y
beginning, ever since the day when he had met Reggie Thesiger, he
conceived that the whole world of Thesigers had challenged him to hold
his own in it, and he was too stubborn a fighter to retire on a
challenge. Besides, he couldn't have retracted without taking Viola with
him.

And you must remember that he was thirty-two when he married her, and
that he had behind him an unknown history of struggle and humiliation and
defeat. The Thesigers stood for the whole world of things that he had
missed, the world of admired refinements and beautiful amenities, that,
without abating one atom of its refinement and amenity, had persistently
kicked him out. Besides--and this was the pathetic part of it--he had an
irrepressible affection for the Canterbury Thesigers, and it hungered and
thirsted for recognition. It nourished itself in secret on any scraps
that came its way. He met tolerance with grace, and any sort of kindness
with passionate gratitude. I think he would have broken his neck to give
Norah or the Canon or even Mrs. Thesiger anything they wanted. And the
Canon and Mrs. Thesiger wanted Norah to marry me. It wouldn't become me
to say what Norah wanted.

Viola, in a serious moment, threw a light on it. (I had been dining in
Edwardes Square on the evening of the day I came back from Canterbury
after taking Norah down there.)

"I suppose you don't know," she said, "that Mummy and Daddy fell in love
with you first? Well, they did. They wanted you to marry me to keep me
out of mischief, but more than anything they wanted you to marry Norah.
You see, she's their favourite."

And it seemed there was even more in it than that. They wanted to keep
Norah out of mischief too. "Not," she said, "that Norah would ever have
run off to Belgium, even with you." But that little adventure of Viola's
had made them nervous. Norah was inclined to look down on the garrison;
like Viola, she had declared in the most decided manner that she meant to
strike out a line for herself; she wasn't going to follow Dorothy's and
Gwinny's lead (did I say that the two married sisters lived abroad at
their husbands' stations--Gwinny at Gibraltar, and Dorothy at Simla?),
and that for lack of originality Mildred's engagement to Charlie Thesiger
was "the limit."

"It's a good thing, Wally," she said. "It'll knit us all tighter
together. That's partly why we've wanted it so awfully. Do you know that
if it hadn't been for you Norah wouldn't have been all