"I won't," I said hastily.
I liked Smart, and I wish we had more of his stamp in the inspectorate.
When we returned to the dining-room Mackenzie looked at me with interest.
"I didn't know that you were the Dominie's Log man till Mr. Macdonald told me two minutes ago," he said. "I am delighted to meet you. I enjoyed your book very much indeed. Very amusing."
He was quite affable now. Writing a book gives a man a certain standing. I fancy it is the dignity of print that does it, and we all have the print superstition. I find myself accepting statements in books, whereas if someone said the same things to me over a dinner-table I should refute them with scorn. "If it is in John Bull it is so!" Mr. Bottomley is a sound psychologist.
When they were departing I said to Smart: "Yes, he's very amiable and all that, but I am jolly glad I had Frank Michie and not him as my chief inspector when I wrote my Log."
Smart laughed.
"My dear chap, Mackenzie would have let you run your school in your own way."
"But," I cried, "he doesn't believe in freedom!"
"He doesn't, but don't you see that he simply couldn't have jumped on you? He would have thought you either a lunatic or a genius, and he would have feared to condemn you in case you might turn out to be the latter. I know an art critic in London, and, believe me, the poor devil lives in terror lest he should damn the work of a new Augustus John. The Futurists aren't flourishing on their merits; they are flourishing because the critics are in a holy funk to condemn them in case they might be artists after all."