“It’s like this, Major. We’re fed up with lies. The blarsted lies of newspapers. The muck them politicians say. The rotten stuff some of our own leaders say. In the old days we used to believe what we was told or what we read. Now we’ve found out. We’ve been kidded, all along! That’s made us think. We know a bit of truth ourselves. We know what ’appened to us. The things we did. The things we’ve seen. We can’t be kidded any more. That makes a lot of difference!”
“What do the men want?” asked Bertram. “What are they looking for?”
“Not over much,” said Huggett. “There’s some that talk a lot. I did a bit myself before I found my job again. Communism. Bolshevism. Bunkum. More kidding! Most others are out for peace—no more bloody war, not at no cost—decent ’ouse-room—not this dog ’ole for eighteen bob a week—a bit of pocket money for the fun of things. See?”
Bertram thought he saw. He believed that Huggett knew the truth of things about the spirit of the men. He marvelled at this fellow’s commonsense, his soundness of judgment, his sense of humour, his patience. Those had been the qualities of the men in the war. They were still there. If all the men were like Huggett, or most of them, England was safe. The menace was only in the minds of men like Bernard Hall of The New World—intellectually morbid—and in the minds of Joyce’s crowd, who were obsessed by the bogey of Bolshevism—that strange foreign growth, so alien to English ideas.
XVIII
“Joyce’s crowd!” To some extent his own crowd. He saw it, not for the first time, but peculiarly defined in his imagination, and in all its glory, on the afternoon of Lady Ottery’s lecture. He drove in a “taxi” with Joyce from their little home in Holland Street to the Wigmore Hall, and by the time they’d reached Cumberland Place, at the top of the Park, fell into line with a steady stream of automobiles of highly expensive kinds.
“The New Poor aren’t so beastly poor yet,” said Bertram, thinking of Huggett in his squalid rooms with the four squalling brats.
Joyce tapped his hand sharply.
“They’ve saved a little out of the wreckage. Precious little, and we’re all going ‘broke.’ ”
Joyce had two reserved seats towards the front of the hall. Bertram saw that she wore a new hat for the occasion, a little blue thing, with an osprey plume (Bernard Hall would hate her for that!), and the short ermine cloak which Lady Ottery had given her for “going away,” when they were married. She looked splendid in health again, and exquisite to his eyes as she stood up looking round the hall and smiling to many friends who waved hands to her, or programmes. The two Russian girls—the Countess Lydia and her sister—were a few seats behind, and called out over the heads of other ladies: