The Man of Business

Scene: Highbury. August 1913.

Between double-doors, opening from living-room to conservatory, sits the shadow of the once great and powerful Minister, State Secretary for the Colonies. To the dark, sombre tones of the heavily furnished chamber the gorgeous colours of the orchids, hanging in trails and festoons under their luminous dome of glass, offer a vivid contrast. Yet even greater is that which they present to the drawn and haggard features of the catastrophically aged man whose public career is now over. In wheeled chair, with lower limbs wrapped in a shawl and supported by a foot-rest, he sits bent and almost motionless; and when he moves head or hand, it is head or hand only, and the motion is slow, painful, and hesitating, as though mind functioned on body with difficulty, uncertain of its ground. Nevertheless, when the door opens, and the small squat figure of a very old and dear friend advances towards him, his face lights instantly. With tender reverence and affection the newcomer takes hold of his hand, lifts, presses it, lays it back again. And when he has seated himself, the Shadow speaks.

CHAMBERLAIN. Well, Collins? Well?

JESSE COLLINS. Well, my dear Chamberlain, how are you? I’m a little late, I’m afraid.

CHAMBERLAIN. I hadn’t noticed. Time doesn’t matter to me now.

JESSE COLLINS. No; but I like to be punctual. It’s my nature.

CHAMBERLAIN. Habit.... Habit and nature are different things, Collins. I’ve been finding that out.

(At this, for a diversion, Collins, readjusting his pince-nez, tilts his head bird-like, and takes a genial look at his friend.)

JESSE COLLINS. Joe, you are looking better to-day.

CHAMBERLAIN. Well, even looks are not to be despised, I suppose, when one has nothing else left.

JESSE COLLINS. Come, come!

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes?

JESSE COLLINS. Nothing else left, indeed! Don’t—don’t be so down, Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN. Dear old friend!... Just now you called me “Joe.” You don’t often do that. Why did you?

JESSE COLLINS. A reversion to old habits, I suppose. One does as one gets older.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes.

JESSE COLLINS (genially making conversation, which he sees to be advisable). I was reading only the other day that, as we get on in years and begin to forget other things, our childhood comes back to us.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes?

JESSE COLLINS. Now I wonder if that’s true?

CHAMBERLAIN. I wonder.

JESSE COLLINS. Mine hasn’t begun to come back to me.

CHAMBERLAIN. You aren’t old yet.

JESSE COLLINS. I’m over eighty.

CHAMBERLAIN. Good for another twenty years. And once you were my senior. We weren’t quite boys together, Collins; but we’ve been good friends.

JESSE COLLINS. Thank God for that!—Joe.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, I do. More now than I used to.

JESSE COLLINS. All the same, you haven’t so much cause to thank Him as we have.

CHAMBERLAIN. No?

(The listless monotone makes the little old man fear that he is not succeeding.)

JESSE COLLINS. Is my talk tiring you?

CHAMBERLAIN. Not at all.... Please go on!

JESSE COLLINS. I only want to say what I said just now: Don’t be down, dear friend. Your record will stand the test better than that of others. Your work is still going on; it hasn’t finished just because you are—laid up.

CHAMBERLAIN. “Laid up” is a kind way of putting it, Collins.

JESSE COLLINS. Why, I needn’t even have said that; when here—it’s sitting up I find you.

CHAMBERLAIN. Sitting out.

JESSE COLLINS. Well, “sitting out,” if you like, for the time being. But do you imagine that this phrase or that phrase (true for the moment) states the case, counts, is worth troubling about?

CHAMBERLAIN. Do I imagine? No, I don’t. I don’t imagine anything. I was never a man of imagination.

JESSE COLLINS. You are, when you say that!

CHAMBERLAIN. No, Collins. When I’ve done anything, it has been because I’ve had it in my hands to do.... My hands are empty now. Some men manage to think with their heads only; others do it—with their stomachs you might almost say. I’ve never been able to think properly unless I had hold of things—had them here in my hands.... Look at them, now! (With a slow, faint gesture he indicates their helplessness; then continues:) I was the man of business, ... and now, I’m out of business; so I can’t think.

JESSE COLLINS. But that business, as you call it, Chamberlain, which you made so many of us understand for the first time—I was a “Little Englander” myself, once—that’s still going on.

CHAMBERLAIN (bitterly). Yes, it’s a fine business!

JESSE COLLINS (startled). Don’t you still believe in it?

CHAMBERLAIN. As a business? Yes. But it’s going to fail all the same. There’s nobody to run it now.

JESSE COLLINS. We mean to run it, Chamberlain! You’ll see!

CHAMBERLAIN. I know you do, Collins. You are loyalty itself.

