"I am glad of that," he said in a perfectly even voice.
This was a turning of the tables; his conventionality was as obvious as hers; she silently noticed it and also passed on.
"Yes, that little patch-up with Jack was in my mind," she said; "but then, as I told you, we have privately settled to have no storms. No, the storm which I mean will be a bigger storm than that. On that subject Jack and I are quite agreed. I mean a national storm, a general upheaval. My goodness! some high towers and steeples will be smashed. And here we all go, meantime, dancing in the middle of the thunder-clouds, with the lightning, so to speak, playing about us."
They had emerged from the wooded walk on to the edge of the meadow bordering the river, and as Marie spoke she pointed across the field to the lawn visible beyond it, filled with gay figures, and bordered with the bright colour of the flower-beds, and set in the sombre green of the yew hedges. Jim followed her finger.
"Yes, assuredly we are dancing," he said. "But Sunday afternoon in the country is an innocuous sort of high-dress dance, isn't it?"
"Certainly; but if we dance all and every day we don't get on with our work. And in point of fact, Jim, all our dances are not very high-dress. No; the fact is we are going to the dogs as quick as ever we can. Money, money, money! That is a perfectly sound and legitimate cry if the means you adopt are those that increase wealth. But if I get a tip from a City man and speculate, I am merely snatching at what I want. Did you go to the Maxwells' the other night? I did, because we all do. That is what we all have come to; but it does not spell efficiency. We worship the golden calf, but instead of feeding it we try to cut little pieces off it."
"And Deborah was a prophetess before the Lord," said Jim. "Proceed, Deborah."
"I wish I were," said Marie. "Oh, you should hear the truth if I was! But, Jack, I must tell you, comes pretty near to being a prophet."
"Then you are the prophet's wife. Tell me what he says about it."
"Ah! he is a prophet in all but the one thing needful--I mean the fire and the burning. The prophet is like the phoenix; he is born from the ashes of a conflagration. In Jack's case all the message is there, but it is delivered--I don't know if it will mean anything to you, but personally I feel it--it is delivered out of cold lips. He needs the touch of the red-hot coal like Isaiah. Did you hear or read his speech last week about the Army Estimates? The First Secretary had given his statement in an apologetic kind of way, apparently wishing to conciliate the Opposition for the estimates being so high. The usual bickering over rounds of ammunition followed, and then Jack got up. Instead of apologizing for their being so high, he fell foul of his own chief for their being so low. He wanted to know why the autumn manoeuvres had been curtailed; he wanted to know why the experiments at Lydd had been abandoned in the middle; he wanted to know why the projected battery at Gibraltar had not been constructed: was it because of the expense? Why, in fact, they had not spent twice as much as they had."