“Nonsense!” he said. “You don’t suppose cows are put into a field through which there’s a right of way unless they are perfectly harmless, do you?”
But pass it off as he might, Nature had played her old, old trick upon him, and in some subtle manner his relationship to Dolly had become more intimate, more alluring; so much so, indeed, that when he said “good-bye” to her he asked to be allowed soon to see her again.
“I want to go in to a lecture in Oxford to-morrow evening,” she replied; “but mother has to go to London, and won’t be back in time to take me. Would you like to come?”
“What’s the lecture about?” he asked.
“‘The Emotional Development of the Child,’” she replied. “I love anything to do with children, and everybody says Professor Robarts is wonderful. He believes that a child’s character is formed in the first three or four years of its life, and he thinks all girls should learn just what to do, so that when they have babies of their own....” She paused, and a dreamy look came into her eyes: a speaking look which told of what the psycho-analysts call “the mother-urge”; and it made precisely that impression upon Jim’s excited senses which it was intended to make.
Wise was the Buddha when, in answer to Ananda’s question as to how he should behave in the presence of women, he made the laconic reply: “Keep wide awake.”
“Right!” said Jim. “I’ll order old Hook’s barouche, and drive you in.”
She told him that the lecture was to begin at nine, and he left her with the promise that he would call for her in good time.
Alone once more in his house, he could not put the thought of her from his mind. This, perhaps, is not to be wondered at, for he was a hot-blooded gipsy in more than appearance, and she was as pretty and soft a little picture of feminine charm as ever graced an English village. He failed, at any rate, to follow her strategy, and permitted himself to be flustered by it, although there was no deliberate method in her movements, nor did she employ any but those wiles which came almost instinctively to her. Jim, with his experience, ought to have realized that a woman who talks to a man innocently on intimate matters, such as those which had cropped up without apparent intent in their recent conversation, is, either consciously or unconsciously, Nature’s agent-provocateur. She is leading his thoughts in that direction which is the goal of her life, according to the ruthless whisperings of Nature, who does not care one snap of the fingers for any but the first member of that blessed trinity, Body, Soul and Spirit. The deft art of suggestion, in the hands of an unscrupulous woman, is dangerous; but in those of a feather-brained little conglomerate of feminine charms and instincts, it is deadly.
These quiet summer and autumn months in the heart of the English countryside had sobered Jim’s mind, and his exalted fancy, which had led him at times as it were to hurl himself at the gates of heaven, was gone from him. He told himself that, having inherited this ancient house, it was his business to take to his bosom a wife and helpmate. His primitive manhood had been stirred by her, and his civilized reason justified the riot of his mere senses by the plea of practical advantage and domestic necessity. She was a splendid little housewife, he mused, a quiet little country girl who had learnt her lesson in the school of privation. She was so dainty, so soft, so pretty; she would always be singing and smiling about the house, arranging the flowers, drawing back the chintz curtains to let the sunlight in, dusting and polishing things, and, in the evenings, sitting curled up in an armchair knitting him waistcoats. It would be a pleasure to adorn her in pretty dresses and jewels, to take her up to London and show her the world, and to give her the keys of the domestic store-cupboards. So often in his life he had been afflicted by the sense of his loneliness; but with her at his side that mental malady would be exorcized like a dreary ghost.