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Stone Butterfly

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.
 “He’s not ‘my’ Jack,” she interposed, swiftly.
“Well, he’d like to be,” retorted the Philosopher. “And of course he’d
‘die’ for England—no!—for ‘America and the Old Glory!’—Delightful
bunkum! He’s all nobleness, patriotism, enthusiasm and heart! A nice boy—
quite a nice boy,—but insufferably dull!”
She was silent.
“Dulness,” pursued the Philosopher, “is the only unforgivable sin. Now
you cannot say I am dull!”
She peeped at him from under the brim of her hat,—an answer was on
her lips, but she would not utter it.
“I amuse you,” he went on. “I make you laugh! That is a great thing!
Isn’t it?”
She nodded, smilingly.
“I have,” went on the Philosopher, complacently, “an original turn of
mind. I say things in an original manner. People quote my remarks as being
new and funny. It’s a great help in social life to have a man among your
friends who may be relied upon to speak in a way which no one else can
imitate. It ‘lifts’ conversation. Don’t you agree with me?”
Her eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Well, I’m not sure!” she said. “There are some clever men who can be
duller than very stupid ones,—though of course they always think
themselves amusing. They tell the same stories over and over again—the
same old jokes and witticisms,—and it is very difficult to listen to, them
patiently and smile as if you were pleased, when really you’re bored!”
He nodded his head.
“True!—very true! I have met many such men. I always avoid them
when I can. But the moral of the whole thing is that one should know as
few people as possible and never keep up with those few longer than a
month or six weeks.”
She gave him an astonished look.
“Why, then we should have no friends!” she exclaimed.
He smiled indulgently.
“Have we any friends anyhow?” he asked. “What are ‘friends’? Are they
not dear sweet people who abuse you behind your back and take an inward
deep pleasure in hearing of your faults and misfortunes? The friends of your
youth for example? I’m not speaking personally of you, for you are still
young—but if you have any so-called ‘friends’ now, and they and you live a
few years longer, you’ll have these dear creatures coming along and saying,
‘Really, is it you? I shouldn’t have known you! Why it’s years and years
since I saw you!—ages!’—despite the fact that it may be only five summers
since you last met. But the expression ‘years and years’ and ‘ages’ is used to
let you feel how old you have grown since then; I know the kind of thing I
tell you! And I have always made it my business to forget schoolfellows
and college companions,—drop them altogether. I don’t want their
‘reminiscences’ and I’m sure they don’t want mine. The secret of happiness
in this world is to forget as you go along. Forget the past, live in the present,
and don’t worry about the future.”
She was silent. And she kept silence so long that he had time to finish his
pipe, knock out its ashes against a tree, and put it in his pocket. Then he
looked sideways at her, and saw that the winsome face was sad. Without
ceremony he took her arm, and walked on past all the roses to a smooth
stretch of greensward beyond.
“You see,” he resumed gently, “we are only on this interesting planet for
a short time, and it seems common sense—to me at least—that we should
endeavour to make that time as pleasant as possible. If we hold on to friends
who knew us as children we find them as changed as we ourselves are
changed, and that isn’t pleasant. Therefore, why expose ourselves to the
shock? No greater mistake was ever made by the human being—than to
keep up his so-called ‘friends.’ It costs money and wastes time—”
She lifted her head quickly.
“Then if you think love a mistake and friendship a bore, can you tell
what life is worth?” she asked.
“Dear elfin lady, I can! Life is worth living on account of the various
agreeable sensations it provides. It is all ‘sensation’—not sentiment! Love
is a ‘sensation’—a violent one—an attraction between two persons of
opposite sex which is quite exhilarating and inspiring—for a short time.
During that short time it has been known to move poets to their best efforts
—though as a rule these individuals write their rhymes to the ‘sensation’—
not to the person they imagine they adore. Friendship is also a
‘sensation,’—the feeling that one had found one’s ‘sympathy’—one’s alter
ego—a most misleading idea as a rule. But any ‘sensation’ is for the
moment agreeable, provided it is not physically painful—and these varying
sensations are the sum bonum of life.”
She sighed.
“I do not like your outlook,” she said. “It makes everything seem so
contemptible and worthless.”
He gave an airy gesture with his disengaged hand.
“What would you! Everything is contemptible and worthless, considered
from the strictly philosophical standpoint. Civilisations, like men, are only
born to die and be forgotten,—we trouble ourselves uselessly in efforts to
keep them alive after their appointed span. Certain races attain to a high
state of education and then begin to degenerate and hark back to the old
roots of savagery—”
“And what do you argue from all this?” she demanded.
“Why, that we should enjoy the present hour as I am doing,” he replied,
smiling agreeably. “And repel the symptoms of degeneracy in ourselves and
others as forcibly as we can!”
She sighed again, and pausing, withdrew her arm from his.
“Poor, pretty, elfin lady!” he said kindly. “You do not like my way of
looking at the world!”
“No! Most certainly not!” she answered, quickly. “If one thought the
things you say, one would commit suicide!”
“Oh, no, one wouldn’t!” and he smiled. “Not as long as”—here he
looked about him—“not as long as a butterfly exists!”—and he pointed to
one just settling on a spray of clematis—“or a pretty woman!”
She moved on without a word, and he felt for his pipe in his pocket. She
looked back over her shoulder.
“I am going indoors,” she called. “Do you want anything before I go?”
He took a couple of leisurely strides and came up again beside her.
“No—I have my ‘notes’ and a pencil—simple things, but they suffice!
And you can leave me the newspaper—its news is false, its English
detestable and its self-advertisement appalling—like all the rest of its class
—but a printed Ananias always amuses me—I only regret it does not fall
dead like its mythical prototype!”
 She had been holding the newspaper in one hand—she now gave it him
with a little wistful upward glance that somehow hurt him and made him
feel uncomfortable. He realised that his ‘philosophy’ had cast a yellow fog
on the sunny brightness of her day. He took her hand, looked at its dimpled
whiteness critically and then gravely kissed it.
“Cheer up!” he said. “It’s a nice little world—and—you’ve got a pretty
little hand! It makes life worth living—or it ought to!—for you. And also
for me.”
She laughed softly.
“Oh, how absurd you are!” she said. “I don’t think you mean half you
say!”
“Probably not!” he answered, mildly. “It is a very abstruse problem for a
man to find out exactly what he means. I doubt if any man has ever done it
—not even old Socrates. And I’m not Socrates—”
“No, indeed!” she interrupted him. “You are—you are—”
“Diogenes?” he suggested.
She laughed again, nodded and ran off.
