XXXIV

I have just returned from a very curious and interesting visit.  I have been to stay with an old school friend of my own, a retired Major; he has a small place of his own in the country, and has lately married a very young and pretty wife.  I met him by chance in my club in London, looking more grey and dim than a man who has just married a lovely and charming girl ought to look.  He asked me rather pressingly to come and stay with him; and though I do not like country-house visits, for the sake of the old days I went.

Well, it was a very interesting visit; I was warmly welcomed.  The young wife, who I must say is the daughter of a penniless country clergyman with a large family, was radiant; the Major was quietly and undemonstratively pleased to see me; the veil of the years fell off, and I found myself back on the old easy terms with him, as when we were schoolboys together thirty years ago.  He is a very simple and transparent creature, and I read him as if he were a book.  He indulged in almost extravagant panegyrics of his wife and descriptions of his own happiness.  But I very soon made a discovery:  his charming wife is, not to put too fine a point upon it, a fool.  She is perfectly harmless, good-natured, and virtuous.  But she is a very silly and a very conventional girl She is full of delight at her promotion; but she is entirely brainless, and not even very affectionate.  She as wholly preoccupied about her new possessions, and the place she is going to take in the county; she cares for her husband, because he represents her social success, and because he is a creditable and presentable man.  But she has no grain of sympathy, perception, humour, or emotion.  I began by thinking it was rather a tragedy; my old friend had married for love; he is anything but a fool himself, except for this one serious error, the falling in love with a girl who can give him none of the things he desires.  He is a very serious, simple, intelligent, and tenderhearted fellow, with all sorts of odd ideas of his own, which he produces with an admirable humility.  He likes books; he reads poetry—­I even suspect him of writing it.  He is interested in social problems, and has a dozen kindly enterprises—­a club, a carving class, a natural history society, and so forth—­for the benefit of the village where he lives.  He would have been an ideal country clergyman; he is an excellent man of business, and does a good deal of county work.  He is fond of sport, too—­in fact, one of those grave, affectionate, solid men who are to be found living quietly in every part of England—­a characteristic Englishman, indeed.  But the strain of romance in his nature has for once led him wrong, and the mistake seemed irreparable.  I was at first inclined to regard him with deep compassion.  He is the soul of chivalry, and it struck me as deeply pathetic to see him smiling indulgently, but with a sad and