“My God,” said Valentine, “don’t I try to be reasonable!”
“Listen,” said Mr. Lapwing, and then he told Valentine that he had been married twice. Valentine was amazed. He had not known that.
Mr. Lapwing said: “I was very young when I married my first wife. Even younger than you, although even then I knew a good brandy from a poor one. And I was very much in love. As, if you will not think an old man too ridiculous, I am still. Of course, she is dead now.”
Valentine was listening with only half a mind. He had still to get over his surprise that his guardian had been married twice. There are some men who look as though they simply could not have been married twice. They look as though one marriage would be, or had been, a very considerable feat for them. Mr. Lapwing looked decidedly like that: he looked, if you like, a widower: but decidedly not like a widower multiplied by two——
Mr. Lapwing was saying, from a dim, distant corner of the room: “In those days I was a very serious young man. I took love and marriage very seriously. And when we had been married a couple of years I discovered in myself a vehement desire to be a father: a natural enough desire in a very serious young man. My wife, however, was younger than I: she loved life, the life of the country and the town, of the day and of the night, of games and dances. You see what I mean?”
Valentine snapped: “Don’t I! Just like Valerest.”
“Exactly. At first,” said Mr. Lapwing, and his face as he slowly paced up and down the dim room would every now and then be quite lost in the shadows. “At first, I indulged her. To tell you the truth, I was very proud of her service at tennis, her handicap at golf. But there are limits.”
“There are,” said Valentine. “Valerest is already in training for Wimbledon next year, and I hope a tennis-ball gets up and shingles her eyelashes. And she’s got to 6 at golf. Pretty good for a kid who looks as though she hadn’t enough muscle to play a fast game of ludo. But that’s right about there being limits. There are limits! And I’ve reached them.”
“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Lapwing’s dim voice from the distance of the room. “I had reached them too, Valentine. And, I am afraid, I grew to be rather unpleasant in the home—as you, no doubt, are with Valerest. One’s manner, you know, isn’t sometimes the less unpleasant for being in the right.”
Valentine said: “I don’t know about pleasant or unpleasant. But a fellow must stick to his guns.”