“Why shall we have another?” asked Bertram, and a little chill crept down his spine, because of the calm and certain way in which the little Vicomte had made that statement.
But it was the Baron de Montauban who answered.
“Surely,” he said, leaning forward a little, to flick the ash of his cigarette into a bowl of flowers, “you are aware that your Lloyd George arranges another for us?”
“Your Lloyd George!” Bertram had heard that phrase from peasants, chambermaids, commercial travellers, shop-girls, the typist-secretary of a music publisher. He did not expect to hear it from a French aristocrat.
Kenneth made a protest, in his graceful way, deprecating unpleasant themes, except when he happened to lead the argument in his best manner as a one-time President of the Oxford Union.
“As office-boy at the British Embassy, I hesitate to listen to accusations against my Prime Minister.”
Armand de Vaux laughed heartily at this diplomatic statement, and said he had no more respect for Ministers of France than for Ministers of England. They were all politicians, playing to their respective galleries. As a soldier and a Royalist he despised them as canaille.
De Montauban pursued his idea relentlessly, despite this interlude.
“When I say your Lloyd George is arranging another war for France, I mean all that body of opinion in Great Britain which calls itself Liberal. Mon Dieu! In their desire to be fair to the Germans—one might as well be fair to his Majesty the Devil!—and in their anxiety to trade again with their former enemy, they utterly ignore the French point of view.”
“What is that?” asked Bertram, anxious to discover whether the Baron de Montauban could give him more light than the peasants of the old battlefields.