CHAPTER VIIIHOW BEALBY EXPLAINED
Lord Chickney was only slightly older than Lord Moggeridge, but he had not worn nearly so well. His hearing was not good, though he would never admit it, and the loss of several teeth greatly affected his articulation. One might generalize and say that neither physically nor mentally do soldiers wear so well as lawyers. The army ages men sooner than the law and philosophy; it exposes them more freely to germs, which undermine and destroy, and it shelters them more completely from thought, which stimulates and preserves. A lawyer must keep his law highly polished and up-to-date or he hears of it within a fortnight, a general never realizes he is out of training and behind the times until disaster is accomplished. Since the magnificent retreat from Bondy-Satina in eighty-seven and his five weeks defence of Barrowgast (with the subsequent operations) the abilities of Lord Chickney had never been exercised seriously at all. But there was a certain simplicity of manner and a tall drooping grizzled old-veteran picturesqueness about him that kept him distinguished;he was easy to recognize on public occasions on account of his long moustaches, and so he got pointed out when greater men were ignored. The autograph collectors adored him. Every morning he would spend half an hour writing autographs, and the habit was so strong in him that on Sundays, when there was no London post and autograph writing would have been wrong anyhow, he filled the time in copying out the epistle and gospel for the day. And he liked to be well in the foreground of public affairs—if possible wearing his decorations. After the autographs he would work, sometimes for hours, for various patriotic societies and more particularly for those which would impose compulsory training upon every man, woman and child in the country. He even belonged to a society for drilling the butchers’ ponies and training big dogs as scouts. He did not understand how a country could be happy unless every city was fortified and every citizen wore side-arms, and the slightest error in his dietary led to the most hideous nightmares of the Channel Tunnel or reduced estimates and a land enslaved. He wrote and toiled for these societies, but he could not speak for them on account of his teeth. For he had one peculiar weakness; he had faced death in many forms but he had never faced a dentist. The thought of dentists gave him just the same sick horror as the thought of invasion.
He was a man of blameless private life, a widower and childless. In later years he had come to believe that he had once been very deeplyin love with his cousin, Susan, who had married a rather careless husband named Douglas; both she and Douglas were dead now, but he maintained a touching affection for her two lively rather than satisfying sons. He called them his nephews, and by the continuous attrition of affection he had become their recognized uncle. He was glad when they came to him in their scrapes, and he liked to be seen about with them in public places. They regarded him with considerable confidence and respect and an affection that they sometimes blamed themselves for as not quite warm enough for his merits. But there is a kind of injustice about affection.
He was really gratified when he got a wire from the less discreditable of these two bright young relations, saying, “Sorely in need of your advice. Hope to bring difficulties to you to-day at twelve.”
He concluded very naturally that the boy had come to some crisis in his unfortunate entanglement with Madeleine Philips, and he was flattered by the trustfulness that brought the matter to him. He resolved to be delicate but wily, honourable, strictly honourable, but steadily, patiently separative. He paced his spacious study with his usual morning’s work neglected, and rehearsed little sentences in his mind that might be effective in the approaching interview. There would probably be emotion. He would pat the lad on his shoulder and be himself a little emotional. “I understand, my boy,” he would say, “I understand.
“Don’t forget, my boy, that I’ve been a young man too.”
He would be emotional, he would be sympathetic, but also he must be a man of the world. “Sort of thing that won’t do, you know, my boy; sort of thing that people willnotstand.... A soldier’s wife has to be a soldier’s wife and nothing else.... Your business is to serve the king, not—not some celebrity. Lovely, no doubt. I don’t deny the charm of her—but on the hoardings, my boy.... Now don’t you think—don’t youthink?—there’s some nice pure girl somewhere, sweet as violets, new as the dawn, and ready to beyours; a girl, I mean, a maiden fancy free, not—how shall I put it?—a woman of the world. Wonderful, I admit—but seasoned. Public. My dear, dear boy, I knew your mother when she was a girl, a sweet pure girl—a thing of dewy freshness. Ah! Well I remember her! All these years, my boy—Nothing. It’s difficult....”
Tears stood in his brave old blue eyes as he elaborated such phrases. He went up and down mumbling them through the defective teeth and the long moustache and waving an eloquent hand.