“This isn’t the time to fool yourself,” I cried. “If ever there was a time to keep your head—”
“Are you keeping yours?” said Roy quietly. He pointed to the mirror behind us. His face was sombre, mine was white with anger. I had lost my temper altogether. I accused him of being overwhelmed by his success in Berlin, by the flattery and attentions.
“Not fair,” said Roy. “You’ve forgotten that you used to know me. Haven’t you?”
Out of doors, as we walked to the Adlon, the night was sullen. The mercury-vapour lamps shone livid on the streets and on the lowering clouds. We made our way beneath them, and I recovered myself a little. Partly from policy: it was not good to let a man like Schäder see us shaken. But much more because of that remark of Roy’s: “You used to know me”. He had said it without a trace of reproach. Deeper than any quarrel, we knew each other. Walking in the frosty night, I felt a pang of intolerable sorrow.
At the hotel, we were shown into a private room, warm, glowing, soft-carpeted, the table glittering with linen, silver, and glass. Houston Eggar had decided that the party would not harm his prospects; he gave us his tough, cheerful greeting, and talked to us and Joan in a manner that was masculine, assertive, anxious to make an impression, both on the niece of Lord Boscastle and on a comely woman. He had also noted me down as potentially useful — not useful enough to make him fix a lunch during my remaining days in Berlin, but quite worth his trouble to say with matey heartiness that we must “get together soon”. I had a soft spot for Eggar. There was something very simple and humble about his constant, untiring, matter-of-fact ambitiousness. Incidentally, he was only a counsellor at forty-five: he had still to make up for lost time.
Joan said to Roy: “Are you better? You look very tired.”
“Just so,” said Roy. “Through listening to Lewis. He gets more eloquent.”
“You shouldn’t have got up. It’s stupid of you.”
“He could talk to me in bed.”
Joan laughed. His solemn expression had always melted her. For the moment, she was happy to be near him, on any terms.
Servants flung open the door, and Schäder and Ammatter came in. Roy introduced each of us: Schäder spoke good English, though his accent was strange: in an efficient, workmanlike and courteous fashion, he discovered exactly how much German we each possessed.
“We shall speak English then,” said Schäder. “Perhaps we find difficulties. Then Roy shall translate and help us.”
This left Ammatter out of the conversation for most of the dinner. But he accepted the position in a flood of what appeared to be voluble and deferential compliments. It was interesting to notice his excessive deference to Schäder. Ammatter was, as I had seen in Cambridge, a tricky, round-faced, cunning, fluid-natured man, very much on the make. But I was familiar with academic persons on the make, and I thought that, even allowing for his temperament, his obsequiousness before official power marked a real difference in tradition. At the college, Roy and I were used to eminent politicians and civil servants coming down for the weekend; the connection in England between colleges such as ours and the official world was very close; perhaps because it was so close, the visitors did not receive elaborate respect, but instead were liable to be snubbed caustically by old Winslow.
Ammatter made up unashamedly to Schäder, who took very little notice of him. Schäder said that it was late, asked us whether, as soon as we had finished a first drink, we would not like to begin dinner. He took Joan to the table, and I watched him stoop over her chair: he had come into more power than the rest of us had ever dreamed of. I might not meet again anyone who possessed such power.
He was, as Roy had said, in the early thirties. His face was lined and mature, but he still looked young. His forehead was square, furrowed and massive, and there was nearly a straight line from temple to chin, so that the whole of his unusual, strong, intelligent face made up a triangle. His hair was curly, untidy in a youthful fashion; he seemed tough and muscular. It was the kind of physical make-up one does not often find in “intellectual” people, though I knew one or two business men who gave the same impression of vigour, alertness and activity.
As he presided over the dinner, his manners were pleasant, sometimes rather over-elaborate. He was the son of a bank clerk and in his rush to power he had, as it were, invented a form of manners for himself. And he showed one aching cavity of a man who had worked unremittingly hard, who had attained great responsibility early, who had never had time to play. He was getting married in a month, and he talked about it with the naïve exaggerated trenchancy of a very young man. He was a little afraid.
I thought that he knew nothing of women. It flashed out once that he envied Roy his loves. As a rule, his attitude to Roy was comradely, half-contemptuous, half-admiring. He had a kind of amused wonder that Roy showed no taste for place or glory. With pressing friendliness, he wanted Roy to cut a figure in the limelight. If nowhere else, then he should get all the academic honours — and Schäder asked Ammatter sharply when the university would do something for Roy.
Dinner went on. Schäder passed some elaborate compliments to Joan: he was interested, hotly interested like a young man, in her feeling for Roy. Then he called himself back to duty, and addressed me: “Roy has told me, Mr Eliot, that you are what we call a social democrat?”
“Yes.”
Schäder was regarding me intently with large eyes in which there showed abnormally little white: they were eyes dominating, pertinacious, astute. He grinned.
“We found here that the social democrats gave us little trouble. We thought they were nice harmless people.”
“Yes,” I said. “We noticed that.”
Roy spoke to Schäder.
“Don’t think that Eliot is always orthodox and harmless. His politics are the only burgerlich thing about him. I can never understand why he should be such an old burger about politics. Safe in the middle of the road.”
“I am sure,” said Schäder with firm politeness, “that I shall find much in common with Mr Eliot.”
It was clear that I had to do the talking. Eggar was too cautious to enter the contest; he made an attempt to steer us away to placid subjects, such as the Davis Cup. Roy gave him a smile of extreme diablerie, as though whispering the letters “CMG”. It was left to me to stand against Schäder, and in fact I was glad to. It was a relief after the day with Roy. I was completely in control of my temper now. Joan was an ally, backing me up staunchly at each turn of the conflict. I had never felt her approve of me before.
First Schäder tried me out by reflecting on the machinery of government. What did I think about the way governments must develop — not morally, that should not enter between us, said Schäder, but technically? Did I realise the difference that organised science must mean? Two hundred years ago determined citizens with muskets were almost as good as the King’s armies. Now the apparatus is so much more complex. A central government which can rely on its armed forces is able to stay in power forever. “So far as I can see, Mr Eliot, revolution is impossible from now on — unless it starts among those who hold the power. Will you tell me if I am wrong?”
I thought he was right, appallingly right: it was one of the sinister facts of the twentieth century scene. He went on to tell me his views about what the central government could and must control, and how it must operate. He knew it inside out; there was no more sign of the young man unaccustomed to society, timid with women; he was a born manager of men, and he had already had years of experience. Although he was a minister, he did much work that in England would have been done by his permanent secretary: as a matter of fact, he seemed to do a considerable amount of actual executive work, which in an English department would never have reached the higher civil servants, let alone the minister. It had its disadvantages, but I thought it gave him a closer feel of his job. He ran his department rather as an acquaintance of mine, a gifted English industrialist, ran his business. It was the general practice of the régime; sometimes it made for confusion, particularly (as Schäder straightforwardly admitted) when the party officials he had introduced as his own staff got across the old, regular, German civil service. He made another admission: they were finding it hard to collect enough men who could be trained into administrators, high or low. “That may set a limit to the work a government can do, Mr Eliot. And we are an efficient race. If you plan your society, you will find this difficulty much greater — for you educate such a small fraction of your population. Also, forgive me, I do not think you are very efficient.”