“My dear Dick,” said his father, “men don’t make such frightful examples, because these things mean less to men than they do to women. Romance is an incident to a man; he can even come through an affaire with no ideals gone, with his mental fineness unimpaired; but it is different with a woman. She has more emotion than mind, else there were no cradles in the land. Her standards are set by the rules of the heart, and when she has broken these rules she has lost her standard too. But to come back, it is true, I think, as I said, that man or woman must not expect too much out of life, but be satisfied with what they can get within the normal courses of society and convention and home, and the end thereof is peace—yes, upon my soul, it’s peace.”
There was something very fine in the blunt, honest words of the old man, whose name had ever been sweet with honour.
“And the chief thing is that a man live up to his own standard,” said Lambert. “Isn’t that so, Dick?—you’re the wise man.”
“Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to work—or worry.”
“The wisest man I ever knew,” said Frank, dropping his cigar, “was a little French-Canadian trapper up in the Saskatchewan country. A priest asked him one day what was the best thing in life, and he answered: ‘For a young man’s mind to be old, and an old man’s heart to be young.’ The priest asked him how that could be. And he said: ‘Good food, a good woman to teach him when he is young, and a child to teach him when he is old.’ Then the priest said: ‘What about the Church and the love of God?’ The little man thought a little, and then said: ‘Well, it is the same—the love of man and woman came first in the world, then the child, then God in the garden.’ Afterwards he made a little speech of good-bye to us, for we were going to the south while he remained in a fork of the Far Off River. It was like some ancient blessing: that we should always have a safe tent and no sorrow as we travelled; that we should always have a cache for our food, and food for our cache; that we should never find a tree that would not give sap, nor a field that would not grow grain; that our bees should not freeze in winter, and that the honey should be thick, and the comb break like snow in the teeth; that we keep hearts like the morning, and that we come slow to the Four Corners where man says Good-night.”
Each of the other men present wondered at that instant if Frank Armour would, or could, have said this with the same feelings two months before. He seemed almost transformed.
“It reminds me,” said the general, “of an inscription from an Egyptian monument which an officer of the First put into English verse for me years ago:
“Fair be the garden where their loves shall dwell,
Safe be the highway where their feet may go,
Rich be the fields wherein their hands may toil,
The fountains many where their good wines flow.
Full be their harvest-bins with corn and oil,
To sorrow may their humour be a foil;
Quick be their hearts all wise delights to know,
Tardy their footsteps to the gate Farewell.”
There was a moment’s silence after he had finished, and then there was noise without, a sound of pattering feet; the door flew open, and in ran a little figure in white—young Richard in his bed-gown, who had broken away from his nurse, and had made his way to the billiard-room, where he knew his uncle had gone.
The child’s face was flashing with mischief and adventure. He ran in among the group, and stretched out his hands with a little fighting air. His uncle Richard made a step towards him, but he ran back; his father made as if to take him in his arms, but he evaded him. Presently the door opened, the nurse entered, the child sprang from among the group, and ran with a laughing defiance to the farthest end of the room, and, leaning his chin on the billiard-table, flashed a look of defiant humour at his pursuer. Presently the door opened again, and the figure of the mother appeared. All at once the child’s face altered; he stood perfectly still, and waited for his mother to come to him. Lali had not spoken, and she did not speak until, lifting the child, she came the length of the billiard-table and faced them.