CHAMBERLAIN (watching to see the effect of his news).
He's coming to-day: to see me.
COLLINGS (surprised). Coming here?
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, it's all been nicely arranged—just a call in passing. To-morrow's papers will describe it as "a pathetic meeting." Well, when a man has to meet his executioner on friendly terms, I suppose it is "pathetic" for one of them.
(All this is very disconcerting to poor Collings. He helps himself to a half-sentence, and stops.)
JESSE COLLINGS. Did he himself——?
CHAMBERLAIN. Propose it? Oh, yes—in the most charming way possible. Isn't it amazing how a man with charm can do things that nobody else dare? I never managed to charm anybody.
JESSE COLLINGS. You made friends—and kept them.
CHAMBERLAIN. So does he. He has been successful all round: art, politics, letters, society—he has friends in all. I've only been successful in business.
JESSE COLLINGS. My dear friend, aren't you forgetting yourself? You came out of business.
CHAMBERLAIN. No, I only changed to business on a larger scale—carried it on under a bigger name. That's how I found myself. I had to make things into a business in order to make a success of them. That was my method, Collings: glorify it as much as you like. And up to a point it was good business, I don't deny. That's how we ran local politics, invented the Caucus: Corporation Street is the result. That's how we managed to run Unionism: made a hard and fast contract of it, and made them stick to it. That's how I ran the Colonies—and the Boer War. That's how I was going to run the Empire on a Preferential Tariff. That came just too late. I'd made a mistake.