JESSE COLLINS. There are others too. I’m not the only one.

CHAMBERLAIN. You are the best of them.

JESSE COLLINS. No, I won’t admit that.

CHAMBERLAIN. Name?

JESSE COLLINS. The best? Probably some one we don’t yet even know. The best are still to come. Time’s with us.

CHAMBERLAIN. Is it?

JESSE COLLINS. Don’t you think so yourself?

CHAMBERLAIN. Not now. I did once.

JESSE COLLINS. You always said so.

CHAMBERLAIN. I said it as long as I believed it: till the stars in their courses turned against me. That broke me, Collins. If I could have gone on having faith in myself, I shouldn’t be—as I am now.

JESSE COLLINS. But what—what made you lose it?

CHAMBERLAIN. Can’t you guess?

(Collins shakes his head, remains valiantly incredulous; and there is a pause.)

I saw somebody else—whose cards weren’t so good—playing with a better hand. It was the hand beat me. My head’s all right still, though it sleeps. But I’ve lost my hand. Look at it! (Again the gesture illustrative of defeat.) Threw it away. You know who I mean?

JESSE COLLINS (cautiously, rather reluctantly). I suppose I do.

CHAMBERLAIN (watching to see the effect of his news). He’s coming to-day: to see me.

COLLINS (surprised). Coming here?

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, it’s all been nicely arranged—just a call in passing. To-morrow’s papers will describe it as “a pathetic meeting.” Well, when a man has to meet his executioner on friendly terms, I suppose it is “pathetic” for one of them.

(All this is very disconcerting to poor Collins. He helps himself to a half-sentence, and stops.)

JESSE COLLINS. Did he himself——?

CHAMBERLAIN. Propose it? Oh, yes—in the most charming way possible. Isn’t it amazing how a man with charm can do things that nobody else dare? I never managed to charm anybody.

JESSE COLLINS. You made friends—and kept them.

CHAMBERLAIN. So does he. He has been successful all round: art, politics, letters, society—he has friends in all. I’ve only been successful in business.

JESSE COLLINS. My dear friend, aren’t you forgetting yourself? You came out of business.

CHAMBERLAIN. No, I only changed to business on a larger scale—carried it on under a bigger name. That’s how I found myself. I had to make things into a business in order to make a success of them. That was my method, Collins: glorify it as much as you like. And up to a point it was good business, I don’t deny. That’s how we ran local politics, invented the Caucus: Corporation Street is the result. That’s how we managed to run Unionism: made a hard and fast contract of it, and made them stick to it. That’s how I ran the Colonies—and the Boer War. That’s how I was going to run the Empire on a Preferential Tariff. That came just too late. I’d made a mistake.

JESSE COLLINS. What mistake?

CHAMBERLAIN. Collins, the Boer War wasn’t good business. It might have been; but it lasted too long. Any modern war that isn’t over in six months now is a blunder, you’ll find. They were able to hold out too long. That did for me. There have been bees in my bonnet ever since—all because of it. Boers first; then Bannerman; then—Balfour. Just once my business instinct betrayed me, and I was done!

JESSE COLLINS. But—wasn’t the war necessary?

CHAMBERLAIN. To put the “business” on a sound footing? Yes, I thought so; it looked like it. No, it wasn’t! But before I quite knew, there’d come a point where we couldn’t go back; and so we just had to go on—and on. D’you know what was the cleverest thing said or done during that war?... You’d never guess ... but it’s true. Campbell-Bannerman’s “methods of barbarism” speech. We downed him for it at the time, but it caught on—it stuck. And it was on the strength of it (with C.-B. as their hope for the future) that the Boers were persuaded to make peace: saved our face for us. They might have gone on, till we got sick of it, and the world too.

JESSE COLLINS. I don’t—I can’t think you are right, Chamberlain. You are forgetting things.

CHAMBERLAIN. No—I’ve had difficulty about thinking so myself; but it has come to me.

(And so he sits and meditates over the point in his career where as a business man he first failed. Presently he resumes:)

When two men, whose qualifications I used rather to despise, beat me at business, Collins—it was a facer!

JESSE COLLINS. Bannerman; and—the other?

CHAMBERLAIN. Comes to see me to-day. But it won’t be a business meeting. He’ll not say anything about it—if he can help.

JESSE COLLINS. And you?

CHAMBERLAIN. Perhaps I shall succumb to his charm. I’ve done so before now.

JESSE COLLINS. Have you and he—had words ever?

CHAMBERLAIN. Differences of opinion, of course. “Words”? How should we? He was always so wonderfully accommodating, so polite, so apologetic even. Nobody ever had a finer contempt for his party than he—not even old Dizzy, or Salisbury, or Churchill. So he could always say the handsome thing to one—behind its back—even when he was making burnt-offerings to its prejudices.

