THE NEW MACHIAVELLI Read online

intelligent.

  "We did a lot of that when I was up in the eighties," he said. "I'm

  glad Imperialism hasn't swamped you fellows altogether."

  Gertrude, looking bright and confident, came to join our talk from

  the shrubbery; the initial, a little flushed and evidently in a

  state of refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady

  in pink and more particularly distinguished by a pink bonnet joined

  our little group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was not

  disposed to play a passive part in the talk.

  "Socialism!" she cried, catching the word. "It's well Pa isn't

  here. He has Fits when people talk of socialism. Fits!"

  The initial laughed in a general kind of way.

  The curate said there was socialism AND socialism, and looked at

  Margaret to gauge whether he had been too bold in this utterance.

  But she was all, he perceived, for broad-mindness, and he stirred

  himself (and incidentally his tea) to still more liberality of

  expression. He said the state of the poor was appalling, simply

  appalling; that there were times when he wanted to shatter the whole

  system, "only," he said, turning to me appealingly, "What have we

  got to put in its place?"

  "The thing that exists is always the more evident alternative," I

  said.

  The little curate looked at it for a moment. "Precisely," he said

  explosively, and turned stirring and with his head a little on one

  side, to hear what Margaret was saying.

  Margaret was saying, with a swift blush and an effect of daring,

  that she had no doubt she was a socialist.

  "And wearing a gold chain!" said Gertrude, "And drinking out of

  eggshell! I like that!"

  I came to Margaret's rescue. "It doesn't follow that because one's

  a socialist one ought to dress in sackcloth and ashes."

  The initial coloured deeply, and having secured my attention by

  prodding me slightly with the wrist of the hand that held his

  teacup, cleared his throat and suggested that "one ought to be

  consistent."

  I perceived we were embarked upon a discussion of the elements. We

  began an interesting little wrangle one of those crude discussions

  of general ideas that are dear to the heart of youth. I and

  Margaret supported one another as socialists, Gertrude and Sybil and

  the initial maintained an anti-socialist position, the curate

  attempted a cross-bench position with an air of intending to come

  down upon us presently with a casting vote. He reminded us of a

  number of useful principles too often overlooked in argument, that

  in a big question like this there was much to be said on both sides,

  that if every one did his or her duty to every one about them there

  would be no difficulty with social problems at all, that over and

  above all enactments we needed moral changes in people themselves.

  My cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to manage, being

  unconscious of inconsistency in statement and absolutely impervious

  to reply. Her standpoint was essentially materialistic; she didn't

  see why she shouldn't have a good time because other people didn't;

  they would have a good time, she was sure, if she didn't. She said

  that if we did give up everything we had to other people, they

  wouldn't very likely know what to do with it. She asked if we were

  so fond of work-people, why we didn't go and live among them, and

  expressed the inflexible persuasion that if we HAD socialism,

  everything would be just the same again in ten years' time. She

  also threw upon us the imputation of ingratitude for a beautiful

  world by saying that so far as she was concerned she didn't want to

  upset everything. She was contented with things as they were, thank

  you.

  The discussion led in some way that I don't in the least recall now,

  and possibly by abrupt transitions, to a croquet foursome in which

  Margaret involved the curate without involving herself, and then

  stood beside me on the edge of the lawn while the others played. We

  watched silently for a moment.

  "I HATE that sort of view," she said suddenly in a confidential

  undertone, with her delicate pink flush returning.

  "It's want of imagination," I said.

  "To think we are just to enjoyourselves," she went on; "just to go

  on dressing and playing and having meals and spending money!" She

  seemed to be referring not simply to my cousins, but to the whole

  world of industry and property about us. "But what is one to do?"

  she asked. "I do wish I had not had to come down. It's all so

  pointless here. There seems to be nothing going forward, no ideas,

  no dreams. No one here seems to feel quite what I feel, the sort of

  need there is for MEANING in things. I hate things without

  meaning."

  "Don't you do-local work?"

  "I suppose I shall. I suppose I must find something. Do you think-

  if one were to attempt some sort of propaganda?"

  "Could you-?" I began a little doubtfully.

  "I suppose I couldn't," she answered, after a thoughtful moment. "I

  suppose it would come to nothing. And yet I feel there is so much

  to be done for the world, so much one ought to be doing… I

  want to do something for the world."

  I can see her now as she stood there with her brows nearly frowning,

  her blue eyes looking before her, her mouth almost petulant. "One

  feels that there are so many things going on-out of one's reach,"

  she said.

