Bertram thought of all the men who had gone marching with him, and before him, and behind him, up the roads of war in France and Flanders, the men of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales. They had seen the bodies of their “pals” blown to bits, but had not turned back. They had sat down with Death, smelt it, heard it scream above their heads, known the fear of it, seen the close horror of it, day after day, month after month, year after year, but had not surrendered some faith in them, some love of their soil, some heritage of the spirit. Were they now likely to be the victims of a “secret cult,” urging them to overthrow civilisation? Were they in dark conspiracy, as the dupes of German Jews, to play Hell and Satan-worship in the country they had saved by the valour of their souls? They were restless, discontented, bitter. What wonder, when prices were rising high against them, and wages were going down, and unemployment was creeping up like a dark tide of misery into millions of little homes? This lecture of Lady Ottery’s was an outrage to the men who had fought for England, though she had no idea of that. It was a perversion of all truth in history. It was putting morbid fears into the minds of an audience already obsessed by fantastic bogeys. It would lead to conflict and cruelty.
“Joyce, I can’t bear it. This is mad and monstrous!”
So he whispered to Joyce, and she turned to him angrily, and said, “Be quiet, Bertram!”
Their movement, and Joyce’s answer, awakened the Earl of Ottery. He smiled sleepily at Joyce, and said her mother was remarkable.
Presently Bertram rose in his seat, bent again to find his stick on the floor under some ladies’ muffs, and whispered again to Joyce:
“Sorry, darling! I’m going. I can’t breathe.”
“You’re abominable!” said Joyce, in a low voice, and turned her head away from him with an angry shake of her bobbed hair.
He strode through an audience that was hostile to his going. Old Brookwood of Banstead growled audibly as he passed, “Be quiet, sir!”
Outside, groups of chauffeurs were chatting beside their motor cars, and across Oxford Circus, as he passed through, came a procession of unemployed with their banners.
“We want work!”