"Yes, that's all right," he pronounced, tenderly touching the new lilac frock which I had lifted out of my trunk, and looking admiringly at the plumed black hat that was to be worn with it. "You'll look splendid and I shall be very proud of you."
"But you ought to be just as proud of me if I were a frump," I said.
"You couldn't be a frump and be my mother," he returned. And to this day I don't know whether this remark was more of a compliment to himself or to me.
Just as dance music is sadder than any Dead March ever composed, so youth and gaiety make one think of death more than ever old age does.
Really, most of the old people that one knows, and particularly the old men, make one think of anything rather than the grave. They are skittish, frivolous, doing their best to dance upon their crutches and holding on to the good things of this world with a desperate grip which youth never has.
That is why youth goes out to fight so readily.
But a great Public School, with its army of eager-faced boys and its echoing stones and its clamour of gay voices, not only makes me think of death, but makes even the past ages of the world pass in procession before my terrified eyes. I can see Death walking in the boyish ranks always, mocking at their pink youth with the grisly horror of his grey decay.
I don't know whether I have a special kind of vision for this horror. I only know that I see it where other people don't seem to see it. In the same way I always find Paris the saddest city in the world, because it is the brightest. I love Paris, but I am never able to breathe in it. When I get back to London the choking feeling goes; for in London, under superficial gloom, there is peace for the nerves and solid happiness.
The choking feeling was in my throat all through that Speech Day. It gripped me first early in the morning when I went to the beautiful chapel and saw recorded on the walls the names of the sons of the School who had given their lives for their country. There were many of them even then. (Ah, Heaven! I dread to think how many there are now!) And I could have kissed the wall where they are recorded in my passion of gratitude and admiration and reverence.
If it comes to that, I should like to drag myself on my hands and knees over the stones of such a place as this in that very passion of reverence. Is it any wonder that these boys died so bravely when they came from a place where chivalry, knightliness, graciousness and the truest manliness have come down as a heritage through hundreds of years?