“No, my lady, that is not quite true. I have seen more envy and hatred amongst the upper class than amongst ourselves. We accepted the injustice of our social condition, and we got out of you all we could on the sly. We made fun of you, and often put you down as not quite so wise as you gave yourselves out to be. The last kitchen-maid of the Duchess of Southdown was very comical on that point. Whenever she heard the servants relating some new freak of her grace, or some funny incident that had happened in the drawing-room, she would invariably say, whilst she washed the dishes, ‘Leave them alone, they can’t ’elp it, they know no better.’ We ended by believing the girl had hit on the real cause of the aristocracy’s behaviour, and that their caprices and vagaries could only be put down to ignorance.”
“And you were right,” suddenly remarked Eva, “we wilfully ignored the fact that you had to start life from a different point from our own, and we were horrified at you not meeting us on our level. We accused you of inferiority and ignorance, but we never thought of blaming the conditions into which we had put you.”
“Ah! ma’am!” continued Temple, “I have heard terrible things said in the refined homes of the gentry; and in my presence, ladies have uttered ’orrible sentences. For instance about the war. I don’t myself understand politics, and I can’t tell if our Government was right or wrong; but there are the women, the children, the ruined home, and to my mind it did not seem quite right. I heard many ladies who came to have tea with your lordship dismiss the whole question with a wave of the hand: ‘It could not be helped; war would always be necessary.’ One lady actually said that she _loved_ war—surely that lady had never seen a battlefield. Another one remarked that ‘People who were not in favour of the war were not patriotic, and ought to be sent out of the country.’ You all drank your whisky and champagne in honour of England’s greater glory and prosperity; and we thought it a queer world in which glory had to be paid for so dearly, and prosperity acquired at the cost of precious lives.”
“Ah! but, you see, Temple, you were not a Colonial Secretary, nor were you a financier,” said Ronald Sinclair.