f him. He spoke sometimes in a husky, low voice, now and again in
a smothered shriek, again in a tragic whisper. He was in a small
gathering and he seemed to know that though the dingy, mysterious room
was somewhat high, he had no need to lift his voice to the shrill
impetuous discord that is said to characterize his speeches in Commons or
Lords. He was carried away by some indefinable atmosphere. What it was
he scarcely knew. After the dinner he shook hands with people, delivered
himself of a number of snappy brusqueries, laughed a good bit and, almost
the last to leave the charmed precinct where he had unbosomed himself
among "congenial" souls, he wandered out.

Next day, lying poseurishly on a lounge in his room at the hotel, he said
to a confidante who had been with him at the dinner:

"Bunting!" (that is not the true name) "Will you kindly repeat to me some
of the things I seem to have said last evening. I know I talked an
unconscionably great deal. What on earth did I say?"

As it had been a perfectly abstemious occasion, one imagines that
Beaverbrook at the dinner was sincere, though playing the actor, and that
in his room he was both theatrical and insincere.

This man has a confusing, but in his own mind seldom confused, orbit of
his own. He was a conundrum in Canada. He is an enigma in England.
That he still considers himself a Canadian, because he was born here,
fortuned here and voluntarily exiled from here after he had completely
mystified a large number of people as to his working psychology, is
proved by the fact that he continues to come back here. He also
professes to be manning the _Daily Express_ with Canadians. He has been
for ten years the intimate of Bonar Law, also a distinguished Canadian of
sorts. And a few months ago there was a rumour, which no one remembers
him to have refuted, that he was a likely candidate for the
Governor-Generalship of Canada. Of course if ever Rideau Hall should
take Beaverbrook for a tenant, it will be time to take refuge in a
Canadian republic.

It is easy to think disagreeable things about Beaverbrook, because he is
so enormously interesting, so pathologically unusual, and altogether so
brilliant and resourceful a phenomenon. I have called him the Imperial
brainstorm. A dozen other titles would fit him as well. There are times
when one almost imagines himself mingling an element of real liking for
the man with one's unfailing admiration of his rema