I would mark with a curious interest the stray country member of the
club up in town for a night or so. My mind would be busy with
speculations about him, about his home, his family, his reading, his
horizons, his innumerable fellows who didn't belong and never came
up. I would fill in the outline of him with memories of my uncle
and his Staffordshire neighbours. He was perhaps Alderman This or
Councillor That down there, a great man in his ward, J. P. within
seven miles of the boundary of the borough, and a God in his home.
Here he was nobody, and very shy, and either a little too arrogant
or a little too meek towards our very democratic mannered but still
livened waiters. Was he perhaps the backbone of England? He over-
ate himself lest he should appear mean, went through our Special
Dinner conscientiously, drank, unless he was teetotal, of unfamiliar
wines, and did his best, in spite of the rules, to tip. Afterwards,
in a state of flushed repletion, he would have old brandy, black
coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the name of temperance omit the
brandy and have rather more coffee, in the smoking-room. I would
sit and watch that stiff dignity of self-indulgence, and wonder,
wonder. . . .

An infernal clairvoyance would come to me. I would have visions of
him in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying,
sometimes being ostentatiously "kind"; I would see him glance
furtively at his domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen
his upper lip against the reluctant, protesting business employee.
We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only
in rare moods of bitter penetration that we pierce down to the baser
lusts, the viler shames, the everlasting lying and muddle-headed
self-justification of the dull.