"Perhaps I'm being too inquisitive?" she suggested gently. This is only another way of getting one's question answered. You might call it the question circumspect and, by borrowing from another's wit, mark the distinction between it and the question direct. But it is not so much the name that matters, as its effectiveness.
In a moment, John was all apologies for his silence.
"Inquisitive? No! It's only the new sensation."
"What new sensation?"
"Somebody wanting to know something about oneself. On the other side of the street where I live, there resides a parrot; and every Sunday they put him outside on the window-sill, and there he keeps calling out--'Do you want to know who I am? Do you want to know who I am?' And crowds of little boys and little girls, and idle men and lazy women, stand down below his cage in the street and imitate him in order to get him to say it again. 'Do you want to know who I am, Polly?' they call out. And oh, my goodness, it's so like life. They never reply--'Who are you, then?' But every single one of them must ask him if he wants to know who they are, just when he's longing to tell them all about himself. It is like life you know."
"What nice little stories you tell. I believe you make them up as you go along--but they're quite nice. So that's the new sensation?"
"Yes--that's it. Someone, at last, has said 'Who are you, then?' And I hardly know where to begin."
"Well, I asked you why your father didn't marry till your mother was forty. You said she was forty."
"Yes, I know--yes, that's quite right. You see he was married before to a wealthy woman. They lived here in London. I'm afraid they didn't get on well together. It was his fault. He says so, and I believe it was.
I can quite understand the way it all happened. You must love money very much to be able to get on with it when it's not your own. He didn't love it enough. Her money got between them. One never really knows the ins and outs of these things. Nobody can possibly explain them. I say I understand it, but I don't. They happen when people marry. Only, it would appear, when they marry. She never threw it in his face, I'm sure of that. He always speaks of her as a wonderful woman; but it was just there--that's all. Gold's a strange metal, you know--an uncanny metal, I think. They talk of the ill-luck of the opal, it's nothing to the ill-luck of the gold the opal is set in. You must realise the absolute valuelessness of it, that it's no more worth than tin, or iron, or lead, or any other metal that the stray thrust of a spade may dig up; if you don't think of it like that, if you haven't an utter contempt for it, it's a poison, is gold. It's subtle, deadly poison that finds its heavy way into the most sacred heart of human beings and rots the dearest and the gentlest thoughts they have. They say familiarity breeds contempt. In every case but that of gold, it's true. But in gold it's just the reverse. The only way with gold, to have contempt for it, is to have none and, when it does enter your possession, give it away. You keep it, you struggle for it, you give it a moment's place on your altar, and you'll find that your first-born must be the burnt offering you will have to make to assuage its insatiable lust."
The sense of humour saved him from saying more. Suddenly he turned and looked at her, and laughed. The only way with gold, to have contempt for it, is to have none and, when it does enter your possession, give it away.
Glorious words to say when you have only a penny in your pocket to pay for your chair in Kensington Gardens--such a fine sense of bravado in them. As for the chance of money falling from the heavens or the elm trees into your lap, it is so remote, that you can afford to voice your preachings without fear of having to put them into immediate practice.
Seeing all this and, seeing the solemn expression on her face, John laughed. All that fine parade of words of his was very human. He knew it. There is not one amongst us but who does it every day. There never is so fine an army of brave men as you will find in times of peace; never so lavish a man with money as he who has none. These are the real humours, the real comedies in this struggle for existence. And yet, it is the only philosophy for the poor man who has nothing, to say he wants less. So you cheat the little gods of their laughter, and whistle a tune to show how little you care.
But to see through it all--there are so many who do it unconsciously--that is a quality beyond philosophy. John laughed.
She looked up quickly.
"You laugh? Why?"
"You look so serious."
"I was. It's so true--quite true, all you said. But what is one to do when everybody around one sets their standard in gold--when people are only good-spirited when there is money to be had, and cross and inconsiderate when there is none? What is one to do then?"
"Must you follow their lead?" asked John.
"What else? The community governs, doesn't it?"
"So they say. But even government is a thing that must be taught, and someone must teach it to the community, so that the community may become proficient at its job. When you get into a community of people like that, all you have to do is to break away. It doesn't matter how universally good a wrong may be, you can't make it right for the individual."
"What did your father do?"
"Oh--he disobeyed the laws of the community. He went away. He deserted her."
She stole a hurried glance at his face.
"Don't you speak rather hardly?"
"No--conventionally--that's all. That is the technical term. He deserted her. Went and lived in the slums and worked. He was probably no paragon, either, until he met my mother. No man is until he meets _the_ woman with the great heart and God's good gift of understanding."
"Have you ever met her yet?"
"No--I'm only twenty-six."
"Do you think you ever will meet her?"
"Yes--one day."
"When?"
"Oh, the time that Fate allots for these things."
"When is that?"
"When it's too late."
"Isn't that pessimistic?"
"No--I'm only speaking of Time. Time's nothing--Time doesn't count.
You may count it--you generally do with a mechanical contrivance called a clock--but it doesn't count itself. As the community looks at these things it may be too late, but it's not too late to make all the difference in life. The point is meeting her, knowing her. Nothing else really matters. Once you know her, she is as much in your life as ever marriage and all such little conventional ceremonies as that can make her."
She looked up at him again.
"What strange ideas you have."
"Are they?"
"They are to me. Then your father didn't meet your mother too late?
How soon did he meet her after--after he went away?"
"Two years or so."
"Oh--he was quite old, then?"
"No--quite young."
"But I thought you said they didn't marry until she was forty."
"Yes--that is so. He couldn't marry her till then. They were both Catholics, you see. Eighteen years went by before they married."
She made patterns on a bare piece of ground with the ferrule of her umbrella, as she listened. When he came to this point of the story, she carved the figure one and eight in the mould.
"Yes," said John, looking at them--"it was a long time to wait--wasn't it?"
She nodded her head and slowly scratched the figures out.
"So the secret papers were sent to your father?" she said.