Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/172

146 MR. GRANVILLE BARKER AND AN ALIBI at the very moment it is vowing to practise self- denial and be strictly matter-of-fact and plain. But there is even more in it than that. There's that Influence ; there's our Ghost. Given Mr. Barker's unconquerable flair for shapeliness ; given, too, his determination to deal with plain reality and "facts"; we have still to explain why he should have let the first frustrate the second by devoting itself to the careful manufacture of this particularly metallic sort of plot. The Voyseys could have been stirred to a display of their individualities, and the necessary form and coherence supplied, by the use of a sustain- ing story much more typical of such a home — at least, so one believes, so finds the world. Then why this special spindle, so eccentric and bizarre ? Why this device of an elvish solicitor playing old Puck with his practice — tossing his clients' coin about in a kind of colossal roulette with an impudence that makes our economics look ridiculous, that shows up our solemn share-holding as the merest shibboleth and sham, and exposes the stupendous silliness of a social system which depends upon such unproductive middle-management with its inevitable sequel of treadmill waste of genuine power? The echoes of the definition give the answer. [Enter Ghost] Impossible not to hear in that contemptuous indictment the very accent of our fierce Adelphic oracle, the swish of the lacerating knout of cutting logic which he wields. Yes — it has to be admitted — shade of Shaw ! Had his bony Fabian forefinger never beckoned Mr. Barker, the elder Voysey, I feel sure, would have remained an honest father, and his children would have been allowed to live their lives (and live them before us entertainingly) with all their charming Chislehurst simplicity. But now we must move carefully. There is immense need here for clearness. Upon no other question have