RENOVARE DOLOREM
THE leaven was working.
One evening after tea Philip took a big breath and addressed his uncle.
"Uncle Joseph," he said, "I was talking to a little girl on Hampstead
Heath to-day."
"More fool you," was the genial response. "What were you talking about?"
"You," said Philip, a little unexpectedly.
Uncle Joseph looked up.
"Oh," he said. "Why was I so honoured?"
Philip explained, in his deliberate fashion.
"She was that little girl we passed on Sunday," he said, "sitting on a
gate. She smiled at me, and you told me it was only an instinct. A
prebby--a prebby--"
Uncle Joseph assisted him.
"--predatory instinct. Well, I met her again one day, and I told her
what you said. I explained that you knew all women were dangerous, and
were the great stumbling-block to a man's work in life. Also parasites."
Uncle Joseph smiled grimly.
"Well, and what did she say to that?" he enquired.
"She said she would ask her mother about it."
Uncle Joseph nodded.
"They always do," he commented. "And what did Mother say?"
"Her mother said--" Philip hesitated.
"Go on," said Uncle Joseph quietly.
"She said that--that the reason why you thought that all women should be
avoided was known only to one woman, and she wouldn't tell."
Colonel Meldrum rose to his feet, and laid his pipe upon the mantelpiece
with a slight clatter. Philip eyed him curiously. There was a change in
his appearance. He seemed to have grown older during the last ten
seconds. The lines of his face were sharper, and his stiff shoulders
drooped a little.
Then came a long and deathlike stillness. Uncle Joseph had turned his
back, and was gazing into the glowing fire, with his head resting on his
arms. Philip, feeling a little frightened, waited.
At last Uncle Joseph spoke.
"How old are you, boy?" he asked.
"Fourteen," said Philip.
There was another silence. Then Uncle Joseph spoke again.
"You should be old enough to understand now. Your friend's mother was
right, Phil. Would you like to hear the story?"
"Yes, please," said Philip.
Uncle Joseph turned round.
"Why?" he asked curiously.
Philip replied with characteristic frankness.
"Because," he said, "it might make it easier for me to keep away from
all women, like what you told me to do, if I knew the reason why I ought
to."
"You are beginning to find it difficult, then?"
Philip, thinking of a blue cotton frock and a pair of brown eyes,
nodded.
"Then I will try and make it easier for you," said Uncle Joseph. "It is
my plain duty to do so, for if once you get into your head the notion
that woman is man's better half and guiding angel, or any sentimental,
insidious nonsense of that kind, you are doomed. Your father allowed
himself to cherish such beliefs, and he died of a broken heart before he
was thirty. You are your father's son."
"Who broke his heart?" asked Philip, looking up quickly. It was the
first time that Uncle Joseph had ever mentioned his father to him.
"Your mother," said Uncle Joseph bluntly. "She broke another man's heart
later on, but that is another story. Perhaps the other man deserved it,
but your father, above all men, did not. Have we read Tennyson
together?"
"Yes," said Philip. "'The Idylls of the King.'"
"You remember King Arthur?"
Philip nodded, beginning dimly to comprehend.
"Well, your mother was Guinevere."
Philip was silent for a while. Then he asked:--
"Is that why you say we must avoid all women?"
"Partly. There was my own case as well. When I was well over thirty,
Philip, I fell in love. I had never loved any woman before, because my
whole life and soul were bound up in the regiment. I fell in love with
the regiment when I joined it as a little subaltern, and I worshipped it
for sixteen years. In course of time they made me adjutant, which cures
most men of such predilections, but it only made me feel as proud as a
hen with eight hundred chickens. Then, just as I got my final step and
became commanding officer, I met a girl and fell in love with her. It
was in Calcutta. She was the spoiled beauty of that season, and I was
the youngest colonel in the Indian Army, so everybody thought it a very
suitable match.
"We did not get engaged for quite a long time, though. Oh, no! First of
all, I had to learn to dance attendance. As I say, I had never been in
love before, or even had any great experience of women. All my time had
been lavished on the regiment. So I laboured under the delusion that if
a man loved a woman, his proper course was to tell her so straight, and
prove his words by devoting himself to her service. I have learned
wisdom since then, but that was what I thought at the time."
"What ought you to have done, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip curiously.
