Mr. Alderman Verity was an elder statesman of the Council and a Conservative of the honest, unyielding type who thought that to approve of Tory Democracy was to be either a rogue or a fool, and Sam objected to him not because he was a Conservative, but for deeper reasons. Verity was the landlord of Sam’s offices. Every tenant objects to every landlord.
One calls Verity an honest Conservative because he made no concessions, not because he was himself a fount of honour. He had no sympathy with the modern mawkishness about pampering the people. He admitted that one had to make promises, that the way to win elections was to tickle the elector as if he were a trout, but as an Alderman he sat above the cockpit of electioneering and frowned upon the Liberal attitudes to which younger Conservatives descended to catch a vote. And their view that the Council existed for the people honestly revolted him: it was so patently the other way about.
The particular instance was Baths in Hulme. He saw no sense in Baths in Hulme. He was quite sincere in his belief that to build Baths in Hulme was to cast pearls before swine. Hulme had not asked for Baths and did not want Baths. Baths were opportunities for cleanliness and Hulme did not want to be clean. Hulme would not be Hulme if it were clean.
The uncleanliness of Hulme was an institution. Conservatives conserve institutions, and the only thing which could remove his Conservative and Aldermanic objection to Baths in Hulme was self-interest.
Self-interest is the greatest institution of them all.
He continued to oppose the young bloods of his Party because for a long time he did not see where his self-interest came in. He even opposed them publicly. He said in public that Baths in Hulme were a nasty, pandering, Liberal idea and that no decent-minded Conservative could think of it without nausea. And then, suddenly and silently, he was found to be with those who proposed that Hulme should bathe if it wanted to. His change of mind coincided with the discovery that there was no open space in Hulme where Baths could be erected. Something would have to come down that the Baths might go up, and what would come down, and why, was the secret of Mr. Alderman Verity and one or two others of the Old Gang who had the habit of standing loyally by each other when a little simple jobbery was in question. Really, it was too simple to be reprehensible. If a Town Council can by one and the same resolution clear away a slum, and confer Baths, who benefits, and doubly, but the Town? Naturally, the slum owner has to be compensated, though adequate compensation can hardly be put high enough. Slums are so profitable.
Wattercouch had many preoccupations just now, but his vigilance was a habit, and he was struck by the change in Mr. Alderman Verity’s attitude. The silence which succeeded his eloquence seemed pregnant with something, and Wattercouch wondered with what. It was an error of judgment in the Alderman not to be ill at this time, but he had covered his tracks and the affair was prejudged, settled before it ever came before the Council. Verity had neither conscience nor fears about it, and the Conservative Party, with a prescient eye on the imminent General Election, was going to use its majority in the Council that it might figure as the Party which bestowed cleanliness on Hulme.
Wattercouch wondered why it was Simpson’s Buildings which those benefactors of mankind proposed to buy and demolish so as to clear a site for their Baths.
“This might be your opportunity, Branstone,” he said.
“Isn’t it asking a good deal of the junior member of the Council to suggest that he tackle an old hand like Alderman Verity?” asked Sam, leaning back in his chair with his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes.