第28章

There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling contentment of the alligator, and shivering through it with the aggressive sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross word.To bear it as a man we must also feel it as a man.My philosophic friend, seek not to comfort a brother standing by the coffin of his child with the cheery suggestion that it will be all the same a hundred years hence, because, for one thing, the observation is not true: the man is changed for all eternity--possibly for the better, but don't add that.A soldier with a bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was.But he can laugh and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse.Now and again, towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness will come upon him.You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.

"Hallo! old fellow, anything up?"

"Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know.I will be better in a little while."Shut the door of the dark room quietly.I should not stay even to sympathize with him if I were you.The men will be coming to screw the coffin down soon.I think he would like to be alone with it till then.Let us leave him.He will come back to the club later on in the season.For a while we may have to give him another ten points or so, but he will soon get back his old form.Now and again, when he meets the other fellows' boys shouting on the towing-path; when Brown rushes up the drive, paper in hand, to tell him how that young scapegrace Jim has won his Cross; when he is congratulating Jones's eldest on having passed with honours, the old wound may give him a nasty twinge.But the pain will pass away.He will laugh at our stories and tell us his own; eat his dinner, play his rubber.It is only a wound.

Tommy can never be ours, Jenny does not love us.We cannot afford claret, so we will have to drink beer.Well, what would you have us do? Yes, let us curse Fate by all means--some one to curse is always useful.Let us cry and wring our hands--for how long? The dinner-bell will ring soon, and the Smiths are coming.We shall have to talk about the opera and the picture-galleries.Quick, where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are the curling-tongs? Or would you we committed suicide? Is it worth while? Only a few more years--perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of orange peel or a broken chimney-pot--and Fate will save us all that trouble.

Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a broken-hearted little Jack--little Jill.We will never smile again;we will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring.The world is sad, and life so cruel, and heaven so cold.Oh dear! oh dear! we have hurt ourselves.

We whimper and whine at every pain.In old strong days men faced real dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry.

Death and disaster stood ever at the door.Men were contemptuous of them.Now in each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of scratches.Every head-ache becomes an agony, every heart-ache a tragedy.It took a murdered father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured mother, a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet that a modern minor poet obtains from a chorus girl's frown, or a temporary slump on the Stock Exchange.Like Mrs.Gummidge, we feel it more.The lighter and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to meet it.The boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike with frolic welcome.We modern sailors have grown more sensitive.The sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us.We meet both with loud self-pity.

Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend--a man whose breezy common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise Iquestioned on this subject of honeymoons.

"My dear boy," he replied; "take my advice, if ever you get married, arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it be a bustling week into the bargain.Take a Cook's circular tour.

Get married on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that foolishness, and catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris.

Take her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday.Lunch at Fontainebleau.

Dine at the Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin Rouge in the evening.Take the night train for Lucerne.Devote Monday and Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into Rome by Thursday morning, taking the Italian lakes en route.On Friday cross to Marseilles, and from there push along to Monte Carlo.Let her have a flutter at the tables.Start early Saturday morning for Spain, cross the Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on Sunday.Get back to Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the opera), and on Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get there.Don't give her time to criticize you until she has got used to you.No man will bear unprotected exposure to a young girl's eyes.The honeymoon is the matrimonial microscope.Wobble it.Confuse it with many objects.Cloud it with other interests.Don't sit still to be examined.Besides, remember that a man always appears at his best when active, and a woman at her worst.Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her: I don't care who she may be.Give her plenty of luggage to look after; make her catch trains.Let her see the average husband sprawling comfortably over the railway cushions, while his wife has to sit bolt upright in the corner left to her.

Let her hear how other men swear.Let her smell other men's tobacco.Hurry up, and get her accustomed quickly to the sight of mankind.Then she will be less surprised and shocked as she grows to know you.One of the best fellows I ever knew spoilt his married life beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon.They went off for a month to a lonely cottage in some heaven-forsaken spot, where never a soul came near them, and never a thing happened but morning, afternoon, and night.There for thirty days she overhauled him.