  I went back in the motor-car with my mind full of her, the quality

  of delicate discontent, the suggestion of exile. Even a kind of

  weakness in her was sympathetic. She told tremendously against her

  background. She was, I say, like a protesting blue flower upon a

  cinder heap. It is curious, too, how she connects and mingles with

  the furious quarrel I had with my uncle that very evening. That

  came absurdly. Indirectly Margaret was responsible. My mind was

  running on ideas she had revived and questions she had set

  clamouring, and quite inadvertently in my attempt to find solutions

  I talked so as to outrage his profoundest feelings…

  7

  What a preposterous shindy that was!

  I sat with him in the smoking-room, propounding what I considered to

  be the most indisputable and non-contentious propositions

  conceivable-until, to my infinite amazement, he exploded and called

  me a "damned young puppy."

  It was seismic.

  "Tremendously interesting time," I said, "just in the beginning of

  making a civilisation."

  "Ah!" he said, with an averted face, and nodded, leaning forward

  over his cigar.

  I had not the remotest thought of annoying him.

  "Monstrous muddle of things we have got," I said, "jumbled streets,

  ugly population, ugly factories-"

  "You'd do a sight better if you had to do with it," said my uncle,

  regarding me askance.

  "Not me. But a world that had a collective plan and knew where it

  meant to be going would do a sight better, anyhow. We're all

  swimming in a flood of ill-calculated chances-"

  "You'll be making out I organised
that business down there-by

  chance-next," said my uncle, his voice thick with challenge.

  I went on as though I was back in Trinity.

  "There's a lot of chance in the making of all great businesses," I

  said.

  My uncle remarked that that showed how much I knew about businesses.

  If chance made businesses, why was it that he always succeeded and

  grew while those fools Ackroyd and Sons always took second place?

  He showed a disposition to tell the glorious history of how once

  Ackroyd's overshadowed him, and how now he could buy up Ackroyd's

  three times over. But I wanted to get out what was in my mind.

  "Oh!" I said, "as between man and man and business and business,

  some of course get the pull by this quality or that-but it's forces

  quite outside the individual case that make the big part of any

  success under modern conditions. YOU never invented pottery, nor

  any process in pottery that matters a rap in your works; it wasn't

  YOUR foresight that joined all England up with railways and made it

  possible to organise production on an altogether different scale.

  You really at the utmost can't take credit for much more than being

  the sort of man who happened to fit what happened to be the

  requirements of the time, and who happened to be in a position to

  take advantage of them-"

  It was then my uncle cried out and called me a damned young puppy,

  and became involved in some unexpected trouble of his own.

  I woke up as it were from my analysis of the situation to discover

  him bent over a splendid spittoon, cursing incoherently, retching a

  little, and spitting out the end of his cigar which he had bitten

  off in his last attempt at self-control, and withal fully prepared

  as soon as he had cleared for action to give me just all that he

  considered to be the contents of his mind upon the condition of

  mine.

  Well, why shouldn't I talk my mind to him? He'd never had an

  outside view of himself for years, and I resolved to stand up to

  him. We went at it hammer and tongs! It became clear that he

  supposed me to be a Socialist, a zealous, embittered hater of all

  ownership-and also an educated man of the vilest, most

  pretentiously superior description. His principal grievance was

  that I thought I knew everything; to that he recurred again and

  again…

  We had been maintaining an armed truce with each other since my

  resolve to go up to Cambridge, and now we had out all that had

  accumulated between us. There had been stupendous accumulations…

  The particular things we said and did in that bawlmg encounter

  matter nothing at all in this story. I can't now estimate how near

  we came to fisticuffs. It ended with my saying, after a pungent

  reminder of benefits conferred and remembered, that I didn't want to

  stay another hour in his house. I went upstairs, in a state of

  puerile fury, to pack and go off to the Railway Hotel, while he,

  with ironical civility, telephoned for a cab.

  "Good riddance!" shouted my uncle, seeing me off into the night.

  On the face of it our row was preposterous, but the underlying

  reality of our quarrel was the essential antagonism, it seemed to

  me, in all human affairs, the antagonism between ideas and the

  established method, that is to say, between ideas and the rule of

  thumb. The world I hate is the rule-of-thumb world, the thing I and

  my kind of people exist for primarily is to battle with that, to

  annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct it. We question everything,

  disturb anything that cannot give a clear justification to our

  questioning, because we believe inherently that our sense of

  disorder implies the possibility of a better order. Of course we

  are detestable. My uncle was of that other vaster mass who accept

  everything for the thing it seems to be, hate enquiry and analysis

  as a tramp hates washing, dread and resist change, oppose

  experiment, despise science. The world is our battleground; and all

  history, all literature that matters, all science, deals with this

  conflict of the thing that is and the speculative "if" that will

  destroy it.

