Jellaby looked contemptuously at the lengthening tale of ministerial successes:
“Perhaps they realize that these results don’t represent the true strength of parties.”
“You mean it’s a moral victory for you?,” I asked. “I said the same thing to you when I was beaten at Cranborne in 1910. With respect I think the feeling of the country is admirably represented in this club to-night: nobody cares.”
With that I left him. Seven men, I think, said good-night to me as I crossed the hall; six of them added: “Well, thank God that’s over.”
There was a further spasm of excitement as the new parliament met; and for me, though I was preoccupied with Barbara’s return, a stab of regret when the liberal party had to surrender its historic claim to lead the opposition. Then one of the shortest sessions on record opened and closed; the foreign secretary set out for Lausanne to find an escape from the threatened war in the near east; and the country gave its undivided attention to the most popular murder-trial of the year.
Save for a moment after Bertrand’s memorial service, I had not been alone with Barbara since our scene in the car. I fancied that she was hardly less embarrassed than I was, though she talked easily enough of her plans for being painted by Edmund Wace and of my work on Bertrand’s papers. We both felt that nothing could be quite the same after that explosion; but I at least had no idea what she wanted.
“There was a touch of brutality about your uncle,” she said after dinner the first night, in criticism of my sketch. “I’m not sure that you bring it out. Any one who disagreed with him was treated with such obvious contempt.”
“Unless he happened to like the person,” I said. “I can’t imagine a single point on which he agreed with you or Violet or Amy, but he was devoted to you all. On the other hand, I’ve heard him trouncing poor Sonia for holding exactly the same views, simply because he thought her second-rate.”
“He thought all women second-rate. So do you, George,” she rejoined without malice.
So sweeping a misstatement I could not allow to pass unchallenged.