Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/459

Rh had, in the course of his business, been sufficiently in the company of gentlemen to be altogether “comme il faut” at a private dinner, and after dinner.

She wrote me concerning him occasionally:

“George Saxton was here to dinner yesterday. He and Leslie had frightful battles over the nationalisation of industries. George is rather more than a match for Leslie, which, in his secret heart, makes our friend gloriously proud. It is very amusing. I, of course, have to preserve the balance of power, and, of course, to bolster my husband’s dignity. At a crucial, dangerous moment, when George is just going to wave his bloody sword and Leslie lies bleeding with rage, I step in and prick the victor under the heart with some little satire or some esoteric question, I raise Leslie and say his blood is luminous for the truth, and vous voilà! Then I abate for the thousandth time Leslie’s conservative crow, and I appeal once more to George—it is no use my arguing with him, he gets so angry—I make an abtruse appeal for all the wonderful, sad, and beautiful expressions on the countenance of life, ex- pressions which he does not see or which he distorts by his oblique vision of socialism into grimaces—and there I am! I think I am something of a Machiavelli, but it is quite true, what I say——”

Again she wrote:

“We happened to be motoring from Derby on Sunday morning, and as we came to the top of the hill, we had to thread our way through quite a large crowd. I looked up, and whom should I see but our friend George, holding forth about the state