A Man's Man Part 21

"Good luck to you in life, Hughie! I can't, I fear, take my stand on the pinnacle of a successful career and shout down advice to you on your way up; neither will I presume to counsel you as to your future. My only piece of advice to you is not to expect much in this world, and then you won't be disappointed.

Roughly speaking, there are only three things in life that matter--health, money, and friends. A woman once told me that the recipe for perfect happiness is a million pounds and a good digestion. The last, I admit, is indispensable. Well, you have it: the Marrable interior is dyspepsia-proof. The million pounds you have not got, and don't want. Wealth, after all, is a purely relative affair. You can measure it either by the greatness of what you have or the smallness of what you want. All that a man needs is enough of the first to ensure his getting the second, and I am inclined to think that in your case this should not be a matter of much difficulty.

"Besides, it is in the _small_ needs of life that money really counts. The yacht, the house in town, the grouse moor--who wants 'em? But the cab home in the rain; the occasional bottle of Pommery; the couple of stalls when an old friend looks you up, or the furtive and sympathetic fiver when his widow does,--these are the things that make money really worth having. Besides, the greatest joys are those you have to save up for, so a millionaire can never know them.

"As for friends--well, there are two cla.s.ses, men and women. Men I need not trouble you about. If you haven't acquired the knack of handling them during the last ten years you never will, and are no Marrable. Women? I give it up! You can't standardise them. Men are fairly normal as a cla.s.s. If you deal straight with a man he will realise and appreciate the fact, and though he may not respond by dealing straight with you, he will at any rate recognise you for what you are--a white man. But you can't depend on a woman to do that. They are far stronger in their likes and dislikes than we are, and are hopelessly capricious into the bargain. My general experience--and it has been wider than you might think--has been that, once a woman takes a fancy to you, you may run counter to every canon of honesty, sobriety, and common decency, and she will cleave to you--probably, I fancy, because you arouse all the protective maternal instinct in her. On the other hand, once you get into her bad books,--it may be because you deserve it, but as often as not it is because you have hot hands or once trod on her skirt in a waltz,--nothing that you can do will prevent her shuddering at the very mention of your name. Perhaps, from the point of view of the greatest good of the greatest number, a woman's method of sizing up the male s.e.x is the best possible, but it comes hard on well-meaning but heavy-handed men like us.

"We Marrables have always been men's men, although we have the profoundest reverence for women. (Perhaps that is the reason: a woman never wants you to reverence women; she wants you to reverence _her_.) What sticks in our throats is the enormous amount of make-believe and s.h.i.+lly-shallying that has to go on between the s.e.xes before any definite business can be accomplished. Whenever I see a Marrable in a drawing-room, sitting on the edge of a chair and balancing a teacup, I always know exactly what he is there for, and I also know that he is dumbly resisting man's primitive instinct to pick up the right girl and _run_. When that feat, or its equivalent, has been accomplished, all is well: I have never known a Marrable who was not a complete success as a husband. But they are bad starters.

"Your father was an exception. He had the good luck to meet a girl who knew a man when she saw one, and was willing to accept the will for the deed when she found him unable to express articulately what she would have loved to hear. By a further stroke of good luck her parents objected to him, so he had a comparative walk-over.

"And therefore, Hughie, I counsel you to escape all future unhappiness by marrying Joey as soon as you get home--a consummation to which, as you will probably have gathered by this time, the whole of these laboured and transparent testamentary dispositions of mine are directed. I have left the child entirely in your hands. Marry her as quickly as you can, and then I shall know for certain, whatever my state of existence at the time, that the two people whom I care for most on earth are both booked for a life of perfect happiness. I could not wish a man a sweeter wife or a woman a better husband.

"Forgive my clumsy methods, but you know I mean well.--Yours,

"JAMES MARRABLE."

Hughie folded up this characteristic doc.u.ment and put it carefully back in his pocket. Then he lit his pipe and reflected.

He did not altogether agree with the tone of his uncle's letter, but he knew in his heart that it contained a good deal of truth. He was ready to marry and settle down, but like most of his race he contemplated the preliminary reconnoitring, the manoeuvring for position, and the elaborate enveloping movements which seem inseparable from a modern matrimonial engagement, with something akin to terror. At the same time, it seemed a tame thing to come home and marry a bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss out of the schoolroom to gratify the shade of a departed relative.

The train slowed down. They were approaching Midfield Junction, where he must change. Hughie took his feet down from the opposite cus.h.i.+ons and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"We'll see," he said. "I must have a look at Joey first. Pretty children so often grow up plain. Perhaps it would be simplest to marry her, but there's no hurry. I'm home for a rest, and I'm not going to bother myself. I have roughed it for nine years. Now I'm going to settle down and have an easy time of it."

He was never more mistaken in his life.

CHAPTER XII

A CHANGE OF ATMOSPHERE

Miss Joan Gaymer sat in a Windsor chair on the landing outside the bathroom door at Manors. It was half-past eight in the morning--an hour when traffic outside bathroom doors is apt to be congested.

Miss Gaymer was wrapped in a bluish-grey kimono, which, whether by accident or design,--I fear there is very little doubt about it, really,--exactly matched the colour of her eyes. At the same time it failed to conceal the fact--_horresco referens_--that she was still attired in what American haberdashers call "slumber-wear." Her slim bare feet were encased in red slippers, one of which dangled precariously from her right big toe, and her hair hung down her back in two tightly screwed but not unbecoming pigtails. At present she was engaged in a heated altercation with two gentlemen for right of entry into the bathroom.

The only excuse that I can offer for her conduct is that, although she was nearly twenty-one, in her present setting she looked about fourteen.

