Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (388 page)

And, oh, how we shall stand and shiver there when the rain and the east wind come!

Oh, you foolish, foolish little maidens, with your dainty heads so full of unwisdom! how often — oh! how often, are you to be warned that it is not always the sweetest thing in lovers that is the best material to make a good-wearing husband out of? “The lover sighing like a furnace” will not go on sighing like a furnace forever. That furnace will go out. He will become the husband, “full of strange oaths — jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,” and grow “into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon.” How will he wear? There will be no changing him if he does not suit, no sending him back to be altered, no having him let out a bit where he is too tight and hurts you, no having him taken in where he is too loose, no laying him by when the cold comes, to wrap yourself up in something warmer. As he is when you select him, so he will have to last you all your life — through all changes, through all seasons.

Yes, he looks very pretty now — handsome pattern, if the colours are fast and it does not fade — feels soft and warm to the touch. How will he stand the world’s rough weather? How will he stand life’s wear and tear?

He looks so manly and brave. His hair curls so divinely. He dresses so well (I wonder if the tailor’s bill is paid?) He kisses your hand so gracefully. He calls you such pretty names. His arm feels so strong a round you. His fine eyes are so full of tenderness as they gaze down into yours.

Will he kiss your hand when it is wrinkled and old? Will he call you pretty names when the baby is crying in the night, and you cannot keep it quiet — or, better still, will he sit up and take a turn with it? Will his arm be strong around you in the days of trouble? Will his eyes shine above you full of tenderness when yours are growing dim?

And you boys, you silly boys! what materials for a wife do you think you will get out of the empty-headed coquettes you are raving and tearing your hair about. Oh! yes, she is very handsome, and she dresses with exquisite taste (the result of devoting the whole of her heart, mind and soul to the subject, and never allowing her thoughts to be distracted from it by any other mundane or celestial object whatsoever); and she is very agreeable and entertaining and fascinating; and she will go on looking handsome, and dressing exquisitely, and being agreeable and entertaining and fascinating just as much after you have married her as before — more so, if anything.

But
you
will not get the benefit of it. Husbands will be charmed and fascinated by her in plenty, but
you
will not be among them. You will run the show, you will pay all the expenses, do all the work. Your performing lady will be most affable and enchanting to the crowd. They will stare at her, and admire her, and talk to her, and flirt with her. And you will be able to feel that you are quite a benefactor to your fellow-men and women — to your fellow-men especially — in providing such delightful amusement for them, free. But
you
will not get any of the fun yourself.

You will not get the handsome looks.
You
will get the jaded face, and the dull, lusterless eyes, and the untidy hair with the dye showing on it. You will not get the exquisite dresses.
You
will get dirty, shabby frocks and slommicking dressing-gowns, such as your cook would be ashamed to wear.
You
will not get the charm and fascination.
You
will get the after-headaches, the complainings and grumblings, the silence and sulkiness, the weariness and lassitude and ill-temper that comes as such a relief after working hard all day at being pleasant!

It is not the people who shine in society, but the people who brighten up the back parlour; not the people who are charming when they are out, but the people who are charming when they are in, that are good to
live
with. It is not the brilliant men and women, but the simple, strong, restful men and women, that make the best traveling companions for the road of life. The men and women who will only laugh as they put up the umbrella when the rain begins to fall, who will trudge along cheerfully through the mud and over the stony places — the comrades who will lay their firm hand on ours and strengthen us when the way is dark and we are growing weak — the evergreen men and women, who, like the holly, are at their brightest and best when the blast blows chilliest — the stanch men and women!

It is a grand thing this stanchness. It is the difference between a dog and a sheep — between a man and an oyster.

Women, as a rule, are stancher than men. There are women that you feel you could rely upon to the death. But very few men indeed have this dog-like virtue. Men, taking them generally, are more like cats. You may live with them and call them yours for twenty years, but you can never feel
quite
sure of them. You never know exactly what they are thinking of. You never feel easy in your mind as to the result of the next-door neighbour’s laying down a Brussels carpet in his kitchen.

We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men in this nineteenth century. In the old, earnest times, war made men stanch and true to each other. We have learned up a good many glib phrases about the wickedness of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful, trading times, wherein we can — and do — devote the whole of our thoughts and energies to robbing and cheating and swindling one another — to “doing” our friends, and overcoming our enemies by trickery and lies — wherein, undisturbed by the wicked ways of fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the “smartness,” the craft, and the cunning, and all the other “business-like” virtues on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and treated with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when men chose lions and eagles for their symbols rather than foxes.

There is a good deal to be said against war. I am not prepared to maintain that war did not bring with it disadvantages, but there can be no doubt that, for the noblest work of Nature — the making of men — it was a splendid manufactory. It taught men courage. It trained them in promptness and determination, in strength of brain and strength of hand. From its stern lessons they learned fortitude in suffering, coolness in danger, cheerfulness under reverses. Chivalry, Reverence, and Loyalty are the beautiful children of ugly War. But, above all gifts, the greatest gift it gave to men was stanchness.

