Part 26 (2/2)

”Nothing else matters in the end, I mean,” smiled Caylesham, good-naturedly conscious of the sarcasm and rather amused at it. ”As long as there's no row, things settle down again, you see. But if there's a row, see where you're left! Look what you've got on your hands, by Jove! And the women don't want a row either, really, you know.

They may talk as if they did--in fact they're rather fond of talking as if they did, and they may think they do sometimes. But when it comes to the point, they don't. And what's more, they don't easily forgive a man who gets them into a row. It means too much to them, too much by a deal, Blake.”

”And what does it mean when there's no row?”

”Oh, well, there, of course, in a certain sense you have me,” Caylesham admitted with a candid smile. ”If you like to take the moral line, you do have me, of course. I was speaking of the world as we know it; and I don't suppose it's ever been particularly different. Not in my time anyhow, I can answer for that.”

”You're wrong, Caylesham, wrong all through. If the thing has come to such a point, the only honest thing is to see it through, to face it, to undo the mistake, to put things where they ought to have been from the beginning.”

”Capital! And how are you going to do it?”

”There's only one way of doing it.”

Caylesham's smile broadened; he pulled his long moustache delicately as he said:

”Bolt?”

Blake nodded sharply.

”Oh, my dear boy!”

He laughed in a gentle comfortable way, and drew his coat right up into the small of his back.

”Oh, my dear boy!” he murmured again.

Nothing could have made Walter Blake feel more virtuous and more courageous.

”The only honest and honourable thing,” he insisted--”the only self-respecting thing for both.”

”You convert the world to that, and I'll think about it.”

”What do I care about the world? It's enough for me to know what I think and feel about it. And I've no shadow of doubt.”

His face flushed a little and he spoke rather heatedly.

”I wouldn't interfere with your convictions for the world, and, as I'm a bachelor, I don't mind them.” He was looking at Blake rather keenly now, wondering what made the young man take the subject so much to heart.

”But if I were you I'd keep them in the theoretical stage, I think.”

He laughed again, and turned to light a cigar. Blake was smoking too, one cigarette after another, quickly and nervously. Caylesham looked down on him with a good-humoured smile. He liked young Blake in a half-contemptuous fas.h.i.+on, and would have been sorry to see him make a fool of himself out and out.

”I'm not going to ask you any questions,” he said, ”though I may have an idea about you in my head. But I'm pretty nearly twenty years older than you, I fancy, and I've knocked about a good bit, and I'll tell you one or two plain truths. When you talk like that, you a.s.sume that these things last. Well, in nine cases out of ten, they don't. I don't say that's nice, or amiable, or elevated, or anything else. I didn't make human nature, and I don't particularly admire it. But there it is--in nine cases out of ten, you know. And if you think you know a case that's the tenth----”

This was exactly what Blake was sure he did know.

”Yes, what then?” he asked defiantly.

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