 CHAPTER VI

T HE ensuing weeks proved to the Philosopher beyond a doubt that so far

as the war news was concerned it was not “twaddle.” Needless to
recapitulate all the cruel and terrible happenings which are burned deep
into the nation’s brain, and graven ineffaceably on the recording stone of
History,—and the details of such lives lived like that of the Philosopher, out
of the reach of the enemy’s fire, hardly deserve to be chronicled at all save
for the curious fact that despite “battle, murder and sudden death” these
lives go on more or less placidly, unmoved by good or ill report of what
does not immediately concern themselves. Like the old farmer pictured in
“Punch” whose wife warned a visitor not to speak of the war, “Cos ’e don’t
bleeve there ain’t no war,” so the Philosopher pursued the even tenor of his
way, spending more and longer time in the country, especially after “raids”
began to affect London’s social equanimity. He plunged deeper and deeper
into labyrinths of forgotten languages, delving for the “root” of this word
and the “branches” of that,—and taking care to delight his host (who daily
became more gouty and irritable) with the patience of his research and the
“flattering unction” he applied to the self-satisfaction of the good old
gentleman, who firmly believed that his great work—“The Deterioriation of
Language Invariably Perceived as a Precursor to the Decadence of
Civilisation” was destined to reform the world. His pet theory was that if
the language of a people could be preserved in pristine purity and elegance
of speech, without the introduction of slang or flippant abbreviations, it
would go a long way to check degeneration and decay. There was no doubt
something in it;—as the Philosopher once sagely remarked, “there is always
something in everything,”—but it was a something not likely to appeal to
the average understanding. Anyway he was happy in his old age, pursuing a
fox of a word through the brushwood of centuries with hounds of argument,
urged on by the Philosopher,—and as long as they two could sit turning
over dictionaries and comparing notes, they paid little heed to the Great War
raging across Channel except as an echo of distant thunder. With the pretty
Sentimentalist it was different. She busied herself with a thousand things.
Punctiliously careful of her father’s household, and attentive to all his
wishes and caprices, she nevertheless found time to help all sorts of “war
charities,”—and as soon as she heard of a V.A.D. hospital being started in
the neighbourhood she offered her services for so many hours each day,—
services which were readily accepted. The “Commandant,” a sour, stern,
old, county lady with more wrinkles than hairs, set her to do the dirtiest and
most repulsive sort of work, for several cogent reasons—first, because she
was pretty,—secondly, because her hands were white and well-kept, and as
the “county” dame remarked, with an impressive sniff to herself, “Do her
good to get them roughened a bit”—and thirdly, because she was a sensitive
creature, and ugly sights and smells made her sick. But she was quite docile
and obedient, and did all she was told to do with a patient sweetness which
might have softened any heart but that of the V.A.D. “commandant” whose
life-organ had apparently become tanned and hardened into a species of
human leather. She never told her father or his friend the Philosopher
anything about her hospital duties,—nor did they in their complete self-
absorption notice that she looked frail and tired in the evenings.
“Women must have something to do,” said the Philosopher, comfortably.
“And it amuses them to go fussing over wounded men and putting bandages
on broken heads and limbs—it saves them,—saves them, I do assure you!
That V.A.D. hospital is a perfect godsend to the women of this
neighbourhood—gives them a fresh interest in life and stops their horrible
“bridge” for a time. To wipe the fevered manly brow and comb the manly
hair gives them a thrill of delightful excitement—it’s something new; and
the plainest old spectacled harridan that ever lived likes to be called ‘Sister’
by a smart boy of twenty. Yes! the V.A.D. is a boon and a blessing!—it
serves a double purpose: sick-nursing and matrimony. The blacksmith’s
anvil at Gretna Green is not in it with a bed in a convalescent ward, and a
good-looking ‘sister’ about.”
His gouty host grumbled assent—the Sentimentalist listened without
comment. When the Philosopher talked in this sort of way she always felt
herself removed very far from him,—she realised, with a little sense of pain
that he and she had nothing in common. She had an appreciation of what
she imagined to be his “cleverness,” but she also had a keen consciousness
that he merely tolerated what he considered her stupidity under the guise of
“sentiment.”
One day on her way back from her work at the V.A.D. she met Jack. She
had not seen him for some time, and had lately wondered what kept him so
long away, but the moment she saw him she knew. He was in khaki,—and
very smart and well set up he looked. Yet there was an expression in his
handsome young face that altered it somehow—and her heart beat a little
more quickly as she held out her hand to him with a pleased utterance of his
name:
“Jack!”
He smiled tenderly into her uplifted eyes.
“Yes, it’s me!” he said. “I’ve joined up. I had to. I couldn’t rest day or
night till I did.”
“But—but you are an American!” she exclaimed.
“Yes. But I’m a man too, I hope! I couldn’t see all the brave blood of
Britain starting to kill the Hun Dragon without wanting to be a bit of St.
George myself. And America will be in the tussle presently. That’s what
I’ve told the old man—my father—and though I’m his only hopeful (or
hopeless!) he lets me go. I meant to see you somehow before training. But I
never get you alone for five minutes in the house. Let’s have a stroll by the
river.”
She turned, and walked slowly beside him, through a swing gate and
along a little side path just wide enough for two, which meandered across a
wide field to the water’s edge. It was full autumn—indeed verging on
winter,—the trees were almost leafless and a chill wind blew through their
branches. The river, so full of charm in the sunshine, had a dull glassy glare
of cold grey on its surface and a tiny shiver ran through the veins of the
Sentimentalist as she looked around her at the dreariness of the landscape
which had been so fair and sunshiny in the spring.
“I hear you’ve been working at the V.A.D.,” he said, then, “Don’t you
tire yourself! I won’t have it!”
She smiled, but the tears were very near her eyes.
“Won’t you?”
“No, I won’t,” he repeated, emphatically. “Where’s that old Philosopher
of yours?”
“Oh, he’s at home, working at the dictionaries with Dad, as usual. He
likes being here—you see it’s not very nice in London just now.”
“It’s never nice in my opinion,” replied Jack. “But if you mean air-raids
and that sort of thing I rather like them! I think it’s what London wants. I
shouldn’t mind if the whole place were bombed to smithereens!”
“Jack!”
 He laughed at her horrified tone.
“Dear little ‘rose-lady,’ you mustn’t be cross with me! You don’t know
London—I do! It’s a regular muck-heap—wants clearing badly. And
cleared it will have to be before this war finishes. If it hadn’t been for
muck-heap London, and muck-heap Berlin and other big cities like them,
full of filth we should have had no war, at all. That’s so!”
He spoke with a kind of repressed passion—she looked up at him
wonderingly and timidly. He met her sweet eyes, and his stern young face
relaxed.
“Yes, dear!” he said. “It’s wickedness that has brought the war on us—
wickedness in men, wickedness in women. The Supreme Being is tired of
looking at the muck-heaps. He wants a clean world. And we’ve all got to
help Him clean it!—with our blood and our lives!”
Timidly she put out her hand and touched his. He caught it and held it in
a warm, kind grasp.
“I shan’t be sent out to France yet,” he went on. “I’ve got to be drilled
into shape. And I mean to see you as often as I can before I go. Do you
mind?”
