THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

6

I would mark with a curious interest the stray country member of the

club up in town for a night or so. My mind would be busy with

speculations about him, about his home, his family, his reading, his

horizons, his innumerable fellows who didn't belong and never came

up. I would fill in the outline of him with memories of my uncle

and his Staffordshire neighbours. He was perhaps Alderman This or

Councillor That down there, a great man in his ward, J. P. within

seven miles of the boundary of the borough, and a God in his home.

Here he was nobody, and very shy, and either a little too arrogant

or a little too meek towards our very democratic mannered but still

livened waiters. Was he perhaps the backbone of England? He over-

ate himself lest he should appear mean, went through our Special

Dinner conscientiously, drank, unless he was teetotal, of unfamiliar

wines, and did his best, in spite of the rules, to tip. Afterwards,

in a state of flushed repletion, he would have old brandy, black

coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the name of temperance omit the

brandy and have rather more coffee, in the smoking-room. I would

sit and watch that stiff dignity of self-indulgence, and wonder,

wonder…

An infernal clairvoyance would come to me. I would have visions of

him in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying,

sometimes being ostentatiously "kind"; I would see him glance

furtively at his domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen

his upper lip against the reluctant, protesting business employee.

We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only

in rare moods of bitter penetration that we pierce down to the baser

lusts, the viler shames, the everlasting lying and muddle-headed

self-justification of the dull.

I would turn my eyes down the crowded room and see others of him and

others. What did he think he was up to? Did he for a moment

realise that his presence under that ceramic glory of a ceiling with

me meant, if it had any rational meaning at all, that we were

jointly doing something with the nation and the empire and

mankind?… How on earth could any one get hold of him, make

any noble use of him? He didn't read beyond his newspaper. He

never thought, but only followed imaginings in his heart. He never

discussed. At the first hint of discussion his temper gave way.

He was, I knew, a deep, thinly-covered tank of resentments and

quite irrational moral rages. Yet withal I would have to resist

an impulse to go over to him and nudge him and say to him, "Look

here! What indeed do you think we are doing with the nation and

the empire and mankind? You know-MANKIND!"

I wonder what reply I should have got.

So far as any average could be struck and so far as any backbone

could be located, it seemed to me that this silent, shy, replete,

sub-angry, middle-class sentimentalist was in his endless species

and varieties and dialects the backbone of our party. So far as I

could be considered as representing anything in the House, I

pretended to sit for the elements of HIM…