffic, made the windows throb, and above its low-toned rhythm, the horns of motor-taxis bleated incessantly.
Christy stirred, and poked the dying fire with his boot.
“I’d like to see how this strike works out. I want to be in England if there’s any real trouble. But I’m off again.”
“Already!”
Bertram was distressed. He hung on to Christy’s comradeship. Here, in these rooms, was a sanctuary into which he could take refuge from the worries of life, or at least could ease them, by unloading his pack awhile, and sorting it out with old Christy. It was not so much Christy’s words which helped him, but his presence. They’d been together in dirty places during the war. They had sat in the same mud-holes, listening to shells overhead, and expecting death together. They knew each other’s courage and fears. Christy had wept once, when his moral had broken for a while. He had just cried like a child when the sergeant was blown to bits, not because of any love for the sergeant, but because of the beastliness and unending misery of it all. Bertram had been on the verge of shell-shock once. He was afraid of being afraid. Supposing he let down the men, played the coward, or something? Christy had strengthened him then. They knew each other—in weakness as well as in strength. He hated to think of Christy going away again so soon.
“Where now?” he asked.
“Berlin for a start. Then—perhaps Moscow. I’ve asked for permits.”