第83章 THE FOURTH(10)

"Little peculiarities of costume count for a great deal.I could name one man who spent three years living down a pair of spatterdashers.On the other hand--a thing like that--if it catches the eye of the PUNCH man, for example, may be your making."He went off into a lengthy speculation of why the House had come to like an originally unpopular Irishman named Biggar....

The opening of Parliament gave me some peculiar moods.I began to feel more and more like a branded sheep.We were sworn in in batches, dozens and scores of fresh men, trying not to look too fresh under the inspection of policemen and messengers, all of us carrying new silk hats and wearing magisterial coats.It is one of my vivid memories from this period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats in the smoking-room of the National Liberal Club.At first Ithought there must have been a funeral.Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt hats, under bowlers, under liberal-minded wide brims, and above artistic ties and tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of self-consciousness, from under silk hats of incredible glossiness.There was a disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a good Parliamentary style.

There was much play with the hats all through; a tremendous competition to get in first and put hats on coveted seats.A memory hangs about me of the House in the early afternoon, an inhumane desolation inhabited almost entirely by silk hats.The current use of cards to secure seats came later.There were yards and yards of empty green benches with hats and hats and hats distributed along them, resolute-looking top hats, lax top hats with a kind of shadowy grin under them, sensible top bats brim upward, and one scandalous incontinent that had rolled from the front Opposition bench right to the middle of the floor.A headless hat is surely the most soulless thing in the world, far worse even than a skull....

At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and Ifound myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its ease amidst its empty benches.

There was a tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see over the shoulder of the man in front.''Order, order, order!""What's it about?" I asked.

The man in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then Igathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it was Chris Robinson had walked between the bonourable member in possession of the house and the Speaker.I caught a glimpse of him blushingly whispering about his misadventure to a colleague.He was just that same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at Cambridge, but grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same knitted muffler he had discarded for a reckless half-hour while he talked to us in Hatherleigh's rooms.

It dawned upon me that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House, and that I should get all I needed of the opening speeches next day from the TIMES.

I made my way out and was presently walking rather aimlessly through the outer lobby.

I caught myself regarding the shadow that spread itself out before me, multiplied itself in blue tints of various intensity, shuffled itself like a pack of cards under the many lights, the square shoulders, the silk hat, already worn with a parliamentary tilt backward; I found I was surveying this statesmanlike outline with a weak approval."A MEMBER!" I felt the little cluster of people that were scattered about the lobby must be saying.