Critically, in the glasses of Mr. Bojanus’s fitting-room, Gumbril
examined his profile, his back view. Inflated, the Patent Small-Clothes
bulged, bulged decidedly, though with a certain gracious opulence that
might, in a person of the other sex, have seemed only deliciously
natural. In him, however, Gumbril had to admit, the opulence seemed a
little misplaced and paradoxical. Still, if one has to suffer in order
to be beautiful, one must also expect to be ugly in order not to suffer.
Practically, the trousers were a tremendous success. He sat down heavily
on the hard wooden bench of the fitting-room and was received as though
on a lap of bounding resiliency; the Patent Small-Clothes, there was no
doubt, would be proof even against marble. And the coat, he comforted
himself, would mask with its skirts the too decided bulge. Or if it
didn’t, well, there was no help for it. One must resign oneself to
bulging, that was all.
“Very nice,” he declared at last.
Mr. Bojanus, who had been watching his client in silence and with a
polite but also, Gumbril could not help feeling, a somewhat ironical
smile, coughed. “It depends,” he said, “precisely what you mean by
‘nice.’” He cocked his head on one side, and the fine waxed end of his
moustache was like a pointer aimed up at some remote star.
Gumbril said nothing, but catching sight once more of his own side view,
nodded a dubious agreement.
“If by nice,” continued Mr. Bojanus, “you mean comfortable, well and
good. If, however, you mean elegant, then, Mr. Gumbril, I fear I must
disagree.”
“But elegance,” said Gumbril, feebly playing the philosopher, “is only
relative, Mr. Bojanus. There are certain African negroes, among whom it
is considered elegant to pierce the lips and distend them with wooden
plates, until the mouth looks like a pelican’s beak.”
Mr. Bojanus placed his hand in his bosom and slightly bowed. “Very
possibly, Mr. Gumbril,” he replied. “But if you’ll pardon my saying so,
we are not African negroes.”
Gumbril was crushed, deservedly. He looked at himself again in the
mirrors. “Do you object,” he asked after a pause, “to all eccentricities
in dress, Mr. Bojanus? Would you put us all into your elegant uniform?”
“Certainly not,” replied Mr. Bojanus. “There are certain walks of life
in which eccentricity in appearance is positively a _sine qua non_, Mr.
Gumbril, and I might almost say _de rigueur_.”
“And which walks of life, Mr. Bojanus, may I ask? You refer, perhaps, to
the artistic walks? Sombreros and Byronic collars and possibly velveteen
trousers? Though all that sort of thing is surely a little out of date,
nowadays.”
Enigmatically Mr. Bojanus smiled, a playful Sphinx. He thrust his right
hand deeper into his bosom and with his left twisted to a finer needle
the point of his moustache. “Not artists, Mr. Gumbril.” He shook his
head. “In practice they may show themselves a little eccentric and
negleejay. But they have no need to look unusual on principle. It’s only
the politicians who need do it on principle. It’s only _de rigueur_, as
one might say, in the political walks, Mr. Gumbril.”
“You surprise me,” said Gumbril. “I should have thought that it was to
the politician’s interest to look respectable and normal.”
“But it is still more to his interest as a leader of men to look
distinguished,” Mr. Bojanus replied. “Well, not precisely
distinguished,” he corrected himself, “because that implies that
politicians look _distangay_, which I regret to say, Mr. Gumbril, they
very often don’t. Distinguishable, is more what I mean.”
“Eccentricity is their badge of office?” suggested Gumbril. He sat down
luxuriously on the Patent Small-Clothes.
“That’s more like it,” said Mr. Bojanus, tilting his moustaches. “The
leader has got to look different from the other ones. In the good old
days they always wore their official badges. The leader ’ad his livery,
like every one else, to show who he was. That was sensible, Mr. Gumbril.
Nowadays he has no badge—at least not for ordinary occasions—for I don’t
count Privy Councillors’ uniforms and all that sort of once-a-year fancy
dress. ’E’s reduced to dressing in some eccentric way or making the most
of the peculiarities of ’is personal appearance. A very ’apazard method
of doing things, Mr. Gumbril, very ’apazard.”
Gumbril agreed.
Mr. Bojanus went on, making small, neat gestures as he spoke. “Some of
them,” he said, “wear ’uge collars, like Mr. Gladstone. Some wear
orchids and eyeglasses, like Joe Chamberlain. Some let their ’air grow,
like Lloyd George. Some wear curious ’ats, like Winston Churchill. Some
put on black shirts, like this Mussolini, and some put on red ones, like
Garibaldi. Some turn up their moustaches, like the German Emperor. Some
turn them down, like Clemenceau. Some grow whiskers, like Tirpitz. I
don’t speak of all the uniforms, orders, ornaments, ’ead-dresses,
feathers, crowns, buttons, tattooings, ear-rings, sashes, swords,
trains, tiaras, urims, thummims and what not, Mr. Gumbril, that ’ave
been used in the past and in other parts of the world to distinguish the
leader. We, ’oo know our ’istory, Mr. Gumbril, we know all about that.”