"I ought either to have bullied her, or gone and made love to another
girl. Those are the only two arguments which a woman appreciates. But I
made myself too cheap. This girl, as soon as she found that she was
quite sure of me, began to play with me. She ordered me about in public,
and I loved her so much that I obeyed her, and did not regard her
behaviour as the least underbred or vulgar. She gave me rather degrading
odd jobs to do, and I did them, proud to think that I was her squire. As
for presents, if I gave her something that she did not chance to want or
possessed already, it was declined with every manifestation of offended
propriety, but if she did happen to require anything, she told me to get
it for her, and I did so gladly, for I felt that all these little
trifles were gradually binding us together. I had not quite grasped a
woman's idea of playing the game in those days, you see. I thought all
this aloofness of hers was due to a young girl's reserve of character,
and that, being too shy and timid to tell me in so many words that she
cared for me, she was accepting all my devotion and my little offerings
purposely and deliberately, in order to show me that, although she could
not bring herself to say the word at present, she meant to do the square
thing in the end. I loved her for _that_, and tried to be patient. But
once, when I, presuming on this theory of mine, suggested to her that
she must care for me rather more than she gave me to understand, she
flashed out at me and told me that I ought to be proud to serve her free
gratis and for nothing, and that a _true_ knight never hoped for any
reward from his lady otherwise than an occasional smile and word of
thanks. On the whole, I think that was the most outrageous statement I
have ever heard fall from the lips of a human being; but as uttered by
her it actually sounded rather splendid! It made me feel quite ashamed
of myself, Philip. I said I was a mercenary brute, and asked her to
forgive me. This, after I had made an abject exhibition of myself, she
ultimately did.
"For the next few months I had a pretty bad time of it. I loved her too
much to keep away from her, but my self-respect was at zero. I had to
put my pride in my pocket and undergo some humiliation nearly every day.
To stand about for hours, waiting for a dance, perhaps to have it cut in
the end; to dash off parade and change out of uniform and gallop away to
a riding appointment, perhaps to find that she had forgotten all about
it; to be compelled to laugh and look amused when she said uncharitable
things about my best friends--that was my daily round, Philip. Yes, they
were stiff days, and I saw they would get worse. When you find yourself
gradually ceasing to respect a woman without ceasing to love her, then
you are in for a demoralizing time, my son.
"But I endured it all. I summoned up fresh stocks of patience and
philosophy. I told myself that she was only a child, and a spoiled child
at that; and that she would shake down presently. When she was a little
older and wiser, she would realise what humiliation she had often heaped
upon me, and she would come and say she was sorry, in her pretty way,
and ask me to forgive her; and I would do so, and we would live happily
ever afterwards. Meanwhile I must be enormously patient.
"Then suddenly, without any sort of warning, just as I was reaching the
limit of physical endurance,--there is a physical side to these things,
Philip, as you may find some day,--she capitulated, and we became
engaged. For a fortnight I lived in the clouds. I gave her all the
presents I could think of, and then sat down and unfolded to her all my
dreams and visions for the future. I told her how proud the regiment
would be of her, and what a splendid regiment we would make of it
between us. I confessed to her, just like a penitent child, that I had
been neglecting the regiment of late, all on her account. Now that the
suspense and worry was over I meant to work double tides and make the
old regiment twice as efficient as it had ever been. I told her I felt
like a giant refreshed. With her beside me, there was no limit to things
we might do with that regiment.
"Then Vivien--that was her name--interrupted me. She said, in her pretty
imperious way:--
"'Joe dear, your regiment bores me. You never talk of anything else. In
future I forbid you to mention it in my presence.' Then she kissed me,
and took me off to a tea-fight."
Uncle Joseph, who had been striding about the room during this
narration, suddenly halted and faced his nephew.
"Looking back now," he said, "it is plain to me that this was the point
at which I ought to have made a stand. I should have taken Vivi firmly,
and said to her: 'My dearest child,'--Uncle Joseph's voice dropped to a
gentle, caressing murmur, but he recovered himself with a
jerk,--'understand this. A man's work is his life. It is his father and
his mother, and his meat and his drink, and the air he breathes; and the
woman who marries him must be prepared to stand by his side and see him
through it, and not to hang round his neck and get between him and what
he has to do. She must sympathise with him when things go wrong, and
share his satisfaction when they come right again. If she grows jealous
of his work and tries to detach him from it, there will be a disaster.
Therefore you must take me and my work together or forswear us both, for
they cannot be divided.' That is what I should have said, Philip, for I
knew it was true, even as she kissed me. But I didn't. I thought I
should be able to educate her up to appreciation of my beloved regiment,
and that her prejudice and selfishness would weaken in time.
"But I was wrong. It was I who weakened. I began by turning out less
frequently at parade. I began to cut mess. I began to lose touch with
the rank and file. Formerly it had been my pride to know the name of
every man in my regiment, and something about him. Soon I found myself
saluted by men on the parade-ground whose faces I did not recognise.
