“They look as if they’d made a damned good thing out of it.”
“Seventeen-ninety-three, eighteen-fifteen,” I replied. “Nineteen-fourteen to nineteen-nineteen. We have changed our rulers.”
“It’s about all we have changed,” Bertrand rejoined.
Then we stood up as a waiter begged leave to push our table away from the dancing-floor. Sir Roger, unexpectedly on his feet, exhibited symptoms of impending oratory, which was checked, at the instigation of Wilmot Dean, by a well-directed crust of bread from the hand of the mannequin. The band, for the first time in several years, played the national anthems of all the allies. Our host ordered more champagne and then called for his bill. Sonia led off the dancing with Lord Lingfield; and I invented an excuse to go home to bed.
The streets round the hotel were too crowded for driving. I told my chauffeur to get home as best he could and walked with Bertrand into the quiet backwaters north of Piccadilly. At the door of Loring House we met my cousin Violet, who insisted on our going the rest of the way in her car.
“I’ve missed all the celebrations,” she told us. “I’ve been unveiling the memorial to Jim at Chepstow.”
“You’ve not missed very much,” I answered. “Are you satisfied with the memorial?”
“Yes. It’s only a medallion in the chapel; and you can only see it from the corner where I sit. I have . . . rather a horror of the war-memorials that are being put up everywhere.”
“They’re the easiest means of forgetting the dead with a good conscience,” Bertrand suggested.
“But not the only means,” I said, as a dishevelled vagrant steadied himself against the bonnet of the car and invited us to a confession of political faith.