JESSE COLLINS. And when you left him?

CHAMBERLAIN. When I left him he did the thing beautifully. So genuinely sorry to lose me; so sure of having me with him again, before long. How could I have gone out and worked against him after that? But it’s what—as a business politician—I ought to have done.

JESSE COLLINS. If you had—should we have won, straight away?

CHAMBERLAIN. We should have won the party, and the party-machine too. For the rest it wouldn’t have mattered waiting a year or two. Yes, we should have won. But here’s this, Collins: we should have won then; we shan’t win now. Times are changing: the time for it is over. Something else is coming along—what, I don’t know. My old fox-scent has gone: wind’s against me. The Colonies are growing up too fast. They won’t separate, but they mean to stand on their own feet all the same: in their own way—not mine. We ought to have got them when they were a bit younger: we could have done it then. Once it flattered them to be called “Dominions”; now they are going to be “Sovereign States.” And he—he doesn’t mind. He is never for big constructive ideas—only for contrivances: takes things as they come, makes the best of them—philosophically—and gets round them; and sometimes does it brilliantly.

JESSE COLLINS. What will he talk about?

CHAMBERLAIN. Anything that comes into his head: the weather, the garden, the greenhouses, the theatres. He’ll tell me, perhaps, of a book or two that I ought to read, that he hasn’t had time for. He’ll say, as you said, that I’m looking better than he expected. He’ll say something handsome about Austen—quite genuinely meaning it. Then he’ll say he’s afraid of tiring me; then he’ll go.... Have you noticed how he shakes hands? He hasn’t much of a hand—not a real hand—but he does it, like everything else, charmingly.

JESSE COLLINS (a little crestfallen). I thought you really liked him.

CHAMBERLAIN. So I do. Because he has beaten me, is that any reason for hating him? If it were—after a lifetime of polls and politics, one would have to be at hate with half the world. No, from his point of view he had to beat me, and he has done it. What I stick at is that he has proved the better business man! As I used head and hand—and heart (and heart, Collins!)——

JESSE COLLINS. Yes, yes, I know you did.

CHAMBERLAIN. Some people thought I hadn’t a heart: “hard as nails” they called me.... Well, as I used those, so he used his defeats, his doubts, his indecision, his charm—and left his heart out. That was the real business-stroke. That did for me.... I liked him: he knew it. Whether he ever liked me, to this day, I don’t know—for certain. If he did, it made no difference. That’s what I call business.

JESSE COLLINS (warmly). But you’ve always been honourable.

CHAMBERLAIN. So has he. Don’t be sentimental, Collins! But some men manage in public life to give you a certain view of their character: so that you count on it. And then, on occasion, they play another—and get wonderful results. If I’d had that gift, I should have used it and done better. He has used it, and he has done better. I don’t whine about it. But I’d rather, Collins (I suppose I’m prejudiced), I’d rather he hadn’t asked himself here—just now: not just now.

(There is a pause, and Collins feels that he must say something; but finding nothing of any value to say, he merely commentates with a query.)

JESSE COLLINS. What has “just now” to do with it?

CHAMBERLAIN. “Just now,” dear Collins, only means the next few months or so—possibly a year. That’s all. I had rather he’d waited, and then just sent a wreath with the right sort of inscription on it. He could have done that charmingly too. And I haven’t got wreaths here for him, for I don’t think that even a posy of these would really interest him.

(And with a weary gesture he points to the orchids, as though they were things of which, not impossibly, “posies” might be made.)

JESSE COLLINS (a little perplexed by this introduction of wreaths and flowers into political affairs). What does really interest him? He’s so interesting himself.

CHAMBERLAIN. You’ve hit it, Collins. It’s himself. Not selfishly. He stands for so many things that he values—that he thinks good for the world—necessary for the stability of the social order. He is their embodiment: he is the most emblematic figure in the modern world that I know—in this country, at any rate—representing so much that is good in the great traditions which have got to go. And to stave off that day he will do almost anything. He would even—if he thought it would enable him the better to prick some of his bubbles—he would even take office under Lloyd George.

(At this point, unobtrusively, a Nurse enters and stands waiting.)

JESSE COLLINS. I don’t think we shall live to see that!

CHAMBERLAIN. I shall not; you may.

JESSE COLLINS (impulsively). Chamberlain, I don’t want to live after you!

CHAMBERLAIN (cajolingly). Oh, yes, you do! Anyway—I want you to. You will send me a wreath that will be worth having.

