'You think so? But how improbable! After war, despotism and the strong hand. You don't suppose the firm hand is going to let go, having got us so nicely in its grasp. Rather not. War is the tyrant's opportunity. The Government's beginning to learn what it can do. After all this Defending of the Realm, and cancelling of scraps of paper such as Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus, and ordering the press, and controlling industries and finance and food and drink, and saying, 'Let there be darkness' (and there was darkness)—you don't suppose it's going to slip back into laissez-faire, or open the door to mob rule? The realm will go on being defended long after it's weathered this storm, depend on it. And quite right too. Lots of people will prefer it; they'll be too tired to want to take things into their own hands: they'll only want peace and safety and an ordered life. They'll be too damaged and sick and have lost too much to be anything but apathetic. Peace, possibly (though improbably): but Freedom, no. Anyhow, it's what neither we nor any one else have ever had, so we shouldn't recognise it if we saw it.... There are too many pips in this stuff,' he grumbled. 'Much too many.'
Daphne finished hers and stood up, as midnight struck, with varying voices and views as to the time, from various church clocks in Cambridge city. 'So,' she said, 'that's the end of that year. No doubt it is as well.... And now I'm going to bed. I've a great deal to do to-morrow.'
She went to bed. She had a great deal to do on all the days of the coming year. But the first thing she did (in common with many others this year) was to cry on the stairs, because it was a year which Paul would never see, Paul having been tipped out by the last year in its crazy career and left behind by the wayside.
6
Nicholas and Alix lay languidly, in fraternal silence, in their chairs. They never went to bed or did anything else with Daphne's prompt decision. At a quarter past twelve Alix said, 'I'm thinking of joining this funny society of mother's.'
Nicholas opened his small blue eyes at her.
'You are? I didn't know you joined things.'
'Nor did I,' said Alix. 'But I'm beginning to believe I do.... I think I shall very probably join the Church, too, before long.'
Nicholas opened his eyes much wider, and sat up straight.
'The Church? The Church of England, do you mean?'