My wife and I would have been more than human if we had not occasionally
cast a curious eye upon the relations of Robin and the Twins.
Of Robin's attitude towards that pair of charmers Kitty could make
little and I nothing. He kept his place and went his own way--rather
ostentatiously, I thought--and appeared if anything to avoid them. If he
found himself in their company he treated them with a certain grave
reticence--he soon grew out of his fondness for addressing us like a
public meeting--and made little attempt to bestow upon them the
attentions which young maidens are accustomed to receive from young men.
There was no mystery about the Twins' attitude towards Robin. "Here,"
said they in effect, "is a fine upstanding young man, full of promise,
but hampered in every direction by abysmal ignorance on matters of vital
importance. His instincts are sound, but at present he is quite
impossible. What he wants is mothering."
And so they mothered him, most maternally. They exerted themselves quite
strenuously to instil into him the fundamental principles of life--the
correct method of tying a dress tie; the intricate ritual which governs
such things as visiting-cards and asparagus; the exact limit of the
domains of brown boots and dinner-jackets; the utter criminality of
dickeys, turn-down collars, and side-whiskers; and the superiority of
dialogue to monologue as a concomitant to afternoon tea.
In many respects, they discovered with pleased surprise, their pupil
required no instruction or surveillance. For instance, he could always
be trusted to enter or leave a room without awkwardness, and his manner
of address was perfect. He was neither servile nor familiar, and the
only people to whom I ever saw him pay marked deference were the members
of what is after all the only real and natural aristocracy in the
world--that of old age.
All their ministrations Robin received with grave wonder--he was not of
the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity--but, evidently
struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own
doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he
realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward worth as opposed
to outward show, that though a coat cannot make a man, a good man in a
good coat often has the advantage of a good man in a bad coat. So he
allowed the Twins to round off his corners; and, without losing any of
his original ruggedness of character or toughness of fibre, he soon
developed into a well-groomed and sufficiently presentable
adjunct--quite distinguished-looking, Dilly said, when she met us one
day on our way down to the House--to a lady's morning walk.
What he really thought of it all I do not know. I have a kind of
suspicion that deep down in his heart every Scot entertains a contempt
for the volatile and frivolous English which is only equalled by that of
the English for the nation to whom I once heard a Highland minister
refer as "the giddy and godless French"; but Robin was not given to the
revelation of his private thoughts. He seldom spoke of the Twins to
me--he was a discusser of manners rather than men--but he once remarked
that they were girls of widely different character. He entered into no
further details, but I remember being struck by the observation at the
time; for I had always regarded my sisters-in-law as being as identical
in disposition as they were in appearance.
Still it was pretty to see Robin unbending to please the two girls, and
to hear him say "No, really?" or "My word, what rot!" when you knew that
his tongue was itching to cry, "Is that a fact?" or "Hoots!" or
"Havers!" as the occasion demanded.
He also possessed the great and unique merit of not being ashamed to ask
for guidance in a difficulty. I have known him pause before an
unfamiliar dish at table and ask one of his preceptresses, in the
frankest manner possible, whether the exigencies of the situation called
for a spoon or a fork: and out of doors it was a perpetual joy to hear
him whisper, on the approach of some one whom he thought might be a
friend of ours, "Will I lift my hat?"
All that year Robin was my right hand. It was a long session; and as
my Chief sat in the Upper House, much work in the way of answering
questions and making statements fell upon me. We had a good working
majority, but the Opposition were a united and well-organised body
that year, and we had to rise early and go to bed late to keep their
assaults at bay while proceeding with the programme of the session.
Every afternoon, before I entered the House to take my place at
question-time, my secretary insisted on taking me through the answers
which he had prepared for my recitation; and we also discussed the
line of action to be pursued if I were cornered by questions of the
"arising-out-of-that-answer" order.
Personally, I loathed this part of the work--I am a departmentalist pure
and simple--but Robin's eye used to glow with the light of battle as he
rehearsed me in the undoubtedly telling counters with which I was to
pulverise the foe.
"I would like fine," he once said to me, "to stand up in your place and
answer these questions for you."
"I wish you could, Robin," I sighed. "And," I added, "I believe you will
some day."
Robin turned pink, for the first time in our acquaintance, and I heard
his teeth click suddenly together.
So the wind lay that way!