perceived, an instinctive suppression in our circle that we
shouldn't be more than vague about our political ideals. It had
almost become part of my morality to respect this convention. It
was understood we were all working hard, and keeping ourselves fit,
tremendously fit, under Altiora's inspiration, Pro Bono Publico.
Bunting Harblow had his under-secretaryship, and Lewis was on the
verge of the Cabinet, and these things we considered to be in the
nature of confirmations… It added to tbe discomfort of the
situation that these plunging enquiries were being made in the
presence of our wives.
The rebel section of our party forced the talk.
Edward Crampton was presently declaring-I forget in what relation:
"The country is with us."
My long-controlled hatred of the Cramptons' stereotyped phrases
about the Country and the House got the better of me. I showed my
cloven hoof to my friends for the first time.
"We don't respect the Country as we used to do," I said. "We
haven't the same belief we used to have in the will of the people.
It's no good, Crampton, trying to keep that up. We Liberals know as
a matter of fact-nowadays every one knows-that the monster that
brought us into power has, among other deficiencies, no head. We've
got to give it one-if possible with brains and a will. That lies
in the future. For the present if the country is with us, it means
merely that we happen to have hold of its tether."
Lewis was shocked. A "mandate" from the Country was sacred to his
system of pretences.
Britten wasn't subdued by his first rebuff; presently he was at us
again. There were several attempts to check his outbreak of
interrogation; I remember the Cramptons asked questions about the
welfare of various cousins of Lewis who were unknown to the rest of
us, and Margaret tried to engage Britten in a sympathetic discussion
of the Arts and Crafts exhibition. But Britten and Esmeer were
persistent, Mrs. Millingham was mischievous, and in the end our
rising hopes of Young Liberalism took to their thickets for good,
while we talked all over them of the prevalent vacuity of political
intentions. Margaret was perplexed by me. It is only now I
perceive just how perplexing I must have been. "Of course, she said
with that faint stress of apprehension in her eyes, one must have
aims." And, "it isn't always easy to put everything into phrases."
"Don't be long," said Mrs. Edward Crampton to her hsuband as the
wives trooped out. And afterwards when we went upstairs I had an
indefinable persuasion that the ladies had been criticising
Britten's share in our talk in an altogether unfavourable spirit.
Mrs. Edward evidently thought him aggressive and impertinent, and
Margaret with a quiet firmness that brooked no resistance, took him
at once into a corner and showed him Italian photographs by Coburn.
We dispersed early.
I walked with Britten along the Chelsea back streets towards
Battersea Bridge-he lodged on the south side.
"Mrs. Millingham's a dear," he began.
"She's a dear."
"I liked her demand for a hansom because a four-wheeler was too
safe."
"She was worked up," I said. "She's a woman of faultless character,
but her instincts, as Altiora would say, are anarchistic-when she
gives them a chance."
"So she takes it out in hansom cabs."
"Hansom cabs."
"She's wise," said Britten…
"I hope, Remington," he went on after a pause, "I didn't rag your
other guests too much. I've a sort of feeling at moments-
Remington, those chaps are so infernally not-not bloody. It's part
of a man's duty sometimes at least to eat red beef and get drunk.
How is he to understand government if he doesn't? It scares me to
think of your lot-by a sort of misapprehension-being in power. A
kind of neuralgia in the head, by way of government. I don't
understand where YOU come in. Those others-they've no lusts.
Their ideal is anaemia. You and I, we had at least a lust to take
hold of life and make something of it. They-they want to take hold
of life and make nothing of it. They want to cut out all the
stimulants. Just as though life was anything else but a reaction to
stimulation!"…
He began to talk of his own life. He had had ill-fortune through
most of it. He was poor and unsuccessful, and a girl he had been
very fond of had been attacked and killed by a horse in a field in a
very horrible manner. These things had wounded and tortured him,
but they hadn't broken him. They had, it seemed to me, made a kind
of crippled and ugly demigod of him. He was, I began to perceive,
so much better than I had any right to expect. At first I had been
rather struck by his unkempt look, and it made my reaction all the
stronger. There was about him something, a kind of raw and bleeding
faith in the deep things of life, that stirred me profoundly as he
showed it. My set of people had irritated him and disappointed him.
I discovered at his touch how they irritated him. He reproached me
boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I
walked in my sleek tall neatness beside his rather old coat, his
rather battered hat, his sturdier shorter shape, and listened to his
denunciations of our self-satisfied New Liberalism and
Progressivism.
"It has the same relation to progress-the reality of progress-that
the things they paint on door panels in the suburbs have to art and
beauty. There's a sort of filiation… Your Altiora's just the
political equivalent of the ladies who sell traced cloth for
embroidery; she's a dealer in Refined Social Reform for the Parlour.
The real progress, Remington, is a graver thing and a painfuller
thing and a slower thing altogether. Look! THAT"-and he pointed
to where under a boarding in the light of a gas lamp a dingy
prostitute stood lurking-" was in Babylon and Nineveh. Your little
lot make believe there won't be anything of the sort after this
Parliament! They're going to vanish at a few top notes from Altiora
Bailey! Remington!-it's foolery. It's prigs at play. It's make-
believe, make-believe! Your people there haven't got hold of
things, aren't beginning to get hold of things, don't know anything
of life at all, shirk life, avoid life, get in little bright clean
rooms and talk big over your bumpers of lemonade while the Night
goes by outside-untouched. Those Crampton fools slink by all
this,"-he waved at the woman again-"pretend it doesn't exist, or
is going to be banished root and branch by an Act to keep children