Part 12

Captain Arthur Izzard, D.S.O., said it was no game, but the real business. Like thousands of other officers of the Great War, he had worn out many boots, seeking a job in London. Vainly. England was surfeited with home-coming heroes. She’d nothing to offer them, after they’d won the dear old war. She wanted to forget them. They were a damned nuisance. So in a moment of brilliant inspiration, he had set up this business for himself. It amused him vastly. It also provided him with something to eat. It also enabled him to do good to his fellow beings, by spreading spiritual and intellectual light. He was the centre of village culture. Mothers came to him for advice upon the feeding of babies, maidens desired information on the comparative merits of Ethel M. Dell and Zane Grey. Farmers consulted him on insecticides. Miss Heathcote discussed with him auto-suggestion and the Freudian theory. He bought old furniture from Sussex cottages and sold it, at outrageous profits, to the New Rich, and occasionally Americans. He was a beneficent influence in Sussex, and all the ladies loved him.

“Some of the foolish ones,” said Miss Heathcote, laughing and blushing in a way that suggested affectionate familiarity with this good-looking fellow and his whimsical ways.

“What about social caste?” asked Bertram, and his question amused young Izzard vastly.

“Caste? The damn thing has broken up like a jig-saw puzzle! Not even the Countess of Ottery, poor old darling—your mother-in-law, by the way!—can keep it going nowadays, when Younger Sons are drifting into trade. Why, Billy Wantage—Lord William of that ilk—is keeping a pub at Wadcombe, and doing very well.”

The conversation was interrupted by a red-haired boy who rode up on a bicycle with a bag slung round his shoulders, which he dumped into the cottage.

“You infernal young scoundrel!” said Arthur Izzard, “I believe you’ve been watching the cricket-match.”

“Train late,” said the boy, grinning.

Izzard seized the papers, and disregarding his customers, read the news for himself.

“Hell!” he murmured to the company, which had increased by two ladies, and an old gentleman of Mid-Victorian aspect, with white whiskers.

“What’s the latest?” asked Miss Heathcote.

“Strike officially begun. Two million men ‘out’ already. The Triple Alliance will probably join.”

“What will that mean?” asked Bertram.

Arthur Izzard gave him a queer look.

“It may mean something like social revolution in little old England. No trains, no supplies, no industry anywhere. General paralysis until something smashes.”

“Abominable!” said the old gentleman with white whiskers. “We must smash the Trade Unions. They’re the curse of the country. I’d flog every man who comes out on strike.”

“Five million, maybe,” said Arthur Izzard, and he winked at Bertram, as though with secret understanding. He said something else, under his breath.

“The Comrades of the Great War.”

“I’d turn the machine-guns on to them,” said Miss Heathcote. It was the opinion of Lord Ottery’s groom.

Arthur Izzard smiled at her as he sat on the counter and swung his legs.

“I wonder if that would be wise—or kind—or safe?”

He waved his hand, as Bertram left the shop.

“Come in again, old man! I’ve excellent tobacco, new-laid eggs, home-made jam, young ferrets, old instruments, any old thing! And a private room for pals!”

“I certainly will!” said Bertram.

He walked back to Holme Ottery, thinking a little about the Strike, but, strangely enough, not very much. He was thinking more about Joyce. Something had stirred his senses, this breath of spring, this countryside, this scent of lilac and apple-blossom and wet earth. The memory of his love-making, here, a year ago, recalled to his mind and heart the joy of it, and his boyish ardour. London had put his nerves on edge, and made him impatient, irritable, moody. Perhaps Joyce had suffered too, in the same way, from the artificial life, the depressing and lowering atmosphere of London after war. It was better here. They might put themselves straight again, recapture their former gladness in each other, thrill again to the touch of each other’s hands, and lips, to the warmth of body and soul. He would talk to Joyce and woo her here back again.

Holme Ottery was wonderful in the dusk of this April day, with a silver streak, through a pile of dark clouds, above its many gables and high chimneys, and shadows closing about its grey walls. Through some of the windows in the west wing, lights were gleaming, in a homely way. Joyce was in one of those rooms, with her gold-spun hair, and slim body, and all the beauty of the Bellairs women—like that Joyce whom Steele had loved—and all their pride and quality.

