Moseby, whose hearing completely petered out as long ago as the year
'98. And, of course, Celia Tennant would play with him occasionally;
but it seemed to me that even she, greatly as no doubt she loved him,
was beginning to crack under the strain.
So surely had I read the pallor of her face and the wild look of dumb
agony in her eyes that I was not surprised when, as I sat one morning
in my garden reading Ray on Taking Turf, my man announced her name. I
had been half expecting her to come to me for advice and consolation,
for I had known her ever since she was a child. It was I who had given
her her first driver and taught her infant lips to lisp 'Fore!' It is
not easy to lisp the word 'Fore!' but I had taught her to do it, and
this constituted a bond between us which had been strengthened rather
than weakened by the passage of time.
She sat down on the grass beside my chair, and looked up at my face in
silent pain. We had known each other so long that I know that it was
not my face that pained her, but rather some unspoken malaise of
the soul. I waited for her to speak, and suddenly she burst out
impetuously as though she could hold back her sorrow no longer.
'Oh, I can't stand it! I can't stand it!'
'You mean...?' I said, though I knew only too well.
'This horrible obsession of poor George's,' she cried passionately. 'I
don't think he has stopped talking once since we have been engaged.'
'He is chatty,' I agreed. 'Has he told you the story about the
Irishman?'
'Half a dozen times. And the one about the Swede oftener than that. But
I would not mind an occasional anecdote. Women have to learn to bear
anecdotes from the men they love. It is the curse of Eve. It is his
incessant easy flow of chatter on all topics that is undermining even
my devotion.'
'But surely, when he proposed to you, he must have given you an inkling
of the truth. He only hinted at it when he spoke to me, but I gather
that he was eloquent.'
'When he proposed,' said Celia dreamily, 'he was wonderful. He spoke
for twenty minutes without stopping. He said I was the essence of his
every hope, the tree on which the fruit of his life grew; his Present,
his Future, his Past ... oh, and all that sort of thing. If he would
only confine his conversation now to remarks of a similar nature, I
could listen to him all day long. But he doesn't. He talks politics and
statistics and philosophy and ... oh, and everything. He makes my head
ache.'
'And your heart also, I fear,' I said gravely.
'I love him!' she replied simply. 'In spite of everything, I love him
dearly. But what to do? What to do? I have an awful fear that when we
are getting married instead of answering 'I will,' he will go into the
pulpit and deliver an address on Marriage Ceremonies of All Ages. The
world to him is a vast lecture-platform. He looks on life as one long
after-dinner, with himself as the principal speaker of the evening. It
is breaking my heart. I see him shunned by his former friends. Shunned!
They run a mile when they see him coming. The mere sound of his voice
