"Rum chap, you are!" Gilbert said to Henry in a low voice.

3

"You see," said Roger, "my notion is to restore the prestige of the Tories. Somehow, they've let themselves get the reputation of being consciously heartless. The Liberals go about proclaiming that they are the friends of the poor, and the inference is that the Tories are the friends of the rich!"

"So they are," said Ninian.

"So are the Liberals!" said Roger.

"So's everybody!" said Gilbert.

"But the Tories aren't culpably the friends of the rich," Roger continued. "I mean, they don't go into parliament with the intention of exploiting poor men for the benefit of rich men. It isn't true that they are indifferent to the fate of poor men; but they have allowed the Liberals to give them that character. I've always said that the Tories have the courage of the Liberals' convictions!..."

Gilbert lay back on the floor with his arms under his head. "I remember the first time you said that. It was in the Union!" he exclaimed.

"I shall say it again in the House some day," Roger retorted. "I'm not trying to be funny when I say that. I think the history of the Tory Party shows very plainly that the Tories have done very admirable things for the working-people: Factory Acts and Housing schemes and Workmen's Compensation Acts. Well, I want the Tory Party to remember that it is the custodian of the decency of England. It isn't decent that there should be hungry children and unemployed men and badly-housed families.

That kind of thing is intolerable to a gentleman, and a Tory is a gentleman. It seems to me inconceivable that a Tory should be willing to make money by cheating a child out of a meal ... but there are plenty of Liberals who do that. And I'm against all this legislation which makes some public authority do things for people which they ought to be doing for themselves. I mean, I hate the notion of the State feeding hungry school-children because the parents cannot afford to feed them, when the proper thing to do is to see that the parents are paid enough for their work to enable them to feed their children themselves. I suppose I'm sloppy ... the Fabians used to say so at Cambridge ... but I prefer the spectacle of a family round its own table to the spectacle of a crowd of a.s.sorted youngsters round a munic.i.p.al school table! And I don't think we're getting the most out of our people! Just think of the millions of men and women in this country who really do not earn more than their keep! That isn't good enough. If you can only just keep yourself going, then you've no right to go ... except to h.e.l.l as quickly as possible. My idea is that we waste potentialities at present, not by squandering them, but by never using them. All those poor people, for example, how do we know that some of them, if given an opportunity, would not be amazingly worth while! There must be a great deal of brain-power simply chucked away or misused. I know that lots of people believe that men of genius work their way up to their level no matter how low down they begin, but I doubt that, and anyhow I'm not talking of geniuses ... I'm talking of the average clever man ... there must be men of good average quality lost in slums because none of us have taken the trouble to clear the ground for them. And the ground has to be cleared! You can't grow wheat on a sour soil. I often think when I see some hooligan brought into Court that, given a real chance, he might have been a better judge than the man who sends him to gaol. The Tory's job is to restore the balance of things. It isn't only to maintain the level, but to raise it and to keep on raising it.... I believe in the State of Poise, of equitable adjustment, in which every man will be able to move easily to his proper place.... There are so many obstacles now in the way of man finding his place that, even if he has the strength to get over them, he probably won't have the strength to fill it...."

"My view, perhaps, is narrower than yours, Roger," Henry said, "but I see all these people chiefly as men and women who are shut out of things: books and pictures and plays and music and all the decent things. I don't believe that if they had the chance they would all read Meredith and admire Whistler and go to see Shaw's plays and want to listen to Wagner ... that's not the point, and anyhow the middle and the upper cla.s.ses are not all marvellously cultured. My point is that their lives are such that they don't even know of Meredith and Whistler and Shaw and Wagner. They don't even know of the second-rate people or the third rate. Magnolia, for instance ... I suppose she reads novelettes, and when she grows out of novelettes, she won't read anything. And she can't afford to go to a West End theatre.... When I think of these people, millions of 'em, I think of them as people like Magnolia, completely shut out of things like that, not even aware of them...."

They spent the remainder of the evening in argument, their talk ranging over the wide field of human activity. They established a system of continual criticism of existing inst.i.tutions. "Challenge everything,"

said Gilbert; "make it justify its existence." They tried to discover the truth about things, to shed their prejudices and to see the facts of life exactly as they were. "The great thing is to get rid of Slop!" said Roger. "We've got to convince the judge as well as move the jury. It isn't enough to make the jury feel sloppy ... any a.s.s can do that.

You've got to convince the old chap on the bench or you won't get a verdict. That's my belief, and I believe, too, that the jury is more likely to listen to reason than people imagine!"

They did not finish their argument that evening nor on any particular evening. They were spread over a long period, and were part of the process of clearing their minds of cobwebs.

Gilbert had dedicated his life to the renascence of the drama and had written a couple of plays which, he admitted to his friends, had not got the right stuff in them. "I don't know enough yet," he said once to Henry, "but I'm learning...." His dramatic criticism was very pointed, and he speedily acquired a reputation among people who are interested in the theatre, as an acute but harsh critic, and already attempts had been made by theatrical managers either to bribe him or get him dismissed from his paper. The bribing process was quite delicately operated. One manager wrote to him, charmingly plaintive about his criticism, and invited him to put himself in the manager's place. "I a.s.sure you," he wrote, "I would willingly produce good work if I could get it, but I can't. Come and see me, and I'll show you a pile of plays that have arrived within the last fortnight. I know quite well, without reading them, that not one of them will be of the slightest worth!" And Gilbert had gone to see him, and had been received very charmingly and told how clever he was, and then the manager had offered to appoint him reader of plays at a pleasant fee!... Following that attempt at bribery came the anger of an actor-knight who declined to admit Gilbert to his theatre, a piece of petulance which delighted him.