A pity the old house was up for sale, but Joyce’s beauty belonged to him.

XXVI

It was impossible to get a private word with Joyce before dinner. Her “palaver” with Alban was still in progress when Bertram returned, as he found when he went searching for her in the morning-room, her bedroom, at the end of the gallery, and at last in Alban’s little room on the other side of the great stairway.

Alban called “Come!” sharply in answer to his tap at the door, and did not look friendly when Bertram went in, smiled at Joyce, and said, “Any chair for a mere husband?”

Joyce’s face was flushed. She and Alban were seated at the table, which was strewn with papers. The brother and sister were wonderfully alike, Bertram thought, as they sat together, side by side. Joyce had the same profile as Alban, though softened and more delicate, the same line of forehead and nose, finely cut, like a Greek cameo. She took no notice of Bertram’s entry, but went on talking to her brother.

“Then it comes to this: You insist on bleeding father to the extent of four thousand a year, and Holme Ottery must go to some horrible Profiteer!”

“That’s the position, apart from the word ‘bleeding,’” answered Alban irritably. “You can see for yourself. The Governor is paying taxes out of capital, borrowing for upkeep, wages, and interest on mortgages, and breaking into capital again for my little bit, and yours. When he pegs out, death duties will swallow most of what’s left.”

“It’s disgraceful!” said Joyce. “It’s a damned disgrace!”

She rose from the table, flinging back the papers, and went over to the window, staring out into the dusk of the park.

Alban laughed, and drummed on the table with his finger-nails.

“It all comes of having a democratic government, pandering to the working-classes, bribing them with doles, and ruining trade and capital by excessive taxes.”

“Somebody must pay for the war,” said Bertram.

Alban became aware of his presence again, and answered him gloomily.

“Not in that way. The Germans ought to pay.”

It was Bertram’s turn to laugh.

“Even Germany can’t pay for the ruin of the whole world, after her own losses.”

Joyce swung round from the window seat.

“For Heaven’s sake, Bertram! Don’t go pro-German, after being pro-Irish, pro-Bolshevik, and anti-everything that’s English and patriotic!”

“Quite so!” said Alban, associating himself with his sister’s protest in a somewhat pompous manner.

Bertram felt a sudden warmth in his blood creeping up the back of his neck. He was not annoyed with Joyce, because he could understand her sense of tragedy about the old house. He was not angry with her, though her words hurt him hideously, after his thoughts about her beauty and the chance of re-capturing her love. But he had no use for that “Quite so!” of his brother-in-law.

“I fancy I did my job pretty well in the war,” he said quietly. “If England ever needs me again . . .”

He checked himself. What was the good of arguing? Joyce and Alban were both on edge because of this family crisis. Anyhow, he would be an idiot to proclaim his love for England. It might be taken for granted after his service.

“Oh, bother all that!” cried Joyce.

She dismissed the need of argument on that score by another attack on her brother.

“I’m not going to let this business end in mere talk, Alban! If there’s any chance of saving Holme Ottery—”

Alban’s temper mastered him for a moment, and he interrupted his sister harshly.

“Haven’t I told you there’s no earthly chance? What’s the good of playing about with unrealities? Facts are facts. Figures are figures.”

“Yes, and your four thousand belong to the facts and the figures,” answered Joyce, just as angrily. “If you gave up gambling and racing, you could put some back into the family pot.”

Alban stared at his sister with that hard look which sometimes came into his eyes, as Bertram knew. But he answered icily, after a moment’s hesitation:

“Don’t let’s have an altercation, or get down to personalities. Four thousand is not too much for my position. I’m extremely economical. I might remind you that father settled two thousand a year on yourself. What about that?”

Joyce spoke in a low voice.

“I’d cut every penny of it to save Holme Ottery.”

Alban leaned back in his chair, regarding his finger-nails, and laughed more amiably.

“Heroic, and all that, but utterly useless, little sister. Besides, what about your own home? Bertram isn’t making a fortune just now.”

“He’ll have to get a job,” said Joyce.

So the attack had come round to Bertram now. He was to be made responsible, perhaps, for the necessity of selling Holme Ottery! Perhaps, after further conversation, he might be accused of instigating the Strike, and would be saddled with the sins of the Government!

