4 Books by Coningsby Dawson. Coningsby Dawson

selfish people how to become decent through the fine humanity of sharing. Time-servers learnt how to get up off their bellies and confront misfortune with a laugh. I don't know whether I make myself clear; perhaps one had to be a part of the great game to understand its lessons. That we do understand them is the reward of those who have survived. We've come back to you as uncomfortable fellows; we shall be much more uncomfortable before we're satisfied. We intend to fight for the same equalities in peace that you sent us out to fight for in war. You asked me what this particular war has created; it has created a complete new set of social and spiritual values. It's done away with the uncharity of caste."

      During his last words he had been gazing across the table at Tabs with a fearless challenge, as much as to say, "That's who I am. Now expose me."

      But Tabs was remembering the coster's reason for not having dragged him into the police-courts, "Served in the ranks, did yer? Then you and me was pals out there!" Braithwaite, whether he knew it or not, had been doing a piece of special pleading for himself. He and Braithwaite, whatever they might be now, had been pals out there. Silently Tabs had been thinking while he had been listening, "You're right and I'm with you. I'd be with you still more if you'd only live up to your standards by sticking to Ann."

      It was Sir Tobias who took the offensive. The soup-plates had been removed and the fish-course had not yet been served. He had the leisure to talk. "You men who have been in the Army," he said testily, "especially those of you who have gained your promotion rapidly, always speak as if the rest of us had been receivers of stolen goods until you put on uniforms. Armies are composed of youth; for most of you it was the first time you had tasted authority. It's gone to your heads; you want to brush experience aside and dragoon the older world into new formations. You, who were civilians yourselves, have come back despising us civilians; your contempt is three-parts fear lest you'll fail, as you failed before, in the old civilian competitive struggle. You talk about the virtues war has taught; let's grant them and grant them gratefully--they saved us from destruction. But what about the frantic recklessness it encouraged, the cheap views of bodily chastity, the desperate insistence on momentary happiness?" At the mention of bodily chastity, Lady Beddow from the other end of the table had stuttered a "tut, tut!" Her husband dodged it, as a boy might dodge a wheelbarrow upset in his path. Without shifting his glance he ran on. "A complete new set of social and spiritual values! Rubbish! War places an excessive premium on merely brutal qualities--muscle, bone, sinew, all the paraphernalia of physical endurance. What use has it got for old fellows of intellectual attainments like myself? It takes the greatest poet, singer, painter, violinist; all it can do with him is to thrust a rifle into his hands. All brains look alike, Michael Angelo's or a rag-picker's, when they're spattered in the mud of a trench. Take Lord Taborley here, for instance--all that military stupidity could do with him was to keep him in the ranks for two years. You can't make me believe in your complete new set of social and spiritual values. A complete unrest and insubordination to time-honored moralities is the legacy of war."

      Having delivered himself, he tucked his napkin tighter into his waistcoat and attacked the fish-course, as though by this display of gastronomic energy he could somehow strengthen his argument.

      It was clear to Tabs that behind all that Sir Tobias had been saying lay his misery over Maisie and Adair. He saw the world always in the personal equation.

      "I agree with most of your statements," the General blundered on. "And yet you're wrong. You miss something. I think it's the vision of the stupendous heroism. You never saw it; you don't want to see it. That you never saw it we can understand; but that you shouldn't want to see it, makes us see red. It was something that we did for you, and you take it all for granted. You cheered us and jeered us into going because you were frightened. You handed us white feathers if we hesitated. You dragged us from our jobs and very often we were poor men, who had no such financial security as was yours. You promised that if we would share our lives with you, you'd go fifty-fifty with us on your financial security. There wasn't time to have deeds of agreement drawn up; we took you at your word. And what a lie it was! Why, I passed a blinded officer in Regent Street to-day peddling shoe-laces. The day before a jobless soldier threw himself beneath a train and his last words were, 'Over the top and the best of luck.' There's a Colonel I see by to-night's paper who's gone back to being a policeman. If you see a man in uniform to-day, your unspoken thought is, 'For God's sake take it off.' I tell you it's all wrong. It's that kind of ingratitude that leads to revolution. You talk about the brutality of war; it's not a patch on the brutality of peace. You treated men's lives as yours while the danger lasted, but you insist that your possessions are your own now that it's been averted."

      He took a breath and glanced round.

      Tabs was nodding unconscious approval. Terry's face reflected the fire of his own passionate indignation and enthusiasm. The butler in the shadows had turned his back non-committally and was making a pretense of fiddling with the next course. Lady Beddow sat very upright and startled, grasping her knife and fork as though they helped to support her. The only person who was still doing justice to the meal was the worn-out version of Shakespeare, who was responsible for the storm.

      The silence seemed to call for a final climax. The ex-valet cleared his throat. And it was to his ex-valet that Tabs listened; he had forgotten the General. It was as though the grimness of reality had interrupted a piece of play-acting. There was less heat in Braithwaite's voice now and more reproach. "You said nothing about caste in those days, when you hurried us to the shambles. You promised us---- What was it that you promised us?"

      "A kingdom round the corner," Tabs suggested. The next minute he felt Terry's warm little hand clinging to his own beneath the tablecloth.

      Braithwaite stared at Tabs to see whether he were jesting; then smiled in relieved friendship at this proof of comradeship from an unexpected quarter. "Yes, perhaps it was that--a future kindliness, where we should all be men together, neither free nor bond." Then again to his host, "You sent us out there where everything was censored. Scarcely a whisper of the truth reached you. The very war-correspondents were instructed to delete the horror and to write nothing that would disturb your calm. We've come back, what are left of us; we think you ought to know what really happened. It isn't that we take much pleasure in telling you, but we think that if you knew, you might be persuaded to keep at least some of your promises. And what do you do? You reassert your privilege to despise us. You stuff your fingers in your ears and talk about caste, and forgetting the war, and getting back to work. Sir Tobias, I'm afraid I'm being far too personal, but you're a sample of millions who weren't there. You're living in a totally altered world of whose very existence you're content to be unaware. Your complacency drives men like myself to the point of madness. We hold that you have no right to be complacent until the bill you put your hand to has been settled. I don't know how Lord Taborley feels; he's not expressed----"

      "Tabs feels exactly the way you do and so do I." It was Terry speaking, like the shrill courage of a bugle answering the slow bass of a trumpet-call. "We're the world that purchased victory--we three, while the rest of the world sat back. It was men like you two who got gassed, and wrenched, and tortured, and girls like myself who patched you up and flirted with you so that we might send you back to the Front cheery--girls like myself who hadn't known love, or children, or anything but a nursery sort of happiness. We three and people like us understand, because we paid the price together."

      "Really, Terry, I must confess there are times when you shock me." As Lady Beddow rose from her seat, she was the picture of disapproval. From the door, which the butler held open for her, she glanced back. "I think this discussion has gone _very_ far."

      As she swept out, she called across her shoulder, as one might call to a pet dog, "Come, Terry."

      VII

      But Terry did not come; she sat on tightly, just as if she were a man among men. Until coffee had been served and the room was free from servants, there was a pretense at small-talk in which Sir Tobias did not join. He crouched moodily in his chair, an unlighted cigar between his fingers, looking very old and somehow deserted. With the instinctive tenderness which she always showed when she knew that she had hurt, Terry got up and went to him. She linked her arms about his