(Whereat his quaint little companion leans forward, and, putting his two hands pleadingly on the swathed knees, wants to speak but cannot. Slowly the sick man lets down his own and covers them. And so, hand resting on hand, he continues speaking:)

Say what you like about the business man—the man who failed: he has known how to make friends—good ones. And you, Jesse Collins, have been one of the best: I couldn’t have had a better. There’s someone been waiting behind you to give you a hint that you are tiring me—staying too long. But you haven’t: you never have. Perhaps, in the future, I shan’t see enough of you; perhaps, from now on, my doctor will have to measure even my friends for me: three a day before meals. But I shall get life in bits still—as long as you are allowed to come.... Yes, Nurse, you may take him away now!

(Jesse Collins rises, and stands by his friend with moist eyes.)

JESSE COLLINS. Good-bye, my dear Joe, and—God bless you.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes ... good-bye!

(Hands press and part, and Jesse Collins tip-toes meekly out, apologising for the length of his stay by the softness of his going. Chamberlain’s head drops, his face becomes more drawn, his hands more rigid and helpless. Without a word, his Nurse arranges his pillows, preparing him for the sleep to which his unresisting body gradually succumbs.)

(Two hours later he is awake again, and the Nurse is removing a tray from which he has just taken some nourishment. He lifts his head and looks at her. At this sign that he is about to speak, she pauses. Presently the words come.)

CHAMBERLAIN. Is he in there, waiting to see me?

NURSE. Yes, sir.

CHAMBERLAIN. Ask him to come in.

NURSE. You want to see him alone, sir?

(There is a pause.)

CHAMBERLAIN. I think only one at a time is enough—better for me: don’t you?

NURSE. It would be less tiring for you, sir.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes. Ask him to come in.

(So that being settled, she goes, and he sits waiting. The afternoon sunlight is making the orchids look more resplendently themselves than ever. So still, so vivid, so alive, they hang their snake-like heads in long pendulous clusters; and among them all there is not a single one which shows the slightest sign of falling-off or decay. Presently the door is softly opened, and the Nurse, entering only to retire again, ushers in the Distinguished Visitor, whose brow, venerable with intellect, and grey with the approach of age, crowns a figure still almost youthful in its elasticity and grace, and perfect in the deliberate ease and deportment of its entry into a situation which many would find difficult. As he approaches the wheeled chair, the kindness, modesty, and distinction of his bearing prepare the way before him, and his silence has already said the nicest of nice things, in the nicest possible way, before he actually speaks. This he does not do till he has already taken and held the hand which the other has tried to offer.)

DISTINGUISHED VISITOR. My dear Chamberlain, how very good of you to let me come?

CHAMBERLAIN. Not too much out of your way, I hope?

DIST. V. On the contrary, I could wish it were more, if that might help to express my pleasure in seeing you again.

CHAMBERLAIN. Well, what there is of me, you see. You are looking well.

DIST. V. And you—much better than I expected.

CHAMBERLAIN. Did you expect anything?

DIST. V. I was told that you had bad days occasionally, and were unable to see anybody. I hope I am fortunate, and that this is one of your good ones?

CHAMBERLAIN. Well, as they’ve let you see me, I suppose so. I don’t find much difference between my good and bad days. (Won’t you sit down?) I’m still in the possession of my faculties; I sleep well, and I don’t have pain.

DIST. V. (seating himself). And my staying with you for a little is not going to tire you?

CHAMBERLAIN. It’s far more likely to tire you, I’m afraid.

DIST. V. No, indeed not! Apart from anything else it is a welcome respite on the journey. Motoring bores me terribly.

CHAMBERLAIN. Then you had really meant coming this way, in any case?

DIST. V. I had been long intending to; and when, last week, Hewell proposed itself, all fitted together perfectly.

CHAMBERLAIN. Are they having a house-party?

DIST. V. I think not: I trust not. No, I believe a hint was dropped to them that it wasn’t to be—that I was feeling far too stale for any such mental relaxation.

CHAMBERLAIN. Are you? You don’t look like it.

DIST. V. In politics one tries not to look like anything; but how at the end of the session can one be otherwise?

CHAMBERLAIN. Is all going on there—as usual?

DIST. V. Yes ... yes. I don’t find being in opposition makes as much difference as I expected, as regards work. One misses the permanent official who always did it for one. Wonderful creatures—who first invented them? Pitt, or was it Pepys? Oh, no, he was one of them. A product, perhaps, of the seventeenth century.

CHAMBERLAIN. In Tudor times Prime Ministers were permanent, weren’t they?

DIST. V. Their heads weren’t. Executions took the place of elections in those days. And there’s something to be said for it.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes. There was more dignity about it; it gave a testimonial of character; the other doesn’t.

