Ian Hay

“ Would you sacrifice all that, Tim, just to get married?"
"But, Peggy," exclaimed Timothy, "you would help me. At least, you wouldn't be a bit in the way."
"You do say kind things to me, Tim," replied Peggy gratefully. "But it would never do. Even a man of your personality would find it hard to get on without friends and without influence; and very young married men have few friends and less influence. They are back numbers: nobody wants them. It's the rising young bachelors who go everywhere, and can command interest and popularity and fame. A wife would be a dreadful drag. ”

“ Any one can be happy who has no doubts about the future; that is why children laugh and sing all day; but the man who can keep a stiff upper lip when there is no confidence in his heart can fairly count himself one of those who have graduated with honours in the school of adversity. During those months Philip acquired the priceless art of taking life as it came, and, abandoning the pernicious habit of drawing upon the bank of the Future,—his account was sadly overdrawn there already,—of living within the income that the Present supplied to him. ”

“ Mablethorpe, as they sat alone together after Sylvia and her mother had gone to bed, "that when you do return from your travels we must not expect to see—quite so much of you as hitherto?"
"No, I think not," replied Philip. Then he added awkwardly, "You understand the situation?"
Julius Mablethorpe nodded.
"Yes," he said, "I do, and I know you are right. There is a power of difference between giving one's best and one's second best. You can't compromise over the really big things of life: with them it must be everything or nothing. You are doing the right thing. ”

“ Half an hour ago he could have set forth the doctrines of Uncle Joseph as matters of fact, not of opinion.
But Miss Falconer did not appear to be offended. She seemed rather pleased with Uncle Joseph.
"I don't like them much myself," she announced. "Except Mother, of course. I like little girls best—and then little boys." She squeezed Philip's arm in an ingratiating manner. "But why doesn't Uncle Joseph like women? They can't do anything to him! They can't stop him doing nice things! They can't send him to bed!" concluded Miss Falconer bitterly. ”

“ The sudden revelation of the eternal masculine in Philip, exemplified by his desire to roam, was jangling the chords of the eternal feminine in herself.
"Dangerous things," explained Philip enthusiastically.
"What for?"
"Well, they very often did them just out of bravery; but the very best things a knight did were always in honour of his Lady."
"Oh! Then you would require a Lady?" said Peggy, growing distinctly more attentive.
"Rather!" said Philip. "To serve, you know. Whenever a knight performed any great deed he wouldn't care anything about himself. ”

“ Philip, thinking of a blue cotton frock and a pair of brown eyes, nodded.
"Then I will try and make it easier for you," said Uncle Joseph. "It is my plain duty to do so, for if once you get into your head the notion that woman is man's better half and guiding angel, or any sentimental, insidious nonsense of that kind, you are doomed. Your father allowed himself to cherish such beliefs, and he died of a broken heart before he was thirty. You are your father's son." ”

“ With you it's just: 'Fine girl, what? Come and have supper at the Savoy to-night!' That's what you call love!" Brand's arms were waving: he was rapidly lapsing into his old Hyde Park manner. "When you've finished with one girl, or the girl's finished with you, what do you do? Kiss your 'and and get another! Bah!"
"And what do you do, Brand," enquired Philip imperturbably, "when a lady gives you up?"
"I give up my job: I give up everything, so as to be free; and I follow her. That's what I do. She's a child: she's not able to look after herself." ”

“ Our friends moved away, for not far off Philip's eye had discerned a familiar figure gesticulating upon a rostrum. It was Brand. He was addressing a considerable crowd, upon the edge of which Philip and Timothy now took their stand. Philip had never seen his colleague out of his overalls before, and was struck with the man's commanding presence and impassioned delivery.
"Life?" shouted Brand. His face was dead white, but his eyes blazed. "Life? What does life mean to you?" He surveyed his audience with profound contempt. "Beer!"
The crowd accepted this bludgeoning in excellent part. ”

“ If this hitherto unsuspected hardness in her nature was a permanent thing; if she was determined to live her own life and be independent—well, here was a unique opportunity for a knight to prove his metal—to justify his boast that he could serve without ulterior motives or hope of reward. If his Lady had selected another knight in preference to him, matters would have been different: proper pride would have driven Philip away. But so long as Peggy walked alone and unprotected, his vocation in life was clear and unmistakable. ”

“ Why not ask a woman to advise you?"
"Because," replied Peggy with great vigour, "women are such born matchmakers. If you go to a woman and confide to her that you are wobbling on the brink of matrimony, she won't advise you: she will simply step behind you and push you in! That is why I can't consult Jean Leslie,—Jean Falconer, I mean,—although she is my best friend. She is far too romantic to say or do anything practical. No, I must have a man, Philip; and I have picked you. You are the best sort I know; you have seen a good deal of life ”

“ As I say, I had never been in love before, or even had any great experience of women. All my time had been lavished on the regiment. So I laboured under the delusion that if a man loved a woman, his proper course was to tell her so straight, and prove his words by devoting himself to her service. I have learned wisdom since then, but that was what I thought at the time."
"What ought you to have done, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip curiously.
"I ought either to have bullied her, or gone and made love to another girl. Those are the only two arguments which a woman appreciates. ”

