It was on the following afternoon, and Joyce was naturally annoyed with him when he showed signs of shirking the engagement. She couldn’t understand, as she said, fretfully, why Bertram disparaged her Mother’s intellectual ability—Joyce always spoke of her Mother with a distinctly capital M—to say nothing of her historical knowledge. Lady Ottery had studied considerably more than Bertram, who was a desultory reader, and had read a good deal at the British Museum last winter, as well as belonging to the London Library, which allowed her to take out eleven books at a time on serious subjects.
“The amount of knowledge Mother has amassed is stupendous,” said Joyce. “Whether you agree with her or not, I think you ought to respect her research work.”
Bertram muttered something about not believing much in book-knowledge, but retreated on that line of argument as the author of a book which soon he hoped to present to Joyce with love and homage, as the first-fruits of his new-found gift. In the end, he capitulated, and agreed humbly to go to the lecture and behave himself with due deference to his exalted Mother-in-law. He tried to give a touch of humour to the surrender, and obtained the glimmer of a smile from Joyce. But she froze him by saying that she hoped her Mother’s lecture would convert him to more reasonable views, and make him see the frightful danger of the opinions held by his revolutionary friends at a time when England was threatened by mob-law.
“My dear Kid!” he said, making light again of her over-serious mood. “In the first place my friends aren’t revolutionary”—he had to make a mental reservation of Janet Rockingham Welford—“and in the second place, I don’t agree that England is threatened by mob-law.”
“Not by the coming strike?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then said: “The men call it a lock-out.”
She called that hair-splitting over words, and though he would not consent to that—it made all the difference to the argument—he agreed that there would be a serious situation in England, dangerous, even, if all the miners left their pits, and millions of unemployed and idle men were added to the two millions already without work. The stoppage of coal would gradually strangle all industry, and the railways, which were the vital arteries of the nation.
“There may be Civil War,” said Joyce, calmly, and Bertram answered sharply, “Nonsense! Who suggests that?”
“General Bellasis. As the Home Office man, he knows.”
“I wish to goodness he’d keep his precious knowledge to himself!” said Bertram angrily, “and not come round here mixing scaremonger politics with tea-table dalliance!”