General Bellasis smiled, not good-humouredly.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Alban, icily.
“Tell us!” said Kenneth Murless, raising his eyebrows in a quizzical way.
Joyce spoke more emotionally.
“Bertram! Pull yourself together. If you don’t accept this—”
The last words seemed to hold a threat.
Bertram thrust his hands into the pockets of his dinner jacket, and leaned forward in his chair, staring at the carpet.
“It’s like this—” he said, groping for the right words; “I don’t like to see people of our class—your class, if you like!—organising their forces to beat down poor devils who want to keep up a decent standard of life, after a war they helped to win. I’ve looked into the question of this Strike. It’s really a Lock-out by the masters—but, anyhow, the men are being offered wages which aren’t quite good enough, they think. Not a fair deal for men who helped to save England. They may be wrong, of course, but that’s how it seems to them. This Defence Force—it sounds all right. I’m ready to serve on the side of law and order. But it looks like a Snob Force for giving Hell to working-men who want a living wage. Aristocracy versus Democracy. Middle Classes against the Mob. Yes! If necessary, I quite agree. But I fought with the Mob. I saw it going over the top on mornings of battle. I walked through its dead bodies afterwards. I learnt to know its spirit, and liked it, on the whole. I’d hate to shoot down fellows who used to salute me in the trenches, and whom I saluted as the salt of England. Of course order must be kept. I understand that. No body of men must be allowed to blackmail a nation, and there may be a bit of that in the minds of the Labour leaders. But there seems to be an idea—General Bellasis hinted at something of the sort—that a little blood-letting wouldn’t be a bad thing. Some idea of forcing the clash, so as to teach Labour a lesson, with machine-guns, and so on. I know something about machine-guns. I served ’em in the Great War. I’m not inclined to turn them against my own men—unless Hell breaks loose. . . . And I don’t think Hell is going to happen. It’s a newspaper scare, and nothing else. It’s not going to happen, unless it’s made to happen. I’ll see myself damned before I help to make it. . . . Do you see my point, General?”
They had let him speak out, without a single interruption, in dead silence. He had been aware of their faces about him. Joyce had become quite white. She was still standing with her hands on the back of the tall chair, and her eyes were fixed on Bertram with a look of amazement, at first, and then anger. Once or twice she smiled, in a queer way, as though some of his words seemed to her too ridiculous. Alban sat with his head bent, glowering. Kenneth Murless was watching him, with a look of extreme interest, as though at some new phenomenon of human nature. Lord Ottery sat back in his chair with closed eyes, fingering his red beard. The General had become restless, crossed and recrossed his legs, shifted a wine glass, flushed angrily, and then met Bertram’s eyes with a hard, hostile look.
“I regret my offer has been refused with such a distasteful—I may say, disgraceful—expression of opinion, sir.”