CHAPTER VII

Winter 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.