DIST. V. Still, electoral defeat is very refreshing. Rejection by one’s own constituents is sometimes a blessing in disguise: it saves one from undue familiarity.... That has never happened to you, has it?

CHAMBERLAIN. It depends what one means by—constituents. In the strict sense—no.

(And now there is a pause, for something has been said that is not merely conversation. Very charmingly, and with a wonderful niceness of tone, the Distinguished Visitor accepts the opening that has been given him.)

DIST. V. Chamberlain, I have been wanting to come and see you for a long time.

CHAMBERLAIN. Thank you. So I—guessed.

DIST. V. I wrote to you—a letter which you did not answer. Perhaps it did not seem to require an answer. But I hoped for one. So, after not hearing, I made up my mind to come and see you.

CHAMBERLAIN. That was very kind of you.

DIST. V. No, it wasn’t; it was natural. We’ve worked together—so long. And I wanted to assure myself that there was, personally—that there is now—no cloud between us; no ill-feeling about anything. If I thought that remotely possible, I should regret it more than I can say. Speaking for myself——

CHAMBERLAIN. If you had not thought it possible—should you have come?

DIST. V. I cannot conceive how that would have made any difference.

CHAMBERLAIN. Still, if you had not thought it possible, you would hardly have asked the question.

DIST. V. Well, now I have asked it. Speech is an overrated means of communication—especially between friends; but it has to serve sometimes. And you, at least, Chamberlain, have never used it as—Talleyrand, was it not?—recommended that it should be used—for concealment.

CHAMBERLAIN. So you think that—in words at any rate—I’ve been honest?

DIST. V. I should say pre-eminently.

CHAMBERLAIN. And—loyal?

DIST. V. I have never had differences—political divergences—with any man more loyal than you, Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN. Thank you. I value that—from you. So the question’s answered. On my side there is no cloud, as you tell me I have nothing with which to reproach myself.

DIST. V. Thank you for the reassurance. In that case the heavens are clear.

CHAMBERLAIN. I hope they are properly grateful. Such a testimonial—from two men looking in opposite directions—is an embracing one.

DIST. V. Opposite? Oh, I had hoped—though we may not see eye to eye in everything—that still, in the main, we were in general agreement.

CHAMBERLAIN. Possibly. I daresay “a half-sheet of note-paper” might still cover our “general agreement,” so long as we only talked about it. That served us for—two years, did it not? But I wasn’t meaning—as to our political opinions. I meant that you are still looking to the future; I can only look back.

DIST. V. That, for you, must be a retrospect of deep satisfaction. It has made much history.

CHAMBERLAIN. Catastrophes make history—sometimes.

DIST. V. You helped to avert them.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, for a time. But another may be coming, and I shan’t be here then. And if I were, I should be no use.

DIST. V. Oh, don’t say that! Nor can I agree, either. No use? Your good word is a power we still depend on. No, Chamberlain, we cannot do without you.

CHAMBERLAIN. You did—when you accepted my resignation.

DIST. V. For a fixed and an agreed purpose. In a way that only bound us more closely.

CHAMBERLAIN. I thought so then. But it has turned out differently.

DIST. V. Has it? I should not have said so. Am I not to count on you still?

CHAMBERLAIN. As a diminishing force? Yes; I shan’t disappoint you.

DIST. V. Oh! (Deprecatingly, as of something that need not have been said.) But not that at all!

CHAMBERLAIN (rubbing it in). Necessarily: one who, as I said, can only look backward. Forward, I am nothing. Believe me, I have measured myself at last. This is no miscalculation—like the other.

DIST. V. The other?

CHAMBERLAIN. My resignation.

DIST. V. Was that one?

CHAMBERLAIN. It certainly had not the effect I intended.

DIST. V. Surely you were not then intending to force me against my own judgment?

CHAMBERLAIN. No; but I thought you, and the rest, would follow.

DIST. V. I think we did: I think we still do. But sometimes, with followers, following takes time.

CHAMBERLAIN. It will take more than my time. That is where I miscalculated.

DIST. V. But, my dear Chamberlain—if one may be personal—you are maintaining your strength, are you not? The doctors—are hopeful?

CHAMBERLAIN. The regulation paragraphs are supplied to the papers, if that’s what you mean.

DIST. V. But I had this from members of your own family.

CHAMBERLAIN. Quite so; it is they who supply them.

DIST. V. Then, if the source is so authoritative, surely it must be true.

CHAMBERLAIN. Are newspaper paragraphs in such cases—ever true?

DIST. V. Perhaps I am no judge. As you know, I seldom read them.

CHAMBERLAIN. Aren’t the probabilities that they will always overstate the case—as far as possible?

