“Sometimes it seems to me as if women were fated to drag a man down ever since Adam’s time. If Adam hadn’t taken his wife’s advice—but there, perhaps he took her advice a good many times and found it good, and, just because she happened to be wrong this time, and to get him into a hole, the sons of Adam have never let the daughters of Eve hear the last of it. That’s human nature.”
Jack Barnes, the young husband, who was suffering a recovery, had been very silent all the evening. “I think a man’s a fool to always listen to his wife’s advice,” he said, with the unreasonable impatience of a man who wants to think while others are talking. “She only messes him up, and drives him to the devil as likely as not, and gets a contempt for him in the end.”
Peter gave him a surprised, reproachful look, and stood up. He paced backwards and forwards on the other side of the fire, with his hands behind his back for a while; then he came and settled himself on the log again and filled his pipe.
“Yes,” he said, “a man can always find excuses for himself when his conscience stings him. He puts mud on the sting. Man at large is beginning all over the world to rake up excuses for himself; he disguises them as ‘Psychological studies,’ and thinks he is clean and clever and cultured, or he calls ’em problems—the sex problem, for instance, and thinks he is brave and fearless.”
Danny was in trouble again, and Peter went to him. He complained that when he lay down he saw the faces worse, and he wanted to be propped up somehow, so Peter got a pack-saddle and propped the old man’s shoulders up with that.
“I remember,” Peter began, when he came back to the fire, “I remember a young man who got married——”
Mitchell hugged himself. He knew Jack Barnes. He knew that Jack had a girl-wife who was many times too good for him; that Jack had been wild, and had nearly broken her heart, and he had guessed at once that Jack had broken out again, and that Peter M’Laughlan was shepherding him home. Mitchell had worked as mates with Jack, and liked him because of the good heart that was in him in spite of all; and, because he liked him, he was glad that Jack was going to get a kicking, so to speak, which might do him good. Mitchell saw it coming, as he said afterwards, and filled his pipe, and settled himself comfortably to listen.
“I remember the case of a naturally selfish young man who got married” said Peter. “He didn’t know he was selfish; in fact, he thought he was too much the other way—but that doesn’t matter now. His name was—well, we’ll call him—we’ll call him, ‘Gentleman Once.’”
“Do you mean Gentleman Once that we saw drinking back at Thomas’s shanty?” asked Joe.
“No,” said Peter, “not him. There have been more than one in the bush who went by the nickname of ‘Gentleman Once.’ I knew one or two. It’s a big clan, the clan of Gentleman Once, and scattered all over the world.”