“ There are so many things that a woman can do now which were impossible in the days of chivalry, that she can live her own life quite happily and contentedly, knight or no."
"It's all wrong, all wrong!" cried Philip passionately. "It's all against every law of God and man! I won't believe it!"
"Wrong or right," pursued Peggy quietly, "it is a fact that many a woman nowadays would find a knight rather—what shall we say?—an encumbrance. ”

“ Certainly he had achieved his purpose in one case, Philip thought.
"To cheat thee of a sigh!
To charm thee to a tear!" The words died away to nothingness in the absolute stillness of the great audience. Then, after a brief interval, came the applause, in mighty gusts. But during that interval Philip had had time to hear the sound of a long tremulous sigh close beside him.
"My reason has been saved at the eleventh hour," said Mr. Mablethorpe gratefully. "Talking of the eleventh hour, shall we go home? Nothing but the cinematograph now!"
But Sylvia insisted upon seeing the programme out. ”

“ I wonder how you knew."
"Any money?"
"I believe not."
"Then why marry him?"
"Well," said Jean Leslie slowly, "I think I might be able to help him a little. A lonely man is a very helpless creature. Not a man like you, Montagu, but an ordinary man. Such a man lives, we will say, in chambers or a flat. He may even have a comfortable house; but he lives alone for all that. He is at the mercy of servants; when he is in doubt about anything, he has no one to consult; when he has done a good piece of work, he has no one to show it to; when he is out of heart, he has no one to encourage him. ”

“ You would get ten years of continuous employment, of a kind almost identical with your present occupation, and the State—people like me—would maintain you into the bargain. No rates, no taxes, no extortionate tradesmen, no women of any kind! Regular hours, rational diet, and free spiritual consolation! What more could a man ask? True, your hours of work would be shorter than at present, but I dare say that if you were good they would allow you an extra go at the oakum when no one else was using it. That's the plan, Philip! ”

“ Then, at last, came voices.
"Vivien! Vivien! Vivien! My little Vivien, after all these years! Thank God for his infinite goodness and mercy! My Vivien! My little girl!"
"Joe! Joe! Dear, dear Joe! At last, at last! Hold me closer, dear! I can't believe it yet! I'm frightened—hold me closer! Oh, my dear, my dear!"
Then the voices blended into an indeterminate, cooing, soothing murmur.
Philip looked into the library.
Upon the hearthrug, with his back to the door, stood Uncle Joseph, misogynist. In his arms he held the Beautiful Lady, and he was passionately kissing her eyes, her hair, her lips. ”

“ Peggy pointed an accusing finger.
"Whose photograph," she enquired, "does a man eventually plant in the middle of his mantelpiece? Hasn't she come along yet, Theophilus? You must hustle, you know. You are getting on. You must not be left on the shelf!"
She put her head upon one side in the manner which Philip loved, and smiled provocatively up at her sere and yellow devotee.
Then, without a moment's warning, her mood changed.
"Philip, my friend," she said caressingly, "forgive me. You are an angel of patience. I did not come here to-night to show you my new frock, or torment you." ”

“ Mablethorpe had said, might break your arms and legs, but it left your heart alone.
Still, it was a black winter. Extreme tragedy is the privilege of the very young—those of riper years do not hug tragedy to their bosoms; they know too much about it; and in this respect Philip, for all his twenty-eight years, was youthful, indeed. But no human experience is without ultimate profit. Most of us have to live some portion of our lives under circumstances which make it necessary to keep our eyes resolutely averted from the future ”

“ But all the newly awakened heart of this small knight of ours rebelled against the idea of imposing upon a woman. Philip felt that Uncle Joseph must be wrong about women. They could not be what he thought them—at least, not all of them. And even if Uncle Joseph were right in his opinion, Philip felt positive of one thing, and that was that no woman, however undeserving, should ever be hardly treated or made to suffer for her own shortcomings. ”

“ I should have taken Vivi firmly, and said to her: 'My dearest child,'—Uncle Joseph's voice dropped to a gentle, caressing murmur, but he recovered himself with a jerk,—'understand this. A man's work is his life. It is his father and his mother, and his meat and his drink, and the air he breathes; and the woman who marries him must be prepared to stand by his side and see him through it, and not to hang round his neck and get between him and what he has to do. She must sympathise with him when things go wrong, and share his satisfaction when they come right again. ”

“ Go and reason with the Yorkshire foreman, and pulverize the gentleman in spats, and argue with creditors—go and study People. Study the way they walk, the way they talk, the way they think, the way they drink. You won't like them. They will shirk their work, or blow in your face, or tell you anecdotes which will make you weep. But they will restore your balance. They will develop the human side of you. Then you will be really rather an exceptional character, Philip. Very few of us are evenly balanced between Things and People. All women, for instance, have a permanent list toward People. ”

“ Sometimes he went to Cheltenham, where Uncle Joseph, roaring like any sucking dove, was devoting his reclaimed existence to Territorial Associations and Boy Scouts. To be quite frank, Philip was secretly conscious of a feeling of slight boredom at Cheltenham. A perfectly happy couple are undeniably just a little dull, and Uncle Joseph and the Beautiful Lady were so entirely wrapped up in one another and their daughter—an infant of quite phenomenal wisdom and beauty—that the ordinary pleasures of life were not for them. ”