In other words, he had made a mess of a love-affair.
Most men—and most women too, for that matter—undergo this experience at least once in their lives, and no two ever endure it in the same way. One rants, another mopes, a third forgets, a fourth bides his time, a fifth seeks consolation elsewhere, a sixth buries himself in work or dissipation. Hughie, who cherished a theory that everything ultimately comes right in this world provided you hold on long enough, and that when in doubt a man should "stand by the Day's Work and await instructions," like Kipling's Bridge-Builders, had gone steadily on, because it was his nature so to do. It was uphill work at present,—a mechanical perfunctory business, with no reward or alleviation in sight,—but he was determined to go on doing his duty by Joan to the best of his ability, and combine so far as he was able the incompatible rôles of stern guardian, undesired suitor, and—to him most paradoxical of all—familiar friend.
For there was no doubt that Joan liked him. She trusted him, consulted him,—yea, obeyed him, even when he contradicted her most preposterous utterances and put down a heavy foot on her most cherished enterprises. For this he did without flinching. The fact that he was a failure as a lover seemed to be no reason why he should fail as a guardian.
Not that Joan submitted readily to his régime. To Hughie's essentially masculine mind her changes of attitude were a complete mystery. They seemed to have no logical sequence or connection. She would avoid him or seek him out with equal unexpectedness. She might be hopelessly obstinate or disarmingly docile. One day she would behave like a spoilt child; on another she would be a very grandmother to him. Sometimes she would blaze up and rail against her much-enduring guardian for a tyrant and a monster; at others she would take him under a most maternal wing, and steer him through a garden-party or a reception in a manner which made him feel like a lost child in the hands of a benevolent policeman. On one occasion, which he particularly remembered, she had rounded on him and scolded him for a full half-hour for his stolid immobility and lack of finesse; the self-same afternoon he had overheard her hotly defending him against a charge of dulness brought by two frivolous damsels over the tea-table.
All this was very perplexing to a man who hated subtlety and liked his friends and foes marked in plain figures. It unsettled his own opinions, too. Joey's variegated behaviour prevented him from deciding in his own mind whether he really liked her or not. At present all he was certain of was that he loved her.
Meanwhile she was coming to see him—about her financial position. That did not promise romance. And Ursula Harbord was coming too. Help! Certainly life was a rotten business at present. And it had been so full and glorious before he had forsaken the wide world and taken to this sort of thing. It might have been so different too, if only—
Poor Hughie replaced Joan's photograph, sighed again—and coughed confusedly. A funereal image appeared over his shoulder in the chimney-glass.
"Were you ringin'?" inquired a sepulchral voice.
"Yes, John. Miss Gaymer and a friend of hers are coming to see me this morning. They'll probably stay to lunch. You can clear away that food over there."
He returned to his letters. Only one remained unopened, and proved to be from a man with whom he had arranged to shoot in the autumn.