She said, ’Anyhow, whatever the issue, the blood of the country is up.  We must fight the thing through.  It is splendid the way the upper classes are stepping into the breach on the railways.  I honour them.  I only hope they won’t all be murdered by these despicable brutes.’

That was the way she talked.  Plenty of people did, on both sides.  Especially, I am afraid, innocent women.  I suppose they were too innocent to talk about facts.

After all, the country didn’t have to fight the thing through for very long, and there were no murders, for the strike ended on October the 5th.

6

That same week, Jukie came in to see me.  Jukie doesn’t often come, because his evenings are apt to be full.  A parson’s work seems to be like a woman’s, never done.  From 8 to 11 p.m. seems to be one of the great times for doing it.  Probably Jukie had to cut some of it the evening he came round to Gough Square.

I always like to see Jukie.  He’s entertaining, and knows about such queer things, that none of the rest of us know, and believes such incredible things, that none of the rest of us believe.  Besides, like Arthur, he’s all out on his job.  He’s still touchingly full of faith, even after all that has and hasn’t happened, in a new heaven and a new earth.  He believed at that time that the League of Nations was going to kill war, that the Labour Party were going to kill industrial inequity, that the country was going to kill the Coalition Government, that the Christian Church was going to kill selfishness, that some one was going to kill Horatio Bottomley, and that we were all going to kill Potterism.  A perfect orgy of murders, as Arthur said, and all of them so improbable.

Jukie is curate in a slummy parish near Covent Garden.  He succeeds, apparently, in really being friends—­equal and intimate friends—­with a lot of the men in his parish, which is queer for a person of his kind.  I suppose he learnt how while he was in the ranks.  He deserved to; Arthur told me that he had persistently refused promotion because he wanted to go on living with the men; and that’s not a soft job, from all accounts, especially for a clean and over-fastidious person like Jukie.  Of course he’s very popular, because he’s very attractive.  And, of course, it’s spoilt him a little.  I never knew a very popular and attractive person who wasn’t a little spoilt by it; and in Jukie’s case it’s a pity, because he’s too good for that sort of thing, but it hasn’t really damaged him much.

He came in that evening saying, ‘Katherine, I want to speak to you,’ and sat down looking rather worried and solemn.  He plunged into it at once, as he always does.

‘Have you heard any talk lately about Gideon?’ he asked me.

‘Nothing more interesting than usual,’ I said.  ’But I seldom hear talk.  I don’t mix enough.  We don’t gossip much in the lab, you know.  I look to you and my Fleet Street friends for spicy personal items.  What’s the latest about Arthur?’