Harding, who read no paper but the _Morning Post_, said that as far as he was concerned he would never speak to a German again in his life. He would like to see the whole race exterminated. But he was afraid of the Socialists with their pestilential doctrine of "brotherhood of man." Lloyd George also filled him with the gravest misgivings.
Dr. Small's eyes twinkled at him: "There is the old caste that speaks. Tradition against the new world of ideas. Of course there will always be _that_ conflict.... That is a wonderful phrase, 'the pestilential doctrine of the brotherhood of man.' I must make a note of it."
"Shame oh you, doctor," said Fortune. "You are always jotting down notes about us. I shall find myself docketed as 'English gentleman, grade 3; full-blooded, inclined to obesity, humorous, strain of insanity due to in-breeding, rare.'"
Dr. Small laughed in a high treble, and then was serious.
"I'm noting down everything. My own psychology, which alarms me; facts, anecdotes, scenes, words. I want to find a law somewhere, the essential thing in human nature. After the war--if there is any afterwards--I want to search for a way out of the jungle. This jungle civilisation. There must be daylight somewhere for the human race."
"If you find it," said Brand earnestly, "tell me, doctor."
"I will," said Dr. Small, and I remembered that pledge afterwards, when he and Brand were together in a doomed city, trying to avert the doom, because of that impulse which urged them to find a little daylight beyond the darkness.
Young Clatworthy jerked his chair on the polished boards and looked anxiously at the Colonel, who was discoursing on the origins of art, religion, sex, the perception of form.
"All right, Cyril. I know you have got a rendezvous with some girl. Don't let us keep you from your career of infamy."
"As a matter of fact, sir, I met a sweet little thing yesterday----" Clatworthy knew that his reputation as an amorist did not displease the colonel, who was a romantic and loved youth.
In a gust of laughter the mess broke up. Charles Fortune and the colonel prepared for an orgy of Bach over the piano in the drawing-room of that house in Lille. Those who cared to listen might--or not, as they pleased. Brand and I went out into the streets, pitch-dark now, unlit by any glimmer of gas, and made our way to the convent where the girl Eileen O'Connor lodged. We passed a number of British soldiers in the Boulevard de la Liberté, wearing their steel hats and carrying their packs.