“Mind? Why, of course not! I shall want to see you as much as you want
to see me!”
Jack smiled.
“Oh, no, you won’t!” he said. “Though it’s nice of you to say it. But you
can’t really!—because you see I’m in love with you, and you’re not in love
with me!”
She drooped her head.
“I’m not in love with any one,” she murmured. “I don’t know how it is
—”
“I know!” and Jack nodded his head sagaciously: “You can’t make up
your mind as to whether a man’s company for life would be possible of
endurance! I don’t blame you for the doubt—not a bit! But, if you are
hesitating I can tell you you’d have a cheerier time of it with me than with
your crusty old Philosopher!”
She laughed.
“Oh, Jack! I never think of the Philosopher that way! I wouldn’t marry
him for all the world!”
 “Well, that’s a comfort,” and Jack drew a long breath of relief. “That’s a
real balm in Gilead! But he’ll want to marry you, you take my word for it!
And when I’m gone he’ll have a clear field!”
She raised her eyes rather reproachfully.
“Then you don’t believe me’?”
“Yes, I do—of course I do!” and Jack pressed hard the little hand he
held. “But I’ve got a bit of imagination, fool though I am! I see a thousand
possibilities—your Dad may die—and then you’ll be all alone—and Mr.
Philosopher will step in to ‘protect and console the only child of his dear
dead friend!’—ugh!—I can hear him saying it!—and I shall be the Lord
knows where!—and you—you are such a dainty little ‘rose-lady’ with such
docile, obedient ways—”
She flashed a sudden look at him.
“You don’t know me well enough!” she said. “I’ve got a will of my
own!”
“Have you?” and Jack smiled indulgently. “Well! I hope you have! And
that you’ll say ‘No’ very firmly when Mr. Philosopher comes round after
you and your fortune—there!—don’t look so surprised!—I heard him say
he knew your father would leave you a big fortune!”
“Me?” and the astonishment was openly genuine. “Oh, Jack, you must
be dreaming! Dad isn’t rich at all—he always tells me he has the greatest
difficulty to make both ends meet!”
Jack laughed joyously.
“Jolly old dodger!” he said, irreverently. “But never mind! I daresay he’s
right!—he’s like my father who swears he’s obliged to live down here in the
country with one manservant to look after him in his fishing cottage by the
river, because he can’t afford to live anywhere else! And yet I’ve heard—
but after all it’s only silly rumour.”
“What is?” she enquired.
“Why, I’ve heard he’s as rich as Crœsus—but I’m sure it can’t be true,
for ever since my mother died when I was a little chap of ten, we’ve always
been pretty hard up.”
“But you went to college?” she said. “And you travelled abroad with a
‘crack’ tutor?”
 “Oh, yes!—all that! Nothing grudged so far as my training has gone. But
no superfluous cash about. And now I shan’t want anything from anybody
once I’m in the Army. I shall be clothed and fed and have my pay for
pocket-money! Jolly! Don’t you congratulate me?”
She looked full at him, frankly and sweetly.
“Yes, I do congratulate you!” she said. “I congratulate you on the right
spirit you show, to voluntarily offer yourself to fight in the great Cause!
Personally I hate the very thought of War,—it seems to me criminal,
barbarous and a kind of God’s curse on the world—but if the battle is for
good then all good men should join in it. I shall miss you dreadfully—”
She broke off—and a soft dew filled her pretty eyes. Jack saw,—and his
heart gave a quick bound. He raised the little hand that rested so
contentedly in his own and kissed it with the utmost tenderness.
“That’s enough for me!” he said. “ ‘I fear no foe in shining armour!’ But
do take care of yourself! Don’t muck about with the V.A.D. Hospital under
the orders of that virulent old dowager who has made herself
‘commandant’! If you must do that sort of thing, why not train for a real
Army nurse?”
“I must not leave Dad,” she said simply. “He has only me.”
“And the Philosopher!” added Jack. “And the Deterioration of Language
Invariably Perceived!”
They both laughed merrily, and the conversation became lighter and
more playful. Before they parted the Sentimentalist had given him her
promise that she would not become engaged to any one without giving Jack
fair warning of his impending doom. And that in the meantime she would
write to him once a week wherever he might happen to be, and would think
of him often and kindly.
“And when you say your prayers,” he pleaded, gently, “don’t leave me
out!”
“Why, Jack! Of course not!”
He looked meditative.
“I know a fat Scotchwoman,” he said, “who makes it a rule to put people
into her prayers when they please her, and to take them out again when they
don’t! Her husband was taken ill at a friend’s house and couldn’t be moved,
and the friend nursed him tenderly, sent for a specialist and paid him fifty
guineas out of her own pocket, besides spending no end of money on
invalid food and luxuries,—and after the husband was cured and returned
home, this same fat Scotchwoman had a slight difference with this very
same loyal and devoted friend and promptly left her name out of her
prayers! There’s heavenly thoughts for you! I always think she got up a
grudge because her husband was cured! He was a gruff old customer, and
rather a drawback to ‘home, sweet home.’ But that’s a true story!”
“Let’s hope it’s an exceptional one!” and she smiled. “No ‘slight
difference’ could make me leave you out of my prayers!”
“Bless you, dear little rose-lady!” he said, fervently. “These are not King
Arthur times or I should ask you for a glove or a ribbon to wear in my
‘helmet’ though it’s only a khaki cap—but—”
“Will you have this?” and unfastening a small brooch in the shape of a
heart, where it held a chain in place round her neck, she gave it to him. “It’s
quite small—you can tuck it in under the band and no one will ever see it
—”
He was almost speechless with delight. Taking the little gold trifle he at
once fastened it in his cap, secretly and securely.
“My ‘mascot’!” he said, triumphantly. “It will mean—ah!—you don’t
know what it will mean to me! Everything in life!”
“Sentimental Jack!” and she smiled. “The Philosopher calls me
‘sentimental’—but you are more so than I!”
“Never mind what the Philosopher calls you,” responded Jack. “Just
think for a moment if you please of what I call you—the dearest, sweetest
‘rose’ lady in the world!”
A lovely colour suffused her fair face—a true “rose” blush,—but she
passed over the endearing compliment with a light gesture of dissent, and as
they had unconsciously walked further along the bank of the river than they
had at first intended, they turned and retraced their steps back to the open
road. Here they shook hands and parted.
“You’ll hear from me very soon!” said Jack as he went, and he lifted his
cap and waved it in light adieu.
She watched his agile figure swinging along till it disappeared,—then
walking rather slowly herself, entered her own home in thoughtful mood.
On the threshold she met the Philosopher. His face wore a grim and
saturnine expression.
“Well!” and the exclamation sounded something like a snort. “Have you
done playing with wounded soldiers for to-day?”
She looked him full in the eyes.
“Yes,” she replied. He was rather taken aback. He had not expected so
simple an affirmative. She moved on to pass him by.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “Do you think you are really useful at that
V.A.D. place?”
