The peace of Versailles was celebrated in London with thanksgivings by day and fireworks at night.
“I wonder why,” said Bertrand sadly.
“Lady Dainton wants me to bring you to her party at the Excelsior,” I said, though, when he repeated: “I wonder why”, it was not easy to find a convincing answer.
“Are you going?” he asked suspiciously, as though I were revenging myself on him for my dinners in Rutland Gate.
“Yes,” I answered. “I wonder why myself; but I’m a bachelor at present and I must dine somewhere.”
“All right,” sighed my uncle; and, on that, we drove to the office and sat until seven o’clock considering the terms and discussing, with Spence-Atkins and any one else who drifted in, what the future policy of our paper was to be.
For several weeks the dearth of news in Fetter Lane and the claims of outside interests had brought our fragile bantling to the verge of death by starvation. Ministers, I thought, revealed a shrewd knowledge of mass-psychology in denying us all news of the conference.
“Kid asks for a thing,” explained Sir Philip Saltash, when I loosed a grumble in his hearing; “you refuse it; kid screams. Go on refusing it; kid goes on screaming. Go on refusing still; kid thinks of something else.”
By July, even the press had almost ceased to scream; parliament had long been silent; and the country was probably thinking of a prize-fight. My own record was representative of the vast majority: I went to my office six days a week, I continued the farce of exploring London to find what people were thinking, I supported a wall at the parties which my wife gave to please my uncle; but such intellectual energy as I possessed had been devoted at one moment to my private affairs in Ireland, at another to O’Rane’s inheritance and again at another to the havoc which poor Eric Lane’s return had wrought in my life with Barbara. At our editorial dinners I was chiefly concerned to see that we had enough readable matter of any kind to fill twenty-four pages. Like the child in Saltash’s parable, I was now indifferent; and, when at last the great secrets which we had screamed to know were flung to us in bulk, we were mildly bored.
“I warned you at Cannes how it would be,” said Bertrand; then he lapsed into unhelpful silence.