Most of
them were little dramatic situations, crucial dialogues, the
return of Mr. Hoopdriver to his native village, for instance, in
a well-cut holiday suit and natty gloves, the unheard asides of
the rival neighbours, the delight of the old 'mater,' the
intelligence--"A ten-pound rise all at once from Antrobus,
mater. Whad d'yer think of that?" or again, the first whispering
of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served a few
days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty
in distress from truculent insult or ravening dog.
So many people do this--and you never suspect it. You see a
tattered lad selling matches in the street, and you think there
is nothing between him and the bleakness of immensity, between
him and utter abasement, but a few tattered rags and a feeble
musculature. And all unseen by you a host of heaven- sent
fatuities swathes him about, even, maybe, as they swathe you
about. Many men have never seen their own profiles or the backs
of their heads, and for the back of your own mind no mirror has
been invented. They swathe him about so thickly that the pricks
of fate scarce penetrate to him, or become but a pleasant
titillation. And so, indeed, it is with all of us who go on
living. Self-deception is the anaesthetic of life, while God is
carving out our beings.
But to return from this general vivisection to Mr. Hoopdriver's
imaginings. You see now how external our view has been; we have
had but the slightest transitory glimpses of the drama within, of
how the things looked in the magic mirror of Mr.
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