“I try to be,” she answered. “None of us can do very much in cases of
great suffering, but every little helps.”
“Delightful platitudes!” and the Philosopher gave another snort.
“Personally, I think you are much more useful at home. Your father is not
very well this afternoon and has been asking for you. I left him on the sofa
in the library. He seems very irritable. I’m going for a walk.”
He strolled off, pausing a moment or two to light his pipe, and she
hurried to the library where she found her father on the sofa as the
Philosopher had said, in a state of highly nervous irritation brought on by
the gout.
“Where have you been?” he wailed, as he saw her. “Down at that d—d
hospital again? God bless my soul, what sort of a daughter are you to
neglect your poor old father for those miserable Tommies! All ne’er-do-
wells I’ll swear!—they would have been ‘on the road’ picking and stealing
and up to all sorts of mischief if they hadn’t gone into the Army! And now
you must dance attendance on them as if they were your own flesh and
blood—” Here he broke off with a sharp cry, wrung from him by a twinge
in his gouty toe.
“Poor Dad, I didn’t know you weren’t feeling well,” she said, tenderly.
“If I had I wouldn’t have gone—you know I wouldn’t! But there’s nothing
to be done for the gout, dear, is there?—you must rest—and have the
medicine the doctor ordered—”
“I don’t know where it is,” he growled. “The bottle has been carefully
put where it can’t be found!”
She smiled, with a gently breathed, “Oh, no, it hasn’t!” and opening a
cupboard by the fireplace, produced the desired palliative. He watched her
pour the measured dose into a wine-glass, and took it with a puckered face
like a naughty child.
“Horrid stuff!” he said, peevishly. “How do your Tommies take their
medicine?”
She laughed.
“Quite nicely!—like good little boys!” she answered. “And they are so
cheerful and patient! Some of the very bad cases are the most enduring. Oh!
—if you could only see one poor fellow—”
“I don’t want to see him!” growled her father. “And I don’t want to hear
about him! I’m worried out of my life by stories of these ‘poor fellows’ who
make the ‘supreme sacrifice’ for their country,—hang it all! the ‘supreme
sacrifice’ has got to be made by all of us some day anyhow—and the men
who make it before their naturally allotted span would no doubt have
wasted their lives in idleness and drink!”
Her eyes filled with a gentle reproach.
“Oh, dear Dad!—you talk like the Philosopher! Don’t get as callous as
he is!”
“He’s not callous,” snapped out the old gentleman. “And you’re a silly
little flibbertigibbet! Callous indeed! Why he’s full of feeling! He’s not
sentimental—and a good job too!—but he’s reasonable and—and kind.”
“If he’s kind to you, that’s enough!” she said, smiling. “But I don’t think
he pays much attention to the war, and he never realises the awful
sufferings of the men who are fighting for us—”
“Why should he? God bless my soul! Why should a learned and brilliant
scholar bother to ‘realise’ what these fighting fools are about? He’s got
something else to do—”
“The Dictionary!” she hinted, smiling.
“Well, that’s one thing certainly. And I tell you what—ah!—you may
look surprised!—but if my ideas were carried out, and language—language,
I say!—preserved in refined forms, and no newspaper slang allowed, there
would be no wars!—there couldn’t be!”
The smile was still on her lips.
“Dear Dad, I daresay you are quite right!” she said. “But I’m afraid it’s
too late now to preserve what is lost. Elegant speech and graceful manners
are very rare.”
 “Glad you know it!” and her father made another grimace as his burning
toe asserted its existence afresh. “You’ll appreciate my work when you see
it!”
“I’m sure I shall!” She hesitated,—then added irrelevantly:
“Jack has joined up.”
“Best thing he could do! He was always idling about, with no aim in life
as far as I could see—one of those stupid young men who want licking into
shape!”
She made no reply. Moving quietly about the room she put things tidy
and stirred the fire into a more cheerful blaze—then, seeing her father had
closed his eyes in preparation for a doze she slipped away. In the outer hall
she met the parlour-maid,—generally a trim, tidy little body, but now with
roughened hair and swollen eyes, crying bitterly.
“Why, Annie! What’s the matter?”
The girl gave a great sob.
“My only brother, miss—he’s killed!”
Killed! The word sounded butcher-like.
“Killed! How awful! Oh, you poor girl! I’m so sorry for you!”
Annie turned away her face and went, still weeping,—comfort there is
none in sudden bereavement, and to offer it is only intrusive. The gentle
little Sentimentalist felt this to the very core of her responsive soul,—and
her usually light step was slow and sad as she entered her own special little
sitting-room and looked out on the smooth lawn and the flower-beds
encircling it, brilliant just now with goldenrod, dahlias, dwarf sunflowers
and other glories of autumnal bloom.
“I’m not in love with him a bit!” she murmured to the silence. “But ...
yes!—I’m sure I should almost break my heart if Jack were killed!”
 CHAPTER VII

W INTER closed in with a drizzling damp atmosphere far more trying to

both body and mind than frost and snow, and though the country in
November is seldom exhilarating except to fox-hunters and others
whose physical activities keep them always “on the go”—the Philosopher
found it more agreeable to spend his time in a comfortable old manor house
which was kept warm and cosy, than to wander between a London flat and
his club in a daily routine walk through the same streets at more or less the
same hour. So that when his host urged him to stay “a week or two longer”
he was not loth to accept the extended invitation; and if any twinge of
shame pricked his conscience at the barefaced manner in which he allowed
himself to be lodged and fed at other folks’ expense, he salved it with the
inward assurance that after all was said and done, the old gentleman was
gouty and ailing and that a companion of his own sex was a good thing for
him.
“And I am a unique person,” he said to himself. “I have humour and
originality—both qualities are worth more than gold. I make no charge for
my jokes—I ask no fee for being amusing, though I really ought to do so. In
the dulness created by average brains I am a kind of luminary; and if I stay
on here—avoiding the November fogs in London—I give as much as I take
—in fact more,—for if they feed me materially I feed them intellectually!”
Truth to tell the Philosopher was pre-eminently known as what is called
a “sponge.” From his boyhood up he had always been paid for by other
people. Why this was so no one could tell. But so it was. He was not a
bread-winner. He had written a few books—books that resembled ancient
Brazil nuts, very hard to open, and very dried-up inside—books that he
wrote entirely for his own satisfaction, though for nobody else’s pleasure.
Naturally the books did not sell,—but according to his view and that of
many other unsuccessful dabblers in literature, that only proved their
brilliancy and excellence. The oft-quoted and worn-out phrase, “The public
is a hass,” expressed his opinion of that great majority whose approval
every man of note, whether in literature or politics, is eager to win while
openly denying its value,—and on one occasion when an old college friend
remarked:
 “Nobody knows you ever wrote anything and nobody cares!” he
accepted the crushing statement with a bland smile and nod of
acquiescence.