Gumbril made a deprecating gesture. “You speak for yourself, Mr.
Bojanus,” he said.
Mr. Bojanus bowed.
“Pray continue,” said Gumbril.
Mr. Bojanus bowed again. “Well, Mr. Gumbril,” he said, “the point of all
these things, as I’ve already remarked, is to make the leader look
different, so that ’e can be recognized at the first _coop d’oil_, as
you might say, by the ’erd ’e ’appens to be leading. For the ’uman ’erd,
Mr. Gumbril, is an ’erd which can’t do without a leader. Sheep, for
example: I never noticed that they ’ad a leader; nor rooks. Bees, on the
other ’and, I take it, ’ave. At least when they’re swarming. Correct me,
Mr. Gumbril, if I’m wrong. Natural ’istory was never, as you might say,
my _forty_.”
“Nor mine,” protested Gumbril.
“As for elephants and wolves, Mr. Gumbril, I can’t pretend to speak of
them with first-’and knowledge. Nor llamas, nor locusts, nor squab
pigeons, nor lemmings. But ’uman beings, Mr. Gumbril, those I can claim
to talk of with authority, if I may say so in all modesty, and not as
the scribes. I ’ave made a special study of them, Mr. Gumbril. And my
profession ’as brought me into contact with very numerous specimens.”
Gumbril could not help wondering where precisely in Mr. Bojanus’s museum
he himself had his place.
“The ’uman ’erd,” Mr. Bojanus went on, “must have a leader. And a leader
must have something to distinguish him from the ’erd. It’s important for
’is interests that he should be recognized easily. See a baby reaching
out of a bath and you immediately think of Pears’ Soap; see the white
’air waving out behind and think of Lloyd George. That’s the secret. But
in my opinion, Mr. Gumbril, the old system was much more sensible, give
them regular uniforms and badges, I say; make Cabinet Ministers wear
feathers in their ’air. Then the people will be looking to a real fixed
symbol of leadership, not to the peculiarities of the mere individuals.
Beards and ’air and funny collars change; but a good uniform is always
the same. Give them feathers, that’s what I say, Mr. Gumbril. Feathers
will increase the dignity of the State and lessen the importance of the
individual. And that,” concluded Mr. Bojanus with emphasis, “that, Mr.
Gumbril, will be all to the good.”
“But you don’t mean to tell me,” said Gumbril, “that if I chose to show
myself to the multitude in my inflated trousers, I could become a
leader—do you?”
“Ah, no,” said Mr. Bojanus. “You’d ’ave to ’ave the talent for talking
and ordering people about, to begin with. Feathers wouldn’t give the
genius, but they’d magnify the effect of what there was.”
Gumbril got up and began to divest himself of the Small-Clothes. He
unscrewed the valve and the air whistled out, dyingly. He too sighed.
“Curious,” he said pensively, “that I’ve never felt the need for a
leader. I’ve never met any one I felt I could whole-heartedly admire or
believe in, never any one I wanted to follow. It must be pleasant, I
should think, to hand oneself over to somebody else. It must give you a
warm, splendid, comfortable feeling.”
Mr. Bojanus smiled and shook his head. “You and I, Mr. Gumbril,” he
said, “we’re not the sort of people to be impressed with feathers or
even by talking and ordering about. We may not be leaders ourselves. But
at any rate we aren’t the ’erd.”
“Not the main herd, perhaps.”
“Not any ’erd,” Mr. Bojanus insisted proudly.
Gumbril shook his head dubiously and buttoned up his trousers. He was
not sure, now he came to think of it, that he didn’t belong to all the
herds—by a sort of honorary membership and temporarily, as occasion
offered, as one belongs to the Union at the sister university or to the
Naval and Military Club while one’s own is having its annual clean-out.
Shearwater’s herd, Lypiatt’s herd, Mr. Mercaptan’s herd, Mrs. Viveash’s
herd, the architectural herd of his father, the educational herd (but
that, thank God! was now bleating on distant pastures), the herd of Mr.
Bojanus—he belonged to them all a little, to none of them completely.
Nobody belonged to his herd. How could they? No chameleon can live with
comfort on a tartan. He put on his coat.
“I’ll send the garments this evening,” said Mr. Bojanus. Gumbril left
the shop. At the theatrical wig-maker’s in Leicester Square he ordered a
blond fan-shaped beard to match his own hair and moustache. He would, at
any rate, be his own leader; he would wear a badge, a symbol of
authority. And Coleman had said that there were dangerous relations to
be entered into by the symbol’s aid.
Ah, now he was provisionally a member of Coleman’s herd. It was all very
depressing.