CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH MR. DABNEY WARMS HIS HOUSE WITH A DISCUSSION AND I AM GLAD TO GET HOME

Mr. Dabney of _The Balance_ having asked me to his housewarming, I found myself in his new rooms at about half-past nine, prepared for an unwonted night of it. He pretends that after my departure for the altar a period of decadence set in over Bemerton's and he had at last to leave. All inhabitants of rooms know these fluctuations. Everything will go smoothly for years and then suddenly comes a relaxation of energy on the part of the staff. It will come _chez_ Packer without a doubt; but not just yet.

Dabney has moved from Westminster to the Temple, where a gentleman ought to live--to a noble suite in King's Bench Walk with a sidelong view of the river across the grass, on which in the cool of the evening the agile barristers disport themselves at lawn-tennis. He looks towards Lambeth and has a blessed glimpse over the trees and roofs of the giant gasometer of the Oval, and he can imagine on a summer's day all kinds of delectable occurrences in progress on the other side of it--Hitch at mid-off stopping express trains; Hobbs at the wicket, punishing and masterful; or whatever he most fancies.

The white wainscotted room when I entered it was full of smoke and noisy with talk. I contrived to find Dabney's hand in the fog and he pushed me into a chair. I gathered that public men were under discussion: the session was well advanced and the unexpected abilities which it had brought forth and the old abilities which it had tested and found wanting were being appraised, in the off-hand smoking-room way. Funny to one outside the machine to hear names which ought by their eminence to inspire respect--and among the simple and ignorant do so--tossed about so lightly and discussed so contemptuously. This man, it is true, was fifty per cent. stronger than last year; but most of them were disappointments, done.

These terrible fellows sized up everyone and everything, as they puffed and sipped. And there was nothing they did not know. They knew all the secrets of the Court as well as of Parliament. They knew why this man's name was not in the last list of honours and why that man's was. They knew everyone who drank too much and everyone who loved unwisely but too well.

Politics, I confess, do not interest me, except as warp and woof of the newspaper drama of life. I would not like to be a politician; nor indeed could I. Only a surgical operation would be able to effect that: some phlebotomizing process, to be followed by an injection of molten brass into the deplenished veins. But I like to watch the wire-pullers at work. There was one at Dabney's, the secretary to some organization: a bulky Rabelaisian cigar-smoker, or I might almost say cigar-eater, named Rudson-Wayte. Looking at him through the haze, as he absorbed his tobacco and drank his whisky, I found myself wondering if on that idle Sunday--the first week-end--the Creator, when He surveyed His six days' work, had exact foreknowledge of these two lenitives and the extent to which His children in the distant days to come would depend upon them. Rudson-Wayte more even than most men at an editor's housewarming leant upon both, and they seemed to agree with him, for his head was undoubtedly clear and hard. In a bout with the gloves or a hundred yards' sprint no doubt he would cut a poor enough figure on such a regimen; but then the highly specialized civilization under which he flourishes has eliminated both necessities. Perfectly easy nowadays for a London gentleman to live fifty years after leaving College and never accelerate his steps at all.

Not that Rudson-Wayte was a stranger to the strenuous life; but always from without. He had looked down amusedly from many a platform and watched ejections and free fights; but he had not taken part. His, to observe and make the best of the situation for his party. He told us of many such experiences and of the strategy which he had devised for the safety of his speakers. He referred to them as his men. "Of course, the only thing for me to think of was how to get my man out of it." And so forth.

"My man was a bit of a stick, not long married, and his precious skin was rather on his mind. The crowd was ugly too; began breaking the chair legs off for clubs. He hadn't any way with him at all, but there were reasons why he should have gone down there to speak, and he was sound enough on the principal question. Brought down his fist at the right moments, you know, and had quite a clever way with the word 'Mister'--for or against. But the game was up now, and things got worse when we heard that there was a gang outside waiting for us. There was only one thing to do and I did it. I got hold of four others of my lot and told them their roles. Then I turned up my collar, and smashed my hat in so as not to be recognized, grabbed my man, and we carried him forcibly out by the back door. As I feared, there were a thousand of them there waiting to duck the whole platform. The instant we emerged from the door supporting our burden, who was all collapsed into his clothes, I called out, 'A doctor! A doctor! Is there a doctor here?' They shut down at once and made a path for us. Bless you, the British public can't be trusted to carry anything through. They're always waiting to be diverted. It touched their old hearts, don't you see? 'Somebody hurt? Steady on, boys. Let them through first,' and so on. So we got through and were driving to the next town and the train for London in no time. London's the mother."

