Читать книгу Old Wine and New - Warwick Deeping - Страница 20

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When Scarsdale heard how a part of London had given thanks to God on Armistice night he looked pained.

He and the man who had been on leave and who had shared in that solemn occasion, were sitting warming their hands at a Canadian stove in a hut somewhere in France. The hut was in darkness save for the stove, which, emitting a sombre glow, lit up the faces and the spread hands of the two men. Scarsdale’s nose looked huge. His gentle eyes stared. Almost they were frightened eyes, while the man behind them was refusing to be afraid.

He said—“But that’s not England. It can’t be.”

The other man lit a cigarette. He was red and good-natured and well-fleshed.

“A jolly big crowd of it, anyway, Bossy.”

“Well, natural enough, perhaps. People must let off steam. It’s the reaction,—after all these years.”

The other man seemed to give the stove a knowing smirk. He had enjoyed that particular show.

And Scarsdale sat and stared. His soft, brown eyes seemed to grow more prominent. He had thought of England as a country on its knees, silent and still and sacred. He had thought of women with tear-stained faces, women praying, women sitting in half darkness with their memories.

Piccadilly Circus!

No, England was not like that. He picked up a piece of wood and dropped it into the stove. He sacrificed to his own faith in humanity, and not to Baal.