"As a wedding-present," he continued, "I shall send him a little silver-mounted dog-whip."
CHAPTER SEVEN A MATTER OF DUTY
"My lord master, you have heard the design I am upon which is to marry.... I humbly beseech you ... to give me your best advice therein." "Then," answered Pantagruel, "seeing you have so decreed and taken deliberation theron ... what need is there of further talk thereof, but forthwith to put into execution what you have resolved." "Yea, but," quoth Panurge, "I would be loth to act anything therein without your counsel had thereto." "It is my judgment also," quoth Pantagruel, "and I advise you to it." "Nevertheless," quoth Panurge, "if you think it were much better for me to remain a bachelor, as I am, than to run headlong upon new hare-brained undertakings of conjugal adventure, I would rather choose not to marry." "Not marry then," said Pantagruel. "Yea, but," quoth Panurge, "would you have me so solitarily drag out the whole course of my life without the comfort of a matrimonial consort? You know it is written Vae Soli; and a single person is never seen to reap the joy and solace that is found among those that are wedlockt." "Wedlock it then, in the name of God," quoth Pantagruel. "But if," quoth Panurge, "..."
Rabelais: How Panurge asketh counsel of
Pantagruel whether he should
marry yea or no.
A week before Christmas, Loring cabled to his mother that he was on his way back to England; in the spring of 1914 he landed at Southampton and travelled unobtrusively to London while his yacht proceeded to Glasgow for overhauling and repairs. And, from the moment when his cable was received, an unconscious adjustment of relationships began, crystallizing in a series of informal family councils.
Ever since the ultimatum from Surinam, Lady Barbara had not set foot in House of Steynes or Loring House. It was plausible to pretend that in Jim's absence his mother was not entertaining, but on his return all three branches of the family decided that they could not afford the scandal of an open breach and of a Catholic house divided against itself. Lady Crawleigh enlisted the support of Lady Knightrider and made an attack in force on Lady Loring. Thirty years before, the three sisters had, each in her own way, been celebrated; Lady Crawleigh had the good looks, Lady Knightrider the good temper and Lady Loring the brains; and their marriages, one after another, to a Scottish baronet and two of the richest Catholic peers in England were felt to be fundamentally satisfactory. As they had begun, so they went on; Kathleen Knightrider bore a daughter and a son, Eleanor Loring a son and a daughter, Doreen Crawleigh three sons and two daughters, of whom the younger died in infancy. The three husbands were above criticism in life and position; if Sir Charles Knightrider was little more than amateur landscape-gardener and ornithologist, Lord Loring was very nearly at the head of the Catholic laity in England; while Lord Crawleigh's succession of great offices, which he not only filled but adorned, would have satisfied the most ambitious woman. If the individuality of the three wives became merged in their husbands, they still made a strong social combination.
"I hear Jim's on his way home," said Lady Crawleigh without preamble. "When he comes, Eleanor, we shall have to make peace between him and Barbara."
"I'll talk to Jim," answered his mother doubtfully. "But you know how obstinate he is." She was divided between loyalty to her son and pity for her sister, who could not enjoy having to plead like this for her own daughter. "I do hope this will be a lesson to dear Barbara."