“Do I expect any one to know or to care?” he demanded. “Do I ask for
the undiscriminating applause of the vulgar? Do I write stories about silly
young women who fall in love with their guardians, and then when they are
married, elope with actors and stable-men? Do I take up the rag remains of
the ‘sex question’ and tear it into fresh shreds? No! Then how is it possible
the man or woman ‘in the street’ should appreciate me? As well ask them to
appreciate the Elgin marbles or the Parthenon! I assure you I am perfectly
satisfied to be as I am—unknown and uncared for.”
The college friend looked sceptical.
“Then what’s the use of writing anything?” he asked. “And when you
come to that, what’s the use of living?”
“Really, my dear fellow, you are very simple!” said the Philosopher.
“Pathetically so! There is of course no use in living. But, unhappily, we
have no choice in the matter. We are born,—without our own specific
consent—and we die—in the same attitude of non-volition. Apparently we
come into life for the purpose of propagating our kind—to no special end.
Those who decline to propagate human units are considered ridiculous—
even if they propagate thoughts,—through literature, painting or music,—
the world does not want literature, music or painting so much as it wants
squalling, guzzling babies who will grow up into squalling, guzzling men
and women—most of them having no aim in life except to squall and
guzzle. I have chosen a path for myself out of the squall and guzzle track—I
live my own life of studious contemplation, and though I fully recognise its
uselessness in common with the general futility of things, I manage to
endure existence comfortably.”
His friend looked at him,—and was about to say, “At other people’s
expense!” but checked the remark in time.
“You don’t—er—you don’t—er seem to care about any one?” he hinted,
hesitatingly.
The Philosopher elevated his grizzled eyebrows ironically.
“Care?” he echoed. “Care about any one?... Surely a cryptic utterance!”
“I mean”—pursued the other man—“you’ve no woman—”
 “Woman!” The Philosopher laughed. “My good fellow, what do you take
me for! Woman? Women? As well ask me if I keep midges for amusement!
No, no! I’ve ‘no woman’ as you rather clumsily put it—I might marry—it is
possible—”
“Oh, really? You might?”
“Money—and good looks together might persuade me,” resumed the
Philosopher judiciously. “But I should endeavor to make myself very sure
that my own special manners and customs would not be interfered with by
the procedure. The first aim of life—considering its farcical ineptitude—
should be personal comfort,—anything that interfered with that should be
rigorously avoided.”
The friend went his way, lost in amazement at what he styled “the old
chap’s d—d selfishness”—but the Philosopher smoked a pipe enjoyingly,
convinced that his theories were beyond all refutation or argument, and that
so far from being selfish he was one of the most virtuous and magnanimous
of men. Encased in a hide of hardened egoism, tougher and more leathery
than that of rhinoceros or elephant, he was unable to perceive any faults of
character in himself though he was keen to mark and to satirize the smallest
flaw in the conduct of other people.
While he lingered on in the country, “sponging” on his host, he took it
into his head to assume a benevolence and kindness towards his host’s
daughter, which, in her rather solitary way of life, greatly appealed to her
over-sensitive nature. He could be an attractive personality when he chose,
—he had an agreeable voice, a pleasant smile, and a coaxing manner,—and
when all three were “in play” together, it was difficult not to be deceived
into thinking him an exceptionally charming man. There was no doubt of
his intellectuality; he was eminent in knowledge of a varied kind,—he had
read widely and he was a good raconteur. Yet one got to the end of his
stories in time, and he was apt to repeat them too often. He had known and
still knew many “famous” people,—both in literary and political circles,
and he could tell many amusing incidents in connection with them,—yet
even of these incidents one got tired after hearing them for the twentieth
time. What took the savour out of them was that he always rounded them up
by some unkind reflection as to the stupidity of that person, the dulness of
t’other, for in his whole list of acquaintance there certainly was not one who
came off unscathed by his sarcasm or his ridicule.
 The Sentimentalist thought of this often, and argued, sensibly enough,
that what he said of any one man or woman he was likely to say of any
other, so that a certain sense of uneasiness began to undermine all her talks
with him. With a touch of self-humiliation she felt she was “not clever
enough” to converse with him in the style he approved. As a matter of fact,
she was too clever,—because she had that sure feminine instinct which
discovers insincerity before it positively declares itself. And gradually, very
gradually, she withdrew the frankness of her nature, curling it up as it were
like the leaves of the “sensitive plant” at his touch,—and he, slow to
perceive this repulsion, or rather, too self-complacent to think such
repulsion was possible, became more and more patronising and “superior,”
treating her for the most part as a pleasing but foolish child, easily swayed
by passing emotions, and therefore capable of being “caught” by even the
simulation of affection if the “counterfeiting” were well done.
“And so”—said he, one chilly afternoon when a bitter east wind blew
suggestions of snow through the air—“your Jack is in khaki?”
She was sewing busily, and looked up from her work with eyes that
flashed warningly.
“He is not ‘my’ Jack,” she replied, coldly. “I have told you that before.”
“Well, he is somebody’s Jack,” persisted the Philosopher, stretching out
his legs comfortably before the fire. “I suppose you’ll agree to that. May I
warm my feet?”
Without waiting for an answer he drew up his chair close to the fender,
and slipping off his shoes, extended his woollen-socked feet towards the
blaze. This sort of self-coddling was one of his “little ways”—those “little
ways” of blunt familiarity which distinguish the truly “great” who make
free with their friends’ houses. She glanced at him with just the smallest
quiver of contempt on the usually sweet lines of her mouth, and went on
sewing.
“This is a kind of domestic bliss!” he said, airily. “If you ever marry,
your husband will warm his feet like this!”
She was silent.
“But I really don’t think,” he went on, “that marriage would suit you. I
doubt if you would keep a husband six months!”
She stopped the flash of her needle through her work.
 “I should not ‘keep’ a husband six days!” she said, quietly. “I should
expect him to keep himself!—and me!”
“So like a woman to twist a meaning out of what was never meant!”
retorted the Philosopher. “Your mind, being feminine, at once seizes on the
wrong view of the subject. My suggestion was that, being full of sentiment,
you would expect sentiment in a husband. You would not find it—you
would be disappointed,—or ‘wounded’—I think ‘wounded’ is the favourite
expression women use in regard to their feelings,—you would consider him
a brute, and he would consider you a bore—and it would be all over!”
She nodded, resuming her sewing.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It would be all over.”
Her swift acquiescence irritated him.
“I’m glad you have the sense to see it—” he began, in a raspy voice.
“Why, of course!” she interrupted him, with a light laugh. “If I
considered him a brute and he considered me a bore, we should have
nothing in common, and we should separate and go our different ways.”
“Oh, that’s how you’d settle it!” and the Philosopher gave a dubious
grunt. “But, if you had a husband, he would be your master, and any
arrangement of that kind would have to be made to suit him, and not you!”
