Before that evening was over — or in the course of the night, it might be better said, as the two men sat up late with their pipes — Hamel told his friend the Colonel exactly what had taken place that morning over at Glenbogie. “You went for the purpose, of course?” asked the Colonel.

“For an off chance.”

“I know that well enough. I never heard of a man’s walking twelve miles to call upon a young lady merely because he knew her father; and when there was to be a second call within a few weeks, the first having not been taken in very good part by the young lady’s friends, my inquiring mind told me that there was something more than old family friendship.”

“Your inquiring mind saw into the truth.”

“And now looks forward to further events. Can she bake and can she brew?”

“I do not doubt that she could if she tried.”

“And can she wash a shirt for a man? Don’t suppose, my dear fellow, that I intend to say that your wife will have to wash yours. Washing a shirt, as read in the poem from which I am quoting, is presumed to be simply emblematic of household duties in general.”

“I take all you say in good part — as coming from a friend.”

“I regard matrimony”, said the Colonel, as being altogether the happiest state of life for a man — unless to be engaged to some lovely creature, in whom one can have perfect confidence, may be a thought happier. One can enjoy all the ecstatic mental reflection, all the delights of conceit which come from being loved, that feeling of superiority to all the world around which illumines the bosom of the favoured lover, without having to put one’s hand into one’s pocket, or having one’s pipe put out either morally or physically. The next to this is matrimony itself, which is the only remedy for that consciousness of disreputable debauchery, a savour of which always clings, more or less strongly, to unmarried men in our rank of life. The chimes must be heard at midnight, let a young man be ever so well given to the proprieties, and he must have just a touch of the swingebuckler about him, or he will seem to himself to be deficient in virility. There is no getting out of it until a man marry. But then — “

“Well; then?”

“Do you know the man whose long-preserved hat is always brushed carefully, whose coat is the pattern of neatness, but still a little threadbare when you look at it — in the colour of whose cheek there is still some touch of juvenility, but whose step is ever heavy and whose brow is always sad? The seriousness of life has pressed the smiles out of him. He has learned hardly to want anything for himself but outward decency and the common necessaries of life. Such little personal indulgences as are common to you and to me are as strange to him as ortolans or diamonds.”

“I do not think I do know him.”

“I do — well. I have seen him in the regiment, I have met him on the steps of a public office, I have watched him as he entered his parsonage house. You shall find him coming out of a lawyer’s office, where he has sat for the last nine hours, having supported nature with two penny biscuits. He has always those few thin hairs over his forehead, he has always that well-brushed hat, he has always that load of care on his brow. He is generally thinking whether he shall endeavour to extend his credit with the butcher, or resolve that the supply of meat may be again curtailed without injury to the health of his five daughters.”

“That is an ugly picture.”

“But is it true?”

“In some cases, of course, it is.”

“And yet not ugly all round,” said the meditative Colonel, who had just replenished his pipe. “There are, on the other side, the five daughters, and the partner of this load of cares. He knows it is well to have the five daughters, rather than to live with plenty of beef and mutton — even with the ortolans if you will — and with no one to care whether his body may be racked in this world or his spirit in the next. I do not say whether the balance of good or evil be on one side or the other; but when a man is going to do a thing he should know what it is he is going to do.”

“The reading of all this,” said Hamel, is, that if I succeed in marrying Miss Dormer I must have thin locks, and a bad hat, and a butcher’s bill.”

“Other men do.”

“Some, instead, have balances at their bankers, and die worth thirty, forty, or fifty thousand pounds, to the great consolation of the five daughters.”

“Or a hundred thousand pounds! There is, of course, no end to the amount of thousands which a successful professional man may accumulate. You may be the man; but the question is, whether you should not have reasonable ground to suppose yourself the man, before you encumber yourself with the five daughters.”

“It seems to me,” said Hamel, that the need of such assurance is cowardly.”

“That is just the question which I am always debating with myself. I also want to rid myself of that swingebuckler flavour. I feel that for me, like Adam, it is not good that I should be alone. I would fain ask the first girl, that I could love well enough to wish to make myself one with her, to be my wife, regardless of hats, butchers, and daughters. It is a plucky and a fine thing for a man to feel that he can make his back broad enough for all burdens. But yet what is the good of thinking that you can carry a sack of wheat when you are sure that you have not, in truth, strength to raise it from the ground?”

“Strength will come,” said Hamel.

“Yes, and the bad hat. And, worse than the bad hat, the soiled gown; and perhaps with the soiled gown the altered heart — and perhaps with the altered heart an absence of all that tenderness which it is a woman’s special right to expect from a man.”

“I should have thought you would have been the last to be so self-diffident.”

“To be so thoughtful, you mean,” said the Colonel. I am unattached now, and having had no special duty for the last three months I have given myself over to thinking in a nasty morbid manner. It comes, I daresay, partly from tobacco. But there is comfort in this — that no such reflections falling out of one man’s mouth ever had the slightest effect in influencing another man’s conduct.”

Hamel had told his friend with great triumph of his engagement with Lucy Dormer, but the friend did not return the confidence by informing the sculptor that during the whole of this conversation, and for many days previous to it, his mind had been concerned with the image of Lucy’s sister. He was aware that Ayala had been, as it were, turned out from her rich uncle’s house, and given over to the comparative poverty of Kingsbury Crescent. He himself, at the present moment, was possessed of what might be considered a comfortable income for a bachelor. He had been accustomed to live almost more than comfortably; but, having so lived, was aware of himself that he had not adapted himself for straitened circumstances. In spite of that advice of his as to the brewing, baking, and washing capabilities of a female candidate for marriage, he knew himself well enough to be aware that a wife red with a face from a kitchen fire would be distasteful to him. He had often told himself that to look for a woman with money would be still more distasteful. Therefore he had thought that for the present, at least, it would be well for him to remain as he was. But now he had come across Ayala, and though in the pursuance of his philosophy he had assured himself that Ayala should be nothing to him, still he found himself so often reverting to this resolution that Ayala, instead of being nothing, was very much indeed to him.

Three days after this Hamel was preparing himself for his departure immediately after breakfast. “What a beast you are to go”, said the Colonel, “when there can be no possible reason for your going.”

“The five daughters and the bad hat make it necessary that a fellow should do a little work sometimes.”

“Why can’t you make your images down here?”

“With you for a model, and mud out of the Caller for clay.”

“I shouldn’t have the slightest objection. In your art you cannot perpetuate the atrocity of my colour, as the fellow did who painted my portrait last winter. If you will go, go, and make busts at unheard-of prices, so that the five daughters may live for ever on the fat of the land. Can I do any good for you by going over to Glenbogie?”

“If you could snub that Mr Traffick, who is of all men the most atrocious.”

“The power doesn’t exist,” said the Colonel, which could snub the Honourable Septimus. That man is possessed of a strength which I thoroughl............