Upton had certainly been very
silent for the rest of that uncomfortable meal,--as if it were for Mary's
sake that she were assuming the mask, behind which, as Jack must know, she
was in torture.
"I'm glad you're to see them, Mary darling; they will amuse you. From your
standpoint of reality, the standpoint of Puritan civilization--the deepest
civilization the world has yet produced; the civilization that judges by
the soul--you will be able to judge and place them as few of our people
are, as yet, developed enough to do. They are of that funny English type,
Mary, the leisured; their business in life that of pleasure seeking; their
social service consisting in benevolent domination over the servile classes
beneath them. Oh, they have their political business, too; we mustn't be
unfair; though that consists, in the main, for people of their type, in
maintaining their own place as donors and in keeping other people in the
place of recipients. In their own eyes, I'm quite sure, they are useful,
as upholding the structure of English civilization. You'll find them
absolutely simple, absolutely self-assured, absolutely indifferent, quite
charming,--there's no reason why they shouldn't be; but their good manners
are for themselves, not for you,--one must never forget that with the
English. Do study them, Mary. We need to keep the fact of them clearly
before us, for what they represent is a menace to us and to what we mean.
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