"The great big balloon," he said to his editor when he was told of what the actor-knight had said over the telephone. "My Lord, when I hear him spouting blank verse through his nose!..."

"That's all very fine," the editor retorted ruefully, "but your criticism's doing us a lot of harm. Jefferson of the Torch Theatre cancelled his advertis.e.m.e.nt the day after your notice of his new play appeared!"

"Ridiculous a.s.s!" said Gilbert.

"Well, if you say his play's the worst that's ever been put on any stage, what do you expect him to do? Fall on your neck and say, 'Bless you, brother!'? You might try to be kinder to them, Farlow, and do for the love of G.o.d remember the advertis.e.m.e.nt manager. If you could get the human note in your stuff!..."

"The what?"

"The human note. I'm a great believer in the human note."

Gilbert left the office as quickly as he could and went home. He came into the dining-room where the others were already seated at their meal.

"You're late again, Gilbert," said Roger. "Hand over your sixpence!"

Roger, who was never late for anything, had inst.i.tuted a system of fines for those who were late for meals. The fine for unpunctuality at dinner was sixpence.

"I haven't got a tanner, d.a.m.n it," Gilbert snapped, "and I'm looking for the human note. That's why I'm late. My heavenly father, I'm hungry!

What is there?"

"Sixpence for being late for dinner," said Roger quietly, "and tuppence for blasphemy!"

He entered the amounts in the "Ledger," and then returned to his seat.

"You already owe six and threepence," he said, as he sat down, "and this evening's fines bring it up to six and elevenpence. You ought to pay something on account, Gilbert!..."

"Pa.s.s the potatoes and don't bleat so much!" said Gilbert. "Look here, Quinny," he said as he helped himself to the potatoes, "what's the human note, and don't you think tuppence is too much for blasphemy?"

"Ask Ninian," Henry answered. "He knows all about humanity!"

"No, he doesn't. Bally mechanic! Aren't you, Ninian? Aren't you a d.a.m.n little mechanic with a screw-driver for a soul!..."

"You'll get a punch on the jaw in a minute, young fellow me lad!" Ninian exclaimed, leaning over the table and slapping Gilbert on the cheek.

"Fined fourpence for threat of physical violence and ninepence for executing the same," Roger murmured. "I'll enter it presently."

"Somebody should slay Roger," Gilbert said. "Somebody should take hold of his neat little neck and wring it!..."

They finished their meal and sat back in their chairs, smoking and chattering.

"What's all this about the human note, Gilbert?" Henry asked, and Gilbert explained what had happened to him in the editor's room. "I stopped a bobby in the Strand and asked him about it," he said, "but he told me to move on. You ought to know what the human note is, Quinny.

You're a novelist, and novelists are supposed to know everything nowadays!"

He did not wait for Henry to explain the meaning of the human note. "I know what Dilton means by it," he said. "When _he_ talks of the human note he means the greasy touch!"

"Slop in fact!" said Roger.

"That's it. Slop! My G.o.d, these journalists do love to splash about in their emotions. They can't mention the North Pole without gulping in their throats. Dilton gave me an example of the human note. There was a bye-election in the East End the other day and one of the candidates put his unfortunate infants into 'pearlies' and hawked them about the const.i.tuency in a costermonger's barrow, carrying a notice with 'Vote for Our Daddy!' on it. Dilton d.a.m.ned near blubbed when he told me about it!"

"Rage?" said Henry.

"Rage!" Gilbert exclaimed. "Good Lord, no! The man was moved, touched!... He blew his nose hard, and then told me that one touch of nature makes the whole world kin! I'm d.a.m.ned if he didn't write a leading article about it ... and they give him a couple of thousand a year for organising sniffs for the million. All over England, I suppose there were people snivelling over those brats and telling each other that one touch of nature makes the whole world kin!... Oof! gimme the whisky, somebody, for the love of the Lordy G.o.d! I want to be sick when I think of the human note!"

"Well, of course," said Roger, "the slop is there, and it's no good getting angry about it. What I want is a Party that won't deal in it.

I've always believed that the mob likes an honest man, even if it does call him a Prig, and I'm perfectly certain that when a Prig gets let down by the mob it's because in some subconscious way it knows he's only pretending to be honest ... unless, of course, it's gone off its head with pa.s.sion of some sort: Boer war jingoism and that kind of thing. And my notion of a member of parliament is a man who represents some degree of general feeling. If he doesn't represent that general feeling he can only do one of two things: try to convert the general opinion to his point of view or else, if he can't convert it, tell it he'll be d.a.m.ned if he'll represent it any longer. That's the att.i.tude I shall adopt in the House!..."

But Gilbert thought that this was a dangerous att.i.tude to maintain.

"If you maintain it too long, you'll never get an office," he said, "and so the only work you'll be able to do will be critical work: you'll never get a chance to do anything constructive; and if you let the Government n.o.bble you, and give you an Under Secretaryship the moment they see you getting dangerous, then you're done for. And anyhow, I don't believe in independent members of parliament. A certain number of sheep are necessary in every organisation, in parliament as much as anywhere else. It would be absolutely impossible to carry on Government if the whole six hundred and seventy members of parliament were as clever and as independent as Lord Hugh Cecil. You must have sheep and lots of 'em!..."

"But they needn't be dead sheep," said Roger. "They needn't be mutton, need they?"

"No, they needn't be mutton, but they must be sheep," Gilbert replied.

"All the politicians I've ever met," said Ninian, "were like New Zealand lamb ... frozen!"

Gilbert leaped on him and slapped his back, capsizing him on to the floor. "Ninian, my son," he said, "that's a good line. Do you mind if I put it in my comedy. It doesn't matter whether you do or not, but I'd like your consent."

"Don't be an old a.s.s," said Ninian.