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"Really," I said, rather surprised, for Julian's acquaintance had done nothing more, to my knowledge, than give me a cigar and a whiskey-and-soda. "He's introduced you to his wife." "Very good of him, I'm sure." "You don't understand. You see Kit for what she is: a pretty, good-natured creature bred in the gutter. But Malim well, he's in the Foreign Office and is secretary to Sir George Grant."
Whereupon he skated to the landing, scrambled down the stairs, sped up Middle Temple Lane, and called the porter to let us out into Fleet Street. He struck me as a man who differed in some respects from the popular conception of a curate. "I'll race you to Ludgate Circus and back," said the clergyman. "You're too fast," said Malim; "it must be a handicap."
"Drive to Ludgate Circus and back, and beat the gentleman on the skates," said Malim to our driver, who was taking the race as though he assisted at such events in the course of his daily duty. "Hi shall say, 'Are you ready? Horf!" "We shall have Perkins applying to the Jockey Club for Ernest Willoughby's job," whispered Malim. "Are you ready? Horf!" Hatton was first off the mark.
"I'm very glad to see you both," he said. "The two other men I share these rooms with have gone away, so I'm killing time by training for my road-skate tour abroad. It's trying for one's ankles." "Could you go downstairs on them?" said Malim. "Certainly," he replied, "I'll do so now. And when we're down, I'll have a little practice in the open."
Kit never appeared in the flat: but Malim went nearly every evening to the little villa. Sometimes he took Julian and myself, more often myself alone, Julian being ever disinclined to move far from his hammock. The more I saw of Kit the more thoroughly I realized how eminently fitted she was to be Malim's wife. It was a union of opposites.
Then she rejoined Malim, amid peals of laughter from both armies. It was a Homeric incident. Only a half-hearted attempt was made to renew the attack. And when the door of the Hummums at last opened, Malim observed to Julian and me, as we squashed our way in, that if a man's wife's relations were always as opportune as Kit's, the greatest objection to them would be removed.
An unimpeachable dinner, a hand at picquet, midnight talk with the blue smoke wreathing round our heads. Well, Malim and I are unlikely to meet again in Vernon Place. Nor shall we foregather at the little house in the Hampstead Road, the house which Kit enveloped in an inimitable air of domesticity. Her past had not been unconnected with the minor stage.
And I could almost have said, with regard to the ancients, what Cicero, very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher, says with regard to Plato, 'Cum quo errare malim quam cum aliis recte sentire'. Whereas now, without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as it is at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same.
He had apparently left home under something of a cloud, though whether this had anything to do with "father's trousers" I never knew. Kit said she had not seen him for some years, though each had known the other's address. It seemed that the Blake family were not great correspondents. "Have you ever met John Hatton?" asked Malim one night after dinner at his flat. "John Hatton?" I answered. "No.
Formerly a newly-married husband was silent and bashful; now the wife surrenders herself to the first coachman that comes. Formerly the blessing of children was woman's pride; now if her husband desires for himseli children, she replies: Knowest thou not what Ennius says? "'-Ter sub armis malim vitam cernere Quam semel modo parere .
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