Lost trumpet

210
THE LOST TRUMPET
“And you, Mr. Marrot ?”
“I’d pull it down again. Blast the militarists and
financiers from the face of the earth. End classes and
masses and all their dirty squabblings for ever. I’d
establish the World-State. And in the process pay
back a few scores for those starved East Anglian
ancestors of mine.”
Pelagueya was remorseless : “And Aslaug ?”
“Really, I don’t know. . . . Well, if it was mine
I’d—I’d make it help me find my brother’s murderer
and have her punished.”
Pelagueya quivered a little by my side. It was
with suppressed mirth. She said, in a strangled
voice : “And you, Anton ?”
For some reason the atmosphere of our idle tea-
table talk had acquired an unwarranted intensity. I
felt more than a reluctance to speak : it was a posi¬
tive distaste. “There is still Mr. Quaritch.”
“So there is. What would you do, Mr. Novel¬
ist ?”
“Really, shock you awfully. I’m afraid, Princess.
Like Marrot, I’d burst your damn civilization to
fragments. But not to bring in the soviets. To bring
instead the days of primitive anarchy, when each man
stood for himself and took what he wanted of women
and wine and life and lust, and there were weaklings
in neither top-hats nor top-boots. I’d restore the
world of 25,000 b.c.”
“You’d find it difficult to write your dirty books
then,” interpolated Marrot, acidly.
“In your soviet state I’d write nothing else.”