DIST. V. That is a course which, as an old politician,—speaking generally—I must own has its advantages. So often, when things are uncertain, one has to act as if one were sure.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, you’ve done that—sometimes. Sometimes you haven’t. I shouldn’t call you an old politician, though. Being old is the thing you’ve always managed to avoid. And yet, you’ve been in at a good many political deaths first and last.

DIST. V. That, in itself, is an ageing experience.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes?... I wonder.

DIST. V. Oh, but surely!

CHAMBERLAIN. I wasn’t sure; but I take your word for it.

DIST. V. In politics, somehow, the deaths seem always to exceed the births: those who go have become more intimate: one has got to know them. Yes, the departures do certainly overshadow the arrivals.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yet sometimes they must have come to you as a relief.

DIST. V. My dear Chamberlain, don’t say that! It isn’t true.

CHAMBERLAIN. Oh! I wasn’t thinking of myself just then.

DIST. V. You were thinking, then, of somebody?

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, I was. I was thinking of George Wyndham. What a beautiful fellow he was! so clever, so handsome, so charming: a man cut out for success, by the very look of him. And then, all at once, down and out: the old pack had got him! How they hunted him! “Devolution!” Wouldn’t they be glad to get that now?

DIST. V. At the time it was impossible.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, you accepted that, I know.... It broke his heart.... Did you go and see him—when he was dying?

DIST. V. I used to go and see him when I could—yes, frequently; we had been great friends. Not immediately—a month or two before, was the last time, I think.

CHAMBERLAIN. And so with him, too, you could say that you remained friends to the last! You have had a wonderful career: friends, enemies, they all loved you. Gladstone (who hadn’t as a rule much love for his political opponents) made an exception in your case.

DIST. V. Yes, I owed a great deal to his generous friendship. It gave me confidence.

CHAMBERLAIN. Harcourt, too, always spoke of you with affection.

DIST. V. Oh, yes; we had a brotherly feeling about Rosebery, you know.

CHAMBERLAIN (ignoring his diversion). Randolph hadn’t though. He was bitter.

DIST. V. Randolph was a performer who just once exceeded his promise, and then could never get back to it. That was his tragedy. Strange how, when he lost his following, his brilliancy all went with it.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, it was strange, in one so independent of others. He had a great faculty, at one time, for not caring, for being (or seeming) ruthless. It’s a gift that a politician must envy. It hasn’t been my way to lose my heart in politics: it’s not safe. But—you charmed me.

(There is an implication here that the quiet tone has not obscured. And so the direct question comes:)

DIST. V. Chamberlain, I must ask. What is there between us?

CHAMBERLAIN. Nothing—nothing now at all—or very little.

DIST. V. No, no; you are too sincere to pretend to misunderstand me like that.

CHAMBERLAIN. In politics can one afford to be quite—sincere? Openly, I mean?

DIST. V. You have been—far more than others I could name.

CHAMBERLAIN. That is a friendly judgment. Others wouldn’t say so. If a man stays in politics till he ceases to be important, while others remain important, there’s bound to be a change of relations.

DIST. V. In our case I don’t admit that it has happened.

CHAMBERLAIN. Don’t you? You were our party-leader. I broke away; so you had to break me. From your point of view you were right. I thought I knew the game better than you. I made a mistake.

DIST. V. Do you mean, then, that you intended to break me?

CHAMBERLAIN. Oh, no. But I meant to—persuade you.

DIST. V. My view is that you did—very thoroughly. Surely I went a long way—conceded a great deal.

CHAMBERLAIN. “Half a sheet of note-paper” was the measure of it. Yes, that speech was a great success, and you remained our leader. But your halving of that sheet was the beginning of—my defeat, your victory.

DIST. V. I don’t recognise either. At this moment we are both defeated, in a sense: out of office, that is to say.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, but you will come back. I shan’t.

DIST. V. But—in all its essentials—what you stand for will.

CHAMBERLAIN. As a hang-fire, perhaps, while parties temporise and readjust themselves to a new balance. But never the same thing again. The time for it has gone. I missed it.

DIST. V. You mustn’t be depressed, Chamberlain. Great policies, new orientations, need careful nursing—testing too. Conditions are changing very rapidly.

CHAMBERLAIN. Mine are getting worse. I have two nurses now—night and day: and I obey orders.

DIST. V. You do well to remind me. You shouldn’t have let me tire you.

(And so saying he rises.)

CHAMBERLAIN. You don’t. You used to, now and then, when we didn’t agree. You had the deliberate mind, your own fixed rate of progression: one couldn’t hurry you. And your semitones, and semicircles, and semi-quavers used sometimes to worry me, I own. They don’t now: having become a monotone myself, I acquiesce. I’m the slow one, now: you’ve set me my pace.... Here I sit, stock still.

