You would feel quite uncomfortable if you heard Dalrymple talk. He
conveys the impression that everything is badly in the way and ought
to be removed at once. That's his view. Dalrymple has no patience with
the social system. This includes everything, from the washing bill to
the House of Commons.
Dalrymple said the General Election made him impatient. By the way,
Dalrymple is a fine upstanding personage, with just the coloured
hair the lady novelists dote on, and eyes in harmony; but despite his
handsome placid bearing Dalrymple is a fire-eater of the hungriest.
"What you want to do is to make a clean sweep of everything," he said.
"Money is an anachronism, and in a perfectly ordered State would not
be required."
Of course it is no more use arguing with Dalrymple than it would be
to attempt a controversy on naval affairs with Lord Nelson on his
pedestal.
And then there is this about Dalrymple--you remember what some Court
poet said concerning Louis THE FOURTEENTH; it was to the effect that
_quand le Roi parle_--well, apparently everything and everybody else
had to put up the shutters. I forget exactly how the thing ran. It
is just so with Dalrymple. He comes into my room in the City and
warms himself, though no fire is needed to fan his enthusiasm for
destruction. The Bolsheviks are peaceable Sunday folk compared with
him. A Nihilist on a war footing would be considered Quaker-like in
his symptoms.
Dalrymple is neck or nothing. He is a whole-hogger even to the most
indigestible bit of crackling.
"What we want is a fresh start," he said. "Then you could begin anew
and everybody would have a chance. Burn things, blow them up, leave
nothing; then we should see something. Your whole scheme is faulty.
Your Underground--" Dalrymple has an irritating habit of fathering
things on me, which is unfair, for, as regards the Tubes, for
instance, I am sorry to say I have not even a share, and often not
as much as a strap.
"But the Underground is only a bit overcrowded," I ventured to say.
"It can't help that, you know."
"It is all wrong," said Dalrymple. "The entire gadget is defective.
Look at France, look at America, look at Germany and Russia and the
Jugo-Slavs."
It was rather breathless work looking at all these nations and
peoples, but I did my best. Dalrymple is particularly strong when it
is a question of the Jugo-Slavs, and he always gave me the idea that
he spent his Saturday afternoons enunciating chatty pleasantries in
Trafalgar Square and on Tower Hill.
But--you might just see the finish--Dalrymple was not doing anything
of the sort the afternoon that I was out house-hunting. Yes, it is
true. You will scarcely credit the fact that I found any difficulty
in tracking down an eligible villa, but that is the case.
The quest took me to a pleasant semi-rural neighbourhood where
there was room for gardens with the borders edged with the nice soft
yellow-tinted box, and rose walks, and dainty little arbours, and
fandangled appurtenances which amateur gardeners love with perfect
justification.
And there was Dalrymple. I won't deceive you. I recognised him on
the other side of a low oak fence. He was wearing an old hat of the
texture of the bit of headgear which the man who impersonates Napoleon
at the music-hall doubles up and plays tricks with, only Dalrymple's
hat had obviously been white and was now going green and other colours
with wear and tear.
And wherever Dalrymple went a small cherub in a holland frock went
too. The cherub would be about five. Dalrymple was fashioning a
hen-coop out of two or three soap-boxes. Both he and the cherub ceased
activities when I hailed and approached; and I stopped to dinner.
Dalrymple told me he rather fancied he could wangle me a bungalow.
"I know the agent chap," he said, as we sampled a very pleasant glass
of port. "Of course they want to keep it fairly dark or we should be
swamped. I have taken a lot of trouble myself, you know, and am just
starting gardening lectures at our club."
So he went on--the house, his new roses, the hens, the jam his wife
made, the idea he had for a winter garden in the interests of his
wife's mother, who could then take the air in her Bath-chair.
"But," I said, "you want to sweep everything away. You aim at sending
villages like this to pot--your own word, you remember. And then there
are the Jugo-Slavs--"
Dalrymple winked and handed me the cigars.