He seemed to me rather a hateful type, this cynical manipulator of candidates and passions; but Dabney tells me that he is really one of the best of men, with naturally very simple tastes, domesticated, musical, and devoted to ornithology. It is one of the bores of growing old, that one loses the power of dividing the sheep and the goats. When one is young, bad men are bad men and good men good men. As one gets older their boundaries begin to get confused and encroach each on the other; and I suppose that by the time I am seventy I shall not know any difference between them.

I asked Rudson-Wayte about bribery and corruption--were they extinct?

"As the dodo, I don't think," he replied. "The more you have to do with politics, the more you realize that human nature is human nature. Nothing ever changes. People tell you that Dickens was a caricaturist, an exaggerator. He may have been when he wrote about some things, but not when he described the Eatanswill election. That's as true as a Blue Book--every word of it--and always will be. Human nature doesn't get out of date. Bribery and corruption!--great Heavens, what else should there be? I don't say that money passes from hand to hand quite so crudely; but money's not the only medium of bribery. Every man has his price to-day, as ever, only he often prefers payment in kind. Why, you can bribe a man with virtue now and then. The big Nonconformist employers who carry a hatful of votes--lay preachers, you know--you can get at them by sitting under them one Sunday. They don't want money or promises: they want homage. Of course they do. Another man merely wants to be seen accepting a cigar from your own case; another to take your arm in public. It's after the election's over that this last type becomes such a nuisance."

"It's a low game," Dabney said, "and you're a low lot, and I don't really know why I like you and ask you to sit under a decent roof."

Rudson-Wayte smiled joyously. "No worse than editing a paper," he said, "and suppressing the truth about everything."

"And who does that?" Dabney asked quiveringly.

"You do, of course, every week. You attack one side for its turpitude and cynicism and applaud the other side for its high ideals and self-sacrifice, when you know there's not a penny to choose between them. They're just the same men, with different views as to how a business should be managed. You know that: you must know, because directly one of the big men on the other side--one of your blackest bugbears--retires, or dies, or loses his wife, you have an article on his personal charm and private integrity, the whole thing really proving him an arrant humbug ready to support against his conscience any policy forced upon him by his party or venal circumstance. You can't deny it. And again, every now and then when some non-party question brings two conspicuous opponents on the same platform in agreement, with compliments to each other, you say how delightful are these amenities of English political life which permit private friendliness to exist alongside public hostility; whereas that is, when looked into a little deeper, really a cause for shame, because men should be all of a piece. Well, what I say is that if you can write calmly like that of party politicians, and defend it, there is no need lor me to be troubled by your condemnation of me for being concerned in the making of party politics."

Dabney really took it very well, and as a matter of fact I don't know that he could have made much of a defence even if he had not been our host. All he said was, "Well, damn the party system anyway."

A young man who had been interjecting remarks very freely here took the floor.

"Of course," he said, "damn the party system. The whole mischief is the party system. It's rotten to the core. What we want in Parliament is the best men, not the machine-made men. But that's all that the voter can be allowed to vote for. How many independent, thinking men are there in Parliament to-day? Not half a dozen, and the few that there are steadily being frozen out. The machine can't endure them, and the machine is on top. I got a ticket for the House the other day and saw the conspiracy in action. There was an old man in our village who used to say that 'very few persons are better than anyone else,' and I thought of these words as I sat there and watched all those blighters at work. It was a terrible eye-opener. I knew that they were obsolete and stupid and pledged to the swindle, but I had no notion how stupid they were. No candour anywhere. On the one side bland red-tapism, and on the other the insincere acrimony of the Jack-out-of-office. Their manners, too, are an outrage--they chatter while speeches are going on; they shout offensive criticisms; there is never a moment when some one is not walking about. It's got to be changed."

"All very well," said Rudson-Wayte; "but you'll never be without it. Men fall into parties as naturally as they fall into temptation. There must be pros and cons. If you want to know how deeply rooted the party system is you have only to read the papers that advocate its removal. Their objection to party is to the party that is in. I have observed that when a paper boasts of having no favour for one party or the other it makes up for it by having an increased hostility towards one party or the other. No; if you really wanted to lead a crusade you would call for a party pledged not to add another law to the Statute Book as long as it held office. That would be something like. Also it would automatically rid the party at any rate of the legal element. But this is shop. For Heaven's sake talk about something else."

"We will," said Dabney, "but it will be shop all the same."

Dabney was right. Everything came round to shop very quickly, and, tiring of the monotony, I slipped away.

Dabney apologized for the dullness of the evening. "You see, this time," he said, "I had to ask everyone. We have better talk at our smaller gatherings. Come when I entertain some novelists."

I said that perhaps I would, and walked homewards correcting my estimates of our public men by the light of the evening's revelations. But by the time I reached the Euston Road I had decided to let them all stand as they were a little longer. Those fellows were only talking, I said. Strike London dumb for a year and how we should get on! Progress then!