Dinny said passionately: ‘What I resent is that any worm will have the power to say what he pleases.’
Sir Lawrence nodded: ‘The greater the worm, the greater the power. But it’s not the worms we need bother about; it’s the people with ‘pride of English race’, and there are still a few about.’
‘Uncle, is there any way in which Wilfrid can show publicly that he’s not a coward?’
‘He did well in the war.’
‘Who remembers the war?’
‘Perhaps,’ muttered Sir Lawrence, ‘we could throw a bomb at his car in Piccadilly, so that he could look at it over the side and light a cigarette. I can’t think of anything more helpful.’
‘I saw Mr Muskham yesterday.’
‘Then you were at the Derby?’ He took a very little cigar from his pocket. ‘Jack takes the view that you are being victimized.’
‘Oh! Why can’t people leave one alone?’
‘Attractive nymphs are never left alone. Jack’s a misogynist.’
Dinny gave a little desperate laugh.
‘I suppose one’s troubles are funny.’
She got up and went to the window. It seemed to her that all the world was barking, like dogs at a cornered cat, and yet there was nothing in Mount Street but a van from the Express Dairy.
Chapter Twenty-two
JACK MUSKHAM occupied a bedroom at Burton’s Club when racing kept him overnight in town. Having read an account of the Derby in The Daily Phase, he turned the paperidly. The other features in ‘that rag’ were commonly of little interest to him. Its editing shocked his formalism, its news jarred his taste, its politics offended him by being so like his own. But his perusal was not perfunctory enough to prevent him from seeing the headline ‘Mr Desert’s Apostasy’. Reading the half column that followed it, he pushed the paper away and said: ‘That fellow must be stopped.’
Glorying in his yellow streak, was he, and taking that nice girl with him to Coventry! Hadn’t even the decency to avoid being seen with her in public on the very day when he was confessing himself as yellow as that rag!
In an age when tolerations and condonations seemed almost a disease, Jack Muskham knew and registered his own mind. He had disliked young Desert at first sight. The fellow’s name suited him! And to think that this nice girl, who, without any training, had made those shrewd remarks about the racehorse, was to have her life ruined by this yellow-livered young braggart! It was too much! If it hadn’t been for Lawrence, indeed, he would have done something about it before now. But there his mind stammered. What?… Here was the fellow publicly confessing his disgrace! An old dodge, that – taking the sting out of criticism! Making a virtue of necessity! Parading his desertion! That cock shouldn’t fight, if he had his way! But once more his mind stammered…. No outsider could interfere. And yet, unless there were some outward and visible sign condemning the fellow’s conduct, it would look as if nobody cared.
‘By George!’ he thought. ‘This Club, at least, can sit up and take notice. We don’t want rats in Burton’s!’
He brought the matter up in Committee meeting that very afternoon, and was astonished almost to consternation by the apathy with which it was received. Of the seven members present – the ‘Squire’, Wilfrid Bentworth, being in the Chair – four seemed to think it was a matter between young Desert and his conscience, and, besides, it looked like being a newspaper stunt. Times had changed since Lyall wrote that poem. One member went so far as to say he didn’t want to be bothered, he hadn’t read The Leopard, he didn’t know Desert, and he hated The Daily Phase.
‘So do I,’ said Jack Muskham, ‘but here’s the poem.’ He had sent out for it and spent an hour after lunch reading it. ‘Let me read you a bit. It’s poisonous.’
‘For heaven’s sake no, Jack!’
The fifth member, who had so far said nothing, supposed that if Muskham pressed it they must all read the thing.
‘I do press it.’
The ‘Squire’, hitherto square and silent, remarked: ‘The secretary will get copies and send them round to the Committee. Better send them, too, a copy of today’s Daily Phase. We’ll discuss it at the meeting next Friday. Now about this claret?’ And they moved to consideration of important matters.
It has been noticed that when a newspaper of a certain type lights on an incident which enables it at once to exhibit virtue and beat the drum of its own policy, it will exploit that incident, within the limits of the law of libel, without regard to the susceptibilities of individuals. Secured by the confession in Compson Grice’s letter, The Daily Phase made the most of its opportunity, and in the eight days intervening before the next Committee meeting gave the Committeemen little chance of professing ignorance or indifference. Everybody, indeed, was reading and talking about The Leopard and, on the morning of the adjourned meeting, The Daily Phase had a long allusive column on the extreme importance of British behaviour in the East. It had also a large-type advertisement. ‘The Leopard and other Poems, by Wilfrid Desert: published by Compson Grice: 40,000 copies sold: Third Large Impression ready.’