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A silent youngster began to speak, cleared an accumulated huskiness from his throat and said, "Consider the girl." "Why marry?" asked Bletherley, unregarded. "You must admit you are asking a great thing when you want a girl ..." began Parkson. "Not so. When a girl's chosen a man, and he chooses her, her place is with him. What is the good of hankering? Mutual. Fight together."
They met in Parkson's sitting-room, because Parkson was the only one of the Friends opulent enough to have a sitting-room, he being a Whitworth Scholar and in receipt of one hundred pounds a year. The Friends were of various ages, mostly very young.
That dream of incessant unswerving work! Where might he have reached if only he had had singleness of purpose to realise that purpose?... And in these gardens it was that he and Smithers and Parkson had sat on a seat hard by the fossil tree, and discoursed of Socialism together before the great paper was read.... "Yes," he said, speaking aloud to himself; "yes that's all over too.
"Every man needs a Lode Star," said Parkson and Lewisham swore under his breath. Parkson's lodgings were now near at hand to the left, and it occurred to him this boredom would be soonest ended if he took Parkson home, Parkson consented mechanically, still discoursing. "I have often seen you talking to Miss Heydinger," he said. "If you will pardon my saying it ..."
Clearly the question was between these two. Or should he vacillate and lose both? And then his wretchedness gave place to that anger that comes of perpetually thwarted desires.... It was on the day after this dream that he insulted Parkson so grossly. He insulted Parkson after a meeting of the "Friends of Progress" at Parkson's rooms.
Lewisham walked on for a space with Parkson trotting by his side. Then suddenly he turned. His face was quite white and he spoke in a tired voice. "Parkson," he said, "you are a fool!... You have the face of a sheep, the manners of a buffalo, and the conversation of a bore, Pewrity indeed!... The girl whose photograph you showed me has eyes that don't match.
The institution of marriage, so far as the South Kensington student is concerned, is in no immediate danger. Parkson turned out with the rest of them at half-past ten, for a walk. The night was warm for February and the waxing moon bright.
That was the interesting part of the evening to Lewisham. Parkson suddenly rose, got down "Sesame and Lilies," and insisted upon reading a lengthy mellifluous extract that went like a garden roller over the debate, and afterwards Bletherley became the centre of a wrangle that left him grossly insulted and in a minority of one.
"Good!" said Lewisham, suddenly emotional. "You talk like a man, Dunkerley. I'm hanged if you don't." "The place of Woman," insisted Parkson, "is the Home. And if there is no home ! I hold that, if need be, a man should toil seven years as Jacob did for Rachel ruling his passions, to make the home fitting and sweet for her ..." "Get the hutch for the pet animal," said Dunkerley. "No.
It was just sufficiently cognate to the matter of Lewisham's thoughts to demand attention. Every now and then he had to answer, and he felt an idiotic desire albeit he clearly perceived its idiocy to reciprocate confidences. The necessity of fleeing Parkson became urgent Lewisham's temper under these multitudinous stresses was going.
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