DIST. V. (lightly diverting the conversation from its impending embarrassment). With your old associates still round you, I see!

(And he touches a trail of blossom admiringly, as he continues:)

They, at least, in their reflected glory, look flourishing; for they, too, have had a share in your career, have they not?

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, they helped me to get into Punch, I suppose, if not into Parliament. Yet, I never thought of it, till it happened—’twas a mere accident. Would you like to take one with you?

DIST. V. I don’t usually so efface myself, but I will with pleasure. This one is quite exquisite. May I? Thanks (and the glory of it goes to his buttonhole). I notice, too, that it has a scent.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, that is a new kind, hard to rear. There are very few of it in England yet, and nowhere growing so well as they do here.

DIST. V. That is so like you, Chamberlain—you are the born expert; everything you touch—it’s in your blood. Whatever you have done, you have done successfully.

CHAMBERLAIN. So I have your word for it. I was saying to Collins this morning that as a type of the really successful man you had beaten me.

DIST. V. I—a type of success? My dear Chamberlain! In my wildest dreams, I aim only at safety; and if my hesitations have sometimes distressed you, they have been far more distressing to myself. You yourself, in a moment of friendly candour, once described me (so I was told) as the champion stick-in-the-mud.

CHAMBERLAIN. So I did, and it’s true. But I said “champion.” If you hadn’t been such a champion at it, the mud would have swallowed you up alive. Instead of that, you have made it a tower of defence against your enemies. That’s why I regard you not only as so successful, but so British.

DIST. V. May I, at least, claim that even for self-defence I have not slung it at my opponents?

CHAMBERLAIN. No. Why waste it? It’s your use, not your misuse of it that I so admire. If you hadn’t been such a wonderful politician, you might have been a great statesman.

DIST. V. Doesn’t that rather indicate failure?

CHAMBERLAIN. No. Sometimes the political world has no use for statesmen—except to down them. Sometimes it prefers politicians, and perhaps rightly. Every age makes its own peculiar requirements; and those who find out when the political line is the better one to follow, are the successful ones. You and I have been—politicians; let’s be honest and own it. And now my particular politics are over. Circumstances have emptied me out. That’s different from mere failure. Great statesmen have been failures; we’ve seen them go down, you and I—too big, too far-seeing for their day. But they went down full, with all the weight of their great convictions and principles still to their credit. I’m empty. Time has played me out. That’s the difference.

DIST. V. I am confident that history will give a different verdict.

CHAMBERLAIN. Will it? When exactly does history begin to get written? Is a man’s reputation for statesmanship safe, even after a hundred years? What about Pitt? Can one be so sure of him now? His European policy may have been a blunder; his great work in Ireland may yet have to be reversed.

DIST. V. In reversed circumstances, that may become logical. But what has held good for a hundred year, I should incline to regard as statesmanship.

CHAMBERLAIN. “Held good”? Fetters a man can’t break “hold good”; but they make a prisoner of him all the same. Policies have done that to nations before now. But would you, on that score, say of them that they have held good?

DIST. V. But let me understand, my dear Chamberlain, what exactly in Pitt’s policy you now question?

CHAMBERLAIN. Nothing: I can’t see far enough ahead to question anything. I only say, when does history begin to get written? We don’t know.

DIST. V. What more can one do than direct it for the generation in which one lives? That, it seems to me, is our main responsibility.

CHAMBERLAIN. Well, that’s what you and I have done. How? Mainly by pulling down bigger men than ourselves. Randolph, Parnell, Gladstone—we got the better of them, didn’t we? Have you never wondered why men of genius get sent into the world—only to be defeated? Gladstone was a bigger man than the whole lot of us; but we pulled him down—and I enjoyed doing it. Parnell, for all his limitations, was a great man. Well, we got him down too. And I confess that gave me satisfaction. You helped to pull Randolph down; but you didn’t enjoy doing it. That’s where you and I were different.

DIST. V. I helped?

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes; it had to be done. And you were sorry for him while you did it—just as you were sorry for Wyndham.

DIST. V. But I did nothing!

CHAMBERLAIN. Quite so. He came down here to fight us in the Central division, and the Conservatives were keen for it. It was touch and go: Unionists were not in such close alliance then; he might have succeeded. You did nothing; wouldn’t back him. (Quite right, from my point of view.) Randolph went down: never the same man again.

DIST. V. But, my dear Chamberlain, we had our agreed compact.

CHAMBERLAIN. An official understanding, certainly. But that didn’t prevent me from going to the Round-Table conference. That also was touch and go; it might have succeeded. Where would our compact have been, then?

