To-morrow and to-morrow ... a novel

by Stephen McKenna

He broke off, as my mother came into the garden with the day’s letters; and, as I struggled against the impact of my uncle’s fury, I recognized that I was being assailed by a stronger enthusiast even than O’Rane and being asked to save by propaganda a world that I thought had already been saved by war.

4

Bertrand’s descent upon Cannes may be likened to the unheralded arrival of the headmaster in a form-room that has for some time been left to its own devices.

“ ‘The Theodosian code’,” Laurence recited virtuously, “ ‘was published in Constantinople on the 15th of February, 438 . . .’ If Bertrand tries to find me a job, say I’m suited, thank you.”

The rest of us, for all our feeling that we were drowsing in a back-water, looked regretfully at the blazing hibiscus-hedge and guiltily at one another.

“We all ought to be going back,” said Barbara, who—six weeks before—had never wished to see Dover Cliffs again.

I asked what good we could do; I nearly told her what harm we could not avoid doing, for Eric Lane had crossed from New York on O’Rane’s boat and was now in London. Bertrand’s outpouring, however, was beyond the range of argument.

“You will find,” he predicted, “that the world is entering on a new glacial age of materialism. We must fight it.”

And his method of fighting it was to resurrect our old paper, to set me in the old editorial chair, to sweep the country with new propaganda and to create a new political party in the dining-room of Seymour Street.

Those who have never edited a paper are inclined to compare themselves with Delane at his most legendary; and the comparison is seldom favourable to Delane or to The Times. Those who have never tried to influence opinion—as my uncle and I tried in six years’ devoted service to the Disarmament League—become in their daydreams a rival to Parnell or Gladstone and convert mass-meetings with a single speech. Hard-won experience had taught me better, yet this is what Bertrand proposed; and Barbara, I knew, was seeing herself already as the maker of cabinets and the adviser of kings.