“Yes?” and the pretty uplift of her eyebrows emphasized the question.
“Thank goodness I haven’t a husband yet!—and if your ideas of marriage
are likely to be true I hope I never shall have one!”
“You see,” said the Philosopher, folding his arms and hugging himself
comfortably, “you are a little person who cannot bear to be contradicted,
and a husband would probably contradict you twenty or fifty times a day.
His opinions would always differ from yours. The man’s point of view is
entirely the reverse of the woman’s. A man’s idea of love—” He paused.
“It is difficult to explain, isn’t it?” she queried, sweetly. “I’m afraid you
couldn’t put it nicely!”
“Put it nicely?” he echoed. “What do you mean? Put it nicely?”
“Well, I’m afraid I couldn’t put it nicely myself,” she said, demurely,
“because—you see—sometimes a man’s idea of love isn’t nice!”
He unfolded his arms and stared at her.
“Isn’t nice!” he repeated. “What is it then? Nasty?”
 She laughed.
“Perhaps! Anyway it’s nearly always selfish!”
“Oh, that’s the way you look at it, is it? And is not woman’s idea of love
quite as selfish?”
“I think not,” she answered, quietly. “Women have to give all,—men are
free to take all.”
He was, for the moment, silent. It dawned upon him that the
Sentimentalist was not “a Plum,”—a Plum to fall into his mouth with a
bang. She might be ripe,—but she was not ready. With elaborate slowness
he withdrew his socked feet from the fender and slipped them into his
ungainly shoes.
“Very well,—it comes to this,” he said, resignedly, “Women are always
right, and men always wrong—in a woman’s opinion. As I have already
remarked, you cannot bear to be contradicted.”
She looked at him with eyes dancing merrily like sparkles of light.
“Oh—h-h!” and she held up a small reproachful finger. “Who is
contradicting anybody? There’s nothing to contradict! We were having just
a little friendly argument which started on your last piece of rudeness.”
“Rudeness?” he exclaimed. “When and how have I been rude?”
“Don’t you think it was very rude to say that you doubted whether I
would keep a husband six months?”
“Nothing rude about it,” he declared, airily. “It was a frank statement.”
“Suppose I made a ‘frank statement’ about you?” she suggested. “Do you
think you would care to hear it?”
“It depends entirely on the nature of the statement,” he replied. “I should
decline to listen to anything incorrect.”
Her light laugh rang out sweetly.
“Anything incorrect means anything against your own ideas,” she said.
“I see! Well, I won’t be as ‘rude’ as to make any statement at all about you,
to your face! One should never be personal.”
She resumed her sewing, and he walked slowly to the window, looked
out at the leafless branches of the trees swaying in the wind, and then
walked as slowly back again.
“I suppose you do think of getting married some day?” he queried.
 “Oh, dear me! Haven’t I just said one should never be personal?” she
rejoined, smiling. “No,—I can’t say I have ever thought about it!”
He bent his eyes down upon her.
“ ‘Gather ye roses while ye may,’ ” he quoted sententiously. “ ‘Old Time
is still a-flying!’ ”
“Is a husband a rose?” she asked, merrily.
He wrinkled his fuzzy brows.
“Well, perhaps not altogether. He might be the useful cabbage or potato
in the soup. In any case for a woman, a man’s protection is necessary.”
“But does he protect? Doesn’t he often desert?”
“In the annals of the gutter press he does,—I grant you that. Life,
however, is something more than cheap sensationalism.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that!” and she raised her eyes, blue as blue
cornflowers, full of a lovely earnestness. “Life is such a beautiful, holy
thing!—and one feels such a desire to make it always more beautiful and
more holy!”
The Philosopher got up one of his ugly noisy coughs. The Sentimentalist
was becoming transcendental. He felt he must bring her down from the
rainbow empyrean.
“There’s nothing beautiful or holy about it,” he grunted. “Life is life—
two and two are four. A man is a man; a brute is a brute. Nature cannot be
altered. If a woman’s unlucky enough to marry a brute instead of a man, she
gets brutal treatment. Quite her own fault!—she should have known better!”
“But how is one to find out the difference between a man and a brute?”
asked the Sentimentalist with an innocent air of enquiry.
He smiled—almost he laughed.
“Not bad!” he said. “I give you that! Not bad at all—for a woman!”
He walked up and down the room again, and finally resorting to his pipe,
lit it.
“All the same,” he presently resumed, “even if your powers of
perception failed to discern the brute in the man or the man in the brute, you
ought to marry.”
“Really! You think so?” And she looked up from her sewing with a little
mutinous air.
 “Certainly I think so. An unmarried woman is a target for scandal—
unless she is very old and very plain—and even then she doesn’t always
escape. You,—having a fair amount of good looks, should marry quickly.”
Her face brightened with sudden dimples of mirth.
“Perhaps I might,—if I could find any one rich enough to suit me,” she
said.
“Rich enough!” The Philosopher was taken aback. It had never occurred
to him that she, like himself, might have a fancy for the luxuries of life.
“Rich enough!” he echoed. “Surely you have no mercenary taint?—no
hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt?”
She laughed, and made a little dab at him in the air with her needle.
“I’m not so sure!” she answered, gaily. “I like comfort and warmth, and
flowers and pretty furniture—and frocks—and jewels—oh!—how shocked
you look!”
“I look as I feel,” said the Philosopher, puffing slowly at his pipe. “I
thought you altogether different,—of a finer mould than the merely
frivolous woman—”
“Now! How can you say that?” she demanded. “When only the other day
you told me that I had a new hat on, and ought to be perfectly happy in
consequence!”
He looked sheepish for a moment, but soon recovered his assertiveness.
“True!—and quite unconsciously I hit upon a fact,” he said. “For now,
by your own admission, your tastes lead you in the direction of mere
frippery. Frocks! Jewels! Good heavens! Two frocks a year—a simple
brooch of unadorned gold, and a couple of plain hats, suffice for any
reasonable woman whose thoughts are trained and fixed—” he paused—
then repeated, “whose thoughts are trained and fixed—” He paused again.
“Yes?” she queried. “Whose thoughts are trained and fixed?—on what?”
“On the simple ideals of life,” he said. “On domestic economies—the
chemistry of the kitchen—the various useful arts by which a woman can
make herself indispensable to man—”
“I know!” And she had such a dancing sparkle of mirth and mischief in
her blue eyes that he could not meet her glances. “The chief art of all is to
give him a good dinner! Sometimes—not always—that is why a man gets
married—that he may have a cook-housekeeper on the premises!” She
laughed merrily,—the Philosopher surveyed her with a kind of ironic
compassion.
“You think that funny!” he observed. “But it isn’t! Your worldly wisdom
is by no means profound—”
“Of course it isn’t!” she agreed. “It’s shallow—shallow as a running
brook!—but quite pleasant! I should hate to be profound,—and—stagnant!
