“You sing so well too,” she said. “Surely you ought to do something with some of those things? Now, don’t interrupt; as you insist on it, I did come out to argue with you.”
“But the argument is to be conducted without any interruption from me?” asked Hugh.
“Yes. You see, you are twenty-four, aren’t you?—which is really middle-age nowadays, when everybody is past everything at forty, and it’s time you did something. It doesn’t really matter much what you do, as long as you do something. ‘Men must work,’ as Mr. Kingsley said.”
Dead silence from Hugh, according to instructions. Peggy wanted to argue the question on general lines and make him suggest singing as a profession, since she did not officially know of this offer of the Opera Syndicate. Hence she continued with glorious generalisations.
“You see, it is a necessity to work,” she said, “for all of us, though I think Mr. Kingsley said that women only had to weep, but I cease at this point to use him as an authority. Good heavens, how dull I should find London if I only went to luncheon and dinner and balls and concerts! Life is simply idiotic unless you do something. And doing things is much more necessary for men than for women, because men are not naturally frivolous; they are only frivolous because women ask them to play about, like—like the flower-maidens and Parsifal.”
Hugh gave a little explosion of laughter.
“I beg your pardon!” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Then don’t, because I am going on until I have finished. Good gracious, I think that one of the saddest sights that the world has to show is an unoccupied bachelor, who is always ready to go out to tea, or make the fourteenth, when there would otherwise be thirteen! I have been in a good many slums and factories and shelters, but I have never seen anything quite so sad as that.”
“You must have been reading the works of President Roosevelt!” said Hugh.
“Not one line, but I have occasionally driven up and down St. James’s Street and looked at the row of bald heads, back to the windows in clubs. Those wretches read the Times, or more probably the Daily Mail, all morning, and totter out to lunch. They read some pink or green paper all afternoon, and totter out to dinner. Then they go to bed, and close their weary eyes till late on in the following morning. Hugh, you will become like them if you don’t take care.”