Pointedly, and still staring amazed, I inquired of her with whom, for really I could hardly believe——
“With me, if—if you will,” said she, a rather lame attempt at a smile and a distinctly anxious look in her eyes showing that at least it was only a momentary aberration.
Momentary or not, however, I am not the man to smile with feigned gratification when what is needed is rebuke, especially in the case of this lady who of all others needed one so often and so badly.
“Why,” I exclaimed, not caring to conceal my opinion, “why—this is matriarchy!”
And turning on my heel I made my way at once to my wife, stopped her whirlings, drew her away from her partner’s arm (Jellaby’s, by the way), made her take her husband’s and without a word led her out of the room.
But, as I passed the door I saw the look of (I should think pretended) astonishment of Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s face give way to the appearance of the dimple, to a sudden screwing together of the upper and lower eyelashes, and my friends will be able to form a notion of how complete was the havoc England had wrought in all she had been taught to understand and reverence in her youth when I tell them that what she was manifestly trying not to do was to laugh.
CHAPTER XIX
ESSENTIALLY, as I have already pointed out, bon enfant, I seldom let a bad yesterday spoil a promising to-day; and when on peeping through my curtains next morning I saw the sun had turned our forbidding camp of the night before into a bland warm place across which birds darted singing, a cheery whistle formed itself on my lips and I became aware of that inward satisfaction our neighbours (to whom we owe, I frankly acknowledge, much besides Alsace and Lorraine) have aptly named the joie de vivre.
Left to myself this joie would undoubtedly always continue uninterruptedly throughout the day. The greater then, say I, the responsibility of those who damp it. Indeed, the responsibility resting on the shoulders of the people who cross one’s path during the day is far more tremendous than they in the thickness of their skins imagine. I will not, however, at present go into that, having gradually in the course of writing this become aware that what I shall probably do next will be to collect and embody all my more metaphysical side into a volume to itself with plenty of room in it, and will here, then, merely ask my hearers to behold me whistling in my caravan on that bright August morning, whistling, and ready, as every sound man should be, to leave the annoyances of yesterday beneath their own dust and begin the new day in the spirit of “Who knows but before nightfall I shall have conquered the world?”
My mother (a remarkable woman) used to tell me it was a good plan to start like that, and indeed I believe the results by nightfall would be surprisingly encouraging if only other people would leave one alone. For, as they meet you, each one by his behaviour takes away a further portion of that which in the morning was so undimmed. Why, sometimes just Edelgard at breakfast has by herself torn off the whole stock of it at once; and generally by dinner there is but little left. It is true that occasionally after dinner a fresh wave of it sets in, but sleep absorbs that before it has had time, as the colloquialists would say, so much as to turn round.