And if I ever do get married, I shall try to marry a rich man, who would be
kind to me and take pleasure in giving me all sorts of lovely things—and I
should not be mercenary, only I should like him to do things for me, and not
want me to wait upon him! I think it such a pity that our men always expect
to be attended to first! Americans are quite different!—they always look
after women in such a courteous, friendly way! After all, kindness is the
true chivalry.”
He dropped lazily into an armchair and began his favourite pastime of
puffing smoke-rings into the air, with the usual ugly distortions of face
which accompanied that effort.
“You are quite eloquent!” he observed, sardonically. “I notice you have a
special predilection for Americans. Why, I can’t imagine! Perhaps you are
looking out for an American millionaire?”
She nodded her fair little head mischievously.
“Perhaps!” she replied.
The Philosopher made a particularly hideous O of his unbeautiful mouth
at that moment, as he discharged a well-nigh perfect smoke-ring from its
cavity.
“The noble and high-minded Jack scarcely answers to your
requirements,” he said.
“No, poor fellow!” and she smiled. “I believe he has always been more
or less hard up. His father put him into some great engineering works, but
of course he had to pay to be taken at all—he was not paid. But he learned
everything he could. Now he’s quite pleased he’s joined the Army—you see
he’s paid there!—and has his food and clothes as well—so he’s happy and
satisfied.”
“Fortunate youth!” said the Philosopher, yawning. “And doubly
fortunate to have secured so much interest in his doings as you bestow upon
him!”
 She was silent.
The Philosopher continued making smoke-rings and she wished he
would leave off. It was unreasonable of her to feel irritated with him, and
yet she could not help it. He, on his part, was conscious of having come up
against an obstacle in his mental plans of conquest,—a soft obstacle,
something like a sand-bag in the path of a bullet. On that particular winter
afternoon he had purposed “making a dash for it” as he had said to himself,
and risking an attempt at love-making. He had thought of various ways of
doing it, more or less approved. It was a cold, bleak day—a day that was
enough to make gentle ladies shiver and draw near the fire,—if she had
drawn near, he would have essayed—yes, he thought he would have
essayed slipping an arm round her waist as he had done on that occasion
when he had pricked or (as he would have expressed it), “lacerated” his
hand among the rose-bushes, and she had “kissed the place and made it
well.” Yes, she had actually done that! And now, little by little, a curious,
imperceptible shadow had arisen like a dividing wall, so that she appeared
to be on one side and he on the other, and he felt by a strange, almost sullen
instinct that were he to “lacerate” his hand ever so severely, he would not be
favoured by the light, soft touch of those rosy lips again. Now, what mood
possessed her, he wondered? What fantastic feminine vagary had made her
thus capricious? Wrapped in a thick hide of intellectual egotism the
Philosopher could not see that he was in any sense to blame.
Had any one ventured to tell him that his ingrained selfishness and utter
indifference to the feelings of any other human entity than his own, had
profoundly affected the Sentimentalist and moved her to reluctant aversion,
tempered with pity, he would have been virtuously indignant. For he had his
own peculiar methods of estimating his own conduct.
“I! I, selfish!” he would have exclaimed. “I, who am always trying to
amuse and please everybody! I give up my own wishes constantly in order
to suit other people! I am a perpetual entertainment to my friends when they
are too dull-witted to entertain themselves! I am really one of the most
unselfish and good-natured of men! I never ‘bore’ anybody!”
And he would have argued that to stay on week after week in an
extremely comfortable country house with all his food provided, was really
a magnanimous condescension on his part, inasmuch as he was assisting a
very irritable old gentleman to pursue literary work which interested him,
and at the same time impressing by his various qualifications a very
romantic and idealistic little lady who, unfortunately for herself, had an idea
that all clever men must be worth knowing.
Yes,—when he had “lacerated” his hand among the roses, her manner
towards him had been charmingly different from what it was now. She was
then still under the glamour and delusion of his reported renown as a
learned and brilliant personality. She looked at him with timid interest; she
listened to him with a pretty reverence. But now her blue eyes studied him
with a critical coolness,—and though she still listened to his talk, she was
not, as before, earnestly attentive. Nothing seemed so impossible as to put
his arm round her waist now,—and yet that was exactly what he had hoped
to do on this winter’s afternoon by the fire. He took refuge in a few
banalities. Heaving a deep sigh, he said suddenly:
“You are not as kind to me as you used to be! In fact you are cold!”
She smiled.
“It is cold!” she answered.
Here was a sort of five-barred gate, over which the ambling mule of the
Philosopher’s philosophy could not easily jump. He thought a moment.
“Have I been so unfortunate as to displease you?” he asked, in his
gentlest tone.
She was quite startled at the question and her sewing dropped from her
hands.
“Displease me? Oh, no!—pray do not think such a thing! I am so sorry if
I give you such an idea—you must not imagine—”
He watched her as he would have watched a butterfly writhing on a pin.
“I do not imagine,” he said. “Imagination is a kind of hysteria. I know
there is something on your mind against me. Surely I may know what it is?”
She hesitated a moment,—then raised her eyes, blue and steady in their
wistful, half-tender expression.
“It is nothing against you,” she said, quietly. “It is only sorrow that you
who have lived so long and seen so much, and studied such deep and clever
things, should be so hard and unfeeling for poor humanity. You show such
indifference to the sufferings of the men in this terrible war—you never
seem to consider the heart-break and agony of the women left at home—the
mothers, the wives, the sweethearts—and so—you see”—she paused, with
a slight tremble in her voice—“I am disappointed, because when I heard
you were considered a very great man in your own line of learning, I
thought you would probably be great in other things as well.”
He looked at her in a kind of quizzical amusement.
“Dear child, that does not follow by any means!” he said. “Most
unfortunately for yourself you are an idealist, which means that you put
your own mind’s colour on a world’s common grey canvas. When the
colour comes off and the dull grey is seen, you are disappointed, and you
feel you will not try putting on the same tint again. I’m afraid your life will
be a repetition of this tiresome experience! And I’m sorry—yes, very sorry,
you have attempted to idealise me, for I couldn’t live up to it!”
He rose from his chair and stood with his back to the fire, pipe in hand.
“You find me indifferent to the war,” he went on. “I am. I freely confess
it. The war is a result of arrogance and stupidity—two human defects for
which I have unbounded contempt. The war also exhibits in the most
glaring manner the sheep-like tendency of men—they follow where they
are led without seeking to know the reason why. If every male creature in
every country flatly refused to be a soldier, tyrants and governments would
be at a loss for material wherewith to fall upon each other—they could not
coerce a whole world that had once made up its mind. It is because there is
no strength of will in the blind majority that war is allowed still to exist—
and you are right—I have no sympathy with it. To me the ‘roll of honour’ is
all bunkum!—and I have no patience with people who smirk their thanks
for a medal from the king in exchange for the life of a slaughtered man.
