“Ah, I see,” I replied sympathetically. “Sorry, Ted. Of course, that does make a difference. When you said 'women,’ I thought for a moment you——Yes, it’s very awkward. To know that in such a crowd two eyes are aching with anxiety that you should acquit yourself well must be extremely trying to the nerves. I should try to forget it.”
He fidgeted with his gloves, and then turned sharp round.
“And suppose they were not anxious?” he retorted. “Suppose they didn’t care whether you came off or not? Hang it, Butterfield,” he continued, “you can imagine what it’s like—they think because a fellow hasn’t a moustache—it’s enough to make a fellow go and drink rotten stuff. I shan’t stand it.”
It was Nellie. I got it all out of him. He had evidently come to tell me. The rude health of public school life had not knocked the fancy out of him, and he had come back to find her grown up and with a tendency to be interested in men ten years her senior. How he had managed to get into the first eleven and to remain in love was to me one of the mysteries of constancy.
“But I thought you would have forgotten almost, Ted,” I said, in the maturity of our confidence. “It’s a year since you went away.”
“A fellow never forgets,” he replied sulkily. “It’s the girls who forget. Could you?”
I passed the point, and speculated on the validity of pledges on eternity.
“And she has—pardon me—snubbed you?” I inquired, after a while.
“Well, no,” he rejoined dubiously, “it isn’t quite that; but she always seems to have engagements or something. She must always 'be going now,’ and she’s altered so. I told her so, and she said we were silly then; and if I muff this match it will be worse than ever.”
I couldn’t help thinking that if I had organised the female mind I should have done it more consistently; but then there would probably have been no comedy in the world. I was willing to help Ted all I could, and advised a spontaneous gaiety in her presence—Ted shook his head—or failing that, a desperate counter-movement with a married woman; a notion he also rejected.