Valentine walked. When he had been walking for some time he realised
that he was achieving the impossible in combining an excess of motive
power with a minimum of progress, for he found himself walking in a
direction exactly opposed to that in which his destination lay. He
corrected this, and presently stood before a house in Cadogan Gardens.
The houses in Cadogan Gardens wear a gentle and sorrowful air, and
Valentine grew more depressed than ever.
Now, years before, his guardian had said: “There may come a time,
Valentine, when something happens to you about which you will think it
impossible that anyone can advise you. But you may be wrong in thinking
that. Try me then, if you care to.”
Valentine’s parents had died when he was very young, in one of those
marvellously complete accidents arranged by any competent story-teller
when he simply must deprive a child at one blow of a mother’s love and a
father’s care. Valentine’s parents, however, had in some measure
protested against their simultaneous fate, and Valentine’s mother had
lived long enough after the accident to appoint Mr. Lapwing her boy’s
sole guardian. Mr. Lapwing was the senior partner of the city firm of
Lapwing & Lancelot, merchants. And as, quite apart from his regard for
Valentine’s parents, he was wealthy, a widower, and childless, it can
readily be understood that he eagerly accepted the trust. Although when
it is said that he accepted the trust it is not to be implied that Mr.
Lapwing tried to take a “father’s place” with the boy. Mr. Lapwing, like
so many childless men, knew all about his place with any boy. He was
without one theory as to education, but acted merely on a vague idea
that the relations between parents and children, whether it was the
Victorian one of shaming the joy out of children or the Georgian one of
encouraging the joy into vulgarity, had gotten the world into more
trouble than anything in history since the fall of Lucifer from
Paradise.
On this evening, twenty-four years after he had first entered the house
in Cadogan Gardens, Valentine stood quite a while before the door and
wondered how he was to put It. It, you understand, was very difficult to
put. A disagreement between a man and his wife remains indissolubly a
disagreement between a man and his wife, and only a man or his wife may
solve It. Indeed, Valentine had already solved It. He detested
compromise. A divorce was, undoubtedly, indicated. Undoubtedly. So
undoubtedly, indeed, that Valentine would not have dreamed of putting
It to Mr. Lapwing at all had he not thought himself bound in honour to
ask his guardian’s advice “when something happens to you about which you
will think it impossible that anyone can advise you.”