Then I began to listen to Vivien's criticisms of my officers. She
sneered at my subalterns, because some of them were hard up and could
not keep polo ponies. She called them 'a fusty lot,'--half of them had
seen active service before they were twenty-one,--and compared them
unfavourably with the Viceroy's Staff. She appeared to regard my
affection for them as a sort of slight to herself. She looked down on my
splendid little Gurkhas, and said it was a pity I could not get command
of a white regiment. And I, instead of telling her straight that she
must never speak in that way of my men again, began by making a few lame
excuses for them and ended by acquiescing in her opinions. I found
myself patronising my own officers--some of the finest soldiers in the
Service--and drifting into an attitude of superciliousness towards
soldiering in general. And all this, Philip, arose from that ennobling
passion, Love!
"Then, when the hot weather came, she went away to Simla. I was to
follow her in a month. During that month I came to myself again. I
realised, once and for all, that a man's duty comes first in this world,
and straightway I saw life clearly and as a whole once more. The cloud
that had settled over the regiment lifted again, and by the time I went
on leave we were as happy a band as ever.
"I travelled up to the hills full of tremendous emotions, Philip. In the
first place, I had not seen Vivien for over a month, and I was mad with
the desire of setting eyes on her again. In the second place, I was
determined to make it plain that she must not attempt to come between me
and the regiment again. It was a delicate problem to tackle, I knew; but
I still hugged the delusion that she was only a child and could be
educated up to a wife's duties. But I saw a big fight ahead of me--a big
fight!"
Uncle Joseph's voice dropped, and the light of battle died out of his
eyes.
"What was the end of the fight?" asked Philip, apprehensively. He saw
tragedy on the horizon.
Uncle Joseph laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
"I need not have worried," he said. "There was no fight. When I got to
Simla I discovered that she had been engaged to another man for nearly a
fortnight."
Philip shrank back into his chair, stunned.
"She had not even written to tell me," continued Uncle Joseph. "She had
allowed me to travel half across India to see her, and then--!... People
told me he wasn't a bad fellow. A bit of a boor, but a good sort on the
whole. He was heir to a title of some kind, I think. I never saw him--or
her, after the one interview.... They were married about a month later.
"I went back to the regiment. I had that consolation, I told myself.
Nothing stood between me and my work now. But I was wrong again. Nothing
seemed worth while any more. Regimental routine wearied me to death, and
presently I understood what had happened. In the old days I had loved
the regiment because it was _my_ regiment: latterly I had loved it
because it was _her_ regiment, and I wanted to make it a credit to her.
Now that she was gone--_cui bono_? But I fought on--I would not give in.
I was mechanical, but pretty thorough. I fulfilled every duty rigidly.
The only difference was that, whereas the regiment had formerly been
commanded by a Damascus blade, it was now commanded by a broomstick, and
it went about its work correspondingly.
"Then, three months later, came a letter from your father. He was dying,
Phil,--dying of a broken heart, if ever a man did. His story was the
same as mine, only more shameful. He asked me to take charge of you.
Then I saw light: my duty lay plain ahead of me. I would go home and
devote the rest of my life to protecting my nephew from the monstrous
danger of Woman. I sent in my papers, came home, and took charge of you;
and here we are! I have spoken."
Uncle Joseph dropped unconcernedly back into his armchair, and relit the
ashes of his pipe. But his fingers were shaking.
Philip sat still and silent for a long time. Then he asked:--
"Was she very pretty, Uncle Joseph?"
"She was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen," said Uncle
Joseph simply.
Philip ventured on one more question.
"Is she alive now?"
Uncle Joseph shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know," he said. "I have dropped so thoroughly out of the world
that the social history of the past ten years is a blank to me. I never
have heard of her since I left India. I do not even know her husband's
title."
Uncle Joseph turned to his nephew. A grim smile played about the ends of
his mustache.
"And now, laddie," he enquired, "have I made things any easier for you?"
Philip flushed.
"What do you mean?" he muttered. But he knew only too well.
"I mean this," said Uncle Joseph. "Has my story made it any easier for
you to relinquish your acquaintance with the small siren of Hampstead
Heath?"
It was the first critical moment in Philip's life. Reason and
Instinct--the truculent logic of his uncle and the gentle, chivalrous
spirit of his father--fought for mastery within him. Instinct won, and
he replied doggedly:--
"No. I'm sorry."
"So am I," said Uncle Joseph, rising to his feet again. "However, you
must be protected from yourself. Listen! You will drop your acquaintance
with this little girl, and refrain from making any other friendships of
a similar nature so long as you remain in my charge. It is an order. You
understand?"
Philip bowed his head in silence. He had been brought up in a soldier's
house, and when Uncle Joseph spoke in his orderly-room voice there was
nothing more to be said on the matter.
That night, for the first time in his life, Philip cried himself to
sleep. He had pledged his knightly word to keep tryst with a lady on
Hampstead Heath the following afternoon, and now he would have to break
it.