“I don’t think I’ll get dragged into this family discussion,” he said, with a desperate effort to be patient and calm. “Anyhow, it’s time to dress for dinner. Coming, Joyce?”

“Presently,” said Joyce. He didn’t wait for her, and went up to his own room on the north side of the gallery, and having shut the door with a bang, sat down on the bed with his knees hunched up and his face in his hands.

“He’ll have to get a job’” Joyce had said.

Well, he’d found his job, and written his first book, now in the publisher’s hands, and his first article, already published, in _The New World_. Not much, but a good beginning. He objected to Joyce’s way of speaking that sentence—“He’ll have to get a job!” She had spoken it harshly. Did she imagine that he hadn’t tried to get a job, that he had been a slacker, an I-won’t-work? He had gone the round of all his friends, answered advertisements—even gone to a Labour Exchange!—in the hope of finding some decent kind of work. He had agonised because of his idleness, until he had sat down to write a book and found himself writing it.

Not one of her precious Family had offered to help him. Ottery had just stared vaguely at him when he had asked for his influence. Alban wouldn’t walk a yard to get him anything. Not all the crowd in Joyce’s set had put anything in his way, though some of them pulled the social wires. He must have a straight talk with Joyce before the day was out. He must put himself right with her and bring her back to him. Impossible that things should go on in this way—this frightful, soul-destroying way.

So he brooded, and was late for dinner, and received the rebuke of Lady Ottery’s frigid glance.

XXVII

There were several people from the neighbourhood to dinner, and Bertram was amused to find himself next to Miss Heathcote, the Vicar’s daughter, whom he had met in Izzard’s oddity shop. They talked a little about that, and the girl seemed nervous of owning friendship at this table with a man who kept a shop.

“Lady Ottery doesn’t approve of such new-fashioned ways,” she whispered, glancing with amusement, and a little fear, at the handsome lady at the head of the table.

Bertram was less amused to see General Bellasis sitting next to Lady Ottery, and Kenneth Murless on the other side of Joyce. They had both come down for Easter as old friends of the Bellairs family. The conversation at their end of the table seemed to be about the Strike. General Bellasis, handsome and florid as ever, was doing most of the talking. Bertram heard only bits of sentences, disconnected threads of his discourse.

“Serious challenge to Government authority. . . . War against Law and Order. . . . We must knock the stuffing out of Labour! . . . Rank Bolshevism!”

The Heathcote girl on his left was prattling about a play she had seen in London—one of Galsworthy’s. Jolly good! Very daring, though. Her father was shocked when she told him the plot. Parents were so easily shocked these days. They didn’t realise the difference war had made to the outlook of women. Everything was discussed. The realities of life and death. Marriage.

Bertram endeavoured to play up to her remarks, but his glance kept wandering back to Joyce.

She wore an evening frock of white silk, as simple as a child’s, with a necklace of pearls, and in this old dining-room, with its panelled walls and timbered roof and high-backed chairs, looked in her rightful place. She belonged to the house. The house belonged to her, not in timber and stone, but in spiritual heritage. She was Joyce Bellairs of Holme Ottery. The son of an Irish lawyer had no right to her. She belonged to a different stock. She’d been bred by centuries of “selection.” Bertram was but a clodhopper to this child of Caste. So he thought, gloomily.

Kenneth Murless was more of her kind. He too belonged to a Family—the Murlesses of Warwick, with a genealogical tree intertwined with branches of the Bellairs, Charringtons, D’Abernons, Courthopes, Grevilles—all the proud old stock. He kept Joyce amused at this dinner table, as he always amused her, with absurd fantasies, word-play, anecdotes, satirical verse, social caricatures, all charmingly told, lightly, with ease, in a way unaffectedly, though he had conceit.

Bertram observed him closely. Never by a single word had Murless been uncivil, in the slightest degree discourteous, in his relations with Bertram, though he must have been aware of jealousy. Once or twice he went out of his way at this dinner to smile at Bertram, though he was too far down the long table to bring him into his conversation. Once he raised his wine glass in friendly salute. Bertram answered it, with a sudden sense of compunction for his habitual sulkiness with Kenneth Murless. He was a gentleman, and more genial than Alban Bellairs.

