World War, 1914-1918 -- Gift books; World War, 1914-1918 -- Miscellanea
Personality is a wonderful thing. It is worth so much more than mere
beauty. Every woman that lives knows how, once or twice in her life, at
least--perhaps quite casually in the street--she has seen a man of whom
she has instantly felt that the woman who belongs to him is very lucky.
The man may not have been very handsome, and he may have been
impecunious looking and badly dressed, but there was something about him
which marked him out as a Man, with a capital M, as distinct from the
mere empty shells of masculinity that walk about among us and have no
power to thrill. I have always called this peculiar and rare quality in
a man the "dignity of the watch chain."
People have laughed at me and have not understood; and so perhaps I had
better try to explain.
It has nothing to do with watch chains. In fact, a man with anything
much in the way of a watch chain cannot very easily have it. Of course,
it never goes with vulgarity. I only mention watch chain at all in
connection with it because there is always a certain dignity about the
chest of the man who has got it. Athletics will not give it, and yet
there is something about the set of the shoulders and the build of the
breast of a man with personality that makes a woman feel that his arms
would shelter her better than any other arms in the world, and that to
be the chosen love of such a Man would be the greatest honour and
delight that life could give.
My Yeogh Wough has got this charm. I can't describe it exactly, but I
know at half a mile's distance when a man has got it. I know directly I
go into a church if any man of the congregation has it. And he, my boy,
had it from the time when he was a few months old--as was testified to
by the fact that a millionaire's wife who hated children asked that he
might be allowed to be downstairs when she was calling on me, because,
she said:
"He's beautiful. He's not like an ordinary child. There's something
about him that draws me."
That seems only to have happened about a year ago, too. And now that
millionaire's wife is a peeress and my Yeogh Wough is just twenty, is a
lieutenant and an adjutant, and is coming home to-day on six days'
leave!
To-day? The day is already gone. It must be a quarter to ten by now and
I dare not think of what the dinner must be like, or the cook's temper.
If she hadn't known him and worshipped him ever since he was little, she
would be in an unmanageable rage. I am beginning almost to be a little
anxious, because this is his second leave and I am a believer in
Compensation. In this world one never gets a good thing twice and the
bolts of fate always fall from the bluest skies.
But I will shut these gleams of fear away from me. The room door will be
pushed open presently and he will come in with his gay, firm step and
his charming smile.
His smile has always had something surprising about it, because his eyes
are so sad.
My Yeogh Wough!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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