"It is. Did she come over to give a display for my benefit? I'm only a wounded sailor, though. Don't count, I s'pose?"
Lady Manners began to gather her correspondence together.
"Graeme," she said, "I am at a loss to know why you should adopt this tone. If it is intended to be in keeping with a pose which your profession requires of you, I can only say that it ill becomes a guest before this hearth."
There was a genuinely hurt tone in the lady's voice—which, indeed, trembled a little. This note of unconscious pathos moved Graeme to one of his rare attempts at self-revelation. He knew she was fond of him in her preoccupied, hard way, and was more concerned about his "lone wolf" attitude towards the amenities of civilised life, as she understood them, than she was capable of putting into words.
"Emily," he said, "'tisn't a pose. 'Fore God it's no pose. Call me what you like—intolerant, idealistic, or whatever long word meets my case. Fact remains, I can't stick that type of woman. They shock me, Emily, in the way blasphemy and drunkenness shock you. All my life long—for fifteen years at least—I've lived in ships with men as my sole companions—raucous-voiced, hairy-chested, buck men, my dear; every blessed type; selfish men and unselfish ones, drunkards, bullies, cranks, wise men and fools. 'Tisn't that one doesn't like 'em at heart, most of 'em. Some are lovable; but one gets into the way of thinking women must be somehow utterly different. When I went to sea I thought all women in the world must be like what I could remember of Mother—" unconsciously his voice changed. "I went on thinking so for some years, chiefly because I never met any women to speak to. The more I saw of men the more I felt convinced that women must be wonderful ... their voices..."
The speaker pulled out a ragged tobacco pouch and slowly fell to filling his pipe.
"Course, as time went on I met women—of a sort—but they didn't disillusion me. They strengthened my conviction that the—er—other sort must be all I'd dreamed they were. Trouble was I never met any. I haven't any parlour tricks—too shy——"
For a few moments the lighting of his pipe occupied the speaker's attention. He enveloped himself in wreaths of smoke.
"I wonder why—I wonder how girls—ladies, I mean, to use an old-fashioned word—get like that Josephine Smedley; flicking cigarette ash about and grimacing when they talk. They don't seem able to say anything without George Robey's slang to help 'em, or to finish a sentence without a laugh like a third-rate barmaid's. I believe subalterns describe them as 'sports.' They aren't men, though they try to ape men; they aren't women—they aren't—oh God! how I hate the type!"
Lady Manners rose. There was in her aristocratic, rather narrow face, a suspicion that her relative had been drinking. Once on a previous visit the idealist had been driven by boredom to seek entertainment in the village tavern, and, while adding considerably to his popularity amongst the rustic toss-pots, returned smelling insufferably of beer.