"Partly. There was my own case as well. When I was well over thirty, Philip, I fell in love. I had never loved any woman before, because my whole life and soul were bound up in the regiment. I fell in love with the regiment when I joined it as a little subaltern, and I worshipped it for sixteen years. In course of time they made me adjutant, which cures most men of such predilections, but it only made me feel as proud as a hen with eight hundred chickens. Then, just as I got my final step and became commanding officer, I met a girl and fell in love with her. It was in Calcutta. She was the spoiled beauty of that season, and I was the youngest colonel in the Indian Army, so everybody thought it a very suitable match.
"We did not get engaged for quite a long time, though. Oh, no! First of all, I had to learn to dance attendance. As I say, I had never been in love before, or even had any great experience of women. All my time had been lavished on the regiment. So I laboured under the delusion that if a man loved a woman, his proper course was to tell her so straight, and prove his words by devoting himself to her service. I have learned wisdom since then, but that was what I thought at the time."
"What ought you to have done, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip curiously.
"I ought either to have bullied her, or gone and made love to another girl. Those are the only two arguments which a woman appreciates. But I made myself too cheap. This girl, as soon as she found that she was quite sure of me, began to play with me. She ordered me about in public, and I loved her so much that I obeyed her, and did not regard her behaviour as the least underbred or vulgar. She gave me rather degrading odd jobs to do, and I did them, proud to think that I was her squire. As for presents, if I gave her something that she did not chance to want or possessed already, it was declined with every manifestation of offended propriety, but if she did happen to require anything, she told me to get it for her, and I did so gladly, for I felt that all these little trifles were gradually binding us together. I had not quite grasped a woman's idea of playing the game in those days, you see. I thought all this aloofness of hers was due to a young girl's reserve of character, and that, being too shy and timid to tell me in so many words that she cared for me, she was accepting all my devotion and my little offerings purposely and deliberately, in order to show me that, although she could not bring herself to say the word at present, she meant to do the square thing in the end. I loved her for that, and tried to be patient. But once, when I, presuming on this theory of mine, suggested to her that she must care for me rather more than she gave me to understand, she flashed out at me and told me that I ought to be proud to serve her free gratis and for nothing, and that a true knight never hoped for any reward from his lady otherwise than an occasional smile and word of thanks. On the whole, I think that was the most outrageous statement I have ever heard fall from the lips of a human being; but as uttered by her it actually sounded rather splendid! It made me feel quite ashamed of myself, Philip. I said I was a mercenary brute, and asked her to forgive me. This, after I had made an abject exhibition of myself, she ultimately did.
"For the next few months I had a pretty bad time of it. I loved her too much to keep away from her, but my self-respect was at zero. I had to put my pride in my pocket and undergo some humiliation nearly every day. To stand about for hours, waiting for a dance, perhaps to have it cut in the end; to dash off parade and change out of uniform and gallop away to a riding appointment, perhaps to find that she had forgotten all about it; to be compelled to laugh and look amused when she said uncharitable things about my best friends—that was my daily round, Philip. Yes, they were stiff days, and I saw they would get worse. When you find yourself gradually ceasing to respect a woman without ceasing to love her, then you are in for a demoralizing time, my son.
"But I endured it all. I summoned up fresh stocks of patience and philosophy. I told myself that she was only a child, and a spoiled child at that; and that she would shake down presently. When she was a little older and wiser, she would realise what humiliation she had often heaped upon me, and she would come and say she was sorry, in her pretty way, and ask me to forgive her; and I would do so, and we would live happily ever afterwards. Meanwhile I must be enormously patient.
"Then suddenly, without any sort of warning, just as I was reaching the limit of physical endurance,—there is a physical side to these things, Philip, as you may find some day,—she capitulated, and we became engaged. For a fortnight I lived in the clouds. I gave her all the presents I could think of, and then sat down and unfolded to her all my dreams and visions for the future. I told her how proud the regiment would be of her, and what a splendid regiment we would make of it between us. I confessed to her, just like a penitent child, that I had been neglecting the regiment of late, all on her account. Now that the suspense and worry was over I meant to work double tides and make the old regiment twice as efficient as it had ever been. I told her I felt like a giant refreshed. With her beside me, there was no limit to things we might do with that regiment.
"Then Vivien—that was her name—interrupted me. She said, in her pretty imperious way:—
"'Joe dear, your regiment bores me. You never talk of anything else. In future I forbid you to mention it in my presence.' Then she kissed me, and took me off to a tea-fight."
Uncle Joseph, who had been striding about the room during this narration, suddenly halted and faced his nephew.