DIST. V. The Round-Table was merely an interrogation covering a forlorn hope. It failed because you remained loyal to your convictions.

CHAMBERLAIN. It failed because one day two of us lost our tempers—one bragged, the other bullied. That was the real reason. If Gladstone had given me a large enough hand over his first Bill, d’you suppose I shouldn’t have been a Home Ruler? I was to begin with, remember.

DIST. V. Standing for a very different Bill, I imagine.

CHAMBERLAIN. Which you would still have opposed. But I should have won.

DIST. V. Certainly, if we had lost you, it would have made a difference.

CHAMBERLAIN. I was younger then: I’d more push in me. But you would have let me go, all the same. Yes, I’ve always admired your courage when the odds were against you.... So, when the time for it came, you pulled me down too. It had to be done.... And here I am.

DIST. V. My dear Chamberlain, you distress me deeply!

CHAMBERLAIN. Of course I do. D’you think I haven’t distressed myself too? Do I look like a man who hasn’t been through anything?

DIST. V. Then—there is a cloud between us, after all.

CHAMBERLAIN. No. I see you clearly; I see myself clearly. There’s no cloud about it; it’s all sharp, and clear, and hard—hard as nails. And I’ve been able to put it into words—that now you understand. Poor Randolph! Do you remember how his tongue stumbled, and tripped him, the last time he spoke in the House? And I saw you looking on, pitying him. You’d got a kind side to you, for all your efficiency. Men like you for that—that charm.... It’s been a great asset to you. Parnell, how he tried all his life to make a speech and couldn’t. But what he said didn’t matter—there was the man! What a force he might have been—was! What a Samson, when he pulled the whole Irish Party down—got them all on top of him to pull with him. What d’you think he was doing then? Trying to give his Irish nation a soul! It looked like pride, pique, mere wanton destruction; but it was a great idea. And if ever they rise to it—if ever the whole Irish nation puts its back to the wall as Parnell wanted it to do then—shakes off dependence, alliance, conciliation, compromise, it may beat us yet! They were afraid of defeat. That’s why we won. A cause or a nation that fears no defeat—nor any number of them—that’s what wins in the long run. But does any such nation—any such cause exist? I’m not sure.... I’m not really sure of anything now, only this: that it’s better not to live too long after one has failed. To go on living then—is the worst failure of all.

(As he thus talks himself out, his auditor’s solicitous concern has continually increased; and now when, for the first time, the voice breaks with exhaustion and emotion, the other, half-rising from his seat, interposes with gentle but insistent urgency.)

DIST. V. My dear Chamberlain, you are overtaxing your strength; you are doing yourself harm. You ought not to go on. Stop, I do beg of you!

CHAMBERLAIN. Stop? Why stop? What does it matter now?

(But even as he speaks, mind and will cease to contest the point where physical energy fails. His manner changes, his voice becomes dull and listless of tone.)

Oh, yes ... yes. You are quite right. It’s time. I’m under orders now. Would you mind—the bell?

(Then, as the other is about to rise, he perceives that the Nurse has already entered, and now stands, unobtrusive but firm, awaiting the moment to reassert her sway.)

Oh, it’s not necessary. There’s the Nurse come again, to remind me that I mustn’t tire myself in tiring you.

(And so, under the presiding eye of professional attendance, the Visitor rises and advances to take his leave.)

Thank you—for coming. Thank you—for hearing me so patiently.... You always did that, even though it made no difference.... I wonder—shall I ever see you again?

DIST. V. You shall. I promise.

CHAMBERLAIN. I wonder.

DIST. V. I assure you, I shall make a point of it. Believe me, I am very grateful for this opportunity you have given me; and even more am I grateful for all your long loyalty in the past. Through all differences, through all difficulties, I have felt that you were indeed a friend. So, till we meet again, my dear Chamberlain, good-bye!

(The two hands meet and part, while the Nurse moves forward to resume her professional duties. The Distinguished Visitor begins to retire.)

CHAMBERLAIN. Good-bye.... You can find your way?

DIST. V. (turning gracefully as he goes). Perfectly!

(And treating the door with the same perfection of courtesy as he treats all with whom he comes in contact, he goes to take his leave of other members of the family. The door closes; the Nurse is punching the pillows; Chamberlain speaks:)

CHAMBERLAIN. So that’s the end, eh?... Charming fellow!

(And so saying, he settles back to the inattention of life to which he has become accustomed.)

The Instrument

Dramatis Personæ

Woodrow Wilson (Ex-President of the United States of America).

Mr. Tumulty (His Secretary).

A Gracious Presence.

An Attendant.