Patricia’s eyes waxed thoughtful.
“You must give me a few days to think it over,” she said, after a short pause. “You are not in a hurry, dear?”
“Not at all. I promised the mater I would ask you. She is such an enthusiastic Jewess.”
“Yes; I admire her for it. It is a wonder she does not live in the Holy Land.”
Lionel smiled.
“I really believe she would, if Palestine were a Jewish country,” he replied. “She cherishes a grudge against the Sultan for shilly-shallying over the affair all these years. She is, like myself, an ardent Zionist.”
They rose from their chairs, and made their way towards the Albert Gate. Patricia was unusually vivacious, and giving a truce to serious subjects, chatted in lighter vein. When they reached the main road, however, they were abruptly silenced. The smile faded from the young Member’s face, and the girl looked on with equal gravity.
The traffic was being stopped by a procession—a procession characterised by sordidness, for those who took part constituted the great body of the unemployed in the metropolis. Four abreast they walked, dirty, unkempt men, with ragged clothes and emaciated faces. They had turned out in hundreds, organised presumably by a trade-union, in order to enlist the sympathy of a good-natured public. Here and there banners were displayed, bearing the legend:—“Unemployed and starving”; “British workmen thrown out by aliens”; “Employ British labour”; “Boycott alien labour”; “Boycott foreign Jews,” and other numerous inscriptions. Along the route, which was guarded by the police, men were collecting money from the passers-by. It was indeed a sight to move the most phlegmatic.
Patricia almost involuntarily tightened her grasp on her lover’s arm. A more depraved-looking set of human beings she had never seen. Some, it is true, were stalwart Britons, or had been before the starvation process had set in; but the majority of them were unable to hold themselves erect from sheer weakness, and the dogged expression of misery was on all faces alike. The expression haunted the girl for weeks; it suggested to her naught else but the faces of lost spirits in Hades. She turned away with a shudder.
“Terrible!” she exclaimed unsteadily. “It makes me feel quite ill.”