The gentlemen, who wore large hairy dressing-gowns, with towels swathed round their necks and mighty sponges in their hands, did not, it must be confessed, show to such advantage as their opponent. They were distinctly tousled and gummy in appearance, and their wits, as is usual with the male s.e.x early in the morning, were in no condition for rapier work. They had both been patiently awaiting their turn for the bath when Joan arrived, and they were now listening in helpless indignation to a peremptory order to return to their rooms and stay there till sent for, and not to molest an unprotected female on her way to her ablutions.

"But look here, Joey," said one,--he was a pleasant-faced youth of about nineteen,--"we were _both_ here before you; and you know we arranged last night that you were to come at twenty past--"

"Binks," commanded the offender in the Windsor chair, "go straight back to your bedroom and don't argue with me. If you are good I'll give your door a tap on my way back."

But Binks was in no mood for compromise, and furthermore wanted his breakfast.

"It's not playing the game," he grumbled; "I was here first, Cherub was second--"

"_Who_ isn't playing the game?" flashed out Miss Gaymer. "Have you _shaved_, Binks?"

Binks, taken in flank, admitted the impeachment,--which, it may be mentioned, was self-evident. "You haven't, either," was the best retort he could make.

"No, but I've brushed my teeth," said the ever-ready Miss Gaymer.

"Well," pursued Binks desperately, "you haven't done your hair."

"My lad," replied his opponent frankly, "if you were a woman and had to put things on over your head, you wouldn't have done your hair either."

Binks, utterly demoralised, fell out of the fighting line.

"Joey, _I've_ shaved," murmured the second gentleman in a deprecating voice.

Miss Gaymer turned a surprised eye upon him.

"_Why_, Cherub, dear?" she inquired.

"Cherub," who was still of an age to be exceedingly sensitive on the subject of his manly growth, blushed deeply and subsided. But his companion was made of sterner stuff.

"Come along, Cherub!" he said. "Let's run her into her bedroom and lock her in until we've bathed. Hang it! It's the third time she's done it this week."

"Lay one finger on me, children," proclaimed Miss Gaymer, "and I'll never speak to either of you again!"

She made ready for battle by twining her feet in and out of the legs of the Windsor chair, and sat brandis.h.i.+ng a loofah, the picture of outraged propriety.

Her heartless opponents advanced to the attack, and seizing the arms of the chair bore it swiftly, occupant and all, down the pa.s.sage. Joan, utterly unprepared for these tactics, was at first too taken aback to do anything but shriek and wield the loofah; but shortly recovering her presence of mind, she slipped off the seat, and, doubling round her bearers, who were hampered by the chair, scampered back towards the bathroom--only to run heavily into the arms of an unyielding, sunburned, and highly embarra.s.sed gentleman, who had been standing nervously on the other side of the door of that apartment for the last five minutes, awaiting an opportunity to escape, and had suddenly emerged therefrom on a dash to his bedroom, under the perfectly correct impression that it was a case of now or never.

"Oh, I _beg_ your--Why, it's Hughie!" cried Joan. "Yes, it _really_ is!"

They recoiled, and stood surveying each other. It was their first meeting. Hughie, owing to a breakdown on the branch line, had arrived late the night before, after the ladies had gone to bed. Joan and he had not set eyes on each other for nine years.

Miss Gaymer recovered her equanimity first.

"You're not a bit changed, Hughie," she observed with a disarming smile.

"A little browner--that's all. Am I?"

Hughie did not answer for a moment. He was genuinely astonished at what he had just seen, and not a little shocked. Where young girls are concerned, there is no greater stickler for propriety than your man of the world; and this sudden instance of the latter-day _camaraderie_ of young men and maidens had rather taken Hughie's breath away. He felt almost as fluttered as an early Victorian matron. Suddenly he realised that he had been asked a question.

"Changed?" he said haltingly. "Well, it's rather hard to say, until--until--"

"Until I've got my hair up and more clothes on?" suggested Miss Gaymer.

"Perhaps you're right. Still, I look rather nice, don't you think?" she added modestly, preening herself in the kimono. "However, you'll see me at breakfast. Meanwhile I want you to hold those two boys back while I get into the bathroom. Ta-ta, dears!"

And with an airy wave of her hand to the unwashed and discomfited firm of d.i.c.ky and Cherub, who stood grinning sheepishly in the background, Hughie's ward slipped under her guardian's arm and disappeared into the bathroom, with a swish of caerulean drapery and a triumphant banging of the door.

Half an hour later Hughie descended to breakfast, there to be greeted by his host, Jack Leroy, a retired warrior of thirty-eight, of comfortable exterior and incurable laziness, and his wife, the one-time render of Hughie's heart-strings in the person of Miss Mildred Freshwater. Another old friend was the Reverend Montague D'Arcy, whom we last saw dancing the Cachuca by the waters of the Cam. Here he was, a trifle more rotund and wearing Archidiaconal gaiters, but still the twinkling-eyed D'Arcy of old. One or two other guests were seated at the table, but as yet there was no sign of Joey. When she did appear, it was in a riding-habit; and after a hearty meal, in no way accelerated by urgent and outspoken messages from the front door, where her swains were smoking the pipe of patience, she dashed off in a manner which caused most of those who were over-eating themselves round the table to refer enviously to the digestive equipment of the young, and left Hughie to be entertained by his host and hostess.

"You'll find her a queer handful, Hughie," said Mrs. Leroy, as she sat placidly embroidering an infantine garment in the morning sun on the verandah,--in the corner of which the current issues of the "Spectator"