MARRIED LIFE 87 



time went on to the humility of his original love. 

 Only once, in all I know of his career, did he show 

 a touch of smallness. He could not learn to sing 

 correctly ; his wife told him so and desisted from 

 her lessons ; and the mortification was so sharply 

 felt that for years he could not be induced to go 

 to a concert, instanced himself as a typical man 

 without an ear, and never sang again. I tell it ; 

 for the fact that this stood singular in his behaviour, 

 and really amazed all who knew him, is the happiest 

 way I can imagine to commend the tenor of his 

 simplicity ; and because it illustrates his feeling 

 for his wife. Others were always welcome to laugh 

 at him ; if it amused them, or if it amused him, 

 he would proceed undisturbed with his occupation, 

 his vanity invulnerable. With his wife it was 

 different : his wife had laughed at his singing ; 

 and for twenty years the fibre ached. Nothing, 

 again, was more notable than the formal chivalry 

 of this unmannered man to the person on earth 

 with whom he was the most familiar. He was 

 conscious of his own innate and often rasping viva- 

 city and roughness ; and he was never forgetful of 

 his first visit to the Austins, and the vow he had 

 registered on his return. There was thus an arti- 

 ficial element in his punctilio that at times might 

 almost raise a smile. But it stood on noble grounds ; 

 for this was how he sought to shelter from his own 

 petulance the woman who was to him the symbol 