Lady Ottery rose from her high-backed chair, with her usual dignity. Dinner, even at home, was to her something of a ritual.

“Don’t talk too long, Ottery,” she said to her husband. “Some of us would like a game of bridge.”

Lord Ottery hated to be hurried over dinner, and said so. Besides, Bellasis was talking about his plans.

“I want to hear them,” said Joyce. “I’ll join you later, Mother.”

She lit a cigarette, and sat on the arm of one of the oak chairs, and took a sip out of Kenneth’s wine glass.

General Bellasis shifted his chair round, so that he faced the little group left at table—Lord Ottery, Alban, Kenneth, Bertram, and Joyce. He had told them most of what the Government had in mind. There was no doubt the Strike was a threat to the whole authority of Parliament, to the social order of England. The men’s leaders were fairly sound, he thought, moderate in their ideas, on the whole. But behind them was a real revolutionary agitation. Underneath, undoubtedly, a lot of dirty work was going on by paid agents with foreign gold. Bolshevists, pure and simple.

“Say rather, impure and artful!” said Kenneth Murless.

General Bellasis laughed, and waved his cigar at the interruption.

His point was that the time had come when Labour had given them the chance for a straight fight. They had challenged “Us.”

“Meaning the Government?” asked Alban.

“Meaning the Decent Crowd,” said the General. “Anybody with a stake in the country, including the unfortunate Middle Classes. All of us. Well, we accept the challenge. We’re ready to knock hell out of them.”

Lord Ottery expressed his view. He did not believe in arranging a clash. He always avoided clashes, if possible. The history of England, he thought, was in the main the successful avoidance of the real issues. That was our genius.

“I agree,” said Bellasis, in a tone which showed clearly his disagreement. “But this clash has got to come. It’s inevitable. We must get the working classes back to their kennels. Back to cheap labour. Back to discipline. Otherwise we’re done.”

“What’s your plan?” asked Alban.

“Yes, that’s the point,” said Ottery. “Has the Government thought out a plan? I doubt it. They never think out any plan.”

“This is all taped out,” said General Bellasis. “The War Office has been working it out.”

Lord Ottery mumbled something to the effect that this didn’t inspire him with confidence.

General Bellasis laughed again, rather irritably.

“Oh, of course the War Office gets a lot of kicks. But some of us aren’t such fools as we look.”

“Nobody would accuse you of _looking_ a fool, Bellasis,” remarked Ottery in a kindly way, and he stared vaguely at Kenneth Murless because that young man laughed loudly at the remark, and even Joyce gave a little squeal of protest.

It seemed, after other conversational interruptions, that the War Office plan, in the event of a General Strike was to recruit a Defence Corps, divided into various districts of England. Ex-officers and men would be invited to join for a three months’ service. They would take over the transport system, work the railways, organise lorry columns, ensure the vital supplies of material life, meat, milk, bread, and so on, and defeat the purpose of the strikers, which was to strangle national industry and activity. If there were any attempts at violence, intimidation, picketing, the Defence Corps would be ordered to do their duty, relentlessly.

“Fire on the mob?” asked Lord Ottery.

“Fire on any ruffian, or body of ruffians, endeavouring to hold up national life.”

“Naturally,” said Alban.

“I hope there’ll be a lot of shooting,” said Joyce, heatedly. “A good opportunity to get rid of our Bolshevists.”

Bertram stiffened uneasily in his chair, and thought of making a protest, but decided to keep his thoughts to himself. He hated Joyce to speak like that. He was thinking of Huggett, and his “Comrades of the Great War” in the slums of London and other great cities, so many of them out-of-work, despairing, rather bitter, but not Bolshevists. This new Defence Corps might not be quick at distinguishing between honest men and ruffians. Some chance shot, any hooligan fool, might lead to bloodshed of a terrible kind. This plan was to divide the nation into two classes. It might come perilously near to civil war. He agreed with old Ottery. Better avoid the clash. Better not to ask for it. He wished Joyce had not spoken those words.

General Bellasis had swung further round in his chair, and now faced Bertram with a friendly smile.

“Joyce tells me you want a job, Pollard? If that’s so, I can put something in your way. How would it suit you to help me run this show, as Deputy Director for the South Coast?”

