Any woman (it is the defect of her sex) comes sooner to the stable
mind of maturity than any man; and Jenkin was to the end of a most
deliberate growth. In the next chapter, when I come to deal with
his telegraphic voyages and give some taste of his correspondence,
the reader will still find him at twenty-five an arrant school-boy.
His wife besides was more thoroughly educated than he. In many
ways she was able to teach him, and he proud to be taught; in many
ways she outshone him, and he delighted to be outshone. All these
superiorities, and others that, after the manner of lovers, he no
doubt forged for himself, added as 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 vivacity 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 artificial element in his punctilio
that at times might almost raise a smile. But it stood on noble