However, I decided to go and see Adela. When all the boys had left I jumped on my bike, and in a short time was sitting in the lovely old garden. It was a charming day. High in the heavens the sun shone gloriously. The earth was a panorama of pastoral beauty, and above The Grange garden birds and bees went blithely on their way. Everything was restful. Everything seemed clean. And I thought it a much better atmosphere than the fug of a London lounge or the sooty surroundings of Oxford Street. And yet there was a longing for the lights that glitter, and the women who understand. I was only a boy, and just human. My virtues and vices were not entirely formed. One day I could with ease have become a parson; next, I wanted—’to risk it.’ Heredity tells. I had the blood of parsons, soldiers, and dreamers in my veins. In my soul God and the Devil were always struggling for victory. I was the mere tool of moods and passions which had been handed on.
We are all like that.
Then I looked at Adela. She was reclining in an Oriental hammock reading a book, and between-times picking up a chocolate. She looked calm and restful, without nerves, and with a suggestion of decision in her pose. Adela was not so fetching as a ballet-girl, or so charming as one of those creatures of Mayfair. London women are very hard to beat in the little things which captivate and enthral. Their experience is gained in a cosmopolitan world. They talk with the intellectuals and dance with the fools. And they can charm both.
Adela was of the soil, the fresh, clean-smelling earth which breeds health and strength, and few illusions. She had no tricks, no little bag with a puff for her nose, or the dainty fads of millinery to enhance her complexion or form. Plain skirt, plain blouse, neat stockings, and well-cut shoes. And yet she was well dressed. The girl of taste is not a bag of glad rags. But the real charm of Adela lay in her magnificent physique, and in her personality.
Adela was different.
No man can define a woman’s personality. It is as baffling as it is alluring. And what I wondered about was this: Adela knew me, yet I didn’t know Adela. A man is an open book even to a schoolgirl. She can find him out in ten minutes, but you will never find a girl out in a thousand years. A man hates this. It is rather an insult to his intellect, but it is a woman’s secret and her strength. She knows it, and she uses it, sometimes in a very cruel way, as history proves. Still, it is a gift of nature with which Providence has endowed the sex, which for centuries has been in chains.
Adela was young. Yet she was ‘old.’
‘Johnnie,’ she said, putting down her book and looking at me, ‘why didn’t you go to the tailor?’
I had been waiting for that question, so promptly pulled the telegrams out of my pocket, and said, ‘That’s why,’ as I put them in her hand. It was a brutal thing to do, but it was a fair thing. The dons had always insisted on my speaking the truth. Not a bad rule, but quite a rotten scheme with the average girl.