It first taught men to be true to one another; to be true to their duty, true to their post; to be in all things faithful, even unto death.

The martyrs that died at the stake; the explorers that fought with Nature and opened up the world for us; the reformers (they had to do something more than talk in those days) who won for us our liberties; the men who gave their lives to science and art, when science and art brought, not as now, fame and fortune, but shame and penury — they sprang from the loins of the rugged men who had learned, on many a grim battlefield, to laugh at pain and death, who had had it hammered into them, with many a hard blow, that the whole duty of a man in this world is to be true to his trust, and fear not.

Do you remember the story of the old Viking who had been converted to Christianity, and who, just as they were about, with much joy, to baptize him, paused and asked: “But what — if this, as you tell me, is the only way to the true Valhalla — what has become of my comrades, my friends who are dead, who died in the old faith — where are they?”

The priests, confused, replied there could be no doubt those unfortunate folk had gone to a place they would rather not mention.

“Then,” said the old warrior, stepping back, “I will not be baptized. I will go along with my own people.”

He had lived with them, fought beside them; they were his people. He would stand by them to the end — of eternity. Most assuredly, a very shocking old Viking! But I think it might be worth while giving up our civilisation and our culture to get back to the days when they made men like that.

The only reminder of such times that we have left us now, is the bull-dog; and he is fast dying out — the pity of it! What a splendid old dog he is! so grim, so silent, so stanch; so terrible, when he has got his idea, of his duty clear before him; so absurdly meek, when it is only himself that is concerned.

He is the gentlest, too, and the most lovable of all dogs. He does not look it. The sweetness of his disposition would not strike the casual observer at first glance. He resembles the gentleman spoken of in the oft-quoted stanza:

‘E’s all right when yer knows ‘im.

But yer’ve got to know ‘im fust.

The first time I ever met a bull-dog — to speak to, that is — was many years ago. We were lodging down in the country, an orphan friend of mine named George, and myself, and one night, coming home late from some dissolving views we found the family had gone to bed. They had left a light in our room, however, and we went in and sat down, and began to take off our boots.

And then, for the first time, we noticed on the hearthrug a bull-dog. A dog with a more thoughtfully ferocious expression — a dog with, apparently, a heart more dead to all ennobling and civilizing sentiments — I have never seen. As George said, he looked more like some heathen idol than a happy English dog.

He appeared to have been waiting for us; and he rose up and greeted us with a ghastly grin, and got between us and the door.

We smiled at him — a sickly, propitiatory smile. We said, “Good dog — poor fellow!” and we asked him, in tones implying that the question could admit of no negative, if he was not a “nice old chap.” We did not really think so. We had our own private opinion concerning him, and it was unfavourable. But we did not express it. We would not have hurt his feelings for the world. He was a visitor, our guest, so to speak — and, as well-brought-up young men, we felt that the right thing to do was for us to prevent his gaining any hint that we were not glad to see him, and to make him feel as little as possible the awkwardness of his position.

I think we succeeded. He was singularly unembarrassed, and far more at his ease than even we were. He took but little notice of our flattering remarks, but was much drawn toward George’s legs. George used to be, I remember, rather proud of his legs. I could never see enough in them myself to excuse George’s vanity; indeed, they always struck me as lumpy. It is only fair to acknowledge, however, that they quite fascinated that bull-dog. He walked over and criticised them with the air of a long-baffled connoisseur who had at last found his ideal. At the termination of his inspection he distinctly smiled.

George, who at that time was modest and bashful, blushed and drew them up on to the chair. On the dog’s displaying a desire to follow them, George moved up on to the table, and squatted there in the middle, nursing his knees. George’s legs being lost to him, the dog appeared inclined to console himself with mine. I went and sat beside George on the table.

Sitting with your feet drawn up in front of you, on a small and rickety one-legged table, is a most trying exercise, especially if you are not used to it. George and I both felt our position keenly. We did not like to call out for help, and bring the family down. We were proud young men, and we feared lest, to the unsympathetic eye of the comparative stranger, the spectacle we should present might not prove imposing.

We sat on in silence for about half an hour, the dog keeping a reproachful eye upon us from the nearest chair, and displaying elephantine delight whenever we made any movement suggestive of climbing down.

At the end of the half hour we discussed the advisability of “chancing it,” but decided not to. “We should never,” George said, “confound foolhardiness with courage.”

“Courage,” he continued — George had quite a gift for maxims—”courage is the wisdom of manhood; foolhardiness, the folly of youth.”

He said that to get down from the table while that dog remained in the room, would clearly prove us to be possessed of the latter quality; so we restrained ourselves, and sat on.

We sat on for over an hour, by which time, having both grown careless of life and indifferent to the voice of Wisdom, we did “chance it;” and throwing the table-cloth over our would-be murderer, charged for the door and got out.