"There was a pleasant, hearty ring in his voice, and a genial, kindly light in his eyes, and he held himself like a frank gentleman.
"'You are certainly an improvement upon both of them,' I said.
"He laughed a sunny laugh, with just the shadow of sadness dashed across it. 'Do you know my idea of Heaven?' he said.
"'No,' I replied, somewhat surprised at the question.
"'Ludgate Circus,' was the answer. 'The only really satisfying moments of my life,' he said, 'have been passed in the neighbourhood of Ludgate Circus. I leave Piccadilly an unhealthy, unwholesome prig. At Charing Cross I begin to feel my blood stir in my veins. From Ludgate Circus to Cheapside I am a human thing with human feeling throbbing in my heart, and human thought throbbing in my brain―with fancies, sympathies, and hopes. At the Bank my mind becomes a blank. As I walk on, my senses grow coarse and blunted; and by the time I reach Whitechapel I am a poor little uncivilised cad. On the return journey it is the same thing reversed.'
"'Why not live in Ludgate Circus,' I said, 'and be always as you are now?'
"'Because,' he answered, 'man is a pendulum, and must travel his arc.'
"'My dear Mac,' said he, laying his hand upon my shoulder, 'there is only one good thing about me, and that is a moral. Man is as God made him: don't be so sure that you can take him to pieces and improve him. All my life I have sought to make myself an unnaturally superior person. Nature has retaliated by making me also an unnaturally inferior person. Nature abhors lopsidedness. She turns out man as a whole, to be developed as a whole. I always wonder, whenever I come across a supernaturally pious, a supernaturally moral, a supernaturally cultured person, if they also have a reverse self.'
"I was shocked at his suggested argument, and walked by his side for a while without speaking. At last, feeling curious on the subject, I asked him how his various love affairs were progressing.
"'Oh, as usual,' he replied; 'in and out of a cul de sac. When I am Smythe I love Eliza, and Eliza loathes me. When I am Smith I love Edith, and the mere sight of me makes her shudder. It is as unfortunate for them as for me. I am not saying it boastfully. Heaven knows it is an added draught of misery in my cup; but it is a fact that Eliza is literally pining away for me as Smith, and―as Smith I find it impossible to be even civil to her; while Edith, poor girl, has been foolish enough to set her heart on me as Smythe, and as Smythe she seems to me but the skin of a woman stuffed with the husks of learning, and rags torn from the corpse of wit.'
"I remained absorbed in my own thoughts for some time, and did not come out of them till we were crossing the Minories. Then, the idea suddenly occurring to me, I said:
"'Why don't you get a new girl altogether? There must be medium girls that both Smith and Smythe could like, and that would put up with both of you.'
"'No more girls for this child,' he answered 'they're more trouble than they're worth. Those yer want yer carn't get, and those yer can 'ave, yer don't want.'
"I started, and looked up at him. He was slouching along with his hands in his pockets, and a vacuous look in his face.
"A sudden repulsion seized me. 'I must go now,' I said, stopping. 'I'd no idea I had come so far.'
"He seemed as glad to be rid of me as I to be rid of him. 'Oh, must yer,' he said, holding out his hand. 'Well, so long.'
"We shook hands carelessly. He disappeared in the crowd, and that is the last I have ever seen of him."
"Is that a true story?" asked Jephson.
"Well, I've altered the names and dates," said MacShaughnassy; "but the main facts you can rely upon."
CHAPTER X
The final question discussed at our last meeting been: What shall our hero be? MacShaughnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for the villain. My idea was a stockbroker, with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said Jephson, who has a practical mind: "The question is not what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes."
"That is so," agreed MacShaughnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt and obtain from her the old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to your wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual maiden favours, while Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the common-sensed girl."
This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration. MacShaughnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote the old lady:
"I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to America with that WICKED Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see Jer. xlviii. 14). Of course one does not like to think of their fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to do that sort of thing nowadays."
"So much for the old lady," said MacShaughnassy, as he folded up the letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold round hand, and read as follows:
"What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour of soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice a poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence he would he an unutterable bore. What the intellectual woman requires in man is not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal of man―a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not too clever."
"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaughnassy, as Brown tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"
"Well," returned MacShaughnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury."
As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly approaching a scowl.
"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the military also."
"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaughnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What reason does she give?"
"That there's a something about them, and that they dance so divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.
"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaughnassy, "I am astonished."
Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The same?"
"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."
"Does SHE give a reason?" he asked.
"Oh yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."
There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought. I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this inquiry.
That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks, and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons I shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock. By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in its hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in QUEUE, two abreast, and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.