“Doesn’t it occur to you that there may be something behind the Ulster movement too?”
“No. What can they do? The Bill will be law before the end of July.”
“They say they’ll fight.”
“Oh,” said Gorman, “we’ve heard all about that till we’re sick of the sound of it. There’s nothing in it. The thing’s as plain as anything can be. We have a majority in Parliament and the bill will be passed. That’s all there is to say. I wish to goodness I saw my way as plainly in the cash register affair.”
Gorman’s faith in parliamentary majorities is extremely touching. I suppose that only politicians believe that the voting of men who are paid to vote really affects things. I doubt whether men of any other profession have the same whole-hearted faith in the efficacy of their own craft. Doctors are often a little sceptical about the value of medicines and operations. No barrister, that I ever met, thinks he achieves justice by arguing points of law. But politicians, even quite intelligent politicians like Gorman, seem really to hold that human life will be altered in some way because they walk round the lobbies of a particular building in London and have their heads counted three or four times an hour. To me it seemed quite plain that Malcolmson would not bate an ounce of his devotion to civil and religious liberty even if Gorman’s head were counted every five minutes for ten years and Gorman were paid a thousand a year instead of four hundred a year for letting out his head for the purpose. Why should Malcolmson care how often Gorman is counted? There is in the end only the original Gorman with his single head.
“Anyhow,” said Gorman, “I’m keeping in with Mrs. Ascher.”
He winked at me as he said this. I like Gorman’s way of adding explanatory winks to his remarks. I should frequently miss the meaning, the full meaning of what he says if he did not help out his words with these expressive winks. This time he made me understand that he had no great affection for Mrs. Ascher, regarded her rather as a joke which had worn thin; but hoped to pick up from her some information about her husband’s subtle schemes. I knew his hopes were vain. In the first place the Aschers do not talk business to each other and she knows nothing of what he is doing. In the next place Ascher had no underhand plot with regard to the cash register. He was acting in a perfectly open and straightforward way. But Gorman cannot believe that any one is straightforward. That is one of the drawbacks to the profession of politics. The practice of it destroys a man’s faith in human honesty.
“How’s Tim?” I asked. “Last time I saw him he was in great trouble because Mrs. Ascher said he was committing blasphemy.”
“Tim’s in England,” said Gorman. “I was rather angry with him myself for a while. If he had followed my advice about the cash register——. But Tim always was a fool about money, though he has brains of a sort, lots of them.”
“Still working with that circus?”