Читать книгу Wintersmoon онлайн

8 страница из 136

Remained then the Aristocrats—the Mossops, the Darrants, the Chichesters, the Medleys, the Weddons. He had once said of them, "I take my hat off to them. All those quiet decorous people, poor as mice many of them, standing aside altogether from any movements or war-cries of the day, living in their quiet little houses or their empty big ones, clever some of them, charitable all of them, but never asserting their position or estimating it. They never look about them and see where they are. They've no need to. They're just there."

He didn't remember, of course, that he had ever said that, but it was what he still at this day, twenty-two years later, felt. And they were of infinitely more importance now than they had been then. They were all—positively all—that was left of the old Aristocracy of England, that Class and that Creed that, whether for good or ill, had meant a great deal in the world's history. They were (he couldn't as yet be sure but he fancied that he felt it in the air about him) engaged now in a really desperate conflict. This might be the last phase of their Power, or it might lead through victory to a new phase of Power, greater than any they had yet known. If they were as poor as mice then, twenty-two years ago, they were, they must be, a great deal poorer than any reasonably fortunate mouse now. He fancied that he could see something of that too as he looked about him. But they would say nothing at all about it. They would have, above everything else, their dignity and self-respect, qualities that the Democrats had lost long ago.