It became relevant to the trend of his thoughts that his son had through his mother a strong strain of the dark Irish in his composition.

How we had wasted Ireland!  The rich values that lay in Ireland, the gallantry and gifts, the possible friendliness, all these things were being left to the Ulster politicians and the Tory women to poison and spoil, just as we left India to the traditions of the chattering army women and the repressive instincts of our mandarins.  We were too lazy, we were too negligent.  We passed our indolent days leaving everything to somebody else.  Was this the incurable British, just as it was the incurable Britling, quality?

Was the whole prosperity of the British, the far-flung empire, the securities, the busy order, just their good luck?  It was a question he had asked a hundred times of his national as of his personal self.  No doubt luck had favoured him.  He was prosperous, and he was still only at the livelier end of middle age.  But was there not also a personal factor, a meritorious factor?  Luck had favoured the British with a well-placed island, a hardening climate, accessible minerals, but then too was there not also a national virtue?  Once he had believed in that, in a certain gallantry, a noble levity, an underlying sound sense.  The last ten years of politics had made him doubt that profoundly.  He clung to it still, but without confidence.  In the night that dear persuasion left him altogether....  As for himself he had a certain brightness and liveliness of mind, but the year of his fellowship had been a soft year, he had got on to The Times through something very like a misapprehension, and it was the chances of a dinner and a duchess that had given him the opportunity of the Kahn show.  He’d dropped into good things that suited him.  That at any rate was the essence of it.  And these lucky chances had been no incentive to further effort.  Because things had gone easily and rapidly with him he had developed indolence into a philosophy.  Here he was just over forty, and explaining to the world, explaining all through the week-end to this American—­until even God could endure it no longer and the smash stopped him—­how excellent was the backwardness of Essex and English go-as-you-please, and how through good temper it made in some mysterious way for all that was desirable.  A fat English doctrine. Punch has preached it for forty years.

But this wasn’t what he had always been.  He thought of the strenuous intentions of his youth, before he had got into this turmoil of amorous experiences, while he was still out there with the clean star of youth.  As Hugh was....