"Pip" Part 17

Linklater, to his eternal credit, devoted the greater part of the five minutes to an abject apology for his baseness and ingrat.i.tude.

Pride--most invincible of all devils--was swept aside at last, and his broken words embarra.s.sed Pip considerably.

"All right, old man, you can dry up now," he remarked nervously, as Linklater paused for breath. "Let's drop the subject once and for all.

It's all over."

"Is it? Pip, they say you won't be able to bowl next term."

This possibility had not occurred to Pip, but if he felt any disappointment he displayed none.

"Yes," he said, "it's a pity. Never mind!"

"And it's all my fault, my fault!" Linklater held his head in his hands and groaned aloud.

"Your fault? Piffle, my dear man! What on earth had you to do with my falling off a bar? You were at the other end of the dormitory. The whole thing was an accident: it happened at a rather lucky time for you, that's all. You'd better cut now."

Linklater rose to go, mightily comforted.

"I heard how you held out against Chilly, trying to keep him from coming--"

"Oh, hook it!" remarked the patient uneasily.

But Linklater lingered a moment. He wanted to say something.

"I'll--we'll look after the house till you come back, Pip," he said awkwardly.

"Right. Back Maxwell up. He's a puker, Link."

"Well, so long!"

"So long!"

Linklater reached the door, and turned.

"It's a rum world, Pip," he said. "If you hadn't tumbled off that bar at that precise moment I should have been sacked."

"You would," a.s.sented Pip.

Then, as the door closed upon his friend, he turned to the wall, and murmured with a contented chuckle,--

"That's why I did it, my son!"

CHAPTER VI

Petticoat Influence

"PIP!"

"Well?"

"May I come in?"

"All right," said Pip in a surprised tone. His sister was not in the habit of craving admission to his den in this formal manner.

The reason revealed itself with the opening of the door. Pipette entered the room with another girl, at whose appearance Pip, always deferential to the point of obsequiousness in female society, rose up hastily and removed his pipe from his mouth. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and otherwise unprepared for company. His private apartment was in a state of more than usual confusion, for a difference of opinion had arisen between John--the fox-terrier--and a cricket-boot, and the one-sided conflict that ensued, together with the subsequent chastis.e.m.e.nt of John, had deranged even the primitive scheme of upholstery that prevailed in "the pig-sty," as Pip's apartment was commonly called.

"This is Elsie Innes," said Pipette. "My brother."

Pip saw before him a girl of about sixteen. She had extremely fair hair, a clear skin, not unbecomingly freckled, and eyes which had a habit of changing from blue to grey in different lights. Girls of sixteen are not always graceful,--like their male prototypes they frequently run to knees and elbows,--but this girl appeared to be free from such defects. She possessed a slim, lithe, young figure, and carried herself with an elasticity and freedom that spoke of open air and early bedtimes. She was in the last stages of what slangy young men call "flapperdom," and her hair was gathered on the nape of her neck with a big black bow. Pip, of course, did not take in all these things at once, but he had time to note especially the neatness of Elsie Innes's feet and the whiteness of her teeth. From which it will be observed that, though his experience in these matters was limited and his judgment unformed, Pip's instincts were sound.

"Please sit down," he said, sweeping John and "The Field" from out of the armchair. "Pipette, what on earth did you bring Miss--Miss, er--"

"Innes."

"--Miss Innes up to this untidy hole for?"

"The drawing-room has got two plumbers in it, and they are laying lunch in the dining-room, and Father is in the study, so we came here," said Pipette.

Pip expressed his delight rather lamely, and the girls sat down.

"You must endure us till lunch," continued Pipette. "I suppose you know that this is the day of the Blanes' garden-party?"

"So it is! I had forgotten."

Pipette smiled amiably and turned to her friend.

"What did I tell you?" she said.

"You said," replied Miss Innes, "that he would say he had forgotten all about it."

"Pip, dear," continued Pipette, pointing an accusing finger, "don't think you can deceive _us_!"

"What do you mean?" inquired Pip uneasily.

"You know," said Pipette. "Think."

Pip thought, apparently with success. "Oh," he said, growing red in the face,--he had never outgrown that childish weakness,--"you are a little a.s.s, Pipette!"

Pipette nodded sagely and smiled at Miss Innes. That young person smiled indulgently upon Pip, and heaved a little sigh which intimated that boys would be boys.

For Pip was at this time involved in the meshes of his first serious love-affair. Being without skill in the art of dissimulation, he made no attempt to conceal his condition, and in consequence was now acting as target for the playful and occasionally rather heavy banter of his friends. Why, goodness knows! We have grown so accustomed to regard the youthful lover as an object of humour, that a young man, if he happens to fall in love, is now compelled to conceal the fact, or, at any rate, dress it up, and endeavour to pa.s.s the affair off as at most a mere airy flirtation.

Now, roughly speaking, a man is in love from his fifteenth birthday onwards: nature has ordained it. But in most cases civilisation, convention, society--call it what you like--has ordained that he must not treat this, the most inspiring pa.s.sion of human life, as anything more than a jest for another ten years or so. And therein lie more little tragedies--disintegrated castles-in-the-air, secret disappointments, and endless efforts of self-repression--than this world dreams of. The boy may keep the girl's photograph on his mantelpiece, and that is just about all he may keep. Contrast with this the happy case of the girl. If _she_ chooses to fall in love at the age of eighteen, nothing is deemed prettier or more natural: she is at liberty to enjoy her birthright openly; she receives sympathetic a.s.sistance on every hand; and if at the age of nineteen or twenty she decides to marry, society comes and sheds rapturous tears at the wedding. What of the boy who has been her playmate for years back; who has taken the lead in all their childish escapades; who has been her trusted guardian and confidant ever since they pulled crackers and kissed under the mistletoe at children's parties? What of him? He is still a boy. True, he is a year older than she is, but by an immutable law he is for all practical purposes ten years her junior. She has sprung up at a stroke of some mysterious magician's wand into a woman, a personage with an acknowledged position in the scheme of things; and he, her old sweetheart, is only a poor, broken-hearted hobbledehoy. He will get over it, you say? Quite true. But that will not make things any easier for him at present. Ten years later he will take a girl away from some other hobbledehoy and marry her. He will then be in the prime of young manhood; and he will behold his first love, plump, matronly, and rather _pa.s.see_, sitting in a back pew at the wedding. It seems rather a dull sort of revenge, somehow.

Of course boy and girl marriages would never do. Joint inexperience is a sure guarantee of disaster. Still, sentimental persons may be permitted one sigh of regret for a millennium which, however hopelessly idyllic and unpractical it might be, would at any rate prevent young men from marrying wealthy widows, and pretty girls from giving themselves, in exchange for a position in society, to middle-aged gentlemen with five-figure incomes. And if a young man must spend the best years of his life in repressing his tenderest instincts, let us at any rate refrain from laughing at his struggles.