Bertram felt a sudden chill down his spine. He was conscious that all eyes were turned upon him, Joyce’s, Alban’s, Kenneth’s, Lord Ottery’s. He was aware that they expected him to look “pleased,” eager to accept this offer.

“Bertram—how splendid!” said Joyce. “A chance at last!”

“What exactly does the ‘show’ mean?” asked Bertram.

He endeavoured to show polite interest, but his voice was hostile, in spite of his effort.

General Bellasis explained that it would mean a recruiting campaign, then a certain amount of drill, to “lick the men into shape”—and then the business of defensive patrols.

“Military police work?”

General Bellasis said “Exactly!” and added his opinion that it was a splendid opportunity for Bertram. It would bring him under the eye of the Government—very useful—make him a public character of some importance, and lead undoubtedly to a good place later on in some Government department. As Director of Home Defence, he could appoint any man he liked for the post, and he had the greatest pleasure in offering it to Bertram.

The offer was handsomely made, in the General’s best style of good fellow and gallant soldier. It was received with a chorus of congratulations from Joyce, Alban, and Kenneth, with an expression of approval from Lord Ottery.

“It’ll suit Bertram down to the ground,” said Joyce. “He knows how to handle men, I will say that for him!”

She was a little excited, and slipped off the arm of her oak chair, standing with her hands clasping its high back, and looking at Bertram.

“Good for you, Bertram!” said Kenneth Murless. “I’m glad for Joyce’s sake as well as yours. I can think of no better stepping stone to a sure place.”

Alban concurred.

“An admirable post. Service to the country. Good pay, not bad fun.”

Lord Ottery agreed. He thought it “Very handsome of the General.”

Joyce was watching her husband. She could read his face better than the others. She saw how first he flushed and then paled a little, while a tuck gathered his forehead into a frown. He was thinking hard, and not certain of his answer.

“Exceedingly kind of you, General,” he said, slowly. “Many thanks. But somehow, I don’t like the job.”

There was silence for a moment or two in the big dining room where many generations of Bellairs had sat at table, discussing events of history, more unfortunate than this, quarrelling, laughing, feasting, drinking.

“You don’t like the job?”

General Bellasis smiled, not good-humouredly.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Alban, icily.

“Tell us!” said Kenneth Murless, raising his eyebrows in a quizzical way.

Joyce spoke more emotionally.

“Bertram! Pull yourself together. If you don’t accept this—”

The last words seemed to hold a threat.

Bertram thrust his hands into the pockets of his dinner jacket, and leaned forward in his chair, staring at the carpet.

“It’s like this—” he said, groping for the right words; “I don’t like to see people of our class—your class, if you like!—organising their forces to beat down poor devils who want to keep up a decent standard of life, after a war they helped to win. I’ve looked into the question of this Strike. It’s really a Lock-out by the masters—but, anyhow, the men are being offered wages which aren’t quite good enough, they think. Not a fair deal for men who helped to save England. They may be wrong, of course, but that’s how it seems to them. This Defence Force—it sounds all right. I’m ready to serve on the side of law and order. But it looks like a Snob Force for giving Hell to working-men who want a living wage. Aristocracy versus Democracy. Middle Classes against the Mob. Yes! If necessary, I quite agree. But I fought _with_ the Mob. I saw it going over the top on mornings of battle. I walked through its dead bodies afterwards. I learnt to know its spirit, and liked it, on the whole. I’d hate to shoot down fellows who used to salute me in the trenches, and whom I saluted as the salt of England. Of course order must be kept. I understand that. No body of men must be allowed to blackmail a nation, and there may be a bit of that in the minds of the Labour leaders. But there seems to be an idea—General Bellasis hinted at something of the sort—that a little blood-letting wouldn’t be a bad thing. Some idea of forcing the clash, so as to teach Labour a lesson, with machine-guns, and so on. I know something about machine-guns. I served ’em in the Great War. I’m not inclined to turn them against my own men—unless Hell breaks loose. . . . And I don’t think Hell is going to happen. It’s a newspaper scare, and nothing else. It’s not going to happen, unless it’s made to happen. I’ll see myself damned before I help to make it. . . . Do you see my point, General?”