  But that is why I did not see Margaret Seddon again for five years.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  MARGARET IN LONDON

  1

  I was twenty-seven when I met Margaret again, and the intervening

  five years had been years of vigorous activity for me, if not of

  very remarkable growth. When I saw her again, I could count myself

  a grown man. I think, indeed, I counted myself more completely

  grown than I was. At any rate, by all ordinary standards, I had

  "got on" very well, and my ideas, if they had not changed very

  greatly, had become much more definite and my ambitions clearer and

  bolder.

  I had long since abandoned my fellowship and come to London. I had

  published two books that had been talked about, written several

  articles, and established a regular relationship with the WEEKLY

  REVIEW and the EVENING GAZETTE. I was a member of the Eighty Club

  and learning to adapt the style of the Cambridge Union to larger

  uses. The London world had opened out to me very readily. I had

  developed a pleasant variety of social connections. I had made the

  acquaintance of Mr. Evesham, who had been attracted by my NEW RULER,

  and who talked about it and me, and so did a very great deal to make

  a way for me into the company of prominent and amusing people. I

  dined out quite frequently. The glitter and interest of good London

  dinner parties became a common experience. I liked the sort of

  conversation one got at them extremely, the little glow of duologues

  burning up into more general discussions, the closing-in of the men

  after the going of the women, the sage, substantial masculine

  gossiping, the later resumption of effective talk with some pleasant

  woman, graciously at her best. I had a wide range of houses;

  Cambridge had linked me to one or two correlated sets of artistic

  and literary people, and my books and Mr. Evesham and opened to me

  the big vague world of "society." I wasn't aggressive nor

  particularly snobbish nor troublesome, sometimes I talked well, and

  if I had nothing interesting to say I said as little as possible,

  and I had a youthful gravity of manner that was liked by hostesses.

  And the other side of my nature that first flared through the cover

  of restraints at Locarno, that too had had opportunity to develop

  along the line London renders practicable. I had had my experiences

  and secrets and adventures among that fringe of ill-mated or erratic

  or discredited women the London world possesses. The thing had long

  ago ceased to be a matter of magic or mystery, and had become a

  question of appetites and excitement, and among other things the

  excitement of not being found out.

  I write rather doubtfully of my growing during this period. Indeed

  I find it hard to judge whether I can say that I grew at all in any

  real sense of the word, between three and twenty and twenty-seven.

  It seems to me now to have been rather a phase of realisation
and

  clarification. All the broad lines of my thought were laid down, I

  am sure, by the date of my Locarno adventure, but in those five

  years I discussed things over and over again with myself and others,

  filled out with concrete fact forms I had at first apprehended

  sketchily and conversationally, measured my powers against my ideals

  and the forces in the world about me. It was evident that many men

  no better than myself and with no greater advantages than mine had

  raised themselves to influential and even decisive positions in the

  worlds of politics and thought. I was gathering the confidence and

  knowledge necessary to attack the world in the large manner; I found

  I could write, and that people would let me write if I chose, as one

  having authority and not as the scribes. Socially and politically

  and intellectually I knewmyself for an honest man, and that quite

  without any deliberation on my part this showed and made things easy

  for me. People trusted my goodfaith from the beginning-for all

  that I came from nowhere and had no better position than any

  adventurer.

  But the growth process was arrested, I was nothing bigger at twenty-

  seven than at twenty-two, however much saner and stronger, and any

  one looking closely into my mind during that period might well have

  imagined growth finished altogether. It is particularly evident to

  me now that I came no nearer to any understanding of women during

  that time. That Locarno affair was infinitely more to me than I had

  supposed. It ended something-nipped something in the bud perhaps-

  took me at a stride from a vague, fine, ignorant, closed world of

  emotion to intrigue and a perfectly definite and limited sensuality.

  It ended my youth, and for a time it prevented my manhood. I had

  never yet even peeped at the sweetest, profoundest thing in the

  world, the heart and meaning of a girl, or dreamt with any quality

  of reality of a wife or any such thing as a friend among womanhood.

  My vague anticipation of such things in life had vanished

  altogether. I turned away from their possibility. It seemed to me

  I knew what had to be known about womankind. I wanted to work hard,

  to get on to a position in which I could develop and forward my

  constructive projects. Women, I thought, had nothing to do with