A Knight on Wheels Part 54

"I don't know. It depends on what Lil does," replied single-minded Citizen Brand.

"Well, how do you like the prospect of New York to-morrow, Miss Jennings?" asked Philip.

They were leaning over the taffrail in the calm darkness, watching the phosph.o.r.escent wake of the great propellers.

"At the present moment," confessed Miss Jennings frankly, "I don't like it at all. It's a way things have when you get right up against them.

They don't look so nice as they did at a distance."

"You are not in your usual spirits to-night."

"No," said the girl, "and that's a fact. I'm not. Worst of being a woman is that you can't trust yourself to be sensible all the time. You do a thing, and you know you're doing right, and you go on knowing it was right for weeks on end; and then, just when you want to feel that you were right most especially, you go and feel that you've been wrong all the time. Silly, I call it! Sometimes I want to shake myself."

"You feel you wish you had not left London? Is that the trouble?"

"Ye--es," said Miss Jennings reluctantly.

"I'm surprised," said Philip, cautiously opening fire, "that you were ever allowed to forsake your native land."

"Who by?" enquired Miss Jennings swiftly.

"Well, there are a good many thousand young men there, you know. It doesn't show much enterprise on their part--"

"Mr. Meldrum," remarked Miss Jennings frankly, "if you start making pretty speeches, the end of the world must be coming. A good many thousand young men, indeed!"

"Well," persisted the abashed but pertinacious Philip, "let us say one young man. Surely there was just one?"

Miss Jennings was silent for a moment. Then she replied:--

"Yes, there was one."

"More than one?"

"No. At least, there was only one that I really fancied. It was a queer thing that I should have cared for him at all. (It's all over now, so there's no harm in my telling you about it.) We were always having words one way and another. We had nothing in common, really. Very stuck on his opinions he was, and always laying down the law. His ideas weren't very gentlemanly, either. He was a Socialist, and didn't belong to the Church; but I cured him of that. I must say I improved him wonderfully."

"Was he grateful?" asked Philip.

"He was, and he wasn't. He would do anything I asked him; but if it went against the grain with him to do it he would say so before he did it--sometimes all the time he was doing it; and that rather spoils your pleasure, doesn't it?"

"I should have thought it would increase it," said Philip. "It would show your great power over him, that you should be able to compel him to do things against his will."

Miss Jennings deliberated.

"Perhaps you are right," she said at last. "I hadn't thought of it that way. Still, his back-chat used to worry me to death. And his temper! It was so fierce, I was frightened of him. He was fierce, too, in the way he loved me. He would carry on something dreadful at times."

"In what way?"

"Well, supposing I made an appointment with him, and changed my mind and didn't go--"

"Did you do that often?"

"Oh, yes, sometimes. It's a good thing to do," explained the experienced Miss Jennings. "If you don't act like that sometimes--promise to meet him somewhere and then forget--a man begins to think he's engaged to you. If a girl doesn't respect herself, who else will? That's what I say. Then his jealousy--my word!"

For a moment Miss Jennings's cheerful little c.o.c.kney voice grew quite shrill. Then came an expressive silence, which Philip construed as an aposiopetic allusion to this young gentleman whose face had been pushed in.

"Still," he persisted gently, "you were fond of him?"

Miss Jennings did not answer immediately.

"I suppose I was," she admitted at last. "But I think I was more sorry for him, if you know what I mean. He didn't know how to look after himself: he was like a child: he wanted a nurse. But if ever I did try to do anything for him, he took it up wrong. He thought I was getting soft on him, and before you could turn round he was trying to lord it over me. No, this affair never came to anything. It never could: we were made too different, both of us. Forget it!"

Miss Jennings ceased, and surveyed the long moonlit streak of foam astern rather wistfully. To-night the land she knew and the man she had been sorry for seemed to have receded to infinity: over the bow of the ship the unknown was creeping, hand over hand, inexorably. She sighed, and then shivered. She was realising the truth of her own dictum on the subject of a woman's inability to be sensible all the time.

Then the voice of Philip broke the silence, expounding the simple philosophy of his simple life.

"Do you know," he said, "I think that all things are possible to two people who are prepared to make allowances for one another? You and the man you speak of both possess strong natures. You both wanted to be master. You both hated conceding anything. He regarded the acts of worship that a woman expects of the man who loves her as a form of humiliation; he was content to make good by material homage--presents, theatres, and so on. You on your part felt that in accepting these things from him you were weakening your own independence and laying yourself under an obligation to him. So he, when he made actual love to you, did so reluctantly and half-heartedly--didn't he?"

"I should think he did!" affirmed the epicurean Miss Jennings.

"--While you could never accept his gifts and his arrangements for your entertainment without just a little--what shall we say?--a dash of vinegar?"

The girl nodded.

"That's it," she said.

"Now," proceeded Philip, too much immersed in his subject to be surprised at his own fluency, "when two people who love one another reach that stage, they must get over it at once, or there will be friction, and finally disaster. Each must learn at once to consider things from the other's point of view--make allowances, in fact. Brand ought to--"

"Who?" enquired a sharp voice at his side.

"--Brand. It was Brand, wasn't it?"

Miss Jennings nodded.

"Yes," she said simply, "it was Brand. Go on."

"Brand," continued Philip, "ought to have remembered that you were a woman, with all a woman's reserve and instinct of self-defence; and that you could not be expected to wear your heart upon your sleeve."

"Yes, he ought to have remembered that," agreed Miss Jennings. "But what about me? What should I have remembered?" She appeared almost anxious to be scolded.

"This," said Philip--"that Brand was a proud, pa.s.sionate man, of very humble birth, terrified of showing you his heart and being laughed at for his pains--"

The girl nodded again.

"Yes," she said, "you are right. I ought to have remembered that. I forgot his feelings sometimes. Poor Bob!" she added pensively.

"So you see," concluded Philip, thankful to feel that his homily was almost delivered, "if only you two could get accustomed to regarding one another in that light, the barrier would be down for ever. A barrier can never stand for a moment when it is attacked from both sides. Make allowances, Miss Jennings! Make allowances! Get to know one another; study one another; appreciate one another! Then Brand can pour out for you all that shy, inarticulate worship of his, without fear of indifference or ridicule, and you can surrender with all the honours of war. Will you try?"