Pooh! Talk of the car of the Juggernaut! The abbatoir in Flanders is a
thousand times worse, because we are supposed to be a civilised, not a
savage, people, though to my notion we are more savage than the primal
men who broke each other’s skulls with stone hatchets. I can see no
improvement—we are the same old blood-thirsty, greedy race!”
He spoke with a fervour that was almost eloquence, and knocking the
ashes of his pipe out, he placed it on the mantel-shelf. Then bending his
eyes on the Sentimentalist, he smiled.
“There! Now you know!” he said. “I am perfectly indifferent to the war.
I don’t care how many fools kill each other! I haven’t the least sympathy
with men who go to have themselves hacked about and disfigured for life,
or blown into atoms by shells. They would have shown much better sense
by treating the members of their stupid Governments to the same sort of
fate.”
“But”—and here the Sentimentalist plucked up courage to speak—“if we
did not fight, Germany would dominate the world!”
“And why didn’t we see that before?” he demanded. “Germany was
dominating the world in every corner of trade—‘peaceful penetration’ as it
was called,—and if the stagey Kaiser hadn’t jumped up like a jack-in-the-
box, under the demented notion that he was a new sort of Charlemagne she
would have dominated it. And we should have gone on in our comfortable
idleness and luxury, getting lazier and lazier, and allowing Germany to do
everything for us, because it’s so much trouble to do anything for ourselves
—except—play tennis and football!”
She looked at him with a flash of indignation.
“Then what a good thing for us that we’ve been shaken up out of our
‘laze’!” she said.
“Perhaps—and perhaps not,” rejoined the Philosopher. “I never accept
things as ‘good’ till they prove not to be entirely bad.”
“And with all these pessimistic ideas of yours, are you happy?” she
asked.
“Entirely so!” And the Philosopher smiled. “Much happier than you are,
my dear child! For you expect so much from everybody and everything!—
and I expect—nothing! So I am never disappointed. You are!”
“Yes, I am!” she agreed, and her sweet mouth trembled. “I am very
greatly disappointed!”
“And you always will be!” he said, pleasantly. Then reaching for his
pipe, he filled it. “The wind seems to have abated a little—I’ll go for a walk
before dinner.”
He paused an instant, wondering if he should say anything else?—a
word of tenderness?—or endearment? No, he thought not! An arm round
the waist was out of the question. He could whistle rather well, so prodding
his pipe, he lighted it, and whistled ‘Home they brought her warrior dead,’
to which lively accompaniment he walked out of the room.
She sprang up when he had gone, indignantly conscious that tears were
in her eyes.
 “I think—I really do think I hate him!” she said to the silence. “And I
used to be almost fond of him! Oh, he makes all life a blank for me! There
seems nothing worth doing, nothing worth living for!” She paced up and
down the room. “Sneer,—sneer!—nothing but sneer! And he’s supposed to
be so clever! Oh, I’d rather be human!—twenty times rather! And yet—
when he first came to stay with Dad he seemed so charming and kindly! I
thought he would be such a splendid friend to have!—but I don’t believe he
cares a rap for anybody but himself!”
In this she was perfectly right. But nothing is so difficult to a
Sentimentalist as to believe in the existence of an incurable Egotist.
 CHAPTER VIII

T WO or three days later Jack called to say good-bye.

“I’m off to France this week,” he explained, “and I shan’t have
another chance. I wanted to see you once more before—before crossing
Channel.”
The Sentimentalist was in her own little morning-room busy with the
week’s household accounts. She pushed aside all the tradesmen’s books and
bills, and rose from her chair.
“Oh, Jack!” she said half whisperingly, and again, “Oh, Jack!” Then
suddenly: “Let us go out in the garden! We can’t talk here!”
She took up her hat which had been lying on a table near her, and threw
a fleecy wool scarf over her shoulders. It was a brilliant day, despite the
wintry season, and a few red leaves still clinging to the trees made flashes
of colour against the clear grey-blue of the sky.
“How’s Dad?” Jack asked, with a show of interest. “And ‘The
Deterioration of Language Invariably Perceived’?”
She laughed rather tremulously. “Oh, just the same! Dad is not very well,
I’m afraid. He says the war worries him so.”
“Worries him? Oh, by Jove! What has he got to worry about?”
“Nothing, really! But that’s just why he worries!”
They were now in the leafless rosery, walking side by side under
intertwined boughs of thorns. Jack gave a quick comprehensive glance
around him.
“Looks rather different to what it did in summer,” he said.
The fair woman at his side looked up quickly.
“Ah, yes!” she murmured. “Everything is changed!”
“No, it isn’t!” he replied briskly. “You’re not changed—and I’m not
changed! You’ve got a touch of the ‘blues,’ dear little lady! It’s that old
V.A.D. commandant, I bet!”
“Oh, no! No, indeed; I don’t mind her snappy ways a bit! The wounded
boys make up to me for all her tantrums!”
 “I should hope they did!” said Jack, approvingly. “I say! If I get
wounded I’ll try and get sent here, and you’ll nurse me!”
She smiled, but there was a rising of tears in her throat and she could not
speak. Jack saw just how she felt, and bravely repressed his own emotion.
“You won’t mind seeing my father now and then?” he went on. “He said
the other day that he would take it kindly if you’d look in at the cottage
sometimes—”
“I will, certainly!” she interrupted, eagerly. “But is he really going to
stay down here all winter?”
“I think so! He’s a queer old chap and likes his own way of living,” and
Jack smiled. “But his heart’s in the right place! He said the other day, ‘I’d
rather feed the robins here, than dine at the Savoy!’ That’s him all over!”
“Is he—is he sorry you’re going?” she asked.
“If he is, he doesn’t show it!” Here the young fellow laughed cheerily.
“Oh, he’s game, I can tell you! He told me he was giving me away like a
pound of tea!—thoughts running on the American war of independence, I
suppose!”
He laughed again, but she was very silent and serious. They had left the
rosery, now the thornery, and were walking in a thick little coppice of fir-
trees, where occasional gleams of the near river shone through. On a sudden
impulse he stopped, and taking her face between his two hands turned it up
to him.
“Dear little ‘rose-lady,’ ” he said, huskily, “say ‘God bless you, Jack!’
before I go!”
“Oh, I do say it!” she answered, sobbingly. “I do say it, and I pray it
every night and morning! Jack, dear, believe me I do!”
Somehow or other he had his arms round her,—he had none of the
Philosopher’s doubts or hesitations,—and he drew her fondly to him.
“You dear!” he whispered. “But I won’t have you cry! No tears!—or
you’ll make a real coward of me! And just now I want to be a hero—for I
think, I really do think you care for me,—just a little!”
She was silent, but she put the tiniest little flutter of a kiss on the hand
that was nearest to her lips. He thrilled to that caress with all the warm
ardour of a Romeo, and releasing her from his hold, drew himself up with
an air of joy and pride.